Belekeri is a small little anchorage port in Karnataka, it does not even qualify as a minor port, didn't even have a Custom's outpost. In the year 2010, about 10-11 billion dollars worth of illegal stolen iron-ore was physically exported from here, right under the nose of the biggest Naval Base coming up at nearby Karwar, and this is just one of the many ports that dot our coastline. There is talk that the Maoists are now extending their hold or grip to the West Coast, and that they have found a foot-hold here.
Belekeri is also a small Indian town. Everybody knows what's going on there. Even the children. And they saw an average of over 10000 tonnes of iron ore moving out every day, or anything between 750 and 1000 dumper trucks. In a town which is about the size of one sector in NOIDA. And NH 17 just pelts through, nothing there for you and me, why stop?
But if you are an outsider and so much as stop your car near the entry to the Port, half a dozen children will want to know everything about you, and I can relate to that. It was part of my childhood, too, this business of wanting to know, when people stopped over in your town.
Especially if it smelt, you know, not very legal. I mean, you don't come to these towns unless you have to.
And. If you grew up in a house which had "1, Cemetery Road" as an address. And the other young boys growing up with you were the children of the other senior government people who lived in houses with addresses like "1, King's Road" or "1, Golf Course Avenue" or "1, Club Road" or bungalows which shared three out of four walls with the Ganges, then you grew up very fast daring each other to late night escapades in said cemetery, and by the time you were 7 or 8 years old - nothing scared you. And especially if these were old-style bungalows, where with some deft tugging of wires and cycle spokes, you could escape at night when everybody else was asleep through the outside opening doors of old-style bathrooms.
The same town in colonial Bihar, Jamalpur Eastern Railway, site and location of the oldest steam loco factory in India then, had as regular nocturnal visitors from diverse ideologies, way back in the '60s. People like Kanu Sanyal, Charu Mazumdar or Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar were in and out of Jamalpur secretly, but we all knew about it, mostly the guy at the AH Wheeler stall at the Railway Station where we went to sneak read Indrajal Comics told us - there were semi-official meetings organised between them and assorted government people from different organs of the State, including religious leaders of all hues - and so by the time we were 10 or 11, we understood politics and democracy like few others ever could hope to. Because in those non-air-conditioner days, you stood outside open windows and simply listened to the loud discussions inside.
Especially if you were also tuned in to the gossip at the railway station where the guards and engine drivers would talk about beheadings and more on the spur lines as well as the Loop line, Main line and the Grand Chord and the tennis markers at the club would talk about the skull dances in the groves between the golf course and the steep trekking path up to the temple on the 3rd of the four hills and the Irish padre in town who shared your Dad's Hercules XXX was the link man to his ex-student Jyoti Basu and knew a thing or two about the Brits, then you knew a lot that you weren't supposed to by the time you were around 11 or 12.
It was so easy to connect the dots then. The state and the rebels played with each other for the minds and hearts of the people within some rules and similar goalposts. And guarantees of free passage were honoured. By both sides. I remember, for example, going with teams of young medical students on smallpox eradication trips into the heart of the most troubled of some of these areas, accompanied by medical orderlies and others drawn from assorted government organisations including the uniformed ones, unarmed and in their fatigues, and that used to be safe.
Which is why, coming to Delhi in the late '60s, was like re-entering an age of innocence compared to the real world in the heart of India.
So now, almost half a century later, when one reads and sees television about "Maoists" and "Naxalites" controlling what looks like almost half of peninsular India, delivered by earnest looking know-it-alls, and listens to the perception benders and their alter-egos wax eloquent on the subject, I wonder - how many of them have actually gone walkabout there lately? Or even been on a train which trundles through slowly through the affected areas? Pelting through in the air-conditioned compartment on a superfast train with no stoppages does not count.
What is actually happening in the affected areas known as the "Red Corridor" or "Maoist Belt" or whatever it is being called lately has as many shades and colours of truth as does the sky over the oceans I sailed across and still do so love. For sure, and here's where shipping experience and information sources come in useful, the theft of minerals and ores and more from these areas is the economic driver - so truth becomes the first casaulty as thousands of crores worth of national assets are stolen and shipped out brazenly.
Of course, we don't see this in the bigger cities from where our perception benders operate, and the non-Metro sea-ports are part of the biggest cover-up to these scams.
But can we have some sort of disclosure from all those people going on and on about this subject - have they been to the heart of India, lately? Maybe they could just ride one of the many trains from Delhi going that-a-way, but in the sleeper or general compartment, please, to try and get a fair picture of what is going on? Do they really know the scale of the grand loot going on?
Because, and this is how it is different now from how it was in the '60s, this time around, the heart of India is being plundered. Violently. By the organs of the state.
So who do they, the people from the heart of India, talk to, now, then?