Thiruvananthapuram  :

As rampant destruction of nature has become the order of the day and even the government remains a mute witness, a woman’s efforts to build up resistance against the mighty quarry mafia for protecting a rock and its surroundings has been catching the fancy of the people at this remote village of  Myladumpara near Nedumangadu in the district here.

Anandi Ramachandran, a writer herself and a friend of the late O V Vijayan, is tirelessly engaged in preserving the nature surrounding her ancestral home at Silk Farm Estate at Myladumpara.

Till recently, the land here fetched only Rs 5000 to Rs 10,000 per cent.

But with the entry of the quarry mafia, land prices have skyrocketed by ten times. But she could not  imagine her house without the shadow of the rock nearby.

‘’The rock and the surrounding locale had always been there in my memory. I cannot even imagine this surrounding without the rock.

“Seeing the rock basking in the orange glow of the evening sky, the trees on the foothills  dripping in the rains, the reverberating  noise of the winds that hit the rock. …Money cannot be a compensation for such a distinct  ecstasy,’’ says Anandi. Unlike the others, Anandi did not want simply to be cowed down by the quarry mafia.

As a first step to protect the rock, she donated one acre of land adjacent to the rock to United Library, Irinchiyam – to  develop it as a mangrove.

Recently, poetess Sugathakumari launched the ‘’kavu nadal’’ project here by planting saplings.

She set up a charitable society ‘Prakritheeyam’ Centre for Conscious Living and Natural Wisdom and, under the aegis of it,  a reception was accorded to the Western Ghat Protection Council’s tour at Myladumpara.

Anandi, who is the president of Prakritheeyam, also spent a good amount of her fortune to set up a headquarters building for Prakritheeyam, an open auditorium with a capacity to seat 500 people and a decorative gateway.

Constructed in traditional Kerala architectural style within 50 metres of the rock, the headquarters and its premises will function as a centre for children from the locality to sensitise them about nature and its rare bounties.

“Prakritheeyam’ will help the children   realise the importance of protecting nature as it is essential for the survival of the entire humanity. We also have plans to set up a writers’ village, facilitating writers to  unwind themselves and write,’’ says O V Usha  who is the vice-president of ‘Prakritheeyam.’

The quarry mafia had approached Anandi by offering Rs 2 crore for two acres of barren land near the rock. But, for her, money cannot be a compensation for ‘’wiping out images lingering deep in one’s memory’’, Anandi says with conviction.

Green activist Kallen Pokkudan will formally inaugurate the activities on December 28.

source: http://www.newindianexpress.com / The New Indian Express / Home> States> Kerala / by N V Ravindranath Nair / December 27th, 2014