Language of Breaths in a Vacuum of Harmony (An Ode to Gauri)

Splashes of cupid’s light shades
Green, blue, yellow, red, white and many more
Brushed in woven hearts.

Early murky morning with the entry of dancing beams
Early monsoonal drizzling
As lilies, roses, jasmines, gulmohars
Swinging along the garden alley
Kept humming in an usual gaiety.

Drenched in her creamy shirt and denim blue jeans
Her glowing disposition beating the beauty of Venus…
Gauri’s late but barging entry into the classroom
Followed with her the waves of magical gravity.

While eyes touched eyes
Simple mathematics
Simplest chemical reaction
Dreams catapulted through the backstage musical chores.

Her jerky smile
Her spiky breezing hair
Her nimble forefingers
Her mesmerizing elegance…
A 360* perfection perfectly spread over the canvas.

Maiden sight
Maiden love.
Attraction caved into infatuation
A bountiful harvest of unseasoned illusions.

Maiden sight
Maiden love.
Those bygone days
Acute shortage of selfness nudged me and broke me often.
So less did I open up
So less did I dared to,
Amidst a crowd of Yankee accent tongues
Amidst a crowd of thick leather valets
Amidst a crowd of young intellectual freaks..

Where exactly did I fit in?
None!
So was I an odd one out_
May be an odd one out but hope still being with.

Attraction prevailed infatuation grew
And I grew too
None to someone
Someone to one
One to one of them
One of them to near one
Near one to dear one.

Infatuation prevailed liking grew
Gauri was into unscheduled dreams
An additional course to live with.
Autumn shed its leaves and rolled back
So did the sequence of seasons followed
Chilling, budding, scorching over the calendars.

Coffee in canteen
Once in a while walks on the busy campus
Moments sometime spent on the historical stone benches
An occasional ride together on her TVS Luna.

Like any other collegiate
I would do the sleep talk
‘I would die for her a million times’
Why didn’t I in those eight semesters of prime life
Ever did I open my heart and just say
‘My dear, I think I am in love with you and I mean it’
Why did I let my maiden love
Into the barren lands of solitude.

With all the purity
With all the courage
With all the humbleness

At last
True being to what I would wish to
‘My dear, I think I am in love with you and I mean it’
Over the phone on one fine day I think I spoke…..
Language of breaths in a vacuum of harmony
I smiled to myself
With my heart leapt into the skies of limitlessness,
‘I would marry if I could!’

Angels are angels
To this day still I carry my love close to my chest crystal clear
At peace and in tranquility.

'What if she hadn’t lost her last breath the sweetest breath!’
So early
So early to the lovely last lost call.

I love you
Still
My little cutie pie…

WHERE ARE THE VILAGEWALLAS IN INDIA TRAVELLING TO THESE DAYS? (Fortune the Bottom of the Pyramid in Travel Businesses in India)

"I recall my grandma, amma, appa, brothers, sisters and neighbors sitting in bullock carts four or five in a row depending upon the crowd, talking the mud roads to the nearest places of worship widely known and visited by the villagers and the neighborhood but less known and hardly visited by the outside world. Not far into the Indian rural history am I taking about but just a 20-25 years ago. Most of the temple complexes in around my village at a reach of 20-30km had their unique congregations seasonally which attracted thousands of villagers", says Mr. Jitu Bhai sitting in panshop at Kharedi, a small village in the eastern part of Panchamahals in Dahos district of Gujarat. People in villages like Kharedi thousands of them spread across the country used to travel mostly in bullock carts and some of the rich in tractors to fairs and festivals without missing most of the year. That invariably used to be the travelling experience which the villagers started with and majority of the older generation actually ended with.

A number pedagogs in the industry opine that most of the rural population in India has actually not travelled beyond their district or neighboring districts. Venkat Ram Reddy who works for India Railways in Pune gets emotional  in expressing his part of story, "I recall the excitement my parents had for the first time travelling to Tirupati a pilgrimage destination many of them would dream those days to go. A dream my mom realized after thirty seven years." They were fortunate to have that slice of spiritual accessibility realized but the story with most of their generation remained unrealized for many more years.

Travelling their own country in India was a dream unreachable/unrealistic for too a recent times. How unimaginable it looks for the globalised world where we talk about ‘global village’, ‘squeezed world’ etc. It is indeed the responsibility of the stakeholders in the industry to enable these village folks to see the world outside they are confined to.

‘Fortune the Bottom of the Pyramid’ as envisaged by late professor C K Prahlad should show way out for the entrepreneurs and the businesses to look towards this unventured market so far. Before we analyze the intricacies of taping rural market for tourism businesses, it is important to dig into the de facto status of today’s movement of people from villages.

Rural population in India has been migrating from villages to urban areas looking for opportunities. The growing stress on farmers for sustenance due to failure of seasonal crops, encroachment of cultivable lands, less demand for the agricultural produce and high risk combined with dreams of giving better life to their next generations. Reasons are a plenty for migrating some seasonal and some permanent but the fact remains fact, migration is at an ascending level. Infact this migration from rural to urban has added numbers to the domestic tourism. People from small hamlets are travelling to nearby tourist destinations for pilgrimage and leisure purposes but at a very slow pace. ‘I visited Srisailam last sivaratri with my wife and children and have planned to go to Sirdi the next season’, says Mr. Balaih a resident of Pochampalli a rural tourism destination in Andhra Pradesh. He says he is motivated by tourists who visit his village and has saved some money for his next trip. Not everyone is so lucky as him to afford to travel but a beginning is always welcome.

Mr. Binu Alakode who visited Kumbalangi an award winning rural tourist destination near cochin in Kerala opines that villagers here are economically benefited due to growing tourism activities and are also taking time off to travel to other parts of the country’, thanks to the recognition and coordinated development of the destination. Come winter many people across their beliefs are found to wear the Ayappa attire black on black in south India especially the rural folks for forty days and make a visit to Sabarimala in Kerala. Motivations have changed so do the villagers’ outlook.

The missing element in the process of these developments is sustainability. "In the middle of an ocean of green paddy fields all around my little village in itself was a spectacular piece of nature’s grace two decades back. Today it pains to witness the missing paddy fields amidst human habitation." shares with Miss. Rwihali Brahma, a travel executuve working with Askon Tours and Travels who hails from a vilage in Assam. So is the case of millions of destinations around the world. Their villages apart atleast their dreams be fulfilled!

Onus also lies with the governments to help in not only the sustainability of the rural destinations but also the rural folks. One of the best ways to sustain the rural folks is to help them travel, support them to see India which they are equally entitled to. One of the revolutionary initiations in this line has been taken by IRCTC by launching its ‘Bharat Darshan’ travel packages. Insiders although say one would hardly find villagers getting their share of chances to have Bharat darshan since urban middle class can easily access to the services and they are in waiting too. Sixth pay commission with pay hike has satiated domestic as well as outbound travel. There is a huge section of employees now travelling to far off places in the country from north to south and even to north eastern states. Middle class in the recent years has suddenly found in their accounts the much needed ‘disposable income’ which they can spend for their vacationing. It speaks good of tourism  growth and for dynamics in the economy. Such an attempt needs to be instigated in rural India in order to enhance their disposable incomes so that their long awaited dreams of having Bharat darshan are fulfilled in the near future.

Stakeholders in the tourism industry in India must work towards these objectives. Risk taking entrepreneurs should venture into this bottom of the pyramid with innovative travelling projects. If shampoo was a product meant for high end customers in eighties bottled and sold, innovative product development with ‘out of the box’ distribution channels by C K Ranganathan the sachet king of FMCG tapped the market at the bottom of the pyramid. It is evident from CavinKares’s unimaginable growth from Rs15,000 to Rs 950 crore  between 1983 and 2010. A phenomenal growth which vows its credit to the bottom of the pyramid of India. Similar creative start ups in  travel industry for the vilagewallas will surely give a new fillip and definitely raise money for the operators. It is also evident from certain rural destinations that pilgrimage tour businesses are on the run in an unorgansed manner. There are small players in the rural market who are organizing trips to pilgrimage destinations across the country but to the very conventional destinations like Varnasi, sirdi, Tirupati, Nasik, Hardwar-Rishikesh, Puri, Sabarimala, Vaishnodevi, Pushkar, Amritsar, Ajmer, Veilankani, Bodhgaya etc.  The rural markets for these pilgrimage spots are mainly the neighbouring regions. If the cost factor is worked upon, it would change the way the world looks at the Indian rural market especially in tourism activities.

The general perception of the purchasing power of the villagers being low may partly be true. But there is also a section of the population in rural India involved in petty businesses and harvesting good crops. This section is otherwise very potential market in itself. A group of five from Mudhol, a remote village in north Karnataka was found vacationing in Goa last summer. One of them Mr. Ravi shared, “We often plan for a vacation trip every summer, last time we had been to Ooty and next year probably we would go to a hill station somewhere in north India. Such groups who plan their own trips from villages are growing in numbers in the recent years. Given proper guidance and motivated to participate in organized travel business, this will have a multiplier effect on others as well. Now the question is, who will do this job of motivating and organizing? Certainly here comes the role of catalyst organizations especially enterprises, intermediaries and the local bodies.

The responsible task of developing rural tourism business may be initiated by the stakeholders in a coordinated approach. Firstly, it is necessary look at villages as markets for tourism businesses and secondly to create villages as destinations. Later aspect is being currently addressed by the Ministry of Tourism with the support of UNDP under the flagship project of endogenous tourism . It is also being promoted under the programme ‘Explore Rural India’. Its high time to see the things from the other angle as well i.e., to tap the rural markets for tourism businesses. 

A TURNAROUND COLOUR

No denim clothing

No concrete roofing

No motor car comforting

No electricity lighting…

Simple is the living

Contented are they all together

Happy are the oldies

Happier are their girls and boys…

Deep in the thickets the other side of the valley

With the walls of mahoganies around

Emergency call for the congregation of

The empty bowels crying

The broken skeletons limping

The lost ploughs looping

The impotent land begging…

Where the need are worn away

Where the dreams are grounded down

Where the joys are torn apart

With the hopes knitted tirelessly

Strangers attempted strangeness.

An ungracious pebble was thrown from the other side

Into the perfectly calm green lakes in meditation

Serene white waters of the valley in slumber,

Ripples, Ripples, Ripples

More pebbles!

More ripples!

Virginity of the white waters of the green lake lost

Lost in the valley chronically that is raped

Lost  forever and ever

No vigilance vigilant around.

While the monsoons shy away

Seeds hide cuddled beneath laterite

Thatches fly with the taunting storms;

Shaky earth under those bleeding feet

Scorching sun over wounded heads

Silence at gun points

Gun points at silence!

When the drooping heads of the lambs rise

When

The empty bowels

The broken skeletons

The vanished ploughs

The impotent lands

Roar……….!

Sun has to rise again

Rise again in the east.

Red mountains across the belts stand

Witness history in making in the foothills

Future being built with mud and hearts, brick by brick.

Two thousand miles far away from the makeshift capital

Amidst the jungles of shrubs

Is the coincidence at reach,

The fall of one single pristine droplet from the heavenly sky

The rise of one single glaring lily from the faithful soil.

Hope lives now miles closer

I can sleep for the day with my dreams close to my lovely chest.