A Road Like This

  There is a road, after the fields and the huts.

The road was there even from the hamlets, but the sun had cracked its surface and the rain had dug its holes.

Between these hills, when you chance upon this road, it is a pleasant surprise.

After the stench of poverty and the dirt of the underprivileged, the road arrives.

By the sides of this road, there are mango trees and mango trees.

Call them mango giants. They join their heads at the top. Conspiring, wisely, I think.

Their branches, like outstretched hands link through the length of the road.

When the road happens to you, you enter a new world.

The thick burly trunks of these mango giants secure your fragile dreams.

The gentle green of the leaves ripple with your laughter.

Every step on the road, the stones beneath murmur about your presence.

When the sun peeks to see what is happening beneath the mango canopy,

It sees naughty children clinging by the branches.

At the start of the road, everything else stops.

Even those raindrops rest on the branches, not falling to the ground.

So protected is this road, that little tribal angels come here to rest.

The hills beyond, smile benign, a little sly about their well kept secret- this road.

Twenty trees on either sides look at this road, like the proud parents of a tarred track.

When the mangoes fall in summer, it awakens the naughty spirits of the nearby hamlets.

The wind that travels past this road carries its stories to the grandparent of the tribes.

The road is beautiful, the secret so starts. The stones still gleam from the goodness of the world.

Those outsiders who gaped at the black beat, so shaded and green, sniffed the scent of the ripe mangoes.

The road gets seasoned with every visit.

The mango trees grow older with every season.

Yet when you walk on this road, the stories don't intrude your solitude.

One this road, you are the regal traveller. The trees know this.

This is that path of silent bliss.

In hindsight (much much later than when the above passage was written):

There is immense breathtaking beauty in Orissa. Somehow the compelling stories of disappointments and tragedies are miraculously cured by the stoic hills and the inanimate trees. All sorrows are latched to the passing wind. And maybe that is why it rains so heavy over here. The wind had to unburden itself of the many stories of false promises and stolen happiness.

It is not exaggerated or exotic, it is a spirit that is deeply tribal. To forget all miseries and live for the joy of the day. And perhaps, my hundred days here have helped me silently latch on to that resilient aspect of living in the remote, uncared parts of the country.

For all the complaints about an unwilling government, almost like a step-parent ill-treating a child in its foster care, there are enough reports to show how ultimately these tribal people have won their battles. Or succumbed courageously in their fight, to just claim their rights. Yet, as the tolerant Mother Earth bears the weight of all the world's troubles, these people too dismiss their problems and toil everyday with an innocent smile. How, I wonder, how?

And why did I have to write about a road? There are moments in one's life, where everything seems like an afterthought, when everything is relegated either to the far past or the unseen future. This road is a place like that. It is a small patch on the road to Chandragiri from Kashipur, but it seems to be a patch from another world.

Where the pressing troubles of land displacement, poverty, unemployment, migration, food scarcity and disease seem like mere myths riddling the human world. Not unlike the crystal waters of the pristine Himalayas that are promised to us in a water bottle. This road just pushed all that I had known about Orissa to a distant place.

Incidents of violent repressions, noisy factories mining their wealth out of these gentle hills, deaths that claimed children who did not have much to eat, the terrorised victims of mosquitoes and Maoists, electricity projects that propelled thousands into darkness- all of the stories of the tribal people were kicked to the oblivion. For every time I passed by this road, the world seemed to be at peace. Just the silent coo of the bird and the gentle wind nudging the sides. And that, ultimately is what the tribal spirit actually is. Just to stay for the present, in the secure folds of Nature.