I love Tempo Trax Gama. Period!

About 20 km before Baihar we started the real field travel as I had come to understand it by then. We left the all-weather road soon and took all possible form of fair weather roads. Every possible form that you can think of. They presented themselves as two white lines running parallel  with a patch of grass in between, a white serpentine line with thorns and stones on either side on which the jeep's tire had to balance, a white line hell-bent on falling in a ditch and all the other sorts as well. Sun bade me goodbye for the day behind the Baiga houses on a hill-top. 

When we started for Harratola, after Chuka-tola it had turned pitch dark . They told that it was about 12-15 km away. By that time of the evening I started realizing that having women NGO workers around does not guarantee sensitive treatment and took a voluntary retirement from looking for it. This bit of the journey that took us an hour could be completed only by Tempo Trax Gama (my dream vehicle) that refused to give up and we had a driver with the same spirit. This vehicle has taken me wherever I wanted to go mostly in Madhya Pradesh. The last time it could drive through a tilled millet field and impressed me immensely. My love for Tempo Trax Gama is almost unchallenged!

By this time, roads leading to the village left all pretensions behind! We literally traversed through forest as we climbed uphill. Have you vertically climbed uphill in a jeep ever? Then you will understand how does it feel. I had faced these kinds of journeys before but in two wheeler bikes.  This was the first time that I was in a jeep. The more I praised the driver, the more each bone of my body complained against me, the driver, the terrain and the vehicle (to my chagrin!). Its completely beyond my comprehension how did we not lose our way in that dark night, but we did reach Harratola to find villagers waiting for us. They informed that they would cook for us  so we need not worry about dinner! It was 9.30 p.m. already! I was not fit to worry about anything anymore after a journey that started at 6 am in the morning. Discussions hovered around the usual topics of the unfulfilled entitlements of this primitive tribe group. A girl named Shatluj had joined us here.  I wondered what the river of Punjab was doing in a Gond village in south-western tip of Madhya Pradesh but no one appreciated the point I was trying to make there. My great punch-line (so I thought!) was ignored royally!

Almost everyone was more or less drunk in the village. This was true for especially the older women, who act in such a sweet manner when drunk! blushing every now and then like a teenagers. Giggling with their clothes stuffed in their mouths. They make me fall in love with their charm. They had a ceremony in the village and

there was customary drinking, but fortunately most of them didn’t drink as much as they would in those days. They informed me that they controlled because I was coming. I felt much grateful! Therefore we talked for long. By the end of the meeting the oldest of the women started dancing and  youngest of the boys started beating the drums (mandher). It was a pity that even after repeating my painkillers I was not up to dancing and had to miss the chance. Anyone who knows me knows that I do not like to miss this! 

I had mentioned earlier that by then I had lost all interest in looking for sensitivity and hence announced that Shatluj should accompany me in my long walk to respond to nature’s call. This gave me the much needed break to look at the sky.  The night sky in the Indian villages has almost never disappointed me. It makes my every visit to the villages, forests, seas and mountains well worth it. It was a dark night and thus the stars were at their best to allure me. These are the moments when I let go all my tiredness and pain and just enjoy the bliss! It was a crisp cool night. I stood in the darkness and smiled at the sky and wished that everyone gets at least one opportunity to enjoy this! 

We got dinner of rice (of Kodo, a minor millet) and daal (lentils) around 11.30 p.m. There were eight balls of salt in my daal, one of which I chewed even before I could realize what it was. The driver found three and Meena, the NGO worker, four. I therefore concluded, it was directly proportional to the importance of the guest! We slept in the Aanganwadi center where four cocks were sleeping already. They protested as much as they could when we brought our charpais (cots) in. I had my sleeping bag for the necessary warmth  in that January night but the sky and the dews that peeped and seeped in through the sparsely placed tiles, made me shiver at night. There are two versions of how I slept! I felt that I was turning so many times that I disturbed others sleeping in the room. But when we woke up in the morning all they complained was about my snoring! Life is not always fair, you see! 

            I was ashamed to wake up at 7 the next morning, considering any village starts waking up by 5 a.m. As I was late, I had to take up the most difficult task after dawn breaks in a village. That is to find a place to answer the nature’s greater call. I had to walk in full public view with a pot of water for about half a km where Shatluj, where my river from Punjab announced that she would not proceed any further in the forest and I better find my place around there itself. I walked towards what seemed a reasonably thick bush in the forest only to be welcomed by a stench. As if that was not enough I had to even witness a half eaten carcass of a buffalo! After this one can hardly describe the ritual of performing the mundane activities related to getting ready for the day, which I finished as soon as possible and got into the jeep. I was then told that the plan of going back to the office in the morning for a bath had been postponed till the evening! 

            How I passed the day after that given the physical discomforts, meetings with heavily drunk men and sensible women, traversing mountains, having my day's fill at around 10 am, and having an insensitive soul with overload of “naa-paak” and “naa-saaf” in her head as company before finally reaching Baihar around dusk is about anybody's guess! I was welcomed by a super cold room situated at the end of the village with a open well to take bath and a toilet that was at least 50 mtrs away...but that night is another story!