NR 2

Negotiating Routes 2

Gharelu nuskhe & Muft ki salah: Chamba, Uttarakhand
(home remedies & free advise: Chamba, Uttarakhand)
with
local Community Radio Station, Henvalvani.

Gharelu nuskhe & Muft ki salah
As children my cousins and I we were administered a dose of Heeng (Asafoetida) for tummy ache, Mulethi (Licorice) for throat infection, or Buknu* for sound  digestion by our grandmother. If the problem was persistent we were marched to the homeopath. Hospitals were always the last desperate resort. Over the years chemists with seductive quick responding allopathic medicines have replaced literally and metaphorically my grandmother’s home remedies with saridon and disprin. Similar home remedies for skin/ hair care were commonly used till bleaches and “organic” facepacks of the beauty parlours/ spas began to make beauty seem almost unaffordable to the common man.
Using home remedies as a point of departure I am interested in creating maps of indigenous knowledge that explore the biodiversity and cultural diversity of communities.

Previously, my search for home remedies lead to exciting new encounters with people/ science/ medicine/ local medicinal plants in the neighbourhood of khirkee village, New Delhi, where I have consistently worked (building relationships and compiling, through various art interventions an alternative history of this urban village) since 2004. The conversations unpacked not just nostalgia for grandmothers’ home remedies, they also traced the evolution of the local ecology, (ie..from cabbage fields to fruit orchards, more recently reduced to shrubs and tress that are growing out of moist crevices of old buildings Or relegated to “public” parks.) Conversations with medical practitioners as varied as the local witch doctor to an allopathic dietician at a private hospital and a number of local residents resulted in over 16 hours of recorded footage towards radio programmes of home remedies and free advice for alternative medication.

Radio

As a socially engaged artist I find the contained radius of community radio very exciting, as the popularity of radio (now also on mobile phone) presents tremendous possibilities for dialogue, conversation, sharing, feedback which is specific to ones locale. Interested in media tools and in communities, I found myself gravitating towards Community Radio (CR).
In my limited experience with CR, from working with a CR station in Nepal (radio Sagarmatha) producing a show with interviews of 28 local tourist guides of Patan Durbar Square to setting up my own low cost transmitter in Khirkee to broadcast Gharelu nuskhe & Muft ki salah, I have found this to be a hugely successful medium to engage communities as well as great a tool for socially engaged artists/ media practitioners.

Patan Durbar Square, Nepal (2006), with Radio Sagarmatha

Radio Khirkee, New Delhi, (2009)

Community Radio (CR):

While the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting in India seemingly opens its arms to radio broadcasters, the monopoly is in fact shifting from the government to the commercial radio stations. India has 18 officially-recognized languages and a total of 1652 mother tongues. One would imagine a vibrant cultural space for radio within this milieu, but that is not the case: registered NGO’s have to sometimes wait upto 3 years for the red tape to clear their licence and allot frequency. To add to this, the stringent policies that govern the CR programming content are redundant and completely devoid of any creative options.

Community Radio Station Henvalvani, Chamba, Uttarakhand:
I was first introduced to Rajender Negi, (station manager Community Radio station Henvalvani) by fellow community radio enthusiasts in 2008. One of the oldest CR stations in India, Henvalvani was started in 2001 by Rajendra and his journalist friend Raghu Jardhari. Using simple narrowcasting* and cablecasting*, Henvalvani has successfully initiated over 40 volunteers/ reporters who work in over 20 villages in the valley. Bringing a range of radio programmes to the villages as well as getting feedback and recording material for subsequent programmes.
Henvalvani is located in Chamba; a small hill town, situated at an altitude of 1676 m, in the Tehri Garhwal district of Uttarakhand.

Henvalvani, Chamba, Uttarakhand (2010)

The idea is to work with Henvalvani CR station to produce a radio programme of Gharelu nuskhe & Muft ki salah from and for the community that Henvalvani has cultivated in this valley. As well as attempt at creating miniature gardens in public spaces with these recipes that I record.

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Footnotes:
Buknu is a powdered mixture of several spices popular in parts of Uttar Pradesh, India. Buknu is claimed to have medicinal values by Ayurveda and is thought to be a very ancient recipe.
The ingredients are: Salt, Black Salt, Sonth (dried ginger powder), Haldi (Turmeric), Jeera (Cumin seeds), Harra Badi, Harra Choti, Baheda, Marodfali, Baibirnag, Peepar, Hing (asafoetida), Amla, Oil.
Narrowcasting has traditionally been understood as the dissemination of information (usually by radio or television) to a narrow audience, not to the general public.
Cablecasting is the same as Broadcasting, except that the signal never goes through the air to be picked up by receivers (TVs). Only people who are plugged in to that cable service can receive that cablecast.

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~ by radiokhirkee on 01/05/2010.