Big Bellies and the Invisible Seed

by Milan Khanolkar
(inspired by a trip to the weekly Wednesday market in Siolim)

On the banks of a river there was a village. The village covered itself with greenery, lived in its own world with little care. Its greenery was its life; people from across the river visited the village for this. Experiencing the living greenery of the village would make the visitors connect with the freshness within them. Someone discovered the poet within her; another found the painter or poet within himself. For yet another it kindled the writing muse and for some others the joy they had within. Some visitors stayed back while others returned to where they came from.

One day a boat arrived in this village with five people on it. They had large stomachs with overgrown paunches that reached their feet. The moment they touched their feet on land they felt a burning hunger within. They felt as if they wanted to eat everything edible and alive in the entire village there and then. They allowed this feeling to get the better of them and promptly starting feasting in and on the village. They kept eating till they had consumed the small farmers, their land, their cattle and their families too. The small farmers were the village protectors and once they were consumed there was no one left to protect the village. Then with enthusiastic frenzy they ate up all the traditions, the symbols, the deities and the religiosity of the village. Their stomachs were so large that no matter how much they ate, their stomachs expanded to fit what they ate. Once they had eaten many hills in one go. How long could it take them to finish this village? After they had consumed the village they rubbed their hands on their stomachs and said there is nothing left, so let us depart now.

Once they were in their boat, ready to leave, an ugly bird came and whispered in their ear. They decided to change their decision to leave. The bird told them that there was still something left in the village and unless they consume that too, they cannot return to where they had come from. Once a week, in a sacred place the village deity would come with a basket of seeds. The village deity is visible only to the villagers and the villagers alone can collect seeds from the deity. These big bellied now realized that had they spared the villagers they could have used them to get the seeds from the village deity and then had the seeds too. But now that the villagers were no more how were they to get the seeds? The deity too, sitting in her place, began to worry as to why the villagers were not coming to collect seeds.

And so the deity keeps waiting, hoping that at least one villager will come to collect seed. The big bellied too cannot leave the village till they eat the remaining seed.

Exploring the 'Market'

by Salil Konkar

Over the course of a month or so, for the ‘Market’ project, some of us from the combined Siolim Diaries and GoCreat group made trips to the Wednesday market in Siolim and spoke to a few of the local vendors there - two women selling coconuts and brooms, another selling pottery that she makes at home. While talking to the potter (Luisa) we asked her if we could some see her at her workplace while she was working - she was most willing, and a week later, on 8th February, we were at her place interviewing her while watching her making the pots. She took us around and also showed us the kiln where she fires the pots and her other clay ware. We learnt that besides selling at the Siolim market on Wednesdays, she also sells in the Calangute market that runs on Saturdays.

On Saturday 9th February, we were at the Calangute market. We saw Luisa sitting close to the entrance of the market, with more stuff than she brings to sell at Siolim (sales are better at Calangute because of the larger tourist crowds there). We walked through the crowded market amidst the loud yelling of fisherwomen and vegetable vendors, and the mechanical sound of a machine pressing juice out of sugarcane.

Having gathered some raw material for making a short film, the next thing on our minds was – how do we put all this together? That’s when we found out about the Centre for Digital Storytelling, based out of Berkeley California, which conducts workshops in digital storytelling, and which has also published on their site a ‘cookbook’ for conducting similar workshops. We found the techniques that they used most interesting and decided to follow them to learn digital storytelling as a group. This would provide the group with a platform to learn and experiment with basic film-making techniques as well as build the capabilities within the group to digitally document village stories in an audiovisual format, which has been one of the objectives of the Siolim Diaries project.