Soligas are the tribals living in BR Hills and surrounding areas (in adjoining tamilnadu forests). They have been living in jungles from ages and depends on nature and forest for their livelihood. They have very good knowlegde of jungles, the wild life, medicinal plants found there. We visited VGKK, started by Dr.Sudarshan which is insrumental is tranforming their lives. Meeting the kids there, made the trip more memorable.
The contrast in lives of the soliga kids and the city bred kids is quite visible, but kids are kids and we had good fun. When the question "How many of you spotted tiger", apparently the hands kept going up. Can't believe that the kids goes to jungle everyday after school to collect firewood! No Xboxes, No Cartoon network, No Theme parks. All they have are green and lush jungles around, a lake to swim, a hillock to climb and fresh air and full of plays and loads of fun!
What kept me haunting from the trip is the beautiful song the children sung while interacting with valley school kids. All I could understand was the word Gorookana (or was it Gorukana) which we were told means a spider (my guess - giant wood spiders that we found every 10 mts while walking). But the song was too tempting that I ended up searching for the lyrics and meaning.
Although I didn't find the right song, here I found something closer.
http://www.musicindiaonline.com/album/31-Kannada_Movie_Songs/22427-Bhoomigeetha__1997_/#/album/31-Kannada_Movie_Songs/22427-Bhoomigeetha__1997_/
It's nice, melodic and I can understand few words in the lyrics that they are referring the jungles in the song titled "Gorookana". I have recorded the audio when the kids sang, but I guess it's not kannada. I want to go back document the lyrics, translate and publish here, since I cannot find them on net. All I found was a reference mentioned in someone's profile that he was instumental in taking sholiga's to delhi to sing this song.
If any of you could help in translating the original (i guess the song was not in kannada) or the commercial version of it (in kannada in the link above) drop me a mail. Till then enjoy the music of ilayaraja in the above link.Almost forgot, VGKK started a resort and hired all sholiga's there. It's equaly beautiful. Here is the link to it .
