A Changing Weather
...which we have to accept
Drops drip on the roof above. Frequent thunders paint the walls in a ghostly white. A constant hum of the falling drops has permeated the house. Water. It flows, finds its way through every corner where an obstacle tries to stop it. It never stops. It flows. Keeps flowing.
The clouds grumble. Dark. Grey. They pour in rain that has been waiting to fall since ages. Gaja has come back. Back only for a day or two. A day of quiet, he must have thought while leaving the big town where he works. Sanju sits in the verandah, hammering the back end of the peeled coconut leaves. A broom is taking shape. The rain watches him as he hammers every time, quietly, repeatedly. Aaji (grandma) is sitting silently on the stool, reading a prose from her favourite writer. Ajoba (grandpa) has clenched the seat which overlooks the jungle above. He has been silent for days. Maybe he has accepted the madness that the pills have brought him. He has to. Reality is flickering away for him, but for us, things are different.
Gaja is lifting up the silt that has come down with the stream. Vishram, his eighty year old father, is using a sickle to loosen it up. Gaja has never known what a vacation is. He leaves his tiny house on the edges of Mumbai, to come and offer help in his parents house in our village. That’s what life is for an average Indian.
The entire village has gone silent. For hours the rain has poured in from all corners. The villagers are still in shock. It flooded yesterday. And it flooded like never before..
Every attempt made by man to tame nature, turns into a tragedy sooner or later. Here, we are witnessing one of those attempts. Most of the market was underwater. A soup of hot chocolate like water, made because of the brownish colour shredded by the laterite above, flowed violently towards the sea. The main road coming down towards the village, had turned into a river. Stones lay in the middle of the ground like pieces on a checkerboard. “We pay the price of development,” someone reminded.
It is true. We will pay the price for development, but what an irony. This development comes from the ones who know nothing about this terrain. It comes from the discussions held in the AC chambers of our so-called futuristic leaders. Never stepping a foot here, the leaders choose the future of our village. This flooding is due to the wrong usage of the World Bank fund for South-East Asia. A fund given to the third world, to build up resilience for the upcoming climate change, has brought about this flood. What an irony!! Climate change will bring in cyclones and to mitigate those, an underground network of electricity and internet cables is being put up. Millions of dollars are being poured in. But have they taken into consideration the terrain of this fragile Konkan coast? Have they thought of the inherent corruption in India? No one is here to ask them this question. Hence this “development” rushes in to fatten the bellies of the so-called politicians and local contractors.
Velhal was throwing off mud that was knee deep in his house. The stream adjacent to his house had come in as an uninvited guest. The seventy-five year old Savithri was scared. One of her slippers had already been taken as a sacrifice by the incoming river. How was she going to survive if the floods had coincided the high tide of the sea?
The tree, barely holding the soil after this so-called development had loosen the soil underneath, gave a final look to the villagers, asking for hope, before it came crashing down. The laterite stone, formed after millions of years of volcanic activity in this region, which is older than the Himalayas, had been standing undisturbed until now. A fund given to help the South-East fight against the cyclones, had crushed this stone with the hands of the crusher, and ultimately paved way for flooding. Villagers knew nothing about this. To be honest, not even the people working on the underground pipeline know this. Who would care to read some brochures when all they are getting is hefty sums in the name of “development”?
Farmers were connected to the tiny seeds of rice which was deep under the flow of river water. Will it stay there? Will the seed germinate? All the back-breaking work made in the past month would go to waste if it didn’t. Who knows what will happen.
One thing is for sure, we are not respecting nature. We, as a species, have forgotten the delicate balance that once kept us in check. The forests spoke to us. The rains warned us. The stones held our stories. We paid homage to them— asking them to help us. But we no longer listen. We feel like we are more powerful with our JCB’s and machines. Now, we measure progress in cables buried and cement poured, not in the calm of streams or the rhythm of passing seasons.
The broom Sanju was making lies beside him now. The rain has slowed, but the air is heavy. Aaji folds her book, looking out with quiet worry. Ajoba stares into the mist, somewhere between here and another world. Gaja, soaked and tired, stands next to Vishram, the silt still clinging to their hands.
Outside, the water recedes bit by bit, but the memory stays. The silence of the village is not just grief—it is remembrance, it is reckoning. Perhaps tomorrow, the sun will rise again. Perhaps the seed will survive. But today, we sit in this fragile stillness, reminded of what we have lost—and what we are still losing.
The world will once again hold meetings under the COP titles. Private jets will fill up the sky. They will find ways to make more money through the greenification of their companies. We will pay the price for it.
Until we learn to walk with the land, not over it, these rains will keep returning—not as blessings, but as warnings. If we don’t listen, destruction will follow. But it’s not the first time some species is being destroyed, is it? Only that this one is knowingly destroying itself..
Sorry, I have been away. There is a lot going in my village.
I have been caught up in a lot of work out here. Some of you follow my work, some don't, so let me just give you a glimpse of what's up. After my walk, I decided to stay back in the village and work to build a model that is both sustainable and economical.
We invited the first batch of people for a digital detox session, where we introduced them to the local culture. We also employed the local self-help groups to make food for them. Taking them on treks through some dense forests not only made them aware of the bio-diversity of this region, it also made the villagers aware of what they had in their backyard. The next batch is about to happen soon.
We took two meetings with the women who work in the self-help groups. What we realised was that a rigorous training was needed. A know-how of the market was missing and hence many products which could be made easily, were non-existent.
After a brief interval, we decided to make our own product and see if we can find a market. The reach that this product got was astonishing. We created jackfruit chips which were made all around Konkan but never marketed properly. We received more than 800 requests - each asking for atleast a kilo of those chips. Some wholesale buyers even asking for as much as 600 kgs. That means we have a huge market. We are failing to market the products.
I was working with two village boys to try to find them sponsors which would help them stay in the village. In the time that I would find them sponsors, one boy left for Mumbai. We hope he'd be back soon. Another boy decided to stay. A sponsor is now taking care of his monthly grant in which he will be creating artisanal wooden products : armchairs, chopping boards, vintage wooden equipment, etc. The idea is to get him self-employed so that he stays back.
We have kept a farmers cup, where three families who put extra efforts in farming, will be awarded with solar sets. This will encourage farming. We even distributed good quality seeds to the farmers, so that they will be self-sufficient the next year round when it comes to seed bank.
Rains have come in early, we have already faced floods in the month of May. This is the second time. A new normal for the times we live in. That also means that new techniques should be developed and we all need to change. I am pushing for government intervention to find solutions to this.
Anyway, the next goals for the near future are finding more products which are unique and which can find a market. The need to bring back artisanal work which was heavily present in the past, back to life. Setting up a workaway account which will help us get in slow travellers who will help us with the mud-house construction - starting coming August. We also need volunteers who can come and stay in the village and help us in making a database of the local flora and fauna. This will help us create a PBR (People's Biodiversity Reserve) which is currently non-existent.
And one more thing, to keep all this on track, we do need donations and contributions. You can do that through Paypal or if you are in India you can donate on this number 8983726737.
Okay, this is why I wasn't active here. What about you guys, how have you been? How was May for you? How's the weather like wherever you are?
With love!
-Ashutosh