Conflict, displacement and toxic water: Adivasis of Bastar speak of lost lands and dead lakes…

There were specks of green shrouded in red dust: a sight not lost on its inhabitants. Dust swirled in the skies, and gathered on the windowsills. The winds carried them further; a dreadful sight to us – the outsiders – who came to these lands to write its tales: some forgotten, some buried and some […]

Laal paani, laal dhool, laal salaam: In a sea of red, adivasis struggle to find what was once theirs…

“When are we meeting again?” asked Soni Sori, that morning. At the Geedam junction, a few weeks ago, we first met her and Lingaram Kodopi. Their car was parked across the road. There were soldiers stationed outside her home. In all the times that we set foot in her house, over the years, they never […]

They called him a police informant. They killed my son: Jogi Mandavi

At the end of a lone street, there stood a blue house. Where lay nothing but mud roads that led to settlements near the hills, we passed by that house at a junction in Cholnar. A frail old woman stared ahead at nothing before her. She sat there at the doorstep most days. Her name […]

In the shadow of the gun, you can’t have peace: Bela Bhatia

From the corner of the road, the paddy fields gleamed in the sun. It had rained a few days ago. Amidst distant hills, wreaths of smoke curled in the air. Some days, a dull roar of engines ricocheted in the distance. The silence returned a while later, almost always. One late summer afternoon, as we […]

Salwa Judum went very well. It was the birth of a revolution: Chaitram Atami

A sense of normalcy prevailed. Unsettling and strange, it belonged here in the midst of a chaotic past and an obscure present. Normalcy: here in the constant is where one often sought its presence. “This is our normal,” remarked Suresh once when we spoke of solitary days and rains underneath an old mahua tree. Like […]

Of Conflict, displacement and loss: Tales from an old Salwa Judum Camp

His suggestions were unfounded. There was nothing he could do to convince us. “Why would IG Kalluri inquire about us?” we asked him to his annoyance. He didn’t answer. He refused to look up, and scribbled away furiously in an old register at the counter. He overcharged his customers, and sometimes quarrelled with them over […]

Rest Of My Family

Stories of encounters with the rest of my human family…

#maoists