Rudraprayag, Whenever we think of Uttarakhand, we imagine a mass exodus of youth leaving the hills for the plains, in search of a brighter, better future. But there are many amongst us who chose to return to their neck in the woods and be the change they always dreamt off.
25 year old Ranjana Rawat of Dhiri village is one such success story. Born and brought up in the lush green hills of Rudraprayag, Ranjana completed her schooling from here and then like everyone her age, moved to do her B. Pharma from HNB Garhwal University, Srinagar. Ranjana got a job as an Industrial Pharmacist in Dehradun that lasted all of three years. Today, looking back, Ranjana tells us, ‘I felt that I wasn’t putting my capabilities and skills to their optimum use. Here I was doing a nine to five job just like everyone else to maintain a certain standard in the society, it was a very shallow feeling.’
On a brief visit to Delhi, Ranjana chanced upon a mushroom-cultivation demonstration which gave her wings to return to her roots with the aim of doing something more fruitful and meaningful.
Since January 2016, Ranjana has painstakingly taught the hill-folks of Dhiri, the art of cultivating mushrooms, ‘mushrooms are easy to grow and have greater returns and that is the reason I and everyone around me took to it with such ease,’ she adds.
At present, her home of fifty families has sustained their livelihood by daring to think out-of-the-box produce due to this young lady’s unrelenting ways, ‘we have planted close to six hundred mango, guava, peach trees along with setting up poly-houses in which we grow seasonal vegetables and mushrooms.‘ Ranjana wants her hill-folks to know their own potential and to make the most of what ever resources they have.
Not only has young Ranjana been a leading example for young girls and elders in her district, but she has held successful training camps in six districts in the hill-state, ‘Its nice to see people take to farming again. Most of us thought of farming as sheer time-pass but now all that is changing. My farm is an ’employment model’, where I lead by example.’
Ranjana signs off, “I want to start small and then grow big. I want to take my people along with me on this journey to a better, brighter tomorrow in the hills, we all call home.”
Senior Journalist Raju Gusain, and an encyclopaedia on the Fab Four’s 1968 visit to this very ashram, talks with pride, “the shift in focus is already showing positive result. In the past 5 months alone, since the ashram was given a face-lift by the forest as well as tourism department, close to 2,200 foreigners have visited the ashram to-date compared to 1000 odd foreigners who visited in 2017. Revenue too has double–folded from 24 lakhs in five months compared to 18 lakhs in one year.” It’s the call of the place, that has made it popular amongst tourist of all ages, places and walks of life.
At present, Mukesh has lent colour to canvasses which include shoes, T-Shirts and of course, paper too. His forte, as he puts it has always been charcoal portraits and sketches on A3 paper. Talking to team Newspost, the young artist tells us, “I started by painting shoes for my friends which became an instant hit and I have been doing shoes and t-shirts for my friends ever since.”
