Blink issue 100 december26 2015

UNDONE BY LAW The SC disqualifying the uneducated from contesting elections deprives many worthy candidates of the fruits of democracy p2 saturday, december 26, 2015

Walks of life

rohan chakravarty

Walking is not merely about reaching a destination. In BLink’s 100th edition, we examine how our lives revolve around our feet — be it padayatras, perambulations or holidays, connecting to livelihoods, forms of protest, even keeping alive traditions of music and spirituality p6-23

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Flung outside the ring When the Apex Court dismissed the petition filed by ‘uneducated’ Kamlesh Kaimri and two others, it dismissed lives spent in grassroots engagement of the kind few schools can teach

High waters Bar-headed geese fly above Lake Mansarovar, revered by both Hindus and Buddhists images shutterstock

On sacred ground Reserves of stamina and a streak of ‘madness’ help conquer the rigours of Kailash parikrama All for a fight Kamlesh Kaimri had filed her candidature for panchayat polls after the SC in September stayed the Haryana law that barred her from doing so ramesh sharma

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eing borneininyeh themaanti Kashmiri Shaivite hoon ki antradition padh has itsnahi peculiarities.

To (I start hoon mein do with, there very few of us, not notare consider myself illitereven a million. it is not the nuate),” But, Kamlesh Kaimri inmerically ‘exclusive’ bit aboutHaryanvi this clubdrawl. that tones softly, in her unhurried makes unique.

There is had a lotnot else.

To start Lack ofitschool education really hinwith, Hindus known deredKashmiri her work.

Whenare she wenttotohave the the Suearliest thanks preme recorded Court, it history was toanywhere. retain herAllright to to Kalhana, author of Rajatarangini, literacontest thethe panchayat elections from Kaimri lly ‘A River of Kings’, in 1050regardless CE. But the village in Hisar, Haryana, of one the who did of theclasses most she seminal work on our Shainumber had passed.

She lost. vite“Yeh identity, byhamari turningtoh… it into a philosophical aas hai hum ladenge, hum discipline, is Abhinavagupta (950-1020 CE).she Arjeetenge (It’s my wish to fight and win),” guably the foremost Shaivite master ever, the he says. A fortnight ago, the SC had dismissed was prolific his precepts and and writings. petition filedwith

by Kamlesh, Rajbala Preet The profundity of Haryana his ideas,law andthat their impact, Singh against the allows onis even a millennium later, he engaglysuch thosethat with a prescribed ‘minimum’ educaes intellectuals and scholars. tional qualification to contest panchayat Little wonder, relics of this Shaivite traelections.

It also the barred those without toilets dition areand strewn overhad Kashmir Valley.

And, at home thoseallwho pending electriciover the ty bills orcenturies, bank loans.have become important landmarks and pilgrimages. a village ofreligiosity 8,399 people, nottofar To aimri, some they evoke and is lead a fromofHisar town’s bustlethey of hospitals regimen rituals.

To others are a partand of residential sectors. centrally the culture they grewThe up in.

For manyair-condithough, tioned Aryan School slips past on the road to they represent an ancient continuous tradiKaimri, too ain railway a canal, tion thatsogrows value gate, with time.

Formarkets not an and bakeries.few, Thethey template changes when we insignificant are, purely, a fountainenterofKamlesh’s lane. The brick road is head spiritual energy. hemmed on both by open drains.

No matter how sides you look at them, it Strolltakes ing buffaloes share space with hurprarabdham (destiny) to visit any children of those plactling down theI,path.

An all-woman is es.

That is what perhaps, lacked. Allmeeting that I had on in to Kamlesh’s Her mother-in-law gone was the courtyard. hilltop Shankaracharya Temnapswhich on a string cot under loneoftree in the ple, was right at thethe edge Srinagar courtyard. daughter-in-law, and did not Her take young even half a day to trek to in anda

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shimmery pinktime salwar-kameez, dutifullytogoes return.

By the I grew old enough de- rate women mumble about daughters andthe daughcheck at the immigration, we hit peraround collecting blessings from the we guests. cide for myself about the other places, lost fect ters-in-law.

Kamlesh too has younger, ‘qualitar-road through misty woods, an At one corner, theValley. door Ito theleft toilet ajar. occasional our homes in the was withismere fied’ women at home.

“But I wanted to fight. waterfall and scanty human presShirts hang from awho linewere inside the two-room ence. stories from those luckier.

Everybody in the family wanted me to fight,” We were headed further ahead, towards brick steel vessels who are left to Nyalam, Thathouse. is whyGleaming when I met someone visitshe says.at 11,700 ft. dryKailash in a trayevery under the Itree a central charac-I ed year, was— truly tempted.

Savita, jointa secretary of AIDWA At Nyalam, small Tibetan town Haryana, of a few ter in Kamlesh’s had known aboutcourtyard. the annual group-treks that hundred says the educational criteria alone will It elimipeople, we practised climbing. was As going Kamlesh anddecades, her team of around 10 the were on for under a governnatefirst 83 per of Dalit women Kamlesh daycent of withdrawal from like the world as women belonging to the Akhil Bharatiya Jan- we ment-run programme.

But those treks were from theit. electoral process.

Hadtoshe beenOurs able knew There were 15 more follow. wadi Mahila Samiti arduous, took 40 days (All-India and, to topDemocratic it all, you was to contest, would have been Kamlesh’s a motleythis group — engineers, CAs, traders, Women’s around on This cots one and techies, had to be Association) lucky in the sit draw of lots. third election.

2005, she had to be retired In bureaucrats; fromfought avid trekkplastic chairsAand talk, the dominant is ers was simpler. package of three weeks,feeling includthe to sarpanch.

“As a Dalitfrom woman she found it rank first-timers, restless youngonethe of ato-and-fro battle lostflight, but a war that ing via Kathmandu (four sters to calm twilighters. difficult to break in,” says Jakhar. must go hotel on. They nodbus vigorously nights), stays, ride to the Tibetan In 2010, stood election to We spent two cold she nights at for Nyalam.

After when Sakuntala Jakhar, state border, four-day road journey to the block samiti and lost abyvil-11 another night at Prayang, president of AIDWA, which filed Mansarovar (two nights) and votes.

“Kaimri overwhelmingly of sorts, we left for Horche, a But I wanted to fight. lage the SCa petition for Kamlesh and then, day-journey to the base voted at forthe her,edge but of thethe block incamp sacred Everybody in the the others, asks them to acclicarry camp for Kailash.

All the cluded the neighbouring Mansarovar.

It was 270 km Gangaway, Our eyes looked family wanted me black flags when exhilarating, leaders visit matising, walking, wa panchayat, where she four got which would take barely hard for toKailash, fight but their village. grunting, enduring, experiencactive aBut, bit the late,” Jakhar to adds. hours. patience waitA the clouds did of the team’s core meming,None exploring, gathering, pickdayMansarovar after the SC stayed the Haryafor had worn thin. not oblige bers canclicking, now standdrenching, for a paning, na law September, Kamlesh The driveintook us through Maychayat post. hurting, In a societypraying, fissured shivering, had filed her pass candidature and um-la, a high with a steep along caste lines, ‘team’ is an aberration. the village elders meditating, cryingthis and, finally, support.down climbhad at lent the their top. Driving “We have meals Something that did ‘connecting’ wastogether. left to you.

That acceptance, notview easily the passhowever, offered awas great of not happen a few years ago,” says Kamlesh, the the gained.

Nirmala, a retiredLake. primary schoolmagnificent Mayum-tso That further Agroup’s good start leader, who is a Dalit. Believed to be whetted teacher, remembers a young Kamthe craving meeting for the Mansarovar.

It around 45 years she grewat upKathmandu, in Jooyi vil- took It all started afterold, three nights lesh 20 ago.80 She into school us years another kmhad to walked reach Horche.

The lage and had attended far short with an early breakfastschool and abriefly, five-hour bus snow-capped barefoot as shepeak was mourning death of a across thethe lake, Gurla of the V pass needed qualifyTatopani, her for the ride toStd Kodari town, alsotocalled at Mandhata family elder.

“I told herft) that around (over 25,500 waswalking a stunner.

Our panch’s post. Her teammates who belong to eyes the Nepal-Tibet border.

The border was debarefoot would take but her the anywhere,” researched fornot Kailash, clouds did otherby communities, do not meet theriver. edu- not fined the noisy andtoo, frothy Bhotekoshi callsoblige.

Nirmala, who Raina, is alsothe the district presiRajinder man responsibcational qualification prescribed them. le On the other side was the Chinese for immigradent She overwhelmed. then introduced to for of my AIDWA. yatra, was We sat “None of us at areZhangmu, matric (Stdconnected X) pass,” says tion point byRamthe there, Kamlesh the ongoing literacy programme.

“I looking at the gentle waves in the turvati. So, whoBridge. will now fight theirand place?

The quoise Friendship After theinlong elabotold herwaters, if you want to study, I willspoken teach you. without a word for

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She would come every day with four to five Dalit women and I would teach them for a couple of hours,” Nirmala recalls. Kamlesh now reads newspapers, keeps accounts for her team and records the minutes of meetings. “My mind is agile,” she says. As a young mother who couldn’t count, she remembers struggling once to pay the doctor’s fee.

The road to literacy opened to her many other alleys — leading to mentors and friends and social causes. Jakhar mentions a protest that Kamlesh had led in 2004, which had instantly de-linked her from the image of a typical ghunghat-wearing bahu of Kaimri. A pond was being dug in the village and the then sarpanch had deployed a tractor for the work.

Kamlesh and several other women wanted him to assign the work to them instead. When he refused, the women approached the police and the district administration directed the sarpanch to halt the tractor. The story, however, did not end there. “At night we heard the tractor running, and we went and lay on the ground, asking him to run it over our stomach. We ended up getting work for 20 days,” Kamlesh concludes on a triumphant note.

In Kaimri, Kamlesh is defined by her work over the past two decades. The once timid woman who pleaded with Jakhar and Nirmala to accompany her on visits to the police station, has all but disappeared. “Now she gets a

Preet Singh Ask Preet Singh for his phone number and he writes it slowly, in his tiny hand. The 62-year-old from Bhambhewa, in Jhajjar, has never been to school but can read and write. “I read six to seven newspapers a day. As children we were asked to take care of the cattle and the farm,” he says.

Singh had been a panchayat member in the 1990s and is now the vicepresident of the All India Kisan Sabha.

The third petitioner in the case against the Haryana government, he says almost 70 per cent of his village is unhappy with the SC judgement.

Singh also has an outstanding bank loan, which he has to repay over five years; but it effectively disqualifies him from contesting.

Rajbala Hers is the name by which the case is known — ‘Rajbala and others Vs the State of Haryana’. The 35-year-old from Matana village in Fatehabad, Haryana, won the very first time she stood for elections in 2010 and became a block samiti member. School didn’t feature much in her early life in Sundarpura. “I might have attended for a couple of years. My village had a primary school. The bigger school was in the next village,” she says.

However, a significant step the outgoing block samiti took was to sanction two acres to expand the primary school in Matana.

Over the last few years, along with her growing involvement in panchayati politics, Rajbala has been making efforts to educate herself. Her husband Rajkumar, a former block samiti member, says their two sons — aged 18 and 12, respectively — are her teachers. “After coming back from school they teach their mother. She is literate, she reads newspapers,” adds Rajkumar.

Rajbala says the past five years have given her confidence. “I had never met a person in authority before. Paav mein taakat nahi thi (I didn’t have the courage for it).”

Being a block samiti member changed all that. “Four days ago, she went to the police station with a woman who was being harassed for dowry,” says Rajkumar.

Out of the race No one from Kamlesh Kaimri’s core team can now contest the panchayat elections ramesh sharma

chair to sit on at the police station,” says Jak- in Kaimri and their answer is a cryptic, “Hum har. After she stepped into the police station ghar basate hai (We fix broken homes).” Often, for the first time, however, her father-in-law men drop into her house with their wives and had been ridiculed in the panchayat. “Tumne request her to mediate in issues ranging from to naak katwa di (You brought us disgrace),” domestic violence, dowry and alcoholism to he told her afterwards. When she intervened property disputes. “The other day, a pandit in cases involving domestic viofamily had come to meet her,” lence in upper-caste housesays Jakhar. Young girls seek her holds, the men of her house out when they want to go to bore the brunt. “Tum marvaogi school. Convincing their parents When she intervened becomes Kamlesh’s job. “The gov(You will get us killed),” her fain cases involving ther-in-law and husband choernment gives bicycles to girls domestic violence in rused. “Then I would stay home who live within 2km from school. upper-caste for a few days,” she recalls. Her Parents often don’t know about households, the men husband, Satyavan, works as a the scheme. We go around the vilof her house bore the labourer. Despite the threats, lage telling them. We also keep a brunt however, he never stopped her watch when the final bell rings at from her work, says Kamlesh. school and make sure the girls reOther men in the village were ach home safely,” says Kamlesh. unable to stomach her active As far as she’s concerned, fightrole outside the house. An upper caste man ing an election and winning are merely the had even offered to buy Satyavan two buffa- means to bring about change. Having fought loes to keep Kamlesh engaged at home. Her fa- for quality ration, common toilets and drinkther-in-law had in the past chided her for ing water, she says there is more work to be appearing in public without the veil. Years lat- done — to access other existing schemes and er, when she stood for elections and her home introduce newer ones. “Sarpanch has the powbuzzed with people, he was a changed man, er to bring change. Dekhte hein, madam (Let’s telling her, “Beta, you are fighting elections. see),” she says, exuding steely resolve.

Why do you need the ghunghat? Take it off.”

Ask Kamlesh and the women what they do p anima

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Country roads calling ‘A’ for buffalo

All in me, it together Love love my Kashmiri in buffalo Agirls basic Sonamarg walk ahome economic unit, with firewood member of the family nissar ahmad and, if you will, also a pet ap/rajesh kumar singh

Six months. Nearly 4,000 km on foot. Fishing boats and bungalows to sleep in. Endless The Supreme Courtfrom tookstrangers. away the illiterate to runfulfilling his world. But if cuppas and stories Taking toHaryana the roadvillager’s seldom right gets more the villager is illiterate in our world, we are so in his. For us, his world is as dark as his buffalo

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engaluru. January 6, 2012. It was just another day for most Bangaloreans, o an villager, black but forilliterate me it was the start of aletters walk can mean the buffaacross India,only Dayone 1 ofthing, a six-month adlo — or sobygoes a popular north Indiventure. Inspired Anna Hazare’s countryan saying,movement, kaala akshar bhains wide anti-corruption eight of us — barabar.

The buffalo is at the centre of the illitwith support from Bhumi, a Hyderabad-based erate villager’s world.

It’screate a basic economic organisation — set out to awareness in unit, a member of villages. the family and, if you will, smaller towns and also a pet.

The buffalo a metonym for his From Bengaluru, weis took the highway, world oftowards tradition by the heading theyet Bayunredeemed of Bengal. Walking light of education.

His world as dark as his through the countryside of isKarnataka, we buffalo and just asworking dumb, indolent watched farmers in their and rice clumfields sy. tending His illiteracy is not merely an inability to or to cattle, lost in time.

The humid read but alsocool a lack enlightenment that litbreeze blew onof our faces, as the swaying eracy on and, extension, liberal education trees theby roadside waved in greeting.

We have up come to be conflated with.

This conflakept a good pace, walking for eight hours tioncovering of learning witheach wisdom has roots six in the and 30 km day. At around evEuropean that ery evening,Enlightenment we would try to findreached a place us to through colonialism.

We continue the modhalt for the night. ernDays project of acivilising the savage. later, salty breeze, tinged with the It isofone thingtold to us saywethat literate smell dry fish, werebeing in Puducherwould help a panchayat member understand ry.

We headed for the beach and watched the his workthrough and communicate better, andbefore quite sunset the coconut trees, another that modern education would make sleeping in boats moored on the beach.

We him virtuous.

Court, for which rewere woken atThe 3amSupreme by fishermen, it was cently upheld Haryana government that the first day ofa the fishing season. Welaw helped mandated them packbasic theirschool fishingeducation nets and along set offwith toother Chennai. qualifications panwards As the for sun contesting blazed downa unrechayat election, is not alone that lentingly, the heat forced twoininbelieving our group to the abilitythe to walk. read and can grantofusrejuthe abandon Evenwrite the prospect ability to tell right from beach wrong.house The belief that venation at an upscale in Chenwherever western modernity nai failed to convince them. has not reached is an of darkness is widely shared by IndiWearea plodded on, after a comfortable day ans, including intellectuals on the right asas spent in feather-soft beds, back to dusty well asbut theinteresting left. phalt, conversations with pasBefore elections India, sers-by onthe thefirst roadgeneral to Andhra Pradeshin(before MN Roy, the leading Indian communiTelangana was carvedlight out of it) brightened the sm, had Quizzical said people should have been educatpicture. brows greeted us, followed ed philosophical before gettingadvice the right vote. by on to how to devote our People cities to need notgoals, be communists time and in energy finite instead ofto a share Roy’s view. They arefishthe ‘frivolous journey’.

Webelieve smiled villages and went

ing in a trickle of a stream, the only oasis in the nipped my pastoral dreams in the bud and we dry land we found ourselves in. marched on. dens inequitieswe thatlost stem from afellow-travtraditional name, At of Hyderabad, another a human at later, that —we Sheela, Fourand months and name a week wereKain worldview.

Butcelebrated when it comes the inequieller.

We still with atohearty meal Delhi lawatiand or Bimla. buffalo down It towas justfunny two ofthat us. the Uday and I ties inmuch-needed cities, they aresleep. believed be random, ventured and Theto countryside had a definite way of to her name, onwards toresponding greet the Himalayas.

We individual and phenomena or a law-and-order is- covered beckoned we responded with renewed perhaps with a swishagrarian of her tail or by the fertile land of curling Punjab sue. Theback violence, injustice andloved discriminaenergy, to the grind that we by now. and her Haryana, ears. Thecrossed reporter, like mostand of headed us cityChandigarh tionwalked in theoncities are earth, rarely with linked the towards We parched baldtotrees dwellers,Himachal found thePradesh. way the Just villager related to ahead of Dhainfluence of modernity. and scrawny birds high in the dry skies for ramsala, his buffalo When a pet suchthrough as a dog a amusing. bolt of lightning ripped When French philosopher Louise Althusser company.

We waved at passing trucks, cycles, the or anight cat can described with human sky,be allowing us a glimpse of theattrimamurdered his wife, he deployed his learning carts, bullocks, dogs and children, giving jestic butes,Dhauladhars. why not a buffalo? to justify If German them ourit. best smiles. philosopher Martin HeiFor urban people,—athe buffalo isGolden just a milkIt was at Amritsar serene Temdegger, English Eliot or French philosFrequent andpoet free TS refreshments offered by ple, making kind of and modern bias to bemachine. precise —This where Uday I decided opher Jacques Derrida is endorsing bystanders, entertained by found our travel tales, to haspart hadways. serious implications forahead our world.

My mind had raced of my Nazi ideas, it becomes individual lapse. No feet, kept the spring in ourhis step.

Our anti-corrupJust as consider buffaloofa the mere maandweI walked thehisfoothills Himaone will blamecollapsed, modern education for creating tion message as people were not in- layas. chine,At hisUdhampur, land becomes forausman an industrial I met stranded reafa whole discipline thatnot gave ideas for geno- source that ter terested, but that did stop canan beaccident. exploitedEverything without any he cides — anthropology.

If an intelour preaching.

We eventually dequalms.

Forscattered the illiterate owned lay in thevillager, dust — lectualtoiskeep convicted rape, it cided off theofhighways the buffalo is a mattresses. family member, goats, trunks, But would nothing to doseeing with and stayhave on smaller roads, and landstop his mother. thatthe didn’t him from sharhis background, butwe thewalked whole The the real India as villager’s inability to with read a cup of tea and biscuits WeSupreme realised we hadis ingThe Court socio-cultural context of a poor not across it. is just a navigational me.notI continued through hinthe fallen inin love with alone believing man an dams Uttar and Pradesh Wefrom crossed riversvilto being on ability the grind drance also asleeping lack thatatdiminhills of but Jammu, roadthat the to lageto would be probed a simiget Gadchiroli, the for forest disishes his being whenever he side dhabas, crossed the Jawahar read and write can lar crime. trict in Maharashtra. Naxalite re- grant us the ability to comes in contact govor Banihal Tunnelwith and the entered If are the active villager is illiterate in bels here, but we saw ernment.

There is a little bureauKashmir Valley. tell right from wrong our world, men we are illiterate in uniformed decorated with cratic routine inRatnipore rural banks and After a day in with a his. For and us, his entireextorting world is as medals badges, bags of vegeta- family of bakers courts — the taking of the thumb — who even washed my dirty darkand as his buffalo.

The lack of local traders. jeans — I reached bles other provisions from printSrinagar — which is laden with and spent the night modern education is a lack of all we turned in my sleeping After a night in a zoo-cum-hospital, meaning.

Thebench illiterate villager bag on the of a bus shelvirtue. Slowly, we haveSea, stopped granting the ter, towards the Arabian passing through sticks outfighting his thumb, bank grabsFurhis with straythe dogs forclerk company. rural world intrinsic to a tradiNagpur andeven Punethe andvalues tracing a national high- ther limp wrist, his thumb first on the ink pad up, atjabs Sonamarg, I was welcomed by tional society the — community, sharing, compasway through Khandala hills to finally re- snow-covered and then on the document and brusquely remeadows. sion,Mumbai. sacrifice, and so on, because western leases ach the wrist. man cannotabe trusted I entered KargilThe after spending night at a modernity has to come to claim that’s good.

Our journey Gujarat was all punctuated by gurudwara, even to place his thumb at Dras the right place trekked towards and on to So anunder illiterate man trees. is lessBy than spe- the naps banyan thehuman, time weareacwhen directed. The act5,359m shows his utter of Khardung-la pass above sealack level. cies akin to his buffalo.the group was down to Another hed Madhya Pradesh, agency. As200 good a stamp, he later is bereft of not kmasand 10 days I reached A few ago, aItnews po- Hargam, half its years strength. was item also describing in Madhya aPrajust the ability his name but the veryI close to sign the China border, where lice report a missinglife buffalo revelled in the ended desh that I for considered as a farmer — possimind. my Thewalk. unlettered man cannot have a usual ironybyand urban middlebly swayed thewry sighthumour of golden wheat under mind, as his buffalo cannot (As told to Saurabh Yadav) have emotion. class has for allThe things The news an orange sun. pullrural. of Chambal, thereport river shekar is an architect currentlyjournalist based in Rome dharminder kumar is a Delhi-based found it humorous the and buffalo had a anoop that inspires both awethat and fear, its ravines

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Pictures with heart

viour the artistes showed as Raoji went to work with his camera. There is a seeming letting down of guard, a primal innocence, a loosening up of their assumed ‘persona’ and a soft transparency in attitude as they consent to being recorded for posterity.

This is a far cry from the posed pictures of artistes we are accustomed to in the mass media. Photographing the external mannerisms or quizzicalities of artistes is par for the course; but to be able to cross the zone into their intimate space and capture their reflective moments, vulnerabilities, moods and make them almost equal and honest partners in this image-making exercise, is not given to everyone. It is enabled not just by personal intimacy with the subject, but by complete trust. So, this is saying a lot; Raoji was a photographer you could trust.

As those who visit the Music Academy’s Tag Digital Archive Centre in its premises till January 9 will delightfully discover. Thirty-two exquisitely restored and printed (by the master craftsman V Karthik of Ramana Labs) B&W images — 11 dancers and 21 Carnatic musicians — each one a study in interiority.

The photographs have all the qualities of masterpieces in B&W — a dominant play of chiaroscuro (particularly in a haunting threequarter profile portrait of vocalist Balamuralikrishna, which almost seems to enter his soul and another epiphanic profile of dancer Sudharani Raghupathy); a masterly sensitivity to grain and tone (as in a superbly balanced shot of Lalgudi Jayaraman tuning his violin); and a quiet awareness of the rhetorical effects of contrast in a picture (a silhouette People beyond the persona Raghavendra Rao’s photographs of Dwaram of dancer ChandraVenkataswamy Naidu and (below) MD Ramanathan; (right) Rao lekha against a sunBusinessLine, from rise on Elliot’s Beach the launch of the which seems a hompaper in 1994, for alage to space or a Mamost a decade. lavika Sarukkai, However, away again in silhouette, from the daily grind, whose still and coiled he was an artist in body, set against a nilavisearch of visual poetry. lakku, evokes the idea of His particularly loving porinfinite time). traits of a range of artistes in There are the candid shots of the city was a tribute to his crea very informal Balasaraswathy ative self and his artistic inclior Aryakudi; a flamboyant B Ranations and concerns. jam Iyer in the same panel as an It often seemed he Some of the images from this energetic shot of a very young was interested more pantheon of portraits — like the Sanjay Subrahmanyan; a fabuin the person than in profile of a joyously smiling lous composition of Kalanidhi the photograph of the Narayanan, probably essaying MD Ramanathan, revealing the person gap in his teeth or of Rukmini vatsalya rasa, expressing ecstasy Devi Arundale with a parrot with palms diagonally pointing, perched on her wrist or of Semdeliberately juxtaposed against mangudi Srinivasa Iyer sunk in the verticality of a lamp in the here is something new, this year, to his easy chair, yet taut with some suffused mu- foreground; the image of a totally immersedthe Chennai Music Season — about sic — have already passed into the realm of the in-music MS, which is a study in finger moveas ethereal as its music itself. We are iconic here. ments, one set of fingers caressing the tanpubeing treated to an experience of Raoji came from a school of photography ra while the other set spreads out before her in music, without stepping into the concert hall. that believed more in emotion, intuition and an ineffable attempt to reach out and touch.

An evocative exhibition of B&W photographs spontaneity, rather than conscious preoccuHowever, the punctum of the exhibition of musicians and dancers brings us as close to pation with technical details. In the many con- has to be the enigmatic, if naughty, image of the experience of hearing their music or see- versations we have had, he would always hold violinist Dwaram Venkataswamy Naidu ing their dance as actually experiencing it. firm to the belief that the mechanics of the caught in the act of lighting his cheroot, suckFor older residents of Chennai this should medium should not be allowed to overpower ing in the smoke into his toothless cheeks be clue enough that one is referring to the the poetry of the expression. with the same intensity he might pull the bow body of photographs of South Indian musiIt certainly helped that he was familiar with across his strings. It is a moment. And it draws cians and dancers, so lovingly shot over some the nuances and complexities of classical mu- attention to the felicity with which Raoji three decades by the late Raghavendra Rao sic and dance as much as he was with the sub- could be in sync with those he was (1932 -2014). ‘Raoji’, as he was affectionately ad- jects he photographed. Raoji had a way of photographing. dressed by friends and colleagues, was one of being gentle and unobtrusive with the camIn Raghavendra Rao’s photographs, you can Chennai’s most sensitive photojournalists, era and waiting till the person before him was almost sense his being able to click the shutter who brought enormous empathy and human- completely at ease with his presence. It often on the tala as it attains sama. ity to his day job as chief photographer for The seemed he was interested more in the person Indian Express and, later, at India Today. He was than in the photograph of the person. And sadanand menon is a Chennai-based art writer also the consultant photo-editor for The Hindu this certainly reflected in the strange beha- and photographer

Musicians and dancers let their guard down when Raghavendra Rao photographed them. Thirty-two of those exquisite images are on show in Chennai

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India W walking...

Songlines to knowing A book or a movie could set you off on a leisurely stroll or a life-altering trek

alking is the same as thinking: although I’d like to believe this is true for everybody, it is especially true for millennials. We, the Uber-hailing Übermensch, have speed and efficiency hardwired into us. We know no other way to live. And because a stray second of stopping and staring makes us break out in existential hives, we run: run for our lives, run for our sanity. Every now and then, however, we come across a book or a movie that makes us reconsider our fight-or-flight instincts.

Bruce Chatwin was surely one of the most accomplished and prolific walkers of all time.

As it so happened, he also wrote beautifully about walking. In his 1987 classic The Songlines, he charts the history of the Aboriginal people in Australia, connecting it to a tradition of nomadic walking. Chatwin’s prose is as audacious as his thesis: that migratory species tend to be less aggressive than sedentary ones, that the walk itself was the ‘show of strength’ that separated the survivors from the rest. The ‘songlines’ that have spread from Africa to the rest of the world are a reminder of our migratory past. These songlines are now preserved by the Aboriginals in Australia, the oldest surviving culture in the world.

Chatwin also believed that the nomadic existence provided nourishment for the soul. He wrote, “Richard Lee calculated that a Bushman child will be carried a distance of 4,900 miles before he begins to walk on his own.

Since, during this rhythmic phase, he will be KOLKATA

New data from the Census shows that over a fifth of the country’s nonagricultural workers walk to work, and that includes people from cities and towns — small and big — and, of course, villages. In a country where public transport is both woefully inadequate, as well as beyond the means of a majority, most people walk because they have no other choice. In BLink’s 100th edition, we examine the journeys that mark everyday life in India The Way (2010) Emilio Estevez

SRINAGAR

forever naming the contents of his territory, it crises is to walk (Joshua Ferris’s The Unnamed). is impossible he will not become a poet.”

Solnit’s magisterial essays in The New York It has been just two and a half years since Review of Books mark her as a writerRawat of rare luAshok Jaujanath the publication of Robert Macfarlane’s The Old cidity and insight.Age: Wanderlust shares these 59 Occupation: Track Ways, but you would think it has been around qualities, along with an unerring eye for histoworker for decades: such is the reverence accorded to ry’s tipping points:maintenance for instance, she with correctly Railways this modern masterpiece of walking. Broadly notes that walkingIndian as a source of pleasure for Walks at least 5 km a day speaking, the book is about a series of long the Everyman is a Leaves relatively homerecent at 10 amphenomwalks in two areas; a harsh, challenging trail enon. The idea of walking for pleasure Returns home at 9 pm began Rawatgardens, loves his work in Scotland and a relatively easier stroll in the in 18th-century English the refuge of because it involves walking. northern part of the UK. Macfarlane delivers a the sheltered and privileged aristocrat.

Solnit He wants to maintain this dismasterclass in balancing experienalso provides an elegant MUMBAI ritual even after his tial and literary knowledge. As a section of theinwritings of Walretirement 2016 former geologist, I found his fixater Benjamin, Rousseau, tion with ‘preferred pathways’ Wordsworth and others who The idea of walking adorable. These are the paths have propagated the idea of for pleasure began in marked by rainwater as it seeps walking as a bottomless pit of 18th-century English through limestone, attracting pecreative energy. destrians, “all of whom etch the gardens, the refuge of Ferris shot to fame with his the sheltered and track of their passage with their debut novel, Then We Came to privileged aristocrat feet as they go. In this way the path the End, a book that takes its of a raindrop hundreds of thouname from a Don DeLillo opensands of years ago may determine ing line and shared something the route of a modern-day walker.” of the veteran novelist’s hysterThere is something deeply poetic ical scepticism about the about this call-and-response mechanism be- American dream. His second novel, nowhere tween man and nature, and Macfarlane is the near as funny as his first, is a compelling, perideal guide to these philosophical implica- sistent beast nevertheless. His protagonist tions of walking.

Tim Farnsworth is a successful trial attorney This year, I read two very interesting books afflicted with the strangest of maladies: every about walking: a non-fiction that clinically now and then, he gets an irresistible urge to paul noronha dissected the intimate link between walking walk, ignoring everyone and everything in his and thinking (Rebecca Solnit’s Wanderlust), life for days on end. Ferris acknowledges both and a novel where the protagonist’s only an- the pleasures and the perils of obsessive walkswer to escalating personal and professional ing. On the one hand, Tim becomes, to borrow

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Dinesh Shah Age: 45 Occupation: Vendor (sells phuchkas) Walks 8-10 km a day Leaves home at 12.30 pm Returns home at 10 pm Shah carries six to seven kilos of potatoes, a kilo of lemons, and a pot of tamarind water to work every day. The vendor cannot board a bus or an auto rickshaw with paraphernalia

Harry and Tonto (1974) Paul Mazurksy

anuradha sengupta

TheAhad Old Ways Abdul Age:Robert 60 Macfarlane Penguin Books Occupation: Vendor ₹873 (sells kangris) Walks 5-6 km a day Leaves home at 8 am Returns home at 8 pm Ahad’s business depends on how much he walks every day. He uses public transport only to return home

nishar ahmad

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Wanderlust Rebecca Solnit Granta Books ₹780

Uma Shankar Yadav Age: 65 Occupation: Vendor (sells sugar cane juice) Walks 8-10 km Leaves home at 8 am Returns home at 5 pm (in winters) A pavement dweller, Yadav likes to take different routes to his permanent spot on Rashbehari Avenue. He says he finds customers along the way

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KALAP, UTTARAKHAND

Mohan Singh Age: 33 Occupation: Farmer in Kalap village in Garhwal Himalayas Walks at least 10 km a day Leaves home at 9 am Returns home at 6 pm There are no roads in Kalap; walking is the only option for Singh and his family

Anand Sankar Age: 31 Occupation: Social entrepreneur in Kalap Walks at least 10 km a day Leaves home at 9 am Returns home by 6 pm

kalap trust

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BHOPAL Shakuntala Chouhan (seen with son Vishwas) Age: 45 Occupation: Vendor (sells water chestnuts) Walks at least 10 km a day Leaves home at 9 am Returns home at 9 pm Shakuntala and her son can’t afford public transport

Vidisha Negi Age: 26 Occupation: Government employee Walks 10-12 km a day Leaves home at 9.30 am Returns home at 6.30pm Negi likes to walk to work and back in order to stay in shape

virender singh negi

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GANDHINAGAR

Karshanbhai Kunverjibhai Bhalodia Age: 65 Occupation: Farmhand Walks 10-12 km a day Leaves home at 6.30 am Returns home at 6 pm Bhalodia wants to save every penny for his family; he also counts walking as a good exercise

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Bhavesh Panchal Age: 28 Occupation: IT professional Walks 3 km a day Leaves home at 1.30 pm Returns home at 11.30 pm It’s easier to walk in Gandhinagar than in most other cities and towns in India; it also keeps Panchal fit

Vijay Varma Age: 30 Occupation: Vendor (sells handicrafts outside metro stations) Walks 8-10 km a day Leaves home at 10 am Returns home at 8 pm Varma and his wife come to Delhi twice a year from Rewa district in Madhya Pradesh. They can’t afford public transport

Chhatrasing Puma Age: 65 Occupation: Farmer Walks 8 km to the weekly market Leaves home at 6 am Returns home at 5 pm Puma uses public transport only when he is exhausted ritu raj konwar

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The morning afterfeet Voting with their The walk of shame barely ever that, it’sto often a mixed that throws up feelings Except Chennai, ourismetros largely walk work, as the bag latest Census confirms.

Whyofis triumph, guilt andnowhere defianceintothe thepicture? opposite of shame public transport

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t is a fact that the majority of people in Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Bengaluru walk to their place of work. This may surprise many readers, especially those living in these cities and dealing with snarling traffic all the time, but the latest Census data related to ‘other workers’ — those engaged in economic activity other than cultivation, agricultural labour or household industry — confirms this. In Chennai, on the other hand, here’s on apreferred reality drama called two-wheelers area bit more for travel, The Real Housewives of population.

New York City used by nearly one-fourth of the one of the show’s stars, Sonja It’s clearwhere that today’s car-centric transport Morgan are says,not “Walk of shame? planning policies catering to theI premafer to call it a victory lap!”

Bad taste inand televijority of commuters, and pedestrian cysion aside, I wasneed strucktobybe that statement. cling facilities improved.

AtWhy the had I never before? same time, thought we need of to itask questions such as: I’ve far never by the walk of How do been these ‘shamed’ commuters walk?

How shame,ofper se.time I remember borrowing much that can be used instead t-shirts in profrom boyfriends to wear last night’s dress ductive work? Are fasterover modes of transport so I could comfortably a rickshaw withinaccessible to them? catch The answers can be out looking likeextent, I was from wearing found, to some two spangles sources ofand inheels at noon.

That was when in Mumformation — trip distances andI lived the cost of usbai.public In Delhi, the ‘walk’ was more like a ‘drive’— ing transport.

I imagine nowadays it’s the Uber of Shame — Ways of moving which takes away from the very meaning of it, of having to cent display to all and Nearly 80 per of people travelsundry on footthat for you’re stillupintolast clothes, meaning distances onenight’s kilometre.

Interestingly, that you there neveriswent homepercentage at all, meaning however, a sizeable using that... wink wink, nudge nudge. even for this two-wheelers or four-wheelers UsuallyChennai I teetered home alone, ignoring all distance. leads with 17 per cent, folthe pointed looks the drivers lowed

by Bengaluru andauto Delhirickshaw with 15 per cent gave9me or were they pointed? Maybe it was and per—cent, respectively. just imagination.

But Formy distances of 2-5 km, theone sharememorable of walkers time, I wasconsiderably having coffeeacross with acities, man while still decreases by 50-70 wearing clothes I had on the beper cent;the about 75 per centput of the tripsnight involve fore. We were involved secretly, as oneIn soKolkaoften walking, cycling or public transport. is in their twenties, and thinking veta and Mumbai, almost half theourselves people use ry smart for passing as distances. friends. Along came public transport for off such In Bengatwo other unexpectedly thattransearly luru, whichfriends, has neither adequatefor public hour,nor sawame, and jumped toshare instant corport significantly high of (and bicycles,

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lege campuses where women students would walk back to their dorms after a night of — presumably — passion. In urban India, PLUs have taken up the phrase with great gusto, right down to its woman-shaming connotations.

It’s not so much the idea that you’re wearing last night’s clothes, it’s more that you’ve had sex and having had sex, you’re daring to wave it in people’s faces. Of course, in India, it has whole layers of new meaning. Most of us live in neighbourhoods where we have a relationship with everyone — from the vegetable vendor to the shopkeeper to the garbage lady.

In the Bandra house I lived in with two other girls, our garbage man practised a peculiar form of intimidation: he’d pull out a used condom from our trash — usually hidden deep in the recesses of an empty cigarette packet to keep him from seeing it, and leave it on our doorstep. We never knew why he did it, he never made eye contact, and yet, no matter how carefully we hid the fact that we might have On the had sex the night before, he’d findmargins a way of letToday’s car-centric ting us know he knew. policies are I had an equally strangetransport relationship with blind to the needs of my local chemist in Delhi; pedestrians I just could not buy mohammed condoms from him. Shampoo yes,yousuf toilet paper yes, even sanitary pads, yes, but for condoms I went to neighbourhoods far away from mine more than half the people walk or use two- where available,them they there, have been found defiand purchased feeling a strange wheelers for this distance. cient in terms of and capacity, access and costs. mixture of guilt defiance.

Similarly, when About 10-35 per cent of the people in Benga- I needed The World Bank hadtest, in 2005 the a pregnancy as wecalculated all must have luru, Kolkata and Mumbai walk even when affordability transport 27 cidone at someindex pointoforpublic the other in ourinsexual their place of work is 6-10 km away. Among ties acrossI wrote developing histories, down countries. the name ofTwo theIndian brand those who travel beyond 10 km, public trans- cities — Mumbai andthe Chennai featured in I wanted, and shoved piece of—paper across port is the preferred choice — 70 per cent in the top 10counter unaffordable especially when glass to thecities, chemist.

He proceedKolkata and 85 per cent in Mumbai. In Chen- considering lower groups. ed to shout out myincome order across theBengaluru shop, and shutterstock nai, Bengaluru and Delhi, nearly 50 per cent wasn’t a part of that study, but is likely to be ineveryone stared at me, their own mental bells use private vehicles for such long distances. cluded the indexso were recalculated today. ringing,if“Shame!” loudly, I swear they resorect) conclusions. But then too, my walk of nated Currently, a general-category in my head.

And what is a walksuburban of shame Clock the walk shame — or coffee of shame — wasn’t so much monthly bus passface-to-face in Bengaluru costs without coming with the₹1,050. aunty something to walking be embarrassed but rather At an average speed ofby, 5 kmph, thosea For a person earning ₹10,000 per what month, the across the hall who has forgotten it was sort of triumph.

Look me, I’m up,their I do transport who daily walk 2-5 kmatspend 1-2 grown hours of cost would exceed once?

10 per You centlive of inlike to be young and foolish in these I knewwalking I was supposed to be coy day onthings! it, and those 6-10 km spend 2-4 come, is considered unaffordable.

Acfear of which this aunty because she could call your about the whole thing, so I pretended for a cording hours.

While it is encouraging that our cities to the Street Quality Score ways 2015 landlord and tell him about your deviant while, flustered, my face are notlooking completely dependent on cars, one released by city-based (“Comingnon-profit home atJanaagraha, all hours! growing hot; I remember the wonders whybut public transport only 665 km of the 1,750men!”). km of Bringing home strange grin I couldn’t wipe off when my face.it isn’t more popular streets studied was found to be I’ve been refused flats for less.

The walk of the shame usually greatly reduces costisper km bus-stops — a score of But I’llby end with a happy story: It’s more that you’ve serviced done by a woman.

If you’re a regufor longer distances.

Technically, perthe cent.

All who this translates inwith man has been my hadthose sex and having 38 For walking lar those viewercommuting of Game of more Thrones, you longhad for than to reduced options partner for commuting over four years now. sex, you’re distances, there might scene in which 10 km, recall publicthe transport should either duefirst to high cost or—poor of our evenings and daring to wave of it in —One is the question thethe scheming queen finally productive be best bet, but Cersei the preferaccess — forcing people to walk mornings together — I was gopeople’s faces time lost gets for herprivate comeuppance.

She’s ence vehicles shows for longer periods of time.

As ing to leave him a note saying to commuting forcedmay to crop and walk there be her no hair, comparative there is noand incentive to use goodbye this was fun puband naked through crowd till she rebenefit in termsaof convenience lic anagain increase in inwetransport, must do this sometime aches theFor palace, allwalking the while with and cost. those long come likely lead to owning a — all will platitudes I was practised a woman behind a bell and inton- in, by being the distances, there isher alsoringing the quesprivate Coolvehicle.

Girl who didn’t Demand ing, “Shame.

Shame.

Shame.” head is Too tion of productive time lost to Cersei’s commuting.

Equitable andmen, integrated Much from therebypublic scaringtransport them off up through the scene, if she’s crying, she is notwoman, only to improve people’s mobil(asneeded a single I was told putting too Cost of commuting doesn’t want us to know it; occasionally she ity, productivity and job opportunities but almuch pressure on a man was a cardinal sin). flinches when some townspeople call World over, public transport is seen as an out an- so to resolve and public health Instead, I woketraffic him up and we both wentwoes. for a crude to remarks at her, but it’s only when she air re- That swer conserving energy, improving transport without walk said, — andpublic we both wore the clotheslast-mile we had aches her thatcongestion she allows herself to connectivity quality andpalace relieving — all critical and drank cyclingcoffee facilities — on the night— walking before. We and weep. The Floss points out that isn’t factors forwebsite Indian Mental cities. However, not much of much use. morning An effective public transwatched the early light, and it was thisbeen was done actually based onpublic a truetransport event, the has to promote in port will take more private off the beautiful and intimate and vehicles the opposite of mistress of KingtoEdward IV,from was Indian blamed for roads.

India.

According research Instidata shameThe after all. comes as a timely reminder. sorcery after theSettlements king developed scoliosis. tute for Human (IIHS), fewer than meenakshi reddy madhavan an author, rao researches on mobilityisand urban most modern-day parlance, walk of shame 100Inurban settlements havethe some form of or- pooja Then After recently of Before at IIHS, And Bengaluru originated less esoterically.

It comesand fromeven col- informatics ganised public transport system;

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Defiant strides Mahatma Gandhi marches with volunteers of Indian National Congress to Dandi in 1930 the hindu

Padayatra power

archives

Which of our netas today have the fitness and austerity to set out on the long march to political payoffs?

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fter the battering in Bihar last month, one takeaway for Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his sidekick Amit Shah is that instead of choppering around the hustings, the tubby twosome ought to have gone on a padayatra.

In modern times, padayatras are a proven political instrument of (a) getting to know your voters; (b) getting to know the ‘ground realities’; and (c) getting to know your own girth.

The padayatra is not only a Long March to Power, but also a Great Leap to Fitness and Smooth Bowel Movement.

It was the Father of the Nation who was also the Father of the Modern Padayatra: Mahatma Gandhi in 1930 undertook the 388-km Dandi March in defiance of the British Empire’s salt tax. He was 61 years old at the time, but a man in far better health and physical capability than 51-year-old Shah. It is no surprise that padayatris of the past were men of fitness and austerity — Gandhian Vinoba Bhave walking for his Bhoodan movement in 1951, or future PM Chandra Shekhar’s six-month-long padayatra in 1983 from Kanyakumari to Delhi.

Today’s politicians, like Lalu Prasad’s son Tejashwi, or the late Madhavrao Scindia’s son Jyotiraditya, or Yashwant Sinha’s son Jayant (our current junior finance minister), may be fit but they are not so austere. Not for these Baba Log the padayatra — and not because they’re westernised, when you consider that the “Million Man March” and other such padayatras are in vogue in the West. Older netas like Sharad Pawar and J Jayalalithaa don’t look like they ever did a padayatra in their life, even before their current health woes. No wonder they’re called political heavyweights.

Today’s democrats don’t even walk up-anddown the narrow lanes of a densely-populated urban constituency, lest voters interpret it as

not having money for a flashy new SUV (and White’s mobile meth-lab in the American TV thus, no funds to win the poll). Perhaps the series Breaking Bad. (And as intoxicating too.)

Election Commission should make padayatra Padayatras are still in vogue in Andhra Praa mandatory electoral requirement, much desh, where in 2003 the late YSR Reddy did a like declaration of assets. Perhaps we ought to three-month walk which got him elected chief insert ‘Padayatri’ into the Constitution of In- minister for the rest of his life, and where in dia’s preamble, just after ‘Socialist Secular’ 2013 N Chandrababu Naidu did a similar 1,700and before ‘Democratic’. km padayatra, after which he was elected chief Gandhiji himself may have walked a couple minister. There is no clearer evidence of the diof mini-padayatras before his Dandi March — rect correlation between walking and attainafter all, he began experimenting with Satya- ing power in India. graha in South Africa in 1906 — but before him, Perhaps that’s why Rahul Gandhi — who a India had been politically subjugated for near- few years ago preferred to motorcycle into the ly a millennium, and not one padayatra. In an- Delhi suburb of Greater Noida (and that too, cient times there was no under the darkness of prealternative to walking, so a padawn) to support a farmers’ agidayatra wouldn’t have made tation — has this year resorted to much of a statement. The only mini-padayatras in drought-hit Rahul’s jaunts are long-distance walking then was areas and in Uttar Pradesh, mere six-seven for religious pilgrimages, like Kawhere an Assembly election in kilometres long, the raikkal Ammaiyar, who is said to 2017 is the next big electoral test amount that office have walked all the way from Thifor Modi, as he confronts a executives do on a ruvalangadu to Mount Kailash — pumped-up Opposition. gym treadmill on her hands. The nearest thing Rahul’s padayatras, however, to padayatra in pre-history was are nothing like Gandhiji’s or Lord Rama’s political exile from Naidu’s or Chandra Shekhar’s.

Ayodhya and his trudge, along His jaunts are mere six-seven with spouse Sita and brother Laxman, to the kilometres long, the amount that office execudense forests of Dandakaranya. tives do on a gym treadmill, or the amount Thus, since the BJP in its efforts to dislodge that women in those rural areas he’s visiting the “cultural imperialism” of the Mughals walk daily to collect water. For them a sevenfinds that there were no padayatras in ancient kilometre walk is essential, inevitable and times, has settled on the rath yatra. This may thus not very impressive. But then again, conalso be a repudiation of the padayatra, which, sidering that his main opponents Modi and like the freedom struggle, is still firmly lodged Shah don’t walk at all, even those seven-km in the collective mind with the Congress party. stretches could improve the health of his parThe modern rath, however, has trans- ty’s parliamentary strength (now at a woeful formed way beyond the chariot in which 45 MPs) when the 2019 polls roll around.

Krishna articulated the Bhagavad Gita to Arjuna; with high-technology and air-condition- aditya sinha has written Kashmir: The Vajpayee ing, the modern rath looks more like Walter Years with AS Dulat

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Sound of mystic music A Baul fair in Kushtiar, Bangladesh. For these wandering minstrels, the human spirit has no religion, no colour and no caste shutterstock

Wanderings with Bauls To the end of the world Buen camino The trail starts in the Pyrennes and winds through woods, meadows and pastures until the next town images veena venugopal

A lifestyle devoted to being mobile, and downsizing just enough to allow a man or a woman to be on the move within well-defined geographical boundaries

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n exasperated British rock musician once remarked, after stewing in his own juice at a Baul festival in the village of Boral, now a part of the city of Kolkata: “There are none so sedentary as the wandering Bauls!”

The Bauls just sat around all day, sang, t was on thegossiped 11th day that allowed myself played music, and I quarrelled like the question I’d been asked consistently fish-wives in a marathon which lasted 72 — getting what amupI doing The June hours, only tohere? sit down againsun in baking the skin meals on myofneck rows was to consume copious rice,and dal back, rivulets of sweat were and flowing down my and vegetables, to bathe to eliminate body, the right strap of my backpack was wasteand matter. pushing so lifestyle deeply against my shoulder blade The Baul does indeed assign primathat entire backand wasthis wound up downsizinto one cy to my being mobile, requires tight knot of muscle.

Theatrail endless ing just enough to allow manwas or aan woman to asphalt ribbon nowell-defined trees on either side. I be on the move with within geographhad last walked past a hiker coupleWest of hours ical boundaries, which lie inatoday’s Benearlier andBangladesh. the water inThis my bottle was barely gal and downsizing has above the first groovethrough from the My affected Baul posture thebottom. ages. Bauls hiking map showed a café ahead, but without understood the utility of walking light much really where Iof was, I couldn’t figure beforeknowing present notions portability came inout how much further thebuilt café to was. am to use.

Instruments were be “What easily carIried. doingPossessions here?” I screamed withdown no one around pruned to the to hear me,legal. “what am I doing here!” minimum ‘Here’ wasasomewhere between the towns Now that wall contains Bangladesh from of Albeiroas in Galicia in Spain.

Twelve India, we’re and stillCee to see how the Bauls and fadays ago, Itohad gotten a bus in imposed the tiny kirs adapt these new off taxonomies town Sarria, km away, and checked from of above by170 governments that are cutinto off afrom tinythe bed-and-breakfast. following mornhorizontal pathsThe treaded by our mysing, Javier, who the place, loaded Robtic minstrels.

Tillowned today, ancient tracks of ascetert, anstill Australian had arrived thea ics are in use in who this region, currently previous afternoon, and me and our backzone of extreme turbulence. packs in his car singers, and drove us a few Among Baul there’s an kilometres expression

which defines the contradictions of a peripa- mestic routine towards a nobler, more spiritutetic lifestyle to counter the linear perception al realm. which northern academicians have always Even five centuries later, the departure of maintained when they have tried to define Nimai Sanyasi, who walked out of his home, southern cultures. leaving behind his faithful wife Vishnupriya “Uthley Gadha! Boshley Raja!” to follow a spiritual path, is a theme which Rising, we are donkeys! Sitting, we are brings tears to the eyes of many a Bengali kilometre so,ago, on little away kings!and dropped us at an otherwise incon- marked woman. every A century and a or half Lallanpillars Fakir theand sign of a yellow sun-like spicuous road.

Backpacks on,albeit Rob- bearing Today’sturn Baulofisthe still such a donkey, left home returned years later, scallop only to on be blue background.

Robert pointed ert and Iinto walked awayorbit, fromcarrying the road,along downall a arejected thrown a global by his orthodox Hindu wife.out His that subbetween two pillars, ubiquitous yellow arrows dirt trackpossessions and were immediately on thekantha, trail. earthly — duggi, ektara, sequent integration into the community of faon trees or rocks, now to keep pilgrims on kombol, korua, aatchla and sometimes even a pop kirs up, in Kushtiar district, in Bangladesh, he ‘trail’ is Japanese a rather obscure cooperative wife description the right track. and the massive volume of mysfor the with Camino Santiago, a pilgrimage When we had settled rhythm, equipped andeexpensive tic songs heinto left abehind is aRobert tale of route that hasand beensuitable operational I was doing on too. the Camino. I smartphone apps.since the early asked me what reverse-migration medieval times, with the first recorded pere-escape am not I don’t believe in god, and so And still royal, because he or she There is the cliché of the Baul There’s andChristian, grino going as far didn’ttohave a one-line answer to holds(pilgrim) court over many byback the there’s exploration. In Idone death — a turbaned, as the ninth Thevoice Way of that question. am turning 40,” simple act ofcentury. raising the to bearded being“Ion the move with the Baul mode of St James, as itheights. is called, comprisIanstarted long answer, but bedithyrambic ektara aheld high. walking, there’s a bit es There’s the various routesaway to the cafore sentence, he walking from TheI finished traditionthe of madhukuri, or of both The scallop shell is thedral at Santiago, to nodded as though he underand there’s walkingbelieved towards. honey gathering, allows the Baul entwined in the be the final resting placeexploof St legend and is the icon stood.

Like travelling all the way There’s escape and there’s to survive in the subsistence James. ways from Delhi North-western ration. There In theare Baulabout modefive of walkeconomy of to rural Bengal. He of the Camino de to walk to Santiago, and I was on Spain and then around undertaking a ing, there’s a bit of both. walks in a circle the vilSantiago theThe Camino which starts 250-km alland by clashing myself was editorFrancis, of a glossy photo-journal in Paris lage, raising his voicewalk in song his at St Jean Pied dedelightedly Port in France the textbook of apenemidonce exclaimed when I described cymbals. When the songdefinition of the Baul and, with over 1.5 practice lakh visitors a lifeofcrisis.

Capriciousness the unique Baul of Ultasadhana: “If trates the ears his listeners, an inner nottree year, is the most route. did have a you can show mepopular that the Bauls are people springs to lifewithstanding, inside the body,I bringing about Robert had started his walk in St Jean, tenuous reason.

When I readHoney about who literally walk backwards, then I can more try to somewhat a mysterious eclosion of seven flowers. than a month ago, and he promised to walk the what of fascinated me was theinfact slot them into front-page coverage.” risesCamino, in the pistils these flowers and, exwith me formigration a couple ofand hours untilreverse-miI got a feel that some on reaching felt There’s there’s change forpilgrims, this intangible gift, Santiago, the villagers of the way.

The scallop shell is entwined the the urge walkof on.the And so—they angration and the transmigration of theinsoul. givethe him histo needs day rice,did, dal,for vegelegend and isand the incantations icon of the Camino de SanBaul songs celebrate this other tables,90 oil.km, until they reach the place where tiago; theaway route distance Santiago are andofthe Atlantic Ocean begins. walking of and the soul fromtohumdrum do- Spain This ends practice walking around a village to

A 12-day walk in Spain, unlike life in a metro, ends with a priceless revelation: There’s no question of choosing this over that; just carry your backpack and take one step after another

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Medieval punditry 900-year-old granaries with a cross on one end and a “just in case” pagan symbol on the other; (right) the first sight of the Atlantic Ocean is a gleeful sign that the end of the world is near

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They called it Finisterre, the end of the earth. year; Mark, from Munich, who boasted about y that 11th day though, I had walked nearFor many centuries, until Galileo and, later, his blister-free socks; and Peter, from Minnealy 200km, most of it alone. Mindful of exColumbus set it straight, pilgrims genuinely polis, who had a terrible toothache and who, penses, I hadn’t taken a single rest day. My left believed they had reached the end of the when the dentist did a root canal and refused knee was wobbly and painful. At times I was world. Here, they burned their clothes and to charge a peregrino, walked on to the next desperate for a friend or a phone call. I mistheir shoes, left their material possessions be- town and got a second tooth fixed too. sed my kid intensely. I had been on the trail hind, and started a new spiritual life. The idea Often though, I’d walk alone. I’d stop when- for six hours, and at 2 pm I was still walking, Migrating soul thethe Goutam Ghose film Moner based on to, theto lifeadmire of LallanaFakir of walking toStills thefrom end of world appealed to Manush, ever I wanted flower, or dip my in 32 degrees Celsius under a hot Spanish my sense of story. I didn’t explain any of this to feet in a stream, or just to pause and look sun, not knowing how long I had to go. That patakas start melodies and rhythms, and every Robert; somehow, it wasn’t necessary. Of the traditions, was the first time I truly wondered whatburstI was November when the around me.

Like vignettes from apoems particularly and the thunderandhere. the dhak which theyherds integrate into their repermillions of feet that have in the thousands of fables doing I sat down fordhol a bit,start trying to talk bucolic fantasy, of massive cows often ing around time ofon.

KaliI wanted Puja. to take off of songs,past. and through which they spread years pounded the very track I was walking on, toire myself intothe carrying thundered Sometimes, a stallion or a ing There aredry village under tree. philosophy peaceful co-existsome may have had better reasons and some their shoes, out houses my socks, findthe some water. marenoble gambolled along. of There was even an in- my Cattle feed onhot hay a shed. inside between man and woman, worse, but what was important was that no ence it was too toinside sit, there wasFrom nowhere to credulous ostrich, hissing awaysyncretism behind a But house, a Bhadu song can be heard. and humanism. reason was too bad to walk the Camino. fence.

The only buildings other than the occa- alinger.

“Bhadu, goI drank wandering in of the road at Let me describe were a walk with the800 Bauls on In a couple of hours, Robert decided to hur- sional Despitedon’t myself the rest my water farmhouse granaries, or 900 Bhadu, we callthe out, Bhadu’s of these smallerfrom routes through country ry on ahead and we parted hoping we would one in oneBhadu, long gulp.

I’d scratched back of my years old, elevated the groundato protect night. the ripped shepherds.

She tried tofelt runlike but the fell in Bengal.

A moist,with sleepy, mistysymat- gone meet again. The trail fell and rose and curved landscape necktoand the skin off, it the produce from rodents, a pagan pot burning of broken husks.” fields both on sides ahead. The section of the Camino I was on mosphere, sunawas a hole through the wound; bol on onelush endgreen of therice roof andon a cross the into rasta, over which In this particular season,individual village girls are al-I a narrow track, twirled through the Pyrenees, past wooded ofother. of my toes acquired blisters, I stopped to aal drink some water oncethe and each go slipping across in Indian lowed to walk could out offeel their in a precariprocesforests that would eventually open into serene Bauls myhomes knee click a chatty farmer,and withsliding a lavish keeping a sharp eyeoveralls, on every step so as to sion to sing Bhadu earn step, some Ipocket pastures. The only sounds were birdsong. An file, ouslysongs withtoevery stuck stomach and smelly loseand balance.

Thetoshimmering fields re- money. The month of Bhadu is personified as a occasional farmhouse, with well-tended vege- not out my dry tongue, not knowcame sat next me. Bethe phrasebook sun, the clouds and the sky.This It’s the young maidening andhow carved into a doll,And which is table patches, was the sole sign of human civ- flecting that helped. sudtween my Spanish simplicity was of Bhadra, Bhadu, we as it’s known in carried at the head of this procession. ilisation. After three hours of walking, in what month denly, enveloped by this intense and his broken or English, startling. I wasn’t parlance.

It’s a season when village op-a was to eventually become a routine, I stopped village misery, for the life firstbecomes time I had managed a few sentences. expected anywhere, I Fromhave mid-August mid-September, Bhaduneeded pressive, girlsanswer run away at a café for an energy drink, a chocolate and a “Why to from why Ihome. was there. both — ato cross and a wasn’t to dowhenclear ispagan the poorest period of thehim. year in rural BenBhadu exists the of chat with other walkers. Then I set off again.

Unlike my real in life, ondistricts the Camisymbol?”

I asked anythingThe legend of curdle, Murshidabad, BankuAn average day’s walk on the Camino is gal. no, there wereBirbhum, no choices to be TheyClouds were both paganshowing initially, blue.

The heat gesturis swelra,made.

Medinipur and Purulia and about 22-25 km. By 12.30 or 1pm, just as the sun patches There wasn’t a question he toldofme with much There sudden spells Manbhum. many gets blazingly hot, you emerge from the tering. of this overThere that, are would thisverbe ing and longare pauses, but when heavy rain, came, which can sions of this legend.

Bhadu is a woods to the service lane of a highway and ofChristianity better or that?

On the Camino, theyflood reThere are hardly any create an enchanted circlePortomarin, has all but where disap- I the land,one cause the bethey let warrior-princess is interthen walk into the town. despite the heat, andwho the intense explaced with thevillage cross. to And the who oth- sing girls the the pain, peared the subsistence economy in besieged by “just hunger.

There herhad waytoto stayedbecause the firstof night, was on a hill.

As I crossed that I on really doher wasmarput er one stay, in case, justare in caseBhadu this Jesus songshaustion, today allcepted Bauland akhras morai the villages of over Bengal, although stocks of graintoin theus. riage.of She remains a virgin a long bridge a wide river, Miño, then no the other.

In a way, that’s was not coming save Like a battery back- one foot in front are still quite is still a couple forever. a tree-climber. looked at theactive. prospect of climbing up 52 Span- and for.Bhadu Carry aisbackpack, drink up!”the heharvest exclaimed, with a thump on my back the life to aspire Quite removed from the cliché of a Baul ofand months away.

Bhadu is one a runaway girl.another.

Bhadu is ish steps, it was with a mixture of exhilaration take step after a wink.

It was exhilarating to know noth- your water, and akhra, singer in perpetual movement, a Baul Alongside the a wild forest creature. at having finished my first day on the trail and ing, to only this everroute worryflows about spotting the yelwo days later, I any hobbled a high as orthe place of encounter and exchange, is an river, swollen with the rains. Just yesterThere are hardly girlsup who singcliff, these weary recognition that some kind ofankar- Kopai low arrow. fancyof cars zipped by. At cient of a reality show.

Put some was easy to wade across. IBut today, the songstourist today. buses All theand troupes Bhadu singers mic version retribution was being played out. peoA hot day,Iit wasn’t expected anywhere, wasn’t needed the we topmeet of the cliff, just pastofan ancient lightple together a closed with strict up to theIn shoulder, flowing swiftly. are composed men. bath, a heartyinlunch and a space wonderfully restor- water to doisanything. the city, walking is the thing that is agirl croppirouettes of rocks and the bright limitations, soonthe youbeautiful can count on some In the grove of trees you by the A single likethen a mechanical ative stroll and around town square you do distance, between aleaving where areside and house, ghagri a red Dayborbluedressed ocean stretching to thewith horizon. hard andontough exchanges. Only ofworrying the river about with white spots where on them; be- doll, in a yellowup later,punches the joke was the universe. not being youand should and a red doesn’tand sing.

The actrippers got blouse. off theirShe vehicles posed by among the Bauls, the exchanges, although vir- yond them, the asks village Islampur.

Asdoing. we ap-In der be. Yet, no one youofwhat you are day was a pretty accurate menand sing the lighthouse oninstead. the rocks. Despite evulent,hat arefirst mostly philosophical.

And bluethe proach grove, isthe outactivity; to be companying the city,the thinking by spots force aturn passive of the often days tobehind follow.the My body, accusVillage girls are locked in at home nowawe now know about the shape of eventsprint manager, scenes, al- pouched storks perched atop be theactively trees. These not something you should ‘wast- erything tomed as it was to sitting — at office, in cars, the age of of menstruation the once earththey andreach the geography continents, ways strolling through unconcernedly, is thein birds are considered by the local ing your time’ on. Onsacred the Camino, this ispopmar- days the Delhi metro adapted surprisingly quickuntil they are married.

Finisterre really looks like the end of the all-powerful Baul — guru and guru ma, who in- ulation, mainly Vaishnavas who,isfor centuries, vellously reversed.

Walking passive here, and ly to the task ofwhen transporting TimesI have changed, andtime, so has walking. world. sat there for a long feeling centervenes uniquely things getmyself really from out have nurtured thinking active.and nourished these sacred has created new boundaries obtered despite being on the edge. It feltand embaroftown hand.to town. Sometimes I’d walk with some- messengers from distant lands.

As a person who’s lived a life driven by self- Scarcity one, invariably with imposed whether in the home or on triumph the street. rassingly momentous; a personal so For the conversation Baul, the human spirit starting has no reliWe enteraccomplishment the village, led in by the storks, targets and work- stacles, the ‘why are you on no thecolour Camino’ question The Baul today on the famjoyous thatsingers I did not for walk a second wonder gion, no boundaries, and no caste.and which seemdeadlines, rudely familiar with the and enforced my daily life is place an endless then progressing to an exchange of by stories makethere: their40 way towards the big whatroad I wasto doing years old, alone, at Wherever they travel, on foot or localof strut around the lanes as if they are theediting true in- a ished chore of making choices.

Between to festival, our countries cultures.

There was Nancy, a habitants Andof walking in a megapolis suchup as Kolthe end the world.

Then, I stood and transport, fromand ashram to akhra and the humans tempopaper and raising a child, itare is amerely constant battle cities. from village to small town to megapolis, to- rary 76-year-old from Washington, walking with can be a dangerous affair. walked back. of visitors. guilt and responsibility. When I am at kata day’s Baul singers delve into the darkest her grandson; 19-year-old Cressida, fromcorHol- home, The birds have if been coming towork. this village I wonder I should be at When I is the author of Baulsphere veenasen venugopal ners city was and learning village to ferret in outher local land,ofwho Spanish gap from times every April, be and fly off mimlu am at work,unknown I am certain I should home.

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Travel Log Camino Francis is an 800-km walk; most pilgrims cover this in 35-40 days, with a few rest days in between. Each town has municipal as well as some private alburgues (pilgrim homes) where you can hire a bed for a night in a dormitory. This costs €10-20. Be sure to carry earplugs — stories of snoring peregrinos abound. Also, alburgues are usually on first-come-first-served basis.

There are tour companies that will book you into bed-and-breakfasts the entire route. This is a more expensive option. I used www.caminoways.com The food in Galicia is great — pulpo, octopus cooked Galician-style, and almond cake are the specialities of the region. Most restaurants on the route offer a tourist menu for dinner — a three-course meal and a full bottle of wine for about €10!

The Camino is open round the year, but summer months are most popular.

Certain years are marked holy and the numbers of pilgrims considerably shoot up in these years.

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The natural path A living root bridge in Mawlynnong, Meghalaya. Made by twisting the roots of a gigantic rubber tree, these bridges make a pathway across a stream

Going the extra mile Children cross a hanging bridge over Kameng river to attend school in Seppa in East Kameng district of Arunachal Pradesh, near the Indo-China border

Her cross to bear A Nishi woman carries rice across a hanging bridge over Kameng river in Seppa, the headquarters of the East Kameng district in Arunachal Pradesh

Man vs Wild How bridges keep India’s Northeast up and running

H Strategic links A bailey bridge constructed by the Indian Army at the high-altitude Sela Pass in Tawang district of Arunachal Pradesh

ow do you walk from this side to that? Connecting people with their friends, their livelihoods, their education, a bridge — often an overused metaphor — is the only tool as essential to a walker as feet.

In the Northeast region of India, bridges are the lifeline of the people. There are suspension bridges, wooden bridges, bamboo bridges and even natural root bridges, which the villagers fashion by weaving together ficus roots, to cross rivers and streams. Children use

them to get to school every day. Men and women use them to reach markets where they buy and sell goods. They are, quite simply, essential for day-to-day survival.

For the lay visitor, these bridges are vantage points from which one can comfortably take in the breathtaking beauty of the rivers and the mountains. These images, collected over several years, serve as a reminder of both the beauty and the danger that nature poses. ritu raj konwar

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The straight and narrow road A tribal man crosses a bamboo bridge over Umiam river in Karbi Anglong district of Assam. It is the only link between Assam and the bordering Meghalaya in this district

On top of the world A suspension bridge over Umngot river in Dawki, around 90 km from Shillong, Meghalaya

Business as usual Khasi women walk a bridge over Sriee river en route to a weekly market in Ukiam in Kamrup district of Assam, about 120 km from Guwahati

Stairway to heaven A hanging bridge over the Ranganadi river at Yazali in Lower Subansiri district of Arunachal Pradesh

Walk the line A wooden bridge made by the Lisu tribe in Vijaynagar, the last Indian village along the India-Myanmar border in Changlang district, Arunachal Pradesh

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Sound of mystic music A Baul fair in Kushtiar, Bangladesh. For these wandering minstrels, the human spirit has no religion, no colour and no caste shutterstock

Wanderings with Bauls To the end of the world Buen camino The trail starts in the Pyrennes and winds through woods, meadows and pastures until the next town images veena venugopal

A lifestyle devoted to being mobile, and downsizing just enough to allow a man or a woman to be on the move within well-defined geographical boundaries

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n exasperated British rock musician once remarked, after stewing in his own juice at a Baul festival in the village of Boral, now a part of the city of Kolkata: “There are none so sedentary as the wandering Bauls!”

The Bauls just sat around all day, sang, t was on the 11th day that allowed myself played music, gossiped and Iquarrelled like the question I’d been asked consistently fish-wives in a marathon which lasted 72 — getting what am The June hours, upI doing only tohere? sit down againsun in baking the skin meals on myofneck rows was to consume copious rice, and dal back, rivulets of sweat wereand flowing down my and vegetables, to bathe to eliminate body, the right strap of my backpack was waste and matter. pushing so lifestyle deeply against my shoulder blade The Baul does indeed assign primathat entire backand was wound up downsizinto one cy to my being mobile, this requires tight knot of muscle.

Thea trail endless ing just enough to allow manwas or aan woman to asphalt with nowell-defined trees on either side. I be on theribbon move within geographhad last walked past a hiker coupleWest of hours ical boundaries, which lie in atoday’s Benearlier and the water inThis my bottle was barely gal and Bangladesh. downsizing has above the first groovethrough from the My affected Baul posture thebottom. ages. Bauls hiking map showed a café ahead, but without understood the utility of walking light much really where Iofwas, I couldn’t figure beforeknowing present notions portability came inout how much further thebuilt caféto was. am to use.

Instruments were be “What easily carIried. doingPossessions here?” I screamed withdown no one to around pruned the to hear me,legal. “what am I doing here!” minimum ‘Here’ wasasomewhere between the towns Now that wall contains Bangladesh from of Albeiroas in Galicia in Spain.

Twelve India, we’re and still Cee to see how the Bauls and fadays ago, Itohad gotten a bus in imposed the tiny kirs adapt these new off taxonomies town Sarria, km away, and checked from of above by 170 governments that are cutinto off afrom tinythe bed-and-breakfast. following mornhorizontal pathsThe treaded by our mysing, Javier, who the place, loaded Robtic minstrels.

Tillowned today, ancient tracks of ascetert, anstill Australian had arrived thea ics are in use in who this region, currently previous afternoon, and me and our backzone of extreme turbulence. packs in his car singers, and drove us a few Among Baul there’s an kilometres expression

which defines the contradictions of a peripa- mestic routine towards a nobler, more spiritutetic lifestyle to counter the linear perception al realm. which northern academicians have always Even five centuries later, the departure of maintained when they have tried to define Nimai Sanyasi, who walked out of his home, southern cultures. leaving behind his faithful wife Vishnupriya “Uthley Gadha! Boshley Raja!” to follow a spiritual path, is a theme which Rising, we are donkeys! Sitting, we are brings tears to the eyes of many a Bengali kilometre so,ago, on little away kings!and dropped us at an otherwise incon- marked woman. every A century and a or half Lallanpillars Fakir the sign of a yellow sun-like spicuous road.

Backpacks on,albeit Rob- bearing Today’sturn Baulofisthe still such a donkey, left home and returned years later, scallop only to on be blue background.

Robert pointed that ert and Iinto walked awayorbit, fromcarrying the road,along downalla arejected thrown a global by his orthodox Hindu wife. out His subbetween two pillars, ubiquitous yellow arrows dirt trackpossessions and were immediately on thekantha, trail. earthly — duggi, ektara, sequent integration into the community of faon trees or rocks,now to keep pilgrims on kombol, korua, aatchla and sometimes even a pop kirs up, in Kushtiar district, in Bangladesh, he ‘trail’ is Japanese a rather obscure cooperative wife description the right track. and the massive volume of mysfor the with Camino Santiago, a pilgrimage When we had settled a rhythm, equipped andeexpensive tic songs heinto left behind is aRobert tale of route that hasand beensuitable operational I was doing on too. the Camino. I smartphone apps.since the early asked me what reverse-migration medieval times, with the first pere-escape am not I don’t believe in god, and so And still royal, because he or sherecorded There is the cliché of the Baul There’s andChristian, grino going as far I didn’ttohave a one-line answer to holds(pilgrim) court over many byback the there’s exploration. In done death — a turbaned, as the ninth Thevoice Way of that question. turning 40,” simple act ofcentury. raising the to bearded being“Ionam the move with the Baul mode of St James, as itheights. is called, comprisI started a long answer, but bedithyrambic an ektara held high. walking, there’s a bit es There’s the various routesaway to the cafore sentence, he walking from TheI finished traditionthe of madhukuri, or of bothshell is The scallop thedral at Santiago, to nodded as though he underand there’s walkingbelieved towards. honey gathering, allows the Baul entwined in the be the escape final resting placeexploof St legend and is the icon to stood.

Like travelling all the way There’s and there’s survive in the subsistence James. ways from Delhi North-western ration. There In the are Baulabout modefive of walkeconomy of to rural Bengal. He of the Camino de to walk to Santiago, and I was on Spain in and then around undertaking ing, there’s a bit of both. walks a circle the vil-a Santiago theThe Camino which starts 250-km alland by clashing myself was editorFrancis, of a glossy photo-journal in Paris lage, raising his voice walk in song his at St Jean Pied dedelightedly Port in France the textbook of apenemidonce exclaimed when I described cymbals. When the songdefinition of the Baul and, with over 1.5 practice lakh visitors a lifeof crisis.

Capriciousness the unique Baul of Ultasadhana: “If trates the ears his listeners, an inner nottree year, is the most route. did have you can show mepopular that the Bauls are people springs to lifewithstanding, inside the body,I bringing abouta Robert had started his walk in St Jean, more tenuous reason.

When I readHoney about who literally walk backwards, then I can try to somewhat a mysterious eclosion of seven flowers. than a month ago, and he promised to walk the what of fascinated me was theinfact slot them into front-page coverage.” risesCamino, in the pistils these flowers and, exwith me for a couple of hours untilreverse-miI got a feel that some on reaching felt There’s migration and there’s change forpilgrims, this intangible gift, Santiago, the villagers of the way.

The scallop shell is entwined the the urge walkof on.

And so—they angration and the transmigration of theinsoul. givethe him histo needs the day rice,did, dal,for vegelegend and isand theincantations icon of the Camino de SanBaul songs celebrate this other tables,90 oil.km, until they reach the place where tiago; theaway route distance Santiago are andofthe Atlantic Ocean begins. walking of and the soul fromtohumdrum do- Spain This ends practice walking around a village to

A 12-day walk in Spain, unlike life in a metro, ends with a priceless revelation: There’s no question of choosing this over that; just carry your backpack and take one step after another

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saturday, december 26, 2015

Medieval punditry 900-year-old granaries with a cross on one end and a “just in case” pagan symbol on the other; (right) the first sight of the Atlantic Ocean is a gleeful sign that the end of the world is near

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They called it Finisterre, the end of the earth. year; Mark, from Munich, who boasted about y that 11th day though, I had walked nearFor many centuries, until Galileo and, later, his blister-free socks; and Peter, from Minnealy 200km, most of it alone. Mindful of exColumbus set it straight, pilgrims genuinely polis, who had a terrible toothache and who, penses, I hadn’t taken a single rest day. My left believed they had reached the end of the when the dentist did a root canal and refused knee was wobbly and painful. At times I was world. Here, they burned their clothes and to charge a peregrino, walked on to the next desperate for a friend or a phone call. I mistheir shoes, left their material possessions be- town and got a second tooth fixed too. sed my kid intensely. I had been on the trail hind, and started a new spiritual life. The idea Often though, I’d walk alone. I’d stop when- for six hours, and at 2 pm I was still walking, Migrating soul thethe Goutam Ghose film Moner based on to, theto lifeadmire of LallanaFakir of walking toStills the from end of world appealed to Manush, ever I wanted flower, or dip my in 32 degrees Celsius under a hot Spanish my sense of story. I didn’t explain any of this to feet in a stream, or just to pause and look sun, not knowing how long I had to go. That patakas start melodies and rhythms, and every Robert; somehow, it wasn’t necessary. Of the traditions, was the first time I truly wondered whatburstI was November when the around me.

Like vignettes from apoems particularly and the thunderandhere. the dhak which theyherds integrate into their millions of feet that have in the thousands of fables doing I sat down fordhol a bit,start trying to talk bucolic fantasy, of massive cowsreperoften ing around time ofon.

KaliI wanted Puja. to take off of songs,past. and through which they spread years pounded the very track I was walking on, toire myself intothe carrying thundered Sometimes, a stallion or a ing There aredry village houses under tree. philosophy peaceful co-existsome may have had better reasons and some their shoes, out my socks, findthe some water. marenoble gambolled along. of There was even an in- my Cattle feed hay a shed. inside between man and woman, worse, but what was important was that no ence it was tooon hot toinside sit, there wasFrom nowhere to credulous ostrich, hissing awaysyncretism behind a But house, a Bhadu song can be heard. and humanism. reason was too bad to walk the Camino. fence.

The only buildings other than the occa- alinger.

“Bhadu, wandering in of the at Let me describe were a walk with the800 Bauls on In a couple of hours, Robert decided to hur- sional Despitedon’t myselfgoI drank the rest myroad water farmhouse granaries, or 900 Bhadu, we callthe out, Bhadu’s of these smallerfrom routes through country ry on ahead and we parted hoping we would one in oneBhadu, long gulp.

I’d scratched back of my years old, elevated the groundato protect night. theripped shepherds.

She tried runlike but the fell in Bengal.

A moist,with sleepy, mistysymat- gone meet again. The trail fell and rose and curved landscape necktoand the skin off, ittofelt the produce from rodents, a pagan potburning of broken husks.” fields both on sides ahead. The section of the Camino I was on mosphere, sunawas a hole through the wound; bol on onelush endgreen of therice roof andon a cross the into rasta, which In this particular season, village girls are al-I a narrow track, twirled through the Pyrenees, past wooded ofother. of my toes acquired individual blisters, I stopped to aal drink someover water oncethe and each go slipping across in Indian lowed to walk could out offeel their in aprecariprocesforests that would eventually open into serene Bauls myhomes knee click a chatty farmer, and withsliding a lavish keeping a sharp eyeoveralls, on every step so as to sion to sing Bhadu earn step, some Ipocket pastures. The only sounds were birdsong. An file, ouslysongs with toevery stuck stomach and smelly loseand balance.

Thetoshimmering fields re- money. The month of Bhadu is personified as a occasional farmhouse, with well-tended vege- not out my dry tongue, not knowcame sat next me. Bethe phrasebook sun, the clouds and the sky.This It’s the young maidening andhow carved into a doll,And which is table patches, was the sole sign of human civ- flecting that helped. sudtween my Spanish simplicity was of Bhadra, Bhadu, we as it’s known in carried at the head of this procession. ilisation. After three hours of walking, in what month denly, enveloped by this intense and his broken or English, startling. I wasn’t parlance.

It’s a season when village op-a was to eventually become a routine, I stopped village misery, for the life firstbecomes time I had managed a few sentences. expected anywhere, I Fromhave mid-August mid-September, Bhadu pressive, girlsanswer run away fromI home. at a café for an energy drink, a chocolate and a “Why to why was there. both — ato cross and a wasn’t needed to dowhenclear ispagan the poorest period of thehim. year in rural BenBhadu exists the of chat with other walkers. Then I set off again.

Unlike my real in life, ondistricts the Camisymbol?”

I asked anythingThe legend of curdle, Murshidabad, BankuAn average day’s walk on the Camino is gal. no, there wereBirbhum, no choices to be TheyClouds were both pagan showing initially, blue.

The heat gesturis swelra, Medinipur and Purulia and about 22-25 km. By 12.30 or 1pm, just as the sun patches made.

There wasn’t a question he toldofme with much There sudden spells Manbhum. many gets blazingly hot, you emerge from the tering. of this overThere that, are would thisverbe ing and long are pauses, but when heavy rain, came, which can sions of this legend.

Bhadu is a woods to the service lane of a highway and ofChristianity better or that?

On the Camino, theyflood reThere are hardly any create an enchanted circlePortomarin, has all but where disap- I the land,one cause to bethey letgirls warrior-princess is interthen walk into the town. despite the heat, andwho the intense explaced withthe thevillage cross. And the who oth- sing the the pain, peared the subsistence economy in besieged by “just hunger.

There herhad waytoto stayedbecause the firstof night, was on a hill.

As I crossed that I on really doher wasmarput er one stay, in case, justare in caseBhadu this Jesus songshaustion, today allcepted Bauland akhras morai the villages of over Bengal, although stocks of graintoin theus. riage.of She remains a virgin a long bridge a wide river, Miño, then no the other.

In a way, that’s was not coming save Like a battery back- one foot in front are still quite is still a couple forever. a tree-climber. looked at theactive. prospect of climbing up 52 Span- and for.Bhadu Carry aisbackpack, drink up!”the heharvest exclaimed, with a thump on my back the life to aspire Quite removed from the cliché of a Baul ofand months away.

Bhadu is one a runaway girl.another.

Bhadu is ish steps, it was with a mixture of exhilaration take step after a wink.

It was exhilarating to know noth- your water, and akhra, singer in perpetual movement, a Baul Alongside the a wild forest creature. at having finished my first day on the trail and ing, to only this everroute worryflows about spotting the yelwo days later, I hobbled a high as orthe place of encounter and exchange, is an river, swollen with the rains. Just yesterThere are hardly any girlsup who singcliff, these weary recognition that some kind of ankar- Kopai low arrow. fancy of cars zipped by. At cient of a was reality show.

Put some was easy to wade across. IBut today, the songstourist today. buses All theand troupes Bhadu singers mic version retribution being played out. peoA hot day,I it wasn’t expected anywhere, wasn’t needed the we topmeet of the cliff, just pastofanmen. ancient lightple together a closed space with strict up to theInshoulder, flowing is swiftly. are composed bath, a heartyinlunch and a wonderfully restor- water to doisanything. the city, walking the thing that is a girl croppirouettes of rocks and the bright limitations, soonthe you can count on square some In the grove of trees you by the A single likethen a mechanical ative stroll and around beautiful town you do distance, between aleaving where areside and house, ghagri a red Dayborbluedressed ocean stretching to thewith horizon. hard andontough exchanges. Only ofworrying the river about with white spots where on them; be- doll, in a yellowup later,punches the joke was the universe. not being youand should and a got red blouse. doesn’tand sing.

The actrippers off theirShe vehicles posed by among the Bauls, the exchanges, although vir- yond them, the asks village Islampur. we ap-In der be. Yet, no one youofwhat you areAsdoing. day was a pretty accurate men sing the lighthouse and oninstead. the rocks. Despite evulent,hat arefirst mostly philosophical.

And bluethe proach grove, isthe outactivity; to be companying the city,the thinking by spots force aturn passive of the often days tobehind follow.the My body, accusVillage girls are locked in at the home nowawe now know about shape of eventsprint manager, scenes, al- pouched storks perched atopbe theactively trees. These not something you should ‘wast- erything tomed as it was to sitting — at office, in cars, the age of of menstruation the once earththey and reach the geography continents, ways strolling through unconcernedly, is thein birds are considered by the local ing your time’ on. Onsacred the Camino, this ispopmar- days the Delhi metro adapted surprisingly quickuntil they are married.

Finisterre really looks like the end of the all-powerful Baul —guru and guru ma, who in- ulation, mainly Vaishnavas who, centuries, vellously reversed.

Walking isfor passive here, and ly to the task ofwhen transporting myself TimesI sat have changed, andtime, so has walking. world. there for a long feeling centervenes uniquely things get really from out have nurtured thinking active.and nourished these sacred to town. Sometimes I’d walk with some- messengers has created new obtered despite being on theboundaries edge. It feltand embaroftown hand. from distant lands.

As a person who’s lived a life driven by self- Scarcity one, invariably with imposed whether in the home or ontriumph the street. rassingly momentous; a personal so For the the conversation Baul, the human spirit starting has no reliWe enteraccomplishment the village, led in by the storks, targets and work- stacles, the ‘why are you on the Camino’ question The Baul today on the famjoyous thatsingers I did not for walk a second wonder gion, no boundaries, no colour and no caste.and which seem rudely familiar with the and enforced deadlines, my daily life is place an endless then progressing to an exchange of by stories make their40 way towards the big whatroad I wasto doing there: years old, alone, at Wherever they travel, on foot or localof strut around the lanes as if they are theediting true in-a ished chore of making choices.

Between to festival, our countries cultures.

There was Nancy, a habitants Andofwalking in a megapolis suchup as and Kolthe end the world.

Then, I stood transport, fromand ashram to akhra the humans tempopaper andand raising a child, itare is amerely constant battle cities. from village to small town to megapolis, to- rary 76-year-old from Washington, walking with can back. be a dangerous affair. walked visitors. of guilt and responsibility. When I am at kata day’s Baul singers delve into the darkest her grandson; 19-year-old Cressida, fromcorHol- home, The birds have ifbeen coming towork. this village I wonder I should be at When I is the author of Baulsphere veenasen venugopal ners city was andlearning village to ferret in outher local land,ofwho Spanish gap from every April,be and fly off mimlu am attimes work,unknown I am certain I should home.

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Travel Log Camino Francis is an 800-km walk; most pilgrims cover this in 35-40 days, with a few rest days in between. Each town has municipal as well as some private alburgues (pilgrim homes) where you can hire a bed for a night in a dormitory. This costs €10-20. Be sure to carry earplugs — stories of snoring peregrinos abound. Also, alburgues are usually on first-come-first-served basis.

There are tour companies that will book you into bed-and-breakfasts the entire route. This is a more expensive option. I used www.caminoways.com The food in Galicia is great — pulpo, octopus cooked Galician-style, and almond cake are the specialities of the region. Most restaurants on the route offer a tourist menu for dinner — a three-course meal and a full bottle of wine for about €10!

The Camino is open round the year, but summer months are most popular.

Certain years are marked holy and the numbers of pilgrims considerably shoot up in these years.

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The morning afterfeet Voting with their The walk of shame barely ever that, it’sto often a mixed that throws up feelings Except Chennai, ourismetros largely walk work, as the bag latest Census confirms.

Whyofis triumph, guilt andnowhere defianceintothe thepicture? opposite of shame public transport

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t is a fact that the majority of people in Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Bengaluru walk to their place of work. This may surprise many readers, especially those living in these cities and dealing with snarling traffic all the time, but the latest Census data related to ‘other workers’ — those engaged in economic activity other than cultivation, agricultural labour or household industry — confirms this. In Chennai, on the other hand, here’s a bit on apreferred reality drama called two-wheelers are more for travel, The Real Housewives of population.

New York City used by nearly one-fourth of the of the show’s stars, Sonja It’s clearwhere that one today’s car-centric transport Morgan are says,not “Walk of shame? planning policies catering to theI premafer to call it a victory lap!”

Bad taste inand televijority of commuters, and pedestrian cysion I wasneed strucktobybe that statement. clingaside, facilities improved.

AtWhy the had before? sameI never time, thought we need of to itask questions such as: I’ve far never by the walk of How do been these ‘shamed’ commuters walk?

How shame, se.time I remember borrowing much ofper that can be used insteadt-shirts in profrom boyfriends to wear last night’s dress ductive work? Are fasterover modes of transport so I could comfortably a rickshaw withinaccessible to them? catch The answers can be out looking likeextent, I was from wearing found, to some two spangles sources ofand inheels at noon.

That was when in Mumformation — trip distances andI lived the cost of usbai.

In Delhi, the ‘walk’ was more like a ‘drive’— ing public transport.

I imagine nowadays it’s the Uber of Shame — Ways of moving which takes away from the very meaning of it, of having to display to all and Nearly 80 per cent of people travelsundry on footthat for you’re stillupintolast clothes, meaning distances onenight’s kilometre.

Interestingly, that you there neveriswent homepercentage at all, meaning however, a sizeable using that... wink wink, nudge nudge. even for this two-wheelers or four-wheelers UsuallyChennai I teeteredleads home alone, ignoring all distance. with 17 per cent, folthe pointed looks the drivers lowed

by Bengaluru andauto Delhirickshaw with 15 per cent gave or were they pointed? Maybe it was and 9me per—cent, respectively. just imagination.

But Formy distances of 2-5 km, theone sharememorable of walkers time, I wasconsiderably having coffeeacross with a cities, man while still decreases by 50-70 wearing clothes I had on the night beper cent;the about 75 per centput of the trips involve fore.

We were involved secretly, as oneIn soKolkaoften walking, cycling or public transport. is their twenties, and thinking veta in and Mumbai, almost half theourselves people use ry smart for passing as distances. friends. Along came public transport for off such In Bengatwo unexpectedly thattransearly luru,other whichfriends, has neither adequatefor public hour, sawame, and jumped toshare instant corport nor significantly high of (and bicycles,

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lege campuses where women students would walk back to their dorms after a night of — presumably — passion. In urban India, PLUs have taken up the phrase with great gusto, right down to its woman-shaming connotations.

It’s not so much the idea that you’re wearing last night’s clothes, it’s more that you’ve had sex and having had sex, you’re daring to wave it in people’s faces. Of course, in India, it has whole layers of new meaning. Most of us live in neighbourhoods where we have a relationship with everyone — from the vegetable vendor to the shopkeeper to the garbage lady.

In the Bandra house I lived in with two other girls, our garbage man practised a peculiar form of intimidation: he’d pull out a used condom from our trash — usually hidden deep in the recesses of an empty cigarette packet to keep him from seeing it, and leave it on our doorstep. We never knew why he did it, he never made eye contact, and yet, no matter how carefully we hid the fact that we might have On find the margins had sex the night before, he’d a way of letToday’s car-centric ting us know he knew. policies are I had an equally strangetransport relationship with blind to the needs of my local chemist in Delhi; Ipedestrians just could not buy mohammed condoms from him. Shampoo yes,yousuf toilet paper yes, even sanitary pads, yes, but for condoms I went to neighbourhoods far away from mine more than half the people walk or use two- and where available,them they there, have been found defipurchased feeling a strange wheelers for this distance. cient in terms ofand capacity, access and costs. mixture of guilt defiance.

Similarly, when About 10-35 per cent of the people in Benga- I needed The World Bank hadtest, in 2005 the a pregnancy as wecalculated all must have luru, Kolkata and Mumbai walk even when done affordability transport 27 ciat someindex pointoforpublic the other in ourinsexual their place of work is 6-10 km away. Among histories, ties acrossI wrote developing countries. down the name ofTwo theIndian brand those who travel beyond 10 km, public trans- Icities — Mumbai andthe Chennai featured in wanted, and shoved piece of—paper across port is the preferred choice — 70 per cent in the top 10counter unaffordable especially when glass to thecities, chemist.

He proceedKolkata and 85 per cent in Mumbai. In Chen- ed considering lower groups. to shout out myincome order across theBengaluru shop, and shutterstock nai, Bengaluru and Delhi, nearly 50 per cent everyone wasn’t a part of that study, but is likely to be instared at me, their own mental bells use private vehicles for such long distances. cluded if“Shame!” the indexso were recalculated today. ringing, loudly, I swear they resorect) conclusions. But then too, my walk of nated Currently, a general-category in my head.

And what is a walksuburban of shame Clock the walk shame — or coffee of shame — wasn’t so much without monthly coming bus passface-to-face in Bengaluru costs with the₹1,050. aunty something to walking be embarrassed but rather At an average speed ofby, 5 kmph, thosea across For a person earning ₹10,000 per what month, the the hall who has forgotten it was sort triumph.

Look me, I’m up,their I do like whoof daily walk 2-5 kmatspend 1-2 grown hours of transport cost would exceed once?

10 per You centlive of into be young and foolish in these knewwalking I was supposed to be coy day onthings! it, and Ithose 6-10 km spend 2-4 fear come, is considered unaffordable.

Acof which this aunty because she could call your about whole so I pretended for a landlord hours. the While it is thing, encouraging that our cities cording and to the Street Quality Score ways 2015 tell him about your deviant while, flustered, my face are notlooking completely dependent on cars, one released by city-based (“Comingnon-profit home at Janaagraha, all hours! growing I remember the wonders hot; whybut public transport only 665 km of the 1,750men!”). km of Bringing home strange grin wipe off when my face.it isn’t I couldn’t more popular streets studied was found to be I’ve been refused flats for less.

The walk of shame usually greatly reduces the costisper km bus-stops — a score of But I’llby end with a happy story: It’s more that you’ve serviced done by a woman.

If you’re a regufor longer distances.

Technically, perthe cent.

All who this translates inwith man has been my hadthose sex and having 38 For walking lar viewercommuting of Game of more Thrones, you longhad for those than to reduced options partner for commuting over four years now. sex, you’re distances, there might scene in which 10 km, recall publicthe transport should either duefirst to high cost or—poor of our evenings and daring to wave of it in —One is the question the scheming queen finally productive be the best bet, but Cersei the preferaccess — forcing people to walk mornings together — I was gopeople’stime faces lost gets herprivate comeuppance.

She’s ence for vehicles shows for longer periods of time.

As ing to leave him a note saying to commuting forced to crop and walk there may be her no hair, comparative there is noand incentive to use goodbye this was fun puband naked crowd till she rebenefitthrough in termsa of convenience lic anagain increase in inwetransport, must do this sometime aches the For palace, allwalking the while with and cost. those long come likely lead to practised owning a — all will platitudes I was adistances, woman behind ringing a bell and inton- in, by being the there isher also the quesprivate Coolvehicle.

Girl who didn’t Demand ing, Shame.

Shame.” head is Too tion “Shame. of productive time lost to Cersei’s commuting.

Equitable andmen, integrated Much from therebypublic scaringtransport them off up through the scene, if she’s crying, she (as is needed notwoman, only to improve people’s mobila single I was told putting too Cost of commuting doesn’t want us to know it; occasionally she much ity, productivity and job opportunities but alpressure on a man was a cardinal sin). flinches when some townspeople call World over, public transport is seen as an out an- Instead, so to resolve and public health I woketraffic him up and we both wentwoes. for a crude remarks at her, but it’s only when she air re- walk swer to conserving energy, improving That said, transport without — andpublic we both wore the clotheslast-mile we had aches thatcongestion she allows— herself to on qualityher andpalace relieving all critical connectivity and drank cyclingcoffee facilities — the night— walking before. We and weep.

Floss points out that watched factorsThe forwebsite Indian Mental cities. However, not much isn’t of much use. morning An effective public transthe early light, and it was this was done actually based onpublic a truetransport event, the has been to promote in beautiful port will take more private vehicles off the and intimate and the opposite of mistress of KingtoEdward IV,from was Indian blamed for shame India. According research Instiroads. The afterdata all. comes as a timely reminder. sorcery theSettlements king developed scoliosis. tute for after Human (IIHS), fewer than reddy madhavan an author, pooja rao researches on mobilityisand urban most Inurban modern-day parlance, walk of shame 100 settlements havethe some form of or- meenakshi Then After of Before informatics at IIHS, And Bengaluru originated less esoterically.

It comesand fromeven col- recently ganised public transport system;

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Defiant strides Mahatma Gandhi marches with volunteers of Indian National Congress to Dandi in 1930 the hindu

Padayatra power

Rest in peace Bengalis have always preferred exercise of the mind to exercise of body. That probably explains their reverence for Rabindranath Tagore, a man who was always seen in ankle-length kaftans the hindu

archives

Which of our netas today have the fitness and austerity to set out on the long march to political payoffs?

Why walking is bad for you

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fter the battering in Bihar last month, one takeaway for Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his sidekick Amit Shah is that instead of choppering around the hustings, the tubby twosome ought to have gone on a padayatra.

In modern times, padayatras are a proven political instrument of (a) getting to know your ur ancestors werethe not‘ground bipeds.realCirvoters; (b) getting to know cumstances forced us own to stand ities’; and (c) getting to know your girth. erect.

Weonly werea quite cosy uptoinPowthe The padayatra is not Long March would argue that it’s er, but also atrees.

GreatSome Leap to Fitness and Smooth been downhill Bowel Movement.ever since. But there’s not enough in trees.

Man cannot survive on It was food the Father of the Nation who was also fruitFather alone,ofalthough women often Mahatma try when the the Modern Padayatra: they’re dieting.

Unfortunately, we wereDandi very Gandhi in 1930 undertook the 388-km low on in thedefiance food chain at this time,Empire’s and the surMarch of the British salt faceHe was full61of predators.

Running made us tax. was years old at the time, but a man harder to catch.

Since the history of in far better health andthen, physical capability mankind has been dominated by thethat relentthan 51-year-old Shah.

It is no surprise paless needoftothe move faster. the beginning, we dayatris past wereInmen of fitness and looked for—large animals we could on, austerity Gandhian Vinoba Bhaveclimb walking such asBhoodan horses and camels. Other animals befor his movement in 1951, or future gan Chandra avoiding us.

Subsequently we invented PM Shekhar’s six-month-long pathe wheel, the chariot, the horse carriage, dayatra in 1983 from Kanyakumari to Delhi.the bicycle, the railway engine, automobile, Today’s politicians, like Laluthe Prasad’s son Teroller skates, and the space shutjashwi, or theskateboards late Madhavrao Scindia’s son tle. As our lives have improved different Jyotiraditya, or Yashwant Sinha’sinson Jayant ways,current so has our ability to move from point A (our junior finance minister), may be to but point B. are Thenot conclusion isNot inescapable.

In fit they so austere. for these Bathe context modern life, obsoba Log theofpadayatra — walking and notis an because lete practice. they’re westernised, when you consider that the capital a nation with thesuch world’s theAs“Million ManofMarch” and other pafastest growing economy, Delhi setting the dayatras are in vogue in the West.isOlder netas trend.

In Delhi we and haveJ aJayalalithaa simple philosophy.

If like Sharad Pawar don’t look Godthey had meant walk, why he even have like ever didusa to padayatra inwould their life, given us Mercedes? leaders show way, before their currentOur health woes.

No the wonder never travelling in convoys of less than six vethey’re called political heavyweights. hicles.

Thedemocrats only placedon’t we don’t inside Today’s evendrive walkisup-andthe house, becauselanes our cars cannot fit through down the narrow of a densely-populated the doors.

We were briefly hopeful after the urban constituency, lest voters interpret it Taas

not having money for a flashy new SUV (and White’s mobile meth-lab in the American TV thus, no funds to win the poll). Perhaps the series Breaking Bad. (And as intoxicating too.)

Election Commission should make padayatra Padayatras are still in vogue in Andhra Praa mandatory electoral requirement, much desh, where in 2003 the late YSR Reddy did a like declaration of assets. Perhaps we ought to three-month walk which got him elected chief insert ‘Padayatri’ into the Constitution of In- minister for the rest of his life, and where in dia’s preamble, just after ‘Socialist Secular’ 2013 N Chandrababu Naidu did a similar 1,700and before ‘Democratic’. km padayatra, after which he was elected chief ta Gandhiji Nano washimself announced, but walked it turned out to minister. may have a couple clothing that discourages athleticism. of There is no clearer evidence ofMost the dibe mini-padayatras neither as smallbefore nor ashis cheap asMarch we had of Dandi — rect our film stars have been pleasantly plump.

All correlation between walking and attainthought We have not forgiven Ra- ing after all, it hewould beganbe. experimenting with Satyathispower has influenced in India. our thought process, and tan Tata for this, and retired soon after. graha in South Africa in he 1906 — but before him, prejudiced us against vigorous movement.

Perhaps that’s why Rahul Gandhi — who a Meanwhile, ourpolitically leaders are now trying en- few India had been subjugated forto nearThe years only time we run istoafter buyinginto fish,the so ago preferred motorcycle sure that the restand of us less often, In in anor- Delhi ly a millennium, notdrive one padayatra. that we can getofhome while it’s still suburb Greater Noida (andfresh. that too, der to fight This isno a plan that is cient timespollution. there was As an heir tounder this tradition, I must protest all the darkness of predoomed to fail, like trying take guns away this propaganda alternative to walking, so to a paabout walking.

Do notagibe dawn) to support a farmers’ from Americans. has al- fooled. Walking dayatra wouldn’tCivil havedisobedience made is —bad You could tation has for thisyou. year resorted to ready begun.

Painters from across India are much of a statement.

The only choke on the air.

You could fall into a pothole. mini-padayatras in drought-hit Rahul’s jaunts are flocking to Delhi, anticipating a boom in fakesix-seven long-distance walking then was Salman Khanareas mightand be driving nearby.

Plus in Uttar Pradesh, mere number-plates.

Others have red flash- long, for religious pilgrimages, likebought Kayou’ll the be late for meetings.

A few simple experwhere an Assembly election in kilometres ers, so that they canwho slipisseamlessraikkal Ammaiyar, said to withnext Google Maps will 2017 is the big electoral test amount that office iments ly into VIP convoys. have walked all the wayMeanwhile, from Thithataswhatever your des-a for you Modi, he confronts executives do on a show police constables have been given ruvalangadu to Mount Kailash — tination, walking takes much pumped-up Opposition. gym treadmill listsher of odd andThe even numbers, on hands. nearest thingto longer thanpadayatras, driving. Frequently, Rahul’s however, If God had meant help them tellin one from the other. to padayatra pre-history was while sitting in the car with my are nothing like Gandhiji’s or us to walk, why Progress is slow, and they’re havLord Rama’s political exile from wife, I turn her andShekhar’s. say, “This Naidu’s ortoChandra would he have ing trouble butalong their given us Mercedes? would Ayodhya andwith his zero, trudge, take us hoursix-seven and 43 His jaunts areone mere bosses remain optimistic. with spouse Sita and brother Laxman, to the kilometres long, minutes if we walked.”

Weexecuboth the amount that office In my ownofcase, I am further dense forests Dandakaranya. a hearty laugh. way to tives do on have a gym treadmill, or It’s the aamount prejudiced be- to dislodge that womenpass Thus, sinceagainst the BJP walking in its efforts the time inareas traffiche’s jams. in those rural visiting cause“cultural I’m Bengali.

Since timeofimthe imperialism” the Mughals walk daily to collect All of this is my opinwater.

Forpersonal them a sevenmemorial, Bengalis preferred exercise of kilometre finds that there werehave no padayatras in ancient ion. So if the propaganda has influenced walk is essential, inevitable you, and the mind exercise therath body.

Consider our thus times, hastosettled onofthe yatra.

This may please govery out impressive. for a walk. Stretch your legs.conEnnot But then again, role be models.

Global poet Rabindranath had a sidering also a repudiation of the padayatra, which, joy the fresh If you could send some over to thatair. his main opponents Modi and long,the flowing beard and was always like freedom struggle, is still firmlywearing lodged Shah Delhi,don’t we would grateful.

Meanwhile, walkbe atmost all, even those seven-km anthe ankle-length kaftan.

Thisthe was not the outfit in collective mind with Congress party. stretches I’ll just put on improve my kaftan go see a man could theand health of his parof The a manmodern who ran rath, a lot, although however,it has caused trans- ty’s about some number plates. (now at a woeful parliamentary strength generations schoolboys ponderinwhat he 45 MPs) when the 2019 polls roll around. formed wayofbeyond the to chariot which was wearing under the TheGita 34-year rule shovon chowdhury is the author of The Krishna articulated thekaftan.

Bhagavad to Arjuand, more recently, Competent Authority sinha has written Kashmir: The Murder Vajpayee of the CPM has also contributed.

Most veteran aditya na; with high-technology and air-conditionWith Bengali with AS Characteristics Dulat communists wearrath dhotis, yetmore another of Years ing, the modern looks likeitem Walter

You could choke on the air. You could fall into a pothole. Salman Khan might be driving nearby. Plus you’ll be late for meetings

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India W walking...

Songlines to knowing A book or a movie could set you off on a leisurely stroll or a life-altering trek

alking is the same as thinking: although I’d like to believe this is true for everybody, it is especially true for millennials. We, the Uber-hailing Übermensch, have speed and efficiency hardwired into us. We know no other way to live. And because a stray second of stopping and staring makes us break out in existential hives, we run: run for our lives, run for our sanity. Every now and then, however, we come across a book or a movie that makes us reconsider our fight-or-flight instincts.

Bruce Chatwin was surely one of the most accomplished and prolific walkers of all time.

As it so happened, he also wrote beautifully about walking. In his 1987 classic The Songlines, he charts the history of the Aboriginal people in Australia, connecting it to a tradition of nomadic walking. Chatwin’s prose is as audacious as his thesis: that migratory species tend to be less aggressive than sedentary ones, that the walk itself was the ‘show of strength’ that separated the survivors from the rest. The ‘songlines’ that have spread from Africa to the rest of the world are a reminder of our migratory past. These songlines are now preserved by the Aboriginals in Australia, the oldest surviving culture in the world.

Chatwin also believed that the nomadic existence provided nourishment for the soul. He wrote, “Richard Lee calculated that a Bushman child will be carried a distance of 4,900 miles before he begins to walk on his own.

Since, during this rhythmic phase, he will be KOLKATA

New data from the Census shows that over a fifth of the country’s nonagricultural workers walk to work, and that includes people from cities and towns — small and big — and, of course, villages. In a country where public transport is both woefully inadequate, as well as beyond the means of a majority, most people walk because they have no other choice. In BLink’s 100th edition, we examine the journeys that mark everyday life in India The Way (2010) Emilio Estevez

SRINAGAR

forever naming the contents of his territory, it crises is to walk (Joshua Ferris’s The Unnamed). is impossible he will not become a poet.”

Solnit’s magisterial essays in The New York It has been just two and a half years since Review of Books mark her as a writerRawat of rare luAshok Jaujanath the publication of Robert Macfarlane’s The Old cidity and insight.Age: Wanderlust shares these 59 Occupation: Trackeye for histoWays, but you would think it has been around qualities, along with an unerring worker for decades: such is the reverence accorded to ry’s tipping points:maintenance for instance, she with correctly Indian Railways this modern masterpiece of walking. Broadly notes that walking as a source of pleasure for Walks at least 5 km a day speaking, the book is about a series of long the Everyman is a Leaves relatively homerecent at 10 amphenomwalks in two areas; a harsh, challenging trail enon. The idea of walking for pleasure Returns home at 9 pm began Rawatgardens, loves his work in Scotland and a relatively easier stroll in the in 18th-century English the refuge of because it involves walking. northern part of the UK. Macfarlane delivers a the sheltered and privileged aristocrat.

Solnit Heprovides wants to maintain this dismasterclass in balancing experienalso an elegant MUMBAI ritual even after his tial and literary knowledge. As a section of theinwritings of Walretirement 2016 former geologist, I found his fixater Benjamin, Rousseau, tion with ‘preferred pathways’ Wordsworth and others who The idea of walking adorable. These are the paths have propagated the idea of for pleasure began in marked by rainwater as it seeps walking as a bottomless pit of 18th-century English through limestone, attracting pecreative energy. destrians, “all of whom etch the gardens, the refuge of Ferris shot to fame with his the sheltered and track of their passage with their debut novel, Then We Came to privileged aristocrat feet as they go. In this way the path the End, a book that takes its of a raindrop hundreds of thouname from a Don DeLillo opensands of years ago may determine ing line and shared something the route of a modern-day walker.” of the veteran novelist’s hysterThere is something deeply poetic ical scepticism about the about this call-and-response mechanism be- American dream. His second novel, nowhere tween man and nature, and Macfarlane is the near as funny as his first, is a compelling, perideal guide to these philosophical implica- sistent beast nevertheless. His protagonist tions of walking.

Tim Farnsworth is a successful trial attorney This year, I read two very interesting books afflicted with the strangest of maladies: every about walking: a non-fiction that clinically now and then, he gets an irresistible urge to paul noronha dissected the intimate link between walking walk, ignoring everyone and everything in his and thinking (Rebecca Solnit’s Wanderlust), life for days on end. Ferris acknowledges both and a novel where the protagonist’s only an- the pleasures and the perils of obsessive walkswer to escalating personal and professional ing. On the one hand, Tim becomes, to borrow

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Dinesh Shah Age: 45 Occupation: Vendor (sells phuchkas) Walks 8-10 km a day Leaves home at 12.30 pm Returns home at 10 pm Shah carries six to seven kilos of potatoes, a kilo of lemons, and a pot of tamarind water to work every day. The vendor cannot board a bus or an auto rickshaw with paraphernalia

Harry and Tonto (1974) Paul Mazurksy

anuradha sengupta

TheAhad Old Ways Abdul Age:Robert 60 Macfarlane Penguin Books Occupation: Vendor ₹873 (sells kangris) Walks 5-6 km a day Leaves home at 8 am Returns home at 8 pm Ahad’s business depends on how much he walks every day. He uses public transport only to return home

nishar ahmad

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Wanderlust Rebecca Solnit Granta Books ₹780

Uma Shankar Yadav Age: 65 Occupation: Vendor (sells sugar cane juice) Walks 8-10 km Leaves home at 8 am Returns home at 5 pm (in winters) A pavement dweller, Yadav likes to take different routes to his permanent spot on Rashbehari Avenue. He says he finds customers along the way

anuradha sengupta

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KALAP, UTTARAKHAND

Mohan Singh Age: 33 Occupation: Farmer in Kalap village in Garhwal Himalayas Walks at least 10 km a day Leaves home at 9 am Returns home at 6 pm There are no roads in Kalap; walking is the only option for Singh and his family

Anand Sankar Age: 31 Occupation: Social entrepreneur in Kalap Walks at least 10 km a day Leaves home at 9 am Returns home by 6 pm

kalap trust

DEHRADUN

kalap trust

BHOPAL

Step by step The Before Sunrise trilogy combines walking with intelligent exchanges; (right) Cheryl Strayed’s trek in Wild is about reconciling herself with the choices she made ap Shakuntala Chouhan Vidisha Negi (seen with son Vishwas) Age: 26 Age: 45 Occupation: Government a Saul Bellow phrase, a ‘genius noticer’: he ob- with Jean-Marc Vallée’s adaptation of Wild film, you will find yourself itching to roam the Occupation: Vendor employee starring Witherspoon as Strayed. city at night, on the off-chance that you run inserves flora, discovers subcultures and me- (2014),(sells waterReese chestnuts) Walks 10-12 km a day film morises the details of idiosyncratic road signs. Wild the to a starry-eyed stranger.

Walks atexcels least 10in kmjust a about every departLeaves home at 9.30 am Novelist Nick Hornby delivers a taut On the other hand, when his ailment gets real- ment. day While a memorable walk can change your Returns home at 6.30pm Leavesthat homesqueezes at 9 am the essence out of Negi likes to walk to work ly serious, he shows symptoms consistent screenplay ideas about romance forever, it also has the Returns home at 9 pm and back in order to stay Laura Dern turns in a marvellous ca- potential to aid spiritual awakening. The Way with schizophrenia, inventing an alternate the book.

Shakuntala and her son in shape meo ascan’t Strayed’s mother: she is as electric a (2011), directed by Emilio Estevez and starring walker persona, a feared alter-ego. afford public today as she was nearly 30 years his father, Martin Sheen, is about one such epHowever, the Ferris brand of brutal satire is performer transport

GANDHINAGAR

not for the faint-hearted. If you are looking for an honest, intelligent, well-written reminder of walking’s redemptive potential, Cheryl Strayed’s memoir Wild is the book for you. After her mother’s death and the swift unravelling of her marriage, Strayed decides to go on a 1,100-mile trek — the Pacific Crest Trail. But she does not run or hide. Instead, she walks: walks with her disappointment, grief and virender singh negi loneliness and tries to reconcile herself with the choices that she made.

“If I had a map of those four-plus years to illustrate the time between the day of my mothKarshanbhai er’s death and the day I began my hike on the Kunverjibhai Bhalodia Pacific Crest Trail, the map would be a confuAge: 65 sion of lines in all directions, like aFarmhand crackling Occupation: WalksMinnesota 10-12 km a day Fourth of July sparkler with at its Leaves at 6.30 am inevitable center. To Texas andhome back.

To New Returns home at 6 pm York City and back. To New Mexico and ArizoBhalodia wants to save na and Nevada and California and Oregon and every penny for his family; back. (...) The map would illuminate all the he also counts walking as a good exercise places I ran to, but not all the ways I tried to stay.” It is unsurprising, therefore, that our roster of great films about walking begins

KARBI ANGLONG, ASSAM

Bhavesh Panchal Age: 28 Occupation: IT professional Walks 3 km a day Leaves home at 1.30 pm Returns home at 11.30 pm It’s easier to walk in Gandhinagar than in most other cities and towns in India; it also keeps Panchal fit

ago in Blue Velvet. And Witherspoon, who was ic walk: the ‘Camino de Santiago’, a traditional nominated for the Best Actress Oscar, must Catholic pilgrimage to the shrine of St James count herself particularly unin Galicia, Spain. In the movie, lucky not to get the nod eventuophthalmologist Thomas Avery ally: she would have become the (Sheen) decides to take the pilfirst woman in the modern era to grimage after his son dies in a win twice. storm along the same route.

At the end of Before Vienna is a city so beautiful Along the way, he meets several Sunrise, you will find yourself itching to that it spurred artistic ambitions fellow-pilgrims, who are on the am faruqui in a young Adolf Hitler. To walk roam the city at night, road for very different reasons. on the off-chance around Vienna all night with a Sheen channelises the graviRAJKOT that you run into an beautiful stranger: one really tas of his role as President Jed equally starry-eyed doesn’t need more than that for Bartlett from The West Wing, and stranger adds a compelling vulnerability a great story. to proceedings here. The film is And so, Richard Linklater’s Before Sunrise (1995) doesn’t try to slow-burning and has somewhat give you more. For an hour and a predictable lines here and there, half, Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Cébut Sheen’s reassuring screen line (Julie Delpy) walk and talk. And all the presence and competent supporting acts by while, you are not only unable to notice the ab- Deborah Kara Unger and James Nesbitt keep sence of a plot, you find it impossible to take the pot boiling. your eyes off them. Before Sunrise boasts that The last film on this list proves that a jourrapidly dwindling entity: intelligent, witty ney with a pet is often preferable to one with Vijay Varma Harry and Tonto and memorable dialogue. At the end of the two-legged companions.

Age: 30 (1974) is about Harry Coombes Occupation: Vendor(Art Carney), a handicrafts outside recently evicted(sells elderly widower who decides stations) with his pet cat to travel acrossmetro the country Walks 8-10 kmhere: a day there are bus Tonto. It’s not all walking Leaves home at 10 am and car rides along the way, Returns home at 8but pm Carney and Tonto make quite the walking pair, Varma and his wife comeeach dealto Delhi a year ing with the ravages oftwice old age in his own way. from Rewa in The film also features thedistrict ever-dependable ElPradesh.

They len Burstyn asMadhya Coombes’ daughter, a bookcan’t afford public DELHI store owner in transport Chicago. Carney hits it out of the ballpark with his performance as Coombes. In fact, he went on to beat Jack Nicholson (Chinatown) and Al Pacino (The Godfather Part II) to win the 1974 Academy Award for Best Actor.

Be warned, though: reading these books Chhatrasing Puma and watching these films may cause your feet Age: 65 to take on a life of their own. Before you realise Occupation: Farmer the true nature of your compulsion, you’ll be Walks 8 km to the weekly market tying your shoelaces in double knots. I believe Leaves home at 6 am it was Ellen DeGeneres who once said: “My Returns home at 5 pm grandmother started walking five miles a day Puma uses public when she was 60. She’s 97 now, and we don’t transport only when know where the heck she is.” he is exhausted

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Footprints of history Bruce Chatwin’s book The Songlines charts the history of Australia’s Aboriginal people through their tradition of nomadic walking reuters ritu raj konwar

aditya mani jha

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Country roads calling ‘A’ for buffalo

All in me, it together Love love my KashmiriAgirls in buffalo basic Sonamarg unit, walk ahome economic with firewood member of the family nissar ahmad and, if you will, also a pet ap/rajesh kumar singh

Six months. Nearly 4,000 km on foot. Fishing boats and bungalows to sleep in. Endless The Supreme Courtfrom tookstrangers. away the illiterate to runfulfilling his world. But if cuppas and stories Taking toHaryana the roadvillager’s seldom right gets more the villager is illiterate in our world, we are so in his. For us, his world is as dark as his buffalo

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engaluru. January 6, 2012. It was just another day for most Bangaloreans, o an villager, black but forilliterate me it was the start of aletters walk can mean only the buffaacross India, Dayone 1 ofthing, a six-month adlo — or soby goes a popular north Indiventure. Inspired Anna Hazare’s countryan saying,movement, kaala akshar bhains wide anti-corruption eight of us — barabar.

The buffalo is at the centre of the illitwith support from Bhumi, a Hyderabad-based erate villager’s world.

It’screate a basic economic organisation — set out to awareness in unit, a member of villages. the family and, if you will, smaller towns and also a pet.

The buffalo a metonym for his From Bengaluru, weis took the highway, world oftowards tradition by the heading theyet Bayunredeemed of Bengal. Walking light of education.

His world as dark as his through the countryside of isKarnataka, we buffalo just asworking dumb, indolent watchedand farmers in their and rice clumfields sy.

His illiteracy is not merely an inability to or tending to cattle, lost in time.

The humid read but alsocool a lack enlightenment that litbreeze blew onofour faces, as the swaying eracy and, extension, liberal education trees on theby roadside waved in greeting.

We have come to bepace, conflated with.

This conflakept up a good walking for eight hours tion of learning witheach wisdom has roots in and covering 30 km day. At around sixthe evEuropean Enlightenment that ery evening, we would try to findreached a place us to through colonialism.

We continue the modhalt for the night. ernDays project of acivilising the savage. later, salty breeze, tinged with the It isofone thingtold to us saywethat literate smell dry fish, werebeing in Puducherwould help a panchayat member understand ry. We headed for the beach and watched the his workthrough and communicate better, andbefore quite sunset the coconut trees, another modern education would make sleeping that in boats moored on the beach.

We him Court, for which rewerevirtuous. woken atThe 3amSupreme by fishermen, it was cently upheld Haryana government that the first day ofa the fishing season. Welaw helped mandated them packbasic theirschool fishingeducation nets andalong set offwith toother qualifications panwards Chennai.

As thefor sun contesting blazed downa unrechayat election, is not alone that lentingly, the heat forced twoininbelieving our group to the abilitythe to walk. read and can grantofusrejuthe abandon Evenwrite the prospect ability to tell right from beach wrong.house The belief that venation at an upscale in Chenwherever western modernity nai failed to convince them. has not reached is an of darkness is widely shared by IndiWearea plodded on, after a comfortable day ans, intellectuals on the right asas spentincluding in feather-soft beds, back to dusty well asbut theinteresting left. phalt, conversations with pasBefore elections India, sers-by onthe thefirst roadgeneral to Andhra Pradeshin(before MN Roy, the leading Indian communiTelangana was carvedlight out of it) brightened the sm, had said people should have been educatpicture.

Quizzical brows greeted us, followed ed getting advice the right vote. by before philosophical onto how to devote our People cities to need not goals, be communists time and in energy finite instead oftoa share Roy’sjourney’. view. They arefishthe ‘frivolous Webelieve smiledvillages and went

ing in a trickle of a stream, the only oasis in the nipped my pastoral dreams in the bud and we dry land we found ourselves in. marched on. dens inequitieswe thatlost stem from a fellow-travtraditional name, At of Hyderabad, another a human at later, that —we Sheela, Fourand months andname a week wereKain worldview.

Butcelebrated when it comes the inequieller. We still with atohearty meal lawati or Bimla. buffalo Delhi and down Ittowas justfunny two ofthat us. the Uday and I ties cities, they aresleep. believed be random, had and inmuch-needed Theto countryside a definite way of to her name, ventured onwards toresponding greet the Himalayas.

We individual phenomena or a law-and-order is- perhaps beckoned and we responded with renewed a swishagrarian of her tail or by covered with the fertile land of curling Punjab sue.

Theback violence, injustice andloved discriminaenergy, to the grind that we by now. her ears. Thecrossed reporter, like mostand of us cityand Haryana, Chandigarh headed tion in theoncities are earth, rarely with linked the dwellers, We walked parched baldtotrees found thePradesh. way the Just villager related to towards Himachal ahead of Dhainfluence of modernity. and scrawny birds high in the dry skies for his buffalo When a pet suchthrough as a dog ramsala, a amusing. bolt of lightning ripped When French philosopher Louise Althusser company.

We waved at passing trucks, cycles, or cat can described human theanight sky,be allowing us a with glimpse of theattrimamurdered his wife, he deployed his learning carts, bullocks, dogs and children, giving butes, why not a buffalo? jestic Dhauladhars. to justify If German them ourit.best smiles. philosopher Martin HeiFor urban people,—athe buffalo is Golden just a milkIt was at Amritsar serene Temdegger, English Eliot or French philosFrequent andpoet free TS refreshments offered by making kind of and modern bias ple, to bemachine. precise —This where Uday I decided opher Jacques Derrida isbyfound endorsing bystanders, entertained our travel tales, has hadways. serious implications forahead our world. to part My mind had raced of my Nazi it becomes individual lapse. No Just kept ideas, the spring in ourhis step.

Our anti-corrupconsiderthe hisfoothills buffaloofa the mere mafeet, as andweI walked Himaone blamecollapsed, modern education for creating tionwill message as people were not in- chine, hisUdhampur, land becomes forausman an industrial layas. At I met stranded reafaterested, whole discipline thatnot gave ideas for geno- source that ter but that did stop can an be accident. exploitedEverything without any he cides — anthropology.

If an intelour preaching.

We eventually dequalms.

Forscattered the illiterate owned lay in thevillager, dust — lectual convicted rape, it cided toiskeep off theofhighways the buffalo is a mattresses. family member, goats, trunks, But would nothing to doseeing with and stayhave on smaller roads, and landstop his mother. thatthe didn’t him from sharhis butwe thewalked whole The the background, real India as The villager’s inability to with read a cup of tea and biscuits WeSupreme realised we hadis ing Court socio-cultural context of a poor not across it. is a navigational me.notI just continued through hinthe fallen inin love with alone believing man an dams Uttar and Pradesh Wefrom crossed riversvilto being onability the grind drance also asleeping lack thatatdiminhills of but Jammu, roadthat the to lage would be probed a simiget to Gadchiroli, the for forest disishes his being whenever he side dhabas, crossed the Jawahar read and write can lar trictcrime. in Maharashtra. Naxalite re- grant us the ability to comes in contact govor Banihal Tunnelwith and the entered If are the active villager is illiterate in bels here, but we saw ernment.

There is a little bureauKashmir Valley. tell right from wrong our world, men we are illiterate in uniformed decorated with cratic routine inRatnipore rural banks anda After a day in with his.

For us, entireextorting world is as medals andhis badges, bags of vegeta- family of bakers courts — the taking of themy thumb — who even washed dirty dark as his buffalo.

The lack of local traders. jeans — I reached bles and other provisions from printSrinagar — which is laden with and spent the night modern education is a lack of all we turned in my sleeping After a night in a zoo-cum-hospital, meaning.

Thebench illiterate villager bag on the of a bus shelvirtue. we have Sea, stopped granting the sticks towardsSlowly, the Arabian passing through outfighting his thumb, bank grabsFurhis ter, with straythe dogs forclerk company. rural world values intrinsic to a tradiNagpur andeven Punethe and tracing a national high- limp his thumb the ink pad ther wrist, up, atjabs Sonamarg, I first was on welcomed by tional society the — community, sharing, compasway through Khandala hills to finally re- and then on the document and brusquely resnow-covered meadows. sion, sacrifice, and so on, because western leases ach Mumbai. the wrist. man cannotabe trusted I entered KargilThe after spending night at a modernity has to come to claim that’s good.

Our journey Gujarat was all punctuated by even to place his thumb at the place gurudwara, trekked towards Drasright and on to So anunder illiterate man trees. is lessBy than spe- when naps banyan thehuman, time weareacdirected. The act5,359m shows his utter of the Khardung-la pass above sealack level. cies to his buffalo.the group was down to agency. hed akin Madhya Pradesh, good a stamp, he later is bereft of not AnotherAs200 kmasand 10 days I reached A few ago, aItnews po- just half its years strength. was item also describing in MadhyaaPrathe ability his name but the veryI Hargam, close to sign the China border, where lice a missinglife buffalo revelled the mind. deshreport that Ifor considered as a farmer — in possiThewalk. unlettered man cannot have a ended my usual ironyby and urban middlebly swayed thewry sighthumour of golden wheat under mind, as his buffalo cannot (As told to Saurabh Yadav) have emotion. class has for all The things The news an orange sun. pullrural. of Chambal, thereport river anoop shekar is an architect currentlyjournalist based in Rome kumar is a Delhi-based found it humorous the buffalo had a dharminder that inspires both awethat and fear, and its ravines

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Pictures with heart

viour the artistes showed as Raoji went to work with his camera. There is a seeming letting down of guard, a primal innocence, a THE CRITICAL ISSUE loosening up of their assumed ‘persona’ and a soft transparency in attitude as they consent to being recorded for posterity.

This is a far cry from the posed pictures of artistes we are accustomed to in the mass media. Photographing the external mannerisms or quizzicalities of artistes is par for the course; but to be able to cross the zone into their intimate space and capture their reflective moments, vulnerabilities, moods and make them almost equal and honest partners in this image-making exercise, is not given to everyone. It is enabled not just by personal intimacy with the subject, but by complete trust. So, this is saying a lot; Raoji was a photographer you could trust.

As those who visit the Music Academy’s Tag Digital Archive Centre in its premises till January 9 will delightfully discover. Thirty-two exquisitely restored and printed (by the master craftsman V Karthik of Ramana Labs) B&W images — 11 dancers and 21 Carnatic musicians — each one a study in interiority.

The photographs have all the qualities of masterpieces in B&W — a dominant play of chiaroscuro (particularly in a haunting threequarter profile portrait of vocalist BalamuraSpaces imperfect likrishna, which almostInseems a chillingto enter his soul and another epiphanic profile of dancer reminder of how our streets Sudharani Raghupathy); unsafe a masterly sensitivity sticks balto grain and tone can (as be, in aa son superbly to his mother as anced shot of Lalgudi Jayaraman they walk past a tuning his violin); and a quiet billboard that awareness the rhetoridisplaysofa message women’s safety cal on effects of contrast in ap/ arun sankar k a picture (a silhouette People beyond the persona Raghavendra Rao’s photographs of Dwaram of dancer ChandraVenkataswamy Naidu and (below) MD Ramanathan; (right) Rao lekha against a sunm sitting in a large open space with an laying BusinessLine, froma geography, of refus- others? Post lunch in the streets claim to a space, around my ofrise on Elliot’s Beach audience of some 2,000 people. On the ing to the launch of the accept conditionalities about who had fice I see men walking around all the time, which seems a homstage is performer Maya Krishna Rao. legitimate paper claim in 1994, al- space. People have they’ll stop and chat, drink a cup tofor which at or thea Maageoftochai space She’s doing her show ‘The Walk’, creat- walked most decade.against violence, for trade local stall, hang out for a smoke. fora water, But I don’tSarukkai, see lavika ed in the wake of the massive protests that fol- union rights, However, away laws and so much too many women — some yes,again for equitable but notinassilhouette, many lowed the rape and death of Jyoti Singh more.from the daily grind, Long-distance protest marches — such as we know work in that area. whose still and coiled Pandey, the young physiotherapy student, in as the hewalk wasundertaken an artist by inthe Chhatra Yuva It’s not only for women that body, setwalking against ais nilaviDelhi in 2012. searchVahini of visual poetry.

Sangharsh in 1980 from Rajasthan to fraught with danger. It’slakku, equally so for evokes the the idea of The screen behind Rao projects her image, DelhiHis loving por- women (in poor, for the domestic workers, to particularly protest violence against for factory and infinite time). larger by several sizes than her person. As she manytraits a range ofofartistes in waysof a precursor Rao’s ‘Walk’) — help office workers, for petrol pump There are the attendants candid shots of walks and talks, her anger palpable, her grief to spread the city was a tribute to hisalong cre- the way, and so many others awareness of issues who are deniedBalasaraswathy their legita very informal visible, the strength of her taut, muscular involve ative selfin and his artistic inclilocals discussions. imate claim to public space byB Raor Aryakudi; a flamboyant body evident in every deliberate step she and Butnations the walk is concerns. also just a way those thesame money thatas an jamwho Iyerhave in the panel It often seemed he allows takes, there’s not a dry eye in the audience. of getting Some of the from from oneimages place to an- this them to claim energetic shot of aasense very of young was interested more entitlement We’re gripped by an unnameable, and yet all- other.pantheon of portraits — like Why, for women, should it the Familiar to that space. a fabuSanjay Subrahmanyan; streets in the person than in Years too-familiar fear, rage, a sort of helplessness. a joyously smiling suddenly be soprofile full ofoffear?

Many years I read a novel in composition of Kalanidhi became of the lous ago, the photograph Many of us are crying for the young woman ago, MD Ramanathan, revealing when I began work in my thehostile, every which the protagonist, a womNarayanan, probably essaying shadow a person who was so brutally violated, but we’re also first job, gap I’d in his teeth or of walk about 10 Rukmini minan, vatsalya is ‘disinherited’ of everyrasa, expressing ecstasy threat, every stray car crying for the thousands of women who con- utes Devi with a parrot to theArundale main road to take a a concern, every catcall thing she can lay claim topointing, —a with palms diagonally tinue to be thus violated every day of their bus to perched herwould wrist orhave of Sem- something to ignore work.on You home, a family,juxtaposed relationships, deliberately against lives, in their homes, in the streets of the cities, thought mangudi Iyer sunk that inSrinivasa the mornings it in friendships: one byofone she losthe verticality a lamp in the is they something new,also thiscryyear, to towns, villages here where live. We’re hisnot easy chair, yetsotaut with some suffused mu- foreground; would have been difficult. es them all. And one day, the image of athen, totally immersedChennai — about And ing that such a the simple thing,Music such aSeason necessary sic it— have already passed into the realm of the in-music MS, wasn’t, really, except she which decides walk, alone, is a to study in finger moveethereal asfront its music itself.

We are thing — puttingasone step in of the other iconic here.had to be careful that one always across country, claiming ments, one set ofher fingers caressing thethe tanputreated an experience and walking inbeing a public spaceto — should be so of Raoji cameand from a school ofstray photography not to be pushed groped by the pas- land ra aswhile her inheritance. walks, the other setShe spreads outsuddenly before her in music, without stepping the concert difficult, so impossible, and tointo be able to do it hall. that moreI remember in emotion,waiting intuition ser-by, thebelieved stray cyclist. at and powerful, and noattempt one dares stop out her.and Rather an ineffable to reach touch. evocative exhibition of B&W photographs such An an achievement. spontaneity, ratherday than conscious preoccuthe bus stop one windy when suddenly a like Rao’s multiple protagonists, who from However, the punctum of thegoexhibition musicians dancers brings us as close to I’mofreminded ofand a visit long ago to New York pation withpast technical details.

In theit,many cyclist pedalled and, before I knew he’d confear to assertion, helplessness to agency. has to be thefrom enigmatic, if naughty, image of the experience of visit hearing music or see— nothing about that has their stayed in my versations we have had, he and would snatched the shawl off my back wasalways gone.hold If walking is fraught with violinistis something Dwaram that Venkataswamy Naidu theirone dance as actually mind,ing except image, whichexperiencing is etched intoit. to that the belief the mechanics of the Butfirm even wasn’tthat particularly botherdanger for women, also something thatsuckcaught in the actitofislighting his cheroot, ForAnd older residents of Chennai should my brain. that is of a long march, ofthis lights not beand allowed to overpower some.medium A shawlshould is a shawl someone will they ing have, time tointo time, to assert infrom the smoke hisused toothless cheeks cluesilence enough that one referring to the and abe grim breaking up isthe darkness, poetry of warm. the expression. wearthe it and keep Much more difficult theirwith rights, demand attention to their thetosame intensity he might pullconthe bow body of photographs South placards Indian musiand of thousands of womenof carrying certainlyhome helped was familiar was theItwalking inthat thehe evening, often with cerns.

This is it means to transform across hiswhat strings.

It is a moment.

Andfear it draws cians and dancers, so lovingly shot saying ‘Take Back the Night’.

That was myover firstsome nuances complexities of Familiar classical muwhenthe it was dark,and from the bus stop. into power. attention to the felicity with which Raoji threetodecades the latea Raghavendra exposure the walkby as protest, way of claim- Rao sicsuddenly and dance as much as heevery was with the sub- What streets turned hostile, shadow if, onbea given day, every In- was could in sync withwoman those inhe (1932 -2014). as he was affectionately ing public space‘Raoji’, for ourselves, for women, adjectsevery he photographed.

Raoji hadcatcall a way of a threat, stray car a concern, every dia decided she would walk in solidarity with photographing. by friends and colleagues, one of who dressed have traditionally been denied was such being gentle and unobtrusive with the camsomething to ignore. other women?

MillionsRao’s of usphotographs, across the counIn Raghavendra you can Chennai’s most sensitive photojournalists, What spaces. erais and waiting till that the person before him was it about space somehow creates try. The Women’s almost senseWalk. his being able to click the shutter brought enormous empathy and humanThewho walk has traditionally been a powerful completely at ease with hissome presence.

It often on the tala as it attains sama. a sense of entitlement among people, blink@thehindu.co.in ity protesting, to his day job chief photographer for The way of ofasdemanding change, of more inamong the person and aseemed sense he of was fear interested and uncertainty Indian Express and, later, at India Today. He was than in the photograph of the person. And sadanand menon is a Chennai-based art writer also the consultant photo-editor for The Hindu this certainly reflected in the strange beha- and photographer

She walks in fear

Musicians and dancers let their guard down when Raghavendra Rao photographed them. Thirty-two of What is itexquisite about space thatare creates a sense of entitlement among some people, and a sense those images on show in Chennai of fear and uncertainty among others?

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Urvashi Butalia is an editor, publisher and director of Zubaan

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Flung outside the ring When the Apex Court dismissed the petition filed by ‘uneducated’ Kamlesh Kaimri and two others, it dismissed lives spent in grassroots engagement of the kind few schools can teach

High waters Bar-headed geese fly above Lake Mansarovar, revered by both Hindus and Buddhists images shutterstock

On sacred ground Reserves of stamina and a streak of ‘madness’ help conquer the rigours of Kailash parikrama All for a fight Kamlesh Kaimri had filed her candidature for panchayat polls after the SC in September stayed the Haryana law that barred her from doing so ramesh sharma

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eing born themaanti Kashmiri eininyeh hoonShaivite ki antraditionpadh has itsnahi peculiarities. hoon meinTo(Istart do with, there very few of us, not notare consider myself illitereven a million.

But, it is not the nuate),” Kamlesh Kaimri inmerically ‘exclusive’ bit aboutHaryanvi this club that tones softly, in her unhurried drawl. makes unique.

There ishad a lotnot else.

To start Lack of itschool education really hinwith, Hindus known deredKashmiri her work.

Whenare she went to tohave the the Suearliest recorded thanks preme Court, it history was to anywhere. retain herAllright to to Kalhana, author of Rajatarangini, literacontest the the panchayat elections from Kaimri lly ‘A River of Kings’, in 1050 CE. But the village in Hisar, Haryana, regardless of one the who did of theclasses most she seminal work on our Shainumber had passed.

She lost. vite identity, byhamari turning it into a philosophical “Yeh aas hai toh… hum ladenge, hum discipline, is Abhinavagupta (950-1020 CE).she Arjeetenge (It’s my wish to fight and win),” guably the foremost Shaivite master ever,the he says. A fortnight ago, the SC had dismissed was prolific his precepts andand writings. petition filedwith

by Kamlesh, Rajbala Preet The profundity of Haryana his ideas,law andthat their impact, Singh against the allows onis even a millennium later, he engagly such thosethat with a prescribed ‘minimum’ educaes intellectuals and scholars. tional qualification to contest panchayat Little wonder, relics of this Shaivite traelections.

It also the barred those without toilets dition areand strewn over Kashmir Valley.

And, at home thoseall who had pending electriciover the ty bills or centuries, bank loans.have become important landmarks and pilgrimages. a village of religiosity 8,399 people, nottofara Toaimri, some they evoke andislead fromofHisar town’s bustlethey of hospitals and regimen rituals.

To others are a part of residential sectors. centrally the culture they grewThe up in.

For manyair-condithough, tioned Aryan School slips past on the road to they represent an ancient continuous tradiKaimri, too a in railway canal, markets tion thatsogrows valuegate, with atime.

For not an and bakeries.few, The they template changes when we insignificant are, purely, a fountainenterofKamlesh’s lane. The brick road is head spiritual energy. hemmed on both by open drains.itStrollNo matter howsides you look at them, takes ing buffaloes(destiny) share space with hurprarabdham to visit anychildren of those plactling down the I,path.

An all-woman is es.

That is what perhaps, lacked. Allmeeting that I had on in to Kamlesh’s Her mother-in-law gone was the courtyard. hilltop Shankaracharya Temnapswhich on a string cot under the loneoftree in the ple, was right at the edge Srinagar courtyard. daughter-in-law, and did notHer takeyoung even half a day to trek toin anda

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shimmery pinktime salwar-kameez, dutifullytogoes return. By the I grew old enough de- women mumble about daughters daughrate check at the immigration, we and hit the peraround collecting blessings from the we guests. cide for myself about the other places, lost ters-in-law.

Kamlesh too has younger, ‘qualifect tar-road through misty woods, an At corner, theValley. door Itowas theleft toilet ajar. fied’ ourone homes in the withismere women at home.

“But I wanted to fight. occasional waterfall and scanty human presShirts linewere inside the two-room Everybody storieshang from from those awho luckier. in the family wanted me to fight,” ence. We were headed further ahead, towards brick steel vessels are to she Thathouse. is whyGleaming when I met someone wholeft visitsays. at 11,700 ft.

Nyalam, dry in a trayevery underyear, the tree a central charac-I ed Kailash I was— truly tempted.

Savita, jointasecretary of AIDWA At Nyalam, small Tibetan town Haryana, of a few ter Kamlesh’s courtyard. hadinknown about the annual group-treks that says the educational criteria alone will elimihundred people, we practised climbing.

It was As going Kamlesh her team of around 10 nate were on and for decades, under a govern83 per of Dalit women the first daycent of withdrawal from like the Kamlesh world as women belonging to theBut Akhil Bharatiya Jan- from ment-run programme. those treks were the it. electoral process.

Hadto she beenOurs able we knew There were 15 more follow. wadi Mahila Samiti arduous, took 40 days (All-India and, to topDemocratic it all, you to would have been Kamlesh’s wascontest, a motleythis group — engineers, CAs, traders, Women’s around on This cots and had to beAssociation) lucky in thesit draw of lots. one third election.

2005, she had fought to be techies, retiredIn bureaucrats; from avid trekkplastic chairsAand talk, the dominant feeling is the was simpler. package of three weeks, includsarpanch.

“As a Dalitfrom woman she found it ers to rank first-timers, restless youngone of ato-and-fro battle lostflight, but a war that ing the via Kathmandu (four sters to calm difficult to break in,” says Jakhar. twilighters. must go on.

They nodbus vigorously nights), hotel stays, ride to the Tibetan In 2010, stood election to We spent two coldshe nights at for Nyalam.

After when Jakhar, state border,Sakuntala four-day road journey to the blocknight samiti and lost abyvil11 another at Prayang, president of AIDWA, which filed Mansarovar (two nights) and votes.

“Kaimri overwhelmingly lage of sorts, we left for Horche, a But I wanted to fight. the SCapetition for Kamlesh and then, day-journey to the base voted at forthe her,edge but of thethe block incamp sacred Everybody in the the others, asks them to acclicarry camp for Kailash.

All the cluded the neighbouring Mansarovar.

It was 270 km Gangaway, Our eyes looked family wanted me black flags when exhilarating, leaders visit matising, walking, wa panchayat, where she got which would take barely four hard for Kailash, but to fight their village. grunting, enduring, experiencactive aBut, bit the late,” Jakhar adds.

A hours. patience to wait the clouds did None of the team’s core meming, exploring, gathering, pickday Mansarovar after the SC stayed the Haryafor had worn thin. not oblige bers now stand drenching, for a paning, canclicking, na law September, Kamlesh The driveintook us through Maychayat post. In a society praying, fissured shivering, hurting, had filed her pass candidature and um-la, a high with a steep along caste lines, this ‘team’ is an aberration. the village elders meditating, crying and, finally, had support.down climb at lent the their top. Driving “We have meals Something that did ‘connecting’ wastogether. left to you.

That acceptance, notview easily the passhowever, offered awas great of not happen a few years ago,” says Kamlesh, the gained.

Nirmala,Mayum-tso a retired Lake. primary schoolthe magnificent That further A good start group’s leader, who is a Dalit. Believed to be teacher, a young Kamwhetted remembers the craving meeting for the Mansarovar.

It around 45 years shenights grew at upKathmandu, in Jooyi vil- lesh It all started afterold, three ago.80 She had into school took20 us years another km to walked reach Horche.

The lage school far short withand an had earlyattended breakfast and briefly, a five-hour bus barefoot as shepeak was mourning death of a snow-capped across thethelake, Gurla of thetoStd V passtown, needed qualifyTatopani, her for the ride Kodari alsotocalled at family elder.

“I told herft) that walking around Mandhata (over 25,500 was a stunner.

Our panch’s post. Herborder. teammates who belong to barefoot the Nepal-Tibet The border was dewould take her reeyes searched fornot Kailash, but anywhere,” the clouds did other communities, too, do not meet theriver. edu- calls fined by the noisy and frothy Bhotekoshi Nirmala, who Raina, is alsothe theman district presinot oblige.

Rajinder responsibcational qualification prescribed them. dent On the other side was the Chinese for immigraShe overwhelmed. then introduced to le for of myAIDWA. yatra, was We sat “None of us are matric (Std connected X) pass,” says tion point at Zhangmu, byRamthe Kamlesh the ongoing literacy programme.

“I there, looking at the gentle waves in the turvati.

So, whoBridge. will now fight in long their and place?

The told Friendship After the elaboherwaters, if you want to study, I willspoken teach you. quoise without a word for

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She come day with four to five Dawhatwould seemed likeevery a lifetime. lit When women and I would teach them fortoa couple we eventually spoke, it was decide of Nirmala recalls. reads to hours,” take a bath in the lake.Kamlesh Braving now the water newspapers, keeps accounts team and (calling it melted-snow wouldfor beher more approrecords of ameetings.

“My along mind isa priate), the we minutes walked in few metres agile,” says. As young gradualshe gradient, till athe watermother touchedwho the couldn’t count,as she remembers struggling waist. Kailash, if pleased with our resolve, once to pay the doctor’s showed up from behindfee. the clouds. parikrama (circumambulation) of The road to literacy opened to her many Mansarovar almost a hundred kiloother alleys —takes leading to mentors and friends metres.

We causes. decidedJakhar to attempt it aftera the Kaiand social mentions protest parikrama, our back.

I was lash Kamlesh that hadonled in way 2004, which hadtold inthat thede-linked Tibetan Buddhists too image revere the stantly her from the of aMantypighunghat-wearing bahu of Kaimri.

A pond on foot.

The sarovar and conduct parikrama cal was dug village and the then morebeing devout doinitthe by prostrating every stepsarof panch deployed a tractor for the work. the way,had often in sub-zero temperatures.

The Kamlesh andtold, several women wanted reason, I was was other that the lake froze and him to assign the work them instead.

When shrank substantially into winters, so the pariktoo becomes shorter. rama he refused, the women approached the police and the district administration directed the Circle of life sarpanch to halt the tractor. The story, howevOurdid staynot in Horche was“At followed nights er, end there. night by wetwo heard the at Tarchin, the base camp Kailash.

After tractor running, and we for went and lay on two the nights ofasking rest, him and to in-between, ground, run it overlast-minute our stomshopping for walking sticks,work umbrellas, ach.

We ended up getting for 20 torchdays,” es, gloves,concludes caps and on bottles, we were set to beKamlesh a triumphant note. earlyby breakfast, ginIn Kaimri, the parikrama.

Kamlesh isAn defined her work followed a drive to ‘Yama-dwar’ wastimid how over the by past two up decades.

The once the trek who usually began.

To avoid Raiwoman pleaded with Jakharthis anddrive, Nirmala na accompany had started her three reachstain to onhours visitsearlier to the to police There, were instructed anda tion,time. has all butwe disappeared.

“Nowafresh she gets given our personal porters for the next three days. I was put under the guidance of Tashey, barely out of his teens.

PreetAfter Singh a collective prayer, and a ritual andforlifting of the Tibetan Asktouching Preet Singh his phone number prayer-buntings, walk began. and he writes it slowly, in the his tiny On62-year-old our right was the rock-face rishand. The from ing high, severalhas hundred feet, perBhambhewa, in Jhajjar, never been pendicular to and the write. ground to school but can read “I we our left, in athe distance read six walked. to sevenOn newspapers day.

As was a deep gorge where children we were asked to take carea roaringand river On says. the banks of the cattle theflowed. farm,” he sprawlingmember flat grounds.

Singh had were beenthe a panchayat Afterand about three in the 1990s is now thelong vice-hours of trying to keep pace withSabha. my agile president of the All India Kisan porter, who was also carrying my The third petitioner in the case sack,Haryana we reached the western against the government, he face of Kailash.

The of view wasn’t too says almost 70 per cent his village clear. were too low and the is unhappy withWethe SC far judgement. view was largely obstructed by Singh also has an outstanding bank the fortress-like cliffs.

A narrow loan, which he has to repay over five in between was all that years; but gap it effectively disqualifies him we had for opportunity. And the from contesting. cameras made most of it.

Munching on nuts and sipping on Tang, we walked in silent contemplation.

Another three hours from the western face was Derapuk, which brought us face-to-face

Rajbala Hers is the name by which the case is known — ‘Rajbala and others Vs the State of Haryana’. The 35-year-old from Matana village in Fatehabad, Haryana, won the very first time she stood for elections in 2010 and became a block samiti member. School didn’t feature much in her early life in Sundarpura. “I might have attended for a couple of years. My village had a primary school. The bigger school was in the next village,” she says.

However, a significant step the outgoing block samiti took was to sanction two acres to expand the primary school in Matana.

Over the last few years, along with her growing involvement in panchayati politics, Rajbala has been making efforts to educate herself. Her husband Rajkumar, a former block samiti member, says their two sons — aged 18 and 12, respectively — are her teachers. “After coming back from school they teach their mother. She is literate, she reads newspapers,” adds Rajkumar.

Rajbala says the past five years have given her confidence. “I had never met a person in authority before. Paav mein taakat nahi thi (I didn’t have the courage for it).”

Being a block samiti member changed all that. “Four days ago, she went to the police station with a woman who was being harassed Face-off Rarefied air makes breathing difficult in the Kailash range; (below) a Buddhist chorten for dowry,” says Rajkumar. with Kailash. Shaped like a diamond, it is flanked by two massive mountains, Avalokiteshwara and Vajrapani of the Buddhist lore.

As soon as I saw it, my knees gave way and I sprawled face down. Was it exhaustion, or climactic catharsis? I realised later that I didn’t move for a long time. On getting up eventually, I felt magically light, with no trace of the fatigue or aches that I was trying hard to divert my mind from not too long ago. I walked in that state of semi-trance, towards what looked like a two-storey structure for our night-halt.

Moving ahead

one else insisted on some rest. He’d sensed something that he couldn’t communicate due to the language barrier. He held my right hand and pulled me back on my feet. We must have run downhill for about half an hour. That’s when the skies opened up. By then, we had reached a cave-like shelter. The group we left behind would have been soaking wet.

The climb down brought us to the eastern valley of Kailash, through which flowed the Zhong Chhu river. We must have walked over 10 km in those five torturous hours. Once down in the valley, the walk was on a relatively flat ground, therefore boring besides being indescribably tiring. But I had never walked for so long and so fast, all thanks to Tashey. We reached Zutulpuk, our night-halt, at least two hours before the rest of the group. I did not even remove my shoes before collapsing on the camp cot.

We started early next morning. The group had to split in three. One bunch had to return.

They could not take the strain any more. The second bunch was for the outer parikrama, which goes via Dolma-la pass and Gauri Kund.

It was longer, hence strenuous, but also predictable. We, the third group, had opted for the Inner Cora. This one was slightly shorter Holding fort but challenging. The most challenging part, I Coming back from Kailash, even when it is a was told, was the Khandsang-la Pass. That parikrama, and hence a different route, turned out to be a gross understatement. Re- wasn’t a fraction as exciting. One, because havaching the very base of the wall turned out to ing wrung out every joule of energy in walkOut of the race NoSlipping one from and Kamlesh Kaimri’son coreall team ing, can now panchayat elections sharma allcontest that the drove us was theramesh greed to be treacherous. crawling fours, to cover barely a few metres in an hour, complete the circumambulation. And, this cryptic, “Hum wasKaimri whenand the their walk answer refusedistoa end.

With the was intimidating. chair to sit on at the police station,” says Jak- in (We broken homes).” bodybasate in bitshai and thefixmind winding up,Often, there At After the base the wall, wethe dug into the fro- ghar har. she of stepped into police station her house withour their wives and was little to hold interest. zen the rockfirst to create footholdher so father-in-law men drop into for time, ahowever, in issues ranging from Eventually, after four-odd as tobeen not slip down.in Even our had ridiculed theas panchayat.

“Tumne request her to mediate brought to naakmade katwa di (You dowry and alcoholism to hours of trudging, came a point guides their way up to cre-us disgrace),” domestic violence, he heratafterwards.

When she intervened property “The other day, a pandit overlooking the habitation of ate told a base the top, to lift us by I walked in that state disputes. in cases involving viofamily had come to meet her,” Tarchin at some distance.

The rope-harness, theydomestic would, inadof semi-trance, lence in letupper-caste houseYoung seekPeoher LandJakhar.

Cruisers weregirls waiting. vertently, chunks of rocky ice towards what looked says holds, men of her housea out when they to ple hugged eachwant otherto in go relief. fall on the us. Climbing up with like a two-storey marvaogi bore the brunt.was “Tum school.

Convincing their parents But, wait, this is not from where I rope-harness even more structure for our When she intervened (You will get us killed),” herany faparikrama, to be becomes Kamlesh’s job.

“The govstarted.

The daunting.

None of us had night-halt in cases involving ther-in-law husband chocomplete,gives must bicycles end fromtowhere ernment girls idea that we and would hang, precardomestic violence in rused.

I would staring stay home it started.

I asked2km for from Yama-dwar. who live within school.I iously “Then suspended, at upper-caste for a few days,” Her am pointed towards a mountainParents often don’t know about hundreds of feetshe of recalls. sheer drop households, the men husband, Satyavan, works as a range in a vague manner Tashthe scheme.

We go aroundby the vilto sure death, at the mercy of an of her house bore the labourer.

Despite thehours threats, thattelling direction.

Tashey refused them.

We also keeptoa unsure bunch.

Several of a heroic strug- ey. I started inlage brunt however, herexhausted and budge. I asked himwhen to dump my bell bagsrings in the watch the final at gle saw usheallnever to thestopped ‘top’, but from her our work, says Kamlesh. waiting carsschool for others to carry to the and make surethem the girls relivid with escorts.

Other men was in the village were bottles, packed pockets achthe home safely,” saysmy Kamlesh.

The ‘top’ a rocky and harsh ridge-line base. I filled up unable to mist stomach her active deep breathfightand As far astook she’saconcerned, with wind, and poor visibility. We began with nuts and raisins, role outside the It house. upper man ing started walking in that vague direction. an election and winning are merely the our trek down. was An steep andcaste therefore had even offered to Satyavan buffaIt became my personal yatra. Having The sanctity of to bring about change. fought doubly punishing forbuy the knees.

Wetwo ran out of means parikrama helped me discover inner loes to keep at home.

Her fa- for a Kailash quality ration, common toilets and drinkwater.

FromKamlesh the top,engaged we’d seen an emerald reserves ofshe stamina and that streak of sheer ther-in-law hadtheinmiddle the past for ing water, says there is more work to be spot smack in of achided caramelher sandy ‘madness’.

It was to keepexisting me company forand the appearing in public without the The veil. more Years lat— to access other schemes terrain. That was Kuber Kund. we done next 14 hours.

That is another storyhas in itself, for er, whentowards she stood for elections andither home introduce newer ones.

“Sarpanch the powwalked it, the more distant seemed. some otherchange. time. Dekhte hein, madam (Let’s buzzed withofpeople, he trudging was a changed man, er to bring After hours laborious we reached telling her, “Beta, you are fighting elections. see),” she says, exuding steely resolve. the waterbody. ghunghat?

Take it off.”

Why need As Ido satyou down to the share the packed lunch with sushil pandit is a Delhi-based advertising and communication professional anima Ask Kamlesh andeager the women they do p Tashey, he seemed to move,what while every-

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saturday, december 26,26, 2015 saturday, december 2015

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saturday, december 26, 2015

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in-faq by joy bhattacharjya

T

his week’s quiz is all about walks, long and short, peaceful and not-so-peaceful.

here,there & elsewhere

Walk the talk

Purple haze

1

Which organisation has started a member’s club for its customers called ‘The Striding Man Society’?

2

Literary walking tours are now extremely popular and well-attended in the UK. Which author’s fans are likely to go for a walking tour to the city of Bath, the site of two of her betterknown novels?

3

What did Mark Twain famously describe as “a good walk spoiled,” though variations of this quote preceded him by a couple of centuries?

4

One of the most tragic incidents of World War II took place in April 1942 when the Japanese army forced almost 80,000 American and Filipino prisoners of war into a gruelling 80km march. More than 20,000 soldiers were believed to have died during the walk. By what name is this incident known?

5

Which 18th-century scientist became interested in his chosen field during the long walks he took with his father in the village of Rashult in southern Sweden?

6

Who was the first Pandava brother to perish on their final walk across the country to Mount Sumeru?

7

Lou Reed’s ‘Walk on the Wild Side’ is regarded a classic in punk music and was released in the album ‘Transformer.’ Which well-known musician produced the song?

8

Which three-word phrase is used to announce that a prisoner on death row is being taken for execution?

9

Which physical activity, also a sport, is performed with specially designed walking poles similar to ski poles and is known for exercising more muscles in the upper body than regular walking?

10

Which widely acclaimed and successful book by Bruce Chatwin, relating his experiences while retracing aboriginal walks across Australia, was nominated for Thomas Cook award for the best travel writing, but withdrawn by the author as he claimed a lot of it was fictional?

n Christmas morning, Bins announces, “It’s time!” I am in my O studio, staring at a blank canvas.

Portraits of The Void are the only kind I can reliably make these days. “Time for what?” I ask.

“A party. We’ll call Jiggs, DingDong and the lady upstairs, Veronique.” Her name’s Rebecca, but when Bins forgets someone’s name he just makes up a new one to take its place. “We can ask them for dinner. They will bring some wine and we can all get drunk.” “What a great plan,” I say, nodding vigorously.

“Except for one small problem: MAKING DINNER.” Cooking is one of my major non-skills. And Bins? Well, he excels more in the confidence department than in taste, texture or presentation. “Pooh!” he says now, waving his hands in the air in his Gaulish way, “you are the total wet quilt! We will make MOUSSAKA and everyone will love us forever!”

“But we’ve never done that!” I wail.

“It’s completely easy-peasy,” insists Bins. “All we need is some aubergine, mince-meat and cheese.” He races out of the door and buys three monstrous purple eggplants before I can even protest. “First you have to peel them,” he says, “then you slice them and fry them. It will take a long time. While you are busy I will bring

the meat, tomato sauce and onions.” He races out again. I glare at the shiny aubergines, convinced that this programme is going to end badly.

By the time Bins returns, I have a stack of limp, snot-coloured strips of eggplant in a plate and a skillet of olive oil smoking on the stove. “Go on,” cries Bins, “what are you waiting for?” So I throw in a strip of snot, it hisses violently, smoke pours from it and a moment later — you guessed it! — the fire alarm goes off. The loud bleat is augmented by a little whiny recorded voice that repeats, “Fire! Fire!” every five seconds. “Blow away the smoke!” yells Bins to me, “open the

windows, turn on the exhaust — I’ll fry the aubergine!” I grab a newspaper to fan the smoke away from the alarm but I’m not tall enough so I’ve got to leap up and down like a demented rabbit while flapping.

By the time the stack of strips is fried the alarm has gone off five times in a row and my knees are like putty.

“Come on, come on!” calls Bins, “there’s much more to do!” Onions to peel, garlic to mince, parsley to cut, tomatoes to sauce, Parmesan cheese to grate. “And now the béchamel sauce!” commands my local Top Chef.

“First scald the milk, then melt the butter, then introduce the flour, whisking steadily ... now the milk – wait! IS THAT A LUMP I SEE?” An hour later the moussaka is in the oven, bubbling industriously.

Never mind that I am a nervous wreck by the time our guests knock on our door: the tinselly sweetness of the day cuts through the lingering wisps of charred aubergine and melting cheese. We sing carols. We drink too much wine. DingDong tells naughty jokes. Merry happies, everyone and a Joyous Moussaka to all. manjula padmanabhan, author and artist, writes of her life in the fictional town of Elsewhere, US, in this weekly column

cornerstone

Answers 1. Johnnie Walker scotch, currently owned by Diageo 2. Jane Austen; the novels were Northanger Abbey and Persuasion 3. The game of golf, banned by King James in the 15th century as it distracted his archers 4. The Bataan Death March. The general who ordered the march, Masaharu Homma was arrested for war crimes in 1945 and executed in 1946 5. Carolus Linnaeus, who developed the biological naming scheme for plants and animals based on the specimens he encountered in his walks 6. Sahadeva, as he suffered the vice of pride. The first to actually die was Draupadi as she favoured Arjuna among her husbands 7. David Bowie; given the risqué lyrics, an edited version was originally released in the UK 8. ‘Dead Man Walking.’ It is also the title of a 1995 film starring Sean Penn and Susan Sarandon 9. Nordic Walking 10. The Songlines

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joy bhattacharjya is a quizmaster and Project Director, FIFA U-17 World Cup t@joybhattacharj

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