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Personal Travel Log of my 3rd Shodh Yatra in Wardha, Maharashtra in May 2013
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Despite millions being spent on women welfare and development, the knowledge and creativity of
India’s women remain unearthed and often ignored in India’s hinterland. A group of thirty people has set
out to find those creative women during SRISTI’s 31st Shodh Yatra in Wardha, Maharashtra from 5th to
1 2 t h M a y , 2 0 1 3 .
A Personal Journey Log by Marianne Esders
www.sristi.org
THE SWELLING
ROAR OF SILENT
TIGERS
Shodh Yatra
is a journey
for the search of knowledge,
creativity and innovation
at grassroots.
Shodh Yatra
is an attempt to reach out
to the remotest parts of the country
with a firm belief
that hardship and challenges
of natural surroundings
are the prime motivators
of creativity and innovation.
www.sristi.org
31st Shodh Yatra, Wardha, Maharashtra
Plastic bags pop up and down the river’s surface. The
flowers of puja chains float here and there between
bottles, trash and dirt. Closeby, the steps of a temple
scale the embankment and further down, some bores
appease their thirst. Quickly we approach the blue
painted walls of the Ashram on the other side of the
river. We are running behind.
I am told in the Ashram lives a lady of 85, who has
spent many years of her life walking. Walking through
the states of India to share Gandhi Ji’s thoughts. Upon
arrival, we learn that she has fallen ill. Only very few of
us may visit her. But first we are asked to sit and listen
to the welcoming words of another elderly woman.
Some of us buy the Ashram’s letters. I also give some
money but do not take the paper. I want to travel light
and would not be able to read the Indian script, which is
still completely alien to me.
After a few minutes, a second elderly woman
approaches, and soon a third. Their hair is cut short and
one of them has shaved her head. Though we don’t
know much about him, we pay our tribute to the grave
of the Ashram’s founder and listen to the words of the
ladies. Finally, a small woman joins us. It seems the
sight of a group of walking shodh yatris makes her feel
stronger. Some illnesses need a cure for the soul. She
shares Gandhi Ji’s message and the Professor
translates into English for me. Except for the
yatris I don’t see any men or younger people around.
Is nobody interested in Gandhi Ji’s ideas any longer?
The women are strong in their preaching. The
atmosphere reminds me of that created by the nuns in
the catholic girl school that I attended when I was
younger. Something sacred floating in the air, little
flower beds here and there, discipline, chastity and
something sublime that I can’t easily nail down in
words. Maybe some form of passion soaked with years
of life.
When I get up from my knees I discover Jesus nailed
on a cross hanging above a small hindu shrine. I refrain
myself from taking a picture. It is all the same, I think
and wonder about the meaning of life. A few steps
further, a naked godess stretches out on the walls of a
temple room. It is time for us to leave and the women
ask me to take the other yatris with me to the Ashram’s
gate. I smile at how naturally they approach me to lead
out the group. So different from the patriarchal India
that I have experienced in many other places.
On the way back over the river, I hear the Professor
speak about what friendship is not. But what is
friendship? He says, it is making another person
become better. I think it is also accepting another
person exactly the way he or she is or would that be
love.
A RESOLUTION FOR DAILY MEDITATION
The yatra begins with a day at Sewagram Ashram nearby Wardha and the resolution for daily meditation. Reflecting on it
now, I kind of followed this resolution, though not always by sitting in silence. For some yatris it feels as if Gandhi Ji’s spirit
is still strongly present in the Sewagram compound. I cannot sense it. But the place is quiet and calming. I leave my
signature in the Visitors Book before we slowly start our walk. Around 100 kilometres ahead.
The coming days we will walk over fields and through forests. I’ll see some Nilgai in a dried riverbed and a little lake not
far off the road will invite me to wade right into it, without hesitation and fully dressed. The water will cool my body,
thoughts and sun-burnt skin. Every day, I will walk myself stronger and at one point feel the wish to walk a million miles
more. It is pure joy to be outside, far away from the office desk, though the temperatures are unbelievably high, around 48
degree Celsius.
During the walk, I don’t speak much and try to stick mostly to those who are silent, say little or do not speak my language.
For some reason discussing about this or that gets to my nerves and is somehting that I would rather avoid than spilling
out a never ending flow of words. I don’t feel like explaining why I am in India, where I come from, what my plans are, and
where I will go. To be honest, I do not know, and time has taught me that too tightly planned paths are illusionary; there
are always unforseen twists. I just walk and see, take a right turn here, a left turn there, and sometimes, I take rest or walk
a little back when I realise the path leads to a place where I do not want to go.
www.sristi.org
1
31st Shodh Yatra, Wardha, Maharashtra
THE HARDSHIPS OF LIFE
In the early morning light, a mother kneels over her
archaic brick making tools to earn the money she needs
to send her children to school. Everything worth its
effort must emerge from the hardships of life. But must
it be this hard? Why do the brick makers we meet on
our journey not use more advanced machinery?
The dusty air and muddy clay have turned the woman’s
clothes and hands into the same colour as the earth
under her muddy feet. Her face is veiled, her eyes wide
awake. I come closer to see what is going on but only
understand fractions since my Hindi is still very bad.
Later someone tells me that her daughter studies at
medical college.
The woman is not shy. She is on Facebook, she says,
and the Professor is thrilled. I wonder why she would
not be, mobile technology is everywhere. What does
she think about 30 shodh yatris walking by? What do I
think about 30 shodh yatris walking by? I take a picture
of her with son. He spends his summer holidays
working with his mother. I think about the project for the
elimination of child labour1 that we carry out at SRISTI.
But before I am able to ask questions, the group has
started walking again.
One thing I told myself before going on this walk was
not to fall behind. Nothing makes it harder to keep the
spirits high than falling behind a group that marches
ahead. In the early morning hours the heat is still
bearable but throughout the day the sun will turn into a
burning fireball, the asphalt will eat the bottom of my
shoes.
2
1 Woman working at a brick making site in Wardha,
Maharashtra
2 Time for a little rest and chat with those who labour hard
every day
My shoes have served me well in the
two preceding shodh yatras. Probably
this time they will fall apart. I know that
the heat of Wardha will get to my brain,
drain more water out of my body than one
can take in. But so far, acidity has not set in
and I am doing my best to prevent it. Wardha is the
region in India where many farmers have committed
suicide to bring their families out of debt. In the morning
light it looks peaceful and like any other part of the
country.
Some water buffaloes pass by in a stoic trot.
1 www. http://www.sristi.org/cms/competition-to-find-innovative-idea-for-eliminate-child-labour
www.sristi.org
After two days we find our rhythm, start early and
take rest when the midst of the day brings too
much heat. Before noon, we hold three village
meetings, after noon another three or four. I am
almost never hungry. The food is cooked very
spicy and it is just too hot for me to eat much.
Sleeping outside is better than under a roof. With
so many stars, I quickly fall asleep in the cooling
night air. When waking up on the second morning,
I feel all my muscles and bones. The third day, I
feel my sunburnt shoulder and my left hip. The
fourth day, I feel no more pain. The fear that I won’t
make it declines with every step and I become
more confident in the belief that I can do it, that my
body can take it, the walk, the food, unfiltered
water, and the incredible heat. No need to sit in a
car or to visit a doctor as I had to in the preceding
shodh yatras. With every passing day, I walk better
in the heat of Maharashtra.
Walking over dry fields in Wardha, Maharashtra
31st Shodh Yatra, Wardha, Maharashtra
PAINTED COTTON FLOWERS
Dusk is approaching when we reach Khairi. It is
situated on a hill and its entrance is framed by a
beautiful tree. I wished we could spend the entire night
under this tree. We stay some time with the villagers
and visit the house of a deaf and mute girl. She has
decorated her room with dried and colourfully painted
cotton flowers. The girl’s eyes and smile are warm and
welcoming and I realise that her expressive way of
communication makes it easier for me to understand
her signs than the foreign languages that surround me
every day.
Besides the girl’s efforts to bring beauty to her room, we
have not come across many signs of creativity in the
region. Her door steps are ornated with bangles. Nitin
calls them half-broken and the professor rebukes him
for his choice of words. Women don’t like the word
broken - they are partitioned bangles, he points out.
After visiting her house, we sally quickly. Though it is
dark by now, we have one more village to reach. The
path meanders downhill. We are at the edge of a
wildlife reservoir. It is the first time the yatris start
speaking about tigers. We try to stay close together
and torches come in handy now.
This night we spend in the huge schoolyard of
Saldhara. While the men wash off the walk’s heat at the
yard’s water tap, the villagers listen to our nightly
presentation. As a woman, I have to find some hoarding
at the far end of the school building behind which I can
hide in the dark to wash my face and feet. Right now I
would not mind taking a bath in the open as the men do.
But I should not forget that I am in India and I do not
want to cause a riot.
I do not like this schoolyard. Maybe it is better than the
crossroad on which we spent the other night where
those sleeping at the outer edges were scared to lose
their lives to cars rolling over their heads – a fence of
white plastic chairs could only serve as slight protection.
But tonight’s schoolyard is situated a little far off the
village and I feel it could be any schoolyard anywhere in
the world.
How will we learn more about the people of this region if
we stay outside their village? Should we not meet, eat
and sleep closer to their homes? Throughout the shodh
yatra we enter many schools, some of them lifeless,
others beautifully decorated, but how many visits do we
pay to the people living here, how many houses do we
see from inside? How close do we really get to the
people’s lives, worries and hopes?
Jahangir Shaikh is the hero of our yatra and a “hit” with all
villagers. In Belgav he shows his modified scooter which
was featured in the Bollywood movie “Three Idiots” to the
l o c a l k i d s .
www.sristi.org
The following morning I start a hungry walk. I have
grown sick of the waste we leave behind. We make
use of plastic cups and plates layered with aluminium
foil though we have brought our own reusable cups
and plates. I am sick of throwing waste into nature. But
my plate is somewhere in my bag under many other
bags at the bottom of the truck. I remain hungry.
RECIPE COMPETITIONS
Some village meetings take place without women,
though we have called them for recipe competitions. It
is not always easy to convince the women to join and
many times, they remain in their houses. But in
Parsodi, the presence of women is overwhelmingly
strong. The Panchayat is a woman herself and has
mobilised the others from five surrounding villages. I
wished this would happen more often. They have
cooked a vast variety of dishes from local plants and
traditional recipes. This time, we taste a lot, learn a lot
m o r e a n d h a v e m a n y a w a r d s t o g i v e
During this yatra only few of us think about reusing
their own plates and cups and many just throw the
trash into the fields without thinking twice. Wind blows
the foil into all directions. I think about how it soon will
affect the cattle and birds. It takes more than double
our lifetime until a piece of plastic is decomposed.
Burning it does not make it better.
“How long have you been that green”, one yatri asks. “I
am not that green”, I respond, “just, I was raised not to
throw trash into nature.” One of the boys asks the
locals for a bag and silently collects what the others
have dropped carelessly. Nobody thanks him for it. But
I see in his face that he feels better about himself.
1 Local dish winning the 1st Prize in a recipe
competition
2 Women presenting their dish varieties made from
local plants
2
1
31st Shodh Yatra, Wardha, Maharashtra
out to the women. In another village, however, I
cannot find a single girl child. Neither at the meeting
nor while walking through the streets. I remember a
village girl speaking up on the second day of our
walk in Belgav. She wanted girl child abortions to be
persecuted. After her speech, a boy got up and
added that girls should be allowed to sit on the back
of a boy’s bicycle without being teased by others.
Another boy told us that he would like to see a
system in place that prevents parents from taking
away their children’s scholarships without having
On another day, two people from France join us for a
few hours. The sun burns their skin and before I find
out why they have come, they have already left and
taken two yatris with them. Sometimes people decide
to drop by for a while or to drop out. Maybe they could
not bear the heat.
In almost every village, children welcome us with
overwhelming smiles, curiosity and creative ideas.
They always have questions, many times too difficult
for us to answer.
to consult them first. We award these kids for their
outspoken sense of fairness. Maybe the future
generation has already internalised what many others
are still struggling to understand.
In Khervada, we are received with tribal music.
Villagers play goat drums and flutes and the sounds
animate a local boy to perform a dance for us. After
lunch, we visit a cheerful centenarian. She is almost
deaf but her mind is sharp and humorous. In Parsodi,
we find a living knowledge register, a healer who has
extensive knowledge about the local plants. And then,
unexpectedly, a man approaches us holding a pamphlet
of the Honey Bee Network in his hands that he had
collected nine years before our visit. He says, he always
wanted to come to Ahmedabad but never made the long
journey. We are touched and happy to meet him.
Kinhala reveals a beautiful but neglected villa speaking
of times that were more prosperous. Along with a few
others, I am invited to enter and in the dusty attic, the
professor finds a few tattered looking diaries containing
poetry and scribbled philosophical reflections. It feels
as if we have found a real treasure. The attic’s doors
hold beautifully stained glass engraved with flowers.
Many of the windows have already shattered and
instead potatoe bags flutter in the warm desert wind.
But some of the colours have remained to rejoice our
hearts.
Centenarian lady
www.sristi.org
31st Shodh Yatra, Wardha, Maharashtra
FAIRY TALES AND TIGERS
What worth is the taste of water without a desert on
the tongue. A white jungle tree embracing a dark door
to unknown lands – fairy tales in my mind – the next
moment, I think of tigers spurting downhill, catching one
of us out of the steep path that we have to take, without
escape. We are laughing at the thought of it. I take a
p i c t u r e . S o m e o n e
takes a picture of me taking a picture. “Hurry, hurry,
d u s k
brings bears, bores and tigers!” On top of the hill heavy
breaths, I take a sip and share my water, a little for
everyone except for the last who might have needed it
most. I do not ask. I only wonder. It seems, nobody else
notices it. Another white tree in the midst of darkness. I
take a picture and wonder what will I do with it. I don’t
even know what kind of tree it is. But it is beautiful. The
curly roots spread through the ground, now and then
revealing their white skin. Trees without leaves, the
ground covered with mazes in decay. I pick up one of
the giant leaves and am stunned by the size and
beauty of it. Do we ever take time to notice. “Hurry,
hurry, we have to hurry!” I throw it back to the ground
and speed up my steps.www.sristi.org
Are the people I walk with different from those I have
walked with before? Some of them I have met on the
earlier two walks. In the morning hours, something
strange had happened. I had pushed myself into a state
of horror by the sight of a tormented cow surrounded by
eighty creatures that were barely skin and bones. I
could not swallow my food and shared with one of
them, a very skinny one, roaming around, trying to eat
my shirt. I realised I would not hesitate to kill the half
dead cow for the sake of relieving it. Holy cow, left on
the street dying in gleaming heat because of a fractured
bone. This is customary, I was told. Unquestionable?
I s n ’ t t h i s o n l y a m o r e s a d i s t w a y o f
killing without taking responsibility? Some people that we
have met on our way have thanked us for coming into
this neglected, drought prone area. Others have watched
us with sceptical eyes. But then, how far does our
responsibility go, towards the people, animals and spirits
t h a t w e v i s i t ? I t h i n k
31st Shodh Yatra, Wardha, Maharashtra
Leftovers, maybe of a tiger’s meal
of the cowshed that we saw at Sewagram Ashram a
few days back. Maltiben had given each cow a name
and each animal listened to its name when it was
called by it. I shed a tear and walk away in sadness
and anger. Should I have stayed to sit next to the
animal watching it die?
“Are you still thinking of it?”, asks someone a kilometre
later. Yes. And I am going to dream of it. Because it
places me before a huge wall of puzzles that I cannot
easily solve. “Well, we tried to help, heave it into the
shade of a large tree. Isn’t that enough, did we not do
our duty, it seems I am still on the insensitive side.” I
did not know there were sides when it comes to
compassion. But I am here to discover. Even the
different sides of pity. Three monkeys sit on my
shoulder, I lower my head and for the time being
decide to consort with the group of silent tigers
watching us from the forest.
In the evening, during a discussion round, I cannot
hold back and express my feelings, in tears.
Momentarily, I wonder whether I am insane to cry in
front of the entire group, but then, it is my true feeling
about how we shodh yatris did just walk away from a
tormented animal.
The night we spend in a fenced schoolyard. Biting
bugs wake me from time to time. At one point I find
m y s e l f a t
the edge of the group. The others must have shifted
their sleeping places further to the middle. But they left
t h e i r
sleeping mats behind. Confused I sit up to observe my
surroundings and see the light of a torch flying over the
path downhill to the village well. Two nightly shades
move on the giant water tank. What are they doing up
there? I am so tired, I fall asleep again. Around three,
the village dogs start barking firercly. Maybe a tiger is
close. How to fight a tiger with bare hands? The
schoolyard light is burning. The bugs are still biting. I
wonder why I am not really scared before I already fall
back asleep. With early dawn, I leave for the train
station to catch the train back to Ahmedabad. I have to
leave early. Just before those staying behind hear the
roaring tiger. Too bad I missed it.
Back in Ahmedabad, I come to know that a decision
was made. A traditional healer was found. Maltiben, the
herder of the Sewagram Ashram met the herder of all
those less fortunate cows for each other’s consultation.
And maybe even the truck that carried innovative
farming utilities from village to village alongside our walk
was utilised to transport the dying cow away from
certain death in the biting sun. At this point of time, I do
not dare to ask further questions.
What do I take away from this shodh yatra. Not the sight
of beautiful landscape and people I experienced in
Manipur. Not the fascination I carried away from Madra
Pradesh, when I had just arrived in India and everything
was new. Maybe this time I have grown stonger,
physically, mentally. There is still a lot to reflect on.
Maybe I learnt that our prejudices influence the
questions we ask and the answers that we seek, as Anil
Gupta wrote in a paper in 1988. Maybe there are too
few women participating in shodh yatras to actually
come closer to the life and creativity of village women
and girls in India. But there is always hope.
Marianne Esders, May 2013www.sristi.org
All my gratitude and love goes to SRISTI, NIF,
the Honey Bee Network and its members, my
most wonderful colleagues, who have become
my brothers, sisters, advisers, and invaluable
helpers in many situations during the three
Shodh Yatras that I was allowed to join and
throughout my first year in India. Thanks to
them, I survived drinking ground water from
village wells and many other stressful
situations. Maybe I have become a little bit
more Indian throughout the process. For sure, I
have grown much stronger and for sure I have
found some very good friends.
Society for Research and Initiatives for Sustainable Technologies and Institutions
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