Everyday Lessons

amit and i are in Barot – the closest village to our micro-hydel site - Rooling. It is a beautiful place with river Una flowing on one side and the hills on the other side. there are a couple of other small villages with funny names like Tikkan, Jhatingiri, Ghitasini etc around this place. there are no places to stay except for a PWD guest house and 2 small hotels that were built in the last 2 years. the road (that was build just a few years back) is wide enough for only one vehicle to pass. There are no vista points as is common in the US... every place offers a beautiful vista of the vast landscape. A few kilometers from Barot is the micro-hydel site that was allotted to amit's dad in 1997. our project is on one of the nallah - Roolang that meets the river Una. we are here to get the detail survey of our site started. this survey is one of the steps to determine the feasibility of this project. whether we do this project or not, the journey is quite interesting. there are a lot o...

there is this street hawker (thela) where we live, where Amit and i generally go to eat "bhelpuri". both of us like to engage in conversation with street vendors and while chatting with this guy, it came to our knowledge that one of the biggest issue these hawkers face is harassment from the local municipal corporation (MC). since the hawkers are not provided with any license to sell their wares, they are at the mercy of these MC officials. the MC personnel come anytime, confiscate the hawker's stuff and then usually demand a bribe to give them back their belongings. the MC officials obviously don't expect the street vendors to leave their spots once they leave – their only motivation is to make a quick buck. Which sadly, is what usually happens. anyways, we have had bhelpuri from this vendor (thela) a couple of times and whenever it came to throwing the used paper plate - he used to ask us to discard it in the open – right next to the steel railing where he stands. I...