The faces of progress
Shashikiran goes for a timeout in the hilly areas on Sakalaeshpur, and comes back to muse on many things about the country we are today.
In Kadamane I spent time with the General Manager, a Field Officer, retired old workmen, supervisors. All have sent away their young to Bangalore. Kadamane has been heaven for them, they say, but for their children they feel Bangalore is better, even if it be hell. This estate is twelve kilometers from NH-48, which highway is fractured by rain, and by trucks carrying ore to Mangalore. The load on most trucks is not covered and the ore-dust flies in the face of people who were heretofore healthy; and in those few trucks which are covered, the cover is a flapping plastic sheet which rises like a serpent’s hood, and spits ore-dust at all.
In another story about his visit, he simply romances the monsoon in the hills.
When the rain commences it is a patter on the roof, then a beating on it, and soon a lashing everywhere. The pouring is intense and blinding in the distance on the hills—the wind, the rain, and their insistent sound move with pressing urgency, curving round and away, traveling far, curling quickly back, touching the tea and the trees and the hills and everything between them, making up for all the time they’ve been away. The pouring ends abruptly and silence takes its place—the tea sparkle, the trees lift, and the hills sizzle. But there is a sound now, which does not rob the silence, the sound of water gushing everywhere, in grooves and gutters, falling from the roof, gurgling down the steep slopes, gaining volume, growing louder and louder as it goes.
Read Hello, Independence Day and A Giant Theater