KAHIHI

What an irony! His democratic descendants, 400 years later, have downgraded his stature to a sheer statue made of some material that will certainly be nowhere close to the quality of his construction. His robust and well architected forts make it evident even today. The Maratha King constructed and won back many forts impregnable forts and sea forts to strengthen his navy in order to fight the invaders – Moghuls, Dutch and Portuguese. Lamentably, most of the forts are in dilapidated condition. Our current day rulers are not paying any attention to reinforce them but have instead come out with a proposal to construct and install his statue at the cost of 3500 million rupees, that too in crowded Mumbai’s Nariman Point.
The king who cared for his farmers more than anything had strictly ordered his soldiers that not a single complaint of their (farmers) agricultural land being trampled will be tolerated. And look at the sense of his political posterities especially when thousands of farmers are committing suicides and shot dead in his own land.
The caretaker minister of Mumbai, Mr. Jayant Patil was the first man to propose this statue. I think his understanding about Mumbai is gimpy. The memorial must be in South Mumbai, the rulers proposed and the opposition agreed as well without any tussle.
After a long stretch of time, railways have shown astuteness or more so sympathy to Mumbaikars by increasing the local services, which has worked to commuters’ satisfaction. However, the rulers of Maharashtra have undone the good deeds of the railways. Since the men in power want the statue in South Mumbai (Nariman Point), they will indirectly be thrusting additional flow of tourist thus cramming the local train compartments, thereby nullifying the benefits of additional railway services. 
Facilitated are those fortunate representatives of people who would hopefully get inspiration and govern sitting at furlong distance, with likelihood of creating farsightedness!
The story of the statue in a nutshell goes like this:
The memorial was supposed to be built on the lines of the Statue of Liberty in the US and Swami Vivekananda Rock Memorial in Kanyakumari. The proposed 309-foot-tall statue, planned to be located off Marine Drive in the Arabian Sea had faced opposition from the Navy. It was also pointed out that the project will violate the Coastal Regulatory Zone (CRZ) norms. The state government then began searching for another location near the Gateway of India. Patil, who is the current Mumbai City District Guardian Minister also visited Worli Sea Face and Mahim Fort, in order to look for a different location for the statue.
Further, the Chief Minister comments like this: Chhatrapati Shivaji's statue will come up only in the Arabian Sea putting an end to the controversy sparked off by his deputy CM.
On the eve of the budget session, deputy CM had told the media that an alternative site was finalized, as CRZ norms would not allow a statue in the sea. CM told the state legislative council that state government would obtain all the necessary clearances from the Centre within a year and over the next five years it would strive to complete the project.
And why this insistence? For the sake of developing tourism. Shivaji might have laughed through the valleys and mountains spread through the state except in Mumbai.

Tourism Potential and Apathy
Maharashtra doesn’t have any plans or policy on tourism. Sweating locations don’t attract tourists. But robust ones do. And they are ample in Maharashtra more than enough to attract brave and patriotic tourists from any part of the world. However, the politicians here are bent more in creating and maintaining skyscrapers than forts and mountains.
The fact is that tourism was never the forte of Maharashtra and perhaps never would be in future unless the insular set up of the concerned is totally altercated.
So if not Mumbai, what’s the second option?
On the Sindhudurg coast there are many such places where everyone including Shivaji would like to ride on a bronze horse with his ultimate grace as a warrior.
Vijaydurg fort known as the Eastern Gibraltar due to its invulnerability is the best choice.
It’s an inspiring place where Shivaji himself had hoisted the saffron flag of victory after winning the Vijaydurg fort from Adil Shah of Bijapur in 1653.
According to the news float, neither the ruling party nor the opposition wants this to happen. Why? The reasons best known to them.
The reasons are overweening from the point of view of architectural and naval achievement.
We luxuriate on Rommel’s glory as the great desert warrior. However, we have forgotten that Shivaji was the best Admiral ever the world has produced. Rommel’s countrymen have strived to immortalize his magnificence. Sadly, our countrymen are least concerned about such acts.

Why Vijaydurg…..?

Vijaydurg fort is an architectural marvel that was built with strategic foresight by the revered king who hundreds of years ago exhibited a rock-solid example of what and how an infrastructure should be thus slapping a tight smack on the rulers of today who talk of robust infrastructure with their shaky tongue.

Consider this (source- wikipedia):

No doubt, Shivaji Maharaj is rightly called the Father of Indian Navy.

 

So instead of fighting over petty issues against the Navy and Environment department, our rulers should visit the fort and decide for themselves whether any other place can be more suitable for the unique admiral king. The urban-rich-hypocrite south Mumbai relishing on calcium carbide ripened mangoes and fishery from cold storage can never satiate the socio-cultural charm of Vijaydurg and it’s delicious mangoes on fresh fish straight from the sea.

- Divakar Kambli

Though my trip was wonderful like the earlier one, a feeling of sadness had slowly crept inside me. The surroundings near the houseboat were in a mess, perchance, because of the habits of the people there and the tourists as well to some extent. The habit of littering around. From a bus ticket to a wafer packet to a 1.5 liter cold drink bottle, we just fly it away once the purpose is served. The tourists (Indians) enjoyed the boat ride but threw away bottles, beer cans, biscuit packets, etc. into the water – really bad. The cook in our houseboat while cutting the fish and vegetable conveniently threw the remains into the water despite having a dustbin in the kitchen.

Output: the surrounding area where the boat was anchored was fully stagnated gathering moss and attracting insects, making the overall experience unhygienic and unpleasant – one reason why I shifted to the MTDC resort abandoning the houseboat.

I wonder how Kerala still manages to keep its backwaters and surroundings clean. May be because of foreign tourists for whom we must keep things clean, matter of first impression and repeats. Also because foreign tourists don’t have ill habits like us of strewing things around.

In all good hope that things will change for good, I still love the Tarkarli bliss and the food there.

Cheers!

The rural India is usually looked down upon. People mostly have tanned skin. The infrastructure doesn’t quench our malls-multiplexes-mobiles hankering. The water is examined with suspicion (it is a misnomer though). It is very rare that we, the urban crowd, might shortlist a rural area as a picnic spot, unless that area has good hotels, bars, mineral water outlets, swimming pools, and so on, even though that rural setup is full of exquisite landscapes, refreshing nature, sumptuous greenery, and compassionate people.

However, these areas, which we ignorantly brush under our carpets for they fail to offer us the comforts we desire, are stuffed with copious natural resources and forestation that can satisfy our daily basic needs.

I remember my grandfather narrating a tale to me about a family in our native place that treated the villagers with leaves of various plants and trees. The wisdom had trickled down from generation to generation. This particular family had a peculiar research methodology. And the results never failed. Almost every ailment, disease, illness was perfectly cured with the paste of leaves they offered. There were different leaves to heal different disorders. Curiosity prevailed in the village for this proficiency of theirs until one day it was revealed to a close confidant who happened to be my grandfather.

“It is simple,” said the well researched and proven doctor “our families have been observing the monkeys for long. Most of the times diseases of human beings and apes are similar. Under certain circumstances, monkeys ate the leaves of particular plants or trees. This pattern was studied for long. And thus based on hard gathered observations and sampling analysis, leaves having particular medicinal values were selected for treatment”

Indeed a genius thing that would mock at the medical science research going on in closed hi-tech ultra-modern costly research centres. Imagine the number of cute white rats that could have been spared.

One such worthiness of rural India that I recently came across is the medications that people (tribes) from these bucolic areas practice. No chemicals involved, just pure natural elements derived from plants and food products. It is indeed a wonder that these illiterate people have the innate quality of recognising the exact plant rich in medicinal value. Very apt; quite adept.

One of my friends practicing medicine as an intern in Buldhana district had told me interesting tales about the medicines people used there.

The tribal population, poor and backward socially & economically, had the abundant wealth of knowledge about the medicinal properties of the natural vegetation around and items of daily household use like coconut oil, milk, turmeric powder, jaggery, and so on. The tribes possess the inimitable erudition to heal around thirty one different human related diseases. This knowledge is the prized property of the population here and the elderly respect it to the utmost. The astuteness of medicinal plant species of these people might in future help large research organisations to develop new drugs for the welfare of the mankind. That of course if the flora and fauna are preserved in the right spirits.

Ever since the mankind has evolved, plants have been used for their medicinal values. It is a matter of pride then that these illiterate people have preserved that culture without any selfishness or asking for monetary recognition in return.

Consider for example, root extract of a plant ranbhendi mixed with curd is used to cure piles. Kidney stone can be cured in 10-15 days when treated with decoction of gokharu seeds and zingiber officinale rhizome. Powder of dried aghada plant added with honey can cure asthma in a week. Homogenised mixture of durwa, haral with honey when taken daily for a fortnight helps in maintaining youthfulness. Paste of amba kernels and fruit wall of Emblica officinalis Gaertn when applied to hair prevents baldness and enriches hair growth. Root powder of ashwagandha, askand with cow milk is used to heal nocturnal emission and strengthen the body. Leaves of chincha cooked with anthill soil are used to treat fractures. Intestinal worms can be cured by taking sitaphal seed powder with jaggery before meals for a week.

You will find numerous such examples if you go to explore wonders for tribal land. People from the tribal land have had continuous relationship with the vegetations, and thus have gained profound intelligence about the plants and their medicinal traits and that too at no cost. The tribes and people of the rural India have tremendous faith in their knowledge, their findings, and their timely proven medicines.

Today we are busy eroding the vegetations, devastating villages for our greed of constructing real estate marvels. The loss of biomass, organic productivity, insolvency of soil, mudding of water bodies are making things worrisome. We are busy acculturating and modernizing that will surely deprive us of the traditional information that the primitive indigenous societies have stored and nurtured for generations.

Nutritional supplements and herbal medicines have today become a craze of this generation. It appears and becomes nutritional or beneficial or enriched with medicinal values when it arrives from the foreign land packaged with “Made in USA” marks – is the psychology that we have developed, which unfortunately will only ruin our values, culture, and rich knowledge base.

India lives in villages. There reside the true Indians. You and I of today who munch a McD burger and sip a Coke are pseudos.

Next time when you take the bite of burger and find it as a pleasuring experience, imagine what contentment it will be bit a cashew fruit just plucked from the tree or sip coconut water from the coconut that just fell in front of your feet from the tall tree.

There is after all, a refreshing difference between the natural and the artificial.

Otherwise eschewed due to its rough terrain, Satara is a vast place and can’t be confined to a small article like this, anytime.

Remember Maratha King Shivaji, with his few hundreds of untrained but courageous supporters, strategically deploying his troops at different forts and locations, impossible to reach by climbing on foot, forget horses, had non-plussed ever boasting Moghul invaders, with the strength of soldiers eual to lakhs.

The main city, more a town, is clean and modest, yet to assume the abnormal shape Pune has acquired and Kolhapur is acquiring.


Sajjangad (Fort of Good People) hardly 10 kilometers away from Satara is situated on mountain range where Sant Ramdas Swami, one of the strategic political advisors of King Shivaji, spent his last few years resting in peace.