On the Road

Once upon a time traveling to the hills must have been fun. I’m not sure anymore. Is this largely due to the exceptional quality of the roads? In the last three months I have frequented non-discrepant villages in Uttarakhand twice and there is a third trip on the anvil. Surprisingly for a state whose Chief Minister was known to be a person who took connecting India by roads rather seriously, UK is blessed with the worst possible roads. 

Gen. Khanduri would surely blame Mother Nature and her fury for the shoddy condition but that’s really nothing compared to what one truly experiences on roads in Uttarakhand. The drive to Dehradun from Delhi is enough to break the toughest of us. That road passes through a state called UP so no real surprises there. But once you enter Uttarkhand you’d expect some relief. 

Hardly the case. 

During my recent visit I was accompanied by a local bloke who gave me the lowdown on everything UK. Dehradun wasn’t anything that he recalled as a kid. Driving through the congested lanes of the town one can’t help but think about the future that is already finding it difficult to park a car or even cross a street. Imagine an entire city carved out of some busy West Delhi suburb and that’s D-Town for you. 

It’s just not the roads or clogging that Dehradun has to worry about. Soon the mall culture is going to set shop and then things would be really bad. The region has really progressed ever since it separated from Uttar Pradesh but seems like they have refused to learn anything from other states and their experiments with stupidity. 

For starters they could have made a new city and operated the administration from a new capital rather than burdening a town that was bursting at its seams. If you could dislocate thousands, submerge an entire town and relocate families all for a dam that according to me serves no real purpose then a new capital shouldn’t have been that big a deal. By the way my take on the Tehri Dam is limited to my subjective view as I couldn’t see anything that the huge thing does. These things would be difficult to achieve as the decision makers like everywhere else in the country are fight for seats. The ballot of a recent election looks like a mega shopping list with symbols like pen, ring, tea set, axe, brick, ladder, jackfruit, tamarind, spectacles and believe it or not Ambassador car!

For a state that greatly relies on tourism connectivity shouldn’t be anything less than a pleasant feeling. The road connecting Chamba via Mussorie and Dhanolti is still motorable but the other one is exactly the stuff nightmares are made of. There’s isn’t any stretch that isn’t laden with potholes. For someone like me who dreads leaving the city but loves the concept of traveling these things matter a lot. For a better part of my road journey I felt like I was in Gurgaon. You really want a picture of what it was like then here goes; picture the worst patch of MG Road and add some hills on one side and a huge valley on the other. And of course this is a mountain road so it will narrower than two SUV’s parked together. 

I could never understand why Indians don’t really do anything permanent or at least concrete about our roads? Remember the earliest tyre advertisements and the words ‘built for Indian roads’ resonating in your ears. What the hell is an Indian road? 

Why the hell hasn’t the concept of world class quality like housing amenities in Indirapuram penetrated this industry!

Food Crisis

Some things don't change. Or should I say the more they change, the more they remain same. In spite of traveling on a regular basis and possessing excellent packing skills, which can rival any super hero on various accounts, in addition to an elephantine memory, I forgot to stock up one of the essentials while shooting outdoors- Sunblock.

I was shooting in the sun for five days which included so much traveling that I felt like bad news visiting villages across Uttarakhand. The lack of protection from sun ensured that the protective layer...wait this is my skin we are talking about...

There isn't any protective layer!

There is just a layer and may I add it's not as resilient as you'd believe it to be. The entire skin peeled off. First it stung. Then it started resembling cling film on some sandwich. Slowly but surely the skin came off. First there were small but significant eruptions. what followed was a bloodbath, which can't be described here. Like some S&M freak I self clicked and have photographic evidence. Don't worry I shan't torture you. But you get the idea. Hence forth either I'm going to cap myself up or go bonkers on industrial strength sunblock.

But things do change. The one change that I saw on this shoot wasn't anything short of a marvel. This documentary that I was shooting for is about an innovative method of cultivating rice and it's called System of Rice Intensification. Under this a farmer needs lesser water, lesser grains and the produce is almost 60-80% more. what's fantastic is that the work required- sowing, water, weeding- is all 80% less than the conventional method in addition to the grain being bigger as well as insecticide free! Rather than planting a handful of saplings the farmer just plants ONE seed in a place and yet the produce is better and the yield is more.

The process is rather simple- soak seeds in water for a day. Then sprout them before sowing them in a nursery. While transplanting use a marker to mark sqaures on the field which has very little water; sow one sapling rather than a handful at each intersection of the square. The farmer just needs to weed the field every 10 days over a period of 30 days. After this you just watch the rice grow. Scientists believe that SRI could actually be the solution for the food shortage in the world. Eat your heart out George W! Read this article from New York Times to get more information on SRI. India is adopting this method for wheat and other grains as well and it's being done by the people from People's Science Institute.

The shoot was really tough but it all seems worthwhile keeping the subject in mind. Also got an opportunity to cross the (in)famous Tehri Dam. I really don't know what the hell the dam is used for- the reservoir is far from full, there is no movie like water-gushing-out scene happening...nothing. Bu it's a scary sight to say the least. Imagine there used to be a entire town that got submerged; what you see above the water was formerly the highest building of the town.