Guntur - the memories

My face made it to the papers. Captured during a discussion with the collector of Guntur (Andhra Pradesh). Guntur - one of the places chosen for our covering deprivation course. Asian College of Journalism is the only college in India that has a Covering Deprivation course in its syllabus. I was one of the 30 students, trying to make something out of our trip to Guntur. For me, this was more than just a part of the course that I had to complete in order to get my degree – my passport to professional journalism (whatever that means).
Apart from making me realise how lucky I was, Guntur gave me many moments to cherish and remember, cry and laugh over, think deeply about, capture and keep…



* * *

Soujanya. An 11-year old girl, she carries a tin of ladoos instead of books, hands clutching the little money that she gets instead of a pencil. Soujanya. Her feet bearing the mark of her labour… We met her during our initial days selling ladoos at the quarry. She did not want to join a school and learn to be able to read and write like the other kids. When we spoke to her she was pretty sure that her life revolved only around the quarry and ladoos. Few days later, we made a stop at a school-cum-orphanage and came to know that they were getting another child to join the others – Soujanya. I experienced a sense of satisfaction, relief, a tinge of excitement, but not before a wave of unexpectedness and surprise. One of my friends, Pia, had met the people of this school, telling them about Soujanya and had urged them to take her in. We went back to the quarry and there she was, holding the tin for the last time… hopefully… I sat next to her and tried to converse using the few words of Telugu that I had managed to pick up. She giggled initially at my lack of knowledge of her language, but we were able to understand each other. She then presented us (Rads, Pav, Yogi, Max and me) with a flower bouquet. And I still have it with me in my book…

* * *



From Guntur, where we had a brief meeting with the Joint Collector, we went to Vinukonda – our base camp. We were hardly ever at our lodge, except during the nights of course. We would set out every morning in our jeeps, lugging around our video camera and tripod and return hours after darkness took over. I got so used to that system that I kind of miss the rush of it all now. We always made sure that we somehow got to travel in this one particular jeep because we felt (especially Max), that we bonded with the driver. He had never spoken much to us, probably because we didn’t speak the same language. And still, we bonded… As soon as the jeep revved, he would switch on the tape player and instantly the jeep would throb with Telugu beats. And we enjoyed every bit of it. I did not understand the language. But I simply loved those moments, traveling with a mission with the beats and the rhythm taking us there. I remember our first day in the jeep. He had not used the tape player at all and after quite a long time, we were beginning to get bored of the silence. So we had begun singing! Yogi and I were doing the seconds and Max, using the camera bag as the drums, provided the beats.  I really do not know how our driver put up with us that day! Maybe that’s why the tape began playing and never stopped since then…

* * *


After hours of debates, we decided that we would target the education in these areas. I had researched a bit before leaving and quite obviously found that this aspect highly troubled me. So we went about visiting schools in the different mandals and interviewing the mandal officials, trying to gather as much information as we could. There were no colleges in most of the mandals. Bollapalli was by far the most backward mandal with a literacy rate of barely 33%. We met many students and teachers there. The easy way out was to get one of the Telugu speakers to help out. But I was determined to try and converse with the students there. On one such day, we didn’t return to our base camp and chose to stay back at this town called Durgi, in an ashram. We spent most of our time in the terrace there, because it was much quieter. It was hard for me to believe that I was in a place entrenched in naxalism. The huddled conversations, the chill breeze, the memories, the moon, Wikham (Yogi’s man) shooting the moon oblivious to everything around him, the bhajans, Max sleeping… it seemed like we were in some dream. The tensions, the fear was not there. Yet there was an undercurrent. And it was then that nishat sir came up, pulling in a boy. He called Rads and me and said that this boy, Cheenu, had come looking for us. The boy looked up and gave a shy smile. It was considerably dark and I could not catch his features. From what sir told us, Cheenu had seen us in one of the schools. Wanting to meet us, he had enquired around and had reached the ashram. On one hand this thought scared me (we had so easily been traced). But on hearing this, a few of my classmates sitting around us, appreciated the fact that we had been able to reach out to him, prompting him to come to us. Yes. I did feel very nice. I did feel nice to have been able to create some impact (little it may be). And we did talk. Pav was fluent in Telugu and we spoke to him about his school, his dreams, his parents, his society, his life… then very carefully tip-toed into the realm that we really wanted to venture – naxalism. We skirted around, cautious all the while. Lunged a bit, then withdrew, kept repeating before we were able to get into a good rhythm. And it amazed me. How naxalism affected every soul here, young and old...

* * *

Max slept in every mandal! Wherever we went there was a stop, initially for 15 min and later extended ones to give us more time to take the shots and talk to the people in the villages. Max, the big guy that he is, got stares from every quarter. In one of the towns, Durgi, one guy went to the extent of asking whether he was a nawab! That was probably the last straw for the rest of us. From that day on, Max went around using Pav’s dupatta making a turban out of it (like the ones sheiks wear) proclaiming his authority as the ultimate nawab!

* * *

An encounter. A dead body. A naxalite. These were the first images that hit us as soon as we landed in Vinukonda. Jayraj had enough contacts to ensure that the body would not be removed until we had a look at it. I really could not say if that was a good thing or a bad thing. But honestly, the days of moving away, not getting close enough to things that would alarm us were gone. At least for us. We were journalists and it was more important for broadcast journalists to get right there. It was Amanda Harper, a BBC journalist who had come down to teach us a semester, who made me realise that it was our job to get there up close because no one else could. We were the journalists, the people’s link. However, I could not ignore the sadism that had seeped in. Here we were, students of journalism, the first journalists ever to step into these areas and we were excited. Excited to see a dead body. A dead naxal. Frankly, I do not know what to make of that. I still have the footage…

* * *

‘I am breakfast Puri’. That is what I ended up saying at one particular restaurant and from then on, it stuck. But it didn’t stop here. I was rechristened several times during our trip. So were a few others. It was like we had lived different lives there and we had to have different identities, different names. And it was mostly related to food. We think when we are eating I guess. Pav was ‘Mirchi Bajji’, Max was the nawab (who ate a lot so we could not really name him), Rads was the ‘Goodie Bag’ (she had the yummy things from home), Dhara was the ‘Alam Chutney’. Many others went nameless and we do feel a sense of regret. But life moves on. Even after returning home, we did not forget our alter IDs. I’m still breakfast puri, Pav is still Mirchi Bajji, , Rads is still the Goodie Bag and Dhara is still the Alam Chutney, Max is no longer the nawab (we absolutely refused to boost his ego any more)...