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Finally introducing to
you the driving behind us Brigadier Ganesham Sir..He
is the most dynamic and inspirational personality
one could ever meet. One of the remarkable features
about him is that given a situation, he critically
analyzes it in every possible direction and infers a
great deal of information from it. Every word from
his is either from experience or by his analysis..
which greatly affects our thought. One can gain an
experience of years by spending 2-3 days with him.
Every moment spent with him was enlightening.
And this is the whole team of pioneers who took part
in this Odyssey.
Pratap, Meraj, me, Shanti, Pavan, Ram naresh, KP, KG
(Rakesh, Venki, Bala, Jeshrun, Joy, Subash and Tarun
were missing)
Friday, august 14, 2009:
The saga continues..
Thus the whole conversation was like the narration
of the telugu magnum opus, Pahtala Bhairavi, the
yester years sci-fi movie and we were in a confused
state of mind about what to believe and what not to
believe.
ON 13th of June, we were back to NIT Warangal and
all the teams shared their experiences. All of us
faced more or less similar kind of funny and cryptic
incidents. The next day we had a feedback session
with Ganesham sir analyzing our pastoral
experiences.
15th morning, we continued our mission touring the
next set of villages around Mulugu namely
Kamalapuram, an Bussapuram, Jangalapalli and
Kasimdevpet of which we were assigned KAMALAPURAM,
an agency area of farthest from Warangal. Our
accommodation was in the house owned by woman, Jaya
Lakshmi.
We can call her the Mother Theresa of Kamalapuram.
She runs an NGO named Shakti Seva Society that
basically works for women empowerment and
eradication of child labour. The NGO has adopted
about 20 villages and initiated about 30 SHG’s
around Kamalapuram. It has eradicated child labour
to a large extent, and there a lot of poverty
alleviation done through well designed and
coordinated social programmes that has brought down
unemployment drastically in this area.
Moved by the pathetic condition of the
adivasi in their village and with the burning desire
to stand on her own feet, has started this NGO. She
is an altruistic and selfless woman who relentlessly
providing quality education and inculcating good
conduct.
Fine, let’s get back to our adventure. As the places
we had to visit were quite far from Kamalapuram,
Jaya Ma’am gave us her bike on which me and Meraj
rode. (I never rode a bike past my neighbourhood: P
and now riding doubles, on a main road at 40-60 Km
was a scary thing to me. But I shrugged off my fear
instilling confidence myself saying, come on Teju
not a big deal…you can easily do it. We were
accompanied by Bhaskar Sir, (Pavan was the pillion
rider on his bike) who is an employee of SSS.
This is the temple of Adivasis
The first place we
visited was Thondiyala, 15km from Kamalapuram. The
village is the home to adivasi named Koyas (tribal
community). Here, we find no house made up of bricks
and mortar. You only find thatched roofs made up of
mud and wood. We met a tribesman named Kanthayya
here. Till this day, we find very few people from
scheduled tribes who have completed their
graduation. It is his sheer persistence that enabled
him to complete matriculation in those days of
Nizam’s rule when it was rarity to find a school in
your vicinity. He has excellent grasping power. He
explained us very vividly about the traditional
agricultural practices and the culture they
followed. Though we are in our early 20’s, the
inertia in us always dominates the agile nature but,
it was different with this octogenarian, he had the
nimbleness of a young kid and moved around so
quickly showing us the artifacts of his days. He
explained us the preparation of Ambali and Gattika (stapple
food of the tribals made primarily from corn and
barely) in great detail and he demonstrated the
preparation of oil manually. He was a shrewd
interpreter too. His mellow wisdom was quite
influencing. He said, “Don’t go just by words
children..take the opinion of others also and
analyze, test and confirm the information u get
before u proceed to do anything” Aah! I thought this
person is a masterpiece.
 Malluri
Ghutta:
Our next visit was to
Malluri Ghutta. A small hillock. I had a wish to go
to Tirupathi on a bike. Somehow my wish was
partially fulfilled through the uphill bike trip to
Malluri Ghutta. It is situated in the midst of a
dense forest and has a temple of Lakshmi Narasimha
Swamy. The priest in the temple narrated to us the
story behind it. Legend has it that a King named
Dilip Karna in 200A.D. got a dream in which
Narasimha Swamy asked him to construct a temple for
him. In the similar way he told us a mythical story
behind the incarnation of other Gods too.
It was an amazing
experience going around the forest relishing in the
verdant greens. It was so dense and beautiful,
completely covered by branches, climbers, roots and
trunks of big trees and they don’t even allow a
single ray of sunlight to enter. We saw a tree trunk
which has a circumference of 8.am. And there was a
small stream of water called CHINATAMANI. It is
considered as a stream of great medicinal values as
it flows down the mountains that are a repository of
several herbal plants. We were not sure of all
those, but the water was so tasty and our taste buds
tempted us in going back to stream again and again
to savour the elixir of life.
While returning we were very happy and thought every
student has to surely go for such an internship. I
felt this job to be more exciting than being just a
traveler, more changed up than being a journalist
and more knowledgeful than being a scholar. It was
an experience that has made us aware of the plight
the rural India faces and also about the diminishing
culture of the ancient India. Conversing about all
this with Meraj, I saw the speedometer and said, “Wooh..we
are traveling at 60..65 and 70 KM/hr” For boys
crossing 120 Km/Hr is a great thrill but, for me
crossing 60Km/hr itself was an achievement.
That evening was one of the best remembered and
treasured one of our lives. We went to a place named
Ragula Gudem, nestled in the thick forest, 5km. from
Kamalapuram. There is no road connectivity to this
place and we set on an adventure into an unknown
territory!!! I will put down the verses of a
beautiful poem by a friend regarding this journery.
Bhanu Tejudu Bhaggumantunnaa..
Karumeghalu Kammukostunnaa..
Katika Cheekati alamukontunnaa..
Kalasarpalu tirugutuntunnaa..
Kaaru adavilo saagina ee saahasa yatra..
Vesindhi ee jeevitaniki o cheraganimudra..
It was an eloquent sonnet. Anyway this wasn’t by
me.. OK.. Let’s continue with our adventure:
We drove on Hero Honda and Honda City and
unfortunately half of our time went into dragging
them in the sandy road. It was a very narrow road,
sufficient for a bullock cart to travel and if we
skid off the road, it would take 10 min. to lift
both of them and travel. And we slipped around 50
times in our to and fro journey. And a more
horrifying thing was that the place is inhabitated
by a lot of snake.s It was a harrowing experience we
would soon like to forget.
Regula
Gudem:
After the painful struggle we reached our
destination – Regula Gudem. It’s a tiny village
consisting 38 families in it. While thinking about
the unwholesome experience, it started raining.
Adding to our woes was the fact that the village has
no electricity. We were afraid and confused about
how we would return. But soon all those worldly
pains subsided and we started our job of interacting
with people knowing about their culture, tradition,
food, livelihood and medicinal practices.
These people rely on hunting and the 170 acres land
distributed by the government to grow food crops.
(but the downside is that they don’t even know how
to cultivate properly). There is one small govt
school in the community and a tube well was
constructed by Jayalakshmi Aunty with her own
interest.
 We
looked outside and the rain hasn’t’ stopped yet. We
feared we would have to stay the whole night there.
They offered to play hosts for the night serving us
their local delicacies, consisting of the just
hunted wild boar The very thought of it sent my
head spinning and we politely refused. Their
hospitality was very pleasing though.
 People
over here are so innocent and primitive, you will
get reminded of Early Man seeing them. The women
here wear a lungi and a jacket. And they don’t have
access to basic medical care. Two kids succumbed to
snake bite due to the inadequate medical facilities
and they couldn’t even take them to a nearby doctor
as they don’t have nay transport facilities. SSS and
government officials urge the locals to migrate to
nearby cities and the government has promised to
provide housing for them under the state
government’s housing welfare scheme (Indiramma Illu
Pathakam).
 But
none of them is ready to leave the forest land they
are accustomed to and would want to find subsistence
in their own forest with better education, health
care and empowerment. What do you infer from this,
Friends? I think this issue qualifies for an
interesting conversation that can lead to some
purposeful initiatives for this ignorant people.
The rain receded….And we made our return journey. We
were involved in similar exotic activities, this
time in darkness. Even if we stumbled across a snake
we would never know. Somehow our adventure was a
pleasant success as we came back alive: P
This was a saga where in we embarked on an
unprepared and aimless journey identifying our
aspirations and dreams and to an extent were able to
realize some of them with some impressive deeds.
Do drop in your valuable
comments…
Wednesday, July 22nd
2009.
Knowledge is a journey. And our journey in search of
knowledge was not to libraries, labs, etc but to
villages where scarcity and poverty lies, “Scarcity
is the mother of invention” and “Poverty doesn’t
make a person uncreative” Our journey was following
these principles. Fourteen of us reached NIT
Warangal on June 10th and we had an orientation
session with National Innovation Foundation, Honey
network about the kind of work we would be doing in
the villages by Brig. D.Ganesham Sir ( Honey Network
AP Co-ordinator). WE were shown videos of the many
ideas incubated by villagers.
Want to have a look at the rural innovations…
http://www.youtube.com/wathc?v=m_ho7xhgWV8
We were then divided into 5 groups and sent to 5
villages around Thorrur mandal namely Dubba Thanda,
Hachu Thanda, Chityala, Chinna Vanagara and
Madipalli. We had to stay for 3 days in our
respective villages exploring them.
P.S. Thanda is nothing but a community or a small
hamlet.
Myself, Meraj and Pawan went to Dhubba Thanda and
were received by a warm welcome by Mani, son of a
librarian and got accommodated in the same library
for 3 days.
The first day we were looked upon like foreigners in
the village and everybody were staring at us. We
went around the Thanda, enquired few details, came
back, read the newspapers in the library and slept.
With the help of Mani, we befriend several kids in
the village. Mani, this boy has just completed 10th
standard but,you must get to know him to understand
how mature and intelligent he is. He has got the
brains which we seldom find even with the sane
graduate. Regarding his communication skills, this
chap can persuade and win even Anil Ambani in just
10 good minutes. We conducted a small biodiversity
competition for the kids to collect different
varieties of plant species and to narrate their
uses.
Here is Mani, Pavan and Kishore
We met Mani’s
grandfather named Somaji who is well above 90 years.
You can call him as the Nelson Mandela for this
Thanda. He studied till 4th standard in those hard
old days of Nizam’s rule. This person fought with
the tyranny of the Nizam’s and distributed 300 acres
of land to all the people in his community who
rightly deserved the entitlement to the land. To
this day, everyone in the Thanda praises his
selflessness and shower utmost respect on him. We
learnt from him and few other elders about the
traditional and culture of Lambadi’s.
This is Somaji and wife
 It was eccentric to get to know that their marriages
used to take place for 6 long months. And their
marriage tradition is quite interesting and
hysterical. It seems during the engagement the
bridegroom is be by the bride’s brother four times
at the same place. And the bridegroom has to stand
till his father in law asks him to sit. Finally, the
bride is sent along with him after 6 long months on
a cow. Girls what do you say?? Kaash…P … the
tradition should have continued everywhere? Right?
 13th June it was the last day in the Thanda and we
were very much disappointed that we couldn’t gain
substantial information, or find any viable
innovations or herbal medicines. That afternoon we
met a person name Vinay Kumar. This bloke is an all
rounder. He is a teacher, businessman (real estate
and hotel business), innovator, Ayurvedic Doctor and
an expert at Yoga. We sat with him for 2 hours. And
the whole conversation was rather more interesting
than a movie, that our focus remained undiminished
listening to him. Unfortunately, we forget to get a
recorder the same day. I will narrate u the
highlights of the conversation that took place;
It seems his grandfather learnt this cryptic art and
dedicated his whole life and wealth trying to
convert Copper to Gold. Finally he made it, but met
an untimely death without revealing the alchemy he
mastered. This person is now continuing the same job
reading the books written by his grandfather trying
to unravel the intriguing art. He said it took him
25 days to read one page. He
also made it a
point to mention centuries old ayurvedic treatments
which included healing a person who has suffered
cardiac arrest. It goes like this…
• A heart attack patient should be made to sit in
blistering sun. Take two lemons and extract some
juice and inject required quantity of mercury into
it according the height of the person and place them
in front him. He said the lemons would fly upto his
chest and dance till the heart attack is cured.
• To a person who consumed poison, a small drop of
ingalikam powder when kept on his tongue would throw
up everything present in his stomach and make him
fine.
And the list of primitive ways of finding the cure
for every illness and health related complications
is unending. He said all these ayurvedic plants,
saints, etc are presenting Srisailam forests. He
also told about an interesting climber named
thippudu thigalu (swirling creeper). It appears that
once if our feet touch them, we will roam around the
forest for 15 days without knowing ourselves. In
between he said,
“If you are interested to talk to a soul I can make
it possible. Are you ready?” We didn’t have any
answer. Suddenly we shivered for a while and it took
a while for us to shed the fear.
All this would seem as sheer superstition and we may
find no good enough a reason to believe in it.
He said every person has an aura surrounding him
which tells his nature and he also told pavan that
if he took bath and did meditation for sometime he
could tell pavan’s future too. Poor Pavan, he said
he didn’t want to know. He told us that there is
some kajal (the same one which we see on the eyes of
katikaparlu) when applied to the eyes we can scan
everything i.e., the land, the past and future of a
person, etc., Once he had unearthed the treasure
which lied in the underground of a person’s house.
And it was no surprise that he works for the
archeology department. Finally, while leaving as we
took his phone number in a book, he said that the
book wouldn’t reach its final destination. We didn’t
understand and went away bewildered. Then he called
me back and asked if my defective eyesight was 6.5.
I said its 8. He suggested me some herbal medicine.
Of course, he poured out suggestions on how Meraj
and Pavan should grow fat.
I don’t know what’s running in your minds now
friends.. But after the whole conversation, I was
excited and felt like visiting Srisailam and the
forests over there once.
A cliché that all you people have been repeatedly
hearing - This is my first blog. I had been wishing
to write one from long time. Finally, the day had
beckoned.
I am doing B.Tech 3rd year in Bits-Pilani. From my
first year, I always aspired to do an enterprising
internship that would match my career interests. So
as intended, I applied to many prestigious
institutes like IISc, E4SI, ISB, IIIT, IIM A and
also a few start up companies. And a day arrived
when I was left with much disappointment for I was
deprived of a positive reply from everyone. But much
to my amusement and surprise, I received 2 mails the
same night, one from Anil Gupta Sir, (IIM A)
blessing me with an opportunity to do a social
internship in Andhra Pradesh Villages with a motive
to uplift the grass root innovators (www.sristi.org)
and he said I can also include my friends in this
great initiative. The other one was from a start up
firm named Daily Dump which was ready to provide an
internship with a stipend of Rs.6000/- and the task
was to market their products in the nearby villages.
Now I had to choose…
My friends and my mind said: “Teju, enough of social
service till now. Concentrate on your career”.
Whereas my heart said, “Teju com’n working in
villages where the real and exotic India lies,
uplifting grass root innovators sounds like a more
exciting job than marketing some mundane products.
And as Sir was willing to allow my friends to
partner me in my social initiative, I sensed an
amazing chance for our juniors to get well
acquainted with the knowhow of the social conscience
and this experience would help them in understanding
the villagers and the way to go about dealing with
them.
Akash (President, Nimaan) and my friend, Bala Phani
Chand appreciated my idea and encouraged me. Somehow
I managed to convince 13 of my juniors and friends
for the internship with the help of many. But the
dismal thing was the fact that I was the only girl
among them. As the project was conceived by me, I
had to start even though my father was not
interested to send. The day before I called my
intermediate friend, Meraj and mentioned about the
internship and she said she would love to join me.
Thus started the odyssey.
Gyan Shodh
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