Four am in the morning….
I’d woken up with dread pooled in the pit of my stomach. My friend, Sankita, had walked into my hostel room, with an expression similar to mine.
“Should we, or should we not?”
“Don’t really have a choice, do we?” I’d asked.
In a social setting, where going on unplanned, impromptu road trips is more of a security concern for two 20 year olds, than a matter of pride, this above conversation is nothing but normal. In this specific scenario, we didn’t even have a guy going with us, either. *Gasp*, right?
To clarify things, the above conversation was pertaining to an impending trip to the infamous Gadchiroli district of Maharashtra, with its stories ringing with explosions and its general image, running rampant with rebel warriors.
Slugging around like a couple of sloths, Sankita and I’d tried to put off the moment of reckoning, when we had to leave, until the last possible moment. We’d filled up our bags – sorry, armed ourselves – with everything we’d thought would come in handy. Deodorants had replaced pepper sprays, a pair of scissors, the blade – completely prepared in case dacoits hijacked the car. It was one of those days, which reinforced the idea that humour was truly a coping mechanism.
Cracking jokes to keep up the spirits, we’d waited for our ride. When it had finally arrived, out stepped Khalid bhaiyya, an angel –. The sun hadn’t cleared the horizon when we finally set out, after reassuring words from the sweet driver about the general misconceptions of our destinations and the roads leading up to there. But even these failed to put out nerve wracked brains to rest. Frame after frame to our car exploding to smithereens played in our heads, with our hands holding each other’s, for the comfort its warmth gave us.
The route we chose demanded a – hour trip. By six, the winter sun had seeped in through the car windows, lulling us to sleep. But yet again, we’d put our overworked minds to use; we’ll sleep in shifts, we’d decided. It wasn’t until Brahmapuri, that we’d dropped all pretence and lowered our defences, when our tummies were filled with breakfast from a thela. We’d decided to sleep off the previous nights’ confusion.
It was about ten am in the morning, when the car slowing down had jerked us both awake.
“Flat tyre”, Khalid bhaiyya had announced, rummaging around for his tools. Sankita and I didn’t really have to communicate our thoughts; almost a reflex, we had both begun to scan the roads for spikes. Daylight and a couple of old villagers selling – on the roadside, were the only things keeping us sane. We’d alighted the car once again, with all vestiges of sleep having vanished.
We’d crossed town after town, for the next 3 hours. None had left lasting impressions; all with a dreary air of being stuck someplace midway between the past and the future – concrete buildings and a smartphone in every hand, but with cattle, bullock carts and bazaars crowding the streets. A monotonous kaleidoscope, of the true Indian spirit.
We’d finally reached Aheri, with the sun scorching right above our heads. There, Mr. – had invited us into his house for a cup of coffee, with an obligatory smile on, courtesy of our source, Mr. Gopal Betawar. His formal and restrained front, betrayed none of the integrity that bubbled beneath the surface; not until he recounted the story of a tired software engineer in Nagpur, who’d decided one fine day, that the quaint old town of Aheri with all its ties to a healthy lifestyle would be the best for him and his family. Neither had it betrayed his sense of humour, irking us with stories of exploded soldiers, all the way to our next stop, Brahmagarh. I believe he had even pointed to an electric pole where they’d found one such soldier’s hand had hung. Like I said, funny man.
It was this one hour, from Aheri to Brahmagarh, that revealed itself to be the crowning jewel of the whole trip. Thickets after thickets of forests rushed past us, and so did dried up riverbeds, awaiting those first drops of rain, with majestic rock formations glinting in the afternoon sun.
Brahmagarh, finally, had turned out to be a true hidden gem. The Devrai Art Foundation it hosted, presented us with not only wonderful content to document, but also a pride in our country’s culture, its tribal heritage and most of all, the revelation that, in a district famous for its sons wielding arms and ammunitions, these rebels with a cause rewrote history, by wielding tools.
With their famous Devrai Rock Dhokra (a patented version of the Dhokra Casting, wherein the metal is cast around a rock), bamboo as well as wooden crafts, they’d not only found a form of sustenance, but an extraordinary outlet for their creativity, finding platforms and extending markets, not only on Indian, but foreign soils as well, while the craze for all things rustic and vintage had caught on. All this, riding on the shoulders of one man, Suresh Pongatti, who for the love of the arts, had dedicated his life to the revival of the same. A true hero, without the capes and the flair.
Riding back, our minds were filled with childlike wonderment at all we’d seen, unabashed pride that, “Yes! We’d done it!”, and most of all, a morbid realisation that this one-day respite from our mundane schedules, this window of opportunity of adventure, had been a once in a lifetime experience.
The skies celebrated our victory, all along the roads back home, with showers of stars in the clearest of the night skies; when every stretch of road flanked by forests turned into tunnels of darkness, the stars above dissipated our worries away.
Back home, we’d flaunted this victory. To every exclamation of “Oh wow, sixteen-hour road trip, in a day?”, “Didn’t one of your guy friends go with you?”, we’d replied with nonchalant “not a big deal” and “it was wild”, only to turn around every time to snicker to ourselves.
In retrospection, it’s a day that still makes us feel all kinds of ways; sending us into fits of laughter, but also sending shivers down our spines. Every decision we’d taken, from trading our comfortable jeans for sanskaari kurtis, stocking up on the deodorants, to adding emergency numbers to our speed dial, it was all a wild ride, one which everyone around us had discouraged us to go on. We solved the answer to question number one. Would we have made it? Yes. And we’d proved it, too. But question number two, that still remains unsolved. When will such unassuming adventures become something that we girls can take up, heads on?
Written By – Vaishnavi Sanjayan
