Gulven

We crossed the jeep on our way to the Brahmaputra and I saw the foreigner I had seen earlier in the day, now seated in the back seat.  He recognised me and we exchanged a smile and a wave.  With his floppy hat and white beard, he looked much like the many others who travel around India looking for the wildlife experience.

When we reached Nameri two days later, there he was again, at the lunch table of the Eco Camp.  As we settled down to a meal at the next table, he introduced himself, his slow, careful English marked by a distinctly French accent, and asked politely, though hesitantly, if he could join our fun-loving group.  It wasn’t particularly unusual and he seemed a decent sort, so we invited him.

 

Gulven, his name was.  An unusual name, I thought, and have remembered it since.

He was quite an odd chap: in his mid-sixties, of medium height but heavily built, with lidded eyes and a puffed pinkish face behind his poorly trimmed beard, his clothes rather shabby and unwashed (he wore the T-shirt I had seen on him two days ago), the stubby fingers – equally unwashed - tearing the roti and dipping it in dal and veggies.  I instantly recollected a word from the Enid Blyton days – ragamuffin!

He chewed his meal deliberately, much as one would consume an unloved but necessary vegetable, and was entirely unfussy in his choice of food though it was, he said, his first trip to India.  He had flown in from Paris to Dubai to Bangalore and then to Guwahati – all without an overnight break.  Immediately after landing at Guwahati, he had taken a bus to Kaziranga for a couple of days and the previous day had taken a handful of local buses, hitched rides and walked the last few kilometres to reach the Nameri Eco Camp.  If this was not unusual, he added that he had had no reservation at the Eco Camp (which is generally full); he just landed up, asked for any place to stay and was given a small room used at times by a field researcher.

Wow. 

He did seem jetlagged – the eyes struggled to stay open -  but, as I realised over the next couple of days, Gulven always looked this way. 

Though his conversation was mild and polite, I wasn’t particularly impressed with his personal hygiene and thought of drawing the conversation to a close as lunch ended.  He then took out his bird book – Field Guide to Birds of the Indian Sub Continent – and I could see a common interest.  The book was new but had been well thumbed already. 

We began chatting about what we had seen and, almost instantly, he disagreed – perhaps a trite too sharply – with my identification of one of the birds that I said I had seen in Kaziranga.  A rude, unhygienic Frenchman, I thought, and we have to put up with this for a couple of days, and, what’s more, it’s his first trip to India and he thinks he knows it all.

“I spent four years in Bangladesh,” he said, almost reading my mind, “and did a number of trips around the country, which is why I know a bit about your birds.” When he spoke of his birds, he was frank, unapologetic and to the point. 

He wandered off with a guide into the jungle, but requested before leaving that he join us on our rafting trip down the Jai Bhorelli river the next day, offering to pay for his share.  Our group, after a quick thought, agreed and that was about all I saw of Gulven for the day.

As we set off down the river the following day, Gulven came into his own.  Along with the expert guide, he seemed to recognise every bird and know a bit of its genealogy, aided by a  photographic memory.  Seeing a bird shoot out over the canopy over us, he emphatically declared it to be a peregrine falcon, with the additional explanation  “Normandy has them.”, even as he pointed out a Nameri jewel– the ibis bill – to the rest of us. Indeed, watching and identifying birds was his only interest, almost to the exclusion of all else. My friend, Jairam, recalls that evening: i remember when we invited him over for a drink, he said, 'never say no to a drink', with a twinkle in his eyes. He sipped his drink quietly, watching the merriment in our group with amusement.

The following day, I joined him and a guide on an early morning trek to see a particularly rare bird, the white winged wood duck.  It was the day before our departure and he mentioned that he too would be leaving Nameri, onwards to Manas National Park.  Did he have accommodation there? No. Did he know anyone there or indeed a broad idea of the route? No, again. This peculiar, lone, scraggly stranger had an extraordinary capacity for travel, I thought, almost to the point of self-flagellation.

During the walk, he was completely focused on birds in the awe-inspiring canopy above and being in his company was an education in birding, no less.  The guide led us to a stream and we sat behind a bush in complete silence for the better part of an hour, until, voila!, there was a rush of noise and quacks and four wood ducks flew past the stream, not stopping by, possibly because they had sensed our presence.  That moment, that single second of spotting, seemed to make his day, though all I had seen was a white and blackish blur that, as it flew by, seemed to remonstrate angrily at the humans around.

That evening, Gulven told me of his life in France: way past his working prime, struggling for money with a broken marriage behind him, no children and afflicted with bi-polar disease, a damaging psychological condition of extreme mood swings, that he now took medication for.  He spoke of a partner – “She’s my girlfriend, nobody gets married in France anymore…” – with little enthusiasm, much less than he had reserved for the ibis bill.  She had no interest in accompanying him and he wanted no burden, so here he was alone.  He mentioned that he’d want to go back and apologise to her for something, but at this point he was speaking more to himself.  He saw the longevity of people in the developed nations and the complexity of their relationships differently: it was a curse if you ran out of money before your end, for you were certain to be alone.  His tone as he spoke was soft and, as when he described birds, precise, always factual and never quite feeling sorry for himself.

The next day, we dropped him to the market in Tezpur town on our way back to Guwahati, with his two modest shoulder bags, one with his binocs and bird book and water, the other with the minimal needs for travel.  As we said our byes and I got back into the car, I could not help but feel sympathy and admiration for this curiously odd fellow from beyond, who had chosen to live for the moment and not beyond it, on his own uncertain terms and often clinging to flotsam, in a world of birds that he had chosen to inhabit alone.

An Easy Chair that Rocked

The photographs – all of them in black and white – lie carelessly scattered on the bed.  I love the process of sorting them out, a careful, time-consuming and entirely thankless task, but for the chance to live out a memory or two that would bring a smile, an involuntary nod or a shrug of nostalgia.

My eye catches the rather ordinary photograph of an elderly man – thin, with a clean, plebeian face and an unsmiling expression - sitting in his trademark easy chair in the portico. 

I rarely saw Ammamma otherwise.  He was always sitting there, by the three steps that led to the little living area at the stately family home in Palakad, Vrindavanam, his Mathrubhumi newspaper beside him and a cup of tea, wearing his trademark white mundu and a vest.  And, in my early teens, watching him sit right there for hours reading the paper and looking out yonder and over the rim of the paper, I used to wonder “Just what is he thinking?”

At meal time, he could be found at the head of the table in the dining room – a small table in front of the larger one being his right as a ‘karnor’ or family head - sipping his ‘kanji’ with a spoon and until he had begun his meal, we wouldn’t quite begin ours (though kids were generally excused).  A quiet, serious, stern man who spoke in grunts and monosyllables, my grand-uncle had a reputation for gruff, no-nonsense disapproval and an expression of ire – the eyes narrowed and focused, the lips pursed, the sometimes-rapid, hoarse, gravelly smoky voice – that could freeze the bone marrow and make the guilty wet his starched mundu. 

It was rumoured by those who knew him well that his bark was much worse than the bite, but he nevertheless frightened the wits out of all those around most often, astonishingly, by doing very little – a crisp few words perhaps or a scowl.   Everyone, including the many visitors to Vrindavanam, walked by him in deferential silence with the obligatory word or two exchanged, head bowed or at an angle that suggested submission.  Occasionally, relatives of his age and a couple of chosen nephews (my father included) sat beside him and had conversations – if you could call a few verbal telegrams a conversation - on issues that men of the 1970s spoke about: politics, farming and the weather, marriages, finances perhaps and renovation to the family home.

Ammamma managed the family’s agricultural fields in his younger days – now, alas, all gone -  marshalling a couple of trusted hands to his cause and, I am told, when he worked, his sternness set standards anew.  My cousin Jayan, who had a cheeky sense of humour, outstanding timing and an ability to make stories come alive, mimicked Ammamma with abandon at a safe distance eliciting much chuckles and laughter from all of us.  Yet, when in front of the patriarch, this worthy could be found crawling on his ample belly, like all of us, for he took no chances.   I learnt from another cousin the priceless titbit that Ammamma never used the toilet, but had a hole dug for him every evening that he could use the next morning.  Knowledge of such facts, I admit, are of little value in, say, new drug discovery, but I have a head (and an unhealthy fascination) for useless information. 

He (Ammamma, not my cousin) stayed a bachelor all his life, though, he did have an interest in his younger days in a pretty girl who lived not far away.  Apparently, her brother was to marry his sister – my great aunt – while he married her, and this fairy-tale-ish ending never did happen, much to his regret.  My aunt seems to recall his sentient oath to bachelorhood as a consequence and, in my mind’s eye, I can imagine the thunderous promise of Bhishma, as the earth shook, the wind took its breath in and the flowers thought it was wise to close shutters for the day. 

He had his spartan little room by the living area, but retreated there only to sleep, for much of the day would be spent in the portico.  If he had one weakness, it was for cigarettes – the brand ‘Scissors’ was his favourite and on one trip I pleaded with my cousin sister to collect a trunk load of used Scissors packets for me that I could then cart across the country back to Assam. He was much amused by my interest in this useless stuff and he let me know this by a miniscule lift of his upper lip and a twitch of a cheek muscle; this was the equivalent of today’s much-abused term LOL.  Indeed, the only occasion on which I actually saw him smiling was when the news was conveyed to him that I had asked around why Ammamma never smiled.  The women in the household found it femininely funny and my puerile impertinence on that day caused much flutter around the home. 

The women – my great grandma (Ammamma’s mother), my grandmother and grand aunt - spent much of their time in the vicinity of the kitchen and communicated with him in rich monosyllables and there were few men folk of his age (and stature) he could spend time with, so it must have been a lonely life as he sat there out in the portico waiting for Godot….and thinking.  As he aged, the lure of a city’s medical facility had no draw, for he represented a generation that refused to leave its roots.  One day, about thirty years or more ago, as illness took its toll, he left that easy chair for good.

As I put the photographs away, I remember the last time I visited Vrindavanam a couple of years ago.  It was a warm, humid day and, crossing the lovely little ‘padipara’ – the gate with a little roof – I walked briskly upto the front door and paused by the portico.  The chair and its occupant of course were missing, yet the setting had not changed a bit, for at Vrindavanam, nothing really changes.  In the heat of that day, my mind's eye could see the man in the easy chair, the torso lost behind the day's newspaper opened out in front, the elbows at rest on the easy chair.   I was tempted to whisper a ‘good morning Ammamma’, the usual acknowledgement that would be met by a brief look in my direction and a responding grunt, even as I would hurry up the steps into the safety of the home.  

And I wished I had asked that question to him once.  “All those days you spent out here on the portico….what were you thinking Ammamma?” 

Why Vaz Was Wise

Among the many unanswered questions on the planet is one that deserves scrutiny by anyone studying the area of motivation.  The question – an inverse one as it might seem – is, why did Mrs. Vaz not go bonkers?

Now that I have your undivided attention, here’s a second question:  why are teachers told to teach subjects that students can comfortably study by themselves, often twenty two hours before their final exam on it?

But, I am getting ahead of myself.  Let’s go to the first.

Mrs. Vaz was the only lady who taught our class in Josephs – PUC and B.Com – for five years. She was of medium height, dressed  in a sari with her hair tied in a neat bun, a quiet, demure lady with an impassive freckled face and  an occasional slow, shy smile.  Every year she’d turn up in class at the beginning of the year, her face a picture of dismay, her posture defeated but with a pretence of defiance.  Every year she would be alloted the most boring subjects – let me emphasise this in case you missed it in a hurry to get to the end – the most boring, tedious, dull, dreary, mind-numbing, lifeless, lacklustre, unexciting, routine, plebian, pedestrian, wearisome subjects, because no one else wanted them and she was too sweet to argue with the the clever HoD who did the allocation, no fault of hers.  Subjects like Economic Geography or Essentials of Management.  …and books like ‘Contemporary Commerce’ or some such incoherent tripe written by a loser of a lecturer at Government Arts and Science College. 

My class tested her sorely.  Every year she would hesitantly step onto the wooden podium (that had once housed a stack of crackers under it).  And every year she would look down and see a class of about a hundred boys and girls, the vast majority of whom stared back at her with a vacant, ‘Oh no, not again,’ look on their otherwise emotive faces.  If she returned the compliment, she did not show it, for such was her bearing and sense of dignity.  Some of the girls – the quiet, half-sari and curd-rice for lunch type - at least attempted to smile in an effort at feminine bonding, but the boys just ignored her presence completely, focusing instead on their busy schedule – passing chits, information, gossip, carving on the desk or reading a forbidden book -  that engaged their wholehearted attention.  The odd fellow would shout out, ‘Welcome Ma’am’ in the falsest of notes, while she would nod her head passively knowing perfectly well that he meant no such thing.

She took most of this really well, having developed a certain detachment from pedogogical ideology.  If Dr. Seuss were watching, he would present her case:

“Let them ignore

Roar.

Snore.

Let them stare

Bare.

Dare.

I don’t care.

I will for sure

conduct the tour.”

So, much as Dr. Seuss’s immortal Horton the Elephant sat on an egg way past his bedtime (Horton Lays An Egg – don’t miss it), Mrs. Vaz laboured through every single class with commendable doggedness. She would sit and read out chapter after chapter with diligent attempts at explaining the explained to those who wanted to hear it, her voice a constant tone that triggered drowsiness on a warm afternoon .    There was a small group who’d make notes and listen.  But, there was a much larger contingent of back-benchers who should have been serving time in solitary confinement for their disservice to civil society.  To them, a Mrs. Vaz class was another hour of gossip, loud remonstrative yawning, day-dreaming and creative, artistic expression in a notebook. Many caught up on their sleep.  Others simply did nothing, they stared out of the window in meditative contemplation (two such worthys are now senior managers in organisations and I understand they do much the same thing). 

Occasionally, though, a loud giggle would break out at the back.  Or even some laughter.  Or someone would visibly display somnolent behaviour that was calculated to test the patience of a certified saint. Or there would be a question asked by an otherwise disinterested superstar (who had spent the last few minutes combing his rapidly thinning hair), followed by much tittering around him and words of encouragement that were as hilarious as they were provocative.  In these not-so-unusual situations, her voice would rise, the rapid flow of words followed by a gesture to the main protagonist to exit the room, something about three quarters of the class was desperately waiting for.  As the offender quickly stood up to leave, others would offer to accompany him or offer loud advice, or say sorry on his behalf or even suggest substitution.  Most of this inflamed her anger greatly; her gentle face would become a rather noticeable red and her demeanour change.  On one or two occasions, she stormed out of the room, but that was playing right into everyone’s hands.  After a few seconds spent in silence, the mass of prospective Chartered Accountants, MBAs and businessmen would evacuate the classroom to the comfort of the college canteen. While I generally kept quiet when there was mayhem, there were times when it was difficult to not be swayed by the peer group and I did join in the collective merriment – not at her expense, but clearly not at her instance!

It was honestly, a hopeless situation. 

My primary emotion, though, was one of compassion.  She was doing the best she could, for you can, after all, only play with the cards you are dealt and, when one did need help, she was always ready, her gentle nature acting as a balm.  I did well in my tests for that was then a matter of pride and she treasured that (years later, she told me that she ‘knew’ I would do well in my career, a unforgettable compliment but happily untrue for I exited the career race early).

The exact root of the word ‘retired’ is not something I know, but surely it is derived from ‘tired’.  Mrs. Vaz retired some years ago and is now probably savouring the company of her grand children, even as an ex-student thinks he should have probably said a quick ‘sorry’ for adding to the torment on occasion and a ‘thank you’ for those flashes of education when they did happen.   Not that she has a bone to pick.  She never did.

The Requiem for a Cloud

Last week , the monsoon – the South West monsoon to be precise - went away.  It disappeared silently, without notice or a whimper, retreating on its tippy toes and leaving behind mornings that have been a charming change from the pattern of the last two months.  Only a couple of weeks earlier, the monsoon had hammered the city into submission one macabre evening, drowning the muffled cries of its ill-prepared denizens, stacking traffic back to oblivion and soaking up the earth (in places where there still existed soil).  It had given notice at that time, dark, lumbering, ominous notice, a brooding face of proclivity, a caustic grin in the clouded sillouette of intent.  I had then been driving and, looking up at the black sky, had stepped on the accelerator, but to little avail for, like others, the car took its share of the battering.  A sixty kilometres away, a bare twenty four hours later, the pounding breached the lake by the farm, and soaked our land, sending its wildlife scurrying to higher ground and providing the perfect storm for the cacophony of frog-sound to commence, a chorus that continued in happy unison through the night. 

This was its swansong for 2015.

The first day of clear sky was magical, for the air breathed clarity, lightness, vision and had a spring in its step.  In the following days, the mornings have had a touch, a faint kiss, of mist.  I can see it condensed on the windows of cars parked outside, can breathe it in the air and feel it clouding the vision of the skyscraper being built far away.  Thankfully, far away.  The air has the feel of winter, but from experience we know that winter, too – like the skyscraper - is far away, and it will only get warmer in the days to come. 

Yet, this is not autumn, for that is typically British weather.  We don’t have anything like it and I am grateful.  The autumn we have read of in English books – books of James Herriot, Dolye and Dickens, books with charming weather interludes, long drives, the moors and the dales and monsters and murders – is an autumn of falling leaves, shorter days, uncertainity and foreboding.  We are happy to be exempt: why have an autumn, when, as here, we can have a post-monsoon season, a cheery, warm couple of months of happiness as the oranges come in to the markets and the seat on the balcony under the morning sun begs to be taken. 

The birds seem to feel the change as well, for there is greater energy in their morning perambulations – I saw the coucal today fly in a downward arc from tree to tree and its flight was the grace of pronounced joy.  Some of the perennial flowers have begun to blossom, months after I had expected them to.  They reach for the warmth gratefully – gratitude for nothing out of the way.  It is a quality that we have long forgotten and that is why I love flowers, dogs and my tea cup.  There are no expectations and each moment is welcome and bliss.  Each is happy to be happy. 

And, therein, lies the learning from each moment spent with our never-swerving companion, Nature. 

A Confession From Volkswagon

...and VW's statement in the confession box said just this:

The Press have always loved to call my brand ‘iconic’
And every car I have thrown up has been positively chic
I am known for my Beetle, my younger boy’s a Jetta
But what I have been up to, you’d never ever betta

Those misanthropes from EPA, their rules are Yankee dum
And to measure my emissions, they stuck a pipe up my ….
My software held the breath in, bloated the intestine
And, instead of the explosion, they recorded a whine.

As the market share graph was on a firm upward loop
The Japs were shouting ‘Tasukete’, Ford was in a soup,
Some goddam smart alec (a Jap for sure) with a fish bone to pick
Did some data crunching (Achtung!) and figured out my trick.

I have chopped a few heads off, led by Winterkorn
Whose “I didn’t know” was as fake as a Nano’s tooting horn
I will make amends, I promised, to indomitable Herr Merkel
No vehicle emissions in future, we will stick to the cycle.

Growing Nuts is a Vicious Cycle

On July 12th, The Hindu documented the death of Renuka Aradhya, a 35 year old farmer, who committed suicide at Kaarekurchi in Gubbi taluk of Tumakuru district.

If you missed reading about his demise, you can hardly be blamed. The story is a familiar, predictable one - depressingly familiar and infuriatingly predictable - to anyone who has an ear for news that concerns the lives of 263 million farmers (the number, as per the 2011 census, that includes both cultivators and agricultural labour).

Two hundred and sixty three million human beings and their children, whose futures have been missed between two economic stools in the last twenty four years of liberalisation, who have been designated ‘laggards’ in the growth process of an emerging economy, who live outside India’s urban agglomerations and suffer the real pain of being exposed to the real costs of ‘development’.

Aradhya had four acres of land on which there were coconut and arecanut trees; apparently, he had taken a gold loan of Rs.90,000 from State Bank of Mysore, Rs.70,000 from the Primary Land Development Bank and Rs.3 lakh from private money lenders.
 He killed himself because his borewell failed.
 …..which meant drilling another borewell. In Tumakuru district, among India’s most water stressed districts, this is a minor form of fracking, no less; it means reaching into the depths of the Earth, over a thousand feet below the ground. The cost? At least a couple of lakhs, which he could not raise in loans.
 ……as a result, his coconut and arecanut farm dried up.
…..which meant he would not be able to pay the annual interest on loans of Rs. 1.30 lakhs (@ 15% on loans taken from banks, @ 36% on ‘private’ loans). The question of principal repayment must not have crossed his mind.

The only reason I remembered to cut this little news item out was that I had spent a couple of days near Tumakuru in a training campsite, a day before Aradhya killed himself.

This is original hard rock country, the outstanding beauty of the scrub and the weathered adaptation of the human and cattle contributing to an ineffable beauty at sunrise and sunset. While arecanut is a traditional crop in the area, the last two three decades have seen three changes in the economics of arecanut, each debilitating in its impact on the farmer, all taken together a recipe for a crisis
1. The first change is the intensity of arecanut plantation, driven by the rapid growth of the pan masala and the gutka industry. Walking around the area, I saw arecanut everywhere, intensely planted and profusely watered from the bowels of the Earth. Water, from underground aquifers that have been charged for decades, now being consumed with imprudence born out of ignorance, short-term economics and peer behaviour. Yet, for every two farms that exhibited the verdancy of assured, timely irrigation by borewell water, there was one that had been abandoned, the plantation standing forlorn in a caked, brown field, cast to the dry winds, just as its owner had been cast to an uncertain fate.
2. The second change is in the rainfall or, more accurately, its absence. Tumkaru has shrivelled into a dehydrated zone, its lakes long gone, the underground aquifers rapidly receding as farmers pump even more water out in a viciously spiralling downward cycle of recession.
3. Yet, this is not all. Arecanut, with its volatile economics has, over the years, become the femme fatale of the farmer. An example: the price of arecanut rose rapidly in 2014 to Rs. 900 a kilogram in August 2014; more areas were planted up, more borewells dug in a mindless frenzy, many farmers seeking a way out of earlier distress, other simply avaricious . Today the price is about Rs. 280, a drop of seventy percent in one year.

Most of us who live in cities do not really appreciate the import of such a drop. To put this in perspective and use an example, imagine you had all your income coming from an index fund on the stock market that you hoped would appreciate above the rate of inflation. Imagine now that, instead of crashing, as it did, by about 4% on Black Monday in August, it crashed 70% to about 7000 points – the number it was at about ten years ago. Considering the inflation in the last decade, you would be at least twice, possibly three times, poorer than you were then.

India’s cash crop farmers – growing cotton, sugarcane, tobacco, arecanut, ginger – have recessed into a state of permanent poverty because their Sensitive Index has crashed. It is a crash that has driven millions in the last few years to poverty from a level that might have been modest, yet above subsistence .

So, why did the price of arecanut drop precipitously?
In 2013, the arecanut crop in the Malnad and coastal Karnataka region declined by fifty percent due to heavy rain that caused a fungal infection in the plant. As the price of arecanut shot up as a result; many farmers made the switch from food crops to arecanut in a classic, much repeated, example of a failure of systems thinking – doing something without knowing that all others in the boat are doing pretty much the same thing.

The firms engaging in processing arecanut then decided to import it , triggering a slump in prices: in 2013-14, about 18,000 quintals were imported, in 2014-15, over five times this quantity came in.

.. …and why can’t the Government impose import duties on arecanut?
The answer lies in bilateral trade agreements – SAFTA and SAARC - where the member countries enjoy total exemption from import duties.

As you read this, is there the ol’ vicious cycle feeling, a sense of helplessness, a feeling of inevitability, of ineluctable decline in Agriculture’s condition?
There is, equally, the larger question to be asked amidst this tragedy: all this for what purpose?

The accelerated desertification of an entire district, the crippling of its farming community, the felling of natural vegetation and the increased wildlife conflict, all to produce a crop that is the crucial input for a final product known to be addictive and carcinogenic, the single largest cause of oral cancer in India today.

My belief - and you are welcome to agree or disagree - is that the starting point is a ban on pan masala and gutka. If you do agree, please write in to the Health and Agriculture Ministers, asking them to do what is right and, yet, provide the agrarian sector the expertise and support needed to move away from arecanut to more sustainable crops that are benign, useful and remunerative.
It's the least we can do for our planet.

Alfred tips the scales

When I was in college, Alfred (not his real name) who managed the administrative office there, was among the most disliked people around. 

He was the chap we had to meet on most routine matters and his unsmiling, stern demeanour was hardly encouraging.  Now, most students who entered the office did so to find a way out of something; to atone, you could infer, for their sins.  Inadequate attendance was the commonest, a delay in the payment of fees, having misappropriated the parent’s grant of funds for an outing to the cinema, was another, requesting the use of some facility or a pardon for the damage of something that was college property (and where you could be easily indicted) was yet a third reason, but there were several. 

Even before you said what you had come to say, his head, with that neatly cut crop of hair and that clean shaven face with a sneer affixed on it,  would shake in an emphatic ‘No’.  He would look down at some other work he was doing and ignore you then, his manner that of an inspector dealing with a juvenile driver.  If you persisted, as most did, he would eye you with one of his trademark looks that was calculated to induce discomfort if not downright fear.  ‘Ask the Principal,’ he would say, as he turned away from you in final rejection of the pathetic piece of human flesh standing in front. 

It did not help that he was considered the eyes and ears of the Principal.  It certainly did not help that the faculty stayed out his way and refused to get involved,  with practised political ease that had been accumulated over the years. Yes, Alfred was a bummer, if there ever was one, and I made it my policy to have as little to do with him as I could.  Instead I stayed, for much of my tenure in college, in the Principal’s good books.

It was in my final year that I had a particularly bad run-in with Mr Sneer and was needlessly hauled in front of the Principal to explain myself; the actual incident is now a distant memory and quite irrelevant really.  What I do remember is my irritation and a sense of helplessness in dealing with this astute gatekeeper of assumed virtues.

A couple of days later, on a Friday evening, a friend, who was a year junior to me in college, and I cycled upto Rumali’s for dinner.  This venerable restaurant on Church Street, now alas a distant memory, was run by a wonderful middle-aged couple on the small patio of a building and was open only in the evenings.  There were few tables, all overlooking the street and the food was simple yet delightful.  The speciality, if you missed it a couple of lines earlier, was Rumali rotis, and, in this, the restaurant was nonpareil, in a class of its own.  Watching it being made by an expert, who twirled it into the air with flourish, picking it neatly as it landed, was as delightful as was the meal that followed.

Well, Anil and I sat down at the table knowing what we’d order.  A minute or two later, when Anil was talking animatedly - which he always did -, the waiter showed up and asked us in a courteous tone what we’d like. 

I looked up and saw Alfred.  For a few seconds, there were three startled faces staring at each other, before he forced a weak smile to appear (the muscles must have creaked from years of disuse).  Never particularly courteous with a waiter, I instantly learnt new manners, “May we please have two Rumalis….” and so on.  He dutifully took the order down and confirmed it in a neutral tone  and then attended to someone else, with us watching his every move, however slight.  

  

When he entered the kitchen though, Anil and I went into whispering overdrive, speculating on his motives for moonlighting.  Our dominant thought, of course, was on just how we could use this priceless information in future negotiations in the college office. 

He brought the food in about fifteen minutes and I could no longer resist the question. “How is it that you work here?” I asked. 

“The college salary is not sufficient, you know,….” he replied in an apologetic tone, leaving the answer mid-way.  I am not sure if there was a “Sir” added at the end, or am I, in sepia-toned reflection, being optimistic ? Along with the surprise of seeing him here was a certain empathy for the man as well; perhaps circumstances had created the mask of aloof severity.

We decided that a good strategy would be to leave a generous tip, but do it in a most discreet way.  If it were today, of course, accepting such a tip would leave Alfred open to a charge of conflict of interest among about thirty other things; at that moment, it just seemed an astute tactic on our part. 

He wordlessly took the bill folder away and pocketed the tip. I thought I saw the trace of a smile.  Sorry, this description is incorrect; the hint of a trace of a smile.  It suggested that we were on a strong wicket with him from now on and both of us chose to keep the little incident away from the troops.

When I had my next encounter with Alfred, it was a confident final year student who strode in to the college office and stated my case.  Alfred looked up, with an enquiring glance, and – this I remember distinctly – shook his head emphatically as he had done a million times before, the sneer intact, the eyes cold. I would be better off, the scorn implied, speaking to the clock on the wall. 

His confidence suggested that I had no negotiation leeway at all and all that privileged information was wasted.  Even worse, I had lost a fortune in a princely tip.  

Waiting for God ought to be good

Some years ago, wifey and I bought tickets to a performance at Chowdiah Memorial Hall of ‘Waiting for Godot’. 

We cannot say that we were not warned.  A theatre friend of mine said that ‘it was a play waiting to be explored, possibly Beckett’s best.’  I had not seen Beckett’s worst and did not know Beckett from Beckham, and therefore – foolishly – disregarded the first part of his sentence.  Wifey’s friend, who is into cinema, said (with a sniff) that, while it belonged to genre of the ‘theatre of the absurd’, it was not the best in class deal (or words to that effect).  Another friend said, ‘How nice!’ and I ignored this warning as well, being rather dense in the head when it comes to interpreting subtle messages. 

Our reason for wanting to watch the play was simple: Naseeruddin Shah was acting in it.  We are big fans of his and he was coming to Bangalore after a while, and, we reasoned, anything he acted in would be fun to watch.  The ticket price was so high that it justified instalment purchase, but I said, What the hell and paid up.

The final, though late, warning was when we entered the auditorium.  As we took our seats and looked around for familiar faces, we saw a sea of beards (the men, of course), thick intellectual specs all around, the kind worn by the crowd that debates existentialism in college canteens, lots of kurtas and most women in starched hand-spun cotton.  All of this was a sure sign that we were in the wrong place at the wrong time, but we continued to ignore the messages from the flight instrumentation panel and twittered excitedly about what was in store.  The chap sitting next to me fetched up with a bag that he almost dragged along and I guessed he probably had a Ulysees, an Odyssey and all of Emmanuel Kant in there.  When I saw the description leaflet that was on the chair, my enthu did pale, for it had all the stuff that I was mortally afraid of: bits like ‘peregrinating ideas’, ‘marsupial folly’ and ‘atrociously wicked’.  By the way, do remember this: if you come across anything that is ‘atrociously wicked’, give it enough space for a blue whale to pass through.  It just means, if you can’t figure it out, don’t worry, others can’t as well.

And then the hush before the curtains were raised.  A chap came on the mike and in a cultured, measured tone, repeated everything that was on the leaflet, no doubt under the deeply embedded impression that theatre goers who watch ‘Waiting for Godot’ have not cultivated the habit of reading (English, at least).  After this Mr. Gibberish had done his bit, we were treated to a few minutes of silence and then the curtains went up to a sound applause. 

Naseer and his pal, Benjamin Gilani, were facing each other in ridiculous wigs and costume.  When they began speaking to each other, it was as if they were continuing a conversation they had begun about twenty minutes ago and, when I confess that I did not understand a word of what they said, I mean it.  After about half an hour of enduring this entirely unintelligible, almost impenetrable, dialogue, I stole a glance at wifey and noticed that she was looking at me as well, as puzzled as I was.  I then looked at the Emmanuel Kant next to me and, well, he was looking at the chap next to him, and so on.  You get the gist.

Occasionally, a couple of the soda glasses or kurtas would burst out into laughter and the audience, that had just got a sense that maybe they were supposed to laugh, would follow.  

I looked at my watch.  Two more hours to go, with Naseer and Benjamin excluding me from their private conversation.  I tried to snooze a couple of times, but just when I felt dreamy and cosy,  Naseer would raise his voice with a theatrical flourish, venting vengeful violence (all ‘v’s if you noticed, alliteration).  It was positively creepy, almost as if he knew I was trying to escape this wrath.

Then, all of a sudden, a woman entered the stage from the left and walked right up to the mike.  “I have an announcement to make,” she spoke, her voice filled with the spirit and tone of theatre, ignoring the two who were waiting for Godot and addressing the audience, “a car with the number plate KA 02 MA 1234 (or something like that) has blocked my driveway and we are unable to take our car out.  The owner of this vehicle must immediately, please, please, remove his car.” 

We both sat up in our seats, alert.  Was this part of the play?  Certainly, if so, it was a most useful adaptation, for Beckett, one guesses, would not have thought of a KA-registered vehicle.  I was tempted to stand up and applaud, hoot and stamp my feet but desisted because I was not sure.  And just as she finished, her husband sidled up behind her, nodding his head and muttering into the mike, “We have tried to tell the management at Chowdiah many times, but they don’t listen…”.  He then backed off, allowing his fuming wife to hog the mike. 

We were all alive now.  Naseer’s face had turned a bright shade of red while the woman was speaking and he now threw his wig on the ground, announced imperiously, “That’s it.  We are cancelling this performance” and stomped off stage.  Benjamin, realising that he had not thrown his wig off, decided to mutter and growl and stomped off too.  Yet, nothing seemed to upset the lady.  She continued, “We are sorry to disturb the performance, but, you see, we had no choice” or words to that effect, while her husband held a banner in the background that read: Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.  (Actually, he did not do that.  I made it up.  He just stood behind her, hoping to leave the place in one reasonably intact piece.)

As you can imagine, we were now lapping up every second.  This was true theatre, worth every rupee.  Then Mr. Gibberish’s voice came on the mike and in his cultured, measured way said, “Ladies and gentlemen, our apologies for this interruption.  Do take a fifteen minute break, and we will let you know of the status.”  What he was actually saying, of course, was, “Maan, we are up shit creek and don’t want you to enjoy the fun.”

We reluctantly left the auditorium and hung around for a few minutes, sipping something or the other.  “Should we stay back, if the play is resumed?”asked wifey.  “Should we?” I asked in turn.  “Where is the car parked?”asked wifey. 

And the rest, as they say, is history.  We were home in about twenty five minutes.  I have long been tempted to access Wikipedia to find out just who was Godot and why these two were waiting for him, but I feel it will be a humbling experience and hence, best avoided.

Will Softbank save the otter...and a lot of other wildlife?

Softbank, that somewhat eccentric internet company in Japan run by an equally maverick Masayoshi Son, has just announced that it will lead a JV with Bharti in solar energy, investing $ 10 billion – that is about 63,500 crores – over the next ten years to generate, hold your breath, 20,000 megawatts of power. 

These numbers, by any standard of energy generation - conventional or otherwise, are awe-inspiring, and, hopefully, not just for the media to digest, but real. Pricewater Coopers says that, if implemented today, it would be the size of the entire power generation capacity of Greece or the Philippines. More importantly, this number is 50 per cent of India's current installed hydropower generation capacity. And that is the reason I am attempting to look for unintended consequences of such immense investment. 

But first, about hydropower. Which means, dams. A day after Softbank’s announcement, the Business Standard carried the following write-up: 

 India's largest hydroelectric project has been given all the requisite clearances by the environment ministry in spite of repeated rejections by its own experts. The 3,000-Mw Dibang river valley mega dam in Arunachal Pradesh, once fully built, will wipe clean 4,577 hectares of forest that is also the homeland of a small community of 12,000, the Idu Mishmi. 

The project worth Rs 25,000 crore was approved on September 22 last year without a study to understand the downstream impact. Instead, the ministry has asked that a study be carried out five years after the dam is commissioned. Likely to be completed in nine years, the study will be done, therefore, 14 years later. According to norms, such studies are to be carried out cumulatively for all hydroelectric projects on the river concerned before clearance is given. 

The dam is only one of 17 planned on the river that flows through the Dibru Saikhowa National Park. It was originally rejected by the Forest Advisory Committee (FAC) in July 2013, the apex body advising the ministry on granting of forest clearances. Ultimately, talks between the environment and power ministries pushed the project by overruling earlier rejections. Repeated meetings and letters over the next one-and-a-half years between the two ministries finally succeeded in clinching the forest clearance, government records show. FAC, in spite of comprising some of the most senior forest officials in the ministry, cannot give non-binding recommendations. 

Serious discrepancies in releasing accurate data were repeatedly seen on the part of the state government and project developer, National Hydroelectric Power Corporation (NHPC), during the clearance process. This included failing to mention that chopping down 325,000 trees would critically endanger the refuge for animals such as elephants, tigers, fishing cats and snow leopards. Unquote 

India's search for power is the single biggest threat to our forests and wildlife and hydropower is a reason – a big reason – why fish are disappearing from our rivers. Many species of fish swim up the river to spawn and lay eggs in sand. Dams stop them from doing so and disrupt their breeding resulting in precipitous decline in native fish after their habitat is modified by dam construction. 

Fish, of course, are also hit by pollution of the rivers, sand mining and unsustainable forms of fishing including the use of dynamite, yet dams probably head the ‘villians’ list. In the last twenty years, India’s race for power has been energised by coal and hydro, at a scale that is mind-numbing.  And, as the fish have disappeared, the otters have too. 

Softbank is certainly not the first company to set up a solar park in India, but in sheer scale and ambition it has the potential to be a game changer. Hopefully - cross my fingers and twist my toes, roll my eyes and rub my nose - hopefully, we are reaching a point where the need for new dams, will be questioned by the decision makers, because a credible, workable alternative – solar energy – now exists, the costs of which have dropped 25% in the last three years, and are dropping every year as new ingenious ways of harnessing the sun’s energy are commercialised. Hence the optimism. And a hope that Softbank will help the otter - and all other forms of wildlife, aquatic and terrestrial - survive.

Curtains at the Play

Sometime in 2011

It has been a long day – an early flight, followed by intense work – and I make it to the performing arts theatre just in time. I flop into a seat by the side door just as the lights dim. This is a weekday, the three short plays are in Hindi, have not been written by anyone famous and have no theatre stars or fetching reviews online, so, from the silhouettes of heads in front, the audience seems thin.

A couple of the usual announcements follow (‘No breaks. Each play of the duration of half-an-hour. Use your mobile phone and you will be hung upside down above a lion’s cage’…that sort of thing). I am hardly listening though, sending messages to friends I’d be meeting later that evening for dinner. The side-door to my immediate left opens and, in the darkness, I faintly notice a man being wheeled in by his assistant. The wheelchair is placed next to me and from the corner of my eye, I see the slumped silhouette of a senior citizen in a kurta-pyjama, his head half forward and cocked to one side, his mouth partly open.

The performance has just begun.

The stories are charming, commonplace and real, the language colloquial and the humour ready and simple, all of which make them happily engaging. Somewhere in the middle though, I hear a gentle snore from my left, not loud enough to annoy, yet hardly soft enough to ignore. This chap clearly did not pay the three hundred bucks I did! Even when he does not snore, he hardly seems to pay attention, for there is no movement of any sort. Not wanting to stare at his face to see if the eyes are open, I curb the urge and stay focused on the play.

When the final play ends, the audience stands up to applaud and the lights on stage come on. We cheer as the actors and the accomplished lady director take their bows and acknowledge gratitude to Prithvi Theatre for hosting the play. The lights brighten and, glancing to my left, I realise – after some initial difficulty – that, for the last couple of hours I have been sitting next to Shashi Kapoor.

The mind protests at once in confusion; it refuses to accept this image, choosing instead to rely on a cache of sepia-tinted, yet bright memories, of my favourite actor and the heart-throb of a million adolescents. Is this him? In that moment, I see the intensity of his performance in Kalyug – the words soft, the eyes expressive, the silence dignified – the starkness of Junoon, and of that one minute, just that minute, in Ijaazat that made all the difference. Of his skill at the masala stuff, led by Deewar, where he was always cut from a different cloth, a shade above, a class, shall we say, apart. Of a guy who always looked like a million bucks (give or take a couple of million). Of a guy with no attitude and an easy, fetching smile and charm. That was my Shashi Kapoor, wasn’t it?

I reluctantly walk slowly away, watching this figure from the corner of my eyes: an old man in the wheelchair, the visage – half-lidded eyes, drooping chin, unseeing eyes marked with disinterest, head unsteady and the slumping posture – only as unreal as a sepia-tinted figure of smoke in the mist.

That evening, though, at dinner, there is a warm feeling to know that I sat beside Shashi Kapoor for a couple of hours one memorable evening.

Shashi Kapoor

( March 18th1938 - December 4th 2017)

Reflecting on a recent Delhi trip and the need to be assertive....

‘Six kgs excess,’ said the lady at the check-in

With a charming, engaging smile

‘Would you please pay by cash, rupees

As the card will take quite awhile?’

I put on my favourite hunted look

As the mouse would before (what else?) a cat

‘Could you please waive this once away

And have a delighted customer after that?’

She shook her head as she wrote the receipt

(The smile was still in its intended place)

I paid up a ransom that emptied my wallet

(And the blood off my cherubic face).

As I walked ashen, the next man checked in

His bag was light; no excess to declare

Built like a hulk, all beef, beer and bulk

HE was excess baggage; it just wasn’t fair!

I thought for a moment of raising the point

That a chap and his bag be together weighed

A limit be placed that charges his flab

And rewards a guy who slim has stayed……(that’s me!)

But I walked on, poorer, a rebel with a cause

Cursing myself as a weakling dimwit.

When I reflect on what held me back

I guess it was the smile that did it.

Avoiding a Dangerous Elephant in the Tall Grass of the Nameri Jungle

We held our breath as the elephant moved
Shaking her head from side to side,
We ducked, hid and prayed in strength
That the wind would not betray our hide.

"Come," urged the leader, in a hoarse whisper,
"We must move behind her ample back,
No noise, no voice, NO camera click,
All which trigger her frontal attack."

We silently formed the line and crept
I bravely brought up the dangerous rear
The eyes that met my gaze were steely
My blood just froze with a nameless fear.

We moved carefully on the path ahead
As the elephant lifted her trunk a-height
She sniffed the air and took a step
Sending us scurrying in frenzied fright.

After awhile, we had crossed danger zone!
And stopped to catch our breath at last
Watching the great head from distance afar
Living the moments just gone past.

A man came up from the opposite way
And looked at us with a puzzled eye
We gave him the gist; he listened and said
"It's my elephant! Doesn't hurt a fly."

Nameri Birdlist - March 4th to 6th 2015

 Ruddy Shelduck

Ibisbill - a first

Common Merganser - a first

Mallard - male and female

Northern Pintail

River tern

Sand Martin

Crested Grebe - a first

Oriental Pratincole  a first

Black Stork - a first

Peregrine Falcon - 2 - a surprise! Identified by Gulven

River lapwing

White Wagtail - a first

Wreathed hornbill - a flock.  Brilliant!  A first

Imperial Green Pigeon - a flock

Great Indian Thick Knee

Common Kingfisher

March 6th - on a walk with Gulven

White Winged Wood Duck - a first

Vernal Hanging Parrot

Spangled drongo

Scarlet Minivet

Pygmy Woodpecker

Yellow Naped Woodpecker -a first

Gold fronted leafbird - a first

Velvet fronted nuthatch - a first

Osprey

Dollarbird -a first

Woodshrike

The Itinerant

One afternoon, when I was about eight or nine years old, I came home from school to find a tall, thin young foreigner chatting with my dad.  ‘Chatting’ is possibly the wrong word, for he was listening in a polite, typically European way with a broad smile on his face.

Dad looked at me, “Do you remember reading the letter from Robert Smeets?”

I certainly did.  The episode had begun with Saro Aunty – my favourite, lovable Aunt and a gregarious, sociable lady if there ever was one – meeting Robert at some event or the other. He was a young Dutchman, who had worked for a bit, saved a modest sum of money and was now travelling around the World.  His stories apparently were fascinating (she remembers some of them even today, I would imagine).  My Uncle and Aunt lived in Sri Lanka at the time and, if I recall, Robert spent a few days with them.  Coming to know of Robert’s plan to visit India from there, my intrepid Aunt suggested that he come over to Digboi and visit and stay with us.  Most people will politely thank the other person for this invitation, promise to do so and then fade away.  But Robert was decidedly not like most people.  Shortly thereafter, my parents received a letter from him, written in a handwriting that can only be described as a combination of art and geometry – full of angles and stylish twists – that is characteristic of a European coming to terms with English.  With a few carefully spelt words, he invited himself over and, when the good Aunt followed up with a letter introducing him, it was an offer Dad and Mum just could not refuse.

So here he was, on a fine day in the mid 1970s.

He had arrived by train, which caused no small consternation as no one in our family, in our friends circle, or their friends circle had ever travelled by train east of Calcutta, except in a dire emergency such as the 1962 war with China.  But, remember, Robert Smeets was different. He could survive just about anywhere though he didn’t quite look it: a tall, gangly sort of fellow, with a blond mop of hair on his head, a slightly loony smile that was perpetually in ‘On’ mode and a soft, genteel voice that was barely above a whisper.

Yes, Robert Smeets, I will say again, was not like most people we knew. 

For starters, he had hardly any luggage, which was a matter of endless conversation for a family that accumulated trunks, hold-alls, suitcases, briefcases, carry bags and picnic baskets.  He then did not seem to see the need to ever wash clothes and the room he lived in had a most peculiar smell that got me fascinated and intrigued all at once, and my poor mother driven to some despair, as the ‘jamadar’, as our sweeper was called, had let it be known that cleaning this room was way below his dignity of labour.  But all was forgiven when, at meal times, Robert would eat most joyfully, chewing every morsel and enquiring about the details of the recipe from my mom, prefacing every sentence with a softly spoken, “Mrs. Vasudevan, could you please….”; indeed, his formality and insistence on manners was admirable as was his frequent notings in a little diary that he carried around, reminiscent today of a long-forgotten era.

In those days, Dad had a monthly free quota of petrol, since he worked in a company that produced petroleum, and he placed the car at Robert’s command.  But Robert was not interested in the least in using it, choosing to walk everywhere and chatting with children and adults alike.  His handicap of not knowing Hindi did not seem to deter his communication ability,  which was anchored always by a trademark smile that got most people on his side; undeniably, the fact that he was white helped too, as Digboi had until the mid 1960s a number of British managers. He caused quite a stir wherever he went, photographing the vendors around him with his little black-and-white film camera, or near Charali, the main bazaar where he insisted on speaking with (and photographing) the beggars in a tone of respect that they must have found most suspicious.

One can only imagine, forty years later, the sort of questions he must have faced a thousand times in the sub-continent.  “Why are you travelling around the World?”, “What do you do in The Netherlands?”, “Are you married?” (this last question, no doubt, from a suspicious fellow travelling in the same coupe as Robert, his family in tow), “Why are you not married?”, “Do you have a girlfriend?”, “Why are you not studying?” and about a hundred others that he must have, I can surmise, answered in the soft, carefully neutral way that the liberal Dutch are wont to do. 

A few days after Robert’s arrival, Dad came back home to the news that the chap had been missing all day.  Much ado followed, of course, until information flowed in that he had walked almost all the way to the next town, Duliajan, a good twenty five kilometres away.  The walk was on a road that cut through a dense jungle and the threat to anyone from the odd elephant or an opportunistic robber was omnipresent.  Ignorance has never been more blissful.  Dad, if I remember right, then sent the car to pick him up and Robert spent much of the evening apologising which my good natured father never felt necessary. Yet, in the eyes of all in Digboi, Robert was instantly branded a certified nut and I had a field day, regaling my friends in school with tales of Mr. Smeets.

My post-school life in Digboi was lonely and I craved for company that only came by when my brothers returned for their annual vacation.  Robert filled in for the time he was in Digboi, spending some time every day playing with me, after I got back from school.  So, when I was told after about a couple of weeks that Robert Smeets would be leaving in a couple of days, it was dismaying to hear. 

With a brief handshake and his smile, Robert left Digboi by train.  He travelled to the North on his way out of India and kept in regular touch with my Aunt and with Dad and Mom through letters, with a promise of a follow-on trip.  A couple of years later, we heard that he had married a Sri Lankan, that country having a special place in his large heart, and had taken up a job in the Netherlands, only to leave it a while later to go back to his first occupation – travel.

The letters from Robert decreased over the years.  Dad was a legendary letter-writer, particularly after his retirement, and would persevere with those who were laggards so Robert continued, perforce,  keeping in touch, the intensity of writing reduced to his annual Christmas card that I awaited eagerly for its unusual postage stamp.  And, then, as his silouette had faded away from the little town of Digboi, the annual card did too, in the most unobtrusive way possible. 

A few days ago, I thought of him and decided to use Google to track this chap down, but without success.  Who (or What) was Robert Smeets?  A post-1960s neat hippie? An environmentalist? A confused soul rejecting capitalist economics? An opportunistic wanderer? An itinerant nomad who travelled for its own desultory joy?  Or just another gentle human being attempting to live life on his own terms?