Despite the fact that pine forests are very pretty, the truth is they are an ecological disaster.  During our meetings with the Kumaoni people, they were quite vehement about the nuisance these trees were.  Some wanted to set fire to the forests, the others cut them down, and a small minority pull them out with their bare hands! Pine is easily combustible and the increase in forest fires in the states has been attributed to this. Ironically, the people are not allowed to use pinewood as fuel because most pine …

On Sunday, after the others left for Rishikesh, I was chatting with a friend from college. He’d heard about Grassroutes (I’ll find out how!) and was quite impressed with the opportunity the whole Grassroutes experience offered.
Out of the blue he asked me if I was interested in a trip in an ambulance.
He was referring to the 108 service that the EMRI (Emergency Medicine Research Institute) (www.emri.in) runs across 10 states in India. “The impact they’ve had in Uttarakhand is huge”, he said. He happened to know the person in …

After the others left, I spent sometime wondering what to do. I needed to reach Aarohi, another NGO on the 1st of July, and I’d three days to kill. I thought I’d go to Almora, but our host Anandji said I’d like Kausani.
I spent more than 2 nauseating hours in the back of three different jeeps to get there, but it was worth it. Kausani is a small quiet town with a narrow street lined by shops, many hotels and loads of greenery. I was staying in a nice …

I was finally back from Calcutta ! The heat had taken its toll on me - throat infection,fever. So, the day started with me meeting these guys at the Baruipur station.This was my second field trip and I was visibly excited. I had missed on the other 2 because of my illness :(.  We were to go to Mograhat, to cover the “Adarini” project. This project is one year old and is aimed at eradicating child marriages from this block which consists of 14 Gram Panchayats in next 5 years.We …

After the absolutely fabulous program at Malay Mukherjee’s place (more about this later) and having pissed off the fathers and nuns at Dashari (more about this later too), I woke up late to the sound of one of the nuns knocking at my door. She had kept breakfast for us even at 9.30 in the morning. Brush. Chana. Bread. Tea. Bath. Nishtha at 11am. Shruti was unwell and so was at home in Calcutta. Tapoti di, Phani and I thus set off for Umarpota, a small village which took us …

Just before our work day got over, we stopped at a small stall to have brinjal pakoras and I happened to mention to Mr.Malay Mukherjee that we were lookinhg forward to seeing some bengaliculture while we were there. And he infact invited us to a rehearsal which was to happen in his house that day! Boy were we lucky!
Only Shruti was unwell so we had to see if she d be well enough to go. When we returned to dishari she had gone to the doctor but since she was …

Shruti had fallen ill, so she had to stay back at Dishari (our accommodation). I and shailee left to meet our escort at Nishtha. Fortunately we found him on the way itself. We were also accompanied by Mr.Moloy Mukherjee. He documents various projects for Nishtha and develops posters and pamphlets for them. Our first visit was to two schools in Baruipur, where Nishtha had taken up its Sanitation project. As part of the project they were building toilets in schools. They had also started a new project under the umbrella …

19th June
It was a fun day, we spent the entire day at the day boarding school. We had also finalised the projects we would be helping NISHTHA with. So, we quickly discussed our ideas and suggestions with Parshuram da and other teachers, and went to try the same in a class. We thought it would be helpful to teach pictorially and with lot of actions, as much as it was possible. We made the standard 6 kids enact the chapter “My family”. We picked up a girl and asked others …

18th June, 2009
We started early in the morning for Baruipur. NISHTHA had booked a guest house for us in Dhakuria, in south Calcutta. We were to drop our stuff there and take a local train to Baruipur. The guest house (Sona Guest house) was a typical city guest house mostly used by corporate houses for their clients/ employees - which in other words means air conditioners/ television sets in all the rooms. Not only was this place a little too far from Baruipur for daily travel, but a city guest …

“Hum pahadi log hai”, says bua-ji as she beats her chest with her fists when talking about the difficulties of mountain communities.

It’s true, the pahadi log are a tough people. They survive no matter what.
The mountains offer few sources of income: agriculture and the army. However, as agriculture is weather-dependent, and as water is always an issue in the mountains, the occupation is hardly lucrative. There are stretches of land that are largely undeveloped due to forest area protected by the Forest Department. So no large industries are flourishing that …