I heard that gun toting Naxals had walked into the compound of the devoted doctors Prakash and Mandakini Amte, who have been the only hope to injured and diseased people, including the Naxals themselves, for 40 years. They had shot somebody who was recuperating on the premises of the hospital. These premises are also where I stayed for a few days with my husband and two seven year old boys. Very close to the gate with the unarmed chowkidaar.
Unlike Arundhati Roy, I didn't fall into deep sleep at night in the Dandakaranya forest. There was little chance to enjoy the forest, stars and the beauty of the villages with their 'simplicity' for me. Because one 'necessity' was missing. I didn't have a friend or a comrade with a gun. I lived in terror and I didn't sleep much. Could this be true of others like me, without guns and/or comrades with AK 47s to protect or surround themselves with?
Unlike Arundhati Roy, I wouldn't dare to post the images of the people I made photos of with quotes of what they told me. They don't have guns slinging from their shoulders so I can't possibly give them a 'name' and a 'face' on my blog or any other magazine that would want to hear their story.
But I do remember the face of one such man very clearly. He told me he was caught between the guns of the state machinery and the guns of the Naxalites. Then he went on to work on the renovation of his hut. The tools he was using could have belonged to the Stone Age.
I am no fan of the machinery deployed by various official, corporate and media forces that work overtime to push the poor and dispossessed who are increasingly 'falling into the hole' as Arundhati so eloquently puts it. However, I have heard with my own ears in Gadchiroli the voices of ordinary villagers - the poor, dispossessed and unarmed say, in no uncertain terms, that the Naxalites are the one stop shop for the violent settling of scores. Any scores.
Unfortunately no one told me of water harvesting schemes and the like that Roy got to witness in the part of Dandakaranya that she was in. And unfortunately after the first few days of hearing the stories I heard, I didn't ask because I never made the connection between murders and water harvesting. My fault.
In the TV interview in the program The Devil's Advocate, Karan Thapar asks Arundhati Roy if she would be willing to talk to the Maoists if the state would stop Operation Greenhunt. She smiles and replies that she is 'just an individual' who can do little to influence them. I think Roy doesn't project herself as 'just an individual'. She writes and expresses herself in any forum she is in like she knows she has clout and she can and will use it. And in 'Walking with the Comrades', she claims she bonds in friendship with the highest in the Maoist echelons.