A padyatra in search of innovation
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Shodhyatra is walking
from village to village to look out for local innovators and to honour them. I heard about
shodhyatra from my father and wanted to join. We started from Bangalore on 24th night and
reached Jaipura of Koppa on 25th morning.
The first day I met a girl named Sharadi, from whose house the
shodhyatra started. The first thing I saw was a turbo made by Rathnakar uncle, generating
electricity from the water falling there.
Several people from Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra and different
parts of Karnataka walked in the shodhyatra. Along with me there were two small children,
Kabir and Amul. Kabir is from Bangalore and Amul from Gujarat. We used to walk for a few
kilometers and in between, when we were tired, we used to
travel in a jeep or a tractor. These were carrying the luggage of people who were walking
in the shodhyatra.
While walking I ate groundnuts from Amul's grandmother and
'kumberkot' chocolates made of jaggery and coconut from a Tamil Nadu uncle.
In villages we stopped to honour people who invented new things,
who preserved plants, and who knew about medicines.
I saw many old people being honoured by the shodhyatra group. And
whenever I saw them I remembered my grandmother. In one village, an old man said that he
lived so long because he ate red rice called 'hegga'. I took a few seeds of that for my
grandmother because I want her to live long.
Many children got prizes because they told the name of several
plants. In one village, one girl knew about 150 plants. Even her father and grandmother
were honoured. Her grandmother gave herbal medicines to the villagers. Of all the people,
I was very inspired to see a happy man without legs. He lost his legs 25 years ago while
climbing a tree. Since then, he has been bedridden. Still, he was happy and smiling. I
touched his feet to get his blessings and decided that I will never cry because I have so
much.
At night we use to camp in villages. We all used to eat together
and the villagers used to cook for us. When we used to enter the village for camping in
the nights, they used to welcome us with drums, songs and people in different costumes
like tribal people, purandaradas and several such others.
In nights there used to be cultural programs in villages. In one
village there was a drama and dance of bears by villagers. And in reciprocation, Gujarati
people from our group did 'garba' dance of Gujarat. In another village, the villagers
danced with fire.
I enjoyed shodyatra and would like to join it again.
Savinitha, Age 9
years,
Poorna Prajna Education Centre
Yelahanka New Town, Bangalore
(Savinitha was a shodhyatri who submitted this report for
the Honeybee Network of IIM Ahemdabad.)
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We attended the Centre for Science
and Environment's workshop on rainwater harvesting. It was a very interesting and
informative. It was also a great learning experience. It was good to hear about the
opening of rainwater harvesting structures in Mumbai. We became aware that Mumbai is also
in the list of cities with a widening gap between supply and demand of water.