India Part 1: See what I see, Basanti calling
THE EXPEDITION
All my bags are packed and I am ready to go…
That’s the call I get as a communicator as a new assignment beckons me.
The mission brief: hunting for stories of human need, change, advocacy, and empowerment. Ground realities, if not narrated would go unnoticed.
Setting out on a journey filled with cultural nuances and captivating people invariably heightens my thirst for exploration. The voyage begins with an 18-hour train ride to the city of the famous yellow ambassador taxi; Kolkata, as it is called now. Upon arrival I’m immersed in the pandemonium of this place.
The landscape of the city gets my undivided attention. I attempt to capture what my eye sees. Thanks to smartphones, with a click of a button that task has become effortless, making it possible to create a collage of classic memories.
Rickety trams crawling through the streets, ginormous steel bridges connecting land separated by inland water, and the random roadside conversations in Bengali. I’m heading from the train station to my final destination Basanti in the Sundarbans, one of the target areas of World Vision.
The concrete jungle and fancy cars soon give way to lush green fields and cart-bikes.
People wading through sticky clay skimming its contents, catches my attention. It seemed as if some kind of treasure lay trapped within.
What are they searching for, I enquire?
“Fish,” says the driver.
A startling discovery for me, breaking the stereotype fishing happens only in water!
The sight of mangroves and boats soon populate my view, signaling my entry into the Sundarbans, the world’s largest tidal halophytic mangrove forest.
Ecstatic to witness the unique flora and fauna of the magnificent grove, I couldn’t help but wonder with the rise in sea level due to global warming, would this place cease to exist one day?
WHAT MATTERS?
Which story to tell, is the fundamental concern facing every communicator. It is the defining decision that sets the mood of the entire field visit. Would it be about an impoverished widow braving death to provide for her children or about a child surviving a congenital anomaly unable to afford surgery?
Out of all the economic assistance stories which one story would represent them all? Scanning through story briefs and having an extended discussion with field staff narrows the choices from hundreds to a few.
At 6:00 AM it all begins. A final kit check and I journey to the remote villages of Sundarbans; geared up to transcribe the lives of sidelined luminaries. The cool sea breeze slips through the flora of the mangroves gently swaying trees from side to side almost in a choreographed motion.
Navigating through the narrow, fractured mud roads of the village, I finally arrive at the house of a local farmer, Hasan Laskar. Walking briskly towards me Hasan hollers out a greeting, expressing his immense joy for having a visitor. Ushering me into his home, he offers me a chair to sit.
"Don’t sit on the mud floor, your clothes will get dirty," says he.
I sit down to listen to Hasan life’s tale.
Hasan pours his heart out, his desperation to acquire an education, the frustration of not being able to go to school and the helplessness of taking up casual labour. From struggling to provide for the basic needs of his children to caring for a malnourished child, he leaves no detail of his fight for survival out.
This family had opened their hearts for me to pen down their vulnerable moments and life challenges.
What a privilege.
Moving to his kitchen garden, Hasan proudly takes me on a guided tour. "I always wanted to have a kitchen garden, now I have one," says he.
Time to pull out the big gun- the full-frame DSLR camera - a worthy tool to capture the family’s full-flavoured daily life.
After a long day, I sit in silence to process the events at Hasan Laskar’s house. My mind wanders to soak in the surroundings. A hen flies across the courtyard and lands clumsily on a haystack.
'I believe I can fly,’ I imagine the hen is thinking as she perches herself on the hay. Things are set in motion the minute one believes, just like Hasan did.
About the author | Annila Harris is a communications officer for World Vision in northern India.