Grass, Patriarchy and the One Against

I am in the gorgeous valley of Sangamchetti in Garhwal, about an hour from Uttarkashi and walking to a village higher up in the hills.  Winter is coming: I hear her gentle footsteps echo in the snow up in the higher mountains and feel her breath in the morning air, see her shadow in the forest canopy and on the carpet of maple leaves on the ground.  

And, as I cross village after village on foot and hitchhike on a passing scooter or two, it is impossible to miss the sight of women hard at work and  I think of the many excursions that I have made to Garhwal and Kumaon at this time of year.  

All through these October days – while in a cab or walking the hillsides or sipping a sweet-milky tea by the road – I have seen small groups of women and girls on their haunches all day (do try that sometime) cut the grasses below chir pine trees or under broadleaved oaks with dexterity and fluid motion and then  carry back-bending loads of grass and firewood, trudging up slopes or picking their way gingerly down steep damp paths of stone and crumbly mud. 

These loads of grass will be hauled midway up poles and trees in their farms for storage.  The menfolk will help in this task, but cutting grass?  Cutting grass is a woman’s job.  

And then I think of another day

That day in October 2018, I had seen the silhouettes of women in a Kumaon community forest perched thirty feet up slender oak trees, lopping branches for fodder for goats and had marvelled and worried for them, for a wrong step – just one - and it would be all over.  I could barely see them up there, but could hear their banter across the valley and occasional laughter beneath which is dead serious intent:  when Winter removes her veil and enters these villages, there is hardship ahead - dull, bitterly cold, grey days of snow and frost – months of waiting that are now just weeks away.  The livestock must survive till the Melt in March as must humans.  The rivers that flow in these valleys are rivers of resilience.

Stocking up on food too is a woman’s job:  in those fields down in the valleys by the Pindar and Sarayu rivers that year were fields of native rice and, on this walk today in end-October 2025, I see women labouring up the valley slope with wine-red harvests of ramdana (amaranth), an extraordinary, nutritious grain that has the name of the diety and is treated with as much reverence.  

And I only see women at work - old moms and young grandmothers, young moms and older girls - harvesting, stacking, hauling; in the walk in 2022 as I crossed a field, there was musical banter, a lilt of harmony and such light-heartedness in the air as they worked that I had stopped to listen, much to their amusement, but today I see a tired cohort walk past with a steady gait:  make no mistake, this is hard, rigorous, purposeful toil.  

The men folk help out too, those who did not migrate or returned in 2020, but it isn’t a partnership of equals……

And today, when I reach the beautiful village of Agoda up in the mountain, after a final back-breaking scooter ride, I think of my trek guide in October 2022....

On that day, we are walking up the hill  leading to Sunderdhunga and I ask Khullu Dhanu – of Rajput ancestry - what his full name is.  ‘Khilaf Dhanu’, he answers and laughs readily when I follow up by asking him exactly what he is Against: ‘Ask my parents, they named me!’ This guy, incredibly fit like true Pahadis, with a ready, winning smile and a generous nature, runs up and down four thousand feet of Himalayan hillside the way I stroll to the club.  He appreciates my interest in the local ecology, so we bond well and chat about things, the way men who have never grown up to understand modern day niceties do.

Along the way I ask him about his kids. 
‘Just two. Both are boys,’ he says and adds, ‘So, we didn’t need to have any more children.’ He laughs, with simple sincerity, this man whom I have grown to like so much.  

A week later that year, I am with Gagan, my old friend who lives in a village near Almora.  He grins at my observation on patriarchy and its flavours.  ‘My neighbour has just had a boy.  After five girls.’ he says shaking his head, ‘Now they will stop the production line!’  He tells me that he only employs women at his micro-enterprise; they are sincere and responsible and trustworthy.  
But not equal……

And that very same evening, I am at Shubham’s store, waiting for the rain - which has been relentless - to stop.  He is away, and his younger sister is a tall, thin girl with a fetching smile and friendly manner.  She has a year more of college in Nainital to finish and I have been told by Kiran and Renu, her neighbours, that she is assiduous, ambitious and motivated.  Perhaps she has no choice.

‘What will you do next?’ I ask.
‘I am preparing to write the Civil Services exam,’ she says, with the confidence and assertion that would win any heart, ‘English is tough, but Sociology and Hindi are fine.’ She thinks for a few seconds. ‘I think I can make it,’ she says with a shy smile.  

It is impossible – utterly bloody impossible – not to be touched.   
It isn’t just the rain that retreats soon after, Patriarchy does too for a moment. Optimism lives in a thousand homes like that little one in the hills.  May it win.

Two faces of hope.....

You Can Choose Any Colour As Long As It's Black

 

Among the many birds with a fetching songo
There is none as versatile as the black drongo
A shapely lissome bird with a dark svelte figure
Which, even when eggnant with preggs, gets no bigger
 
(Aside:
Eggnant with preggs or pregnant with eggs?
Poetry these days is going to the dregs
Does any of your work (myself btw) make any sense?
Or is that an ode to poetic licence?)
 
She’s a staple on the wire, a strategic perch
And for food, she will skip the Swiggy search
(pardon the sly dig at this lazy human lurch)
A flying bug in sight and the hunt is on
The drongo takes off, insect woe begone!
With a pitch, a roll, yaw and pirouette
Aerobatic machine, dusky slender silouette.
 
The insect is history, it’ll soon be digestory
Yet Ma’am will not rest, her appetite is a mystery
The swerve, dip & twist: jaw-dropping to see
(And the buffett, unlike Swiggy, is delivered for free).
Yet, there are even more skills in her family tree.
 
She can imitate the calls of birds galore
(Her mate, of course, says, Yeh dil maange more)
She hasn’t revealed why she was given this skill
To be a Pied Piper (even to the
Rambunctious, cantakerous, cackling ol’ hornbill!).
She is territorial & combative, will dive bomb with gall
Result? in North India, she is often called Kotwal!
(And now she reminds me of a Didi in Bengal)
 
So, I will end this tribute that’s way too longo
By beckoning her ilk in Tambrahm style: Vango!
(I bet you thought I’d end with drongo)
And now you have just been proved all wrongo.
 
ps: In your Swiggy if you’d like insects for free
Please order a chicken biriyani.

Binaca

Some years ago, while browsing through the shelves at a department store looking for toothpaste in a sort of confused daze because of the thousand mindless permutations of flavoured foam, I came across a tube of Colgate Cibaca.  I had forgotten that Colgate had acquired the brand Cibaca (or what was left of it), and, gawking at this unprepossessing tube,  I thought of my childhood.

So would you have, had you grown up in the 1960s and 70s: Binaca was possibly the country’s favourite toothpaste and occupied pride of place in every bath in our home.  It wasn’t the quality of the paste, which was probably ordinary.  It wasn't even the flavour - terming the Binaca taste-in-mouth a flavour would be a flattering compliment as it was, in all likelihood, some mint oil  blended into a repelling green paste and stuffed into a tube.  

No, none of that.  There were two good reasons why Binaca rocked.  

Reason 1: the Binaca Geet Mala, a weekly radio show of the best Hindi songs, hosted on Radio Ceylon by the incomparable, the inimitable, the one-of-kind Ameen Sayani, whose enthusiasm and language was only matched by his extraordinary ability to do the impossible - engage you in light conversation over radio.  But more of this perhaps in a later post.

Reason 2, and this reason made much more sense to a kid and is the subject of this note, was that every Binaca carton with toothpaste carried a tiny plastic animal toy figurine – an elephant perhaps or a tiger or tortoise or a rhino, all the domestic pets, a camel or kangaroo; new ones were often introduced monthly and hence could be collected.  

I must have spent hours in meditative pleasure, gazing at my collection of little plastic toys, arranging them, trading them with friends, placing them on toy trains or little cars or having them perform in a circus to a hugely appreciative, almost fawning, imaginary audience.  Buying Binaca toothpaste was something my parents learnt early to outsource to their youngest son in the larger interest of domestic peace and internal stability, for he would – very shamelessly, it must be added – open the packet in the shop itself, inspect the animal inside closely and then whoop in joy or reject it in ill-concealed annoyance if it was a part of his collection.  Shopkeepers all over the country had, no doubt, resigned themselves to such behaviour, so while there’d be the odd burst of irritation, much amusement was to be had as well, with statements such as, “Beta, the first tiger you got was male.  This is female”, the subsequent laughter letting me know that they were fibbing.  

Then something happened, possibly in the late 70s, that will remain a mystery, much in the mold of Tutankhamen or why the Homo erectus died out:  the little animal figurines were dropped from the product.  Across the length and breadth of India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, there must have arisen a collective groan from an entire generation, to which cacophony, I added my robust voice of displeasure.

Just why the company (Hindusthan Ciba Geigy was the despicable villian) chose to do this is beyond my comprehension (and possibly beyond theirs to).  I can almost see some ill-educated, misanthropic, deprived corporate Ignoramus - with about as much capability for emotion as a dining table - taking the decision, supported by the Finance Controller and other anti-social elements that were determined to ruin civilized society.  The Ignoramus must have thought aloud: “We need to do something to save costs.” And, his Financial Controller (who was born twenty-two years old at birth and hence did not know what childhood was like) would have added: “Yessir, we can save 0.04% in overall costs from removing that useless addendum, which will help us ship some more dividend back to Europe (or wherever).”

If indeed the Ignoramus did this, I hope he rots in hell, and is boiled in the sodium lauryl sulphate that is used as toothpaste there, reportedly mixed with acetic acid.  But the ignominy for Binaca did not quite end there. As if to compound the sheer asininity of their actions, another idiot (let’s call him Ignoramus 2, for the numbers are getting larger) changed the brand name to Cibaca.  Maybe he thought he was being funny.  Maybe his parents had done the same to him.  Maybe he had commissioned a market research firm to do a study on the existing name and suggest a new one (which study must gleefully have been funded by Close Up).   The Geet Mala – horror of egregious horrors – too changed to Cibaca Geet Mala and Ameen Sayani could not quite bring himself to roll these words of his otherwise fluent tongue.  The downward slide from greatness had begun.

Colgate, of course, bought Cibaca with the intention of killing it and, it must be said, they have done a very effective job.  The toothpaste I now held in my hand said “Colgate Cibaca 3-in-1. Fresher Breath. Stronger Teeth. Whiter Teeth.

No doubt, somewhere in the Colgate office, there is one product manager, fresh out of his MBA who, while I was playing with the animal figures, was doing differential equations in his knickers to prepare for Kota’s entrance exam, that would help him get into IIT, that in turn would get him into an MBA, so that he could leave his engineering far behind and became a supremely incompetent product manager and come up with such 3-in-1 concotions (which makes him Ignoramus 3).  I mean, consider this: can you think of one toothpaste – just one, from the millions circling the planet – that does not say any of the above?  Is there a paste that says, for example, “Stronger teeth? What are you smoking? See a dentist…..” . 

Imagine the effort that has gone in to make the most pedestrian, utterly banal, profoundly didatic, insanely boring, needlessly verbose claim that you could ever see: an ad agency working late nights, brand and product manager putting up presentations to sleepy senior marketing managers none of whom played with Binaca toys, damn them, a conference to launch the new fresher-stronger-whiter lousy damp story about a toothpaste that masses of kids had bought for their parents simply because it had little plastic animals inside. 

..And Miles to go Before I Sleep....

 When I take an overnight train, there is always uncertainty about things but the one thing that is certain is that I will not get a wink of sleep.

Let me explain: if there is a guy who has been featured on Tiktok because he snores like a mule with a fire lit to its tail while it is digesting bhoot jholakia chilli, he will be in the berth beside me (the snorer, not the mule).  The berth above his (snorer, not mule, pay close attention) and mine are generally taken by his two jobless brothers who join him in 16-beat percussion at 10 pm sharp because their family ritual post-dinner is a bloody drumjam.

A couple of days ago, when I took the overnighter to Bangalore, there was a noisy family with a couple and two kids, two moms-in-law and the husband of one of them who was stone deaf but kept laughing because he thought that the best way to keep everyone else informed that he was following the conversation closely.

The two kids had been given an injection of something with concentrated caffeine dipped in glucose as the base, because they kept climbing up, across and down, with the younger one weeping when he couldn’t swing upside down because I was in the way and unwilling to be the subject matter of particulate collision.  The other one had left his slippers elsewhere which prompted all of society as currently present and voting to search for them, while he wailed his head off.  The moms-in-law did not join the treasure hunt, being deeply engrossed in fluent Telugu on matters of gossip in which gold seemed to play a prominent role (the only other word I understand in Telugu is Cheppandi, so I generally say, Me No Cheppandi, and hoof it).

When we reached a junction, the kids’ dad got off to get dinner, which prompted the rest of this damned football team to rush up and down the corridor and the upper berth highway, asking him to return which he did with enough food for the Maratha Regiment.  They ate for about 45 minutes, during which the sounds of chomping were frequently subservient to burps from the  old fellow who had no clue, of course, that he was burping at 93 decibels like a lawn mower and he would combine a laugh at that volume to the kids’ delight.

After dinner, the kids took the upper berths and promptly fell asleep and the lawn mower found a berth in the next compartment, so I finally stretched out and yawned and clutched at the silver lining, which was, of course, that kids generally don’t snore.  Half an hour later, the dad hurriedly woke the kids up as the train slowed, who in turn woke up anyone who had just been dreaming of batting at Lords (that’s me), and this bloody football team-and-a-half exited at the next station.

They were replaced by three brothers.     

All For A Reel

Elephants are not gentle giants. 

 
This is Lesson 1, I was told, twenty-seven years ago when I took my first baby steps into wildlife as a volunteer with a bunch of friends who were wildlife conservationists researching ways to identify crop-raiding elephants.

 
Lesson 2: never forget Lesson 1.

 
In those initial years, from the comfort of a jeep or a Sumo, I saw elephants deep inside Bandipur and once spent an unforgettable, uncomfortable, terrifying night on top of a tree by the Kabini reservoir, surrounded by a herd below that was minding its own business but unhappy about our being there and trumpeted in annoyance (it helped that our team of four had two forest guards for company who were composed).  Along the way I read – in Vivek Menon’s book on pachyderms – the story of a forest officer who remarked to a researcher, almost casually, about a herd nearby, “I know my elephants, this herd is fine”. And minutes later, he was charged and killed.  The researcher later said that the poor man knew his elephants but the elephants, well,….they did not know him.  I never forgot Lesson 2.

 
The farm, Random Rubble, is in a zone of uneasy coexistence with elephants.  My old friend, Mottai waal, wanders around at night with a certain panache, all nine and a half feet + six tons of him.    He is an old fellow and hasn’t been known for aggression in years, yet I would rather see him from the first floor at fifty feet and admire a miracle of evolution.  In 2024, the two juveniles keeping him company trampled a farmer who followed them, pelting stones; the man hadn’t learnt from his village’s history and he hadn’t memorised the roll call of the dead.

 
I read the account – and saw the video – of the foolhardy roadside tourist in Bandipur who was trampled a couple of days ago by a tusker.  His bravado – of proximity - was stupid, uncalled for, needless and driven, no doubt, by that primeval need to have video footage that he would then broadcast.  There were many others doing precisely that who have lived to tell the tale (and this man has survived as well), but each of them could have been the victim.  How stupid is that?  What story does his family assimilate: a rogue elephant got my father?  Wouldn’t that be a travesty?

Tourism is a mixed bag, for it assumes responsible behaviour which, it would seem, is too much to ask.  As tourism – including wildlife watching - has exploded, elephants find themselves to be the stars of Instagram and the nucleus of trite stories, now uploaded and instantly forgotten in a search for ceaseless admiration. This is dumb, incredibly daft behaviour.  Can we – as footloose itinerants in SUVs - leave elephants alone and avoid that urge for a compulsive reel?  Can we park far away and accept that they have right of way?  Can we provide them the space to move away from us?

 

And can we spread this word to ensure that no lives – not human, not elephant - will pay the price for a moment of gratification? 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Old Times Redux...

So, it was bound to be that when a group of motley former colleagues, largely unemployed (save for two-and-a-half, the half being the redoubtable distinguished Yul Brynner - SRK is passe, HRK rules), there would be clinking of glasses and, since Suresh was in the thick of the action, boiled peanuts as well a rich carnivorous menu.  Ashok’s being there was the central – and ostensible – reason for this long-pending meeting of intellects and such was the banter that the waiter insisted on taking the photograph shown here (the tip was as much on his mind as our banter, never grudge a waiter his Carry).

 
If Snehal had hiccups at 8.54 pm, it was because we thought of him in the most charitable way possible and raised a toast (not a burpee, which is his copyright), alongwith GV’s (now patented) Kolhapuri chappal. Discussions meandered to many not on this group, including the One who lead South Asia’s best VC team (that included an extinguished candidate, me) and it was time to call Dinesh to know if we had made a return on Fortune Biotech, but it seems all that was left were a few cans in the head office of Azadirachtin, subsequently used to repel insects there just when there was some usage in our office as well (in the corner room).  

In the middle of this charming gathering, of course, was Parag’s incisive comments and his quiet listening (which was a refreshing contrast to the rambunctious rest).  GV spoke about Advanced Bioenzymes with great nostalgia, looked up its current market cap (which none of us could count the zeroes off, even after just a single drink) and wondered if the American Dark Knight brother was available to be kidnapped.
 
There was also talk – now I am in Amar Chitra Katha mode - of the wily Brahmin of 1, Cenotaph road (add an extra L to the wily and it gets a whole new meaning) who could not hiccup simply because he had left for wider shores sometime ago.  We all agreed that wily Brahmin had vision, with perhaps an occasional keener vision for a skirt than was prudent.  In the end, we decided that we all had needed him but Ashok said (and I agree wholeheartedly) that he – the Wily One – was a whimsical man and others sometimes paid the price (all this before the second pitcher was being delivered). 
 
SNS, having dropped out at the last minute, was given a mouthful in absentia from all of us eager to catch up on about 243 data points pertaining to real estate prices, deals and who’s dealt with whom but not going around with whom, with permutations in tow – for, in this, he stands alone.
 
TVS had two enthralling stories of fund raising, including his sardonic witty reply to a young rookie who had the bloody gall to ask him what his secret sauce was (if you want to know the answer, the cost is now a pitcher of Bangalore’s best and that, you agree, is not an option on GPay).  

And we chose to not speak of the Despicable One with a nasal twang who has been kept waiting at the gates of hell because satan has his standards to maintain and the DO fails even those tests.  And in the centre of all of this conversation, of course, was the One-who-Retired-from-TDICI and has spent his time ever since in perfecting the single putt into the 19^th hole.  
 
All of us were generous in offering our hospitality to all others, for we are empty-nesters, with plenty of nests to boot, and it would appear that the combined value of this group’s real estate holding in England is about 1.5% of its otherwise-enervated GDP.  As the group enlarges in size the next time, we will discover land holdings in Bosnia and El Salvador, no doubt. 

Parag and I bailed out early, and when it was farewell time, it was because a farewell is necessary before we meet again. 

We Walk In Those Footsteps....

 It is one of those mornings in Coorg in the early days of the monsoon when the sun peeps through low clouds that bring in short spells of light rain.  I am walking away from the little town of Ponnampet with no destination in mind, but a hope that the clouds will stay away till I am done with the stroll and get to the meeting I am due to attend.  

The road leads down to the valley and winds by the little brook with lush, dense grassy banks, its waters gurgling as they drop over small rocky outcrops.  I stop to see the stream and to listen to the sound of the gurgling water, for this isn’t just a sound, it is music, with the richness of being - alive, vibrant, throbbing and percussive, all at once.  The sound of the stream is romanticised in advertisements but - here is the irony - when people are by a stream, they pay little attention to it or hear its rhapsody or even hear their voices within.  To listen to the music of the brook takes time and no one has any to spare, save for the cackle of conversation and a photograph that will be soon forgotten.  So, the waters of the brook flow on, the gurgle a rich sound of musical silence….

The paddies in the valley are yet to be planted and the road leads up a gentle slope, so, after a while, I walk on, past the ubiquitous coffee. A small road spins by to my left and, on impulse, I turn in by a signboard to a Bhadrakali temple both to see the temple and get off the main road.

And then, about fifty metres in, is an astonishing sight on my left: a pristine sacred grove, impenetrably dense with trees, creepers, orchids and shrubs jostling for space and weaving within each other.  The trees here are giants in this wet deciduous forest, reaching for the sky and bursting into sartorial elegance at its apex, the canopy, while strangler figs form gorgeous patterns of stiflement as they encircle their host. 

As I stroll in wonder, I see a huge raptor take to the air from its vintage point in the canopy, with slow, heavy wingbeats after it spots the homo sapien below.  The lighting precludes conclusion; what was that, a black eagle? I will never know, of course, and just this once, watching it fly away is what matters, for a spectacle without a name has an aura of its own. In 'Otherlands', a beautiful book by a paleobiologist Thomas Halliday, he echoes the thought (and I could hardly better this!): "...a flurry of wings in a thicket, a half-seen hide or the sensation of something moving in the dark, is an integral part of experiencing nature. A little ambiguity can generate as much wonder as a fixed truth."

A minute later, a hare bolts out from the sacred grove and makes a dash down the little road, as hares always do.  They are Nature’s Great Dashers and this one stays true to type, disappearing around the bend. I see a path through the grove, one that has been created by human hands, but in the monsoons, it is one that is less trodden by us.  What other species have walked that way?  The answers - when we do find them - are often surprising, for many forms of wildlife have learnt that humans bring with them both trouble and food.   They learn as much as we do, but the price they pay is higher and they have learnt that too.  

The sacred groves of Coorg are strange silent places for the most part, protected by devout belief and unnamed fear of the divine and the supernatural.  These groves are a treasure trove of ethnobotany and natural history, of the past in the present and of form over fashion.  Isn’t it odd that the antidote to greed is a fear of the unknown?  

And when I am done and retrace my steps, I see a gorgeous restless bird, with a distinct jagged tail that it perks up, much like the fantail flycatcher - it is the white rumped shama and I watch it fly away into the canopy but Richard Bach said it well: A farewell is necessary before we can meet again…..

Some days are meant to be perfect. 

Photo by Chaitanya Patankar (from FB)