Learn Life Harmony from Chhattisgarh’s Jungle Children

Shivya Nath Travel blogger and bestselling author of ‘Rootless and Restless’

I said goodbye to Chhattisgarh with many mixed emotions. I spent about two weeks in this state. During this time, I had traveled there on a motorcycle late at night in the dense Sal forests. The ghostly trees with their fallen leaves, glowing white in the moonlight, presented a strange sight. I crossed flowing rivers to reach remote tribal settlements.

During my trip to Bastar and Kawardha, I stayed in a village of the Gond tribe deep inside the forest, which was completely deprived of even basic facilities like electricity. In this marked area of ​​Naxal influence, I sat near a bonfire with my host family and tried to understand the complexities associated with tribal life and the prevalent misconceptions about it.

I saw the traditional festivals of Dhurva tribe. Along with the herbs in a traditional healer’s hut, I also saw bird claws and pangolin scales (collected years ago). In remote villages, I met artists and craftsmen involved in metal and bamboo crafts, whose extraordinary lives and rare skills seem to have disappeared behind the government classification of ‘Other Backward Classes’.

At a local haat (tribal market) I drank landa in a dona made of tendu leaves. It is a traditional drink prepared from rice, which is slightly grainy. Under a huge Mahua tree, I met a warm family from the Baiga tribe, who were preparing Mahua liquor in a boiling pot. They did not let me go without tasting that hot and strong drink in the leaf bowl, even though it had not been long since I had breakfast.

I also met women of the Baiga tribe, who still carry traditional tattoos on their foreheads, arms and legs. They live in mud houses and share the land with bears, leopards, tigers and other creatures of the forest. I will never forget that evening when, at dusk, standing under the gushing spray of Tirathgarh Falls, I suddenly felt an intense feeling of freedom. I wanted to live that experience for a while longer.

But while spending time among the tribes of Chhattisgarh, a feeling of deep sadness remained within me. The reason for this sadness was that now the old rituals, traditional styles of clothes and hairstyle, social gatherings in the forests and tribal markets – all these are becoming victims of modernity.

The diet of the tribals, once based on coarse grains and nutritious traditional foods like Kodo, Drumstick and Mahua, has now been reduced to rice and pulses, due to which malnutrition has increased. Their rich traditional knowledge related to sustainable and ‘zero-waste’ use of the forest and its resources is also gradually becoming extinct.

The inclination towards so-called modern methods of forest conservation has driven away the same communities from the forest who had protected this priceless land for centuries. Many tribal communities are also losing their traditional connection with the forest. While living with tribal families, sharing a meal with an Ojha under the starry sky and listening to stories of socially progressive traditions, one thought kept coming to my mind again and again. The present generation of tribal elders is our last chance to preserve India’s ancient indigenous knowledge, which teaches the way to sustainable co-existence with nature.

Their children – who still have the forest in their veins – can be trained as naturalists, tourist-guides and conservation workers, rather than serving as mere sources of unskilled labour. Instead of calling them backward, we should accept the age-old knowledge that they have acquired while living a harmonious life with this earth. In a world plagued by material greed and environmental degradation, a trip to Chhattisgarh reminded me of what we risk losing along the way as we move towards ‘progress’.

In a world plagued by material greed and environmental degradation, a trip to Chhattisgarh reminded me of what we risk losing along the way as we move towards ‘progress’. We have to learn to live a harmonious life with our earth. (These are the author’s own views)

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