Village Trips

Once in a blue moon the job throws up something that leads to interesting experiences. Something similar happened the previous week. Almost three months into the new posting I was pretty settled with the routine in the office. I would wake up, get on with my routine of reading and writing until ten in the morning after which I would take the few steps to cross the road to the office. At the office I would sit most of the time doing almost nothing. After nearly nine years of sitting cooped up in an office I thought the new posting would take me to the fields. I happen to be posted to a training institution where I was supposed to train others, farmers mostly. However I was doing nothing of the sort and instead I got trained twice. In short, I was comfortably ensconced in my little routine until last week. I was told, no ordered, to stand in for an officer in a distant place. Not surprisingly I was reluctant to go. But I had no choice.

Not only was the place very far away, the other thing was that I had to travel to three villages daily for five days. I wasn’t given any vehicle or support and not even told what I was supposed to do. I only knew that I have to have meetings with farmers in fifteen villages. A couple of days ago I had addressed nearly hundred farmers in three villages but there I had others to support me. Here in the new assignment I was to do a solo job of it. It seemed a daunting task in every way. I decided to travel to the place from Hyderabad which was nearer. I took my bike to a roadside town on the state highway, from where I traveled to this place I will call MG. From MG I planned to visit three villages every day for five days. I had only one lady assistant, a newly recruited person to assist me.

On the first day I traveled on my bike for seventy five kilometers to MG and from there deep into the rural hinterland. It turned out to be very unlike the other village. To begin with the entire area was hilly, with winding roads, fields on either side. The hillocks were green with trees, the paddy, cotton, jowar fields were green. It was greenery everywhere. In the mild sunlight of wintry late afternoons the grassy landscape looked quite beautiful. It was another time when I wished I had a camera better than the one I carried. Nevertheless I clicked the accompanying pictures. In a couple of villages I was told one could find deer in the wilderness. There were also herds of wild boar that destroyed the crops. I once saw a peacock on a hillock.

So it went. Every morning I would travel in a bus upto the roadside town where I parked my bike. I would go on the bike to MG from where I would go to the villages. The meetings were a challenge. The farmers are not so naïve as everyone thinks they are. One slip and you’re exposed so one has to be very careful about what one talks. I was able to conduct meetings without any trouble. It wasn’t even boring because one village was not like the other. I learnt new things and an interesting episode I plan to write for ‘Open Page’ in The Hindu soon. I would have lunch in a farmer’s house in the bigger villages or else I would return to MG for lunch. So for five days I was touring villages, meeting farmers, talking to them and learning new things myself. It was tiring no doubt but it also was a rewarding experience in the end.