There are two kinds of stories that are told. There are ones that need the narrator, an outsider (a reporter, if you will), whose knowledge of the events and characters must be relied on. And then there are those which come unstuck only through the words of the character(s) where the living of the tale also becomes its telling. After the prelude, we begin our Saranda story with one that is of the latter kind.

“Saranda is not what you see today,” says Abhijit Ganguly, a 66-year-old adventurer, agriculture graduate and entrepreneur who runs Manoharpur’s only privately-owned guest house. “What you see is only a feeble, tottering remnant of what was once the forest of seven hundred hills, or as the tribals call it in their language, Saranda.”

Born in Gua in 1946, to a doctor father who instilled in him a love of the then pristine jungles and a nuanced understanding of its tribal folk and their culture right from his childhood, and having lived almost all of his life in Saranda, Ganguly insists he can’t speak dispassionately about the forest and its people.
“All the shades of green you can imagine were once found in Saranda. The appearance of the new leaves in spring was a sight to behold in the years of my youth. Now, with deforestation and the ecological changes that have happened over the years, the majesty of this sight has lessened by a great degree, though, thankfully it is not entirely gone,” he says.

The winters have always been a special time of the year for the Gangulys. As children, Abhijit and his siblings would wait for their father to take them to the forests. The entire family would pack essentials and set camp in various spots, often for weeks. In fact, one of his fondest memories is of how his father would keep four or five cycles ready every time he came home with a gang of friends for the holidays from school in West Bengal. A few months into his marriage, he and his father introduced his wife and kindred spirit, Manjusha, to the forests. Having just retired as a high school principal, she is keen to resume the forest exploring with her husband.

Saranda’s kusum trees are her favourite. “While spring meant new leaves of green, I would wait for the kusum trees. The new leaves would be a rich crimson. It would seem from distance like the tree tops were on fire. The vast green interspersed with splotches of fiery red would be mesmerising. Now, the kusum trees have become fewer,” she says.

Of their years in the forest, the Gangulys have anecdotes galore. One on a ‘wild encounter of a different kind’ surfaced as we talked of reports of bear attacks in the papers. “It was a winter afternoon and my wife and I had taken the jeep. We had left the jeep and were walking down a forest path when, suddenly, two bear cubs appeared out of undergrowth on the sides of the path. Manjusha couldn’t resist their cuddliness and ran to them, picking them up in her arms. Now, the rules of the jungle are very different. Such young cubs are never left unattended by parents. Even before I could shout out a warning, a male adult came rushing, grunting ferociously. She knew how to stave off a bear attack and her jungle instincts kicked in. She placed the cubs on the ground away from herself and kept walking straight ahead, away from them. The bear came and sniffed his cubs while we hurried back to the jeep,” he recollects. The wild life in the region, he adds, had a way of harmony with the humans, which became increasingly strained over the years and ultimately snapped. “The blasts in the mines and the movement of heavy vehicles in the elephant corridors scared them away from their roaming and feeding grounds. Now, they raid agricultural fields in and around Saranda as do the bears.”

“Baba’s (his father) role as a doctor brought me near the tribal people. One of my earliest observations of their living was their proximity to the forest,” he says, pointing at the oil-on-canvass painted by his father depicting a tribal youth throwing his arms wide in exhilaration, looking at the rising sun.

“The tribal people did not speak much. Even now, in the interiors, you will find that the people do not speak to you unless they are replying to something you have asked. It is as if they are forever in contemplation of their surroundings, including the visitors,” he says of the Hos connection to the outside world.

“Their way of living is almost like a commune, though you may think otherwise with the distant homesteads. Everyone is involved in bringing up and teaching the children of the village. For example, when a farmer teaches his adolescent son to make a plough, he does not sit with him and instruct until the boy perfects the art. The boy sits with the wood and his tools near a common passage in the village and tries to carve the plough. Each elder passing by gives feedback and instructions till the craft is perfected.

This way the father is not kept away from his daily chores while the boy learns from a host of instructors. Now, you have to appreciate how the delicate fabric of community ties rest on such seemingly unrelated acts like learning to make a plough. If agriculture loses its significance in these communities, one small way in which a boy forges bonds within the community is lost. This is not to say that it would lead to a complete breakdown of their way of living. But a valuable thing – the sharing of knowledge – would indeed be lost,” Ganguly points out.

Of the hostility the Governance Now team encountered in a village, he says, “This is fairly recent. Every team of outsiders alighting from a car is seen as people who would hand out some cash. They were always wary of the outsiders or ‘dikus’, but never hostile. Now, they have started feeling resentment as they think they are being betrayed by the outsiders who keep them out of the patches of the forest while reaping its riches for themselves.”

“Moreover, the distrust has deepened with the poor record of development in the region. What was promised to the tribal people has not been delivered. This industry-led model of development lacks an appreciation of the local knowledge. I have tried speaking to the many government officials who come to my guest house about how Saranda’s conservation is key to the development of the Hos. After all, they still live off the forest and if the forest is allowed to disappear and mined without a thought for the ecological consequences, it will be disastrous for the people,” Ganguly says.

“The government should not ignore the context of the people while making attempts to improve their lot. But it inadvertently does. Let’s take up education as an example. The goal has to move ahead from just literacy. I have seen hungry children walk miles for the mid-day meal they get at school. With very little food and no electricity at home and a thousand chores to do, the only ‘learning’ that the children get is in the schools. But this kind of patchworked education does not take them very far. Some dropout after high school, the lucky few who go to college come back to find that their education is of no use in the village. The cities are, in any case, full of unemployed graduates. Thus, the very belief of the tribal people in education gets shaken,” says Manjusha. 

The talk of development, or rather the skewed nature of it, wearies away the enthusiasm of the conversation. One realises with last sips of the afternoon tea that the couple have a Saranda in their memory, the likeness of which can now only be imagined. The face of the forest, as the Gangulys rightly worry, has changed for good, if not for the good.

Also read: Governance Now at ground zero of development offensive