a day in barot...

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 of questions, uncertainties and doubts - uncertainty about all the government clearances, land acquisitions (private as well as forest); questions and apprehensions about the impact of this project on the villagers - are we disturbing the environment by such huge construction in this beautiful landscape? are the villagers going to be happy? what about the people who would lose their land? these villages are already electrified and so the power that would generated would be added to the national grid. so honestly speaking they would not have any direct benefit from this project except employment for a few years. what we do plan is to understand the needs to these villages and help in what ever way we can.

so while the detail survey of the landscape is going on - amit and i are attempting to break ice with the villagers...we are trying to interact as much as possible and try to find out their feeling about this project and also to understand more about their life in this beautiful landscape.

In that attempt we set out on foot to explore the village…we noticed that almost all farms were filled with people picking potatoes...it seems the potatoes were ripe and ready and it was time for the next sowing season of jowar. we also noticed that a lot of children had taken off from school to work in their farms… we also walked into one of these farms where a woman and her son were picking potatoes and volunteered to pick some potatoes with them...the first reaction was obviously of doubt but then they saw that we were serious. the lady showed us the way ...picking potatoes is not a very easy task - you keep a small sickle in one hand and with your knees on the ground (these people sit on their feet), you keep digging the land to find potatoes and collect these in a basket. needless to say that we were quite pathetic and slow in the beginning but later got the hang of it...i am not sure for how long were we there but while i was doing this act of picking the potatoes, i realized later that i was totally in the moment...it was like life was moving slow - one potatoes at a time :-).

we were rewarded for our hard work with a lot of warm smiles and a bag full of potatoes!!

PS: we also barged into somebody's house to see a gherat (hydro-power flour milling machine). the owners showed us the operation with a lot of pride and enthusiasm. they also showed us their trout farming tank. while we were leaving the lady also presented us with "ghia". it was very refreshing to see their openness and unpretentious behavior.

pps: one of the good things about being in barot is that you get ample time to pen down your thoughts...once it is dark outside there is hardly anything to do...the village becomes very quiet with the only sound that you can hear is that of children playing and dogs barking...there is no TV connection in this hotel that we are staying... the cell phones don't work as well. So you either read, walk, talk, eat or write :-))

the "bhel" experience

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. It was not acceptable to us to throw trash there, so we would generally take it with us and throw it whenever we had access to a trash can. on this particular visit again the same thing happened but this time in the spirit of being the change we wish to see, we went to a store nearby and brought a small trashcan and took it to the hawker - urging him to use it.

We had hoped that the hawker would be happy seeing a solution to his littering problem, instead, he got a little edgy on seeing the trashcan and said that he would not be able to keep it because:

- if he keeps it next to his “thela” the chances are very high that somebody would steal it (since it is of good quality) when he is not around.

- he does not want to own it or tie it to his thela because that would mean extra load for him, which in turn would make it very difficult for him to run when the MC official come for their sudden raids.

at the same time, this guy did understand our sentiment and was ready to take the trash can only if we would accept the money we had spent on it ...we obviously didn't want him to pay for something that he does not want. so there we were ---trying to find a solution to a simple issue like throwing used paper plates, but we had failed. at the end of it, the "bhelpuri" guy proposed a solution – he would tie a "teen ka dibba"(can of tin) with a chain to the railing next to his “thela”. It will be something that he will not have to carry around and the “tin ka dibba” is not good enough for people to steal. we had no option but to take the extra trashcan home.



***we had read and heard a lot that no change is possible (or sustainable) till it is chalked in participation with the people who will be affected by the change. We also thought we understood this. But i guess, we did not realize that it has to be practiced in every little thing that comes our way....hopefully, this small incident serves as a lesson to remember:-)