Men who will stop the water: vignettes from Goa's mining heartland By Hartman de Souza [EMAIL PROTECTED]
We skirt Paikdev's temple for Paikdev Zor, where this tribal snake deity bathes. The story goes that the village of Maina in Quepem Taluka once received all the water from the 'zor' or 'spring', and people from adjoining Kawrem, none. Then after a terrible tragedy, an angry father from Maina, grieving for his inconsolable daughter whom he had given into marriage at Kawrem, forced Paikdev to send water, through the hill, to that village too. I glance back. Seeing how the mining company 'renovate' Paikdev's temple, I feel a chill of sadness, only heightened by the fine spray of a dying drizzle. Some years back, Paikdev's temporal abode was a labour of love crafted in laterite, mud-plaster and whitewash, nestling in a small clearing, surrounded by hundreds of trees. Now, as if in a mockery of archaeological surveys, contempt for "tribal" beliefs, it seems manufactured in a factory. Paikdev in concrete; garishly painted into dissonance; in return for this paucity, the absence of his hills, trees and water. After an hour and a half, unlike my motley colleagues, I am tempted to sit. Aki, all of eight, eagerly bunking school, skips ahead like a sprite; Zaeen, fifteen, playing truant to identify birds, looks like he would rather not go back to school; and to Pauto, in his mid sixties, and Shantaram, in his thirties, this is home. It's July, the traditional paths covered with thick grass and shrubs well over Aki's head; creepers and vines form a thick web, through which we stumble and pick our way. I mutter a loud prayer to Paikdev and ask him to ensure I do not put my foot on a snake's head. "Not all snakes are poisonous," Zaeen says. "Yeah, sure. I just don't want to find out which is which." Shantaram points to an old mine, abandoned in Portuguese times. It takes thirty years for the earth to recover from mining, so, apart from a sudden incline and overhang in the distance, and a deep bowl, the forest has returned in vengeance, the mud road all but disappeared, although one can spot recent wheel tracks. The earth regenerating itself could have made a nice story if we didn't know the ending. "This is where they intend mining," I say. "What will happen then?" Aki asks me. "This hill will disappear," I tell her. Her frown says she can't comprehend the scale of destruction, or maybe she's trying to figure out how anyone could be stupid enough to make a hill just disappear. We climb clumps of grass wedged between ancient laterite burnt a deep brown. At the summit we look out at a morning clear enough to plot the rain. In the distance, cloud-misted hills stretch towards Sulcorna to join the taller ghats, home to the Kushawati; directly below, sprawling to our right, the four hills we have trudged over. To our left, across the Maina-Kawrem road, barely 500 metres from the Government High School at Maina, is the rogue mining operation that dug out two hills in barely six months, leaving behind a bottomless cavern. "This is what will happen here?" Aki asks. "They're stupid people." No, I want to say, just very greedy and very, very dangerous, the kind who will murder for ore. Zaeen's just read the Goa Foundation's Goa, Sweet Land of Mine. "How do they get 'environment clearances'? he asks. "There's a laboratory in Hyderabad that fabricates reports saying there's nothing on these hills except ore." "That's it" "It's worse." I tell him what Joao, a lawyer from Quepem, says: that the mining operations have already begun without 'environment clearances'. Zaeen snorts in disgust. He's figured out that back in school, they'll tell him he must respect the law! We pass full grown cashew trees, bhendi, teak, and mango, planted some twenty years back by the Forest Department, who will watch silently as they are hacked down. I see pots to distil feni, and as we skirt the last hill, plantations of areca, tiny terraced fields of rice, and lean-tos of thatch left over from the summer months when shepherds watch over cattle grazing. The shrine leaves Zaeen, usually on constant alert, in repose. Pauto says Paikdev takes the form of a snake. To me, his face is a giant rock darkened with age, buried in the hill, and festooned with bright-green ferns and lichens, tiny sprigs of wild flower, grasses, creepers and vines; his eyes glow rich with the blackness of ore. Around his forehead are entwined the thick roots of an ancient kusum, its trunk a pillar to the sky, its canopy of leaves welcoming the clouds. >From Paikdev's mouth, along the furrow of his pursed tongue, water courses out. Before his great-great grandfather's time Pauto tells us, the water only flowed to Maina, where lived a man who gave his daughter in marriage to Kawrem. Blessed with beautiful child, one day she came to fill her pots at the spring only returning to find her infant lifeless, his tiny body covered with tiny black ants. The father grieved a full year, then, carrying a big stick, walked to the zor with nine men, berating Paikdev for not giving water to Kawrem and hitting the rock. From that day three-quarters of the water flowed to Kawrem. Returning, we descend 45 degrees from Paikdev Zor. Zaeen trekked the Himalayas this summer, so he looks at me witheringly, Aki readily following suit. Naturally stepped by water, the path down twines between plants growing high on either side, as if planted by a divine farmer and we get the hang of going down, grabbing a handful of the plants as if they were ropes. "You're way too slow," Zaeen tells me, pushing past with Aki. We are touched by the succour of Paikdev Zor, the legend resonating as we cross a mountain stream four times, awed by the magnificence of flowing water. With innumerable brooks, this stream joins the Curca, a tributary of the Kushawati. It is difficult not to believe, as Pauto does, that these waters are not part of a divine force. We come back full circle, to the canal built at a cost of Rs. 4 crore (Rs 40 million) to carry water from Paikdev Zor downstream. Villagers here know contractors and politicians made money from the canal, but, they add cynically, at least they gave us Paikdev's water. On the other side, Kawrem is still blessed with its abundance, both villages touched by the munificence of a tribal deity towards a grieving father. "That's dumb," Zaeen tells me as we trudge the last hundred yards to a hot shower and change of clothes. His teeth are chattering. "Her father hit a rock to give water, now these swine will hit that rock to stop the water -- that's dumb." ENDS -- ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Hartman de Souza is an Africa-born, Goan journalist based in Pune, who voices his outrage against the impact of mining on peoples' lives in interior Goa, on the west coast of India.