After waking up, getting ready, and discovering my countless mosquito bites all over my face, arms and legs, we, Romaben, Shantaben, and some others drove to the cite of a sammelan(a meeting/gathering). As we were driving, we passed the District Magistrate’s posh house and the location of the Jaypee cement factory. (The site of the factory that Shantaben’s husband used to work at, which was publicly owned until it was laid to languish without any formal firing of people or shutting down. He told us the benefits were enormous: two pairs of shoes, clothes, groceries like oil and sugar, medical benefits, and concession rated loans. When the factory degenerated Shantaben organized the wives of the workers in a struggle to stop the closure. Thus launched her political activism career from quite humble beginnings. After the “closure” Jaypee bought it).
We bumped along in an AC less car for two hours. It is hard to describe the terrible disrepair of the roads even with pictures. These are cement roads and not dirt roads, but most of the paved surface is gone –littered with concrete pebbles. Potholes are huge like craters and numerous. The reason for this is that most mining companies transfer their resources to markets or ports for shipment by road. These roads are honestly not built sturdily enough to sustain perpetual weight, so they have become horrendous. This phenomenon happens all over India near heavy mining industries. The roads remind me of the time I used to sit in the back of the bus on the way home from elementary school and the driver would purposefully go 40 mph over speed bumps to make us all roll with laughter. Instead of laughing this time, in a weird way, I fall asleep. Every single time I am in the car it takes me no more than 10 min to get drowsy and zzzz… yes, its weird.
Later driving off the road, we drove on a rugged dirt pathway. After thinking, oh, we’re here, we then drove along a rocky, stoney, sedimenty trail. When the trail ended, we kept driving literally in the jungle (on fallen trees) for a km. Then, though we were in the middle of absolutely nowhere (the nearest relatively Greensboro sized town was about 1.5 hrs away), we saw a small shelter colored by saris of about fifty women, fashioned out of tree bark in a clearing. Another fifty men were there and about 20 cute little children. These people are called adivasis, or tribal people. When we first stepped out into the makeshift gazebo, a cruder version of Latin’s (my high school), every person greeted us with a Namaste by touching our hands and then joining their own hands together at their forehead. We reciprocated.
kheti
outside of the tent literally was farmland!!
So what was this meeting about? Simply put: it was a gathering of adivasis from all over the area, many traveling four five hours by foot through the hills simply to attend a get-together of their comrades, mentors, and fellow strugglers about the usurpation of their land for so called development on which they farm and live.
At the heart of all this, as one astute adivasi woman put it succinctly, is that all they want is to be left alone. “You let us keep our land, and we will live the way we want to. All we want is our land.”
Some of those, like us, who are not born and brought up in the community and mostly serve as educated support systems, gave quite long speeches about government appropriation and the potential power in the growing strength and confidence of the tribals. Then, the aggrieved communities got up to the mike and told a few of their stories. Some talked about their confrontations with Forest Department officials, the ordeals of labor work as a result of migration to cities in certain seasons to work as construction laborers, humiliation they felt when trying to communicate with the government or some NGOs. (Sorry, I can’t be too specific. They talked in an accented Hindi/tribal language, and I myself understand only a little bit of Hindi. My dad who got 50% served as my translator and so I got about 20%. Lost in translation…) Bc a lot of all this work is about women empowerment and giving wives and daughters the courage to voice their own agendas, only the women were allowed to speak initially!
Many were antagonized by a ranger who puts a notice on their door: leave your home in 10 days. So, people put a notice on the ranger’s door (as a symbol) no we will not! All this mobilization and confidence inspiring initiatives helped cement adivasi conviction.
I kept thinking, wow, this world they inhabit is so distant.
A lot of the troubles were communicated through songs sung by a few of the tribals. One singer, the embodiment of the people’s poet, so eloquently described the feelings of solidarity, hope, and also despair the struggle engenders. Neither lengthy speeches nor extensive essays could invoke the message that the few lines of his poems did.
“No matter how much they try to drive you away, don’t quit your land. No matter if they hit you with sticks or stones, don’t leave your land. “
So, as I’m quickly jotting these notes down while at this gathering, there are about fifteen intrigued children around me, fascinated by the photobooth app on the macbook and the display photos. I have them on slideshow, and they’re yelling out Tiger! Lighting! Bug! Flower! (In Hindi of course). All of them are crowded near my chair, and the numbers keep growing. I can’t blame them… the Macbook Air is pretty sweet. Oh, the adults are coming and now nobody is listening to the speechgiver. Oops…
I planted a tree!
Woman showing government proof that the land she occupies LEGALLY belongs to her, something to be very proud about.
On the way home, I stared out the window, watching the green fields and small mud huts in the backdrop of a sky colored pink and orange by the setting sun. Someone in the Jeep used their phone to play old Hindi love songs. In those instants, nothing felt more romantic.
