A Grassroots' View

Some pics I took in the field recently...

They seemed like a pair of  super-aggressive, persistent and really pesky kids who keep trying to ask you for stuff. But if you think about it, its really sad to see kids so small fighting so hard for everything when they should be playing around....

Unfortunately, I was given the un-accomplishable task of getting taluk maps from a local Government office. This office was a very huge building with lots of people but it had no windows, brick-thick dust lined the walls, did not have electricity, the officials used handfans if you please, 7'o'clock blades to tear papers and slide rulers to draw lines....The pic shows their neat and organised filing cabinet. 

Women going to work at a garment factory. If you read the reports on their working conditions, the indignity and hardships they endure is truly horrible. It also makes me very uncomfortable to see people herded in trucks like this. Dunno why...

Who needs that penthouse when you can live here :)

It was so hot that I couldnt even bear to stand there...But this is their life...day after day after day after day....

This man is 34 years old. He has not gone to school, he works as a wage labourer for 35 rupees a day. He lives off Govt schemes and says he cant remember when he last saw a 100 rupee note.

Tender coconuts the size of helmets :) 4 rupees each :)

A group of children waiting at a Govt school for their "mid-day meal". The food they serve is half cooked and the rice is full of stones. But still, kids fight over their share for it.

This kid doesnt mind working while her friends play. She makes 150 rupees a month, washing vessels.

Mind-boggling superstition. Your caste is your identity. The "difference" between the two dominant castes in this village was that one did not wear a nose-ring because decades ago, when someone went to get a nose-ring for a person from the other caste, he did not return. The two sects have been at logger-heads ever since and are bitter enemies.

 

Every morning, women queue up to take water from the  pipe which is there only for 3 hours in a day. Each family is allowed to take only two pots.

Ragi roti and chutney :) The famous staple food...Impossible to eat, atleast for me. Half the pic was lost but you get the idea?

Why on earth does man do this???

I want to live here :(...fix a tyre on this tree and swing away to glory :(.be lost to the world :(

Well, these were just a few things that caught my eye but I really wished I could capture and freeze every little detail. Because, you know what - its actually true... India really lives in her villages !