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I wrote this piece for Digantik.com in 2005.

Neither at the reasonably comfortable hotel room at Parvatipuram, nor when I am at the base camp of the team that takes a periodic trip to the hilly villages with the Mandal Revenue Officer some 18 kilometres from the town, does the realization of where we are going dawn on me. It is only when the jeeps can no longer cross the ditches and our path started getting ever more vertical that ‘the walk’ started. Our luggage, mostly containing edibles and filming equipment, was unloaded and the officials who we were travelling with led the way to what was to be the destination of our lifetime.

A fairly decent stretch of plains soon turned into a climb that soon had us on all fours. Beyond us the top of the mountain (which we were told, marked the first stop of our journey) looked remoter than ever. There were bushes on one side and a dangerously steep fall of nearly a thousand feet on the other side as we ascended. And yet, there was one in the entourage, the tribal guide, barefoot, relatively naked and loaded with a considerable share of our luggage, who jumped from rock to sharper rock with incredible ease. I wished we could be the same in our assessment of each other. I, marvelling at a hill dweller’s obvious ease in these conditions, and he, aware of my limitations, stopping every now and then to accommodate us to his faster pace.

The so called inaccessible area and this person who has obviously lived there all his life bring forth doubts regarding whether inaccessible is the word to describe it. Chodipilli Dhendu’s (the guide) everyday business with people in neighbouring villages requires him to cover long distances almost every day. He doesn’t know his age. Perhaps he doesn’t need to. It is only we from the ’surface’ who require to be reminded of the necessity of our continued existence with birthday celebrations. Dhendu’s existence, to me, justifies itself.

We see streams and jump from rock to rock to get to the other side. Our stoical guide’s feet on the other hand, take everything quietly. Further up, more civilisation comes into view. Women working in kitchen gardens (where were the kitchens?) jutting out of the forty-five degree slope, a child playing with a dog in the small fields beyond, clusters of four or five houses (making up an entire village) and more such unrealities.

Ages of walking and dozens of stops later we reach the point where it would all seem worth it. It is a village called Machikachintalavalasa. The entrance is marked by an electricity pole the cables to which we have followed all our way. There is an electricity bulb that hangs from it whose light is as much a source of surprise to the villagers as it is a source of relief to us. We are told that the village has had the poles and the cables for almost fifteen years now. The lights however, come to life whenever the village is being ‘visited’.

We sit down for a bit, uncomfortably aware of the villagers’ stares. Drawing upon our essential supply of edibles (biscuits and chips), we fill ourselves, reminding each other of the ‘food in these areas’.

Realisation of work to be done comes down upon us and we set out to divide the village into flat areas of interest. One decides upon ‘tribal culture’ and the other sticks to the ‘administration’. The opportunity of exploring a place as different from what I am used to call home is overpowering. ‘Story hunting’ however takes priority and the pocket notebook grows heavier by the second. Why the question “What are your problems?” comes to mind in spite of the enchanting locale soon goes beyond understanding.

Notes are taken, jotting down hamlet populations and household counts, with ‘quotes’ that are a must for the stories. In our explorations it is not the remoteness of the people that hinders us, but our own emotional baggage. Not that it is easy or even advisable to lose the baggage, but a certain amount of genuine and open minded probing into issues helps.

For those of us with a tribal already in our heads it was the hardest to come to terms with a real one. What clinched it for me however, was what one future journalist exclaimed to a friend when back, “There were actual tribals up there!”

Digantik, the student e-zine of dear old Asian College of Journalism, is still online. Scores of hard workers carry on the good work.

Posted on Thursday, January 26th, 2006 at 11:51 am and filed under life, people, personal, random.

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