Thursday 25 March 2021

Modernity and the Village

 


... That is a corruption of the Local, that is happening on all fronts as it tries to respectfully take in Modernity. Local has lost a basic faith in itself.
Komakkambedu Himakiran Anugula That's the problem
Aparna Krishnan The main problem.
Mahima Thangappan Ayurveda always talks about keeping the body's internal factors strong than blaming external disturbances. I always extrapolate that to the society too. If at all villages had shown resistance to the damaging external factors.
Aparna Krishnan Their resistance is broken in various ways. TV - which projects the other world as most desirable. Schooling - which teaches them that reading-writing jobs are most superior. The seductive scents of soaps and shampoos now in every remote village. It needs a sound perspective and a rooted movement and visionary leadership to be able to withstand all this. Every society has succumbed to the pull of modernity.
Aparna Krishnan When I was new to the village I used to criticize how the SCs would invest everything they had to build a little cement room. Later I realized that they are part of a larger society, and the aspirations are those seen elsewhere ... To expect greater wisdom and self denial and perspective from just them is not possible.



When the corporate becomes king, or king-by-proxy, profit becomes the mantra. Every village livlihood is squeezed out into extinction, as the plastic and aluminium companies sell vessels and winnow which earlier the potter and the bamboo weaver used to supply, And the mills sell cloth that the weaver used to supply.
Its either industrilization, or the villager.


All our effort, in the personal and collective, sometimes seems all too small in the face of the juggernaut of modernity which has unleashed a consumerism that is swallowing the earth.
And yet we need to work on. Because when and how the change will come is unknown and unknowable.
And our missed effort should not be why that final push missed its mark.

3 Comments

  • Chittaroopa Palit
    इस modernity only a juggernaut then. Does it not offer an escape from caste feudalism and patriarchy. Is equality not a modern notion. 
    • Aparna Krishnan
      In modernity, industrilization, casteism has morphed into classism. Thats all. Alomgside it has irreparably destroyed the sustainable livlihoods of many, and made a skilled weaver and a potter wannabe clerks and watchmen.
      For real and sustained changes we need towork from our foundations, our roots. Validating all that needs to be validated. Questioning and correcting all that needs to be. 
    • Aparna Krishnan
      No, equality is not a 'modern' notion.

TVs in all the homes im Paalaguttapalle, Dalitwada. But no dal. Malnourishment.
... the grip of mindless consumerism.
... empowered by the consumerism of our privileged class



oiJtusSneph rolno1soo7l,er fe20d1dli6 
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I have blown candles off on cakes in my childhood. Much later i realized how lamps are lit with devotion because light is a symbol of the sacred. And to blow out light, or candles, is not part of our ways.
But now in a village where light is called Jyothiamma the goddess, candles are blown out in those birthdays of the children in families which can afford a small cake.
The unquestionable allure of modernity brooks no questions. And also gives no answers.




tJoshtSeSSpounnmseo 1u7a,r 2imes01d5f 
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Paalaguttapalle (Dalitwada)
When our daughter was going to the village school, I used to wash and keep the small platic bag in which lime (choona) would come. Each year we would buy a bag of 5kg to whitewash our house, and the bag was her schoolbag. As for all the other children. It would hold the slate, a notebook and the pencil and slate chalk. This was ten years ago exactly when she entered 1st, and stayed the practice till she entered 5th class.
Today the children demand and get a plastic backpack costing 350/-. Even in these times on no employment, the parents sell their soul and get them the bag. The child without it feels 'deprived', in this SC community.
I rave and rant much less now ... and I contain my helplessness. The community here is a part of the larger society and its aspirations are created there. And each of us in our consumptiveness is responsible to pushing Eashwaramma and Varalu also having to give their children who desire all this. We contribute to the culture of consumption.



I can mop a mud floor with cowdung better than the new daughters-in-law of 20 years of age. They grew up in cement floored homes as the government SC housing schemes gave them one roomed cement boxes for homes by their childhood. We retained our mud floors.
Sustainable and beautiful skills have disappeared before our eyes, and we have watched helplessly.




Govindamma of the opposite village, Eguva Maalapalle, is the village midwife, the mantrasayani. She considers this work punyam, meaning auspicious, and does not ask for payment. She says that sometimes people do not pay her anything at all, even though she may even need to put her hand inside and manipulate the baby to assist delivery. She also considers giving advice to women who wish to abort papam, or sinful.
Till 10 years ago all delveries were done in the village, and there was no problem that she failed to handle. Now they all go to PHCs and have unnecessary labour inducing injections and medications done.
The details of pre natal and post natal care and rituals in the village is amazing.


Aparna Krishnan
24 June 2015 at 18:54 ·
Twenty years ago, when I went to the village in 96, there was no TV. There was also hardly electricity. We used to gather together on the streets at our house steps and chat under the moonlight and starlight. the children used to sing their festival songs, and the elders used to teach them more. I used to attempt adult literacy classes, and also help the children with their studies. There were happy times every evening till our early bedtimes.
Now there is TV, and people socially sit together before the TVs and watch. If I go to chat, Eashwaramma will not take her eyes off the TV, and will pat on the floor asking me to sit next to her and watch the saas-bahu Telugu versions. The girls learn new fashions from the serials, and Annapurna, our tailor, has honed her skills catering to these demands. My daughter wears most old fashioned clothes in the village because I am clear about how the cuts should be. The other mothers are younger and also inspired by the TV !
When the little girls come during Sankranthi month singing their songs and dancing home to home, if it is serial time they are shushed and asked to sit and watch. Only after the serial are they given oil for the lamp and rice and a rupee or two.
I feel i have seen an age pass. Pre TV is Neanderthal Times for the present youngsters.


  • Pankaj Arora
    Neanderthal times were sustainable. TV culture is a termite/trojan horse to destroy indigineous cultures from within. It's an exercise in homogenization that helps big corporates and big governments alike.
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    • 6y
    • Aparna Krishnan
      Yes, and we watch helplessly.
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      • 6y
    • Gyan Mitra
      Modern business models which exploit people are done through the 'soaps'. ( That is why they were called 'soaps' as earlier, they were created to sell soap, detergent, toothpaste, now also 'beauty' and 'hygiene' products, mobiles, etc. We have lost our influence on the children, our grandmother's stories are now boring.
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      • 6y
    • Pankaj Arora
      Programming | Program do these terms ring some bell as well @gyan mitra?
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      • 6y
  • Raghunandan Tr
    What a sad thing! I feel the same when I go back to my village. In fact, when the entire house shuts down to watch TV, I walk off alone into the darkness, to sit at the steps at the end of the garden and listen to the sounds of the treefrogs, crickets and the occasional train going past.
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    • 6y
    • Aparna Krishnan
      My children are not enamoured. They have their childhood games which are far more fun for them. The aduts are hopelessly hooked. Labour times used to be adjusted so that the women could return in time to watch a certian afternoon serial !! Of course, now there is no cropping, no labour in the drought.




When the very direction is wrong, every success is a failure.
#ModernTimes
One of our children, Paalaguttapalle Dalitwada, is a nurse. She studied hard. Against all odds. She is happy. We are all happy. It is a success story.
And yet.
Her grandfather was a vaidudu. Village medicine man. Who treated diseases with mantrams and herbs. Snake bites also. People used to come from far and wide to him.
He was not rich. But much respected.
That age ended.
Faith in those medicines waned. As village health nurses started coming and warning against them. And giving injections.
The granddaughter of this great doctor, this vaidudu is now a nurse. The lowest rung. She works below all the doctors.
And somewhere I grieve.
... when the direction itself is wrong, every success stays bleak.
  • దామోదర రెడ్డి
    Near our village, There lived Mangali kanakayya, and his brother.. who gave all of themselves in worshipping knowledge they inherited, walking to and forth of all villages in vicinity every day, and treating any one suffering.. with utmost dedication and involvement, skill. stories of their treatment still reverberates in all villages. never concerned about what they will get in return.. only at time of harvest, sankranti.. they came to every home, and take what ever all people give to them, for entire year. their knowledge they saw, as responsibility.. never as means of gaining from some one's suffering.
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    • 2y
  • Chitra Sharan
    My neighbour would say when she lived in Benares, there would be doctors called Dhoot Vaidya. A sick person would send someone from their house to this Vaidya's house, the Vaidya would throw a towel on the representatives hand, check the pulse from on top of the towel and give medicines which the Vaidya himself would pound, crush and mix. It was a laborious and time consuming process and that Vaidya would see only a few people because of this it seems. She would say, yet the crowds would throng, wait for hours and get treated. We have lost so much ...




En route the meeting on rural livelihoods.
Bus stop at Damalcheruvu.
An unshelted spot in a triangle in the middle of the road.
No roof, no bench. As one peers down the heated road. For approaching buses.
A year ago. Before the road widening.
A vast tamarind tree. Ancient.All encompassing. Under which we sat on benches. Under which there were flower stalls. Fruit carts. Life.
The tree sascrificed to road widening. To the erection of a statue.
...
Buji, "They spent so much. They could have erected a shelter. For us."
Roopa, "All they care is about their cut. And name."




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