The Hindu : States / Other States : Jarawa footage: Andaman administration to serve notice to TV channels

The Hindu : States / Other States : Jarawa footage: Andaman administration to serve notice to TV channels

from me and my diaries of sanjeev reddy ck

'As a child I was tough to handle..parents, teachers, neighbours and friends..everybody had problems with me..had countless complaints against me..

school for me was not boring but sitting inside a classroom was horror..

my school was in the fields..open wells to swim all day.. buffaloes and cattle to rare..paddy pools to play with mud..mango trees to climb..

was not allowed to write my half yearly exam in 5th standard for short of attendance...hardly attended the second half..after several requests from my appa and intense lobbying by favourite teacher Rajanagendra mestru i gottu write the final exam...

to this day m surprised how I managed to top in 5th standard..

now I understand perhaps, it would take not more dan a month to digest all dat is der in the pulpy books and vomit on the final papers..

schooling was funny....

but I enjoyed it all the way....' 

101MSDCF

Girls are Complex

She has a doubt
Often puts him in trouble, forcing him to clarify
Poor guy
He didn't know girls are complex.
Infact a friend of him inquired to help him out
What the doubt was all about
Nothing
Simplest of the simplest
"Honey I love YOU......
But why is that Jack, Raj, Kittu and Manu come into my wild dreams....
Every night I swear on you, every night"
His friend was bowled before he could lend a helping hand
And found his way out of the coffee hut!
What an istant coffee shot....!

Monalisa, Her Ancestral Rags and a Paradox

Generations perished
Generations came along
This one they say still will go on.

Mystery behind the rosy lips of Monalisa
Is it Davinci's paradox
Is it my mediocrity
Is it my untamed artist in me,
She tends to be the same under all clouds
Every time witness I the same smile.

Oh! where is the mystery and what is the mystery
Tell me could anyone around
How is it different
Different from this angle to that angle?

I am ignorant
Layman laid all his brains flattened
Under the million dubious feet of the errant critics.

I opine what I am taught to read
Beneath the mixture of colours brushed over the contracted canvas
What sense does it put through to debate on
What emotions and moods flutter through thee,
She tends to be the same under all clouds
Every time witness I the same smile.

Is it
Because it is The Davinci
The creator from the summit of creativity
A mystery sustains.

Lest,
There stands in her ancestral rags
Clinging on to her dusty dark skin
Inartistically designed
Yet fashionably presented for the besieged ramp,
A trillion dollar mysterious smile
behind the rosy lips of that anonymity,
Is the fun of riches
Is the gift of our democratic lineage.
She stands still
Beaten by the deceived unfaithful dreams
Beaten by the ungrateful blessings of Gods and Goddesses,
Still with a smile
A mysterious but not one on the contracted canvas.

Yes. A paradox
One on the centuries old contracted canvas
Other on the unknown amongst you and me in the mass.

My mother, your sister, her niece
She stands there
Gazing into the tunnel of vividness
Blinded for a while for centuries for hope
Sucked to the last drops of her restless veins
stretched her arms both
Still soothing
With a mysterious smile.
Woman thy name is not news to me
I am helpless
What a monster and an impotent I am
I am born to you
Why then I still say
I am what I am.

I am, he is, we are and they are
Flocks, flocks, flocks
One, two, three and hundred and one.

Journey doesn't adjourn out of persperation
From this end to that end
From canvas to one in the mass.

When would we break the jinx
Let ourselves boot the paradox of smiles,
Monalisa open herself up
Say then,
Enough is enough
Put me down on the floor
I am tired all these days hung on to the wall.

Davinci would run away
Having blurred her rosy lips locked up
In a mystery for all these days.

A paraodx lost.
A smile lost.
A thousand generations lost.

My untired mother
I am a while tired
Could you take me in your arms
Lay me on your laps
Let me take the last nap
Miles to go before dear,
Hug me hard I have a meeting in the Hell
Bless me I come back alive
With
Monalisa
Davinci
And a mysterious smile,
And a palanquin on the shoulders of His messengers.

In His presence
The judgemnt of the smiles
The judgement of her ancestral rags.

Language of Breaths in a Vacuum of Harmony (An Ode to Gauri)

Splashes of cupid’s light shades
Green, blue, yellow, red, white and many more
Brushed in woven hearts.

Early murky morning with the entry of dancing beams
Early monsoonal drizzling
As lilies, roses, jasmines, gulmohars
Swinging along the garden alley
Kept humming in an usual gaiety.

Drenched in her creamy shirt and denim blue jeans
Her glowing disposition beating the beauty of Venus…
Gauri’s late but barging entry into the classroom
Followed with her the waves of magical gravity.

While eyes touched eyes
Simple mathematics
Simplest chemical reaction
Dreams catapulted through the backstage musical chores.

Her jerky smile
Her spiky breezing hair
Her nimble forefingers
Her mesmerizing elegance…
A 360* perfection perfectly spread over the canvas.

Maiden sight
Maiden love.
Attraction caved into infatuation
A bountiful harvest of unseasoned illusions.

Maiden sight
Maiden love.
Those bygone days
Acute shortage of selfness nudged me and broke me often.
So less did I open up
So less did I dared to,
Amidst a crowd of Yankee accent tongues
Amidst a crowd of thick leather valets
Amidst a crowd of young intellectual freaks..

Where exactly did I fit in?
None!
So was I an odd one out_
May be an odd one out but hope still being with.

Attraction prevailed infatuation grew
And I grew too
None to someone
Someone to one
One to one of them
One of them to near one
Near one to dear one.

Infatuation prevailed liking grew
Gauri was into unscheduled dreams
An additional course to live with.
Autumn shed its leaves and rolled back
So did the sequence of seasons followed
Chilling, budding, scorching over the calendars.

Coffee in canteen
Once in a while walks on the busy campus
Moments sometime spent on the historical stone benches
An occasional ride together on her TVS Luna.

Like any other collegiate
I would do the sleep talk
‘I would die for her a million times’
Why didn’t I in those eight semesters of prime life
Ever did I open my heart and just say
‘My dear, I think I am in love with you and I mean it’
Why did I let my maiden love
Into the barren lands of solitude.

With all the purity
With all the courage
With all the humbleness

At last
True being to what I would wish to
‘My dear, I think I am in love with you and I mean it’
Over the phone on one fine day I think I spoke…..
Language of breaths in a vacuum of harmony
I smiled to myself
With my heart leapt into the skies of limitlessness,
‘I would marry if I could!’

Angels are angels
To this day still I carry my love close to my chest crystal clear
At peace and in tranquility.

'What if she hadn’t lost her last breath the sweetest breath!’
So early
So early to the lovely last lost call.

I love you
Still
My little cutie pie…

WHERE ARE THE VILAGEWALLAS IN INDIA TRAVELLING TO THESE DAYS? (Fortune the Bottom of the Pyramid in Travel Businesses in India)

"I recall my grandma, amma, appa, brothers, sisters and neighbors sitting in bullock carts four or five in a row depending upon the crowd, talking the mud roads to the nearest places of worship widely known and visited by the villagers and the neighborhood but less known and hardly visited by the outside world. Not far into the Indian rural history am I taking about but just a 20-25 years ago. Most of the temple complexes in around my village at a reach of 20-30km had their unique congregations seasonally which attracted thousands of villagers", says Mr. Jitu Bhai sitting in panshop at Kharedi, a small village in the eastern part of Panchamahals in Dahos district of Gujarat. People in villages like Kharedi thousands of them spread across the country used to travel mostly in bullock carts and some of the rich in tractors to fairs and festivals without missing most of the year. That invariably used to be the travelling experience which the villagers started with and majority of the older generation actually ended with.

A number pedagogs in the industry opine that most of the rural population in India has actually not travelled beyond their district or neighboring districts. Venkat Ram Reddy who works for India Railways in Pune gets emotional  in expressing his part of story, "I recall the excitement my parents had for the first time travelling to Tirupati a pilgrimage destination many of them would dream those days to go. A dream my mom realized after thirty seven years." They were fortunate to have that slice of spiritual accessibility realized but the story with most of their generation remained unrealized for many more years.

Travelling their own country in India was a dream unreachable/unrealistic for too a recent times. How unimaginable it looks for the globalised world where we talk about ‘global village’, ‘squeezed world’ etc. It is indeed the responsibility of the stakeholders in the industry to enable these village folks to see the world outside they are confined to.

‘Fortune the Bottom of the Pyramid’ as envisaged by late professor C K Prahlad should show way out for the entrepreneurs and the businesses to look towards this unventured market so far. Before we analyze the intricacies of taping rural market for tourism businesses, it is important to dig into the de facto status of today’s movement of people from villages.

Rural population in India has been migrating from villages to urban areas looking for opportunities. The growing stress on farmers for sustenance due to failure of seasonal crops, encroachment of cultivable lands, less demand for the agricultural produce and high risk combined with dreams of giving better life to their next generations. Reasons are a plenty for migrating some seasonal and some permanent but the fact remains fact, migration is at an ascending level. Infact this migration from rural to urban has added numbers to the domestic tourism. People from small hamlets are travelling to nearby tourist destinations for pilgrimage and leisure purposes but at a very slow pace. ‘I visited Srisailam last sivaratri with my wife and children and have planned to go to Sirdi the next season’, says Mr. Balaih a resident of Pochampalli a rural tourism destination in Andhra Pradesh. He says he is motivated by tourists who visit his village and has saved some money for his next trip. Not everyone is so lucky as him to afford to travel but a beginning is always welcome.

Mr. Binu Alakode who visited Kumbalangi an award winning rural tourist destination near cochin in Kerala opines that villagers here are economically benefited due to growing tourism activities and are also taking time off to travel to other parts of the country’, thanks to the recognition and coordinated development of the destination. Come winter many people across their beliefs are found to wear the Ayappa attire black on black in south India especially the rural folks for forty days and make a visit to Sabarimala in Kerala. Motivations have changed so do the villagers’ outlook.

The missing element in the process of these developments is sustainability. "In the middle of an ocean of green paddy fields all around my little village in itself was a spectacular piece of nature’s grace two decades back. Today it pains to witness the missing paddy fields amidst human habitation." shares with Miss. Rwihali Brahma, a travel executuve working with Askon Tours and Travels who hails from a vilage in Assam. So is the case of millions of destinations around the world. Their villages apart atleast their dreams be fulfilled!

Onus also lies with the governments to help in not only the sustainability of the rural destinations but also the rural folks. One of the best ways to sustain the rural folks is to help them travel, support them to see India which they are equally entitled to. One of the revolutionary initiations in this line has been taken by IRCTC by launching its ‘Bharat Darshan’ travel packages. Insiders although say one would hardly find villagers getting their share of chances to have Bharat darshan since urban middle class can easily access to the services and they are in waiting too. Sixth pay commission with pay hike has satiated domestic as well as outbound travel. There is a huge section of employees now travelling to far off places in the country from north to south and even to north eastern states. Middle class in the recent years has suddenly found in their accounts the much needed ‘disposable income’ which they can spend for their vacationing. It speaks good of tourism  growth and for dynamics in the economy. Such an attempt needs to be instigated in rural India in order to enhance their disposable incomes so that their long awaited dreams of having Bharat darshan are fulfilled in the near future.

Stakeholders in the tourism industry in India must work towards these objectives. Risk taking entrepreneurs should venture into this bottom of the pyramid with innovative travelling projects. If shampoo was a product meant for high end customers in eighties bottled and sold, innovative product development with ‘out of the box’ distribution channels by C K Ranganathan the sachet king of FMCG tapped the market at the bottom of the pyramid. It is evident from CavinKares’s unimaginable growth from Rs15,000 to Rs 950 crore  between 1983 and 2010. A phenomenal growth which vows its credit to the bottom of the pyramid of India. Similar creative start ups in  travel industry for the vilagewallas will surely give a new fillip and definitely raise money for the operators. It is also evident from certain rural destinations that pilgrimage tour businesses are on the run in an unorgansed manner. There are small players in the rural market who are organizing trips to pilgrimage destinations across the country but to the very conventional destinations like Varnasi, sirdi, Tirupati, Nasik, Hardwar-Rishikesh, Puri, Sabarimala, Vaishnodevi, Pushkar, Amritsar, Ajmer, Veilankani, Bodhgaya etc.  The rural markets for these pilgrimage spots are mainly the neighbouring regions. If the cost factor is worked upon, it would change the way the world looks at the Indian rural market especially in tourism activities.

The general perception of the purchasing power of the villagers being low may partly be true. But there is also a section of the population in rural India involved in petty businesses and harvesting good crops. This section is otherwise very potential market in itself. A group of five from Mudhol, a remote village in north Karnataka was found vacationing in Goa last summer. One of them Mr. Ravi shared, “We often plan for a vacation trip every summer, last time we had been to Ooty and next year probably we would go to a hill station somewhere in north India. Such groups who plan their own trips from villages are growing in numbers in the recent years. Given proper guidance and motivated to participate in organized travel business, this will have a multiplier effect on others as well. Now the question is, who will do this job of motivating and organizing? Certainly here comes the role of catalyst organizations especially enterprises, intermediaries and the local bodies.

The responsible task of developing rural tourism business may be initiated by the stakeholders in a coordinated approach. Firstly, it is necessary look at villages as markets for tourism businesses and secondly to create villages as destinations. Later aspect is being currently addressed by the Ministry of Tourism with the support of UNDP under the flagship project of endogenous tourism . It is also being promoted under the programme ‘Explore Rural India’. Its high time to see the things from the other angle as well i.e., to tap the rural markets for tourism businesses.