During the 10 days we spent in Garhwal, Uttarakhand, not a day went by when we didn't eat jeera alu

God's gift to Garhwal

Business Standard

Some time ago, I found a group of domestic workers in my neighbourhood making plans for the summer. "Are you planning to take your children out this summer?" one of them asked Anita. "I'm going to see my children, not take them anywhere. They don't live with me anymore," she said. They were barely four and six years old, and lived with her sister in Mumbai, she said. It seemed odd, and the entire group of ladies wanted to know why. "In Delhi, I work from morning till evening as a nanny to two children. I was getting no time to look after my own," she said. Her sister in Mumbai was having similar issues with childcare. "And neither of us are well off enough to be able to give up earning to look after our kids," So they hit upon a solution. "We decided that I'd pay my sister Rs 2,000 a month to care for my kids as she does for her own. There's is a good government school near her house that they attend, and my sister gets an income sitting at home," said Anita.This was an innovative solu

Who'll take care of Nanny's kids?

I've always wondered why folk arts and craftspeople often receive step-motherly treatment, not only from the government, but also from the public at large. While the works of mainstream artists repose in galleries and museums, their rural counterparts toil facelessly and silently, getting few rewards for their talent. That's why while in Jaipur, when I got the chance to meet one of the most talented block printers in the area, I jumped at it.I reached Bagru, the mecca for block printers near Jaipur, one dusty and hot morning. There, at Bagru Fabrics, a unit known for the fineness of its block printing, I saw Shyam Lal, painfully scrawny and impossibly gnarled, bent over a long table spread with a beige cloth. "When I was in my teens, I learnt block printing from my father. It's something I've done for the last 30 years," Lal said.He took me through the laborious process of printing, which began with soaking the cotton in harad, an ayurvedic herb that "fixes" vegetable dyes (iron shavin

The block printer of Bagru

"Is the vomiting accompanied by cramps?""The patient's in the second stage of labour. She is waiting under the tallest neem tree in Kishanpura village!""Tie a tourniquet above the bite. And don't panicâ€¦"The snippets of conversations I was eavesdropping on sounded like I was in an emergency room of a busy hospital. I wasn't. I was behind the scenes of a 24-hour medical call centre in Jaipur, headquarters of the 104 Toll Free Medical Advice Service, a public-private health initiative by Health Management and Research Institute (a Piramal social venture), that enables people all over Rajasthan to call 104 toll free to seek medical advice. As I watched, callers from villages in Barmer, Sikar and other remote districts received single-dose prescriptions, diet counselling and even grandmother's home remedies over the phone. If at any time it appeared that the patient calling in needed more expert help, that call would be diverted by the paramedics to one of the two doctors on duty."In many

Call the doctor, toll free

I walked into the cavernous, dark room and drew back with a start. In that imperfect light, there were hundreds of eyes looking at me. Some were at my level, some lower and some, larger than my body. One of those faces sprang to life to a drumroll. It was a beautifully crafted puppet wearing the garb of a village mukhia."Let me introduce myself to all you city folk. I'm Jokhim Chacha, and I'm here to talk with you about... well, anything you want to talk about," he said. Then, prancing all over the stage while musicians sang to the sounds of local instruments, Jokhim Chacha told us about conditions in the villages nearby. Every now and then, he'd direct a question or comment to one of us in the audience. For almost an hour, he and the accompanying musicians were able to hold us in thrall. At the end of the show, the lights came on and Poonaram emerged casually from behind the stage.He'd been our guide in Tilonia, and had been showing us all the innovative projects that the Barefoot Col

When puppets do the talking

Whenever I used to think of dentists, tall males with impressive degrees, grimly doing their worst, oblivious to one's screams of agony, would come to mind. That was before I met Bhanwari Devi, the dentist at Tilonia's Barefoot College. Portly and ghagra-clad, she was chatting with some students about dental hygiene. The kids were saying they didn't have time for it since they spent their day grazing animals. "Oh ho, just scrub your teeth with twigs of babool or neem wherever you are! Our desi toothbrushes are our best friends," she laughed. Impressed by her grandmotherly wisdom as much as her well-stocked clinic, I stopped for a chat.Belonging to Beawar, Devi was brought up behind the veil, amid the belief that education was unnecessary for women. Then, she met activists from Barefoot College. "They said the veil wasn't a symbol of modesty - it suffocated women like me, restricting us from realising our true potential," she said. Feisty Devi threw off her veil and shifted en famille t

The granny dentist of Tilonia

It was a dusty stone building, not unlike many that one sees in the desert. Outside, all was quiet in the heat of the day. From within, however, strains of a Colombian folk song redolent of the rain forest wafted through. I followed the music to the building. In a hall that looked like a classroom-cum-factory floor, I was greeted by the sight of five groups of women - black, white and all shades in between, sitting together in perfect harmony, assembling complicated-looking circuits. I was in Tilonia's Barefoot College, and this was my first glimpse of its 10th batch of solar engineers - all illiterate grandmothers from the poorest villages of Colombia, Nicaragua, Madagascar and Panama. They were learning how to assemble, maintain and operate solar lighting equipment; so that when they returned, they could bring light to their own communities.I watched them at work - thinking if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes, I might not have believed it was possible. "It's actually not that hard,"

Solar engineers, Barefoot style

Picture this. A young woman is walking down a small town street on a dark winter night. Two men spot her, and close in for a bout of sick evening entertainment. She hears them snicker and immediately takes out her phone to call for help. In the light of the phone, the men see her face clearly for the first time. They bolt. "One minute they are making lewd comments, the next minute they are haring away down the road as fast as their legs could carry them," laughs 25-year-old Usha Vishwakarma, the woman in question. And this is the same area where, a couple of years ago, a woman would be lucky if she ventured outside her home after six p.m. - and returned home unscathed.What has brought about this change? "We girls have become more 'dabangg', that's all," she says. Founder of a spirited two-year-old movement for gender equality, Red Brigade, Vishwakarma has initiated a mini-sexual revolution in her neighbourhood in Lucknow, once notorious for crimes against women."I used to work with chi

The charge of the Red Brigade

Need to rustle up a four-course meal or hire a helicopter to find your pooch? Just get a butler

Your very own Jeeves

It's ironic that April, with its scented breezes, sudden showers and languorous days, heralds the coming of a season of discontent for so many. Even as the children of the upper-classes celebrate their exam results in malls and bowling alleys, the children of "People Like Them" mill anxiously outside government schools, vocational centres and bookshops, worried about their results, worried about their future. I often see many of them not far from my house, where a non-governmental organisation organises vocational training programmes for young girls. That is where I recently ran into Anita. Seventeen, made up and truculent, she'd come to find out what courses she could join."I don't mind doing a beautician's course," said she, admiring her predatory scarlet talons. "Beauty can never go out of business!" She was desperate for something to do, having failed her Class X exams. Her parents now wanted her to quit school and start working. "They say they don't have the money to send me to sc

Schooling, not schools

In Mumbai last week, I had occasion to ponder over theories of urban planning while stuck in traffic. Some planners, often of the old school, believe that slums are eyesores and must be replaced, or at least repositioned outside city limits. I could well see their logic - but up to a point. The other urban planning perspective that sees slums as productive, functional spaces crucial for a city's economic and cultural growth, also made sense to me. For all around me was the famed leather market of Dharavi. Festooned with trendy bags, wallets, belts, jackets and hats all conceived, designed and produced in the slum - the place was a bargain hunter's paradise. I decided to ditch the jam and browse some shops instead. At the end, I not only found myself the proud owner of a brand new bag, I also got a brief insight into the slum that so many Mumbaikars hate to love.The first shop I walked into had handbags of the glitziest brands - Gucci, Prada, Louis Vuitton and more. "The brands may not

Lessons from the slumdogs

The other day, my 14-year old and I were discussing the issue of migration before his economics exam. "Why can't the government provide better work opportunities in villages to control migration?" he asked with the clarity of a young mind undimmed by reality's disappointments. "I can imagine how unfair it would seem to a young person from a village, if he were told not to seek work in Delhi and stagnate in his own village, just because it's already too crowded!" So I told him the story of Yogeshwar Kumar and his Namda project - a story so inspirational that I decided to share it here as well.Kumar is an impassioned IIT alumnus-turned-power activist who's engineered many an impossibility into reality. Years ago, when he realised that many villages in far-flung areas were too far from the grid line to even hope to be electrified, he decided to do something about it. "I trained villagers to build, operate and maintain their own hydel power plants, harnessing the waterfalls and streams aro

More power to the people

On the occasion of Women's Day, Close the Gap, an Oxfam initiative, posed some interesting questions in the social media: "Can women feel safe in Delhi when 95 per cent of police are men? Why do women make up less than 12 per cent of the Lok Sabha? Why are only five per cent of women in India's corporate a part of the top management?"Just as I was pondering over these, my cleaner Anita walked in. I decided to pose Close the Gap's big questions to her. "How would it make any difference to women like me, if some upper-class women became heads of rich companies?" she asked doubtfully. "What would really make a difference to women like me is the inclusion of women in fields that concern us!"Her first suggestion was that there should be lady bus conductors in all public buses. "Only women who have to travel in buses everyday will understand what an improvement this would make to our daily lives." She said fixed working hours made women like her easy prey for men on the prowl. "Every evening

A heaven for women

Driving through the thorny scrub forests around Alwar a fortnight ago, we came across acres of orchards of amla, the Indian gooseberry. It was the fruiting season, and the trees were heavily weighed down by the excellent amla crop this year. Since I love the sweetly astringent taste of the fruit, of course, I had to stop. We walked under the amla trees, sand underfoot and the sun shining hotly overhead. A few pipes lay criss-crossed the orchard like underfed pythons, making me wonder how could anything grow in such desert-like conditions. Just then, a man walked up to us and asked if we wanted to buy some amlas.â€œThese are really good for health,â€ he said, launching into what was clearly a well-rehearsed spiel. â€œThey say an apple a day keeps the doctor away. But an amla a day will have doctors flocking to you, wanting to know the secret of your good health and longevity.â€ He didnâ€™t realise he was in fact preaching to the pulpit. Iâ€™ve long been aware that the frui

Geetanjali Krishna: The sweet taste of amla

Iâ€™m always amazed by the sudden turns that my conversations with people sometimes take. One minute I was doling parenting advice to a part-time help, and the very next minute my kitchen was redolent with the vaguely questionable aroma of boiling chickpeas. Seema said her seven-year-oldâ€™s friends were refusing to play near their tenement over a drain in South Delhi. As her daughter wasnâ€™t old enough to wander around the slum, she ended up being home alone.Why didnâ€™t the friends want to come over, I asked. â€œThey say our house smells bad,â€ said Seema. I deduced it must be the salubrious location above the drain, but was proven wrong. â€œOur home always smells of chana (chickpeas) â€” either theyâ€™re soaking outside or boiling on the stove,â€ she explained.While it was true that cooking chickpeas gave off a strong odour, it also buttered the bread in Seemaâ€™s household. Her husband made a fairly good living selling chana-kulcha from his

Geetanjali Krishna: Of chanas and gas chambers

A pair of hypnotic dark eyes looked into mine. â€œYou are a dreamer,â€ said he. I nodded mutely. â€œSometimes your dreams keep you up at night,â€ he whispered into my ear. I gulped and nodded again in agreement â€” but then, maybe Iâ€™d have agreed to pretty much anything he said. Before I knew it, heâ€™d slipped a large ring with a black stone on my index finger. â€œIt will give you good dreams,â€ he whispered, â€œonly for Rs 400.â€ As I went to a sunny nook away from the magicianâ€™s mesmerising presence, the dubious possessor of an ornament whose powers I scarcely believed in, all I could do was marvel at the manâ€™s skill.â€œItâ€™s a matter of performance,â€ said he later, â€œall my life, all Iâ€™ve done is perform and connect with different audiences.â€ His name was Majeed Khan, and he used to be a Kalandar working with dancing bears before the practice was declared illegal. â€œI tried my hand at different trades, but after being used to the freedom of the

Geetanjali Krishna: A magician's tricky life

On Republic Day in Delhi, we celebrate being citizens of the world&rsquo;s largest democracy in many different ways. The glitterati have long boozy lunches in the sun, the children organise flag-hoisting in their local parks, and so on. As I watch the sale of plastic tricolours reach its final frenzy, all I can think of is the family of carpetbaggers I met in Chhattisgarh early this month. Their worldly belongings fit into three small bundles; they&rsquo;d never voted in an election or been to school or a mall or a metro. When they lived, they existed on the unseen fringes of society. When they died, they died unsung.

<B>Geetanjali Krishna:</B> The Republic's invisible people

It was a lonely, moonless night. The three-member film crew walked into the cremation ground on the banks of the Ganges. In a distance, surrounded by the flickering light from a pyre, they saw the Aghori sadhu, meditating next to the human skull in which he cooked and ate his meals. Laid out ceremoniously before him was a corpse, a lone lamp shining inside its hollowed-out torso. They were witnessing an ancient, secret ritual of necromancy in which the Aghori was invoking his lord Kapileshwar.

Sadhu struck

Often I find that animal conservationists get so involved with saving animals that the fate of their human brethren ceases to matter as much. Some years ago, I met an ex-snake charmer who was practically reduced to begging when his traditional livelihood was declared illegal. Of course, it is true that traditionally, animals like monkeys, snakes and bears used to be cruelly trained to perform tricks. It is, however, also true that the end of these clearly barbaric practices strikes a death knell for these traditional livelihoods &mdash; something which animal conservationists must bear in mind. Last December, when the Indian government brought out a path-breaking national action plan to safeguard bears, I heard about the approach towards the eradication of bear dancing adopted by the World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA).

Geetanjali Krishna: It's just a bear necessity

A cheetal doe and her two young ones graze peacefully in the twilight. Two langurs chatter overhead. Are they gossiping about the mother-cub bear duo that frequents this area? We can&rsquo;t tell. Then, somewhere in the foliage, the alarmed whoop of a cheetal breaks the silence. Has it felt the presence of a big cat? Goosebumps prickle my skin as I mull over all this drama in the jungle, sipping mulled wine around a roaring bonfire and playing charades on Christmas.

At home in the jungle

Gifted raconteurs I&rsquo;ve met aplenty, but few as gifted as Aslam, the young Kalandar from Chorbhatti, Chhattisgarh. When he started telling me the story of his childhood, a sizeable crowd of people who had probably heard them a hundred times earlier, gathered. They laughed when he cracked a joke, clapped appreciatively when he mimicked someone. As for me, his intended audience, as soon as I suspended my disbelief, I found myself drawn into the world of bear dancing seen through the eyes of a child who grew up amongst it all.

Geetanjali Krishna