As a kid, I was lucky to have had many oppurtunities to experience long road trips through the heart of southern india – the bustling commercialism of the Bangalore – Chennai route; the shimmering heat haze and inviting canals on the Coimbatore – Bangalore route; or the seemingly never-ending villages on a road journey through the length of Kerala.
In all these trips, certain things always seemed constant – weatherbeaten brick houses dwarfed by the big Indian sky; thier walls painted with fading advertisments for forgotten brands of cement and bicycles. Or fields of low bushes and trees, framed by low hills in the distance.
During this year’s annual vacation to India, I had the oppurtunity to relive one of of those road trips – on the new “Old Road” between Chennai and Bangalore.
So on a cool, overcast morning we set off from Chennai ; my dad and the family driver in the front seats of the family car and me in the backseat, staring out at the familiar yet different landscape. At first, it really did seem like everything had been transformed:
- The “Old Road”, once a bumpy two-lane blacktop, now a smooth four lane toll highway
- Sriperumbudur a sleepy little town more famous as the site of Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination; now bustling with activity as the site of large automobile factories
- Giant factories still under construction, hinting at even more astonishing development, slowly creeping out into the hinterland of Tamil Nadu.
It seemed like the quiet rural landscapes of my childhoold had disappeared. But as the hours ticked by, I began to see the familiar markers of my childhood:
It seems the ripples from India’s 15-odd years of liberalization has yet to spread beyond its cities – the rural landscapes of India remain much the way they were when Manmohan Singh first threw open the gates for FDI in India. The sentimental part of me takes comfort in the fact that the happy memories of my childhood are undiluted. Another part of me wonders when exactly will most of India actually feel the benefits of the “economic miracle” that educated, white collar India has ridden to new heights?
Working on this photograph gave me an oppurtunity to reflect on the remarkably full life that my grandmother has lead.
She married my grandfather aged 18 and was a mother before she turned 21. She suffered the heartbreak of watching a daughter die, but has seen the birth and marriage of her grand-daughter.
She has lived through seeing her uncles put in jail fighting for India’s independence, a World War, the Independence of India, an Emergency, the slow death of those grand dreams of a socialist paradise and the emergence of a new “liberal” India.
Coming from a generation where most women never left thier homes, she would travel the length and breadth of India, found a school, run a charity that educated the children of a 100 poverty-stricken families and still run a household that had 7 families and over 20 children under 1 roof.
She would conduct the marriages of nearly half the children who grew up under her care, and remain the person everyone turned to when it came to the marriage of those children’s own sons and daughters.
She suffered a massive heart attack that left her bed-ridden for months, but has through sheer determination, beat the predictions of every single doctor who has treated her.
Through good times and bad, in sickness and in health, she remains the anchor-stone for my extended family.
I salute her and can only say one thing in summary – They broke the mold when my grandmother was born.
An article by JD’s girlfriend on self-sustaining gardening, lead to a small discussion on JD’s blog about the fantasy fruits we’d like and any other tips that anyone could remember.
I mentioned that some vegetables and cereals can attract wild animals and in passing mentioned elephants and how they could demolish walls to get what they wanted.
To prevent that discussion from going too off-topic, here’s that story on elephants
Back in the ’80s, my dad worked for the tea division of Unilever India. We were staying in the estates where the tea was grown and these were typically in isolated hilly areas in South India.
Just before the rainy season started, the company would stock up on several hundred kilos of urea fertilizer. Unfortunately, this was also the time when the elephants went on their annual migration from one forest range to another and the estates along with the shed storing the fertilizer was right in the middle.
The elephants could smell the salt used in the fertilizer and would head straight for this shed. Shed locked and made of brick? No problem – just knock it down!
So by the next morning when everyone went back to work, there would be no shed left, only rubble, mostly empty bags of fertilizer and lots of elephant poo and elephant pee all over the place.
The company eventually moved the shed to another place far away from the elephant trail 