Despite millions being spent on women welfare and development, the knowledge and creativity of

India’s women remain unearthed and often ignored in India’s hinterland. A group of thirty people has set

out to find those creative women during SRISTI’s 31st Shodh Yatra in Wardha, Maharashtra from 5th to

1 2 t h M a y , 2 0 1 3 .

A Personal Journey Log by Marianne Esders

www.sristi.org

THE SWELLING

ROAR OF SILENT

TIGERS

Shodh Yatra

is a journey

for the search of knowledge,

creativity and innovation

at grassroots.

Shodh Yatra

is an attempt to reach out

to the remotest parts of the country

with a firm belief

that hardship and challenges

of natural surroundings

are the prime motivators

of creativity and innovation.

www.sristi.org

31st Shodh Yatra, Wardha, Maharashtra

Plastic bags pop up and down the river’s surface. The

flowers of puja chains float here and there between

bottles, trash and dirt. Closeby, the steps of a temple

scale the embankment and further down, some bores

appease their thirst. Quickly we approach the blue

painted walls of the Ashram on the other side of the

river. We are running behind.

I am told in the Ashram lives a lady of 85, who has

spent many years of her life walking. Walking through

the states of India to share Gandhi Ji’s thoughts. Upon

arrival, we learn that she has fallen ill. Only very few of

us may visit her. But first we are asked to sit and listen

to the welcoming words of another elderly woman.

Some of us buy the Ashram’s letters. I also give some

money but do not take the paper. I want to travel light

and would not be able to read the Indian script, which is

still completely alien to me.

After a few minutes, a second elderly woman

approaches, and soon a third. Their hair is cut short and

one of them has shaved her head. Though we don’t

know much about him, we pay our tribute to the grave

of the Ashram’s founder and listen to the words of the

ladies. Finally, a small woman joins us. It seems the

sight of a group of walking shodh yatris makes her feel

stronger. Some illnesses need a cure for the soul. She

shares Gandhi Ji’s message and the Professor

translates into English for me. Except for the

yatris I don’t see any men or younger people around.

Is nobody interested in Gandhi Ji’s ideas any longer?

The women are strong in their preaching. The

atmosphere reminds me of that created by the nuns in

the catholic girl school that I attended when I was

younger. Something sacred floating in the air, little

flower beds here and there, discipline, chastity and

something sublime that I can’t easily nail down in

words. Maybe some form of passion soaked with years

of life.

When I get up from my knees I discover Jesus nailed

on a cross hanging above a small hindu shrine. I refrain

myself from taking a picture. It is all the same, I think

and wonder about the meaning of life. A few steps

further, a naked godess stretches out on the walls of a

temple room. It is time for us to leave and the women

ask me to take the other yatris with me to the Ashram’s

gate. I smile at how naturally they approach me to lead

out the group. So different from the patriarchal India

that I have experienced in many other places.

On the way back over the river, I hear the Professor

speak about what friendship is not. But what is

friendship? He says, it is making another person

become better. I think it is also accepting another

person exactly the way he or she is or would that be

love.

A RESOLUTION FOR DAILY MEDITATION

The yatra begins with a day at Sewagram Ashram nearby Wardha and the resolution for daily meditation. Reflecting on it

now, I kind of followed this resolution, though not always by sitting in silence. For some yatris it feels as if Gandhi Ji’s spirit

is still strongly present in the Sewagram compound. I cannot sense it. But the place is quiet and calming. I leave my

signature in the Visitors Book before we slowly start our walk. Around 100 kilometres ahead.

The coming days we will walk over fields and through forests. I’ll see some Nilgai in a dried riverbed and a little lake not

far off the road will invite me to wade right into it, without hesitation and fully dressed. The water will cool my body,

thoughts and sun-burnt skin. Every day, I will walk myself stronger and at one point feel the wish to walk a million miles

more. It is pure joy to be outside, far away from the office desk, though the temperatures are unbelievably high, around 48

degree Celsius.

During the walk, I don’t speak much and try to stick mostly to those who are silent, say little or do not speak my language.

For some reason discussing about this or that gets to my nerves and is somehting that I would rather avoid than spilling

out a never ending flow of words. I don’t feel like explaining why I am in India, where I come from, what my plans are, and

where I will go. To be honest, I do not know, and time has taught me that too tightly planned paths are illusionary; there

are always unforseen twists. I just walk and see, take a right turn here, a left turn there, and sometimes, I take rest or walk

a little back when I realise the path leads to a place where I do not want to go.

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1

31st Shodh Yatra, Wardha, Maharashtra

THE HARDSHIPS OF LIFE

In the early morning light, a mother kneels over her

archaic brick making tools to earn the money she needs

to send her children to school. Everything worth its

effort must emerge from the hardships of life. But must

it be this hard? Why do the brick makers we meet on

our journey not use more advanced machinery?

The dusty air and muddy clay have turned the woman’s

clothes and hands into the same colour as the earth

under her muddy feet. Her face is veiled, her eyes wide

awake. I come closer to see what is going on but only

understand fractions since my Hindi is still very bad.

Later someone tells me that her daughter studies at

medical college.

The woman is not shy. She is on Facebook, she says,

and the Professor is thrilled. I wonder why she would

not be, mobile technology is everywhere. What does

she think about 30 shodh yatris walking by? What do I

think about 30 shodh yatris walking by? I take a picture

of her with son. He spends his summer holidays

working with his mother. I think about the project for the

elimination of child labour1 that we carry out at SRISTI.

But before I am able to ask questions, the group has

started walking again.

One thing I told myself before going on this walk was

not to fall behind. Nothing makes it harder to keep the

spirits high than falling behind a group that marches

ahead. In the early morning hours the heat is still

bearable but throughout the day the sun will turn into a

burning fireball, the asphalt will eat the bottom of my

shoes.

2

1 Woman working at a brick making site in Wardha,

Maharashtra

2 Time for a little rest and chat with those who labour hard

every day

My shoes have served me well in the

two preceding shodh yatras. Probably

this time they will fall apart. I know that

the heat of Wardha will get to my brain,

drain more water out of my body than one

can take in. But so far, acidity has not set in

and I am doing my best to prevent it. Wardha is the

region in India where many farmers have committed

suicide to bring their families out of debt. In the morning

light it looks peaceful and like any other part of the

country.

Some water buffaloes pass by in a stoic trot.

1 www. http://www.sristi.org/cms/competition-to-find-innovative-idea-for-eliminate-child-labour

www.sristi.org

After two days we find our rhythm, start early and

take rest when the midst of the day brings too

much heat. Before noon, we hold three village

meetings, after noon another three or four. I am

almost never hungry. The food is cooked very

spicy and it is just too hot for me to eat much.

Sleeping outside is better than under a roof. With

so many stars, I quickly fall asleep in the cooling

night air. When waking up on the second morning,

I feel all my muscles and bones. The third day, I

feel my sunburnt shoulder and my left hip. The

fourth day, I feel no more pain. The fear that I won’t

make it declines with every step and I become

more confident in the belief that I can do it, that my

body can take it, the walk, the food, unfiltered

water, and the incredible heat. No need to sit in a

car or to visit a doctor as I had to in the preceding

shodh yatras. With every passing day, I walk better

in the heat of Maharashtra.

Walking over dry fields in Wardha, Maharashtra

31st Shodh Yatra, Wardha, Maharashtra

PAINTED COTTON FLOWERS

Dusk is approaching when we reach Khairi. It is

situated on a hill and its entrance is framed by a

beautiful tree. I wished we could spend the entire night

under this tree. We stay some time with the villagers

and visit the house of a deaf and mute girl. She has

decorated her room with dried and colourfully painted

cotton flowers. The girl’s eyes and smile are warm and

welcoming and I realise that her expressive way of

communication makes it easier for me to understand

her signs than the foreign languages that surround me

every day.

Besides the girl’s efforts to bring beauty to her room, we

have not come across many signs of creativity in the

region. Her door steps are ornated with bangles. Nitin

calls them half-broken and the professor rebukes him

for his choice of words. Women don’t like the word

broken - they are partitioned bangles, he points out.

After visiting her house, we sally quickly. Though it is

dark by now, we have one more village to reach. The

path meanders downhill. We are at the edge of a

wildlife reservoir. It is the first time the yatris start

speaking about tigers. We try to stay close together

and torches come in handy now.

This night we spend in the huge schoolyard of

Saldhara. While the men wash off the walk’s heat at the

yard’s water tap, the villagers listen to our nightly

presentation. As a woman, I have to find some hoarding

at the far end of the school building behind which I can

hide in the dark to wash my face and feet. Right now I

would not mind taking a bath in the open as the men do.

But I should not forget that I am in India and I do not

want to cause a riot.

I do not like this schoolyard. Maybe it is better than the

crossroad on which we spent the other night where

those sleeping at the outer edges were scared to lose

their lives to cars rolling over their heads – a fence of

white plastic chairs could only serve as slight protection.

But tonight’s schoolyard is situated a little far off the

village and I feel it could be any schoolyard anywhere in

the world.

How will we learn more about the people of this region if

we stay outside their village? Should we not meet, eat

and sleep closer to their homes? Throughout the shodh

yatra we enter many schools, some of them lifeless,

others beautifully decorated, but how many visits do we

pay to the people living here, how many houses do we

see from inside? How close do we really get to the

people’s lives, worries and hopes?

Jahangir Shaikh is the hero of our yatra and a “hit” with all

villagers. In Belgav he shows his modified scooter which

was featured in the Bollywood movie “Three Idiots” to the

l o c a l k i d s .

www.sristi.org

The following morning I start a hungry walk. I have

grown sick of the waste we leave behind. We make

use of plastic cups and plates layered with aluminium

foil though we have brought our own reusable cups

and plates. I am sick of throwing waste into nature. But

my plate is somewhere in my bag under many other

bags at the bottom of the truck. I remain hungry.

RECIPE COMPETITIONS

Some village meetings take place without women,

though we have called them for recipe competitions. It

is not always easy to convince the women to join and

many times, they remain in their houses. But in

Parsodi, the presence of women is overwhelmingly

strong. The Panchayat is a woman herself and has

mobilised the others from five surrounding villages. I

wished this would happen more often. They have

cooked a vast variety of dishes from local plants and

traditional recipes. This time, we taste a lot, learn a lot

m o r e a n d h a v e m a n y a w a r d s t o g i v e

During this yatra only few of us think about reusing

their own plates and cups and many just throw the

trash into the fields without thinking twice. Wind blows

the foil into all directions. I think about how it soon will

affect the cattle and birds. It takes more than double

our lifetime until a piece of plastic is decomposed.

Burning it does not make it better.

“How long have you been that green”, one yatri asks. “I

am not that green”, I respond, “just, I was raised not to

throw trash into nature.” One of the boys asks the

locals for a bag and silently collects what the others

have dropped carelessly. Nobody thanks him for it. But

I see in his face that he feels better about himself.

1 Local dish winning the 1st Prize in a recipe

competition

2 Women presenting their dish varieties made from

local plants

2

1

31st Shodh Yatra, Wardha, Maharashtra

out to the women. In another village, however, I

cannot find a single girl child. Neither at the meeting

nor while walking through the streets. I remember a

village girl speaking up on the second day of our

walk in Belgav. She wanted girl child abortions to be

persecuted. After her speech, a boy got up and

added that girls should be allowed to sit on the back

of a boy’s bicycle without being teased by others.

Another boy told us that he would like to see a

system in place that prevents parents from taking

away their children’s scholarships without having

On another day, two people from France join us for a

few hours. The sun burns their skin and before I find

out why they have come, they have already left and

taken two yatris with them. Sometimes people decide

to drop by for a while or to drop out. Maybe they could

not bear the heat.

In almost every village, children welcome us with

overwhelming smiles, curiosity and creative ideas.

They always have questions, many times too difficult

for us to answer.

to consult them first. We award these kids for their

outspoken sense of fairness. Maybe the future

generation has already internalised what many others

are still struggling to understand.

In Khervada, we are received with tribal music.

Villagers play goat drums and flutes and the sounds

animate a local boy to perform a dance for us. After

lunch, we visit a cheerful centenarian. She is almost

deaf but her mind is sharp and humorous. In Parsodi,

we find a living knowledge register, a healer who has

extensive knowledge about the local plants. And then,

unexpectedly, a man approaches us holding a pamphlet

of the Honey Bee Network in his hands that he had

collected nine years before our visit. He says, he always

wanted to come to Ahmedabad but never made the long

journey. We are touched and happy to meet him.

Kinhala reveals a beautiful but neglected villa speaking

of times that were more prosperous. Along with a few

others, I am invited to enter and in the dusty attic, the

professor finds a few tattered looking diaries containing

poetry and scribbled philosophical reflections. It feels

as if we have found a real treasure. The attic’s doors

hold beautifully stained glass engraved with flowers.

Many of the windows have already shattered and

instead potatoe bags flutter in the warm desert wind.

But some of the colours have remained to rejoice our

hearts.

Centenarian lady

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31st Shodh Yatra, Wardha, Maharashtra

FAIRY TALES AND TIGERS

What worth is the taste of water without a desert on

the tongue. A white jungle tree embracing a dark door

to unknown lands – fairy tales in my mind – the next

moment, I think of tigers spurting downhill, catching one

of us out of the steep path that we have to take, without

escape. We are laughing at the thought of it. I take a

p i c t u r e . S o m e o n e

takes a picture of me taking a picture. “Hurry, hurry,

d u s k

brings bears, bores and tigers!” On top of the hill heavy

breaths, I take a sip and share my water, a little for

everyone except for the last who might have needed it

most. I do not ask. I only wonder. It seems, nobody else

notices it. Another white tree in the midst of darkness. I

take a picture and wonder what will I do with it. I don’t

even know what kind of tree it is. But it is beautiful. The

curly roots spread through the ground, now and then

revealing their white skin. Trees without leaves, the

ground covered with mazes in decay. I pick up one of

the giant leaves and am stunned by the size and

beauty of it. Do we ever take time to notice. “Hurry,

hurry, we have to hurry!” I throw it back to the ground

and speed up my steps.www.sristi.org

Are the people I walk with different from those I have

walked with before? Some of them I have met on the

earlier two walks. In the morning hours, something

strange had happened. I had pushed myself into a state

of horror by the sight of a tormented cow surrounded by

eighty creatures that were barely skin and bones. I

could not swallow my food and shared with one of

them, a very skinny one, roaming around, trying to eat

my shirt. I realised I would not hesitate to kill the half

dead cow for the sake of relieving it. Holy cow, left on

the street dying in gleaming heat because of a fractured

bone. This is customary, I was told. Unquestionable?

I s n ’ t t h i s o n l y a m o r e s a d i s t w a y o f

killing without taking responsibility? Some people that we

have met on our way have thanked us for coming into

this neglected, drought prone area. Others have watched

us with sceptical eyes. But then, how far does our

responsibility go, towards the people, animals and spirits

t h a t w e v i s i t ? I t h i n k

31st Shodh Yatra, Wardha, Maharashtra

Leftovers, maybe of a tiger’s meal

of the cowshed that we saw at Sewagram Ashram a

few days back. Maltiben had given each cow a name

and each animal listened to its name when it was

called by it. I shed a tear and walk away in sadness

and anger. Should I have stayed to sit next to the

animal watching it die?

“Are you still thinking of it?”, asks someone a kilometre

later. Yes. And I am going to dream of it. Because it

places me before a huge wall of puzzles that I cannot

easily solve. “Well, we tried to help, heave it into the

shade of a large tree. Isn’t that enough, did we not do

our duty, it seems I am still on the insensitive side.” I

did not know there were sides when it comes to

compassion. But I am here to discover. Even the

different sides of pity. Three monkeys sit on my

shoulder, I lower my head and for the time being

decide to consort with the group of silent tigers

watching us from the forest.

In the evening, during a discussion round, I cannot

hold back and express my feelings, in tears.

Momentarily, I wonder whether I am insane to cry in

front of the entire group, but then, it is my true feeling

about how we shodh yatris did just walk away from a

tormented animal.

The night we spend in a fenced schoolyard. Biting

bugs wake me from time to time. At one point I find

m y s e l f a t

the edge of the group. The others must have shifted

their sleeping places further to the middle. But they left

t h e i r

sleeping mats behind. Confused I sit up to observe my

surroundings and see the light of a torch flying over the

path downhill to the village well. Two nightly shades

move on the giant water tank. What are they doing up

there? I am so tired, I fall asleep again. Around three,

the village dogs start barking firercly. Maybe a tiger is

close. How to fight a tiger with bare hands? The

schoolyard light is burning. The bugs are still biting. I

wonder why I am not really scared before I already fall

back asleep. With early dawn, I leave for the train

station to catch the train back to Ahmedabad. I have to

leave early. Just before those staying behind hear the

roaring tiger. Too bad I missed it.

Back in Ahmedabad, I come to know that a decision

was made. A traditional healer was found. Maltiben, the

herder of the Sewagram Ashram met the herder of all

those less fortunate cows for each other’s consultation.

And maybe even the truck that carried innovative

farming utilities from village to village alongside our walk

was utilised to transport the dying cow away from

certain death in the biting sun. At this point of time, I do

not dare to ask further questions.

What do I take away from this shodh yatra. Not the sight

of beautiful landscape and people I experienced in

Manipur. Not the fascination I carried away from Madra

Pradesh, when I had just arrived in India and everything

was new. Maybe this time I have grown stonger,

physically, mentally. There is still a lot to reflect on.

Maybe I learnt that our prejudices influence the

questions we ask and the answers that we seek, as Anil

Gupta wrote in a paper in 1988. Maybe there are too

few women participating in shodh yatras to actually

come closer to the life and creativity of village women

and girls in India. But there is always hope.

Marianne Esders, May 2013www.sristi.org

All my gratitude and love goes to SRISTI, NIF,

the Honey Bee Network and its members, my

most wonderful colleagues, who have become

my brothers, sisters, advisers, and invaluable

helpers in many situations during the three

Shodh Yatras that I was allowed to join and

throughout my first year in India. Thanks to

them, I survived drinking ground water from

village wells and many other stressful

situations. Maybe I have become a little bit

more Indian throughout the process. For sure, I

have grown much stronger and for sure I have

found some very good friends.

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