Salted Away

Of the many interesting clients I had in my career in venture capital, Ranga was the nicest.  That he was, like many small scale industrialists of the time, not averse to some self-aggrandisement at the cost of about everyone he did business with, was purely a matter of detail.  I use the past tense, for he has moved on, no doubt, to sell a copy of the Bhagvad Gita to Lord Krishna (at discount to the price charged by MNCs).  He was a small, avuncular man, dressed in white and had a clean, dapper look about him that endeared him to everyone.  He ran a small little company in Chennai manufacturing proteins for his erstwhile employer, an MNC, and profits for himself, his business existing on the excise and employee-compensation privileges enjoyed by small units, when compared to the big ones (and, on useful occasion, some tax evasion as well). 

Ranga would have been most content bagging the local award instituted by his street for small scale industrialist of the year, but for a chance meeting.  It was widely rumoured (and such rumours are often perfectly true) that he had met my company Chairman, an old schoolmate of his, at the December music festival.  Now, Ranga, among his talents, could recognise the difference between an opportunity and a protein and, in a trice, he had sold his project idea to make iron-fortified iodised (and God-knows-what-else) salt to the unsuspecting deficient public.  The benefits of such salt seemed numerous, and my Chairman should have promised to consume a packet or two, for there is no better way to put off such entrepreneurs than by becoming a customer.  He couldn’t though, you see, due to his blood pressure, though till the day he retired, he never hesitated to rub salt in others’ wounds (particularly on issues of salary hikes for his star employees, one of whom is the writer).

Sorry for the digression, but let’s pull back.  I was asked to manage the investment in this new goldmine.  Not evaluate the investment opportunity, mind you, for that had been done by God himself, but only manage it.  Ranga got his first 20 lakhs from our fund and sat down to make the iron-fortified iodised salt in a stable, marketable form.  Iron – the lonely bugger - has a tendency to attract oxygen and, rusted salt, you will admit, is unlikely to be the next big thing (unless you are aiming for toxicity).  Every quarter, I’d visit his lab in Chennai and come away deeply impressed at the diligence, the sheer assiduousness, the focus exhibited by the team of scientists, entirely comprising him and his daughter.  They’d show me the R&D register of about a hundred combinations tried, without success, and would watch my face carefully to gauge any expressions.  There were none, since I had no clue anyway.  

Ranga, nevertheless, remained the eternal gentleman.  Shortly after my wedding, he informed me that his son-in-law’s Fiat car in Chennai was up for sale, if I was interested. It was in very good condition, he affirmed, and would be available at an attractive price of Rs. 62,000 (those were the days before conflict-of-interest was coined as a watchword).  I put the money down right away and drove the car back to Bangalore with the air of an achiever.  The car, I will assert, worked well for about twenty five days.  Around the fourth weekend after the acquisition, I was driving the family out to Whitefield, when a persistent rattling sound attracted our collective attention.  I looked at all the cars on either side to warn them of a problem with their vehicles, but was surprised to see some of them point to mine.  We stopped and I got off to take a look.  The exhaust pipe – a long gloomy-looking metal barrel – was trailing the Fiat by a good two metres, attached to the car by the thinnest of pieces, and enjoying itself in the process, bouncing up and down the road.  There were some pieces of metal sticking out below the chassis as well: no doubt these had, once upon a time, held the exhaust in place.  When I looked under the chassis – the first time I had done so, of course, much of what I saw was corroded, the rest was rather brown, much as if the iron-fortified salt had been liberally applied for keeps.  Other than a smoky sort of smell, all else seemed under control. 

Well, one can be generous and optimistic; these things happen.  With a cloth in my hand, I picked the exhaust pipe up gingerly and dropped it in the boot and we decided to continue.  The engine though now sounded less like a car and more like a rather angry aircraft carrying a bovine with an upset stomach.  Passers-by stopped to stare and shake their heads and, of course, one could not stay immune to feedback.  When, a few minutes later, a couple of lights dropped off, I knew that I was pushing my luck.  That the vehicle brought us back home was a tribute to its will-power and desire to do the right thing by its owner.

The head mechanic at the garage that repaired my car was delighted, for, as he explained gleefully, he had never seen such a decrepit piece.  After changing about everything in it and pocketing the substantial cash (about 15% of the cost of the car), he advised me to sell the car as soon as possible. 

It was time to call Ranga again.  He was his usual courteous self and, when I told him that I had decided to upgrade to a Maruti and wanted to sell the Fiat in Chennai – I can lie to keep a friendship - he was deeply moved and promised all help.  I sent the car to his place and he put an ad in the local paper and, on my behalf, actually negotiated the same price that I had paid him, which convinced me that, when it came to rip-offs, he was non-pareil.

Coincidentally, this period was when the team of respected scientists, led by Mr. Rip-Off got their product stable.   They now had the solution.  But, a solution to what?  For, was there really a problem?  Those who needed iron, I now learnt, were getting free-of-cost pills from the Primary Health Centres and the Tamil Nadu Government did not seem to fall over itself chasing the product. We had invested some more money (our Chairman was known to be persistent) and we virtually owned the company, having put up all the risk capital.  Ranga, in his gentle way, blamed the absence of sales (there were no sales at all, a unique record of sorts) on the bureaucracy, an easy and convenient villian.  In about three years, I gave up, and our Fund moved the investment to a category that could be called “Hopelessly written off, with no Earthly chance of any money coming back.  Try Mars.”

I learnt later that some of our money had gone into a new car, no doubt, for the son-in-law.

         

Blood of The Red Earth

It was about eight in the morning, when we began climbing Shivgiri hill, almost immediately entering a dense wood of wet deciduous trees.  Our host led the way, turning back frequently to signal that we’d need to maintain silence, for our group was a chatty one.  Walking in the Western Ghats is always a bewildering experience, for there are so many species of plants and trees that you cannot even begin to place in your memory and some that make you stare in wonderment: a thick creeper with thorns big enough to rip your skin through, a flourescent plant and trees with trunks thick enough (possibly belonging to the ficus family) to need a jog-around to see the other side.  This is hill with priceless wildlife as well: small and large carnivore, deer and bear.

The previous evening, driving up to our host’s place – located about halfway up the hill - I had wondered aloud if he had cut the road through the hillside to his property.  “Iron ore miners,” he replied briefly.  There was no need to say more for the curse that the mineral heaps upon its environment is well known.

The evidence of iron in the mud and stone was everywhere on the hill, the distinctive red-rust colour in the rock and the rich red colour of the soil.  When a friend fished out a magnet, he was amazed to discover that a stone that he picked up at random stuck fast to it. 

The hill originally had a coffee estate on it, and a couple of small farms.  As the state of the coffee plantation worsened, someone discovered the ore deposits all over the area.  The price of land shot up as one speculator after another sought to make a quick kill, the result being the usual demonstration of avarice all around; even the priest of the local temple that had given the hill its name, was not immune to the disease.

If the miners had their way, this hill would have been history.  So what had prevented this destruction?  Some local stakeholders have fought a battle in the court and won a reprieve for Nature, yet the war is not over.  The week prior to our trip, a machine had apparently come lumbering up to test the ore at a particular spot, so the threat is omnipresent, yet the few brave men who have come thus far to protect the hill remain committed to their goal. 

To many – in India’s cities, in senior roles in large companies, in the media and in critical decision-making roles in public policy – the stalemate at Shivgiri would only be representative of ‘India’s policy paralysis’.  Democracy, they intone, is our bane, for the inclusiveness that the system and the Courts allow prevents economic growth.  Look at China, they then continue, for an example of quick, firm action.  Quick action towards what? I ask.  Higher standard of living at a permanent cost to our water, soil and air?

Do we need to decimate this beautiful landscape, and the flora and fauna within it, to export ore (again, to China) to enrich their economy and to further empower the thugs who run mining businesses in India?  Do we need to wipe out countless species to make even more vehicles, in which we will continue to evaluate our windshield view of the World, from airconditioned comfort?

Much of this ‘growth-at-any-cost’ opinion is from people who have no idea whatsoever of what we will lose, for they canter from airplane to conference to meeting to airplane, seeking solace in the comfort of numbers such as GDP and growth rate percentages, and are as isolated from the real World as the Sultan of Brunei; these are folks so convinced of their perspective that they see any system of checks and balances as obstructionist. If this is not living in an ivory tower, pray what is?  Sadly, this  includes the highest leadership in the country today – business and political leadership - who, while they speak in the English of the elite, use the language of the ignorant.  This is the leadership that has rejected the Gadgil report’s intelligent, reasoned plea to protect the Western Ghats from further mining, dams, polluting industry, such as refining and deforestation.   ..…and they will justify all of this with

“Citizens, for you

It’s this we do

For power is a Nation’s legs

Ignore the carnage

The collateral damage

An omelette needs broken eggs.”

As we reached the top of the hill, the mist engulfed us in one rapturous moment and cleared as quickly as it had come.  The view of Kemmangundi on a bright December morning, above the mist-and-clouds, was magnificient and my mood lit up in sync as well.

Nature can overwhelm like nothing else.  After some chatter and excitement, we settled down to the view, each lost in thought, even as Chief Seattle’s words came back to me, again and again: Rich men, he said wisely, know the price of everything, but the value of nothing.

If Shivgiri has a tale to tell, it is that fighting for what one believes in is the only way.

When Karma met Kulfi

We, Vish and I, are walking through a little fishing village off Karwar, which is on the coast of North Western Karnataka, when we come across this man.  He is decidedly not South Indian or from Maharashtra, which is around the corner, and that makes it curious enough.  This most mysterious pot, covered in red cloth on the back of the cycle makes it downright intriguing.  He calls out to the village folk, but I am not able to quite get an idea of his wares.  Fish?  But why would one sell fish in a fishing village?

So, of course, we must stop and question him.  India has a million untold stories, for there is no one to question a prospective story teller, no one to listen to a history, perhaps part-fable, part-fact.

“Namaskar,what are you selling?” I ask in Hindi.

“Ice cream.”

Vish immediately looks at me, with that familiar longing expression, licking his lips for effect, while I – the ever-cautious, hygiene-obsessed parent – am defensive, signalling out of the corner of my eye that there will be no ice cream, and if he were to be a good boy now and not press the charge, adequate compensation will follow later.

The man’s Hindi is different, it has a practised ease, without the effort that the Southies put in. 

“Where are you from?” I ask.

“Kanpur,” he answers, and there is some pride, a touch of defiance possibly (or was I reading too much?).  Many questions arise instantly: why did you leave?  Why here, and not a shudh-Hindi speaking belt?  Why ice cream?  ..and the family?  

“That’s far away from here.” I begin with a statement-question.

“Yes, Sir.  But we all need a livelihood.” This is the familiar dal-roti argument, so it sounds predictable.  Yet he continues to speak: months of meandering and many different jobs, some menial, others stifling, brought him to Karwar and to the kulfi business.   Working with people was hard, he admits, because values are so different...

Values?  This is different.

“Can we see your ice cream?”

He removes the damp red cloth, lifts the lid of the vessel and we peer in.  Sure enough, this is home made kulfi, in the mould. 

“How much do you sell them for?”

“Rs 5 for the small one,  Rs. 10 for the big one.”

My Hindi is closer to his, so a conversation ensues.  His family has been left behind in Kanpur and he visits them once a quarter, he says and I wonder if he’d save enough money to return after the trip. 

Does he buy a train ticket, or, like many others in those million untold stories, hitch a ride on the national migration network we call Bharatiya Rail?

I change the topic.  Unsure of how kulfi is made, I ask him if this is made out of water.  The body stiffens, the chin firms up and the eyes are now glowing.

“There is not a drop of water in this, it’s all pure milk,” he answers, misunderstanding my question to be a mild accusation, “I sell this to children.” He is now warming up. “Your parents brought you into this world, fed and clothed you,  and looked after you in your childhood, but they are not your companions in Life.  You leave them behind and carry on.  So,” and now the words are tumbling out at rapid pace, almost like the Sant who would preach the sermon from memory, “what stays with you other than your Karma?.”  A rhetorical question and big talk, but very impressive, for we, father and son, are both smitten, one by the surprise of hearing philosophy from a kulfi seller and the other by a language he cannot half follow. “If I use water, I can fool my customers, but I cannot fool my Karma.  There is a bigger power that keeps watch on us and that – power – is our companion.”

The last time I came across this, it was at the front desk in Bangalore of  a 26 billion dollar company: integrity is what you do, when no one is watching, the printed poster on the wall said. 

    ..and yet, the difference is crucial: the company displays this to remind those who work within, the kulfi seller needs no reminder.

“Are you happy?”

“As happy as can be, Sir,” he says, calling out to the children in the village.  …and the funny part is that he does not consider Vish a potential customer, possibly knowing that I am the problem.

The funnier part, of course, is that I would buy the same kulfi if the 26 billion dollar corporation were selling it at ten times the price.

We walk away from the philosopher and, quite literally, into the sunset, but it’s a nice feeling.

A Stone Left Turned

I wonder what it was that got me thinking of Sridhar.  That was a long time ago, the time when Sridhar and I were the best of friends – in our 10^th, 11^th and 12^th – at an age when everything (and everyone) left an impression on you. 

I had just been appointed the captain of the St Patricks House cricket team much to my surprise (until I discovered that no one else wanted it).  A skinny fellow with an outsized nose came up to me on the day of the first (and only) match and assured me that he would score at least twenty runs if he was selected to open the innings.  Looking around at the ragtag team that was assembling on the steps of the pavilion, I made the decision to take him in.  Needless to add, he was out the second ball, an incident I recalled everytime I owed him anything. 

Yet, we became friends, best friends.  It’s hard to imagine two boys who could have been more unlike each other, but I suppose friendships aren’t built on likeness.  Sridhar was always neatly dressed, while I was sloppy and always in hand-me-downs.  His family was a traditional Andhra one, his father never failing to remind the son of the hardships he endured on the way to managerial success in a large company.  My family was anything but traditional.  His mother was semi-literate and self-effacing, my mother erudite and confident.  His house was about as stuffy as mine was airy – indeed, the memory of his home is of a claustrophobic living room, with all the windows shut, and the pungent aroma of an Andhra curry from the kitchen.  Our food at home centred around eggs and bread.

And yet, we were the best of friends.  As we both lived in Indiranagar and cycled to school in our 10^th standard, we spoke of things that most teens ignore – of poverty and its causes, of values and morality, of the need to form people’s attitudes to issues, of the desire to change the World. Sridhar was unbelievably idealistic, believing that another World – just and non-violent - was possible. 

Since the exposition of such views would make him out to be some sort of nut, he wisely kept to himself in class and only had me for a friend. I was as comfortable in his company as he was in mine (many others thought me insufferably intellectual, a charge I have never denied)  and, when the conversations on Utopia were done, he would talk – gently at first, vehemently later – of the challenge of dealing with his father, a dark, unsmiling, intense workaholic if there ever was one.  It was astonishing to learn that he admired his dad about as much as he despised him; he is a self-made, proud man, Sridhar would say, but a terrible father to him and his elder sister, and an uncaring husband.  His father had set the goals out for the son: after PUC, came engineering, followed by a post-grad in the US. 

There was a problem with this script.  For Sridhar was not very good at his academics. 

He’d spend hours at his table in his room, with its closed windows and musty smell, his books opened out in front of him.  He’d work out sum after sum, revise his Chemistry formulae and get his literature lesson learnt thoroughly, but he would also dream lavishly of a future that he’d influence with idealism.  In the ensuing tests, his marks would place him bang in the middle-to-lower-half of the class, much to his father’s noted disapproval. “How much did your best friend get?” his father would ask, and, of course, I had done much better than he had.  To this question, against my own exhortations, Sridhar would never lie, for he believed that a lie would undermine his moral character.  It did not help that our class was filled with high-achievers, and when the ICSE results were announced, he had just about made an average grade.

Sridhar then opted for science (did he have a choice?), while I joined St Josephs College of Commerce.  We would meet every evening at cricket and then spend some time on trivia.  He was being coerced to perform better by his anxious father, yet the results in his I PU were poor and it was clear to me that he was losing interest, even as the pressure from his father – taunts, anger, be-like-me speeches, mild acts of violence like the throwing of books – increased.  The result was predictable: his II PU results were very poor indeed.  Engineering was ruled out.

The father took charge: clearly Bangalore was the wrong place for his son and what was needed was a fresh start.  Admission to BSc at Loyola College – the father’s Alma Mater -   in Chennai followed.  Sridhar and I agreed to keep in touch over mail and he seemed enthused at joining the hostel there, away from the family.

We wrote regularly to each other initially; he had been ragged, and hated the first couple of months but seemed to settle down immediately after.  As the year wore on, his replies became infrequent.  A few months later, I went to Chennai, as a part of the cultural team to take part in Mardi Gras, the IIT Madras festival.  

There I saw Sridhar.

He had long hair and wore a torn pair of jeans and slippers.  In one hand, he had a pair of sticks to play the drums with and in the other a cigarette that had a rather odd aroma that I couldn’t quite place initially.  When he saw me, his eyes registered drugged recognition and he walked up with exaggerated nonchalance.  He was doped alright; he began incoherently, asking me about  family and then speaking of the college, his friends, drums, all in a disengaged language that was unrecognisable, even as I stood appalled and horror-struck.  Looking down at the ‘joint’ in his hand, I made an excuse and walked away, determined to end what remained of our friendship.

There was much I had to learn then about people and what drives them.  

A year later, he fetched up at my college with his college's Western music group for a festival.  If anything, he was worse off than before and spent a large part of his time asking around for ‘grass’ that he could smoke.  I exchanged a word or two, but kept away.  

What does one feel in these situations?  Anger, sadness, contempt?  Resignation?  

In my final year of graduation, Sridhar landed up at home unexpectedly.  His father, he said, had found out that he was on drugs and had taken him home for treatment, locking him up in a room for days on end.  He was now off dope and ready to clear his academic backlog and move on.  We spoke of this and that, my old sense of friendship returning in modest measure, for in those years, we had shared so many stories, many secrets too........he knew me better than anyone else and that feeling is hard to get rid off.

As he ended the conversation, he asked me - I remember this as clearly as if it were yesterday - if he could borrow two hundred rupees for the journey to Chennai, that he would return by money order in the coming days.

The year was 1987; two hundred rupees was not a small sum of money.  I should have said No.

As I now inhale the fragrance of the evening– the radiant Kalyana Soungandhigam flower on my terrace, with its delicate white bloom and nectar filled stem – it’s rummy to think of us people.  Nature, you will agree, is immensely simple in contrast.

I never heard from Sridhar again.

Vicky does a Star Turn

In the new millenium, one species that rapidly vanished from the corporate workforce has been the Confidential Secretary and these unique specialists now work only with those who occupy high positions of redundancy in Indian companies.  Right until the late ‘90s though, they existed in strength and were almost entirely alike one another: largely women, a chatty, gossipy lot, with distinct sartorial tastes, who knew much more than they should about things like managers’ salaries,  transfers of executives, annual performance ratings, who had said what about whom, and how everyone, no matter the age, fudged travel bills and the like.  Hence the word ‘Confidential’, which, if irony had a throne, would be king.

Most of them in Bangalore were Anglo-Indian, Goan or from Mangalore, their convent education and putative command over English and European customs getting them their job after a course in a finishing school.  As a class of employees, they were reasonably content with their lot – hardly aspiring for higher roles in the organisation -  and more bothered with leaving the office on the dot of five and plunging into the domestic and social life around them. 

In the years I spent in the corporate sector, there were a number of them I encountered, but this piece is about the secretary who worked for two of us in investments. Vicky Carvalho - that was her name - was in a class of her own.  When I first joined the company, a colleague asked who would be the secretary I’d be working with.  “I haven't bothered to find out.” was my response.  “If it is Vicky, it is the only thing that you will be bothered about,” he replied, and, boy, was he right.

Vicky was not just incompetent, she set new standards in the Science of Incompetence.  Her ability to make mistakes – new, creative ones every week and repetition of old ones every day – was legendary and a talent, no less, that’d leave lesser mortals gasping for breath as they scratched their heads to find out where to begin sorting the mess.   

If she had to prepare an expense statement from a set of bills and saw “In Room Dining Available 24 X 7” anywhere, she would multiply 24 by 7 and add it to the bill (I am not making this up, honest).  And this was one of her minor errors.    

If you dictated an official letter that she had to type into the computer, her first draft would have about fifteen mistakes, including ones that a six-year old would have avoided, such as spelling words such as ‘the’ in most innovative ways, adding an extra one for good luck or leaving it out altogether.  The letter in hand, she’d come rushing up to you breathlessly as if she had just seen a dragon outside the window.

Vicky never walked like mere mortals, instead rushing everywhere as if to convince you of her intention to do a good day’s work.  So, she'd rush up to you and exclaim that she had read the page after printing it out and that it was fine.  Once you swallowed twice, counted to ten, drank some water and let her know where those fifteen mistakes were, Vicky would be look crushed, her face would fall and she would most regretfully say her Sorry sixteen times in rapid succession – one for each mistake, and one for the honey pot.  Her second draft would have another fifteen, since she believed deeply in statistical consistency.  And so on.  Her closest friend in office was the bottle of correction ink (which she called “white fluid” to the endless amusement of a rather wayward colleague).  When you had the final letter ready, much paper having been churned, she would spill coffee on it, so that we could begin all over again. 

Vicky reserved her best for the CEO though.  Once, when his secretary was on leave, he asked her to mail a crucial letter to our financial partner, warning them against dealing with a particular client.  Vicky rose to the occasion and generated a smokestack of drafts, before printing out the final version.  After taking the signature of the now-pink-in-the-face-CEO (and he could go rich pink, I promise), she couriered it.  No, she didn't send it to the intended recipient, but to the client against whom we had advised.  The client, of course, had strong views about us writing to someone else about him and let us have those views in clear, precise, thoughtfully-scribbled, richly-endowed, vibrantly adjectivised English what he thought of us.  

When the roof came down, our Lady Mr. Bean was on her annual vacation in Goa.

I began to call her Vicky-Doosron-se-kaam-Carvalho.  Wasted, since she didn’t understand a word of Hindi.

Occasionally, there were tasks of greater import assigned to her by well-meaning but goofy people, who had just attended training programs on How to Motivate your Star Employees by Setting Challenging Goals.  The ensuing periods were traumatic and should have been categorized as Level 3 in the Unmitigated Disaster Index: Vicky would fly into a panic because she understood nothing, would drive others into a panic as well, re-do her work about twenty times, rush off to Goa in between for a friend’s wedding, post a personal birthday card to a client instead of a bill and call up my long-suffering CEO on the intercom and ask him to fetch her some tea.   My colleague and I were free-loaders in this entertaining performance, as long as, of course, we did not have any work for her to do.

Astonishingly, no one really speculated on just when she’d be asked to resign.  She was a gentle soul, more hapless and confused than anything else and somewhere in our bureaucratic mess, there was, I suspect, a hefty dose of mis-placed sympathy which pre-empted such action.  “Poor thing, nobody will employ her,” was the apologetic refrain, one that, I admit, I heartily disagreed with.  Instead, the organisation gave her minimal salary hikes in the annual review, which she seemed to cheerfully accept: she would say Thank You about six times, with a Sorry added in when least required.  Most (including the writer) who did the speculation on the pink-slip-for-Vicky actually resigned much before that event instead.  

Yet, one day, the pink slip did arrive at her desk, much after I had left the organisation (but then, one pursues these matters with abiding attention).  Vicky reacted very surprisingly, engaging a lawyer to fight for her reinstation or, in its absence, additional compensation.  My sympathies were clear: the lawyer needed all our emotional support, for he had to deal with her, possibly everyday. 

One can only speculate on the result of that momentous court battle.  The important question that Civilisation needs to pose to itself instead is : who typed the legal draft?

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.