When the curd rice goes sour

The business of venture capital is a funny one: you meet many business owners who seek your company’s funds for their business, yet you invest in about three per cent of them.  The analogy of searching for a gilted needle, one that hopefully will not prick you, in a haystack is possibly appropriate.  There is another  technique of VC investment which a friend of mine perfected; he used to invest in everything that came his way (or almost everything), in the hope that you’d win some and that averages would work out; in the sophisticated language of finance, this technique is called Spray & Pray.  I am, though, not going to elaborate on this further, focusing instead on archetype characters who came to us seeking funds, particularly in the mid-nineties, for their growing businesses.

Many of these companies were in Chennai or Coimbatore, run by conservative first-generation businessmen, largely in engineering.  The typical owner of such a business knew nothing about venture capital (except a belief that it was free money).  Flocks of intermediaries – in the sophisticated language of finance they are called investment bankers -  would descend on him promising to present his company’s story attractively to VCs and get (free) money.  The stories were typical – say, an engineer who once worked for a Tata Motors or an Ashok Leyland strikes out on his own in an industrial shed by pawning his wife’s jewellery.  Much sweat, working capital and toil in the Chennai heat later, he is ready.  Ready? For, well, more money (so that he can sweat and toil more and beg his Bank Manager for Working Capital enhancement).    After much persuasion, one intermediary would get the mandate to raise money for him.  And then the tamasha would begin.

The investment bankers would initially let us know that there was an incredible opportunity coming our way, at which point I'd fish out a well-used notepad.  They would begin their pitch by asserting that the promoter of the company was ‘God-fearing’, prompting me to doodle a decorated ‘G’ – often with an elephant head - on my pad.  Most of these promoters were (and are) extraordinarily superstitious and will believe in any vibhuti-spinning saffroner who tells them that their best times are yet to come and put up his photograph alongside the pantheon on the stained factory wall.  

Inevitably, such promoters, the investment bankers would continue, came from a ‘Good Family’, enabling the adding of a ‘GF’ to my scribbling pad.  Evidently, this was meant to illustrate that the promoters would never, never cheat you.

This assertion always carried with it a body language of insistence, as if I was displaying incredulity at the thought that anyone could possibly come from a good family.

Since scepticism is a part of my genetic algorithm (also called chromosomes), I had two moments of truth to form my own judgement : the first was to compare the company’s profits with the cost of the car that the entrepreneur used to drive around in (often an imported Merc). Many businessmen had cars that cost more money than the annual profits of their company. Those were the days before car financing was popular, and an outsized car (as was most often the case), meant that the business was making more money that the financial statements cared to admit.  In 1990s Coimbatore, in particular, an entrepreneur’s notch in society was defined by his car, so this was one reckless decision these fellows normally took.

The second moment of truth came when you asked the investment banker or the owner (at a subsequent meeting), why the profit margins were low.

The standard reply would be: ‘Saar, we don’t show all the profits on the books’.  Easily interpreted, this means that some – possibly much - of the business happens outside the company’s accounts in different names or cash, to evade tax.

Actually, the standard reply was not just what is above.  It would be: ‘Saar, we don’t show all the profits on the books, but after you invest in us, we definitely will,’ on the rather sanguine assumption that he was talking to a naïve, believing optimist (occasionally, one will admit, it was not an assumption).  

It never ceases to amaze me that these businessmen had (and have) compartmentalised sections in their heads: the section on religion and the one on ethics were entirely mutually exclusive and did not even acknowledge each other.  Most of them though had a mathematical equation between religion and tax evasion: a defined part of the evasion was duly deposited in their favourite temple’s hundi (hence, my belief that temples should be taxed at 30 percent).

But back to the story.  So, he was God-fearing, came from a good family, yet was willing to shaft the Tax Departments, but would never trick the biggest risk-taker in his business, his equity partner; it was dizzying to make sense of.  The standard scribble on my notepad for the occasion was ‘GAT-F’, for God-And-Tax-Fearing.  (I often wondered, if after our meeting, as these guys gulped their curd-rice-and-mango-pickle down, what they though of us as a species: idiots and troglodytes?)

The most important question that I would then ask concerned the family: if there was a son, what was he doing? An MBA in Australia instantly meant that he was being primed to take over from the father, in which case, you could be assured of trouble if you did not exit at the right time – prompting a ‘Son-in-MBA’ or SiMBA doodle from me on the pad.  As the case headed to a conculsion, the SiMBA doodle was the most damaging piece of evidence, the confession-in-open-court, so to speak. 

If the page on my notepad  contained SiMBA and GAT-F, the final scribble would be ‘F-O’, which, while left to your imagination, meant a rejection of the investment ‘opportunity’.

Chingari Koi Bhadke

The United Nations, in the month of December last year, decided to declare March 3^rd – today – as the World Wildlife Day. Part of the objective of this declaration, as I understand from the material available on it, is to celebrate diversity and plant and animal life on our planet.  And yet, reflecting on the path traversed by our country, let alone the rest of the planet, and looking ahead with approximate extrapolation, it is impossible to feel anything other than pessimistic. 

The two keys to preserving India’s wildlife are habitat conservation and protection.  Yet, even as copious sums of money seem available to set off on a mission to Mars, celebrate the birthdays or anniversaries of forgettable men and allot Rs. 1000 crores to India’s sugar mills to export its excess production – a profligate waste of national wealth if there ever was one -  every National Park in India is understaffed by at least fifty percent and annual Forest Department budgets for operations and intelligence gathering are squeezed and cut, since our forests do not have ‘economic value’ and our tigers do not vote.  Eight rhinos have been poached from Kaziranga in 2014 alone for their horns (about thirty were taken in the previous year), while a number of leopards have been killed in man-animal encounters, the result of unchecked, flagrant destruction of their habitat.  Small animals such as pangolins and otters, and many species of birds have been decimated to the point of extinction for their meat and pelt.   The situation in the Wildlife Sanctuaries and Reserve Forests, lower in the protection category than National Parks and where tigers are generally not present, is much worse, with a collective war being declared on wildlife of any kind and the mass logging of forest cover.  Many of these areas have been opened up to quarrying and mining, reducing large areas to moonscapes as in the case of Bellary in North Karnataka. 

Indian wildlife is in unprecedented crisis.

Voltaire famously said, “With great power comes great responsibility” (the quote now being attributed to Spiderman’s creator).  Yet, the Governments at the Centre and State have been active, irresponsible participants in the carnage of wild India.  For every token expression of care and love for wildlife exhibited by the Ministers and their minions – a sponsoring of a tiger in a zoo here, or a billboard on wildlife protection there – a mass and unhindered ‘Movement for Mass Destruction’ is underway across India to destroy wildlife habitat and, in the process, fauna itself, by providing environmental clearances for projects irresponsibly, without due diligence or the application of science.  The intents of the perpetrators are no less criminal than that of a poacher, but are clad in the respectable cloak of ‘development’: the large hydro projects in the North East that are destroying thousands of hectares of forests are a flagship example. 

In 2013 alone, according to Sandrp, 21805 megawatts of hydro generation was sanctioned in the North East.  If and when this is all done, half of whatever is generated will be lost in the transmission losses to the destinations across the country, while a large part of the rest will be used to supply subsidised power to the superficial indices of urban lifestyle, with no accountability or economic incentive for energy conservation.  The ecological value of these forests in the North East is incalculable, not just from what is known of it, but, critically, from what we do not know.  As an analogy, would you, blindfolded,  pick a piece of jewellery from your locker and throw it away on the assumption that it is an imitation piece?  Yet, our Nation does this every day in the pursuit of a seemingly respectable growth rate in GDP, our benchmark being China which has destroyed its habitat and wildlife almost completely.  This is not just insanity, it is deliberate, sustained malevolence against Nature and its constituents to whom we have now dedicated certain days in the year in pathetic recompense. 

As criminal as the Government’s fondness for hydro projects in the North East is the deliberate mendacity of the Kerala’s political establishment in twisting Dr. Madhav Gadgil’s report on the Western Ghats to meet its own ends, thereby encouraging the steady, unswerving logging and land usurpation along the Western Ghats, South India’s jewel in the crown.  Entire classes of the animal kingdom, such as fish, have not even been considered as wildlife where protection is concerned, which is why the science of fish conservation has no takers and the nationwide mining of sand at an unprecedented rate for the construction industry continues, in flagrant violation of the orders of the National Green Tribunal.  When all the sand is gone, the result would be the partial or full drying up of our rivers in summer, a classic case of culling the golden goose.  Across India, lands have been opened up for mining, with Big Business building a case for ‘mining our way to prosperity’, a false, and hopelessly inadequate argument.

These are grim, worrisome stories that are the sad harbinger of a future where India’s spectacular wildlife will be reduced to the sepia-tinted photographs of a then-remorseful generation.The media has (with few notable exceptions) eschewed from reporting much of this with the seriousness it deserves, focusing much more on the ‘decision-paralysis’ in the Government. But even they have been surprised with the unseemly haste with which the current Minister occupying the chair in Paryavaran Bhavan, who has no knowledge of wildlife or forests whatsoever, has rubber stamped his approvals on large projects with high-impact possibilities that needed considered, independent evaluation.  He has been ably aided in this effort by a sham of a committee group called the Expert Appraisal Committee, which is staffed by a bunch of bureaucrats with little appreciation of the impact of their thumb impression; as an example, the River and Hydro group of the EAC is headed by a undistinguished former Secretary of Coal.  Under the Minister, they have shown little capability to dissent, for didn’t Upton Sinclair once say “Its difficult to get a man to understand something, if his salary depends on his not understanding it?” And backing the honcho at the Ministry is the Head Honcho who, despite his election to the Rajya Sabha from the North East, understands little of its wildlife or forests.  In the science of ecology, it is ignorance, not familiarity, that breeds contempt.  The Head Honcho has, in the evening of his political life, wearing the blinkers of long-discredited economic theory that does not recognise the value of ecosystem services,  initiated the assault on India’s wild heritage, for it is from his office that missives on relaxation of environment conservation norms have originated.

India’s political leadership of the Twenty First Century has, in essence, abandoned a truly rich culture of tolerance that was displayed over centuries of co-existence in chasing a chimera.  It has forsaken its responsibility, blinded by greed for ill-gotten wealth and the continuance of political power. 

It is Anand Bakshi whose words drive me to pessimism, for he said

Chingaari koi bhadke
To saawan us’e bujhaaye
Saawan jo agan lagaaye, us’e kaun bhujaaye?
Patajhad jo baagh mein ujaade
Woh baagh bahaar khilaaye
Jo baagh bahaar mein ujade, us’e kaun khilaaye?

(If someone lights a spark

Then the rains will put it out
But if the rains start a fire, who will put it out?

If a garden is destroyed in the Autumn
It will bloom again in the Spring
But who can revive the garden that is destroyed in Spring?)

Pessimism does not, however, mean losing hope.  If March 3^rd is to have any meaning for us, it should be reflected in our actions.  At the risk of sounding didactic,  I would ask you to look beyond your immediate world of home-and-work to get involved: since none of us can actually be there,  involvement means learning about wildlife conservation issues and taking action sitting just where we are, using the social media tools available to us.  Two websites that I recommend for regular, sustained engagement are

www.conservationindia.org

www.sanctuaryasia.org

The few men and women who are fighting to save our wildlife need your active, sustained and vocal support and there are notable recent examples where, for instance, the usage of social media to register your voice of protest has created real change.  Do let me know if I could help catalyse your involvement in any way.  

For Whom the Bells Toll 'Bong'

“…and let me tell you something you don’t know,” the short, dark, tubby man said, half rising from his chair, glaring at me with bloodshot eyes and thumping the table with his fist in anger, “when I was at IIT, I once got into a fight and killed a fellow.  I am capable of doing it again.” Now, you might expect me to be alarmed by this, but to those who knew Dhruv Jyoti Das it was as innocuous a statement as expressing an urgent need to use the washroom.  I suppressed a smile with some difficulty, for his face was a comical sight and, of course, this only made him madder.

No one who has met Das can ever forget him.  We had funded  DJ (as the humanoid was affectionately called) a small sum of seed money to develop a technology where he added a product resembling thermocool to concrete and then applied this on the roofs of tobacco-curing barns, saving a whole lot of energy.  The farmer would pay for this and, from then on, save the equivalent money in firewood costs in a single tobacco season; the Tobacco Board was as excited as the farmers were, there was no competition in the market, the pricing was immensely profitable and my company obviously believed that we had a winner. 

…till we got to know Das well (which took about ten minutes on the outside).  He was a dark, balding, paunchy fellow, with a clipped, bushy moustache that enhanced a permanent scowl.  He was as short in height as he was on the basics of finance and, indeed, as he was on temper and, by the time I joined the company, my colleague was searching for a basket to throw his towel in.  On my first day at the venture fund -  in 1992 - I was asked to take over the monitoring of our investment in Jyoti Agrotherm, and SNS, for he was that colleague, promised all support (SNS was never one to miss out on good, clean fun, albiet from a respectful distance).

DJ lost little time in letting me know just who was the boss in the room and meetings with him remain etched in memory.  Cheryl, our irrepressible receptionist, would call on the intercom, when he walked into our office with an authoritative stride.  In her sparkling, formal tone, she’d inform me of his arrival, but would immediately depart into the recesses of the office, coughing as she suppressed her laughter at hearing me groan and complain.  For, at every meeting that DJ had with us, there would be a general increase in the room temperature, owing to his entirely ridiculous demands from us, rather needless aggression and the absence of any progress on the project.  As he got agitated (over everything), he’d begin to talk loudly, even shout, his tummy swaying with animated fervour, hands gesticulating wildly, often pounding each other or the table, and indignance rendering him speechless with anger, while his moustache did a delicate dance of emotion.  He once began drooling out of the corner of his mouth, and I wondered if he was having a heart attack or if there was something behind me – a poster perhaps -  that I should know about, but I dared not ask, just in case he’d throw an excited fist in my direction.

I learnt to take some of this in my stride, yet most of those in office – we had a staff of about thirty then – found the performance supremely entertaining.  Our conference room had a half-glass partition and a lazy afternoon presented everyone a perfect opportunity to walk by and sneak a look at a fuming DJ from the corner of one’s eyes, giving the waiting minions an update leading to a collective doubling up in laughter, which I’d clearly hear.  On his leaving the office, I would be surrounded by colleagues who’d want a detailed Minutes-of-the-Meeting tabled immediately, with stereophonic sound and special effects. 

The only person DJ was scared of was his formidable wife - a nominee on the company board -  whose name I now thankfully cannot recall.  As a little child reading Amar Chitra Katha comics, I had nightmares of Shurpanakha, yet never believed that something like that apparition could approach reality, but it did.  On one occasion when I was stupid enough to agree to a Board Meeting at their home, the husband was joined by his wife in a no-holds-barred verbal assault on my employer.  We were, I was informed, the single biggest reason for the company’s failure by not agreeing to invest more money and asking for ridiculous reports such as a Income Statement or expecting to make profits from such a venture.  As the lady raised her voice, I noticed DJ recede into a hitherto-unseen shell, much as an wolf would on seeing a leopard.  He emerged about half an hour later and spent a few minutes calming her down, making me believe that, with adequate training and possibly a gene transplant, he could become human one day.

Now, all this meant that the company could only go in one direction and indeed it did.  When he owed enough creditors sufficient sums of money, DJ did the disappearing act one morning leaving us to file a winding-up petition, which exercise probably cost more than the investment in the company.  Yet, for everyone in the company, me possibly excluded, the investment had generated an incalculable Return on Investment. 

Many years later, sitting in front of a furious young Mr. Mehta in another office, I wondered if I had signed on for The-Reincarnation-of-DJ-Das or that the Higher Power had singled me out for treatment on account of some past unforgivable sin.  But I shall leave that story for another day…..

 

  

The Case Against Sugar

In the first week of January 2014, a group of medical and nutritional experts in the U.K. launched a rather unusual initiative called ‘Action On Sugar’ to influence the food industry to reduce added sugar in foods by 40% over four years.  If anything, this was long overdue.  Across the Western World and increasingly in India, sugar is emerging as the single biggest cause of a growing lifestyle disease epidemic.  India, I read, is the World’s largest consumer of sugar and with a growing appetite for junk food; Pepsi recently announced an investment of about five billion dollars (rupees thirty thousand crores) in helping us on our collective way to the hospital. The Action on Sugar needs to originate here.

Refined sugar is a relatively new invention to the World and is newer to India.  In our country in the 1970s, when I was growing up, sugar was rationed carefully and it was common for the poorer economic sections of society to drink their tea without it; indeed I clearly remember my gardener drinking his tea, with a piece of jaggery by the side, that he’d bite into once in a way.  Historically, sweets (or ‘sweetmeats’ as Indian sweet dishes were called) were consumed on special occasions and made with jaggery.  Acreage under sugarcane in India grew dramatically in the 1970s, with irrigation support and the green revolution, and sugar has since been widely and easily available – interestingly, this is the period in which obesity, blood pressure and illnesses resulting out of a sedentary, rich-food lifestyle have made their firm presence in all of urban India and in parts of rural India as well. 

Refined sugar has no nutrition at all and is a source of completely unnecessary calories; there are multiple sources of sweet carbohydrates in every part of India that have higher nutrition.  Sugar is known to be addictive as well: in a French study in 2007, it was reported that when rats were given the choice between sugar and cocaine, they chose sugar overwhelmingly.  Even the rats that had been given cocaine over a period, to get them addicted to it, seemed to prefer sugar.  There is enough anecdotal evidence of this in our lives as well; the craving for a sugary dessert after a meal can be intense and continuous.  While sweet dishes as dessert after every meal, rather than a fruit, are conspicuously sugary, it is the insidious addition of sugar to human diet that has caused the addiction.  All of us, children in particular, consume sugar in most processed foods: sauces and ketchup, ‘healthy’ juices that have added sugar, brown and white beverages, cookies and bakery products, junk food and bread spreads.  

As I began to study the health effects of sugar, there was as much learning as there was worry; what follows in this paragraph must make us sit up and take notice.  Refined sugar is obviously a major contributor to obesity and is a toxin for those with diabetes.  In addition, a US study by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta and Harvard School of Public Health showed a link between high levels of sugar consumption and a 275% percent higher relative risk of dying from cardiovascular disease where refined sugar consumption was about a quarter or more of a person’s calorie intake.  Dr. Aseem Malhotra, an eminent cardiologist in the UK who is leading the fight against sugar, suspects that sugar causes the liver to produce more uric acid, and this leads to high blood pressure and much of the resultant illnesses, including dementia.  Sugar, he further adds, could be as inimical to the liver as alcohol, contributing to a non-reversable condition called non-alcohol fatty liver disease – the second biggest cause of liver failure after alcohol (which, by the way, is from sugar as well!). Others point to a possible role that sugar could be playing in some cancers.  No wonder then that Professor Simon Capewell of the University of Liverpool’s Institute of Psychology, Health and Society labels sugar ‘the new tobacco’.  Much of this information has been known for years, but it all came together to make a compelling case only with the increased focus in the Western World on public health which now centres around the consumption of toxic junk, including refined sugar.

So, how much sugar is OK to consume?

In January 2014, a peer-reviewed article in the Journal of Dental Research suggested that added sugars should not be more than five per cent of calorie intake, to protect teeth and gums and most health specialists agree with this estimate.  This means a maximum of six teaspoons of sugar for a person consuming two thousand calories a day.  To most of us, this will mean a lifestyle change.  Remember the sugar you consume in your tea or coffee is part of the story and much of the sugar you consume is involuntary, as you eat processed food: as a yardstick for comparison, a can of any of the cola brands in the market contains the equivalent of nine spoons of sugar (actually, high fructose corn syrup, a cheaper alternative to sugar, but with the same deleterious effects), which is your quota for a day and a half. 

It is time to act now – individually and collectively - to neutralise an avoidable epidemic. Cut your sugar to the minimum – it’s the least you can do to help yourself.

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.