Travels in Konkan and Education-2

Part 2

Now, before I proceed further, I think I must take up the task of explaining who and what we were visiting in Dhamapur, Sindhudurg, Konkan, Maharashtra, India.

This is not so easy because the who, the what and all the links to them are rather overwhelming. This is just a humble effort at trying to explain a profound Philosophy- a crucial and successful Experiment in education.

http://www.vigyanashram.com/

In a small village called Pabal, about 2 hours Northeast of Pune, is an institution called Vigyan Ashram.
Students at Vigyan Ashram build everything they and their community need to live, with their own hands and improvise and innovate with their own minds. It is probably one of the very few centres of education in the world which build self confidence and the spirit of enterprise in the youth. Here, one can finally be envious of people for the right reasons; people who work with their hands and who will never depend on any electrician, plumber, mason, scientist or even politician to make their lives easier.

At Dhamapur, a young couple- has started 'Syamantak'- a sort of Konkan chapter of Vigyan Ashram. (I think, and I am backed by very visionary people here, that there can never be enough in the country and even in the world.)

So here we were; my friend- to spread the Vigyan Ashram concept to more people and me.... well, to just listen, absorb and revel in my good fortune of being in such progressive circles. (And of course because I love taking off to random places and showing off my sleek SLR!)

For sometime now, I am thinking about life. (Don't you dare moan...) Actually, I have been thinking about the Scale of life, about what constitutes 'la dolce vita', a good Standard of living.

During this trip, I realised that every aspect of lifestyle is a matter of choice and all the talk about ' being stuck in a rut' etc. is something we bring on ourselves. Some people, like us atleast, can think about what really makes us happy and make the necessary lifestyle changes.

So,
Do I want to live in a metro (or a wannabe-metro) with its malls, crowds, accidents and 'modern', 'happening', 'connected' life?

OR

Do I want to live in a small-town (or even downright rural area) with nature, space, gentleness, 'roots' but bad toilets?

I know that my contempt for the familiar urban makes me romanticise the rural and my craving for coffee and conversation make me doubt if I will ever fit in if I move out of the city.

The pros and cons for me are evenly balanced. But let me set aside my existential issues for the moment. My capacity to write interestingly about it stops here.

I have serious concentration span issues too... so more in Part 3.

To be continued…

Travels through Konkan and Education

Part 1

Many people are mighty pissed off with the Great Indian Education System; (GIES for short) which pretty much sucks. And it is my good fortune that some of these people happen to be my friends. What is special about their pissed-off ness against GIES is that it has led them to do some crazy but important things- make films, take their kids out of the conventional school system, join or even start alternative education centres and tour the countryside making more and more people understand why actually everyone should be pissed of with GIES.

So being the tag-along friend I am, I gate-crashed one such tour and ended up in Dhamapur, Konkan.

(Yes, this is another travelogue. I guess that’s all I feel like writing about nowadays. )

The Yeshti journey:

Front row seats, right behind the driver, in full blast of his horn (you sickos! I mean, the horn of the bus…. Gosh!) - 1^st half expressway-esque and 2^nd half picturesque

Via Satara and Kolhapur, we reached the shadiest, dingiest, dirtiest lodge-cum-dhaba I have ever seen, at Gaganbavda. (I mean seriously, that place had questionable character. Especially because the ST driver (State Transport driver, guys…. Uff, you can’t be this finicky.) stopped at this private joint and he and the conductor mysteriously disappeared into its dark depths, leaving most passengers standing around looking around for loos.

My friend and I ate bananas standing outside the bus and made cheap comments on the surroundings for fun.

After Gaganbavda, starts the ghat.

Konkan is the ghat-champion. She really knows what to do with people who are silly enough to blast mountains and build roads through them. She twists and turns roads at unbelievable arcs and scares the shit out them.

Our driver was pretty confident though and took every super- sharp turn in his stride with deft twists, twirls and wringings of the wheel. Along with the landscape, even I was slowly turning greener and greener (one irritating weakness I have is bus sickness) but soon enough I was totally entranced by the view outside the window, diverting my thoughts and bile from the view inside me. We reached Kudal which was where we got off.

From Kudal, after a wadapaav which was strangely dry and oily at the same time and some initial confusion in finding the bus stop, we hurriedly boarded another bus to Dhamapur which was our final destination. We made our ‘ignorant, city slickers’ status amply clear through our frantic questioning and high tension to reach our stop (Dhamapur khalchi waadi) and so eventually, the whole bus threw us out with many further landmarks, directions and a roar of relief, continuing on its way to Malwan.

to be continued...

Taking off

Beautiful ideas are often generated out of the blue and the luxury of joblessness is actually being able to execute them.

So a friend and I rickshawed off one day, to the railway station, randomly picked a place to go- Kamshet - unknown and unexplored, en route between Pune and Lonavla.
After having almost resigned oneself to the blows of multiplex prices on the wallet and the heart, paying only 11 rupees for the local train ticket was… was so touching! I looked at the ticket window guy with disbelieving, grateful tears in my eyes, and he grunted back the lack of change. Ah well…

Like all train journeys it was full of the things to see, conversations to eavesdrop and people to observe- their clothes, (one guy’s tight fitting jeans said ‘Arrest Me’ in embroidered red, just above his butt!) varying levels of sleepiness and animation. Standing at the door made our hair fly in the warm wind and we got a more than cinemascope view of the scenery- blazing yellow, red and pink flowers of trees against the blue sky, green and yellow fields and village people, their homes and their cattle…. the works.

The train started filling at every station and then suddenly emptied out almost completely, with more noise and bustle than a place called Begdewadi warranted. We wondered why; later we got to know that there was a Mahashivratri jatra happening and Begdewadi was happening too. Ecstatic kids and young men in addition to their energetic voices, now possessed loud, ingeniously crafted, cardboard horns, which they blew through with great gusto, producing sounds like an amplified goat. It was an awesome din.

Kamshet: The station was right next to a river, where the water was being utilized optimally by lots of people washing clothes, utensils, vehicles and buffaloes.
We explored the small town, more than half owned by Jains, which made my friend swell with pride (he is Jain, of course.) But I declared it no use if he couldn’t get us a free meal in someone’s house.
This possibility was left unexplored unfortunately, because we spotted कांदा भजी in a shop and gorged on it, not caring one bit who owned it. The dish washer and I were the only women in the place and I got looked at more because I was worse dressed, especially with my bandana.

Then we found our way to the river, soaked our legs in the dubiously murky water (who cares?) and met a lot of floating clothes, algae, guppy fish and some ‘sucking fish’ (I don’t know what they are really called) who just stayed stuck to one place- a stone or a piece of floating cloth or my friend’s foot and apparently got their nourishment or kicks from that.

Fortunately we didn’t have enough money to buy bottled water, because the borewell we found near a multicoloured temple later (with ‘प्यार का दीपक हर अंधकार को दूर कर देता है’, written on its ceramic tiles décor wall) was one of the tastiest waters I’ve ever tasted.
The sun was super strong and while dozing in the temple, we saw a sign a little in the distance saying ‘Pets and Honey’.
Any randomness just had to be explored, so we chatted up the security guard and he gave us a gate pass.
The place turned out to be a trust which had an orphanage, a nursery, vermiculture pits, ducks, turkey, pigeons, monkeys, dogs and get this…. emu (who had strange guttural voices and the most beautiful, emotive, brown eyes), and a soon-to-be-opened old age home.
A very friendly employee there enthusiastically gave us a tour of the whole place and we were really impressed. In this out of the way, little known town of Maharashtra, 53 orphans had a real childhood- a good education and a loving home with dedicated caretakers.

The children who had grown up and left the home, had planted trees to remember their time there.

When we left there, some of my chronic cynicism about the world had been healed.

On our way back to the station, we stole some sugarcane from a passing truck by running after it (the road was really bad, so we could keep pace quite easily) and tugging at a stick of cane with all our might. Then we walked to the station feeling really rustic, spitting out चूसा हुआ sugarcane.

The Begdewadi Jatra had been a superhit. All the stations on the way back rang with excited horns and in the falling light, the hill at Begdewadi, swarmed with hundreds of people, like ants.

In the rickshaw back home, the Pune traffic didn’t seem so unnerving anymore. Though this was only a short term effect, the trip rejuvenated me to take on my struggles with Time again.

Some questions...

Warning: a lot that follows is slightly cliché. But this is an attempt to soothe my mind… Some questions about the modern world of the city-

Why are cinema tickets so exorbitantly priced today?

Why are multiplexes so noisy, so crowded and why does everyone’s face there look the same?

Why does everyone only talk in English at all the counters at all the big shops and theatres today?

Why does the coke have so much ice?

Why aren’t small single screen theatres at least reasonably clean and their projection and sound systems reasonably well- functioning?

Why don't they have caramel popcorn?

In a multiplex, how cheap is it that only the 2 rows closest to the screen are priced 20 rupees less (silver class)?

Is the multiplex doing us poor students and the slightly less well-off sections of the miniscule section of the city population which comes there, a big, magnanimous favour by letting us into its posh complex without first checking our wallets for a minimum sum of money?

Why don’t people sit through the end credits of any film? Why are the end credits cut before they have run fully?

Why do the lights never go off at the first scene and always come on at times during the last scene itself?

Why do we have to bear the ‘Rasabhang’ of a completely unrelated, cheap, techno song start blaring on the sound system automatically at the interval, everytime, no matter which film is actually on?

Why doesn’t anyone in the multiplex management so apathetic about this?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Why are photographs mass printed?

Why do they change the contrast and brightness and colours of my photograph without consulting me?

Why are those women at the counters in these photoprinting chains so rude and snobbish when they do not even know how to load a camera properly?

Why are the girls always at the counter and the men always doing the ‘technical’ work in the glass walled room with the printing machines?

To be continued....

something light for starters

this is to be read as a rock and roll song... :)

Sitting around

I’m sitting, just sitting

Watching the world go by.

Coz sometimes I don’t wanna be a part of it

I like the objectivity

Sometimes I can’t keep pace with it

Life’s too fast for me

But then, I sure don’t wanna be all alone

I need some company

That’s why I’m sitting, just sitting on the brink

Watching the world go by

I’m just sitting, just sitting

Watching the world go by...

Coz sometimes things seem too big to handle

Life is cold and calculative

Sometimes I feel like a dot in space

I think I need some perspective

There’s no place to go, but round and round

I have no alternative

That’s why I’m sitting, just sitting up here

Watching the world go by

I’m just sitting, just sitting

Watching the world go by

Coz sometimes I feel I’m losing focus

I see my life as a blur

Sometimes I feel things should be bold and different

Why is everything so familiar?

But they say, it’s gotta be here and it’s gotta be now

Life is so particular

That’s why I’m sitting, just sitting and rebelling

Watching the world go by

I’m just sitting, just sitting

Watching the world go by...

kickstart

hello,

i have no idea why my blog is called rage of reason. i just took up Sartre's Age of Reason and put it back down. maybe that's why...

i read this somewhere and i like to think applies to me:
''i can either have the self
or i can have consistent behaviour.
i cannot have both.''

that might do as an introduction right now. the rest will be pretty evident through my mutually contradictory views and wonderings.

so, here i am, all new and wide-eyed in the world of blogging. all i know is i can write anything here and maybe some people will come to read me. that's pretty exciting.

so here goes...