The Hindu Business Line : Along the road less travelled...

"AJI kay anli (Grandma, what have you brought for me)," the 8-year-old girl shouted in Marathi as the ST bus stopped at Kandivili on the Western express highway. The nearly 70-year-old, bulky grandmother in the traditional brown navvari sari, helped by the conductor, took her time to climb down from the ST bus. She unwound a chikki packet from her waist and handed it to her granddaughter, who hugged her in glee while the conductor unloaded four tightly wound plastic bags on the road.

The child, her mother and the old woman got busy talking at the bus stop as the conductor shut the door, blew the whistle and the bus left for Borivili.

The old lady had boarded the ST bus at Chiplun in the morning, took a window seat and nodded off as the seven-hour-long journey started. She broke out of her nap when the bus halted at ST bus stations and went back to sleep as the vehicle resumed its noisy journey up the Konkan coast towards Mumbai.

One watched the lady from a few seats away. Her face had washed off the lines of years of living by the laws of an unequal village society. No one could now set rules for her nor did she desire to lay down the terms of living for others. Grace had touched her sweet face.

ST buses in Maharashtra offer a variety of joy though the engineers who have designed the interiors might have done it for humans without limbs. The green cushioned seats are narrow and bunched together, leaving little space for one's legs or arms.

The drivers, conductors and passengers are not in haste; travellers are given time to get in and out of the buses and the bus never starts till the door is banged shut and the conductor rings the bell and blows on the whistle.

One dropped out at Borivili and landed into the evening busy hour of Mumbai to be carried home in one swift rush. As the Konkan trains were booked, Varad suggested an ST ride from Mumbai Central at 11.30 p.m. which took us to Chiplun at around 6.30 in the morning. The towns and villages along the Konkan coast are clean, unlike those in other parts of Maharashtra such as Amravati, Nasik, Kolhapaur and Solapur. The Chiplun ST station and Chiplun town are neat.

Vivek Bendre, Varad Giri and oneself walked a few minutes to land at Babar's residence for a short break as it was to be our base camp.

For a day we roamed Chiplun, and Babar informed us that there were at least 3,000 empty apartments with the Enron power plant lying shut. Today, one sq. ft of built-up area in Chiplun costs about Rs 500 and business is not brisk.

"Anywhere in Konkan the public is peaceful like the surroundings. A short chat and the auto drivers settle the dispute when they occasionally bang into each other. That is not the case in Kolhapur where there could be a riot. The Konkanis sing their language," explained Varad Giri as we walked along.

The next day with Vishwas Dattatray Katdare (Bhau), we took a bus to Khed and then on to Mandangad and Velas village beside the Arabian Sea — a distance of about 130 km. At Khed one had pav-misal, sugared tea and the early morning copy of The Indian Express, with Sania Mirza taking the front pages. We seem to be making much of Sania Mirza and Karthikeyan. "If you think Karthikeyan is anything close to Schumacher, forget it," my friend Sampathkumar told me in Mumbai.

Sania does not have a strong serve nor a feisty backhand or forehand and yet she is being written up as a world-beater. Still in her teens, the Russian lady Maria Sharapova has won the Wimbledon while Sania has not done anything of note on tennis lawns to merit the media hype.

The Konkan public does not much care for the incidentals of Indian sports. Their lives are quietly spent in wadis spread over a few acres, reminding one of Kerala.

A thin strip of road, barely able to take an auto, runs along the tiled, aged wooden Konkan homes. Rectangular mud floors form the front yards while coconut, supari, pepper, cashew and mango trees crowd out the sunlight in the backyards. One watched women split supari nuts on steel knives and there is a complaint over prices crashing.

Mostly we wriggled through the wadis to reach the sea at Velas and Anjarla. The two sea fronts have no fishing communities, leaving the beaches free and untenanted.

A strong sun heats up the soft spread of sand while the nights turn the beach cold, making walking an unpleasant chore. "The way these villages are arranged there is no way hi-fi tourism can come in. The wadis will be eaten up if the government thinks of developing tourism by widening the thin stretches of country roads and no wadi owner will agree," says Varad. Perhaps, Konkan will not allow itself to be an empty Coke bottle on the global shelf.

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