Life is full of joy, fun, glory, ecstasy, satisfaction and happiness. It's also about sorrow, misery, agony, frustration and a whole lot of other things. One has to learn to live with all these things and should find appropriate avenues to express them. In that sense I feel blogging will give me the right platform to express my feelings about various things in life and thereby get satisfaction and happiness. With a lot of hope here comes my debut knock...
Reflections of my Fieldwork
As part of the field work segment of my PRM course in IRMA, I was allotted the fishing village of Koadiakkarai in the east coast district of Nagapattinam in Tamil Nadu. The excitement of visiting a fishing village for the first time in my life was there even before I reached the village. Whatever I thought about a typical fishing village was there in Kodiakkarai and there were many things that kodiakkarai offered me which I never thought would be there in the village.
To start with, the most fascinating part of my stay in Kodiakkarai was its beach. The beach there was different from that of the other places. It was not blue in colour rather it was brown in colour and the sea was shallow. This was a treat to my eyes and that used to be my companion on all the evenings that I stayed there in the village. The next best thing was the food that I got there. Since I hail from Tamil Nadu I simply love the food in that part of the World and Kodiakkarai food was no different. I used to get idlis for breakfast, rice with poriyal, rasam and thayir for lunch and typical mydha paranthas for dinner. That kind of delicious food made my life in Kodiakkarai a fruitful one. The next best thing about Kodiakkarai was the chats that I witnessed in the hotels. I have seen such heated discussions in my home town but here it was more enjoyable and they used to be anything from cinema to politics to sports and people discussed with a kind of passion that was unique to that place alone. The next best thing according to me in Kodiakkarai was the wild life sanctuary and the birds’ sanctuary. I know Kodiakkarai was a tourist spot due to the presence of a picturesque beach but only when I went there I came to know that the village was not only famous for its beach but also for its birds’ and wild life sanctuary. Also the fact that it was the only village that had a beach, a wild life sanctuary, a birds’ sanctuary and an MPCA (Medicinal Plants Conservatory Area) gave me a great feeling to be there. The next best part of that village and the most noteworthy one was the warmth with which the people treated us in the village. They provided us with all the basic amenities that we wanted and treated us not like guests but like kings. The next best part of that village that attracted me during my stay was the youth of the village. Most of them were SSLC passed guys and they did everything one would expect out of the youth and also did things which one would never expect out of them. They played cricket and may be that was the reason why I liked them, may also be because they watched cricket and discussed it day in and day out as I used to do, may also be because they spent hours together on their mobile phones, may be because they gave more importance to these things than anything else in life and more because they treated me like one among them and not like an alien.
It’s always difficult for anybody to love something so much and to hate the same thing as much as you loved it. But I have to say that kodiakkarai gave me a lot of joy but at the same time gave me as much pain as well. This was something which I never expected it to be this strong and it was nothing other than the caste difference. Caste was something that was omnipresent in Tamil Nadu irrespective of whether it’s a city or a town or a village but people live in harmony. But the scene in Kodiakkarai was that the people of the BC community did not like the people of SC community and vice versa. When one speaks to them he/she can make out that nothing other than a blame game was going on between the two communities. People from the Soliya Vellala community who constituted the majority of the BC population were saying that it was they who brought the SC people into the village and they have no reason to oppress them. SC people were saying that the BC people simply did not want them to come up in life and hence they were creating all kinds of constraints for them. Though there were no clashes between the two communities, the caste feeling was so strong that even the Children were playing the blame game. This was something that made me to hate the village as much as I loved it. Having said that I sincerely pray that this caste segregation gets eradicated in the years to come. Hope this happens sooner than later. The next thing that made me to hate this village was the drinking habit of the fishermen. Yes they work hard but that cannot be the reason why they drink. But interestingly this was the reason they gave me when asked about their drinking habit. It’s not that only they suffer because of this habit of theirs but their families including children suffer to the core. They spend more than 50% of their daily earnings on this, leaving their families under poverty. Hope this habit of the fishermen gets evaporated. Yes, sooner than later.
All the experiences that I had in Kodiakkarai during the 50 days stay including the best and worst experiences gave me something to learn and enjoy in life. The first and the most important of that learning was how to treat your fellow human beings. Then I learnt how a person can be happy even when he has nothing with him and how this was possible. The learning perhaps was that a person can seldom be happy without anything in life. Each one of us is happy because of something in life and the argument holds true in the context of Kodiakkarai also. The Soliya Vellala community barring a few families was leading a happy life in the village because they had everything in life and the all important money. On the other hand the dalit community barring a few was leading a miserable life as they had nothing in their lives other than poverty. Learning here was that do not bring caste into the picture any more. It’s time we move on in life towards development. Development of the individual followed by the basic social unit called the family, then the society at large. Hope this happens too. Yes, sooner perhaps than later.
Thus my experiences in Kodiakkarai were a mixture of good and bad things in my point of view but certainly there was something to be learnt and understood in each one of them. In that sense my village experience was a beautiful one.
PS: Please do write your comments, which I think will be of immense help to me in my future postings.
