(Paalaguttapalle, Daliwada) - And years flew by on winged feet ...(2003 to 2013)
1. The family grew larger, and
relationships deeper and firm.
2.
The village was extremely pretty with small circular mud houses, painted red
and white. Now the houses are mostly cement built under the SC housing scheme,
and it is less pretty.
3. Groundwater fell from 200 feet to 600 feet
4. Lashing monsoon rains gave way climate changes and there is no rain
5. Tanks used to get full during rains, and villagers used to go and clear
sluices so that the bunds didn't break. Tanks have not seen water for five
years now.
6. Agriculture was in full swing and homes had paddy and pulses and groundnut
and oil from the fields. Now every food item is purchased.
7. Many children used to study only till 7th or 8th. Now the generation of
fully schooled youth do not wish to work in the village, and are unable to get
dream white collar jobs. They work is hotel boys or shop boys.
8. Evenings would be spent on the doorsteps chatting into the night, and now
they are spent watching serials in TVs.
9. There used to be a undependable phone a kilometer away in the Kamma hamlet
in Naren's home. Now every home has one or two cell phones.
10. The farmers used to run after the labour for work. Now there is no work -
and the farmers and the labour are feeling bleak.
11. Everyone used to go
to the forest to collect firewood. Now there are some gas stoves in the village
- and the new daughters-in-law are schooled and do not wish to work hard at
collecting firewood and other chores.
A decade passed. A generation has grown up. We are older, a little wiser. Some cherished dreams got put aside, some survived.
But its a beautiful village, with beautiful people who have space and time and goodness ...- Then and Now.
...At years end ...
Over the years every house in the village has moved to deeper and deeper monetization.
Every house has a cell phone, a TV, and now the aspiration is a gas connection. Shampoos are the default, and the youngsters use toothpaste even as neem trees abound. Food stays compromised on, as the scarce money gets diverted to these 'choices', manufactuired by TV ads, and by a pervasive sense of consumerism all around the country and the earth.
Twenty years ago, we used to go to the next village two km away, if we needed to receive a call. It did not matter. There was no TV, and leisurely conversartions filled the evenings and nights. Consumerism stayed at arm's leagth - which has now entered every home through TV. Firewood was plenty as fuel, and not even the upper caste families in other hamlets had gas.
As much as the disappearing water table is a defeat, so is this.
...
The village was hard working and self sufficent - just 40 years ago. The potters the bamboo artists, the stone cutters, the thatchers, the agriculturists fed into each other's needs and supported each other.
They were then schooled into an understanding that their traditional skills were lowly, and that only working at a desk with a pen was respectable. They were televisioned into a sense of poverty and self-loathing, and sold unattainable dreams of shampoos and soaps and cell phone and glamourous homes. Now the generation X knows no traditional skill, not is willing to do any traditional work, including farming. They also have no way of entering those beautiful enticing worls on TV.
We have acheived this situation, on our own strength. The colonizers left our shores long ago.
...
Paalaguttapalle (Dalitwada)
This community was once a self-supporting community - the thatchers were employed in thatching all the houses, the potters had the neighbourhood as their cliente, the bamboo merchants made winnows and baskets. The Wadders were the community that did earth and stone work, and were very much in demand for digging wells in the past.
Now everything has changed. The thatchers will soon have no more thatching to do as there are fewer and fewer thatched houses. The masons are mostly Muslims from the neighbouring Kothapeta. But while thatching gives repeated employment - masonry is almost just a one time work. Bamboo baskets have given way to aluminium basins, and even plastic winnows have entered the market. The Wadders have lost employment with wells becoming irrelevant and with the advent of earthmovers. The other side of the reality is that these jobs have lost appeal for many reasons including low remuneration, and the next generation of thatchers does not exist. The children neither know to, nor wish to thatch. Same holds for many such environmentally friendly and sustainable skills.
When we talk of sustainable and labour intensive employment we sometimes wonder whom we are speaking for today. There is no one desiring those employments! Partly due to the non remunerativeness of the work, and even more due to a schooling and education which has taught them to desire white collar jobs.
Those happy years. When water was at 200 feet, and lands were planted with paddy, and transplanting songs would waft. Now water is at 1000 feet.
When our 15 year old was 5. And thought that mother knew everything. Now she knows that parents know nothing.
#Swadeshi
Twenty years ago there were local products in circulation in our
village. Ramakka from the next village would bring balls of puffed jowar and
jaggery, four for a rupee. The local bumk shop in Varadappanaidupeta would sell
locally made groundnut balls.
Today's village children buy sealed packets of snacks from
factories. Without working on restoring local production, we will only keep
leading flag marches to nowhere.
In my village, dalit and landless, the elders talk about 50 years ago. There were cows in every household as agriculture depended on cows. There was milk for all children as there were no collection centres to buy the milk for urban areas. The tanks had water and there was fish, crabs (ours is a dry/ tank-irrigated area). Paddy was grown in surplus and people ate well. Today borewells have exhausted our groundwater/ there is no agriculture/ every drop of milk is sold away/ children are all anaemic. Yes, there are TVs, and cell phones, and cement houses. Thats modernity and development - socialist or capitalist or communist. We, in the village, are at at the end of our imagination. If anyone is seriously interested in engageing - most welcome.
Mankind is on its suicidal last leg. Our village bores are reaching 1000 feet. And when I boil the water I get a thick crust on the vessel. But that is water we have and need to drink in the village.
Borewells came. Millet fields were replaced by sugarcane fields. In 30 short years the groundwater has gone from 50 feet to 1000 feet and got exhasuted. There is no agriculture, no drinking water, no livlihoods and a disappearing existance.
And all this was predicted !
One watches. One has failed to communicate some larger truths one wished to.
20 years ago, 1996 -
Nagarajakka asked me what the fridge in Uma’s house in Venkataraamapuram was for. When I explained to her she asked back why people have to be eating leftovers and why they cannot cook warm food fresh twice a day and eat. Gadgets and consumerism were put in their place.
Today, 2016 -
There are two fridges in Malapalle, in Rajagopal Anna's house and in Siddiah's house. It is now an admired item. Children run to those houses to place bottles of water in it, and then come after some hours to take home fridge water. Gadgets and consumerism have won the battle. The war is still on, though.
- Paalaguttapalle (Dalitwada)
1995 - when we moved to our village, electricity used to be undependable. The incandescent bulb would glow like a glowworm at nights. We all used to sit together under the moonlight on the street and talk till we felt sleepy and drifted away. Groundwater was at 200 feet,
Twenty years later - we have a tubelight, the current is steady and the bulbs glow bright. People stay up late watching murderous serials with villianous mothers-in-law and schemeing daughters-in-laws. Meanwhile the borewells ran fulltime on good electricity, and finished the groundwater. Now even at 1000 feet there is very little water, if at all.
The village is developed.
Twenty years ago I moved to our village, to stay with Uma and Naren. Nagesh followed later. There was just one phone in the whole panchayat of seven hamlets, and people used to be called to Naren's home for any call. The phone would not work mostly, and I used to go to Pakala once a week to get calls from my parents. There was one TV in the panchayat, and only Doordarshan. The bulb at night used to give a dim light and reading would be hard.
Agriculture was in full swing. There was employment and hard work and hope and satisfaction.
Today, there is one or more cell phone in every home. Every home has a cable TV. The bulbs glow brighter with better voltage. And also groundwater is exhausted. Rains have changed and there has been rainlessness for 3 years. Agriculture has halted and there is no money. Farmers survive on some ration rice and similar subsidy on undernourishing diets.
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