Day 3 of my walk- The crisis of “too much stuff” and a disillusioned younger generation..
This is what I call isolation due to extreme urbanisation. I am sitting on the roadside, its 7:30 pm and I am yet to find a place to sleep. There are many many people around me. Not just people, on the right hand I have a huge chemical factory called RCF. Many people have come here from all corners of India to fill their bellies. The temple I thought I would stay in, was locked. God needed guarding here. But still, I’d say I trust my mother to show me the way.
People are running around with snacks and bottles of cheap liquor to forget the work they are doing in the chemical factories. The air is intoxicating enough, but still its not enough to forget the memories of their loved ones back home where they have left them. There is dust, there are trucks filled with crushed stone passing by with speeds that would shame an F1 racer. The village has already been uprooted. The people have already sold off their lands and moved away. The crusher unit on the left has quarried out most of the lower end of the mountain. People are living in a continuous onslaught of dust. The village dogs have got many illnesses and the people seem to have gated themselves into their house.
Only a few kilometres back I was walking through some serene landscape which was spotted with gated properties. The villagers, who are the native of this place, face water issues. But these gated properties, filled with exquisite art and architecture, have pools to swim in and trees and gardens that need watering all day long. Something is definitely wrong. These people living in their mansions don’t want to mix in with the villagers. They don’t need their local wisdom and memories of the place where they live only for a few days, every few months. They don’t want to know how these people tended this place, what the mountain next to it means to them, how they had trees all around the place where they played as kids and filled the fruits in gunny sacks. Now those very trees are gated in these properties. Those old bonds of these trees with now some 70 year old villagers, has lost. The trees too don’t recognise them anymore. They have new owners now— who carefully groom and cut them, unlike the villagers who let them grow however the trees wished. You would say that in such interior parts where even the roads don’t lead properly— there would be nothing more than jungle and some villagers with their cattle. But here you have private tennis courts, spas, gyms. The rich people of Mumbai wanting to have a space to detox. The clubs in Mumbai aren’t enough so lets make our own.
The only problem with this mentality is that it forgets the people of the place. It forgets that these people had a culture, they had their traditions and customs and they tended the land as if it were sacred. They had shrines, patches of jungles left alone, common wells. This new urban machine-like mind doesn’t see any of this, for it land, if it is empty, is a place to be pillaged. Something to be built upon. The jungles that in the past were owned by someone and still kept thriving are now cut down by its new owner. The river which was flowly freely, from which the villagers drank the water, is now a dumping ground of plastic. The sewage water of these villas and mansions bleeds into the river and a once clean source of water is turned useless.
I sat under a tree in the afternoon. Mamta had given me a tiffin when I left her house. After eating and sleeping for some while I saw a person coming around who asked me my whereabouts. He too was from a nearby village. Having no other option for making money, he too had to find work as a security guard in a mansion here. The younger people of my generation are on their phone—watching cricket or playing video games and working on the building sites of these villas. They are completely disillusioned. All this development is only 5-10 years old. None of this existed before that, but now it is extrapolating. There are fine horses which are kept in these villas, trucks filled with luxury items pass me every now and then, but what about these villagers, the real inhabitants of this land. Now devoid of it. Landless.
Why aren’t we focusing on small scale agriculture? Why aren’t we building models of development that are helping these natives? Why aren’t we promoting sustainable tourism and agricultural practices that will help keep the traditional and cultural aspects of the villagers alive? We have certainly lost track and we need to get back on it. I am hopeful though. There is love and kindness in everyone’s heart. If it is dark then we have to be the light in this tunnel filled with darkness.
I am still clueless as to where I will find a place to rest, but I trust the mother and she will guide me to the right place.
If you can help me by contributing for this walk, then please do, I could start a kickstarter or manage crowdfunding through some other website, but none of those options are available to me here in India. So, I will be dependant on your donations. You can contribute through paypal - here’s the link. I will send out a personalised postcard if the donations are above $30 and if it’s above $100 then whatever comes out of this walk - a book, a documentary or anything else - you will be the first ones to receive it.
Thanks for your continual support. I am truly grateful!