A Tail, a wing and an occupied loo....

I don’t know if you follow the real news as carefully as I do – I mean real news, not stuff like wars and elections and other needless distractions – because the notable news last week was that Air India found a Boeing 737 that it never knew it owned.  This aircraft, if you will pardon an utterly condemnable, entirely avoidable pun, was hiding in plane sight. 

I am not making this up, pinky promise.  The Dumdum guys in Kolkata apparently told the Air India guys to remove their vehicle from the parking lot and the Air India guys said, Which car?  And the Dumdum guys said, The plane.  And the Air India guys said, We generally don’t park our planes in the carpark but our pilots sometimes get late for dinner at home, so let us get back to you.  And the Dumdum guys said, You ignoramuses, the plane, the plane!  The one that hasn’t flown for years.  And the Air India guys said, Well, on a philosophical note, Air India itself hasn’t flown for years.  (All Air India guys are part-time philosophers, with a PhD in Chaos Theory, which is a job requirement). 

And the Dumdum guys (who don’t understand the first fricking fi of philosophy unless Marx had pronounced it) said, You dumb, inert, half-witted, moribund asses, this is a Boeing 737-200 that once took Gopakumar to Pune in the 2001 monsoon through nerve-wracking turbulence and is now parked near the golguppa stall beside the Control Tower. And the Air India guys said, Which golguppa stall?  And who is Gopakumar?  And the Dumdum guys said, The golguppa stall that uses last year’s mustard oil and left-over aviation fuel (and they refused to answer the second question which dealt with an inconsequential human). 

And the Air India guys said, But we just counted all our planes using an Abacus and a scale and found a few missing engines and pilots and one plane with only one wing and one that had three because of an unfortunate exchange, but the planes are all there.  And the Dumdum guys were flummoxed and said, Why did you use the scale?  And the Air India guys said, Because we couldn’t find measuring tape.  And then everyone laughed though no one understood why (so, this sounded like the G20 Meet). 

And then the Dumdum guys said, To repeat, this is the 737-200, you decrepit, fossilised, amorphous, inanimate piece of jelly.  And the Air India guys – regretfully ignoring the compliment of being elevated to the same species salad as jelly - said, We have no 737-200s, we crashed all of them long ago.  And the Dumdum guys said, Look, here is a photo of the plane with the old Air India logo and everything else missing, so it has to be yours.  And the Air India guys said, Gosh, it’s ours!  There’s even a weeping Maharaja in the loo who refuses to come out.  And someone in the Air India office jumped up in joy and said, It’s got wings!  It’s got wings!  

And then they sold it. 

Grass, Patriarchy and the One Against

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

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

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

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

And then I think of another day

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Two faces of hope.....