The Hindu Business Line : Uncared forever

The Chitale family in Indore resides in a well-provided bungalow with a large front yard bearing old trees, including sandalwood. Dinesh Kothari, Kishor Rithe and I had a long meeting with the elderly Ashok Chitale, a senior Supreme Court lawyer, on the way the Indore Municipal Corporation was doing away with the avenue trees to widen roads for absorbing the growth in car population.

Ashok Chitale is slowly recovering from a spinal surgery and would like to do his bit by taking up environment issues in the courts.

My friend Dinesh is a worried man as, if the butchery continues, Indore will have a shaved look — like it has happened to Amravati. We were joined by the pleasant Bharat Chitale, son of Ashok, equally keen to pitch in with Dinesh.

After the session, we assembled in the front yard to appreciate the flying in and out of about seven to eight common grey hornbills.

They seem to have made their homes atop the trees in the compound being driven out from their regular habitat, a casualty of the brown drive of the civic authorities. From there, we drove to the three-acre green campus of the lawyer and Gandhian, Anil Trivedi.

For years now, Anil Trivedi has allowed his patch of land in Indore to grow any way, never trying to trim it into a fashionable, well-kept lawn.

He lives in the greenery with his brothers and their family. Trivedi forms a part of the small but growing citizenry of Indore, disturbed over the manner the city was losing its face.

One read news reports of a long-term, multi-crore plan to alter Indore into a mega city on par with some of the big names in India.

Indore is an old number identified with the Holkar family and could over the next few years become a popular remix with malls and cemented roads. It was about 9 when the visits were done to take the five-hour drive to Sailana grasslands. Through the night, Dinesh drove his bashed up white Maruti Zen to arrive at Sailana at about two in the night. Sailana is less than a small town, and at two everything was shut.

Dinesh parked the car inside an empty petrol pump and the three of us settled down to sleep inside the car.

We kept the windows open to enjoy the cold, wet wind and that brought in the mosquitoes. We went on a small spin to drive away the nuisance, came back to the petrol pump and slept in the closed car. It is impossible for three to rest in a Maruti Zen and one kept awake waiting for the morning.

By about 5.30 the dawn made an uncertain entry, with a lighted candle in its hands, trying to breach the dark wetness.

Till about 12 noon, we roamed the Sailana grasslands watching the Lesser Florican, the singing bush lark rising vertically into the skies and calling from a height and a few crested larks. We had the first cup of coffee at the home of the organic farmer, Rajendra Singh Rathore.

Taking us to his farm, he informed us that he had partly done away with tilling and weeding the land and hoped the experiment would work.

"The rains this year have been good as of now," he told us. Rathore's home (Ph: 07414-266425) at Amba village has become a sure stop for us even as he tries hard to win markets for his organic harvest. At Nagpur, there is Sanjay Kashinath Sontakke (M: 9822469495) and his wife trying to promote organic food in the city.

Sontakke is aware of traders sprinting away with about 80 per cent of the price the farmer should get and wants to sell his products directly. "As long as the farming community is not in direct touch with the buyers, farming will be a business failure," he told us, while his wife offered fresh aam ras with the aam (mango) grown without chemicals and roti for lunch. Forty-year-old Sontakke's outfit goes by the name "Gramshri".

"Sometimes I feel like throwing up the whole experiment and take up a city job. But I am not being able to do it," he said.

In the early years of independence, co-operatives were set up to break the grip of traders.

The politicians took over the co-ops and today the farmgate price for a farmer keeps him poor. Every time there is a rise in the prices of farm goods, the government allows free imports and bans exports, hurting the farmer most. India interior has been left uncared forever; the Rathores and Sontakkes are a nuisance. It is the holy month of Shravan and one can see young and old men (one did not see any females) walking the roads with a bamboo pole slung across their shoulders.

Two small copper vessels with water are tied to the two ends of the bamboo.

Vijay Kumar Agarwal, a merchant selling vessels in Mruabadabad in Uttar Pradesh, halted at Omkareshwar to collect the waters of Narmada and was proceeding to the Mahakaleshwar temple at Ujjain.

"On Monday, we will offer Narmada's waters to Lord Shiva," he told us. He was walking the 140-mile separating Omkareshwar and Ujjain to fulfil a promise. "Aur bhagwan bhi mera ichha puri kar denge (And God will fulfil my wishes)," he said with a smile.

He walks the day and rests in the night, while there are others who never place the bamboo pole on the ground, walking non-stop.

That faith in the month of Shravan is bewitching; or as poet Arun Kolatkar writes, "And you are reduced/to so much small change."

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