for the rejuvenating breeze of Aravalis’…
“…I observed my
rescue approaching me. Dressed in an off white shirt, blue denim and throwing a
shining swagger to this statued world, he approached me and said, “Kesa hai?”…”
“…dogs glaring
standstill with tails so strict that they almost touch the sky and eyeballs
wider enough to eject and drop…”
_______________________________________________________________________________________________
Flashback….
23rd August 2011
0800hrs.
Hello! Hi,
yes I am fine. No! I can’t visit Agra anywhere in near future. Ok, I’ll try it
next year. Yes, I have a RURAL INTERNSHIP next year in reserve. I’ll put it in
use somewhere near Agra. Yes sure, why wouldn’t they allow me? After all it is
my engineering, is it not? Yes they would! Ok I’ll hang up now.
Bye!
Wouldn’t they? NO, they
definitely will.
Yet here I am. Ambedkar Gramin Yuva Vikas Sansthan, Mokalsar,
Barmer, Rajasthan. I have quite some articles in my credit now, and this experience is more than credible enough to share with you all. Thus here I
am, in Mokalsar a tiny village in the lap of Aravali hills. The village however
is developed and clean enough to be accredited as a small town instead. But
before I proceed to describe the village, I’ll correct myself with
chronologies.
And before I start, let me warn you; do not consider this article
as a comic entertaining piece. This is a solemn piece full of feelings…!
It all started when I first stepped my left foot (as per the
customs), in the semi-deluxe RSRTC bus
RJ-14 2409. Yes I remember the bus number. Why wouldn’t I, it was a no-moon
night better acknowledged as Amavasya
and the person sitting next to me entertained me for the entire route by
talking to his ex-wife on the phone. Do not verdict me for listening to someone
else’s classified talks, as his affectionate exchanges were louder than the bus
engine. This was the inception of my
expedition by leaving Jaipur (my home place) towards Mokalsar, a small village
150kms away from the Barmer district of Rajasthan state. The night was dark,
air was cool and soon after being an auditor to some pleasant warm exchanges
from my nearby contemporaries, my senses surrendered to slumber.
It is of no surprise if every eye ogles at you when amongst
Saafas, Kurtas, giant Kundals and Kade you are wearing a heavy woodland jacket and boots. So I relaxed my mind with the above mentioned explanation,
when I stepped in Mokalsar the next morning. However soon the atmosphere altered
such that I felt everyone is doing anything but staring at me; a little girl
sitting still on a bicycle with just a rear tyre and her brother holding the
front chassis of cycle in his hand, both staring my jacket I guess; a loose,
fragile, white dhoti kurta and saafa cladded old man holding a beedi (indigenous cigarette) in his
pouted lips with his hands ready to light it with an already burning matchstick
but waiting for my allowance and looking with his lifeless eyes right into
mine; dogs glaring standstill with tails so strict that they almost touch the
sky and eyeballs wider enough to eject and drop; an old women with an
expression of distorted teeths and charred skin so rare and erratic that it
slipped my bag from my hands. As my bag dropped on the ground and the bus left
me with the statued world (except the breeze and flattering Peepal leaves)
asking for an explanation for my intrusion into their domain, I observed my
rescue approaching me. Dressed in an off white shirt, blue denim and throwing a
dazzling swagger to this statued world, he approached me and said, “Kesa hai?”
He was Abhishek William, my fellow
intern-colleague.
The main building of Ambedkar Gramin Yuva Vikas Sansthan,
welcomed us with a Peepal tree and the glorifying Aravali hills in its
background. An exhilarating view it was and the very moment, I decided that
soon from now, I will be standing on one of those hills.
This part of Rajasthan has a peculiar custom of keeping “RAM” as the end name of a man and “DEVI” as that of a woman. Hence in the
entire course of time I met all sorts of Rams, from KanaRam to HanumanRam,
from HansaRam to PokarRam. Our reporting person was Mr. DungarRam ji Prajapat, an
extra soft spoken, self-reserved, calm minded person with tremendous will and
determination. He had been working for rural development in the region for past
12 years and it was his feat that bought AGYVS its present recognition. Today
the NGO is successfully working for women, destitutes, Handicapped, children
and socially neglected to bring them into the societal mainstream. And under
such hardworking organization we spend our Rural Internship period.
To be honest, our guardians here were a little amateur in
handling intern students, thus the entire prerogative of our internship was on
our shoulders. We were to choose our objectives as well as their results. This
provided us flexibility to work, watch movies and freedom to climb mountains.
No doubt our internship was full of action-packed and life
risking maneuvers. Our each morning started with action. It was the washroom and Latrines. Now I do not know how you measure it but the compound had
a 2 feet by 2 feet floor area, 1/4th of which was already captured
by a massive iron bucket…sad a substitute
of mug… But we were warriors and accepted to jam pack ourselves in the arena
only that the later washing part was jeopardizing. Imagine lifting a 10 kg iron
bucket by one hand…! Indeed a life-risking maneuver as I exclaimed earlier.
We had been provided with a small room, already packed with two
cots, a table, a zero watt CFL and a killer rat. The presence of large packs of
mosquitoes induced my roomie William
to light Good Night coils that filled our small room with such quantity of
smoke, one can only imagine coming out of the silencer of a truck or during fogging in DA! Since our room was under several layers of halls, no ray of
light could reach us, and at night it was dark as jet black. Believe me or not
but we could not see anything at all. It was worse than night blindness. This
darkness, warmth and smoke provided scope to the killer rat to attack on us and
our belongings. While I was preparing my futile efforts to fool him out of the
room using bait Makhaane(s), the tiny hound was chewing my Sohan Papdi and
towel right behind my back, by establishing comfortable accommodation in my bag
and making a fool out of me…
I always believe that one can make tremendous effect from his/her
pen. Written words can bring a big change. So in the similar regard with words,
we decided our first assignment; to translate and type letters in Hindi. This
may not sound trivial to you when you may realize that these letters that we
translated and typed in Hindi were all addressed to high profile offices like
District Council (Zila Parishad), Barmer and North Zone, Delhi. However these
would anyway be read by Babus, so we usually kept our grammatical skills under
control…K
While we studied the complete history
of our NGO and their year by year annual reports, we realized the gravity of
legitimate and credible work done by them. However this also induced us with
the idea of how better it would’ve been if these annual reports would be
available digitally on net. It would definitely help the NGO to get more
recognition and acceptance. Thus we fixed our second mission, to construct
their website. You can visit
Catch the following in the next part:
“…Somewhere in 40’s
PokarRam ji’s eyes displayed fissures of struggle and heat…”
“…I realized that
my 10 rupees cannot battle a man’s self-esteem that he has earned by travelling
1500kms, for last 10 years…”
“…I decided to watch a Romantic heart-break movie that would depress me
even further. This helps me to get a sound sleep...”
That’s all for now, thanks for reading.
Have
a good day…J
Yognik Baghel
