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.
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 :-))
posted by Gagan (Liza) Chawla at 11:52 PM
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