This Day That Age

This morning, while scanning The Hindu, my attention was drawn to a column I often ignore: “This Day That Age” which carries snippets from The Hindu edition fifty years ago, to the day.

The news item from The Hindu dated July 30^th, 1963 was titled ‘Forest Land for Rayon Firm’.  The text read: 

‘The Government of Kerala have given permission to Gwalior Rayon Silk Manufacturing Company Limited (wood pulp division) at Mavoor to purchase 25,000 acres of private forest land in Malabar area.  This will help the company in the production of rayon pulp and for starting new industries based on timber.  It is also stated that these lands would not be acquired by the Government in pursuance of any legislation regarding nationalising forests in Malabar area for a period of 32 years.’

I read the little note again, its language betraying the hope of the ‘60s, the relative innocence of a Government bent on pursuing industrialisation as the only means of development for a young nation.  It was startling to have seen this, for this was no accidental glance at a column one rarely read; it was meant to be.  Retrieving an old file from the loft, I turned the pages, with clippings stuck to them, until I came to the one on Mavoor.  It was a moment of reflection, some déjà vu as I read the story.

In the early 1990s, after I had graduated from Business School, I was, much as any other B-School grad would be then, caught up by the promise of the era of liberalisation and the stock market boom.  Gwalior Rayon – now Grasim – was a punter’s delight and its relatively young management, represented by Mr. Aditya Birla, was seen as ambitious, global and representative of the New India. 

Mavoor was the hitch in this grand scheme.  For, there was a battle going on at Mavoor, a battle that caught my attention and played the decisive role in changing my career.

One day in the early 90s, the story in the papers caught my attention – it was poignant and well-written.  Gwalior Rayon’s pulp factory, which was located by the Chaliyar river, had, in the thirty years of its existence – from the early 1960s to the early 1990s – sucked its water out and pumped back toxic discharge, destroying the river.  The factory had polluted the air and water with mercury, cadmium and sulphides and consumed almost the entire bamboo wealth of the Wayanad area, a large part of it supplied by a compliant Government at a ridiculous price of Re 1 per tonne (when craftsmen in the surrounding villages were charged many times this price for producing handicraft products from bamboo).  I read that the village folk along the river paid a heavy price for this outrage: malformed babies, hundreds of cancer deaths, severe debilitating bronchial ailments and kidney failures (650 at last count).  I read, with awe, of the courage of K.A. Rehman, who had chosen to fight the company all the way (succumbing to cancer from the emissions, but asking his people, from his death bed, to continue the fight) and of a journalist, Surendranath, who put his career and personal safety on the limb to expose the devil.  I read that, in 1985, Gwalior Rayon had strategically shut the plant down, to put pressure on the Government to be on their side – their argument was that they provided employment to 3,000 people – and that when they re-started operations, it was on even more advantageous terms to them.  I read that every political party had taken the company’s side and used the old argument: when you make an omelette, you break a few eggs.  And I read that the company had rejected the idea of setting up a pollution treatment plant, on the grounds that it would endanger the overall return on investment.

I had no idea why this battle engaged me as much as it did; there were other environmental disasters around to study as well.  Yet it did, perhaps because it was a Kerala story and not far away from Bangalore, perhaps because it was a people vs corporation debate with a high-profile company involved, perhaps, at a larger level, because it was a development question that I had always wanted to ask.

…and I asked one question to myself: Whose side was I on?  My qualification had aligned me to the side of business, yet my heart wasn’t there.  The more I read about the issue, the more I believed that I was on the wrong side.  Along my career as a private equity analyst, I would have to look at profits, possibly as the sole indicator of success and the thought was far from pleasant.  Perhaps, unwittingly, my initial effort at funding a corporation would create a future Gwalior Rayon; to most fund managers, this would be a dream come true.  To me, this was chilling to contemplate.

The 1990s was when I began to learn about the environment – thanks almost entirely to the Mavoor issue -  intent on making up for a lost education.  It was also the time when the Courts in India were becoming aware of their role as possibly the only authority with an environmental conscience and the days of the plant at Mavoor were now numbered.  When, in 2001, the pulp factory was shut down for good, I was ready to make a change away from the World that I never belonged to.

Five years ago, a blog posted on the issue spoke of a comeback that the river, and its people, had made.  Reading it was as motivating as it was heartening. 

I have cut this little note out from today’s newspaper and have pasted it alongside the older cuttings on Mavoor in my file, for no story has a real ending. 
And to everyone who reads it, there is one message – never, ever, lose hope.  

Music to my ears

Last Saturday was hardly special.  I was in our office store room,  removing the contents of a trunk, keeping what I wanted and discarding what was of no possible use.  A moth-eaten blanket (“keep until fully destroyed, for sentiment”), a book in excellent condition (“give away”), the odd accounts file (“did I actually pay so much as tax in 1998 ?”), a few long-playing records…..

I slackened the cleaning pace, for this was the best part.  Each LP was special, suffused with memories that emerged from the record itself, much like the genie did from a lamp, images, movement and colour that the mind could see through its sepia-tinted lens.  Each memory was from a childhood not so long ago, one that could not ever come back, for the times have gone as have the people.  And I, much against my will, grew up long ago (well, not so long ago). 

There is nothing wrong in living in the past, if the past has no bitterness to offer, no jealousy to adorn you with, no recrimination and no ‘if-I-hadn’t-done-that, imagine-where-I-would-have-been-now’.  The past  is inspirational, motivating, exhilirating, immersed in exaggeration and the starkness of colour in sepia.  This morning, as I picked up a record with the photograph of a large pot-bellied man on the jacket and the name Chembai Vaidyanatha Bhagavathar, the colour in the sepia emerged.  Staring out of the window, it was an easy journey to 1973

We were at the home of Menon Uncle in Tinsukia, Assam – amongst the millions of Menons encircling the planet and leaving their indelible mark, he was ‘Tinsukia Menon’, a one-and-only tag that was about as astute a definition as any.  It was a home on the first floor of a rather peculiar angular building owned by Marwaris, of which community Tinsukia Menon was a honorary and esteemed member.  Perhaps it was Saturday evening, as it generally used to be on our visits there.  The men – him, my father and an eight-year old who would act like an adult – in one room, the women – four of them, Indira Aunty, two of her three daughters in their late teens or early twenties and Mum – in another.  Some laughter and small talk from the women, subdued conversation from the men as, with an air of expectation and ceremony, Menon Uncle removed the record from its jacket with care and placed it on the mast of the record player. 

The steps were routine:

Switch on the record player.  Lock the record in, by closing the ‘gate’. Drag the starter lever, along a semi-circle until the ‘click’.  The mechanism then got into action, as the record dropped six inches onto the turntable, the hand with the needle moved a good forty-five degrees until it was over the record, and gently settled on the corner. 

With a hiss –and the odd stratch – the record began to play. 

The music, to the ears of the uninitiated, was rather odd.  The voice was old and a touch out of breath, yet Uncle and Dad were in a different world, and that was enough for a child who wanted to be a grown-up.  For Chembai was no ordinary singer; he represented a generation of Carnatic legends, devout yet iconoclastic, loving yet despotic, immutable yet open to change.  Stories about him were part of music folklore and were shared with awe by the men; the boy soaked it all in, as if he understood.  A story on his refusal to play in Guruvayoor because of a problem with money, after which he lost his voice.  To regain which, he sat outside the temple doors and prayed that he would sing upon which the Lord, needless to add, heard his feelngs and granted his voice back.  Of his affection for his disciple, Yesudas, a Christian who mastered the nuances of Carnatic music.  Of his animosity to film music that he derided as banal.  Of his stringent standards and harsh, yet constructive, criticism of accompanying musicians in public.  And so on….

Indira Aunty – dimunitive, cheery and gentle –interrupted the reverie with a snack or two.  My personal favourite at their home was puffed rice with sugar and coconut and the ubiquitous mixture was always no more than an arm’s length away to enrich the evening.  When the needle reached the end of the record, Menon Uncle stood up with a sigh of satisfaction, and replaced the record with another.  This time it was Balachander’s mellifluous veena or possibly Semmangudi or ML Vasanthi Kumari, all names now etched in the receding memory of an antediluvian connoisseur.  The music ended before dinner, yet the rhythm, the incantation, the humming stayed on in the mind of the little boy who was, for that evening, a grown-up.     

As with most music, the more I listened to Menon Uncle’s enviable collection of Carnatic music -  Chembai, MS Subbalakshmi, Chittibabu’s veena – the more it grew on me.  Dad’s collection of records was good too and he and I spent some very happy hours listening to music that I could not even begin to comprehend, yet the fondest memories I have are of that large room on the first floor in Tinsukia, the quiet company of the two men and their music.

 In the year or two before we moved out of Assam, Menon Uncle had begun collecting spool tapes.  This was new and thrilling, and as Dad resisted buying a tape recorder, I looked forward to the evenings in Tinsukia. It was there that I first heard – on tape -  John Higgins, the American who had made India his home and Carnatic music his mission.  Higgins’ singing was more Indian than most, and we collectively marvelled at the commitment and talent of the man.  And, much to Menon Uncle’s disapproval, it was in his home that I heard my favourite song from Anurodh, a Rajesh Khanna film, again on spool, his daughters having persuaded him to lower his standards for the bourgeois.

Years later, we moved to Bangalore.  Dad gave his rather bulky record player – with its distinctive fragrance of vinyl and wood – away.  It was a heart breaking moment for me as, I am sure, it was for him as well.  When Menon Uncle followed us to Bangalore a few years later, record players and spools had given way to audio tapes and he too gave away his collection.  On the odd occasion when we met, our conversation would veer around to the progression in Carnatic music.  A tape would be fished out to make a point.  Yet, there was no sepia anymore.  The magic of the music remained, yet the magic of the experience had diminished. 

I put the record back in its jacket and closed the trunk.  My cleaning for the month had been done. 

Keynes Goes to the Market

John Maynard Keynes, to the uninitiated, was the Numero Uno of Economics, the original thinker, with a particular bias to common sense.  Among his finest pieces of scholarship was the assertion that what is good for the individual need not be – often decidedly is not – good for the country’s economy.  An outstanding illustration of this is a recessionary economy.  When times are bad, people cut back on expenses and enter a state of monetary hibernation.  The country cannot and should not do that; on the contrary it must spend more, possibly on public goods and services.  Such an expenditure, though it creates a deficit,  acts as a stimulus to restart the process of development. 

In 1930, when Mahatma Gandhi was building the foundation for a fairer and ecologically just society, Keynes – possibly he was influenced by Gandhi, possibly not – wrote:

            “Now it is true that the needs of human beings may seem to be insatiable.  But they fall into two classes – those needs which are absolute in the sense that we feel them whatever the situation of our fellow human beings may be, and those which are relative in the sense that we feel them only if their satisfaction lifts us above others, makes us feel superior to our fellows.”

            He went on to argue that if world output grew another ten-fold, humanity’s absolute needs would be abundantly satisfied, but because it is impossible for everyone to do better than everyone else, relative gains for everyone would remain as impossible as ever.  We can therefore, by the acquisition of things, be temporarily superior to another – perhaps for a day or even less – but we come up against someone in our peer group who is better off in a relative way.  What is meant to make us happy, he implied, actually does the reverse.

Prophetic.

At the start of the twenty-first century, most of the developed countries had indeed achieved a ten-fold increase in real income (that is, keeping the value of money at 1930 prices).  People who live in these countries, and in the glittering metropolis’ of the developing world (such as Bangalore) have an abundant supply of all sorts of products and services they could possibly want.  These things have been made at an immense ecological cost, a cost which is not counted or allocated to their bill of material.  It is a cost that has put our planet’s future at risk.

…and yet, here’s the funny part,  study after laborious study shows that rich people around the planet are rarely happy.

So, just what are we hurting ourselves for?

For eighty three years, we have not listened to the wisdom of John Maynard Keynes.  Can we start today?

Reduce your consumption – it’s the least you can do for your planet.

A Dump of Bullshit

From The Hindu dated Friday May 3^rd, page 14

(with some apologies for a personal interpretation)

“Poverty,” said the Asian Development Bank chief, sipping his bottled water, “amid progress worries me greatly.  It is disheartening that in a region of such rapid progress, we still have a population of more than 800 million people living in absolute poverty.  This, along with growing inequality, remains an overarching challenge” he said, while making his presentation in an impeccably tailored suit, in a air-conditioned room at the Indian Expo Mart at Greater Noida (the outside temperature was 38 degrees Celsius). 

The ADB Chief indicated that the bank’s lending programme may have to be lowered, simply because the income from investments of surplus resources (which are mostly lent to European countries) has come down due to lower interest rates.  Despite the tight financial position, the Chief added, the ADB would still be interested in promoting a number of projects in India (remember, he is greatly worried by poverty).  Such projects include the Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor - no doubt, all of India's poor people live along this line or will migrate to it - and other highway and railway projects.  He said that poverty could be eradicated only through (hold your breath: not food, not jobs & livelihood, not income, not security, not healthcare or sanitation) infrastructure development and, towards this end, co-financing with the private sector and attracting offshore funds - perhaps he had Argentina, Greece and Spain in mind - would “act as a catalyst in promoting infrastructure finance.”

Then, the ADB Chief seemed to forget everything he had said.  “It is because of domestic demand that India, China and other emerging market economies in Asia have enjoyed stronger growth and I think it will continue, led by strong consumption demand” he ended.

While he was making this epoch speech, no doubt to applause and encomium, there were two news items that entered the media radar. 

 - For the first time ever, all the fourteen districts of Kerala were declared drought-hit.  Perhaps they do not have infrastructure; of what use is total literacy, when a road to Hell may have made the drought easier to handle? 
 - The Supreme Court strongly endorsed the role of the gram sabha to decide if land must be given away to infrastructure projects, mining or industry.  It is beyond doubt, the Supreme Court said, that there is an organic connection between tribals and their land; that bond must be respected. 

The ADB Chief ended his meeting early.  He had to meet another 82 year old economist who, like him, lives in an ivory tower, but in New Delhi.  And then there was a flight to catch to another country, where this polemic pronouncement, this passionate plea for poverty purge, would be delivered to a fawning audience in the comfort of a temperature-controlled convention centre.

Putinitoff a quick one Da

The other day, while searching for old school friends on Facebook, I came across Christopher’s photograph.  He hadn’t changed much and, as I stared at the picture, the years rolled back to the moment when, in the Ninth, I stood terrified in front of the goal as a packaged tornado names Chris, in possession of the ball, came charging at me, seventy-two kgs of fat and muscle.  When he kicked the ball – kick is an understatement, for his normal tendency was to propel it with violence, to give it the third degree – it was at my face.  The resulting swelling on my nose took a week to subside.

Chris, the photograph clearly showed, had only added to his seventy-two and in no small measure.  But then, he was the quintessential Bangalore Anglo-Indian and all of them, without exception, loved their meats and their wines (particularly if the wine was a turpentine-hard rum).  They were, somewhat disparagingly, called Dings, a term I shall eschew, referring to them instead as Anglos.  Every old-timer in the city has had his or her share of encounters with Anglos, each such encounter resulting in a little unforgettable story.  For they were a unique community of English-speaking, fun-loving, quirky, often charismatic, live-for-today mavericks.  Aah!  You have an objection, I see; why am I using the past tense here?   Read on.

Up until the 1990s, most of the Anglos in the city lived in the area stretching from Frazer Town to Kammenhalli and Lingarajapuram, the last being designated with wicked humour as ‘United Dingdom’, a particular jibe on the community’s predilection for all things British.  Indeed, the old-timers will tell you that, until about fifty years ago, when an Anglo spoke of home, it was the British Isles, even if he had never been there or could not place it on a map of Europe. 

The origins of the Anglos is hardly a mystery.  The English, Irish and, in particular, the Scotsmen in India, for all their sniffing at the natives and inherent sense of superiority, weren’t averse to dalliances with Indian women, and this was seen by many Indians amongst the lower middle-class and lower class as a sign of upward mobility.  The resulting progeny benefited from the inherently British sense of fair play – they had access to English convent education, British names – Harriet, Alfred, Patricia and about a dozen others -  and some preference in jobs.  The outcome was a rather unique combination: light skin colour and Caucasian brawn in a physical sense, a pyschological and demographic profile of the working class, much left to be desired in academic ability, and a general loyalty to the good life and the British empire (in that order).  The English that the Anglos spoke was different from the educated ‘natives’ as well, and brilliantly quaint; I have spent many evenings rolling in laughter while my friends Vij and Vikas mimicked the Anglo accent to perfection.  Vikas’ apocryphal encounter with a certain Kevin is particularly vibrant.  Coming across Kevin kicking the football listlessly into the net, he asked him the obvious stupid question (in Anglo language) ,”Kevin, whatchadoing, Bob?” To which an irascible Kevin apparently said, ”puttinoff a goal in the ‘ole, you buggah.”   

Anglos were outstanding do-ers, not thinkers.  You would see them running their own garages around Bangalore, or being fitters, electricians, or – as is much stereotyped -  engine drivers (communities of them lived in towns that had railway junctions).  The best educated ones among them were -  I say this in humour -  sports teachers, one such seasoned campaigner, Macbride, being my school’s legendary hockey coach (“if ya bloody ‘ell not passa ball, I’ll give ya a bloody whippin’, ya miserable buggah”).  Yet, it is the enduring image of our plumber from the 1980s that comes back to me today.  If you had a problem with the taps, you called Al.  He would fetch up on his cycle, dressed for a formal evening at the club, with a tie, an impeccably clean shirt and a pair of black or brown shoes that shone like an oil-can.  His English -  polite, calm and reassuring, addressing my mother with a respectful ‘Ma’am’ -  was only marred by the rather overpowering smell of beef in an alcohol-laden breath.  When he rolled his sleeves up and got down to work, you saw a muscular forearm, a firm grip and a tendency to go down the drain (this is no metaphoric statement, do take it literally), where no man had gone before.  Job done (“have putinitoff one pipe, Sir, no mess for a hundred years now”), he would wash up, politely state his modest fee and leave, but not before he had had the tea that my mother had prepared; she found it impossible to treat him as anyone other than an equal, such was his demeanour.  It wasn’t just the men who were exceptional with their hands, the women were gifted cooks as well, creating their own brand of hybrid cuisine that, as can be expected, leaned towards the British culinary method.  In the evenings, after the hard work of the day, you could expect to find Al, with his friends, in a bar in Lingarajapuram, nursing his Hercules XXX Rum.  The Anglos, in general, were heavy drinkers, a fact that took its toll on many families among them. 

I often wondered what it must have been like for a community to move from reasonable status on the social pyramid in pre-independence India, to one of sub-dominance in the economic reality of the last thirty years.  In a city increasingly obsessed with education and the creation of theorists – those who will draw the plumbing diagram for a skyscraper, but cannot change a tap to save their grandmother – was the doer, the hands-on Anglo, a lesser mortal now, to be seen as workers or labour?  If so, what must have been this impact on the community’s esteem?

Until the late 1980s, the Anglos were an integral part of Bangalore city but, when the process for emigration to Australia eased up, the younger generation began to move there in substantial numbers.  Why Australia?  Perhaps it was to do with esteem, for they must had apprehensions of inequality if they moved to the UK, perhaps it was to do with the increased income, perhaps it was the Australian belief in fun, beer and live-for-the-day.  Perhaps it was the World’s finest beef.   Many of them moved via the Middle East, where they had gone to work, while others moved after the older generation had passed away and they had sold their properties.  One fine day, in the early 1990s, for instance, Al’s number was disconnected.  And that was it. The Anglos who remain, to the best of my limited knowledge, are not as maverick as the generation before them.  Hence, the past tense in sepia.

About a month ago, I was driving by the concrete-and-glass buildings off Outer Ring Road, the part that abutts Kammanahalli and one could not help feeling a tinge of remorse at having lost a part of our city when a community chose to move away.  United Dingdom, I recognised, was gone for good.  

Horn OK Please - Except on Mondays

This Monday was ‘no-horn’ day.

What’s your take?

Mine is: as bad ideas go,

This one takes the cake.

You see, we horn

While a baby is born

In love forlorn

When weary, war-torn

At the pedestrian-moron.

Since you look at me askance

I need to further explain my stance.

You see, we beep

Everytime we weep

When the baby needs sleep

As the farmer herds sheep

At the pedestrian-creep.

Then, how can we shun

The finger on the gun?

I can see you don’t see eye-to-eye

Again, permit me to explain why?

You see, we horn-whistle

At the drop of a thistle

Or the launch of a missle

As it begins to drizzle
At the pedestrian-imbecile.

Every dog has its day, but ‘No-horn’ does not

If you disagree now, I pity your lot.

Even, by the way, when you read this loony verse

You may horn to lend voice to morbid curse.

The good news folks is

That ‘no-horn day’

Was a failure anyway.

There was no baby

No dog with raby,

No tears, no lost love, no pedestrian

No sheep, no thistle, no equestrian

No missle, no drizzle, no idiot gone bonk

Yet, millions of cars continued to honk.

Agadhalla

There are some days that make you think.

I am sitting at Agadhalla village, at the base of Gopalswamy betta, at the edge of Bandipur Tiger Reserve.  A couple of hundred metres away is the main road to the temple atop the hill, a temple that is as breath-taking to reach as it is to behold.  The winding road to the top has panoramic views of the valleys below and the hills beyond, and sighting the odd elephant herd is routine.  Vehicles – the best of them – wind their way up, for the diety at Gopalswamy betta is revered by many.

Agadhalla is a couple of hundred metres away from the main road, but in every other sense, it could be on another planet. 

Every household has a story of woe to tell; often, it is the untold story that is vivid, evident in the expression of its denizens, in the deprivation that surrounds them, in the unimaginative homes that have been constructed for them by an uncaring administration.  The hamlet has two tribes – the Soligas and the Jenu Kurubas – and the friction between them is evident.  As the men and women engage in high-volume banter, there is little joy that you might sense and lesser expectation.   Even as the entire village delves deeper into debt, alcohol is the staple diet of the men - and many women -  in the evenings (as we have learnt to expect).  The homes have nothing inside; a few clothes and utensils, the odd, broken trunk in the corner, all of which reveal an unwillingness to seek a better life.  For the hundredth time, I ask the question: why? 

And as we – a motley group of students and, well, older students (including me) -  install a few fuel-efficient stoves in some homes and then wind our way to the primary school to speak with Guruswamy, the assiduous teacher there, there are more stories that await.  Of a child abandoned, of single-parent homes, of an older child who threatened to emulate his father and kill himself if forced to go to middle school.  

The relationship the hamlet shares with the forest is beset with tension: the Forest Department asserts that there is illegal firewood harvesting and the odd poaching of wildlife and when a Forester was speaking to me, the denizens stayed away.  Far away.  This village, he grumbled, is spoilt and lazy and wants easy work and easy money.  The Government gives them cheap food - 28 kg of rice, 5 kg of wheat and a kilo of sugar for just Rs. 120 - so they don’t really need to work much and now, by giving them free fuel-efficient stoves, he implied, you are spoiling them even more.  They see the forest as an exploit-able resource, to be plundered, not protected, he asserted fiercely.  I had to admit that he had a point.  But then, everyone did, everyone had a point in this forgotten village, in this place no one would want to understand.

Agadhalla is, be assured, just another tribal village around a National Park (Bandipur has a hundred and twenty three of them).  Another tick on my growing list of the tribal villages that I have spent time in around forests, searching for meaningful solutions.  Another tick on the growing list of an ailing, empty micro-society that is unhappy.  Perhaps angry.

Sitting in the sun that day and watching two little children on a tricycle, the dried flem from their noses seeming like a scar above their lips, their brown hair indicating protein deficiency, all of us asked the questions that have taunted me this long: why?  Why are we different from them?  

Why has it turned out this way, when we all know that the tribals were the original sustained protectors of the forest?  Why do they see the Forest Department as their enemy, when at least half their annual earnings come (or could come) from labour work done with the Department?  Why are they, as one of my students asked, unwilling to improve themselves, to seek work, to aspire for a better life, to yearn for a better tomorrow? And, most importantly, how can we catalyse change?  Change that preserves what is left of their culture, yet provides them respect and purpose and elicits from them, in turn, respect for the forest. 

That day, I returned to the metropolis, just in time to be at a friend’s place for dinner.   He introduced me to a colleague of his saying that I was ‘a guy who has quit the rat race to trample around forests’.  The colleague, mulled wine in hand, looked askance and with a mock shiver of his hand asked me if I was ‘an activist’. 

I don’t mind saying that I felt like hitting him then.