Where there is a Willys, there is a Way

A couple of years ago, when a friend of mine called me excitedly to tell me that he had just bought a Willys Jeep of early 1950s vintage for about 3 lakhs, I asked him if there was a history of insanity in the family.  He didn’t seem to mind the question as, apparently, his wife had asked him the same thing on learning of the purchase.

You see, there are two kinds of people in Bangalore:

Those who work to support their family

Those who work to support their Willys jeep 

I suggested that he apply right away for a housing loan, and add a bathroom to the jeep and move in, as the rest of the loan would be spent on repairs.  He laughed nervously and invited me home to see it. 

When I fetched up at his home a few days later, he was still excited and showed me all the documents of the vehicle.  The Registration Book weighed slightly more than the Constitution of India and there were papers relating to the engine that ran into two hard bound files (no, I am not making this up.  Actually, one hard bound file).  It had a petrol engine that had been changed to diesel and after the change of a couple of engines had gone back to petrol which made me wonder if there was a sort of buy-4-tyres-get-engine-free scheme going for Willys jeeps. 

The vehicle was a neat green in colour, the seats were extremely uncomfortable with the cushioning dating to the Mughal period and there was a spade and a petrol canister attached to the back, which I simply couldn’t quite comprehend: if you need to pour petrol into the tank, a funnel works better than a spade, but I didn’t say this.  The car had 3 gears and the keychain had a legend which said, “My other car is a Rolls”. 

We climbed in and settled down, which took about five minutes because there were wires everywhere, one of which gave me a slight shock and my leg kept getting stuck in them, and then he started the car, but – and here was the crux – it did not move.  It sort-of hummed away loudly and stayed in the same place, exactly like my labradors, who are, amongst other things, the laziest dogs above the Equator (my cousin’s dog in New Zealand is lazier).

After a few tries, he abandoned the attempt to start it rather sheepishly, but we did take a selfie together and he sent it to everyone except the Prime Minister.  Soon, he joined an association of Willys owners which has a President, Secretary, Treasurer and lots of internal politics and, while the association works very well, none of the Willys do.  Like my Labradors, the Willys tends to flop and pack up when two conditions are appropriately fulfilled:

 There is no mechanic within a ten km radius; and

There is no mobile signal 

Early last year, my friend wasn’t as enthu about the Willys anymore and had gone back to earning a living.  A couple of weeks ago, I learnt from his wife that he had sold the vehicle, and I was pleased to be proved just right.  

“So, our friend lost a packet on buying this Titanic?” I asked; a rhetorical question.

“Actually, he sold it for a profit of 20k, after including all his costs. He’s waiting to brag about it to you.” 

Now, I don’t know why I feel so low.  Is it because I didn’t get the last word, or is it because I now know there are so many suckers around?

The Real Bagheera of Bagli

 

Jowan Singh Alava is a real hero.  

Hanumanth and I are in a tiny, non-descript village, along with PS Vijayshankar from Samaj Pragati Sahayog, on a learning journey.  We discuss agriculture with the denizens and then I ask, "Has anyone had any encounters with wildlife?"
The answer is unanimous: I should, they all say, speak to Jowan Singh.  
We walk a bit to reach his modest home and he comes out to greet us with a big smile (as you can see).
And then, with no pretensions whatsoever, he tells us the story.

Twenty odd years ago, on a warm summer night, the family was asleep outside their hut, in  a little village about three hours from Indore.  
Jowan Singh awoke to a rather odd sound- a stifled, yet terrified cry - and looking around, he saw a leopard taking his five-year old daughter away.  The animal had moved silently among the sleeping family, picked up the little one with its mouth and was now dragging her over the hard wheat field.

With a yell, he began to chase the animal.  He then did the unthinkable: he caught up with the leopard and held on to its tail, shouting all the while.  (As he described this, my heart began thumping away and I got the goosebumps big time).
The leopard tried to pull away with a growl, but Jowan Singh would not let go.  The animal dropped the girl and that was when Jowan Singh let go as well, half expecting the leopard to attack him but the now-frightened animal bounded off.
Jowan Singh then took his daughter - who was bleeding badly from the skull where the leopard had its grip - on a bullock cart to the nearest hospital (a Government one) four hours away in the middle of the night.  The doctor on night duty examined the wounds and, with a shrug of indifference, said that they would have to wait for the day doctors to show up to do the needful.  

And that was when Jowan Singh Alava, this man of incredible tenacity and courage, finally lost it.  "I told him that, if my daughter did not survive, he wouldn't too. I had blood all over me and a frenzied look (like a paagal), so the doctor got really scared and treated her." he said, with a cheerful laugh.  

She survived and is now in her twenties, though she carries the scars on her temple and face.  What Jowan Singh carried on his face, when we met him, was a charming smile and a modest acceptance of our encomiums.

Yes, Jowan Singh Alava is a real hero 

When the Pahadi spoke

He spoke animatedly, his face aglow
Of elegant, dignified, Pahadi stock.
He spoke of ageing, loneliness and health
And the impact of the migration shock.
Of hardship and attachment as seasons go by
Of the regular, crunching uphill walk.
 
As I listened, noted and marvelled within
At the Pahadi’s resolute grit and smile
My eyes took in with utter fascination
His charmingly easy fetching smile.
The teeth; they were perfect, white with shine
Some secret mountain herb or chamomile?
 
After the conv, I popped the Big Q
‘Just how do your teeth fit the perfect Bill?
I spend on toothpaste, on dentist and brush
And yet my set are over the hill.”
He smiled again, that sparkle of white
And removed his dentures from behind the grill

My Farmily and Other Animals

I reach the farm around 9 this morning, the morning after a night of gentle, persistent rain.  The air is heavy with moisture and the tall grass greets me with a fragrance, while its bushy heads brush against my skin.  I pick my way carefully on the soft, wet earth, for the-morning-after is time for the Kingdom of Animalia.  This is mid-day already for the birds – white-headed babblers (damn their new name), bushchats, bulbuls, tailor birds, sunbirds, white-eyes, mynas and the odd bushlark me thinks, though I am missing the chatter of the white-browed bulbul family that’s usually around the young mango.  As I open the house door and deposit the bag, a wasp from the in-house nest greets me with a buzz, a menacing keep-away whirr.  Two of her female ancestors had given me a nasty sting some years ago, so I get this message well (males are the benign, retiring type who’d rather curl up with a book than pick a fight, and that’s why we’ll get along well if we e’er meet).  Over the years, I have removed the wasp nest often (after saying my prayers), but they always return and the last time Anand, my extraordinary brains trust, was asked his opinion, he lit a quick small fire and finished them off, which destroyed not just the wasps but my heart as well.  So, I have decided to let live (and not provoke the females, after all this #MeToo stuff).   

Anand and I walk to the back of the farm, a patch of horse gram (huruli) that is as nutritious as it is unfussy to grow.  The lush sight is a delight to see, the little saplings waving excitedly in the breeze.  He shows me the impressions of the hoof of wild boar as it traversed through the patch to the ragi across, being grown, thankfully, by my neighbour (who is not averse to occasional flavouring of rice-and-curry with some bacon).  Even as we stand there, a small flock of baya weaver birds descend on the guava tree by the small pond and their excitement suggests that it’s nesting time – indeed, monsoons is when they work their magic.  The path is dotted with gorgeous lemon-yellow butterflies – the Common Grass Yellow – flitting about with purpose, in which pursuit, of course, they differ vastly from me. 

Did I just hear a Crested Serpeant Eagle?  It isn’t to be seen, which is odd, but the call – that deceivingly plaintive cry – is, as an Ornithologist would say in his tongue, diagnostic. “Do not enter the Tuvare (toor dal) patch, Sir,” Anand says, “there is a bee hive there.”  Which, of course, is great news for pollination.  I would not have entered the Tuvare anyways, for it has grown taller than I am and is densely packed – a walk through this would have had the heart doing a lively gig.   

We begin the walk to the front of the farm – the Western side, so to speak -  and, a few steps ahead, a grey francolin (a big name for a partridge) takes off just ahead, giving me quite a start and Anand a hearty laugh.  A month ago, I had seen their dainty little nest with eggs under a clump of grass.  They are generally heard more than seen, yet they are lovely birds, tubby and compact, in the line of evolutionary thought that includes quails and pheasants.  Thankfully, in our area, they aren’t caught for the table (well, at least to my knowledge). 

We are now past the little patch of greens that I am looking forward to eating next month (if not beaten to it), and Anand stops all of a sudden and points to a solitary scat on the path.  “Jungle cat,” he says with assuredness, and I feel a thrill, for this is a first.  “It seems to have gone this way last night.”  As we walk further, he points, with disappointment, to the now-sparse patch of jowar by the water-channel.  “The monkeys came a couple of days ago and destroyed this,” he says in irritation, and I share the emotion, not being particularly fond of bonnet macaques.   

Even as we stand there, staring at the soil, he bends down and examines a paw print in the soft earth.  Hares, two of them, went by last night too, their prints and droppings pointing the way.  At one point they seemed to have both stopped to deposit an entire load of droppings and I can, in my mind’s eye, see them now:  the male standing up and sniffing nervously, looking around all the time, with his black-tipped ears twitching like vibrant antennae.  I love to see hares bound across a field in a sprint that can leave you breathless and awed.  They are, in a phrase, Nature’s great dashers.  When in my teens, I read an eerie story called “The Rabbit’s Paw” (read it at your peril), but it only enhanced my fondness for rabbits (and, by extension, their Indian cousins).   

At my foot is a tiny LadyBird beetle.  Can Nature be more resplendent than this?  “We call it Guruganji vola (insect),” Anand says in reponse to my question and, on reflection, this is a brilliant name.  Guruganji is the local name for Abrus Precatorius (or the Crab’s Eye), which is Kunnikuru in Malayalam.  The LadyBird looks just like the Crab’s Eye, so what could be better than naming an insect after a seed that it resembles?  Damn the science, admire the simplicity.   

After Anand leaves for lunch, I stroll on my own – there’s a treepie up there, and his cousins, the crows, come around when I have lunch.  They know that I will give them a piece or two, not just of food, but of my mind as well.  My Great-Grandmother, a woman of incredible fortitude with a toothless grin and a yawning earlobe, used to keep one ball of rice for the crows on the low roof at the back, for these were, she insisted, her ancestors reborn, who would keep an eye out for her.  I share no such sentiment (or perhaps I do).  She, my Great-Grandma, lived to the age of 98, so the crows have a trick we don't quite know about.

I am in the porch and, taking a step forward, I see a movement on the stone patch a few feet to my left.  A striped keelback – a beautiful, harmless snake – is moving rapidly away from me, for the last thing it wants is to be near humans.  The moment it enters the grass I know that I have lost it for good. 

I must be honest, I miss Colonel Haathi.  It’s been a while since he visited, but I know that when the ragi is ready to be taken, you can’t keep a good elephant away. 

A Rhetorical Question To a Common Sense Economist

Allow me to ask you a question, well, a rhetorical one, after I present some essential macroeconomic data, basic stuff at that: 

Your Government has a historical record of budget deficits, more recently at around 4% of the Gross Domestic Product, but at earlier highs of 6-6.5% of GDP.  In the current Financial Year (2018-19), the Government will borrow around Rs 6 lakh crores to fund a deficit of 3.3-3.5% of the GDP.   

Now, here’s the question: what is your opinion of the following plan that your Government might present?

The Government says – let’s suppose – that it wishes to run a long-term project over the next twenty years which has the following characteristics:

- It will cost a minimum of about Rs 1 lakh crores a year (that’s Rs 1,00,000,00,00,000).  Once begun, this investment cannot be stopped without delaying the project and increasing its cost.  This alone will, at current price levels, increase the budget deficit by about 0.5% of GDP every year and contribute to inflation.

- The overall cost therefore would be about Rs 20 lakh crores.

- All of this money will be raised by borrowing, within India and abroad.

- The project has never been done earlier in any part of the World, never tried out at anything close to the scale that the Government is proposing.

- The benefits from this project are entirely in the realm of speculation and subject to a number of assumptions – including one on weather patterns.  None of these assumptions have been put up for scientific review and educated scrutiny.

- There is no peer-reviewed independent project report by a ‘non-interested’ stakeholder that has detailed the net benefits of the project after a cost-benefit study.  

- The employment benefits from the project are, relatively speaking (ie, in comparison to alternatives that could be done with that kind of money), marginal to the point of being irrelevant.  The agricultural unemployment resulting from the displacement as a result of the project is likely to be – there are no reliable estimates here – greater than the employment generated, resulting in significantly higher migration to the cities by both landless and landed (but now ‘de-landed’ agriculture workers)

- It is likely – indeed, probable – that some parts of this giant project will be stalled due to land acquisition issues, local stakeholder protest and intervention by the Judiciary (though such intervention may be years in the future, making the project even riskier)

- Which brings us to the issue of risk management; the project has no public risk management profile or document, nothing that alerts us to possible show-stoppers, unintended consequences or accidents.

This utterly insane white elephant is the loosely termed ‘river-linking project’, which was budgeted in the year 2002 to cost about Rs 5.2 lakh crores.  The project targets thirty rivers in India and seeks to inter-connect them in the hope that floods will be prevented by such connection as waters seek their own level.  

It is an idea that is as foolish as it is quixotic, as unequivocally disastrous as it is costly and as useless as it is destructive.  Everything about this project has ideology sans reality written all over it and yet, over the last two decades, the project has received undue impetus.  

Beyond all of the above – each of which should by itself be enough to halt the progress of the project – is the issue of planetary geoengineering that is being attempted, possibly beyond the scale of the Three Gorges Dam.  Could such effort have unintended – and unpleasant – consequences?   

Indeed, yes.  Take dams, for instance.  Over the last sixty years, the construction of dams in India alone has displaced four million people, arguably the biggest cause for refugees – ecological refugees – after partition.  Despite all attempts at water distribution from these dams, desertification and land degradation is growing as never before, with such geoengineering resulting in other unintended consequences including the decimation of fish habitat and concomitant loss of fishing livelihoods.  

A second example.  In an excellent article titled ‘The Risk of Planetary Geoengineering’, Rahul Matthan writes of a crazy attempt in the 1950s to seed clouds in the US and control the weather called Project Cirrus.  Read this:

“ In their first attempt, they took on a hurricane heading to Jacksonville.  A Project Cirrus plane dropped dry ice along the edge of the squall line and almost instantly, the clouds shed rain over the sea.  This was the result they were anticipating and they hoped that this would cause the storm to change its direction.  

While the storm initially turned away as they hoped, it soon made a dog-leg turn over the Atlantic and headed back to the mainland with renewed vigour.  The resulting Frankenstein’s monster of a storm was more vicious than before, its winds gusting at a hundred miles an hour by the time it made landfall over the Savannah.  It smashed windows, flattened sugarcane fields and caused upwards of $23 million of damage.” 

The consequence of river linking are too frightening to contemplate – and these are the intended ones.  The ecological cost of the project includes the destruction of swathes of forest and vastly increased human activity in protected areas, while the benefit of flood mitigation is, at best, a hope – just how can one predict if this will work? 

The Government of India should be doing quite the opposite of what it proposes – it makes excellent economic sense to protect the river courses as they are, remove encroachments, spend a fraction of the funds that would go into linking rivers to clean them up instead and protect the riparian forests that then mitigate flood impact.  Watershed management and river conservation must be given the most important place in Government policy, for our human capital’s productivity depends on it, more than on anything else.  Is common sense too much to expect?

Duck-in-mud

It's approaching dusk on a cloudy, overcast day.
I am by the open, harvested, muddy and puddled paddy field, squelching a way through the mud to look at my favourite sight: busy ducks.
There’s something about ducks that has always fascinated me: the way they waddle around and squawk at each other, dipping their beaks in the tiny pools and eating away with the rapidity of mindless chatter. There’s something about the way they all seem to move together, without even looking up and seeking directions or leadership. There’s something marvellously enticing about the egalitarian-ness of this whole troop (the collective noun for a group of ducks is a flock, of course, but that’s when they are flying. A group of ducks can also be called a brace, raft, team or paddling when on water. That’s your education for the day). And there’s something in their busy-ness - call it living in the moment - that is fulfilling.

So, here I am, standing next to Satyan and his young boss, Murali (whose mobile number I have stored as Tarav Murali, the prefix meaning duck in Malayalam). Here, off the lovely village of Somnathpur, with its historic never-prayed-at temple and an equally historic but abandoned shrine, I meet these two men from the border of Kerala and Tamil Nadu, simple men of leisure, watching over a thousand ducks with benign care. The vast majority are females (ducks), with about a tenth of them being males (drakes). When I mention that the ratio is a happy one for the drakes and should be an education to us all, Satyen’s lined, weary face breaks out into a grin, showing teeth that could do with repair, a crooked, chipped set that has held its share of beedis over the years and his voice – a scratchy, gravelly smoker’s voice – attests to the habit. He communicates with the whole flock using clucks and the odd grunt and they seem to know just what to do then. Fascinating, utterly engrossing.

There are questions of course, from me, and none, it seemed, from them, for I must surely fit a prototype. Why are the ducks here? Why now? What’s in it for you? How do you protect them? What’s your life like?.....and the questions flow on at a high pitch, above the chatter and din of the team of ducks hard at work on the paddy.
The answers return in monosyllables and it’s a struggle to connect the dots. They have come a long way, of course, but the rest of Murali’s large family, all of whom breed ducks – over a hundred thousand of them – are spread out over the southern states. The crop here has just been harvested and the land is fallow, prior to the next crop being sown in perhaps a month.
The ducks waddle in rows over the paddy, picking tiny pieces of grain from the muddy puddles with their beaks working like whirring motors. And, not just grain, but pests too. Along the way, they enrich the soil with their droppings and churn the mud, all practices that we could classify as Deep Ecology. But that’s for the farmers. What’s in it for Murali? Do they sell the ducks for meat?
Eggs, he says. His current flock of a thousand would give him about four hundred eggs a day and each egg fetches – at the moment – eight rupees, a handsome return, FOB (free on board – because a truck comes in the morning to pick them up). I tell them – jocularly, of course - that my life, in immediate retrospect, seems wasted and I’d love to give it all up and join them. Four thousand tax-free and the company of a thousand ducks; is there a better Heaven?
Satyen laughs again- he’s clearly certified me as a stand-up comic and now laughs at anything I say or ask – while Murali hastens to add that it’s not that rosy. “There’s transportation in a truck that’s expensive and other costs too,” the voice trails away, leaving me unconvinced, and he continues, “and ducks don’t lay eggs around the year.”
Ducks lay eggs apparently for about three quarters of the year, and for two years.
What about after that?
Murali’s face changes colour a shade. ‘We sell them away,’ he says.
‘For meat?’
He nods in assent.
‘Do you get attached to these ducks?’ I ask. It’s not a nice question, you will agree, provocative in its tone, and seeking a response that he is clearly unhappy to provide.
‘Yes, I do. But what to do?’
‘Do you get really attached to any one or two ducks out of these?’
‘Yes, then I leave them at home and allow them to lead their lives.’
“Do you keep any eggs for incubation?”
“No. Eggs are incubated artifically nowadays. We buy little chicks.”
“And, where do you take all these ducks to, at night?”
“We corral them. No sleep, Sir, because there are dogs and jackals waiting for a meal.” Satyen chips in, “And elephants in some places!” “Yes, elephants, back in our home range.”
So, these are not men of leisure, I can see. Over the past quarter of an hour, an empathy – perhaps even a bond – has developed between us, who inhabit different worlds as removed as possibly could be. With his family dispersed, Murali’s mobile phone – a basic button-phone – is his lifeline for communicating with them, the truck driver, customers and farmers.
It is a world that has changed slowly. Thankfully.
There’s just the one question that I don’t get an answer to, and perhaps it should remain this way. Why don’t these ducks fly away? Ducks are amongst the longest flyers in the world and these – Mallards, clearly – are known to migrate over continents. They never leave us, Murali assures me, and I wonder why? What is going on in that little brain at the apex of an incredibly dexterous neck? Is it loyalty to the flock (brace/raft/team/paddle – to reiterate the education)? As there is no leader (or so it seems), is this a collective decision to opt for a sort of free-slavedom, a curious twist in the machination of Nature?
By now, the ducks have changed direction, unanimously it seems, and are heading the opposite way, much like a disjointed march of a rag-tag army. I marvel at the ease with which their beautiful webbed feet step lightly on the mud, and the discerning eye with which they pick their way. This is visual, noisy, asynchronous poetry, these thousand ducks on their daily rounds. We stand in silence watching and listening to the chatter of a thousand waddlers. And then it’s time to turn around and go home, a long way away. The ducks don’t miss us though.

Immoral Signs

It was when I saw a dugong – a sea cow – in Singapore zoo that I thought of Father Dennis Coelho, who taught me in high school. 

Dennis was a rather sleepy looking fellow, with a generous waist and three chins, a genial air and a loopy smile, all of which seemed genetically linked to Suspect Number 1, the aforementioned mammal.  We called all the priests ‘Fa’ (ridiculous, as it sounds), but amongst us he was known as Babyface.  For much of his life, he taught English, in which subject his competence was commendable and hence of no interest to a biographer.  Of much greater interest to us was the School’s decision to ask him to teach Moral Science.  

He must have committed some unforgivable sin to be given this task.  When anyone takes Moral Science classes for fifty ninth standard boys, their only real knowledge from the class is a clear identification of which moral they had carefully abandoned yesterday.   

The Moral Science class, I remember well, succeeded the noon break, after we had played cricket, sweated it out in the sun and then had lunch.  We returned to the class for a well needed rest under a fan that had been last serviced around the Sepoy Mutiny.  This meant, of course, sleeping or lounging around, both of which apparently are not Moral Science.  Alternately, we’d use our compass to inscribe names on the desk in front, a task that was incredibly creative, for over the last few decades, every available space on it had been taken and one had to have a careful strategy.  Playing Battleship or Book Cricket – both games requiring compulsory brain-deadness - were options too. 

But Dennis did not get the idea of win-win at all.  He could done his thing, allowed us to do our thing, and a peaceful, shared, mutually respectful co-existence would have ensued.   

Instead, he would trundle langourously in, with heavy steps, heavier eyelids and the heaviest foreboding and take his chair.  Then would begin the most boring - lemme emphasise that for effect - THE most boring, incredibly dull, profoundly inane, utterly pointless, predictably tedious, uncompromisingly dreary, scathingly lifeless, monotonous litany.  You get the picture.  He would attempt, with some pompousness and mild assiduity, to get us to see morals in stories in a book that was written for the limited readership of Certified Angels, when the kind of stories all the Ninth Standard boys wanted to hear cannot (unfortunately) be revealed in public.   

So I slept.  There were times when I made a valiant effort to stay awake, but lost the battle, only to wake up when I was shaken and stirred by my neighbour, who had just been woken up when his neighbour poured the leftover water in the waterbottle down his back.  Once, I tried to sleep by holding my book up, but the afternoon peace was broken by the dull thud of my head banging against the desk after I had nodded off, causing much merriment for the citizenry.  It was hopeless.  And, without fail, Dennis would pick me out as one who was the principal sleep-catalyst of the class, a villian and a wastrel and a blot on the Moral Science landscape.  

I was once sent to the Vice Principal’s room – whom we called Small Cop, but was a gentle, smiling soul, unlike The Cop who was a gorilla in disguise.  Well, Small Cop asked me gently why I was sleeping.  Is this a question?  I mean, he should have asked Dennis why he wasn’t allowing all to sleep?   

As the year ended, Dennis – a normally mild-mannered fellow who, when awake, wouldn’t harm an anopheles mosquito – cursed me to hell. I had slept again and, dreaming that I was playing for India and facing Andy Roberts, had woken up with a sweat and a start, apparently exclaiming ‘Shit’ aloud (in justification, anyone facing Roberts would say much worse things).  “You will never succeed in life,” he said with feeling, his face turning a shade pink and the third chin swaying in the breeze in excited anger. 

About twenty years later, while having lunch with our team in CDC, I remembered Dennis and spoke about him to an attentive group.  I imitated his walk and his langourous style and recited a story or two to much local approval.  A little later, Annette, my boss’ secretary gently informed me that he was her uncle.  

I should have paid attention in that class, me thinks.