Sorry

I was struck by a serious case of laziness. That’s the only valid excuse for being back home for 5 whole days and not posting. Or reading your posts for that matter. But I am making up for my tardiness now by jotting down a post and interspersing it with pictures. Pictures I had no interest in taking despite being egged on by Homecooked. You see rural Maharashtra is not new to me. I have made a couple of visits earlier so to me its no longer interesting from the point of view of taking pictures. I therefore dint make the effort to take my camera along with me. That’s how sure I was about not taking pictures. But what did I do when I went around the villages? I succumb to the desire of clicking a cute kid here, a green farm there. Sometimes people and places compel you to capture them. I love the mobile phones we have these days. They may be equipped with crappy 2 megapixel cameras like mine is, but they come in real handy in situations where one is unprepared.

So here I am laying out my slightly blurred, unclear pictures for you to see. Oh and just in case you were wondering what I was doing there, I was a part of a team trying to assess rural schools. I  like the way I make it sound all jazzy but truth be told, I was the bottom rung of the team. The time when I am no longer bottom rung, had better come soon I tell ya!

We made a visit  to one of the classes and visibly distracted the kids.I tried to surreptitiously grab a picture of the kids without disturbing them any further. The young fellow on the first bench caught me. As did the girl behind him. So much for being stealthy.

Chicks go to school. Literally.

Worn books. Kept along the teacher’s desk.

A chalk and duster. Its been ages since I  held a chalk in my hand.

A brightly painted wall. Quite a rarity in the schools.

Shoes! All neatly lined up. And tiny!! I think the size is just so cute!

This is how the mid-day meal is prepared in some of the schools. This one was in a tribal village.  LPG has obviously not make an entry here yet.

We took a short course in Kolami from these two children. Their teacher (on the right) was disinterested throughout the exchange. The kids however were very excited that someone was trying to learn their language. Dont ask me to repeat even one word they said. Their language is so tough that it made Sanskrit sound easy to me! Kolamis are a tribe found in parts of Maharashtra.

Wooden carts used to transport people and goods. The cattle thats hitched at the front of the cart was missing. Must have been grazing somewhere.

A temple in a tribal village.  Simple ways  to communicate with God. Who needs the trapping of large temples? Certainly not God. On the right corner in the village school.

Look carefully on eitherside of the hill. You will notice a line carrying “buckets”. Thats the supply chain of one of the local industries that mines limestone and trasports it via a overhead line. Quite neat,eh?

The rains havent been very good this year. They have actually been prety bad. The greenery you see on the surface is a result of the 4 or5  rain showers that they had in the season. Groundwater levels are very low in Vidharbha at the moment. This is a picture of a small dam in the area. As you can see it looks more like a pasture land than a dam.

But as with my trip to Rajsathan, I took the rain with me to Vidharbha too! It poured the day we reached and rained on and off on each subsequent day that we were there. It didnt rain hard enough to fill up the dam or recharge the wells, but it did rain  enough to make the weather comfortable.
A fallen compound leaf on the wet road.

An inverted gulmohar flower. Red, spotted with water droplets and beautiful.

Raindrops clinging to the leaves.

The reflection of trees in a puddle.

And now for a little quiz. This is a picture of a field. Look at the crop growing and tell me what it is. Let me give you a hint to make it easier for you. Think of crops that grow in the Vidharbha region of Maharashtra. The crop is non edible.  Come on now hazard a guess, the comments space is all yours!

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