Masala Journalism

I've stumbled on the side of twelve misty mountains
I've walked and I've crawled on six crooked highways
I've stepped in the middle of seven sad forests
I've been out in front of a dozen dead oceans
I've been ten thousand miles in the mouth of a graveyard
And it's a hard rain's a-gonna fall

Polluters or protectors? Farmers in Himachal Pradesh fight for their rights over forests
August 16, 2015 || Scroll.in

Farmers are rallying for the implementation of the Forest Rights Act, which gives them the right to govern forest resources, as a High Court order brands them 'polluters'.

On July 25, around 2,000 farmers gathered in Himachal Pradesh’s remote tribal district of Kinnaur to highlight the threat looming over their land, forests and livelihoods. Against the background of green hills, they thundered chants as local leaders gave rousing speeches. When the assembly dispersed, the farmers were still unsure if they had been heard, whether their demand for the implementation of the Forest Rights Act of 2006 would be met, particularly after a recent High Court order. || Full article

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Odisha diaries: the struggle for community control over land, forests and natural resources
April 25, 2015 || Down to Earth

No matter how much compensation is promised, companies will need ‘a social licence’ to conduct business on the land of the people

For the past 20 years, local communities across the eastern Indian state of Odisha have engaged in numerous movements to protect their customary lands and forests against industrial and government interests. Several have captured global attention, documenting resistance from some of India’s most marginalised communities in the face of dispossession and displacement. Now, Odisha’s communities are mobilising once more to assert their rights over the resources that define their culture and survival, using modern technology and India’s Forest Rights Act of 2006 (FRA). || Full article

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An Opportunity to Get Conservation Right
February 25, 2015 || Thomas Reuters Foundation

At People’s Rights Conference, Nepali communities affirm their rights to resources in a recently declared conservation zone

The hall burst into applause as the final declaration was read out. The audience, composed of community forestry user groups from Nepal’s Chure region, Indigenous Peoples, women’s rights groups, Dalit advocates, and youth vowed to continue the movement that had brought them together over the course of the past seven months.

Echoing in the hall was the demand to start including Chure’s people in determining the policies that govern the fate of the forests, land, and water they have depended upon for generations in the Himalayan country. || Full article

Return of the Himalaya

All I want to do is walk. Any chance I get, I take off. It doesn’t necessarily help that six seven hours a day are spent bumping around in a bus or in the back of a jeep. We ride parallel to rushing rivers that are voraciously being dammed. Beside, the headquarters of hydro and cement companies sprawl. It isn’t long before the asphalt disappears and gives way to more humble tracks upon which to tread. We slowly climb up and eventually back down lush green hills. And while the winding dirt roads mean travelling at the snail’s pace, it still feels like I’m going too fast.

My eyes try as best they can to feast on my surroundings, but more often than not they are fixed upwards, glued to snowcapped peaks. I can’t help it. There is something about those sharp, jagged edges that arrest, keeping me in awe, aware of my size. When they move out of view, I take in the breadth of the landscape. Another world defined by a direct relationship with the land comes into focus. As soon as we stop for tea or reach our destination in Kinnaur, in Kullu, in Mandi, my legs take over. Every free moment I can steal away, I want to take in these hills and streams and staircase villages.

So every evening after heated discussions on community forest rights, I leave my new activist friends behind and begin to wander. It’s only on my own two feet that I feel like I can move slowly enough to feel everything that this place stirs inside. My mind is engaged in constant conversation with itself; I am only a bystander at this point, quietly listening to the back and forth banter inside my head.

Climbing up worn pathways, I quickly get lost trying to find my way to an arbitrarily picked destination way above where I stand – a temple, an orchard, a waterfall. Amused villagers ask where I am going and I excitedly reply that I’m simply going for a walk. It’s not long before I am again sitting down with strangers, drinking tumbler after tumbler of sweet pahadi chai.

I know these moments mean more because of those summers I spent as a kid exploring a similar setting in Kangra. Sent to my Nanaji and Nanima’s house, the monsoon welcomed me.  I know it’s because of the memories that come back from that year in Kumaon that makes it all the more meaningful. And now, with a few more years on me and a (relatively) more stable head on these shoulders, I keep my ears open, attuned to the secrets being whispered.

I no longer try to compartmentalize or label the feelings that arise. Rural life with all its beauty, generosity, and hardships stands directly in front of me. Not asking for anything, yet still demanding all of my attention.  The smell of wood-fed fires brings waves of nostalgia and inspiration that wash over me, making it all so dangerously easy to romanticize. Standing atop of a world that at once seems familiar, and yet one I know I cannot claim to fully understand.  It is here I recognize there is too much upon the hills and below the surface that I am unable to put into words.

But just as is with every return to the Himalaya, internally there is work being done. Inside, I can only hope my heart is being soaked, and wrung, and washed anew. That somewhere, though I cannot see it – only vaguely feel it – there is a realignment taking place.

Monsoon in Four Parts

I

The fattest drops made the biggest splashes. Rolling, dark clouds creeping over the hills were the first sign. The gusts of wind followed. Every other summer or so, me and Vikram found ourselves transplanted to our grandparents’ home at the foothills of the Himalayas. Every other summer or so, in a village in Himachal Pradesh, our dreams were watered from above.

The isolated existence those few weeks brought meant constantly having to find different ways to pass the days. Buried in a family album somewhere there is a picture. There is my brother, and there am I. We are only children. In Montgomery County Recreation Department t-shirts and baggy basketball shorts, we squish mud between our toes as our education takes form through dance and laughter. There we stand soaked, smiling, and without knowing it building a relationship – with land and soil, trees and roots, mountains and sky, heaven and earth.

II

After days and weeks of unrelenting sun, what we have all been waiting for has finally come. And the sudden downpour leaves the city pacified. Not so slowly the roads turn to ponds and lakes. The brown water lagoons emerge as if they were from the soil beneath the asphalt, instead of the visible manifestations of sewage, pollution, and unsustainable living. But the monsoon’s message is lost upon us, as we continue on unaware of what the puddles are trying to relay through frantic vibrations of splashes and ripples.

The morning downpour makes Delhi’s traffic only more hectic. But no one complains. We are each lost in our own reflections as we gratefully accept the shower, simply thankful for nature’s offering.

The auto-rickshaw drivers maneuver in a dream-like state, weaving their ships across the sea. The on-lookers standing beneath awnings and gazing atop balconies stare as if they are lost in thoughts belonging to another dimension. And those rushed souls, who have forgotten their umbrellas look silly compared to those others who have also forgotten their umbrellas, or perhaps never intended on bringing them, indifferent to, or unaware of, the washing taking place.

III

In another portion of Himalaya, the precipitation never ceases. It has been weeks now. The peaches have spoiled. The landslides increased. But homecomings are well worth whatever mild inconveniences that must be incurred. Upon hilltops the entire valley glows neon green. The clouds hang in arms reach. Once more I reacquaint myself with mountain trails and unending forests, walking like my legs never forgot.

In rapidly changing villages, a new generation seeks the gains of development and progress. Land is bought and sold as hotels and summer homes sprout like specially engineered grains. But it is the people and places that taught me so much that make it all worth it. The love, and hard work, and reminder that our lives still remain dependent on a healthy relationship with the earth, shapes the form of reflection and reconnection. And as I feel humbled by it all, I know that thick jungles and fat layers of moss are worth worshipping.

IV

After the rain, after the stickiness sets in and summer passes, when seasons eventually change and the journey must continue, what will having our dreams watered by the monsoon yield? We can only hope that in some way our memories will remember: what it sounded like when our laughter splashed against stones and when the streets turned to rivers and when the village reclaimed one of its own. We can hope that these memories will continue unconsciously informing our choices and unknowingly shaping the dreams we continue to dream when the chaos and strange beauty of New York City returns.