Written in 2018, during the public debate around shoot-at-sight orders on Avni, a tigress in central Maharashtra.
Yesterday I saw the photo of a man viciously beheaded, his limbs askew, and skin peeled off his back to reveal a hollowed out trunk. A bloody, gouged head was located a distance away. I waited for the instinctive visceral response to such violence but it was curiously muted, perhaps by familiarity, for such photos are circulated with regularity on these particular WhatsApp groups. The title of this group suggests that it is for those interested in wildlife issues in Maharashtra, but members, as is often their wont, tend to accommodate tangential subjects. This man was attacked by an animal in central Maharashtra while guarding his fields. Rarely a week passes without a death or injury credited to animal attacks — tigers, leopards and most commonly, sloth bears.
Written in 2015 during a fellowship year in Jawhar, Maharashtra.
He sits under the shade of the awning, a neighbour’s phone clutched in his hand, idly flicking ants, both real and imaginary, from his dhoti while waiting for his daughter to call. This is one of the few spots in the village where he gets cellular reception and so here he must sit. Occasionally a ball, carelessly thrown by one of the younger fielders, will sidle up and he will throw it back, a reprieve from the monotony. He glances intermittently towards the phone, willing it to ring. He has been here for well over half an hour but he dare not go back in case he misses the call, neither can he call her for the phone has no balance. He leans back and waits.
Written in 2015 during a fellowship year in Jawhar, Maharashtra.
Among the many problems that afflict rural India are inefficient healthcare and nutrition. On paper, it boasts a remarkable structure of primary and secondary healthcare centres and hospitals reinforced by auxiliary nurses, ASHA workers and midwives, not to forget various schemes to promote child nutrition. On paper only. Reality witnesses a number of hardworking individuals, fighting to dispense good health in a complicated system of interlinked issues, fuelled by the greed of corruption and the simplicity of ignorance.
Written in 2014 during a fellowship year in Jawhar, Maharashtra.
Caste-based reservation for higher education and jobs is a much-debated subject when we run dry of other topics of conversation. If people are unacquainted or conversation stilted, whip out a discussion on reservation and watch how people warm up to each other as they bond over the unfairness meted out over the years, over how they missed their true callings thanks to a perverse government machinery that insists on propagating the ridiculous farce that is reservation. Point noted.
