You know it is the beginning of our spring in Bangalore when the Mahogany sheds its leaves. Indeed, I never cease to be amazed at just how many Mahogany trees there are in the city, judging from the millions of leaves on most roads in the older residential areas. The early mornings are a joy to behold, for all through the night the leaves have gently drifted down onto the road, forming a carpet of shades of brown.
This morning I am out with my son in Defence Colony. He is on his little cycle, while I am on foot, jogging to keep pace with him. We pass an impatient supervisor from the Municipality, who is ordering the street sweepers to sweep the roads clean of leaves, while they grumble and gossip amongst themselves. I would love to see the carpet of leaves remain, but……
One of the sweepers has a little child. He is an active fellow and cannot sit still, which feature draws my attention. I then notice his preoccupation: he picks up many leaves that have been swept onto the side of the road, drops some and collects the rest, comparing them to the ones he has put away, sizing them for colour, shape, form and condition. He pays close attention to each leaf, as if it were a potential friend and takes an instant decision to reject or add to the pile by his side.
“Do you like these leaves?” I ask in Tamil
“Yes.”
“But why are you collecting them?”
He does not have an immediate answer, prompting me to repeat the q.
“Because,” he replies, “I don’t get so many at any other time of the year.”
I continue my walk-jog, marvelling at the reply. A Honda Civic, with a busy, harried owner at the helm, drives past me at some speed and over a leaf-carpet, sending a rush of leaves up into the air. There are a number of morning walkers – brisk, tuned individuals – most of whom have ear-plugs with music on, a tight exercise schedule and certainly no time for leaves. I cross a small group of college students, walking to their tuition class, all with their heads down, their attention exclusively on the the mobiles in their palms.
Fifteen minutes later, we are back a full circle and the boy has followed his mother further down the road, his collection of Mahogany leaves in a plastic bag. He is still looking around, but clearly, with a satisfactory collection, his standards are now high. As i cross them – mother and child – I wonder just how inaccurate English is as a language. We don’t grow to be adults, we regress to that condition.
Sunday, February 19, 2012
Sunday, January 8, 2012
When Hans Came Visiting
When Henri Stader III (Hans) called me from Singapore Airport, he was all excited. “I have just met,” he breathed into the phone, “a woman called Cynthia over on the flight from LA. She's fabulous company and gorgeous; we spent much of the flight just getting to know each other and I must plan my return to coincide with hers.” I was hardly surprised, for I had long known that you could get Hans charged up about a telephone pole if there was an attractive skirt draped around it.
“Is your Indian Airlines flight to Chennai on time?”
“Alas, yes,” he sighed, and hung up to go back to his new girlfriend.
Hans was as American as they come. The son of Henri Stader II (who, no doubt, was the illustrious son of Henri Stader I, all of which means that they had a problem with finding a book of names whenever it was needed), Hans was a magna-cum-laude from some US univ or the other and worked as a VP in an American investment bank that was our joint venture partner. He was a tall, well-built, friendly fellow, with a long face that reminded me of Stan Laurel (of Laurel & Hardy fame) and a smile that could be charming, sardonic or entirely artificial. Like most American investment bankers, he had an attention span that varied from about 18 to 25 seconds (on the outside), considerable stated arrogance when needed and a natural propensity to make some really cool presentations. I knew Hans well for, just a couple of months prior to his India visit, I had spent a month at LA in 1996, with him as my host. He had been hospitable and had spent a weekend driving me around, yet my primary impression was of a fellow who was rather vacuous in the head and driven to distraction by just about any pretty face.
Hans’ India itinerary was to land in Chennai, where my colleague, Chandra, would meet him for an hour, after which he would take the Bangalore flight. He would work with us for a week and return. Simple enough. When he landed in Bangalore, it would be my turn to host him, not an entirely unpleasant prospect, for he could make sparkling conversation and be a perfect guest.
Some hours later, I had an anxious call from Chandra, who was at the Chennai airport. The Indian Airlines flight had landed, all passengers had gone past immigration and indeed left, but of Hans there was no clue. I was convinced of course that he had, in his infatuation, done some fat-headed thing, yet there was little any of us could do but wait.
When the call did come, it was three hours later. Hans was at the Taj Hotel, at Colombo, Sri Lanka and a shaken man.
He had quite a story to relate: landing in Chennai, he was told at Immigration that his visa had expired. Just how he could board the flight at Singapore with an expired visa was a flummoxing question that remains unanswered, yet he first didn’t believe it and later, as it became clear that he was in the wrong for not having checked such a basic detail, he began to get increasingly belligerent with the immigration officer, which, you will doubtless agree, is a particularly bad idea. He demanded that the visa be renewed at that moment – a laughable request – and, when that was turned down, that he speak to the American Embassy, which request was also denied. The situation was turning grim: the immigration officer was on the verge of stamping “Deported” on his passport – the ultimate humiliation to any American – after which he would have to take the next flight out of India, when a kindred soul suggested helpfully that the same aircraft that had brought him to Chennai would be flying to Colombo in an hour and that Sri Lanka did not require Americans to have a visa to visit. This was real serendipity (pun intended, for Serendip was Sri Lanka’s original name!).
To buy a ticket to Colombo was with him the work of an instant and, on arrival, he checked into the Taj, a safe hotel in what was otherwise an unsafe country for foreigners at that time. His boss in the US, he said, had given him a dressing down and added that he bloody well stay in the hotel till the visa was done and not move around.
All’s well, we breathed easy, that ends well. My colleague began the complex task of working on getting a visa for the fellow by pulling strings in the right quarters.
I called Hans a few hours later and he seemed relaxed now. “I have just had the most incredible food here at the hotel. Dinner seems inviting as well.”
The next morning, he called in with encomiums about the food again. Clearly, Hans was having a feast.
On the third morning though, when he called, I could barely recognise his voice, punctuated by a series of groans. He was down in bed with a most upset stomach, the result of over-indulgence in spice, fish, sausages and about everything else at the buffett. Mr. Henri Stader III was now terribly ill, the hotel doctor had been summoned and our traumatised friend had stayed up all night, making frequent, emergency trips to the bathroom. Much as I tried to commiserate with his plight, it was, at once, comical and entertaining and so typical of the fellow to goof up at the slightest opportunity. I hopefully made the right noises in sympathy and continued the work the next day as he gave me session-wise updates on his health, thankfully omitting the gory details.
When Hans finally reached Bangalore two days later, he seemed a changed man. Three kilos lighter – not from having thrown his weight around, for a change – he now spoke in a softer voice, and was visibly weak (and not just in the head, so the condition had now spread in some sense). He spent a few days in Bangalore coming to work, but was clearly preoccupied with recouping his health, in which effort, of course, all of us in office had much unneccessary advice to offer.
On the day of his return, I thought some sympathy was in order. “You have had a difficult trip, Hans,” I said, “ and I hope the return will be fine.”
His face, I recall distinctly, was glum. “All this was OK,” he replied, “ but I have missed the return flight to LA with Cynthia.”
Hans hadn’t changed after all.
“Is your Indian Airlines flight to Chennai on time?”
“Alas, yes,” he sighed, and hung up to go back to his new girlfriend.
Hans was as American as they come. The son of Henri Stader II (who, no doubt, was the illustrious son of Henri Stader I, all of which means that they had a problem with finding a book of names whenever it was needed), Hans was a magna-cum-laude from some US univ or the other and worked as a VP in an American investment bank that was our joint venture partner. He was a tall, well-built, friendly fellow, with a long face that reminded me of Stan Laurel (of Laurel & Hardy fame) and a smile that could be charming, sardonic or entirely artificial. Like most American investment bankers, he had an attention span that varied from about 18 to 25 seconds (on the outside), considerable stated arrogance when needed and a natural propensity to make some really cool presentations. I knew Hans well for, just a couple of months prior to his India visit, I had spent a month at LA in 1996, with him as my host. He had been hospitable and had spent a weekend driving me around, yet my primary impression was of a fellow who was rather vacuous in the head and driven to distraction by just about any pretty face.
Hans’ India itinerary was to land in Chennai, where my colleague, Chandra, would meet him for an hour, after which he would take the Bangalore flight. He would work with us for a week and return. Simple enough. When he landed in Bangalore, it would be my turn to host him, not an entirely unpleasant prospect, for he could make sparkling conversation and be a perfect guest.
Some hours later, I had an anxious call from Chandra, who was at the Chennai airport. The Indian Airlines flight had landed, all passengers had gone past immigration and indeed left, but of Hans there was no clue. I was convinced of course that he had, in his infatuation, done some fat-headed thing, yet there was little any of us could do but wait.
When the call did come, it was three hours later. Hans was at the Taj Hotel, at Colombo, Sri Lanka and a shaken man.
He had quite a story to relate: landing in Chennai, he was told at Immigration that his visa had expired. Just how he could board the flight at Singapore with an expired visa was a flummoxing question that remains unanswered, yet he first didn’t believe it and later, as it became clear that he was in the wrong for not having checked such a basic detail, he began to get increasingly belligerent with the immigration officer, which, you will doubtless agree, is a particularly bad idea. He demanded that the visa be renewed at that moment – a laughable request – and, when that was turned down, that he speak to the American Embassy, which request was also denied. The situation was turning grim: the immigration officer was on the verge of stamping “Deported” on his passport – the ultimate humiliation to any American – after which he would have to take the next flight out of India, when a kindred soul suggested helpfully that the same aircraft that had brought him to Chennai would be flying to Colombo in an hour and that Sri Lanka did not require Americans to have a visa to visit. This was real serendipity (pun intended, for Serendip was Sri Lanka’s original name!).
To buy a ticket to Colombo was with him the work of an instant and, on arrival, he checked into the Taj, a safe hotel in what was otherwise an unsafe country for foreigners at that time. His boss in the US, he said, had given him a dressing down and added that he bloody well stay in the hotel till the visa was done and not move around.
All’s well, we breathed easy, that ends well. My colleague began the complex task of working on getting a visa for the fellow by pulling strings in the right quarters.
I called Hans a few hours later and he seemed relaxed now. “I have just had the most incredible food here at the hotel. Dinner seems inviting as well.”
The next morning, he called in with encomiums about the food again. Clearly, Hans was having a feast.
On the third morning though, when he called, I could barely recognise his voice, punctuated by a series of groans. He was down in bed with a most upset stomach, the result of over-indulgence in spice, fish, sausages and about everything else at the buffett. Mr. Henri Stader III was now terribly ill, the hotel doctor had been summoned and our traumatised friend had stayed up all night, making frequent, emergency trips to the bathroom. Much as I tried to commiserate with his plight, it was, at once, comical and entertaining and so typical of the fellow to goof up at the slightest opportunity. I hopefully made the right noises in sympathy and continued the work the next day as he gave me session-wise updates on his health, thankfully omitting the gory details.
When Hans finally reached Bangalore two days later, he seemed a changed man. Three kilos lighter – not from having thrown his weight around, for a change – he now spoke in a softer voice, and was visibly weak (and not just in the head, so the condition had now spread in some sense). He spent a few days in Bangalore coming to work, but was clearly preoccupied with recouping his health, in which effort, of course, all of us in office had much unneccessary advice to offer.
On the day of his return, I thought some sympathy was in order. “You have had a difficult trip, Hans,” I said, “ and I hope the return will be fine.”
His face, I recall distinctly, was glum. “All this was OK,” he replied, “ but I have missed the return flight to LA with Cynthia.”
Hans hadn’t changed after all.
Saturday, December 10, 2011
Reduce : your agenda for 2012
Sometime in the last quarter of this year, the population on the planet touched seven billion. Many commentators found it an easy subject to speak about, brushing up on their Malthusian economics and making a number of predictions, some optimistic, some dire. Many, in particular, picked on poor Paul Ehrlich, a pioneering biologist and Professor of Population Studies at Stanford, whose only fault was that he errored on the side of caution by predicting doom, caused by a population explosion. He was mirroring the views of Malthus, who had said something similar in the late 18th century, arguing that there were resource limits to growth.
There was, in the media, a sense of celebration about the seven billion figure. Irrefutable data is now available, many said, about how human ingenuinity is solving most of our problems : wars are becoming less, as is cruelty, people have more food per capita and are living longer and there is less poverty than there was, say, a couple of decades ago. The conclusion is that population is no longer a threat to the survival of the planet or indeed our species. Indeed, there is much to agree with in these assertions and the data presented is robust and, hence, trustworthy.
There were pessimists as well. Human ingenuity has its limits, they said, and the stagnation in food production the World over is but an example. Moreover, the population growth is largest in the poorest countries, which only exacerbates conflict, hunger and low life expectancy. It is also a fact that increased populations have put severe pressure on our oxygen tanks,ie, the forests………and so on. There is little to refute here as well.
As you can see, the debate can be confusing and, perhaps, quite irrelevant, since nothing in this is within our control. A good idea then is to speak of just what is within our range of influence and is perhaps a much larger cause for concern : our senseless consumption patterns.
Consider the following :
1. India hosted its first F1 race, a wasteful exercise in wanton consumption as tonnes of material were shipped and airlifted half-way around the World and back again, all for a couple of hours of entertainment for the crowd in the stadium (over 90% of the viewership of the race was on TV, not live, so location does not really make sense).
2. In Kerala, around Onam, about Rs. 240 crores of liquor was sold this year, which works out to Rs. 80 per capita. This does not include the vibrant business of import of foreign liquor through informal channels. Wine is an unusual beverage in India, about which most consumers know nothing, yet its consumption in India in 2010 was about 16 million litres. A significant part of this comes from Australia and the US.
3. A report on the Indian automotive industry noted that the number of car models for a buyer to choose from had exceeded one hundred. There are now 104 distinct models of vehicles in the Indian market. As a result of this bewildering choice, people are compelled to keep up even if they do not really need a new car.
4. The Outlook magazine reported in its latest issue that there were two hundred and fifty two food shows on air across Indian television channels, all espousing the cause of consumption.
5. In a recent issue of The Mint Lounge, a mobile phone by Tag Hueur costing Rs. 13 lakhs was profiled; it had diamonds, mother-of-pearls and white lizard skin.
6. We visited a family who have recently relocated from the United States. In their living room, I saw the largest LCD television set ever. You could lay it on the ground, put a mattress on it and use it as a comfortable bed for a child. They have a second television for their two kids as well.
Such data is cause for despair. This issue of consumption, utterly egregious consumption, is far more difficult an issue than population to deal with, since it involves attitudes, beliefs and, that most indefinable facet of human emotional intelligence, ego.
For the first time in human history, we have a surfeit of products, services and experiences to buy and no shortage of money. This has generated a cycle of economic growth in urban India which is as dissatisfying to consumers as it is environmetally catastrophic – more product sales bring more money to those who buy different products, the sale of which give stakeholders more money and so on – and is best measured by the Gross Domestic Product, a most abused statistic in its use as an index of human well being. As we all know, a smaller and smaller proportion of each middle class family’s income is being spent on necessities and a great deal more on discretionary bits, most of which we could classify as contributing to an unsustainable lifestyle at the expense of the planet. I never point this out to people, since they will in turn ask me to look at all those around them and then say, “ but they are all doing it, so the problem is not with me, it’s with you.” Yet, this is hardly an answer. As Betrand Russell once famously said : “if fifty million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing.”
The consumption in India has gone up so much and so fast that the resultant inequality in society is engendering a mass conflict. The Supreme Court, in a landmark judgement earlier this year, connected the dots between the Maoist conflict in Chattisgarh and consumption. “The root cause of the problem,” it said, “lies in the culture of unrestrained selfishness and greed spawned by modern neo-liberal economic ideology, and the false promises of ever-increasing spirals of consumption leading to economic growth that will lift everyone (out of poverty)….”
Even as we binge ourselves sick on stuff, Earth is paying a heavy price. An analysis by the International Energy Agency recently found emissions had risen by a record amount in 2010, despite the worst recession in eighty years. In that one year alone, the rise in annual carbon dioxide emitted was 1600,000,000 tonnes (1.6 gigatonnes) – this is just the increase, mind you, the total emission was 30.6 gigatonnes. Each one of us – middle and upper-middle class Indians – have pitched in with disproportionate contributions to this in our own way by buying, buying and, well, more buying of goods, services and experiences (such as travel). As more people join the middle class, and newer products load already-groaning shelves in shops, this feeding frenzy will only increase.
The consumption footprint of each of us is now eerily global. To feed our insane demand for things (and hence, their packaging), the supply comes from everywhere on Earth. Just as most of our electronic goods come from China, some of their material come from, well, India – the Bellary mines, for instance, supplied a huge part of the iron needed for the Beijing Olympics’ infrastructure and Goa’s rich forest wealth is being decimated to export ore all over the World to feed the rich World (of which the reader of this note is an intrinsic part). We spoke of wine earlier; a large part of the apples we eat come from New Zealand, US and China, while the fuel that transports them across India comes from Russia and the Middle East. This is asinine, senseless, profligacy.
In September, the Economist reported that Chinese demand had ended a century of steadily falling raw material costs for rich-world consumers. Industrial raw material prices fell by around 80% in real terms (ie, adjusted for inflation) between 1845 and 2002. But much of the ground lost over 150 years has been recovered in the space of just a decade. Iron ore, for instance, now fetched $ 178 a tonne, compared with $ 13 a tonne in 2001, despite the doubling of iron ore production in this period.
China, though, is not the problem.
Our demand for Chinese products is the problem.
Surprisingly, no one wants you to lead a simpler, less consumptive life. The Government wants you to consume more and increase GDP and the corporate sector, which obviously wants higher profits from higher sales, downloads data on us such as, “the per capita consumption of diapers in India is one-seventh that of Vietnam” or some such tripe. The acute pressure, of course, is from peers and your own family would want to keep pace on the consumption treadmill for the rudimentary, temporary joy it offers.
Yet, we must buck the trend. If we chose to not consume and look back at the many many generations before us who made their money painfully and hence consumed wisely, there would be lot to learn. For the future of our planet – which is now in deep peril, make no mistake - there is no solution, no quick-fix, no counter-balance other than scaling back on our lifestyle and leading simpler lives, by thinking a hundred times before we buy and a thousand times before we throw.
Make 2012 a breakthrough year. Reduce.
It’s the least you can do for the planet.
There was, in the media, a sense of celebration about the seven billion figure. Irrefutable data is now available, many said, about how human ingenuinity is solving most of our problems : wars are becoming less, as is cruelty, people have more food per capita and are living longer and there is less poverty than there was, say, a couple of decades ago. The conclusion is that population is no longer a threat to the survival of the planet or indeed our species. Indeed, there is much to agree with in these assertions and the data presented is robust and, hence, trustworthy.
There were pessimists as well. Human ingenuity has its limits, they said, and the stagnation in food production the World over is but an example. Moreover, the population growth is largest in the poorest countries, which only exacerbates conflict, hunger and low life expectancy. It is also a fact that increased populations have put severe pressure on our oxygen tanks,ie, the forests………and so on. There is little to refute here as well.
As you can see, the debate can be confusing and, perhaps, quite irrelevant, since nothing in this is within our control. A good idea then is to speak of just what is within our range of influence and is perhaps a much larger cause for concern : our senseless consumption patterns.
Consider the following :
1. India hosted its first F1 race, a wasteful exercise in wanton consumption as tonnes of material were shipped and airlifted half-way around the World and back again, all for a couple of hours of entertainment for the crowd in the stadium (over 90% of the viewership of the race was on TV, not live, so location does not really make sense).
2. In Kerala, around Onam, about Rs. 240 crores of liquor was sold this year, which works out to Rs. 80 per capita. This does not include the vibrant business of import of foreign liquor through informal channels. Wine is an unusual beverage in India, about which most consumers know nothing, yet its consumption in India in 2010 was about 16 million litres. A significant part of this comes from Australia and the US.
3. A report on the Indian automotive industry noted that the number of car models for a buyer to choose from had exceeded one hundred. There are now 104 distinct models of vehicles in the Indian market. As a result of this bewildering choice, people are compelled to keep up even if they do not really need a new car.
4. The Outlook magazine reported in its latest issue that there were two hundred and fifty two food shows on air across Indian television channels, all espousing the cause of consumption.
5. In a recent issue of The Mint Lounge, a mobile phone by Tag Hueur costing Rs. 13 lakhs was profiled; it had diamonds, mother-of-pearls and white lizard skin.
6. We visited a family who have recently relocated from the United States. In their living room, I saw the largest LCD television set ever. You could lay it on the ground, put a mattress on it and use it as a comfortable bed for a child. They have a second television for their two kids as well.
Such data is cause for despair. This issue of consumption, utterly egregious consumption, is far more difficult an issue than population to deal with, since it involves attitudes, beliefs and, that most indefinable facet of human emotional intelligence, ego.
For the first time in human history, we have a surfeit of products, services and experiences to buy and no shortage of money. This has generated a cycle of economic growth in urban India which is as dissatisfying to consumers as it is environmetally catastrophic – more product sales bring more money to those who buy different products, the sale of which give stakeholders more money and so on – and is best measured by the Gross Domestic Product, a most abused statistic in its use as an index of human well being. As we all know, a smaller and smaller proportion of each middle class family’s income is being spent on necessities and a great deal more on discretionary bits, most of which we could classify as contributing to an unsustainable lifestyle at the expense of the planet. I never point this out to people, since they will in turn ask me to look at all those around them and then say, “ but they are all doing it, so the problem is not with me, it’s with you.” Yet, this is hardly an answer. As Betrand Russell once famously said : “if fifty million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing.”
The consumption in India has gone up so much and so fast that the resultant inequality in society is engendering a mass conflict. The Supreme Court, in a landmark judgement earlier this year, connected the dots between the Maoist conflict in Chattisgarh and consumption. “The root cause of the problem,” it said, “lies in the culture of unrestrained selfishness and greed spawned by modern neo-liberal economic ideology, and the false promises of ever-increasing spirals of consumption leading to economic growth that will lift everyone (out of poverty)….”
Even as we binge ourselves sick on stuff, Earth is paying a heavy price. An analysis by the International Energy Agency recently found emissions had risen by a record amount in 2010, despite the worst recession in eighty years. In that one year alone, the rise in annual carbon dioxide emitted was 1600,000,000 tonnes (1.6 gigatonnes) – this is just the increase, mind you, the total emission was 30.6 gigatonnes. Each one of us – middle and upper-middle class Indians – have pitched in with disproportionate contributions to this in our own way by buying, buying and, well, more buying of goods, services and experiences (such as travel). As more people join the middle class, and newer products load already-groaning shelves in shops, this feeding frenzy will only increase.
The consumption footprint of each of us is now eerily global. To feed our insane demand for things (and hence, their packaging), the supply comes from everywhere on Earth. Just as most of our electronic goods come from China, some of their material come from, well, India – the Bellary mines, for instance, supplied a huge part of the iron needed for the Beijing Olympics’ infrastructure and Goa’s rich forest wealth is being decimated to export ore all over the World to feed the rich World (of which the reader of this note is an intrinsic part). We spoke of wine earlier; a large part of the apples we eat come from New Zealand, US and China, while the fuel that transports them across India comes from Russia and the Middle East. This is asinine, senseless, profligacy.
In September, the Economist reported that Chinese demand had ended a century of steadily falling raw material costs for rich-world consumers. Industrial raw material prices fell by around 80% in real terms (ie, adjusted for inflation) between 1845 and 2002. But much of the ground lost over 150 years has been recovered in the space of just a decade. Iron ore, for instance, now fetched $ 178 a tonne, compared with $ 13 a tonne in 2001, despite the doubling of iron ore production in this period.
China, though, is not the problem.
Our demand for Chinese products is the problem.
Surprisingly, no one wants you to lead a simpler, less consumptive life. The Government wants you to consume more and increase GDP and the corporate sector, which obviously wants higher profits from higher sales, downloads data on us such as, “the per capita consumption of diapers in India is one-seventh that of Vietnam” or some such tripe. The acute pressure, of course, is from peers and your own family would want to keep pace on the consumption treadmill for the rudimentary, temporary joy it offers.
Yet, we must buck the trend. If we chose to not consume and look back at the many many generations before us who made their money painfully and hence consumed wisely, there would be lot to learn. For the future of our planet – which is now in deep peril, make no mistake - there is no solution, no quick-fix, no counter-balance other than scaling back on our lifestyle and leading simpler lives, by thinking a hundred times before we buy and a thousand times before we throw.
Make 2012 a breakthrough year. Reduce.
It’s the least you can do for the planet.
Thursday, November 17, 2011
Apumaan
Apumaan was unique.
Not for his looks though. If you walk on any road in Kerala, you will see a hundred like him: he was an elderly, small fellow, thin and dark, with teeth that precariously dangled from their perch, a shiny pate protected from the sun by the ubiquitous umbrella and a handwoven mundu that defined his Malu identity.
Not for the work that he did, for he did nothing in particular.
Not even for his intellect, for after many attempts at law, he came to the robust conclusion that the examiners had hatched a collective conspiracy to suppress natural talent.
Three decades after he passed away, Apumaan remains in my memory for his unique, unsurpassed ability as a story teller.
Every year, when my family made the annual trip to Kerala from Assam, my only question would be to know when Apumaan would visit – for I had waited a year for the hour. On an evening, around dusk, he would duly shuffle in, just as we had finished our baths, a crooked smile playing around the corners, a tooth or two at a rakish angle for sheer effect. Apumaan’s entry was always dramatic in its own way. He was the only one who could call my grandmother – his cousin – ‘Mayi’; taking a chair he would rag her with outstanding good-natured ribbing, while the rest of the joint family giggled by the side. My grandmother had a wonderful sense of humour as well and, as I write this, I can see her bobbing up and down in her chair, the loose skin on her hands swaying under the weight of her laughter. Yet this adult talk was but the prelude, the overture, to something more. Turning to me, Apumaan would then say, “so, since your coming here, have you seen Gudugudu Panda walking about outside?” The children would now bunch up together, their small figures erect, eyes as large as saucers, mouths ajar, for it was a name that evoked trepidation, mystery and the horror of the omnipresent evil one. No, we would say, in unison.
“Well, I just met him,” Apumaan would continue merrily, “ and he had the little drum in his hand as always, the one that goes gudugudu-gudugudu and he was asking about all of you. (Involuntary shivers from the audience). I told him that there was a little boy who had just come from Assam,……” as I cringed, he would add “… but I also told him there was nothing much for him here. Did you know what this cunning fellow did the other day?”
…and the story would begin and go on for a long, long time, each moment challenging our imagination and moving us from mirth to fascination to consternation and then back again. As he spoke of the evil fellow's wrongdoing, his face would darken up, the pitch would lower to a whisper (for Gudugudu Panda was outside listening in) and the eyes would narrow. And, as he regaled us with how this same fellow had slipped and fallen in the banana patch of the farm, there would be the crooked smile at the corner of his mouth and a twinkle in the eye. The twinkle, yes, that described Apumaan best.
All of us children would sit transfixed, bewitched by the story and the story teller, while the rest of the family sat at a distance and marvelled at his ability. When the performance was over, the tea sipped, a last little dig taken at Mayi, Apumaan would look at us once with a serious eye, “When I meet Him on my way out, what shall I say?” and then carefully listen to all our answers and messages. He would then shuffle off into the darkness, with his torch and his umbrella, a lonely (and heroic) figure.
Could anyone have asked for more ?
Not for his looks though. If you walk on any road in Kerala, you will see a hundred like him: he was an elderly, small fellow, thin and dark, with teeth that precariously dangled from their perch, a shiny pate protected from the sun by the ubiquitous umbrella and a handwoven mundu that defined his Malu identity.
Not for the work that he did, for he did nothing in particular.
Not even for his intellect, for after many attempts at law, he came to the robust conclusion that the examiners had hatched a collective conspiracy to suppress natural talent.
Three decades after he passed away, Apumaan remains in my memory for his unique, unsurpassed ability as a story teller.
Every year, when my family made the annual trip to Kerala from Assam, my only question would be to know when Apumaan would visit – for I had waited a year for the hour. On an evening, around dusk, he would duly shuffle in, just as we had finished our baths, a crooked smile playing around the corners, a tooth or two at a rakish angle for sheer effect. Apumaan’s entry was always dramatic in its own way. He was the only one who could call my grandmother – his cousin – ‘Mayi’; taking a chair he would rag her with outstanding good-natured ribbing, while the rest of the joint family giggled by the side. My grandmother had a wonderful sense of humour as well and, as I write this, I can see her bobbing up and down in her chair, the loose skin on her hands swaying under the weight of her laughter. Yet this adult talk was but the prelude, the overture, to something more. Turning to me, Apumaan would then say, “so, since your coming here, have you seen Gudugudu Panda walking about outside?” The children would now bunch up together, their small figures erect, eyes as large as saucers, mouths ajar, for it was a name that evoked trepidation, mystery and the horror of the omnipresent evil one. No, we would say, in unison.
“Well, I just met him,” Apumaan would continue merrily, “ and he had the little drum in his hand as always, the one that goes gudugudu-gudugudu and he was asking about all of you. (Involuntary shivers from the audience). I told him that there was a little boy who had just come from Assam,……” as I cringed, he would add “… but I also told him there was nothing much for him here. Did you know what this cunning fellow did the other day?”
…and the story would begin and go on for a long, long time, each moment challenging our imagination and moving us from mirth to fascination to consternation and then back again. As he spoke of the evil fellow's wrongdoing, his face would darken up, the pitch would lower to a whisper (for Gudugudu Panda was outside listening in) and the eyes would narrow. And, as he regaled us with how this same fellow had slipped and fallen in the banana patch of the farm, there would be the crooked smile at the corner of his mouth and a twinkle in the eye. The twinkle, yes, that described Apumaan best.
All of us children would sit transfixed, bewitched by the story and the story teller, while the rest of the family sat at a distance and marvelled at his ability. When the performance was over, the tea sipped, a last little dig taken at Mayi, Apumaan would look at us once with a serious eye, “When I meet Him on my way out, what shall I say?” and then carefully listen to all our answers and messages. He would then shuffle off into the darkness, with his torch and his umbrella, a lonely (and heroic) figure.
Could anyone have asked for more ?
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
Ramki gets a wrinkle
Much of what I know of animal nutrition owes itself to Dr. Venkateswarlu Rao, a most interesting, if eccentric, character.
Dr. Rao owned a company in Chennai (that still exists), specialising in providing nutritional supplement to the poultry industry. I had prospected his company, found it interesting and got my fund to invest a tidy sum of money in it. It was not a bad decision, for the company’s business seemed profitable, its bank was very happy with it and the market was attractive and growing.
The problem was not the company. It was Dr. Rao.
He was (and possibly still is) a man with a colossal ego, with three favourite subjects for prime-time discussion : his achievements, his brilliance and his (outstanding) future. These subjects gripped him and he would analyse himself with delight, much as an archaeologist would dance around mummies. He, in a sentence, could not actually believe that he was real.
His bank manager, Dr. Rao would proclaim, blanched at the thought of losing his client and possibly had his picture up on the wall with the pantheon.. His competitors slept with their lights on at night, his customers stood in serpentine queues to buy his products and joint venture partners crowded every flight into Chennai. His employees, he would freely admit, were rather vacuous in the head, yet the company average for intelligence exceeded the ordinary by miles, thanks to one brilliant man (he would add the last bit with much modesty). Such encomium to himself was often substantiated by examples in graphic detail. Somewhere along this rather tiresome monologue that I was subject to every time I visited, there would be some information for me on the market and the current issues he faced (nothing, of course, was a challenge to this eminent personality). I must add that the man was very good at his business - most such men are – yet the self-praise was way out of proportion.
In keeping with this personality, he had a large house in Chennai, with statues and fountains (and statues-cum-fountains), a couple of nasty guard dogs, many servants and a couple of imported cars that underlined his perceived stature, and was a member of the city’s golf club, where he remained a rather petulant novice, for golf has an abrupt way of deflating self-esteem.
Notably, he liked me a great deal due to my hearing of his achievement list every time we met. I would nod politely as he spoke and pay the odd compliment if I sensed he was fishing for one. If this put him in a good mood, a discussion on the business would begin. When he visited us in Bangalore, he would be escorted right to a conference room for a few minutes with a VP or even possibly the CEO. The hope, of course, was that the hours I spent would translate one day into a satisfactory return on investment for my company.
The company expanded its capacity as a result of our investment and grew well for the next three years to about Rs. 25 crores, yet the stock markets had changed in the period, making it very hard for small companies to raise public funds or provide us a market exit for our initial investment. Dr.Rao had little desire to let go of his baby in any way (this is hardly uncommon amongst Indian entrepreneurs). He approached us for a buy-back of our shareholding in early 1997. It was a time of change in the fund : we had a new CEO who came with strong preset ideas, including a dim view of the animal feeds business. After many happy years at TDICI, I had got a job elsewhere and was leaving, so a colleague of mine, Ramki, less used to the remarkable Dr. Rao, was assigned to the task of negotiating with him.
Ramki was (and remains) a gentle, self-effacing soul and I made one rather silly error in handing over in not telling him my partly successful, if utterly tiring, method of dealing with Gods-Gift-To-Mankind Rao.
Within a few days of my departure from TDICI, there was a distress call from Dr. Rao. Could I please get involved again, he pleaded. His tone now changed to anger : the new fellow (Ramki, of course) and his boss (TDICI’s new CEO) were both hopeless, most arrogant and had had the temerity, the cheek, the bloody gall, to make him, the Dr. Rao who was the gold standard for animal nutrition, sit in the reception before a meeting. During the meeting, his company apparently was referred to as a ‘small’ player in the animal feeds business, in the course of conversation. This was, of course, factually true: the company was a small player, but facts are most irrelevant to such people anyways.
I politely declined to be involved and made some noises in sympathy, itching to put the phone down and get on with life. Dr. Rao’s anger though, was unflinching, and he had to let it all out. Subsequently, I am given to understand, he did make life difficult for the fund during the exit discussions, but all's well that ends well, if philosophy is a sop to use on such occasions.
Ramki developed his first wrinkles then. You will be surprised to read then that he remains a dear friend and has most likely forgiven the stress I put him through.
A final point : What struck me as most remarkable is an oft-ignored aspect of a person’s display – his signature. Dr. Rao’s was a lengthy sign-off that took about a tenth of a page’s surface area and had stylish peaks as he wrote his name and a long line in the middle, followed by a flourish in the end. Could his personality be one with his signature, I wondered. Or, to put it differently, was it possible for a reader to deduce a person’s personality by the signature? Over subsequent years, I have tried to study this in considerable depth and must have looked at a thousand signatures. My conclusion is that the signature often tells us little, but there are many occasions, possibly five times out of ten, when it stands out and exposes a person’s personality very accurately.
Dr. Rao owned a company in Chennai (that still exists), specialising in providing nutritional supplement to the poultry industry. I had prospected his company, found it interesting and got my fund to invest a tidy sum of money in it. It was not a bad decision, for the company’s business seemed profitable, its bank was very happy with it and the market was attractive and growing.
The problem was not the company. It was Dr. Rao.
He was (and possibly still is) a man with a colossal ego, with three favourite subjects for prime-time discussion : his achievements, his brilliance and his (outstanding) future. These subjects gripped him and he would analyse himself with delight, much as an archaeologist would dance around mummies. He, in a sentence, could not actually believe that he was real.
His bank manager, Dr. Rao would proclaim, blanched at the thought of losing his client and possibly had his picture up on the wall with the pantheon.. His competitors slept with their lights on at night, his customers stood in serpentine queues to buy his products and joint venture partners crowded every flight into Chennai. His employees, he would freely admit, were rather vacuous in the head, yet the company average for intelligence exceeded the ordinary by miles, thanks to one brilliant man (he would add the last bit with much modesty). Such encomium to himself was often substantiated by examples in graphic detail. Somewhere along this rather tiresome monologue that I was subject to every time I visited, there would be some information for me on the market and the current issues he faced (nothing, of course, was a challenge to this eminent personality). I must add that the man was very good at his business - most such men are – yet the self-praise was way out of proportion.
In keeping with this personality, he had a large house in Chennai, with statues and fountains (and statues-cum-fountains), a couple of nasty guard dogs, many servants and a couple of imported cars that underlined his perceived stature, and was a member of the city’s golf club, where he remained a rather petulant novice, for golf has an abrupt way of deflating self-esteem.
Notably, he liked me a great deal due to my hearing of his achievement list every time we met. I would nod politely as he spoke and pay the odd compliment if I sensed he was fishing for one. If this put him in a good mood, a discussion on the business would begin. When he visited us in Bangalore, he would be escorted right to a conference room for a few minutes with a VP or even possibly the CEO. The hope, of course, was that the hours I spent would translate one day into a satisfactory return on investment for my company.
The company expanded its capacity as a result of our investment and grew well for the next three years to about Rs. 25 crores, yet the stock markets had changed in the period, making it very hard for small companies to raise public funds or provide us a market exit for our initial investment. Dr.Rao had little desire to let go of his baby in any way (this is hardly uncommon amongst Indian entrepreneurs). He approached us for a buy-back of our shareholding in early 1997. It was a time of change in the fund : we had a new CEO who came with strong preset ideas, including a dim view of the animal feeds business. After many happy years at TDICI, I had got a job elsewhere and was leaving, so a colleague of mine, Ramki, less used to the remarkable Dr. Rao, was assigned to the task of negotiating with him.
Ramki was (and remains) a gentle, self-effacing soul and I made one rather silly error in handing over in not telling him my partly successful, if utterly tiring, method of dealing with Gods-Gift-To-Mankind Rao.
Within a few days of my departure from TDICI, there was a distress call from Dr. Rao. Could I please get involved again, he pleaded. His tone now changed to anger : the new fellow (Ramki, of course) and his boss (TDICI’s new CEO) were both hopeless, most arrogant and had had the temerity, the cheek, the bloody gall, to make him, the Dr. Rao who was the gold standard for animal nutrition, sit in the reception before a meeting. During the meeting, his company apparently was referred to as a ‘small’ player in the animal feeds business, in the course of conversation. This was, of course, factually true: the company was a small player, but facts are most irrelevant to such people anyways.
I politely declined to be involved and made some noises in sympathy, itching to put the phone down and get on with life. Dr. Rao’s anger though, was unflinching, and he had to let it all out. Subsequently, I am given to understand, he did make life difficult for the fund during the exit discussions, but all's well that ends well, if philosophy is a sop to use on such occasions.
Ramki developed his first wrinkles then. You will be surprised to read then that he remains a dear friend and has most likely forgiven the stress I put him through.
A final point : What struck me as most remarkable is an oft-ignored aspect of a person’s display – his signature. Dr. Rao’s was a lengthy sign-off that took about a tenth of a page’s surface area and had stylish peaks as he wrote his name and a long line in the middle, followed by a flourish in the end. Could his personality be one with his signature, I wondered. Or, to put it differently, was it possible for a reader to deduce a person’s personality by the signature? Over subsequent years, I have tried to study this in considerable depth and must have looked at a thousand signatures. My conclusion is that the signature often tells us little, but there are many occasions, possibly five times out of ten, when it stands out and exposes a person’s personality very accurately.
Saturday, September 10, 2011
A Tale of Two Ambulances, One Doctor, Zero Impact
Earlier this week I was out on the road, travelling to two villages, both close to Bandipur National Park but about forty kilometres away from each other. As we neared the first village, I noticed a vehicle that looked like an ambulance parked by the side of a road in an hamlet. I stopped the car, got off and decided to learn a bit about how rural health care worked.
The vehicle, owned by a foundation, was a rural mobile clinic really, not an ambulance and does a round of four villages a day, covering about twenty villages a week.
The driver of the ambulance was welcoming and invited me to take a look inside. The doctor – a young, thirty year old fellow, who could speak English only with an effort - was sitting by an empty bed, inside the vehicle. I introduced myself and asked him if I could learn more about their work, to which he nodded.
“Are you an allopathic Doc ?” I asked.
“Siddha, allopathic, anything.” he replied.
Anything?
“Yes, depends on the ailment,” he answered.
He sensed the doubt in my voice and shifted his gaze to the cardboard box by his foot, which was full of used syringes – there must have been a fifty or more in there. By his side, were eight bottles of injectables, some of which I recognised as paracetamol, B Complex and pencillin. All these injections were this morning’s work, he said, not without a tinge of pride.
As I spent the next ten minutes watching him as he attended to patients, the conclusion was clear : here was a Siddha medical practitioner (Siddha being a largely Tamil variant of Ayurveda), who was shooting a syringe of allopathic formulation (about which he would know a damn) into every patient who popped in, the indication of his success not being the state of the patient, but being the number of syringes in the box. His choice of injection seemed bizarre and, without any particular line of questioning. This is not healthcare and can indeed harm ignorant, largely illiterate people, whose unspoken contract of trust is being mis-used with nonchalance.
If I take this up with the foundation, I will get predictable answers such as, “Which allopath would want to spend his days in a vehicle in a remote rural area?” or “Villagers have a fetish for injections and do not accept tablets or syrups as solutions.” Both these are right, yet they do not justify doing the wrong thing.
The next morning, I was at Karemala – at the primary school there - and another rural mobile clinic toddled up, this time belonging to another foundation, run by a remarkable man of high personal integrity. At the sound of the vehicle, all the children in class stood up and asked the teacher permission to visit the doctor – every single one of them! It was remarkable to see a line of them standing patiently by the ambulance, even as I decided to board the vehicle from the front.
For starters, there was no doctor inside, only a bored-looking chemist. He had decided that he would elevate himself on this day and had therefore taken the doctor’s chair. The first child – a scared six year old - shuffled in; he spent ten seconds taking the child’s pulse and asked her the problem. She had a cold. Out came a strip of tablets. “Take half a tablet in the morning and half at night, and now make way for the next child.”
Fifteen minutes later, the man had dismissed seventeen patients – all the chidren of the school - and I was suspicious. I went back into the school and, as the children trooped back in, I took the tablets from them. Here’s a sample of what he had given them, other than paracetamol, which he seemed to ration out at the rate of one tablet per child to most of the kids, as if it was some delectable toffee.
• Etofylline – 1 tablet per head for five children. I learnt later that this is an anti-asthmatic drug and would be useless if given this way.
• Amoxycillin 250 mg ( an antibiotic) – he gave 5 capsules to a child who complained of throat pain. This child had no temperature, no white spots near the tonsils, no cough or cold and seemed to be fine otherwise.
….and so on.
In addition to his frivolous dispensation of medicines, he seemed to have touching faith in the ability of the six year olds to remember dosage and regularity; there was no need to write something down for the teacher to monitor or even ask if a parent was around to join the consultation.
I tried to hide my anger and, instead, taught the child with throat pain to gargle with salt water, while the teacher, at my request, took the medicines away from the children. We both decided to work urgently on a better system that ensured minimum quality at least for this village.
What is common to these ‘clinics’? They are both set up by remarkable people, whose integrity and intentions are beyond doubt and who would not tolerate such slack. In their ambition to scale the program, though, they have lost sight of just what it is doing for its target audience.
In the train to Bangalore, I pondered on the old maxim of quality being inversely proportional to quantity. Perhaps, in humankind’s most important needs of healthcare and education, less is more.
The vehicle, owned by a foundation, was a rural mobile clinic really, not an ambulance and does a round of four villages a day, covering about twenty villages a week.
The driver of the ambulance was welcoming and invited me to take a look inside. The doctor – a young, thirty year old fellow, who could speak English only with an effort - was sitting by an empty bed, inside the vehicle. I introduced myself and asked him if I could learn more about their work, to which he nodded.
“Are you an allopathic Doc ?” I asked.
“Siddha, allopathic, anything.” he replied.
Anything?
“Yes, depends on the ailment,” he answered.
He sensed the doubt in my voice and shifted his gaze to the cardboard box by his foot, which was full of used syringes – there must have been a fifty or more in there. By his side, were eight bottles of injectables, some of which I recognised as paracetamol, B Complex and pencillin. All these injections were this morning’s work, he said, not without a tinge of pride.
As I spent the next ten minutes watching him as he attended to patients, the conclusion was clear : here was a Siddha medical practitioner (Siddha being a largely Tamil variant of Ayurveda), who was shooting a syringe of allopathic formulation (about which he would know a damn) into every patient who popped in, the indication of his success not being the state of the patient, but being the number of syringes in the box. His choice of injection seemed bizarre and, without any particular line of questioning. This is not healthcare and can indeed harm ignorant, largely illiterate people, whose unspoken contract of trust is being mis-used with nonchalance.
If I take this up with the foundation, I will get predictable answers such as, “Which allopath would want to spend his days in a vehicle in a remote rural area?” or “Villagers have a fetish for injections and do not accept tablets or syrups as solutions.” Both these are right, yet they do not justify doing the wrong thing.
The next morning, I was at Karemala – at the primary school there - and another rural mobile clinic toddled up, this time belonging to another foundation, run by a remarkable man of high personal integrity. At the sound of the vehicle, all the children in class stood up and asked the teacher permission to visit the doctor – every single one of them! It was remarkable to see a line of them standing patiently by the ambulance, even as I decided to board the vehicle from the front.
For starters, there was no doctor inside, only a bored-looking chemist. He had decided that he would elevate himself on this day and had therefore taken the doctor’s chair. The first child – a scared six year old - shuffled in; he spent ten seconds taking the child’s pulse and asked her the problem. She had a cold. Out came a strip of tablets. “Take half a tablet in the morning and half at night, and now make way for the next child.”
Fifteen minutes later, the man had dismissed seventeen patients – all the chidren of the school - and I was suspicious. I went back into the school and, as the children trooped back in, I took the tablets from them. Here’s a sample of what he had given them, other than paracetamol, which he seemed to ration out at the rate of one tablet per child to most of the kids, as if it was some delectable toffee.
• Etofylline – 1 tablet per head for five children. I learnt later that this is an anti-asthmatic drug and would be useless if given this way.
• Amoxycillin 250 mg ( an antibiotic) – he gave 5 capsules to a child who complained of throat pain. This child had no temperature, no white spots near the tonsils, no cough or cold and seemed to be fine otherwise.
….and so on.
In addition to his frivolous dispensation of medicines, he seemed to have touching faith in the ability of the six year olds to remember dosage and regularity; there was no need to write something down for the teacher to monitor or even ask if a parent was around to join the consultation.
I tried to hide my anger and, instead, taught the child with throat pain to gargle with salt water, while the teacher, at my request, took the medicines away from the children. We both decided to work urgently on a better system that ensured minimum quality at least for this village.
What is common to these ‘clinics’? They are both set up by remarkable people, whose integrity and intentions are beyond doubt and who would not tolerate such slack. In their ambition to scale the program, though, they have lost sight of just what it is doing for its target audience.
In the train to Bangalore, I pondered on the old maxim of quality being inversely proportional to quantity. Perhaps, in humankind’s most important needs of healthcare and education, less is more.
Monday, August 22, 2011
My Best Friend
When I woke up on February 25th this year, I knew it’d be a special day; sometimes you just feel it in your heartbeat, there’s a spring to the step and all seems right, as Wodehouse would say, with the World. After an early breakfast at the Digboi Guest House, my new acquaintance, Raju Sharma, and I set off to search for an old friend.
The old friend was Mali.
Mali was not just a friend, he was my first real friend. He must have been employed by our family when I was but an infant, and he was at least thirty years older than me. Yet, when I was a little child just beginning to understand the World around, Mali held my hand in support as much as my parents did, by my side all the time.
Mali (whose name was Man Bahadur) was a short, muscular Nepali and our gardener-cum-Man Friday. He was a reticent man who spoke little of himself, but would be around for any work that needed to be done, as long as it did not remotely involve the intellect - God had thoughtfully omitted to fill the cerebrum from this creation of His, consistent with the old equation, Brain X Brawn = Constant.
Mali's background was quite a mystery. He once told me that he came from a remote Nepali village and had earlier worked in a beedi factory; this fascinated me and, on the many occasions when my parents were visiting friends or out for a party at the Club, Mali and I would spend endless happy hours rolling mock beedies out of plain paper, while engaged in light banter. He took his job of minding me very seriously and would sit by my side, as I slept. When my parents returned, often beyond midnight, Mali would walk back alone to his servant’s quarters at the bottom of the hill on which our beautiful home stood. He occasionally walked me to my friends’ homes and, during those strolls, would point out the many flowers and trees along the roadside; these were my first Nature Walks in the little town of Digboi. As most children do, I took him entirely for granted and assumed he existed to serve; his uncomplaining nature only made this assumption a reality. He hardly ever went back to see his family, even when my mother would offer to pay him for the while he was away – in every sense, we were his family.
On occasion, we would see evidence of his astonishing strength. When my brothers turned up for the vacation with their large, cumbersome hold-alls – alas, now extinct as a piece of luggage – Mali would simply swing one onto his back, pick up a suitcase and ascend the stairs, his back bent much in Nepali style, while we all watched in amazement.
In those magical years of my childhood, I made friends in school and had my differences with many, as all children will do. Yet Mali was the only friend I could never find any fault with. As for any adult, it must have been trying for him to humour a child all the time, yet he did so with silent sincerity, never asking for a quid pro quo that would have been granted by my grateful parents. When, in the winter of 1977, we packed our bags and left Digboi for good, I was inconsolable because I believed, despite my Mother’s statements to the contrary, that I would never see Mali again.
When I visited Digboi again this year, thirty three years later, I met Raju Sharma, an attender at the guest house where I stayed. It was a wonderful coincidence; he had had known Mali when he was growing up himself, and instantly recognised him from an old photograph that I had remembered to pack.
“I am not sure if he is still alive,” Sharma said, “but he had shifted to Margherita many years ago.” I then remembered that my father had got Mali a job in a tea estate. Raju put his mobile to good use and we were off to track him down. There was a sliver of a chance that I would meet Mali, and all that I had to find my way was an old photograph.
We reached the Margherita estate and spent a couple of hours asking our way around. Up a picturesque driveway and we were on a plateau, close to a large nineteenth century bungalow now occupied by a senior manager at the estate. We stopped about a minute’s walk from a labour line surrounded by tea bushes. I got out of the car, walked across to the few children and young girls standing there and took his photograph out, an old black-and-white one where he had stood next to me and the other servants in our old bungalow.
A girl of about twenty stared at it for a minute and then exclaimed in happy surprise. “That’s my father when he was young,” she said. Yes! I thumped fist-on-palm.
Just how does one describe the emotion of seeing a dear childhood friend after these years? When Mali shuffled in - an old man, bent with age and infirmity - I had difficulty recognising him……and then, I saw his fingers, gnarled and rough, that I instantly recognised from that childhood long, long ago. He looked at me inquiringly, while the girl grinned and told him that his Gopu Sahib had come.
Mali dropped his bundle of firewood, walked right up and hugged me, tears forming in his eyes. I felt a lump in my throat as well, as I struggled to calm him down. The man had changed little, his simplicity and affection intact in the evening of his life. We spent a few minutes in silence and the years rolled away as I went over my few memories of a childhood long past.
We then exchanged updates – after we left, he had got married and had two grown up children. He told me of a serious fall, a battle with malaria and the other hazards of life in Assam, his feeble voice now mumbling more to himself, frequently wiping a tear away. I called my mother from my mobile and gave him the phone. He spoke to her in a voice that was barely audible or even coherent. After the call, when the conversation ceased and the far away look in his eyes stayed put, I knew it was time to go. I kept a smile on my face, and cheerily bid him farewell.
I will be back, I said. And, I meant it.
Post Script : as I post this, it has now been about three months since Mali has been missing from his home. He had been admitted to a hospital for a cataract and, on the day of his discharge, just walked away. I cannot help thinking that meeting me had something to do with this, yet I hope I am wrong and that he is safe.
The old friend was Mali.
Mali was not just a friend, he was my first real friend. He must have been employed by our family when I was but an infant, and he was at least thirty years older than me. Yet, when I was a little child just beginning to understand the World around, Mali held my hand in support as much as my parents did, by my side all the time.
Mali (whose name was Man Bahadur) was a short, muscular Nepali and our gardener-cum-Man Friday. He was a reticent man who spoke little of himself, but would be around for any work that needed to be done, as long as it did not remotely involve the intellect - God had thoughtfully omitted to fill the cerebrum from this creation of His, consistent with the old equation, Brain X Brawn = Constant.
Mali's background was quite a mystery. He once told me that he came from a remote Nepali village and had earlier worked in a beedi factory; this fascinated me and, on the many occasions when my parents were visiting friends or out for a party at the Club, Mali and I would spend endless happy hours rolling mock beedies out of plain paper, while engaged in light banter. He took his job of minding me very seriously and would sit by my side, as I slept. When my parents returned, often beyond midnight, Mali would walk back alone to his servant’s quarters at the bottom of the hill on which our beautiful home stood. He occasionally walked me to my friends’ homes and, during those strolls, would point out the many flowers and trees along the roadside; these were my first Nature Walks in the little town of Digboi. As most children do, I took him entirely for granted and assumed he existed to serve; his uncomplaining nature only made this assumption a reality. He hardly ever went back to see his family, even when my mother would offer to pay him for the while he was away – in every sense, we were his family.
On occasion, we would see evidence of his astonishing strength. When my brothers turned up for the vacation with their large, cumbersome hold-alls – alas, now extinct as a piece of luggage – Mali would simply swing one onto his back, pick up a suitcase and ascend the stairs, his back bent much in Nepali style, while we all watched in amazement.
In those magical years of my childhood, I made friends in school and had my differences with many, as all children will do. Yet Mali was the only friend I could never find any fault with. As for any adult, it must have been trying for him to humour a child all the time, yet he did so with silent sincerity, never asking for a quid pro quo that would have been granted by my grateful parents. When, in the winter of 1977, we packed our bags and left Digboi for good, I was inconsolable because I believed, despite my Mother’s statements to the contrary, that I would never see Mali again.
When I visited Digboi again this year, thirty three years later, I met Raju Sharma, an attender at the guest house where I stayed. It was a wonderful coincidence; he had had known Mali when he was growing up himself, and instantly recognised him from an old photograph that I had remembered to pack.
“I am not sure if he is still alive,” Sharma said, “but he had shifted to Margherita many years ago.” I then remembered that my father had got Mali a job in a tea estate. Raju put his mobile to good use and we were off to track him down. There was a sliver of a chance that I would meet Mali, and all that I had to find my way was an old photograph.
We reached the Margherita estate and spent a couple of hours asking our way around. Up a picturesque driveway and we were on a plateau, close to a large nineteenth century bungalow now occupied by a senior manager at the estate. We stopped about a minute’s walk from a labour line surrounded by tea bushes. I got out of the car, walked across to the few children and young girls standing there and took his photograph out, an old black-and-white one where he had stood next to me and the other servants in our old bungalow.
A girl of about twenty stared at it for a minute and then exclaimed in happy surprise. “That’s my father when he was young,” she said. Yes! I thumped fist-on-palm.
Just how does one describe the emotion of seeing a dear childhood friend after these years? When Mali shuffled in - an old man, bent with age and infirmity - I had difficulty recognising him……and then, I saw his fingers, gnarled and rough, that I instantly recognised from that childhood long, long ago. He looked at me inquiringly, while the girl grinned and told him that his Gopu Sahib had come.
Mali dropped his bundle of firewood, walked right up and hugged me, tears forming in his eyes. I felt a lump in my throat as well, as I struggled to calm him down. The man had changed little, his simplicity and affection intact in the evening of his life. We spent a few minutes in silence and the years rolled away as I went over my few memories of a childhood long past.
We then exchanged updates – after we left, he had got married and had two grown up children. He told me of a serious fall, a battle with malaria and the other hazards of life in Assam, his feeble voice now mumbling more to himself, frequently wiping a tear away. I called my mother from my mobile and gave him the phone. He spoke to her in a voice that was barely audible or even coherent. After the call, when the conversation ceased and the far away look in his eyes stayed put, I knew it was time to go. I kept a smile on my face, and cheerily bid him farewell.
I will be back, I said. And, I meant it.
Post Script : as I post this, it has now been about three months since Mali has been missing from his home. He had been admitted to a hospital for a cataract and, on the day of his discharge, just walked away. I cannot help thinking that meeting me had something to do with this, yet I hope I am wrong and that he is safe.
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