Rural India
The Potato Song
You read about the wilderness library. Here is the wilderness school, where adorable tribal girls sing English songs in a village that doesn’t speak English, in honor of the potato that they don’t eat. […]
Month: June 2014
Rural India
Solar panels & solidarity
The adivasi women of Edamalakudi, Kerala’s remotest panchayat, have formed a headload workers’ group, helped light up their villages with solar power, and practice group farming in wild elephant territory. All are Muthavan tribals. Almost all are members of Kerala’s extraordinary anti-poverty and gender justice movement - Kudumbashree. They are also neighbours of Chinnathambi, the keeper of the Wilderness Library. pic: Madhuraj, Mathrubhumi Weekly […]
Rural India
The wilderness library
At 73, P.V. Chinnathambi runs one of the loneliest libraries anywhere. In the middle of the forested wilderness of Kerala’s Idukki district, the library’s 160-books — all classics — are regularly borrowed, read, and returned by poor, Muthavan adivasis […]