After a couple of days during which we were only informally chatting with people, and mostly walking all around Ranikhet, this was the day we were supposed to go meet people working for Grassroots.

A description of the Grassroots office would be incomplete without a mention of the steps that lead you there. Located near the famous Khalika temple, you step off the road and follow a flight of stairs to the office and pickle factory. On your way down you might not really notice that you’re climbing down over a hundred steps, what with a clear view of the valley below  threatening to unfold, but when you’ve got to climb up, you’ll notice the steps. Every single one of them. Not one’ll pass that you wouldnt stand on, sweating and panting. Makes it rather difficult to leave the snug Grassroots office!

But that came later in the day. To start with, we landed up at the office in time for the Monday morning gathering. Grassroots has people working on various projects in several far flung areas, so Monday is the day everyone makes it a point to report to the office. Before we knew it, we were sitting in a large group of Grassroots workers who began telling us about the work they were doing.

In a freewheeling, interesting conversation that lasted till lunch, we learnt not just about how the infiltration wells and biogas plants were helping individual families, but also how they were helping change the society itself. An example, hilariously narrated by the irrepressible Mr Bhandari was about how in Bengal, people give their daughter’s hand in marriage to a family that has its own pond, so their supply of fishes was never a problem. Similarly, he said in water starved Ranikhet, they were trying to get people to associate infiltration wells or any other effort to conserve/ensure a supply of water with a mark of respect.

Following the chat, we had a heavy lunch, followed by the interminable climb back up the steps. We then headed on a field trip to see some of the projects Grassroots had implemented in the nearby villages. We first headed to a house that had installed a biogas plant. The women spoke about how they now no longer had to walk long distances to collect firewood, and the ease of use of the clean fuel.

We then headed to a naula, or the local water source. At the naula, we found several women waiting for the one bucket of water allotted their family for the day. Despite the water crisis, they were cheerful, and offered us a drink of water from their share. After they had filled their buckets, they headed and turned to leave, but not before inviting us to their house, an offer we took up to talk to them a little more.

We spent some time at their house chatting about various local problems, and how Grassroots was helping them tackle most of them, except the problem of their naughty kid, who was finally subdued by convincing him that Rashmi’s bag was in fact used to carry off kids!

Following this, we headed to the town of Majkhali, where we met Geeta didi, a widow who runs a self help group for about a dozen women. Here we got our first taste of how the Kumaoni women were breaking age old barriers in becoming independent and going out to work. Most of them are usually found knitting even while participating in the SHG’s meetings, and we were told they do so even when they head out to gather firewood- wood on their head, knitting, as they walked through the forests, with a traditional song on their lips.

After this meeting, we headed back to our homestay, a walk of a few kilometres, along which we were routinely overtaken by people who left Majkhali a long time after us! We landed up at the place though, and hit the sack hard, at the end of an engaging and exhausting day.