Taamul

By Allwin Jesudasan & Rajkamal Goswami An edited version of this article appears in the print edition of  Down To Earth, July 15, 2013 “Varsham muluka naa TV paathutu beedi suthitte irrupen. Varshathulle inthe oru vaaram oru kavalai illaame na inge thanguven.” (All year I sit in front of the TV, rolling beedis. In the one week that I spend here, I just relax and enjoy my stay here without worrying about anything else in the world) remarked a middle-aged woman ‘pilgrim’ from a small hamlet of Alangulam Taluk of Tirunelveli District of Southern Tamil Nadu.  She was replying to our query as to why she came to visit the the Sorimuthu Iyyanar Temple inside the Kalakad Mundanthurai Tiger Reserve (KMTR) during the annual Adi-amavasya festival. We had asked this question because to us, it was difficult to understand the motivations that drove hundreds of thousands of people to travel and camp inside forests. During this festival a large area of the forest around the temp...

An edited version of this article was published in ( Down To Earth (August, 2012) “Rivers gave us the first great human civilizations. But what did we give back to our rivers?  Death?” – Ms. Sina Suchiang, a Khasi women working as a teacher in Brichornot Village, Jaintia Hills, Meghalaya Dusty and sooty landscape of Jaintia Hills. Narpuh Reserve Forest (RF), deep inside the Jaintia Hills of Meghalaya, is among the few good forest patches which has withstood the intense pressures of growth, development and mindless extraction of natural resources like coal and limestone. It also forms an important watershed area with many important rivers originating from the hills. We visited the forest in March and November last year looking for birds and primates as part of an ecological study. The 200 km and 9 hour long journey from Shillong to Pasadwar village, the range headquarters of Narpuh RF block 1, was dominated by large broom-grass plantations, coal and limestone mi...

This note is to explain the title and inspiration behind it. Its not an original title. I have actually used the title of one of my favorite movies, which I am sure many of you gus already are aware of! This is the imdb link to the movie:  http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0116922/ It is directed by David Lynch. A dear friend from Norway introduced me to him and since then I have been completely hooked to his work. He is literally the 'dream merchant' which infact most folks in showbiz are aslo known as. But Dave (thats what I call him) is 'The Real Dream Merchant'. He sells us his vision of dreams through his movies. And his dreams err movies are in some ways real inspiration to let people dream! His movies looks more like a visual poetry..full of layers, not just vertically placed one above others but also layers which merge and unclasp seamlessly, overlapping from all possible directions...more like a complex three dimensional mesh of visuals transcending dreams and r...