Let me begin with a confession. I left for Chhattisgarh with the usual apprehensions about the State that often makes headlines for violence. Some sights added to these anxieties: Central Reserve Police Force patrolling the highway in columns of ten, some sitting behind foliage engrossed in their phones, anti-mine vehicles parked at intermittent distances, and our cab driver speaking endlessly about Naxalism.
But I saw another side of Chhattisgarh that often gets overshadowed in these reports: a beautiful State with warm and welcoming people.
We were on a red gravel road that branches out of the single-lane highway that crosses the Kanger Ghati National Park in Bastar. It was a few kilometres from here that 27 men, including top Congress leaders, were killed in a Maoist ambush in 2013.
It felt like we were in a different time, with the forest blocking out the sun, and with trees, bushes and vines wrestling for space. A 3 km hike inside the sanctuary took us to Jaldev Patel, who was sitting in the sun with his wife, Lachni Patel, and members of the Dhurva tribe, a subset of the Gonds. With a mile-long smile, Lachni welcomed us and brought us plastic chairs. As the photographer started clicking photos, she ran into her thatched hut to change into her best outfit: a white saree with orange flowers. She handed over a bouquet of peacock feathers to her husband to pose with.
A few yards away, Pardesi, visibly tipsy, confessed in broken Hindi, “Madam, thoda... (Madam, a little...)”. He tipped an invisible glass into his mouth. He said that for sabun and tel (soap and oil) he sells distilled mohua, a forest produce. He took us to his hut, which had a strikingly clean black mud floor, to show us how he makes his brew. Pardesi mistook us for folks from the administration. After the tour he asked us where he was supposed to sign for the imaginary mistake that he had made.
The villagers have to walk about 6 km that includes trekking across the forest, crossing over a crystal clear stream and hiking to cast their vote. They have to take the same route to get their monthly ration from the fair price shop. There are no dish antennas, and mobile phones are far and few. In fact, the only signs of any modernity were a couple of motorbikes.
The village has a school with 27 students. We met them playing volleyball barefoot. Out of the four rooms in the school, only one is used as classroom. The others are for the teachers to use: a make-shift bedroom, a staffroom piled with vegetables for the mid-day meal, and a storeroom. The school’s cook offered us lunch.
A stroll through the village gave us a sense of bucolic peace. Momentarily we forgot about the CRPF men patrolling the highway. We questioned them on Naxalism but were stonewalled. We were met with indifferent shrugs and a stock reply: “We don’t know any Naxals.”
Can one feel fear in retrospect? Perhaps I was chilled and relieved at once that we dodged bullets. We had travelled 1,000 km in three days, criss-crossing Bastar, Dantewada, Sukma and other places that are in the news for violence, but never once did we feel unwelcome.
On the day we returned to Delhi, though, we heard about the killing of a Doordarshan journalist by the Naxals.