Donald Duck in Cowboy Gear

In the early 1990s, I began a corporate career working with TDICI, then India’s premier venture capital fund and, almost at once, I was handed over a portfolio of companies in which we had invested over the years.  Of the two vexatious companies in this portfolio, Gum India was, by far, leading the charts.  It made Big Fun, a rather disgusting pink bubble gum and Gum India was, to use an equally disgusting pun, a sticky mess.    

The bubble wasn't in the gum though, but in the financials (call it a hot air bubble) and the Income Statement and Balance Sheet were products of inspired fiction.  The company owed money to nearly every pedestrian in Chennai, was a marginal player in most markets and made a product that destroyed kids’ teeth, which didn’t quite put it on a pedestal anywhere. The company was driven by its sales people who, inspite of an alleged business education, understood nothing of finance, collections or profitability, leaving all of that to the man who will shortly be introduced as the Chief Protagonist of this story.  

And, if this was not enough, the company founder, a tall, lean chap called Naru, was (and still is) quite a character: full of bluster, grand ideas (never supported by reality, which he perceived to be but an irritant), and an ability to talk the hind legs of the most skeptical donkey you’d meet. In us, he had found not just a donkey, but a pack of them. 

This chap had a mean streak of arrogance, sometimes communicated in the vein of sophisticated humour.  This was partly a result of what he saw as superior breeding and partly his opinion of himself and his education from IIM (blame, Calcutta). Naru knew everything.  Naru had the last word.  This hauteur meant that he consigned me to his beleagured finance manager.

This note then is about Ramk, Gum India’s finance manager. He was a short tubby chap, grey haired, with a moustache and an ingratiating, sly smile that hid more than it revealed. It was a slyness that was cast within, for his was an unenviable position to be in: hounded by creditors, harassed by employees and impaired by a management team that found him to be an impediment in their grandiose plans.  There is no doubting the stress he was under, which at some point presented him with a slipped disc (he wore the collar to every tricky meeting to generate sympathetic vibes).

This is not to imply that Ramk was a suffering, silent saint; on the contrary, he was a skilled manipulator, generating superior, highly convincing fiction on a spreadsheet.  His job was to convert a complainant into his victim - a job he did with unmatchable skill - each of whom was guided gently down a primrose path to nowhere (ask me, I was Victim #1).   

In our regular meetings in his office in Chennai, I was always prepared with stern messages and sometimes rehearsed my lines.  One hour into the meeting, I would be putty in his hands and rich fodder for his spreadsheet-led fiction recital.  The next quarter, he would assert with what I can only call Inspired BullShit (which he had learnt from his boss), would be spectacular for the company. Since that quarter never ever arrived, the next quarter would be a repeat in an astonishing display of chutzpah.    

Ramk’s room was a drab, grey cabin, with little to please the eye, except for a worn poster that was stuck on the wall behind him. It had Donald Duck in a cowboy suit, hat, holster, the works, twirling a gun on his forefinger, with a broad grin across his engaging face. The byline said, “Nothing will happen today that I can’t handle!”. 

And everytime I met him in his room, my eyes would fix on that poster and then on him.  And then back to that poster.  That sly smile, the chutzpah and brazenness....

As the years have passed by, Donald Duck in Cowboy Gear has stood me in good stead, much before the film '3 Idiots' popularised "All-is-well"!  When faced with a fire in my family home in the middle of the night, an airline employee who had closed the flight gates when I reached them or a child who ran headlong into my car (he ended up fine), I have despaired, only to see that poster on the wall and breathe again.  Followed by a picture of Ramk in my mind, his easy, at times sly, smile reflecting confidence in his deft hands and in getting out of this one, skin (and neck collar) intact.  

But then, I hope the writing on the wall - the poster and the idiom - is the only thing I learnt from the inimitable Ramk.

I Once Lived in a Vacuum

About thirty years ago, a company called Real Value, that made fire extinguishers that did not look like they were for exclusive use by the Asian Weightlifting Champion, decided to make a new product called the Vacuumiser.  The principle of this gadget was to put your leftover food in their specially-designed dishes, which were then vacuumised under a motor, making it last forever (make sambar in summer, consume in monsoon, sort of thing.  You get the pic, even if it seems yucky).  

The company I worked for then had a ‘hard furnishings allowance’ (which is the dumbest idea for tax-saving ever.  Ever.  Take it from me).  Not needing any furnishing, hard, soft or in-between, I bought the vacuumiser with that allowance, because the ad by Trikaya Grey, an agency that specialised in doing funky ads for gullible imbeciles who had hard furnishing allowance, looked good.  The product was clearly useless for us, since we had a cook who used to come in everyday, and hence I bought it (most of my decisions follow this pattern.  If you are looking for someone to take charge of a nuclear reactor, ignore my job application in the larger interest).

The first day, I vacuumised the leftover idlis from breakfast in one of their dishes and put it in the fridge.  On day 2, the idlis had shrunk like a Chinese T-shirt (XXL to M in one wash, guaranteed, says the label, but in Chinese).  They were also flatter than a helipad and were now a colour best described in the Asian Paints brochure as Zinnia Bloom.

The math is as follows:

Idlis without air inside = bricks without air inside

Remove ‘without air inside’ from both sides.

Idlis = bricks.

After nearly losing two of my finest teeth, I abandoned the effort to eat them.  So did the neighbourhood cow that, with a look of disgust, deposited some dung in clear expression of opinion and  I briefly considered shipping that dung (vaccumised in one of their bloody dishes) to Real Value.  In a week, we realised that anything with air inside – which is about 97.245% of all food that I know – would no longer have air inside and hence needed rehydration therapy, meditation and motivational speeches and tender loving care before consumption.  

Yesterday’s vaccumised chappatis tasted like the ones found while excavating Harappa, and the chana could be used in construction, particularly of highways, no questions asked.  And the khichdi was transformed into a grim forbidding cake, needing a knife, protection glasses, two hammers and GPS-type navigation. 

When I told my friend and senior at IIMB, Aloo, who was at Trikaya Grey, that I had bought a vacuumiser, he seemed aware of it.  He told me this after he had stopped laughing, which, from a guy who is the closest human form to a potato, was the last straw (no, not a vacuumised straw.  He liked his carbs.).  

He was thoughtful for a minute and then let me know that it wasn’t the vacuumiser, but the fifteen customers who were the only purchasers of this bloody liability who were the Real suckers. 

Alvida once more....

When I reached Random Rubble on the evening of Feb 21^st, about a fortnight after I had last been here, I knew that Winter was leaving shortly: the evening was warmer than it had been and the canopy, that had begun its Great Annual Shedding of Leaves three weeks ago, was partly bare and open.  

Winter is one for leaving quietly: she picks her moments well and I have learnt, with experience, to anticipate her departure. There were moments in those early years when I would think of the many months to come before her return, weeks of stifling heat and evening showers, of two fickle monsoons and flooding, of squelching tyres and a sliding car as it worked the last lap, months of waiting….Today, I enjoy the days of every season, which is probably a testament to the self-help reading that each of us is assaulted with.     

Siddharth, a friend with a passion for wetlands and their conservation, had turned up and was waiting for me, for we had planned a birding trip to the Big Lake of the Mother-of-the-Forest the next morning (and that went reasonably well).  We sat under the stars after dinner and spoke of viruses, birds, science and venture capital and, about a quarter of an hour after I had gone to my room, getting ready to hit the sack, the howls of a pack of jackals filled the silent night.  It has been some years since I have heard them – far too long – but this is, to use a rather atypical phrase, such a February thing, for my notes seem to suggest rendezvous around Valentine’s (they have much in common with otters, which is a reason for my affection).  A minute or two later, the calls went silent and the village mongrels began their reply, one that was far too persistent, me thinks.

I know Winter is leaving when the palash and silk cotton flowers begin to bloom and the noisy rosy starlings busy themselves up in the tree, darting from one flower to another with an urgency that makes them seem like behind-schedule postmen checking post boxes in those days of yore.  

Stand below and a light shower of falling wine-red silk cotton flowers – gorgeously designed, shaped and coloured by evolution -  is destined to bless you (if Nature’s blessing is what you seek.  If you seek photographs of starlings, a sore neck will bless you as well).  And, just as Winter does, these starlings will leave when their time here is done, which is about as philosophical as we can get in natural history. 

When she, Winter, did leave two nights later, she left behind an enveloping mist that rolled in late – around 7 in the morning -  delivering you softly into the lap of Spring.  The morning mist, with its fragrance that suggests poetry and tea and langour, is what she leaves behind, much like a handkerchief with a delicate perfume that a girl would tuck into a boy’s palm.  So, it must be felt, savoured, inhaled, absorbed.  A cup of orthodox organic tea (preferably one in each hand) is strongly recommended.

And when the mist lifts, with the sun up in the sky and the portents of a warm day, the fragrance of mist recedes into transient memory.  I have learnt to live the moment in memory too - some call it nostalgia - with the expectation that the mist will roll in early on the morrow.  That the day after this day will be as today is in some way.  

Which, if you think about it, is a slice of some philosophy too.

The sunsets of Spring

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Day Time

Ok, I don’t know about party poopers and negative people who will read this post, but I have recently become a huge fan of Galgotia, whoever he is, and of his parents who did the initial hard work that popped out one fine day as Baby Galgotia.  Apparently, he was in a typical utterly boring business when someone asked him if he had ever been in Univ.  So, he set up a Univ, having misunderstood the question.  This is more than I can say for you, so let’s give him some respect and treat him as 67% human (for now).

Then he recruited some unsuspecting passers-by and trespassers as faculty and got it all going. Some years later, there was a silly hype on something called Artificial Intelligence which his students badly needed because, if they had non-artificial intelligence, they would have preferred to become toll gate operators in the Atacama Desert to his stellar university. So, Baby Galgotia (who had, in the meantime, grown up despite Societal pressure to have him extradited to the Cayman Islands in a rubber dinghy) set up the Centre for Artificial Intelligence, with himself as the Centre, some batata pav and samosas, and a dog from China as his sidekick that was not a dog but a robot that looked like a dog and fooled everyone into thinking it was a dog because it did to Galgotia’s car tyres what dogs do when they see car tyres.

Then there was some conference in Delhi on this (no, the conference was not on what dogs do when they see car tyres), so he signed up the dog which had an IQ greater than all those trespassers-who-are-now-faculty combined. To keep a close watch on the dog, he sent the trespassers, sorry, the faculty and to keep a watch on the trespassers, sorry, the faculty (why is this autocorrect thing not working when I key in trespassers?), he made a drone out of thermocool that looked so stupid that it did not even fool a reporter from a TV channel called Times Now-or-Never (the answer is Never). Then they occupied a Stall, which, if I may digress with a pithy comment, is a perfect verb to answer the question, How is technological progress best described in India?

It all unravelled sadly when the robot dog did to a pole in the conference what it otherwise does to tyres (what the pole was doing in the conference is one of 3,247 questions that are engaging the attention of Informed Society at the moment) and someone who was observant saw a Made-in-China sticker in a delicate part of the dog’s anatomy that I refuse to describe in further detail out of sensitivity for reader sentiments.

Then hell broke loose, of course, as you may have read, and Galgotia’s Brigade was asked to vacate the Stall, which is such a pity because they were just getting started and, no doubt, hens, geese and cows - with real methane, mind you - were waiting to be let in. I have written a strong letter of condemnation about such extirpative tendencies of these conference organisers who, when reports last came in, had failed a competitive intelligence test where the only other competitor was the thermocol drone. But I am deeply impressed with the bureaucracy that has ordered an Inquiry and taken action with impressive speed: it has neutered the Principal Offender, the dog.  

Nanju's bete noire

On this day a couple of years ago, when I met Ananda, my friend and occasional philosopher-cum-guide, he was all excited. ‘Sir, you remember Nanjundappa?’ he asked.

‘Yes, I remember him,’I said; he has worked occasionally at Random Rubble and is one of those silent sorts with wide open sparsely populated spaces between his ears.

‘Sir, a leopard bit him!’ he said and sat back with satisfaction at seeing the shock on my face.
It turns out that on an earlier day, the leopard had picked up one of Nanjundappa’s lambs and returned this day for another. The man heard the commotion in the pen, rushed out and charged at the leopard. In the ensuing melee, the leopard dropped a lamb and bit Nanju on his palm and then bolted away.

It was a nasty bite, deep and bloody. Now, the thing you expect to read next is that Nanju was rushed to the hospital but then he, as with many others in Doddi, his hamlet, has never visited one in his life and wasn’t about to grace the premises of an Emergency ward with his Divine Presence now and the only thing more daunting than a leopard that bites is a doctor who injects (old jungle saying). So he tore out some old cloth and wrapped it around a heavily bleeding palm and then wondered how he’d manage the excruciating pain.
And then an idea struck him.

So Nanju and his friend then headed out to the local bar about four km away and tucked in a robust round of pegs of potent intestine-churning stuff like PowerBolt, Napolean 65 and BigBang 10000, which meant that in about half an hour, he was pain-free, sozzled to his gills, seeing two bottles where there were none and leopards behind the grill on the counter. He was, to use Ananda’s immortal words, ‘Full tightu, saar.’

Which is the condition in which Ananda and a couple of forest guards, who had been informed, found him. They took a most reluctant Nanju in the jeep to a clinic but the doctor – quite rightly – refused to inject a pain-killer into a guy who was seeing two leopards where one doctor stood, and asked them to go to the Government hospital. At which point, Nanju did what these strong, silent types do when they are plastered to their pinkies: he gave everyone present and voting a piece of his mind - that tiny piece that was still left inside the cranium. In most colourful language, he cast grave doubts on everyone’s ancestry and their parents’ marital status, and continued the performance in the hospital until the effects of PowerBolt + Nap 65 + BB 10000 had worn off.

All in all, he lost about two litres of blood (after we deduct the sales tax in the narration). He was then sent back to Doddi and was taken everyday for an injection and told that, if he so much as breathed BigBang 10000 in, he would be locked up in hospital with a leopard or two for company and, if leopards couldn’t be found, doctors - the kind who carry sutures and thread and sing praises of the devil - would substitute.

I met him the other day in front of his ragi field; the stalks were tall and handsome and richly productive and he proudly told me that he guarded it all night from the machan on top of a nearby tree from elephants and wild boar and the odd nocturnal writer, the keen scrutiny no doubt aided by a generous helping of Napolean 65.

His hand has healed well and the leopard, having learnt that you do not mess with some, has moved to greener pastures (which, you will - one hopes - understand, is an idiom and not a suggestion of a cathartic change in diet).

Now, if this story does not have the happy ending you often dream for, which one does?

No Blues This Morning Please

If the first day of a year is an indication of what the roll out would be, then it is birds for sure.

It was silent enough on new year's night at Random Rubble to hear a lizard drop (with a soft splat, if you need to know the details) and I woke up to the new year to the lovely musical notes of the puff throated babbler, described in the bird app as a 'melodic warble' which makes me want to rename it the warbler babbler and have the rest of civilized society after my blood ("Warbler babbler" ends in birder murder - ToI). 

I just love this sketch....(not mine though)

The puff throated babbler is a lovely bird too, and keeping it company with nervous energy is the lovelier fan-tailed flycatcher (now called the spot-breasted fantail and soon to be called something else by someone who was denied second prize in Moral Science). As I clamber outside to take a look, it hops on the branch first this way, then that, with frenetic urgency, never still for a second, which, of course, reminds me of a lot of some people I know……The fantail unfolds with a flourish often and then folds up in an instant.  In a moment of heightened joblessness, I once tried counting this to tabulate the per-minute frequency and realised that life could be better utilized in washing dishes. 

The bird-life gets into top gear when, to my astonishment, two blue-bearded bee eaters show up on the low branch of the tree by the building.  Even as I move in slow motion towards my camera, one of them perches on the tip of the roof and, half upside-down, inserts its long, curved beak into a tiny cavity.  What on earth is going on here? This is a bird that is a recluse-and-a-half and generally in the higher canopy, with a low opinion of Civil Society below.  As I get closer, inch by inch, to see more, both of them get wind of the human in the vicinity and are gone.  The mystery reveals itself: the buzz of a hundred stingless bees that hover around the cavity tells the tale of a morning attempt at breakfast, some unhappy (and some dead and digested) bees and a human who will write a blogpost on the outcome.  If you haven’t seen this utterly gorgeous bird, do see the lovely image in this excellent article on the bee eaters of India: https://www.natureinfocus.in/animals/the-bee-eaters-of-india.

And then, later in the morning, as I watch the regulars – a drongo, bulbuls, sunbirds, a white-eye, a tailor bird - a movement in the lime trees and the blue-faced malkoha surfaces.  Now, I will happily endorse a name change (and protest till I am blue, but not quite in Malkoha league).  It finds something green – a grasshopper, me thinks – and makes a quick meal, which answers the second question this morning: why would a malkoha hang out in a thorny inhospitable lime bush?  

A movement above gets my attention: it’s a grey hornbill, with that occasional wing-beat and talkative cackle flying past.  This one, and its mate, generally hangs around Random Rubble, perched high up on a  tree, often hidden in the canopy but cackling away to deliberately stress out budding photographers on the ground.  Yes, I have a bone to pick with the Grey (and the idiom could not have been more inappropriate). 

Later in the day, an Oriental Honey Buzzard flies overhead and by then I have seen the shikra and black-winged kite, so we are housefull on raptors.

But then there is always space in the sky……

Wisdom. For a change (but you could pay with notes as well)

The other day a friend and I were chatting about something and he mentioned that it is hard to stay positive (as in, a positive frame of mind, not the charge at one end of the battery cell).  As is usually the case when I disagree, I said nothing.
 
I am now about three generations old.  Back then in 1965, the average life expectancy in India – and this is, if anything, an overestimate – was forty-two and the odds of my surviving the first year if I had been born in a poor family in Bihar would have been around 60:40 (as it happened, it was a C-section birth in Ernakulam and the early delivery was, no doubt, God’s way of handing over the problem after doing his best at getting me to behave in socially acceptable ways).  But back to what the world was like then:  small pox was still around and fatal and polio was amongst a laundry list of diseases that could put someone out for good. India was a horrific basket case, having just got over a debilitating food crisis: we have no idea how many humans - emaciated, crippled, sickened and lost – perished.   
 
As for other species, forests were being rapidly cleared and hunting wasn’t just common, it was, in most parts of India, culturally mandated and wildlife was living a precarious extinction crisis across the world which we thought would be final.  And the world had just overcome the Cuban Missile crisis (for which, of course, I am not responsible, having not yet been born) which brought the planet as close to the edge as it can ever get. 
 
When I think back these years and of what could have been had the call of the dice been different, it is hard – impossible - to stay negative.  Life rocks.  Seriously.  I have thought of this every time I am by a stream or river waiting for an otter to show up (they never do, so it’s mutually exclusive), or when watching a herd of elephants, with a nervous, palpitating heart, or, as in October this year, a flock of snow pigeons at Darwa Pass, after a trek up that I thought would never end (like most of my posts on Facebook). 
 
We live in a world of astonishing charm in the company of the most remarkable species about which we are learning much more every day than was known earlier.  And keeping these species company is an utterly unpredictable, notably idiotic, understandably neurotic, visibly egotistic, extraordinarily chaotic, incredibly talented, generally idealistic, somewhat plurastic one that is, well…., us.  Years ago, I decided to not worry about what I cannot control when I am not at the steering, and instead to enjoy the ride (and to not read the newspapers).  All these species have stories to tell and writing those stories – to inflict on an unsuspecting audience that seeks Literature but is given Peanut Sauce - is the best part of the deal.  This is an astoundingly beautiful world and never has been better.  Truly.  
 
I am off to a river and the forest by it for a few days, hopefully to meet some of the Kuruchiyars I know, among the nicest, gentlest people you could find with an encyclopaedic knowledge of the ecosystem.  And to have a cup of black tea twice a day with two delicious unniappams at the world’s finest tea stall.  An apology in advance if I do not reply to that birthday message, but let that not stop you….