Crushed and Buried

 Amrita lay on the bed, her eyes closed wearily. The news coming in was heartbreaking and she felt helpless. At 72, she didn't have the energy to face powerful lobbyists and felt she was letting down the people who had looked up to her all their life. But that was not her area of expertise. She had done what she could and had hoped that the value of the work would speak for itself. Clearly, the land, the lure of the land, would always win over all other considerations.

Her cell phone rang. She didn't want to speak to another soul but ignoring calls was not her nature. She looked at the phone and was glad she had not ignored it. Her son Nitin was calling her. "Haan, beta...?"

"How are you, ma?" asked the loved voice from several seas across. "The kids want to go to Switzerland this year. I will drop in for a few days after we finish that trip," he said. She didn't miss the changing pronouns that clearly laid out the plan - he will go with his family on the trip and then he would come alone to meet her. She suppressed her sigh and said, "Do whatever is best."

She put the phone down and lay back. Despite the call, it was not her son or grandchildren who came to her mind but the hundreds of tribal children she had been working with over the last several decades. An ecologist, she had dedicated her life to documenting tribal knowledge of rare herbs, working with them closely in introducing modern techniques without harming soil and the environment to help them preserve the local flora and the fauna. In the process, she had helped them set up a school and train the brighter ones to take over the management of the school. She had been so close to them that even when Nitin left home for higher studies, they filled the lacuna and gave her the warmth of a loving family around her. She was their didi, their amba, their aaji, and they were her chutku, chutki... her children, her sisters, her friends, her protectors.

She had worked with government departments to get them easy access to facilities, to ensure they were not disturbed, to empower them...

But slowly and steadily, giant bulldozers moved in to make way for highways and related buildings. Oh, they didn't destroy the entire landscape in one day, just a little here, a little there, and then some more. Shrinking acreage barely perceptible to the passerby, but for the sore eyes, still some greenery that made them feel reassured that our forests lived.

Now, even that last pretense was going to crumble. She felt helpless. Her eyes closed. Never to open again. Nitin flew in for the last rites before the Switzerland trip and then took his children on the promised trip. The last ties he had with India broken completely, he could now pursue his dream of completely shedding the last of his roots and becoming the citized of his adopted country.

But life has a quirky sense of humour. In three years, his growth seemed to hit a ceiling. His management invited him and said, "You have been an asset but we can barely promise you anything more here now. Would you like to head our India office for a few years? We think you are best suited, given your roots."

Nitin received the news with mixed feelings and was even more sceptical when he was told that it was in Chattisgarh. The place he remembered was quite backward and he had been glad to get out to Mumbai for his college education and then abroad for higher studies. He had visited remote areas with his mother, but he had longed for comforts and modern facilities even back then. To go back there...?

But it seemed the best recourse under the given market conditions and the office photos posted on the site showed swanky buildings, state-of-the-art equipment and windows overlooking greenery. Truth be told, he also felt nostalgia gently rocking his being and he decided to give it a shot.

When he reached his office on the first day, he was gratified. It was indeed like home away from home - his current home, that is. He was impressed with the progress India had made, and sat with contentment in his seat in the office marked CEO.

"There used to be a forest around here somewhere?" he asked, not able to remember what it was called back then. His colleagues, drawn from across the country, politely shook their heads and confessed to being ignorant of it. Maybe just some woods or copse of trees, they sneered behind his back. They enjoyed the night life the place offered, the cafes and restaurants, the shopping mall with its multiplex, a home away from their home in other cities.

The forest lay buried under his very feet, crushed under the weight of the buildings he called his office. The tribals who could separate a poisonous weed from a herb without second thought now shied away in the shadows, serving him tea and coffee, dusting the place clean, and hoping to see their children occupy these very chairs one day.