Hello Chhattisgarh!

Time ticks away. It's been one year since i first landed in Chhattisgarh as an IAS probationer and now i find myself going back to where i came from (#lbsnaa). 

Exactly one year back, i had funny notions about the state and its people, there were doubts whether i will fit in. Doubts whether i will survive, both professionally and existentially. Like any other newspaper reading member of the middle class citizenry, i also thought of "Chhattisgarh" as a term synonymous to "Naxalism". (Having read and reviewed a lot of Leftist literature obviously didn't help feel better). 

I remember being pleasantly surprised finding that there is flight connectivity to its capital, the fact that the airport was normal and there was no armed ambush till half an hour after the flight's landing also brought relief. 

The drive from the airport to my district took 6 odd hours and i spent the whole time looking out of the window, searching for People carrying weapons and red flags. What i found instead, were wide roads that led to the highway that cut through a beautiful, serene countryside, dotted with kuchcha houses and ponds..

Over the next few weeks, my preconceived notions about the state went for a complete toss! Instead they were replaced by even funnier notions... 

For one, I was astonished by people's capacity to consume paan... When there are more than 4 people clustered at a place, the place is bound to smell of beetle nut! ... When the "Honorable" High Court decided to confer on us, probationers, temporary powers of a judicial magistrate, i found myself sitting on a high chair listening to the pan chewing lawyers. The height of the chair was enough to make me seem imposing and give wings to my already inflated ego but not enough to prevent the pan filled saliva that splashed from the lawyers' mouths, from reaching me!

The scenes at the courts and govt offices were filled with obnoxious red teethed smiles of middlemen, spread across faces that were made rotund by intense oral activity (i.e. chewing :P)...  I soon learnt the subtle differences between people's choices - the gudaku, the paan, the gutkha and the hundred other products that they subject their teeth to. 

The second pattern that emerged clearly was that of pond bathing! Initially i saw it as an escape from the heat, but then, when my travels increased, i realized its omnipresence. Wherever there is a water body - a river, a pond, a tank, or even a temporary rainwater nallah... There are bound to be people of all age groups and genders bathing, be it early in the morning or late into the evening... ( somehow the nights were given to the poor water bodies to soak in all the human touch). One had had dreams in which the river flowing next to the circuit house would be flowing with soap water and there would be bubbles all around.

Away from the dusty towns, in the tribal villages, i sensed satisfaction in the air; A sort of a unhurried ease that comes with lack of expectations. Children greet me with broad noses and beautiful white smiles (for their teeth are still not subjected to the torture reserved for adults). Barefooted people could be seen carrying tendu patta on their lean, sun-burnt bodies.  The forest that surrounds is cut by roads that are plight-fully checkered with tar. Roads that are used by trucks and lorries carrying produce from the dug-up earth.

In the days that followed, chhattisgarh slowly began to reveal itself. Its a cadre wherein the IAS is still looked up to, a state where administration has shown promise, a state where political intervention is not vile or crippling. A state where problems are huge and complicated and the people are submissive and enduring.

Chhattisgarh has the land from which the richest business tycoons earned their money, made the middlemen rich and left the indigenous people wondering what just came and took away their home. It's a rich state with poor people that challenges the government to deliver and distribute the benefits of industrialization better. 

One can go on writing, but its now time to go back to LBSNAA and somehow describe my dirt and sweat filled field level experience using big English jargon words that no one back in the district would either understand or care to...

PS: All views expressed here are purely personal and have no connection with those of the Government. This post has been carefully modified to fit into the ambit of freedom of speech permitted to officers under the Rule 6 and Rule 7 of All India Service (Conduct) Rules, 1968.