I have been thinking deeply about ‘opposition’ and googling on the word found that it originates from the position of planets and celestial bodies relative to each other. It’s interesting that it should have been adapted into the language of politics. Traversing different mining belts in the country has only raked up feelings of ‘opposition’ in me. Since I lie out of the orbit of celestial bodies, I have really begun to wonder almost helplessly what the way out on this is. Are there other ways of trying to explain the miseries that mining unfolds for resident communities and their landscapes?
My recent visit to the area around Damodar in Jharkhand, revealed that years of mining, large craters and fly ash dumps, cooling ponds and outlet pipes found in the landscape bore histories of resistance and opposition but have also become a part of people’s life. It was an acceptance of a ‘way of life’, after a burial of discontent. I was searching desperately for artists in the community, writers, poets, musicians, and I kept getting one answer, as if to remind me continuously that my reality orientation has gone awry, ‘It is gone, nothing is left.’ Am still wondering how ‘it can go’ and what is it that ‘we want to hold on to’, what is that we want to ‘create and recreate’. Trying to search for art in the everyday, I had first to build an appreciation for those who were already experts in the field, whether linguists or folk singers. They deeply regretted the loss of the art forms in their communities today, almost as if the ravaging of landscapes had ravaged minds. And yet there was an urge that the new creations stick to forms, to the beat of the old. Young entertainers must learn the techniques and the forms they insisted.
A singer, Sukumar ji, who is now nearing sixty has managed to preserve the old and create new within it. After visiting the areas for two days, some leaders, youth groups and activists, I had begun to give up. Was there no artist near the river, who had wanted to write, talk or sing about it? Sukumar ji had written one song on the Damodar. He shared that while several songs mention the river, since it has such a close association with every day life, there was really no great emphasis given to the river in itself. What helped Sukumar ji to ‘discover his talent and nurture it?’, I asked (keeping in mind that he was probably one of the few ‘creators’ I had seen). He shared that his village had a very good library when he was young. The library gave him access to a wide range of books which facilitated his writing. From the blacksmith community, Sukumar’s community would produce almost all that is useful from the agriculture implements, tongs, iron vessels, and other home implements to even loosely assembled country pistols. Also a language activist, and having written several songs in Khorta, he regrets that the library does not function in his village anymore.
A visit to a village off the Damodar, called Jharindi near CCL colonies where pollution has reached such high levels, that methane emanates from its banks, we sit at the tea shop on what is known as Hospital Road. A broken wall in front and new tenements to the left is suggestive of some disturbance here. The village elders explain how a hospital was shifted from here, and the railway line was to divert into the heart of the village and a mine was to be located where the hospital is now. No railway line has come in as yet, but in spite of many years passing after initial land acquisitions having been announced, the dwellings off Hospital road seem to exhibit the ‘fragility of transience’ in them. Right near the pit, which is now covered in grass, is a sacred shrine, a young boy explains that this is dedicated to ‘Kasba Dada’ who saved the village from mining, for when the pit was dug up, no coal was found, and since then the the residents dedicated this patch of land to their sacred village guardian.
The deeper end of the pit is now a small water body, and a village elder shares in a soft tone, that it’s the only honour left for women, I look across to see a group of them arranging their colourful buckets at the drinking water tap, partially absorbing what he is trying to tell me and partially trying to soak up the environment. But no singers, writers, painters here. I mention old photographs and paintings, if any, and am told that there are some people who are the elderly who would be able to tell me a few things.
An elderly woman comes forward as we enter the interiors of this more than a hundred year old village on the banks of the confluence of Damodar and Konar. She shares how youth of today are absorbed in TV sets and have no respect for their elders. The mela (fair) on the river banks is not quite the same any more as new destinations for it are being sought. Women of their time would cover their faces when they walked. What is happening to our culture?’ she rues. A strange sense of dualism hits me, as I hesitate not to speak too much, almost conscious of the baggage’s I am bringing in.
Still reeling from the previous house visit, where the oldest man in the village through his attempt to explain why he is feeling unwell, is shooed by the younger women in the house, he is ‘almost dead’ they shout in front of him, as our conversation breaks off and he helplessly collapses into his earlier position, while his female relatives replace a mosquito net to cover him and drive us out. I wonder, in spite of this place being a kind of urban hub for a coal and steel city, health care continues to be a mystified service, and diseases have no names to them.
Just before leaving I meet two CCL employees, one retired and old and the other young, and when I ask the older worker if he has any memories or photographs of the time, his eyes become moist with some kind of nostalgia but he is quick to add that it is all with the company. The younger worker shows off his ‘worker ID card’, the older worker shares that the colours have changed, he had different ones.
All along the banks of the rivers is a devastation of sorts. At Kharkhari Colliery, I realize that one would have to dig deep to search the expressions. A mine surveyor speaks of the numerous tunnels underground and the number of kilometers that mine workers walk underneath the surface, he shows me a road map of tunnels which also carry with it the idea of depth. As he talks about the netherworld I can only imagine through pictures, we try to ask him with the help of the map, which villages these tunnels are under, trying to get some kind of direction of the known with the unknown.I realize that to really build that picture of experience and emotion around the charred landscape one would have to look underground. I had only scratched the surface so far.
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