Thursday, April 1, 2010

Lalitpur - part 1

                                         Naani ka ghar. Lalitpur.

                                                   

Just wanted to share, spurred by today's story on Bundelkhand :

Lalitpur is my mother's home. My maternal grandparents' place.
When I was a kid, I was often teased for my Bihari roots by my cousins who thought just because they were not from my state, they were superior to me culturally and socially.
My maternal uncles own half a dozen stone mines in Lalitpur. The village of Jakhlaun is almost owned by them. One of them has one mine for production of granites. All my childhood, I grew up starstruck by their wealth.

As I matured and looked at the world around me, I realised how backward the area is (it suffers from acute draught situation and flash floods and excessive mining leading to deforestation and ecologial imbalance) and how my mother, despite her rich upbringing, was lucky to have married my father who despite his limited means did not have to be part of an excessively vicious cycle of human greed for a living.

Knowledge is everything. It changes the way I look at the world.

More on Lalitpur. And its burdens. Soon.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Knowledge is power and one can safely say that one of the most powerful commodities is knowledge. A person with correct information and of course knowledge can do wonders.
As far as money and wealth is concerned, it is just a by product of your mind.

PallSin said...

Very true, Dev!
The April Fool joke about your blog was a good one. And glad it was just a joke. :)
Blog is an extension of us. If you don't run it, it won't be the same as before.

So it came back, like a torrent rising from within, not letting her breathe, not letting her live. She thought she could be the sea, the mas...