Why a visit to rural India is a must for students?

 I am a born and bred urbanite and a lifestyle beyond it could only be related to work or vacation. Recently, to complete a family ritual, I visited my in-law's ancestral village, approximately 2 hours’ drive from Surendranagar with a population of approx. 2000 people in Gujarat and came back awed with so many insights. 

So first and foremost, we arrived late at night and our neighbour, Dhaval exhibited full hospitality and we enjoyed scrumptious dinner. The food was simple but the taste still lingers. As we were sitting around talking with each other, I saw the couple's two-year-old son moving to the door, opening it and going outside. That very second, I panicked and asked Dhaval to stop him but the family were laughing and said that he would go to the lanes and come back by himself. 'It is very safe here, someone or the other will drop him home if he wanders very far' shared Dhaval. Out here if our child walks a floor down, we tremble and rightfully so. 

We then shifted to other topics and two incidents he shared fascinated me. It seemed while we all were experiencing lockdown and the strictest, in the village everyone after 8 -10 days was moving around doing the work. The reason is within the village there was no 'VIRUS' and no outsider was allowed in so they were safe and protected. 

The second was that the forest authorities had brought in a lion and lioness with their cubs to be stationed within 2 kms of their village as the land surface was inclined towards jungle environment. The animals had a tracking devices and if any of the local people lost any domestic animal, they were compensated with another. The local villagers were comfortable with the animals moving around close to their habitat because they believed that till you provoked the animal, the lion would never attack. Unfortunately, the heat in those parts of the country could not sustain the lifestyle and the animals had to be shifted back to Gir. The very next moment, I requested him to take me to visit the region the next day and to my delight, he agreed.  

That particular night, we slept outside on cots called 'khatiya' under the skies and believe me, the sight was overwhelming. You saw a range of twinkling stars  and it reaffirms that we are truly just specks in the vast universe.  Lying there we were trying to test our knowledge of constellations but bookish knowledge failed and eventually the host plied us with all the information. There is so much difference between ''theory'' and ''practical'' knowledge and till we are thrown into the practice, concepts taughts will always be incomplete & fail us in application. 

Early morning, we walked around the entire village and some houses were so beautiful. Most of the homes had cows and goats tethered by a rope to the tree in front of their homes and no wonder we found the milk so fresh. 

We visited a beautiful old temple and heard that Tatya Tope had once hidden here as it had tunnels taking you to faraway places.  I am not sure of the authenticity but the story sounded great and in 30 minutes, we returned back to our place. Culture and history comes alive when you meet natives and hear their perspective rather than the stories printed in books. 

We went about with our rituals for which we had traveled to the village in the morning and at 12 pm visited the region where the lions had stayed. All around you saw vast expanses of dry brown grass, small hilltops, some cacti and no person around. As we moved deeper, we came across a valley with a stream running below and lots of peacocks and peahen. We urbanites were so excited that we exclaimed and rushed out of the car and the banging sounds of the doors had them scuttle within a few minutes. Truly, we were infuriated with our behaviour, we city folks had a lot to learn about nature etiquette. 

We then decided to move on foot and trekked for an hour or so till we came across a snake home. For a small snake, the house was huge and Dhaval shared that snakes lived together and there could be in hundreds.  Every moment was special and scary as we had no inkling of how to behave if we did come across such creatures but Dhaval was knowledgeable and kept easing our fears. The sun's scorching rays got to us and we made our way back but did realize once again that we were comfortable around a concrete jungle but a real jungle, we are vulnerable and ignorant. 

In the evening, we made our way back to the city thanking Dhaval and the family who invested their time to make ours memorable. In the city, somehow even though we desire much, we are not able to allocate 'TIME' to anyone and here one gives the entire day. We really need to re-evaluate concept of time and relationship in our lives. 

As I reflect, what stands as great takeaways is that people in the village knew each other and trusted one another and that is the reason a two year old child was safe walking around. Out here, we are unaware of who resides in our building apart from a few floors and thus 'TRUST' is a huge factor with us. The crime rates further sow seeds of distrust. 

Next, we are not connected with nature as we should be. We read of all the flora and fauna, in our text books but in practice struggle with the identification. A trip or two regularly to rustic backgrounds will do a lot of good to connect with what was originally designed by 'NATURE' for  ''US''.