ORCHA

Orcha is a small village 18 kilometers from Jhansi but during the time of the Mughals it  was the capital  of Bundela kings of the region.  It was much later that that Laxmibai and Jhansi became famous during the first war of Indian Independence. Orcha is a small village – divided into two by the main road. On one side is the more bustling part which includes the famous Raja Ram temple while the more stately palaces are on the other side. The river Betwa flows quietly past the palaces and forms the other axis.

Passing through the rustic scenary of 21^st  century Bundelkhand the sudden sight of these grand 17^th century palaces are truly astounding . The temple of Raja Ram means more to the local pilgrims and many sadhus add colour to this small place. The palace complex is remarkable with two huge palaces – the Raj Mahal and the Jehangir mahal. Today they are mute, but three hundred years ago the lives of the residents of these palaces were intimately intertwined with those of the mughals who lived not far away in Agra.

Today the walls are mostly bare but in a few rooms the frescos that have survived the tide of the times are breath-taking. Scenes from fights, from the royal courts as well as illustrations which depict scenes from history and the epics are now preserved and there are English, Italian, French and Spanish speaking guides that show tourists around. During the evening the palace complex comes alive with the sound and light show which captures the palace intrigues of the bygone days in many hues.

Around the main palaces are the lesser ruins, principal among them the house of the royal courtesan – Parveen Rai. Legend has it that the Mughal Emperor coveted her but with her ready wit and grace she won over the empire and her way back to Orcha. The pleasure garden the frescoed pavilion today is an undisturbed haven where we found a group of baya weavers busy with their nest making.

   

The river Betwa is an important character in this hideaway. Today it is a public bathing and washing place but earlier it was a spectator to history which is present today as the splendid chattri’s or memorials to the Bundela kings of Orcha. There was brief shower before we reached this place and the vultures spread out their wings to dry them creating new patterns on the domes and spires.
A short video on Orcha

IN ALEKSANDER’S LAND

Mother Teresa's memorial

The immigration officer at Aleksander the Great Airport studied my Macedonian visa and consulted a page on his desk and shook his head. He consulted his colleague in the immigration officers ‘cage’ next to him, but she didn’t have the answer he wanted and he went to consult the Immigration Police booth behind him. An officer dressed smartly in blue uniform came up to me, asked me to sit on a bench and disappeared into his cubby hole with my passport. While the line of passengers at the immigration desk grew rapidly shorter I wondered whether I was being denied entry as an Indian in the land of Alexander, for bringing an end to Alexander’s world conquering campaigns two and a half thousand years ago! Soon the officer came back and asked the immigration officer to stamp my passport – my paperwork was in order and I was free to get into the land of Phillip and his more illustrious son.

The Old Stone Bridge

Macedonia is a small country of a little over 2 million people in the Balkans, north of Greece, with which it has a tense sibling rivalry. Here too it is Alexander ( or Aleksander as the Macedonian’s prefer to write) who seems to be the bone of contention. Greece holds Alexander as their own, and would prefer the ‘northern’ Macedonians to remember their geographic place on the map. On the other hand Macedonians are intensely possessive of Aleksander and are planning a 25 metre tall statue of the old warrior king astride Bucaphelus in the centre of their capital Skojpe ( pronounced ‘skopia’). At present the ten metre high pedestal is being constructed in the central square which is peppered with statues of all kinds – heroes from the past on their horses, women talking to each other with their, a shoe shine and even a bikini clad woman taking a dive into the river Vardar which flows past. Erecting statues seems to be an obsession with the current government which has apparently spent over 2 million euro each for installing four gigantic lions on each end of a city bridge. It is not surprising I found the topic very politically sensitive when I ventured to ask about them. The small memorial to Mother Teresa and her statues in the centre of town provided an assurance in an unfamiliar land.

The old Skojpe bazaar is dominated by the Kale fortress. It is a jumble of small shops and eateries and narrow lanes. Since it was a Sunday evening it was empty when we explored it but the morning bustle could easily be imagined. There are a number of dome shaped buildings from the Ottoman times some are mosques, some have been converted into museums. The most interesting building that I noticed was a mosque which gradually morphed itself into a barber’s shop. Macedonians has many religions – Islam, Orthodox Christian being principal among them. The people too are from many ethnic strains – I felt comfortable as an Indian with similar hybrid vigor.

Skojpe Bazaar

The business end of my Macedonian trip was a workshop in Ohrid, a lake resort 160 kilometers away. The 2 hour journey from Skojpe to Ohrid twisted and turned through snow covered mountains. It was an unusually cold year I was told. Ohrid lake was a sight to behold – a vast expanse of blue ringed by snow clad mountains. The old town of Ohrid is a Unesco heritage site and reminded me of our own hill resorts like Nainital and Ooty with its steep roads and paths crisscrossing the hillside overlooking the lake. Ohrid is famous for churches. They say it had 365 churches, one for every day in the year, even today many of them are standing – from small twenty by fifteen feet structures to massive monuments. Ohrid is still discovering its past through excavations in many parts of the town. There is an old amphitheatre and even today it is used during the tourist season for holding events.

Ohrid Lake

Macedonian food generously uses cheese. They even batter fry cheese somewhat like paneer pakora- but instead of a snack it is eaten as a main course. Another Macedonian speciality was a baked fluffy pastry which first made circular like a pie and then sliced up into cubes or diamonds or regular cake slices. Chopska, fresh vegetable salad which uses grated fresh cheese as the principle dressing, also seemed very popular. I was told that the lake serves a excellent trout which is now endangered due to overfishing. The scales of a different fish are also fashioned into Ohrid pearls which are then turned into jewelry and sold in every corner of the town. The restaurants ringing the lake served a variety of cuisine, and even though it was very cold most of the customers preferred to sit outside with heating through different kinds of heaters for comfort. Macedonians still love to smoke, the new visual warnings on the cigarette packets notwithstanding.

The Macedonian currency at 43.50 dinar to the US dollar provided a familiar exchange rate and there was no need to indulge in crazy multiplication for conversion every time I bought anything. The best buy in Macedonia were chocolates. They make reasonably good chocolates and the prices are unbelievable. 

FLAME OF THE FOREST

Flame of the Forest

Patnagarh was once a princely state, but is now a small town in the district of Bolangir in Western Orissa. Even though there have been three ministers from the erstwhile royal family in recent times, the region clearly hasn’t benefited too much from their interventions in the state government. The forty kilometer drive from Bolangir (where we were staying) to Patnagarh was resplendent with ‘palash’ trees in full bloom. Even though I was familiar with the flower, prinicipally through its reference and use during ‘basanto utsav’ in Shantiniketan, it was only here that I realized why it is referred to in English as the ‘flame of the forest’.

 Women Carrying Mehula flowers

Bolangir is one of the poorest districts in Orissa, part of the infamous KBK districts, where hunger deaths, distress sale of children were reported during Rajiv Gandhi’s time as prime minister of India. Since then many hundreds of crores must have been provided as development assistance to this district, but not much development is in evidence. The Humanity is a small voluntary organization started by group of youth, fresh out of University in Bhuvaneswar, who decided to work with the poor rural and tribal people of the district in the mid- nineties on issues of development. Today they continue to be committed to the work and in keeping with the times today much of their work revolves around ensuring that the people are able to get the full benefits of state run programmes like NREGS (National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme), PDS ( Public Distribution System), Mid-day Meal and so on. We have been working with this group over the last few years for informing the rural population about the National Rural Health Mission and its different provisions.

Even though we are in the twenty first century of malls and supermarkets, I saw the ‘barter’ system working in the village of Tentulikhunti. It was quite accidentally that I saw a little girl clutching a tin in one hand and a twisted plastic bottle in another walk resolutely down the village path. On asking my associates I came to know she was going to the village shop. I followed her as she waited patiently at the shop window for the woman who ran the shop to appear. She took the tin full of rice and filled the bottle with some oil and handed it back to the girl. The little girl put the bottle in the tin and walked home where her mother may have been waiting to complete her cooking for the afternoon.

Our meeting at the village anganwadi centre started late because the villagers hadn’t returned from their ‘mehula’collecting trips. Early in the morning each family designates someone to go to collect the ‘mehula’ flowers ( also known as mahua) that have fallen below the trees in their small parcels of farm land. From a distance these flowers look like grapes – a little smaller in size and a few shades paler. This flower is then dried for a few days in the courtyard and then sold to the local traders. Today it sells at 9 rupees a kg, and a family with a few trees can manage a collection of up to twenty kilo’s a day. But it is back breaking work of picking the flowers one by one before the sun becomes too hot. Later in the day the cattle eat up whatever is left behind. The dried ‘mehula’ becomes the base for the local country liquor. Today the major production comes from Government registered distilleries, but the home made stuff is supposed to far superior. Unfortunately we didn’t get an opportunity put these claims to the test.

Transparency is an important buzzword in contemporary development circles. The World Bank has made it an important criteria for judging aid effectiveness and Transparency International, an international NGO compiles annual rankings of countries’ around the world and India doesn’t rank very favourably. The Right to Information is considered to be an important tool for transparency. The full blown practice of transparency was very much evidence in the villages of Patnagarh. Many of the village walls were painted with the provisions of different government schemes, and the walls of the Primary School were painted showing amounts that had been received from the government for different provisions like maintenance, books and stationery and even the names, date of joining and birth dates of the teachers. The names of all the members of the Village Health and Sanitation Committee and their responsibilities were painted in four inch tall alphabets opposite the Anganwadi Centre. However not one of the literate villagers we spoke to had taken the trouble of reading through the information. So much for transparency! You can live in glass house but if people don’t care they won’t look inside to see what you are up to, let alone throw stones at you.

Sunflower : A cash crop

The children of villages around Patnagarh were a very animated lot. In the school, they burst into a song on the instruction of the teachers to welcome us. The smaller ones were playing adult roles to perfection. I have already talked of the girl who went shopping. I saw another slip of a girl, not more than five years old, busy trying to fill two vessels of water from the hand pump. After many attempts to carry both filled vessels at the same time, she went home with one filled vessel and the other swinging from her other hand. The smaller children had plump cheeks and a glint in their eyes. It is unfortunate that some of these children will not grow into adults, many girls will be married and forced into motherhood well before they are physically or emotionally prepared, and if the circumstances are desperate some may even be sold. Surely, children in India deserve better.