No Bottling Up…

As we walked around Sankaaram, a tribal village belonging to people of Koya tribe in Mancherial district, I was greeted by this pleasant sight of an old man (name: Talandi Posham) squatted on the floor, very diligently stitching a gunny bag around a plastic water bottle.
While we spoke to him about what he was doing, a group of people gathered around to join the conversation. They all echoed very proudly that the water inside the bottle is as cool as water from the fridge when the gunny bag around the bottle is moistened with water after filling the bottle. I was completely mesmerised by this indigenous refrigeration system (called “Burre” by them) he was designing around the bottle to keep water cool when he would take his goats for grazing during the treacherous summer months in Mancherial. I asked the old man if he can give me that bottle, but he said that he would take a minimum of 2 days before he finishes stitching it completely and I can take it if I can wait for two days. I playfully kept pestering him, but all he did was grin and continued to do his work!
We casually asked him how much he would sell it for, he said 100 rupees. So many days of hard work and 100 rupees is what he could quote for it. Like a fool I asked him if he would make it faster and give it to me if I gave him a little more money (a mistake I am miserably guilty about) and without an iota of greed he maintained his stance “Wouldn’t I give you if I could finish it? It is not about the money, I will not be able to finish it now” and went back to stitching the pouch seriously, sitting in the same squatting position for at least an hour more.

As we headed back home, a woman who was observing us all through rushed to her house and got me her bottle and gave it to me. I tried giving her money and she politely refused saying she will not charge me for a gift…

I felt so relieved to see a community like theirs exist where money matters so little and human connections matter so much. This experience reminded me of something Rudyard Kipling said in an address to the students in McGill University, Montreal — “Beware of over concern for money, or position, or glory. Someday you will meet a person who cares for none of these things. Then you will know how poor you are.”