at makthal

Im doing an offline blog because I am at Makthal and there is no internet connection in this town.
I have been in Makthal since 11th morning. The first day we stayed at the Yugantar office. It is nicely located away from the noises, traffic and pollution of the town. There is Mahila Samatha office under Yugantar office. The best part of that place was the girls who stay there. They are rescues child-laborers who stay at Mahila Samatha and are taught and fed there. There were close to 30 girls who are taught at Makthal the curriculum from 1st till 5th class in a year. One women who was a jogini is now employed by Mahila Samatha to cook and feed these girls. She also made coffee for us in the morning and evening and has amazing patience to take care of these 30 girls. These girls were very curious about us and would come up and speak to us every time they got a chance to. They initially thought I was a French person because some French people had visited them earlier and because of my telugu skills. When Padma was around she would translate. The fun thing was when Padma was not around and I would communicate with them in my broken Telugu. On the first day we just went to the bank to do the account transfer done. Then we stayed at the office and Padma slept till the evening and I was busy hanging out with these girls. In the night I went to sleep at around 11 and in 15 minutes I felt something bite m left arm that hurt a lot and left my hand swollen and red where it bit. Then I changed my position and slept and was bitten again and I changed my position, used a second sheet to cover my selves and washed my arms. After getting bitten a third time I got up and sat on a chair for two hours and tried sleeping. Around two the insects crawling on the ground seemed lesser in number and then I sweeped the floor and slept. I woke up again at 6 because of a power cut.

The second day we went to three villages, Anugonda, Muslaipally and Karni to see how the community kitchens are running. We saw the feeding happening in Anugonda and Karni. In Muslaipally they had already fed before we got there. Was sad in Kaini that some of the people who are destitute and eligible to eat in the community kitchen do not go and eat because the person who cooks in a sc woman. The people in Karni who had come to be fed were thanking us and falling at our feet saying that they were weak and starving before the community kitchen started and now they are feeling better. Two very old women who we spoke to had no family and some other’s family had migrated to work in cities. Some of them receive a pension of 200 Rs a month or free rice on Anthyodhaya card. After that we went to Makthal had lunch rested at the office for a bit and then went to Karni to interview a retired head master whose name is Lingappa who presently does agricultural work. We also took a walk to see his farm. In a small patch where he grows mangoes he has 7-8 types of mango trees. He even had blue mangoes (Neelam) that I had not seen before. From him we got leads about who are the other people we could speak to in the village the next day. We went back and this time we moved to a hotel because I did not intend to get bitten again. Felt sad moving out belongings because I would miss conversations with the girls at Mahila Samatha.

The third day we started with going to Karni at 8:30 to attend a fisher community meeting. We had gone there because we had heard that when they bid for fishing at the tank the money that gets collected goes towards development of the village. The community organizer had told us that he wanted to speak to the fisher community and the Panchayat so a part of that could be used for funding the community kitchen. It wasn’t that Yugantar is unwilling to put in the money (we have already put it in the bank account and do not plan to withdraw it) but the idea was to find means to sustain it beyond the one year project period and just check if people in this community wanted to contribute to feeing vulnerable, destitute people from there own village. They were speaking at the top of their voices to bid for an amount for the tank but were quiet and ignored when the question of contributing to the kitchen came up. Someone whispered to us that most of the money collected really goes for funding liquor at village festivals! That was it then we went back to the town. Returned in the evening to interview farmers for my study.

The last day was uneventful. We waited till noon for two sarpanches when they were to come to the bank at 10 A.M. One said at noon that he will take another two hours and we asked him not to come. The other came by half past noon. Then we left for another village from where we had to pick ‘sapota picker’ and then had lunch and got back home by evening.