Baranti, A trip to remember
I am an earnest patron of the cultural
history or things like that, sometimes ventures my habit to go through some
periodicals or treatise or magazines or books specified to that. I was then
contemplating specially on old traditions and culture of Bengal. It was a
crispy afternoon of November, 2010. I flicked through the crinkly pages of an
old book, at the solitary corner inside the ‘Bangiyo Sahitya Parishad Library’,
stalling oldest collections of Bengali Books in Kolkata. I hardly remember the
name of the book where the name of the place grabbed my attention. I returned
home and browsed thoroughly about the place, revealing a very little
information posted online. A few lines were written in a blog along with a very
few low resolution photographs. But I managed to get a phone number of a
resort, furnished at the very bottom of the page.
I had only a few friends of mine,
inculcating the same trains of thoughts and interests parallel to me. I made a
pre-planned rendezvous with them and I flung the topics of my findings about a
tribal village of Purulia district, which overlooks the co-existence of Baranti
River and Baranti Dam alongside, naturally flanked by three hills; Jay Chandi
Pahar , Muraddi Pahar and Baranti Pahar. I enunciated my intervention to find
the name of that village to Soumya and Arjya. They were listening with rapt
attention positioning their jaws on their hands... when I finished the
description... Arjya jumped up, hugged me and screamed.... “yeeeeeeh!!! We’re
ready. But please ask Rumali to come with us (It’s the nick name given by
Soumya to my girlfriend).”It was not out of uncertainty whether I can manage
her or not. So I asked them to convince her...
I dialled the number that I had collected
form the blog and with my full astonishment the mobile number was found to be
of Kolkata itself, more precisely Keshto pur. A gentleman picked the phone up
and happened to talk with me. He made me informed to the fact; although it is a
Kolkata number, but I have called at the right number to get reserved for
Akashmani Resort, at Baranti. With three of his friends he sought out a joint
venture to buy a handful of plots at Baranti about 15 years back at the time
when there exists only a distant jungle, desolate and dense with a tiny tribal
village beside the Baranti dam. Eventually they transformed the plot building a
small cottage to spent vacations in a calm and quiet place in the lap of
nature, where it can be found at its crudest form. Recently they have opened it
for the tourists but not for all. They have their own verification process,
through which they decide whether they are going to give the booking or not; as
they want only the people who loves nature and respect tribal cultures to go
there. He asked me to meet him at his place.
...26th Dec, it was the last day
of our semester exam. We met at Kaka’s shop after the paper. I make them
remember that only 4 days left to our trip. They rushed to the market for some
shopping and I returned home. Our railway tickets were still not booked.
It
was about 10:30 pm. We boarded on Chakradharpur Passenger. The wooden bunks of our reserved compartment
drew different and unique expressions on the face of four of ours. I personally
loved it for the vintage look and feel. It was the first time we were
travelling in a train compartment like this. As the train starts and left the
Howrah station behind, tremendous cold gripped us in. All of us were shivering
and the sound that was coming out from the rhythmic collisions of our teeth
assonantly rhymed with the mechanical sound of the train. We took our dinner
(Biriyani) and tried to sleep. It came in beats and pieces. But you can surely
call it a sound-sleep (A sleep interrupted by the sound).
The train was scheduled to halt for only 2
minutes. The last piece of our sound sleep broke suddenly when only about 30
seconds was left to start the train again. We took our bags and jumped on the
platform with all agility and the train slipped from the station in no time. We
were still in the measure to ponder about our belongings whether anything had
gone with the train or not. The name of the station is Adra. We had to take
another local train of Ashansol cord line from here and the first train of that
route was to leave at 6 am. So we had to wait there for 2 hours.
It will never be a misfit to register an
adorable memory to get the view of sunrise from an old railway station like
Adra. The old British structures, the broken shades and the concrete benches
looked mysterious in the dark, imbues the arcane pasts and the morning sunlight
made them to be anointed with a baptizing freshness. We bought the ticket and
board the train. In that morning train along with the sleepy passengers we
crossed two stations, named Jaychandi Pahar and Burudi. The third station was
Muraddi. We got down here. It was a small village station and there was a small
market just beside the station. We bought some chicken and other stuff for
lunch and took a van rickshaw to reach Baranti. It was a 40 minutes trail through
village roads, treading through jungle and finally we reached Akashmani Resort.
It barely accommodates a two roomed cottage with an asbestos roof which
overlooks an area of about 2 bigha of Akashmoni plantation just beside the
Baranti Dam.
We kept our baggage there, handed over the
chicken and other cooking stuff to the caretaker and came out for a walk by the
side of the Dam. The Famous JayChandi Pahar is seen clearly at the opposite
side of the dam from here. [Heerak Rajar Deshe- the famous movie of Satyajit
Ray was shot there]. We took our bath
and by the time the lunch was ready. While taking our lunch, sitting just
outside the cottage, we were introduced with two interesting characters Manu
and Sona by our caretaker. They were two street dogs lives in the
compound. The caretaker provided two
plates for them and they took their lunch calmly with us.
Soumya and Arjya went to take a nap and we
two i.e. Rima (Rumali) and me went out for a walk. With our utter surprise we
found that Manu and Sona were following us. I patted them on their heads and
told them in simple Bengali to show the way through the tribal village. I
didn’t know what they understood, but after few moments we found ourselves
following them through the village road. What a beautiful, neat and clean
village it was. Each of the mud houses had hand drawn design on the outer wall.
Domestic poultry birds were running around, some of the villages were sitting
by the side of the road and trying to tune their radio.
Women were working the
households. In front of the last house of the village Manu turned back to us,
as he was asking that if we want to go farther. I again asked him in Bengali
what was there beyond the village. He
didn’t reply, but started running towards one direction. Sona was sitting there
idle. I was clueless about what to do. After about 10 minutes, when I was
taking some photographs, saw that Soumya and Arjya was coming towards us with a
little girl and Manu was leading their way. She was the caretaker’s daughter,
who was coming with them. Seven of us then united and went through the jungle
to the other side of the dam. The sun was setting; we sat there for a while
until the little girl asked us to push off. It was getting dark. The birds were returning to their nests, the crickets
and foxes heralding the end of day time by their noisy presence. We froze at
our feet by the shivering wintery clutches of cold and walked as fast as
possible towards the resort.
Pakora and tea was ready for our evening
snacks. We ask Jayanta da (caretaker) to prepare few packets of popcorn, what we
were carrying with us. It was difficult to sit outside. So we slipped in to the
room, plunged into the blissful gossip. Jayanta da came and asked what we liked
to have in dinner. We asked for chicken pakora, aaloo vaja, salad and roti. It
was the New Year eve. Soumya brought out the bottle of Royal stag from his bag.
Celebration started.
Jayanta Da knocked the door in the morning
with smoky cups of bed tea. After having breakfast we prepared for the trekking.
We had a plan to track to the Baranti hill. But Jayanta da told us that he
couldn’t go with us as he had to prepare the lunch for us and suggested us to
take Manu and Sona with us. Although we were not so sure whether it would be a
wise decision or not but as there was no other option, we decided to go just
like that. I didn’t know how many people will believe that, Manu and Sona show
us the way to the top of the hill. They showed us the easiest possible ways to
climb the hill and whenever we took the wrong way they barked and alerted us.
The first half-an-hour we were struggling a bit for understanding their signals
but after that it was a fun. We believed that they would show us each and every
nook and corner of the hill where we could reach by giving moderate
effort. We reached the top, took photographs,
had some dry food shared it with two of our guides. Then we returned to the
resort taking a different route led by our most trusted guides. It was a very
unusual experience for us.
In the afternoon we were sitting at the
bank of the irrigation dam. Jayanta da was with us. Three hills could be seen
from here, the Baranti hill at our back, and Muraddi & Jaychandi Hills at
the opposite side of the dam. We came to know that this tiny village was a safe
hiding place for the Maoists. Farming and fishing were the main two ways to
earn the livelihood for the villagers. We saw some village women were carrying
big pieces of coal on their heads. Jayanta da told that the women worked in
some illegal coal mines. Many businessmen are involved in this illegal business.
They and their supervisors come here every day at night after about 2 am. Huge
trucks loaded with coals, passed through the road just behind the resort. Some
times during the ripening seasons of rice, wild elephants come and stay at the
adjacent jungles. It is a nightmare for the villagers. There was no bank, high
school or Hospital within 5 K.M. There was only a primary school at the end of
the village and a health centre about 6 K.M away from Baranti.
Another sunset at Baranti Dam. A round
shaped boat was floating, few open bill storks were flying around, the colour
of the sky and the water were changing rapidly. The hills at the opposite side
of the Dam were turning into silhouette guards deployed by the nature. Some bullock carts and trackers were coming
through the road of red bolder just behind us. Jayanta da stood up and started
to walk towards the resort. He had to call Shantosh, who will take us to the
Garh Panchkot, Maithon Dam and Kalwaneshwari temple the next day by his Maruti
Omni. We waited for some more time to drink the cup of nature to the lease.
Finally the sky turned black. Stars started to come out one by one. We returned
to the resort. The silence of the dam prevailed. I woke up at the night by the sound of the
heavy vehicles once and understood whatever Jayanta da told us was true.
We
started at about 8 am from the resort next morning and reached Garh panchkot
first. It was a valley surrounded by the hills. A broken temple and some other
ancient broken structures were scattered here and there. They were nothing but
the ruins of Panchkot Palace stood as a silent testimony of Bargi attack in
Bengal during the 18th century. After spending some time there our
car approached towards Maithon dam. It
is a dam built on the Barakar River for flood control and also generate a huge
amount of hydelpower. It was built during the World war II, when a devastating
flood in Damodar Vally detached Kolkata
from the rest of the country for about 10 weeks. The lake is spread over about
65 square Kilometres. We stopped here
for some time and headed towards Kalwaneshwari Temple. This temple was about 500 years old. In
remote past human sacrifices were offered to Goddess Kalwaneshwary. The present
structure of the temple is built by the Rajas of Panchkot. It is situated at
about 5 km downstream from the Maithon dam by the side of Barakar River at
Asansol, Bardwan. Girls offered puja to Devi Kalwaneshwary. We took a vile meal in a dhaba near the
temple. Then we returned to Maithan Dam for boating. Boating in Maithan lake was a pleasent
experience. After that we had some snacks and returned to Baranti. Shantosh
promised us to buy mutton for our dinner. But when we reached the meat shop it
was about 6:30 pm and the shop was closed. But Shantosh went to the shop
owner’s place and convinced him to re open the shop and bought mutton for us.
When we reached our resort, our clock was showing 8:00 pm.
It was the last night there. We finished our dinner with rice, aaloo vaja,
beguni, maach vaja, mutton, chutni and salad. We talked and talked and
talked... and every one of us might be praying for stretching the night for at
least few hours. . Nobody slept that night.
In the morning after bed tea we took our
bath as soon as possible. We packed our bags again. While taking the breakfast,
the horn sounded. Shantosh had come. We hugged Jayanta da. He told,’’Abar
asben’’ (come again). Manu and Sona were sitting at a corner; suddenly they
stood up and started rubbing their head against our pants. Soumya gave some money
to Jayanta Da as Bakshis (tip). We board the car, Jayanta da and his daughter
was standing at the gate. The car started. We saw Manu and Sona were running
beside our car. First we thought that they were doing this as their regular
practice, But after 5-7 minutes when we
found them still running beside the car I told Shantosh to stop. We got down
from the car, gave them biscuits, pat them on their head and neck. Seeing their
innocent faces our eyes filled up with tears.
Shantosh reminded us, if we didn’t want to miss the train then we should
go now.
...... car started again. We headed towards
Muraddi railway station leaving Baranti Dam, Baranti Hill, Akashmani resort,The
small tribal village, Jayanta Da, Manu and Sona behind. May be within the
sorrow and tears there was a hidden promise...... We will come again...
For more info visit the following link....
http://popularity.network/in/achin
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