Remote. Untouched:

I believe the trees spoke to me. I believe there were fairies.

We were traversing the pot-holed roads in the Maikal hills of western Chhattisgarh on our way to see the open cast bauxite mines of Balco (Vedanta). For years, neither the government nor the company had made any efforts to repair the road. Maybe intentionally. It was a road which only a truck could traverse. Other cars and vehicles would land with punctured tyres. As did ours.

We were in a remote forested region in the hills, full of trees and water bodies. It had rained the previous night turning the day cold and wet. I decided to go walk around a bit while my colleagues spoke to a group of young men from the Baiga tribe sitting around a small fire. Each tree here like that in rest of Chhattisgarh had a distinct character and seemed full of life. When I was considerably away from everybody and surrounded by trees, I whispered a soft hi to them. Somewhere the leaves rustled. I whispered how are you. The leaves rustled from the other side. I carried on the conversation stunned, trying to figure out whether it was my imagination or something was really happening. Then as I got ready to go back and said my goodbye to the trees, a strange thing happened. A wind started to blow and all the trees swayed along with it.

It must have been my imagination but there’s no questioning the strong raw vibes in those areas. Everything had a life there, the trees, rocks, rivers. It seemed like a place untouched by humans, as it must have existed hundreds of years ago. Even the tribal communities lived a life they had known for generations. Though slowly many of them have started getting to know and understand money and value of land, there are many who still use barter system to get what they need. On one hand they are innocent and unaware of the harshness of life that they are slowly getting pushed into. On the other hand, they can be aggressive when they feel that you are an outsider or feel threatened. What I admire about them is there intrinsically linked lives to nature and what I feel desperate about is how fast they are getting urbanized. Their land is fast falling into the hands of corrupt mining and infrastructure companies who are stripping it clean of nature and age old traditions of communities.

Chhattisgarh is a pure state, very rural and heartbreakingly pretty. People are simple and unassuming. Nature speaks here…if only anybody cares enough to listen.