Trees, teens and philosophical totems

I could have sworn this tiny mango sapling wasn't there the last time I walked by this patch at Random Rubble, about three weeks ago.  At that time, Balappa, the assiduous Pujaree whose work philosophy is to chop away relentlessly at things until the 4 pm timer goes off in his otherwise somewhat muddled head,  had cleared some overgrowth, the result of a vibrant monsoon.  

I have no problem with overgrowth - nothing better for the soil if it's rich grass - but, with the onset of summer (which should be a month from now, the risk of a blaze rises.  So, the undergrowth had to make way. 

Am I glad I got this done!  This little sapling is an infant, now thankfully no longer abandoned to its fate.  Seenappa gave it a supportive stick to lean on and I wished it well from my heart, for wild mango is the handsomest and most useful of trees, the branches beckon Apis dorsata to colonise there (that's the wild rock bee that can give you quite a sting, but are ecologically priceless) and the buzz, when the flowering occurs, rivals the whispers in the corridors of power in North Block.  The wild mango's roots bind soil too, which is why it is such a precious riparian tree.  And, if all these ecosystem services were not enough, the often-sour fruits can drive an elephant nuts (now, in my excitement, I am getting my puns all mixed up, isn't it?). 

What I did stumble upon three weeks ago in the same clearing was another
bonus though: a sandalwood sapling, carefully concealed behind the electric pole and peeping out at us in mock surprise.

I know that, with sandalwood, I should keep my emotions aside (preferably in a black UV-protected biodegradable plastic bag) for it could be here-today-gone-tomorrow, yet over the years, I have become more accommodative of these things, emotional, but indifferent to loss and gain.  I don't get angry as much, I guess, which is, on reflection, not a wholly admirable trait.  Is that what growing up does to you?

Just ahead in a clump of lantana, reaching for the sky and seeking to break free of the tangle that it is bound in, is the common Black Siris or the bhilwara sapling and, once again, I have no recollection of how it came to be (this is becoming a habit, this lack of cognition).  Bhilwara is grown for its wood and is a happily native species, attaining majestic height.  It has stature in local folklore too, as does most species that provide good wood, and Ananda's father speaks of a male and a female in bhilwara, which, I think, are two sub-species of Albezia; this one, Albezia odoratissima he says has a dark inner bark, while the other one has a reddish one.  

These tales are important, for they speak of deeper knowledge and understanding and a science that has got us this far.  And these tales are being fast forgotten, which is why we need to record them for we will never know what we have missed by not knowing what we do not know.  If that does not confuse you......

The lakkali saplings (vitex negundo) that we had planted four years ago are doing well after a growth spurt this last monsoon: as with most teenagers, these two couldn't be more different from each other: one is a scraggly tall fellow looking quite sorry for himself, the other better developed and seemingly more stable.  Give them their space and time, I have often advised others about bringing up teens, and have never followed it myself generally, but with these two, I promise I have done just that.  Lakkali will grow to be a large shrub and is a splendid plant for the border of any land; make an emulsion of its leaves with a couple of other species as well and you have a useful organic insecticide.  Does that leave you convinced?  (Did you need convincing? is a better question....)

A few feet away is the mahua tree that I had planted along with the lakkali.  Some years ago, my travel-till-you-drop buddy, Hanumanth, took my photo hugging a large mahua near our guest house in the Pench tiger reserve and I got a sapling shortly thereafter for the farm (the things that photos do to you....).  This teen has super potential to be a high performer (hi-po is what some folks term this phrase, which makes it sound like a bloody infectious disease).  

Mahua can grow to be a giant, provide flowers that get you high and seeds that get you oil (non-edible, unless processed) and is, generally, an asset to the forest.  Giant it will be one day, yet, for the moment, I am the one in charge and I shall watch - as bosses nauseatingly say - its progress with interest.  

...and, ladies and gentlemen, these are my twin-babies.  A fig and a peepal that are giants today, my little ones that have outgrown me by miles. At around fifteen, they are still teens - precocious, generous, social teens.  Every time I walk by, I give them a hug and caress their large trunk, the rough bark of which is a highway for a variety of ants and the canopy a perch nonpareil.  

On reflection, I am not ready to be that monk-who-is-indifferent yet.  It's a humbling thought. 

I walk up to the front, by the shed, and watch the rays stream through this patch of mango, laburnum, lime, tamarind and ficus, woven with creepers and shrub, a mosaic of wild melancholy, garnished by sunbeam.  You could stand there and watch the sun stream all day, which is exactly what I intend to do (well, until I get hungry, that is).

And then another little mango sapling catches my eye, lit by the rays of ebullience.  

This sapling has a low chance of making it big; the competition for light is intense in this wild little nook at Random Rubble, I think.  Should I dig it out and transplant it - change the nursery school, shall we say? Let be for now, for no infant would like to know that she was written off once as failure. 

That is about as erudite as a parent can get.   

Desideratum

All that I have learnt is that

Our only goal now is

To give land back - every square metre we can -

In the condition in which we usurped it

To the only Power that ever owned it

We own nothing

Except stewardship

The ephemeral thrill

Of the productivity drill

The harbinger of tillage

And every tool of pillage

The mechanical whirring of GDP and wealth

And winning a non-war and the stresses of stealth

We own nothing

Take them away.

Our joy isn't from them.  It never was

Our land isn't ours.  Honest.  It never was.

Our joy is when, from the stands, we watch

The Power at real work

Bring back the soil, the grass and a long lost shrub

And push a stone aside for a growing fig

Our joy is when fireflies light up the night

Where an insecticide once darkened the day

Our joy is when

We accept with humility

That we scarcely did a thing right

But, with rare courage,

In the end

Have done the right thing.

When It Rains, It Pours

Not a good year, Ramappa said.  

I had stopped by to chat with him.  He is normally an effusive chap, with a ready smile and the standard question, “When did you come?”  Today, the question was asked but the smile was weary and worn. 

It has been a hard year in our parts; agriculture seems increasingly stitched together by a thread that will cause it to tear further as it comes apart at the seams, a mosaic of the inevitable, the causative, the jagged and the linear.  Rice – a rich-red large grain called dodaberu nellu and the staple of a feast – was given up years ago, when the rains played truant and low-cost polished grain inundated the ration basket; the road to hell, they say, is paved with good intention.  

The ragi economy, once the palliative, inches towards history, as rains this year were on, then off, then, well, on again at the wrong time; the elephants were missing, but wild boar marked their attendance alright.  Ours is a hardy ragi-consuming landscape; it is eaten twice a day, stored for a year.  Ragi is an insurance, it is belief, faith.  An emotion. 

Ragi needs labour to harvest –now rarer than it ever has been and therefore costly - and the threshing machine is a feature these days, not a bug.  Capital and weather combined, the risk category has changed to high now, but – here’s where economics stays theoretical – the return hasn’t.  At twenty-five rupees a kilo, a price fixed by an oligopoly of buyers with capital and staying power, it has been a ruinous crop to grow this year.  The TN Government could buy ragi at the minimum support price and change the script, but wishes aren’t horses…..   

Ragi is grown for another reason, of course: its straw is staple cattle feed in our parts, but that – the cattle economy, in normal times an epitome of stability and the only source of capital gain, when a calf or milch cow is sold – has had a lightning strike with the lumpy skin disease; vets – private and Government – and quacks have made their money, a wicked transfer of wealth from the believer to the soothsayer, from the prey to the predator. Seenappa paid twenty thousand, then sold his cow for nothing, in despair; he is minus seventy overall in this asset.  

So, ragi, avarekkai and mustard, all low-input, rain-fed and low-maintenance crops, and cattle don’t work anymore; roses, chrysanthemums, beans and tomatoes are the choice for they work occasionally with fluctuating return; these are high-input, pesticide-heavy games of chance, each harvest a lottery with the price a game of Russian roulette, for the revolver is loaded with debt.  What kind of economy is that?  

Ramappa sits on his haunches & looks away.  “I will not grow ragi anymore,” he says.  I don’t believe him, for ragi isn’t a crop, you see. It is an emotion.  

It is time to fix what is broken before that changes.  

Crypto, Idiots and Why Some People Need a Haircut

 On Dec 6th last year, I wrote, with a skip and a whoop!, that I had finally found a research methodology to study Idiots:
"I am deeply touched that millions of people are buying cryptocurrency. 
For years, I had been searching for a reliable way to measure the percentage of Idiots in a population.  The current population of gullible, naïve, inept, self-delused, infatuated, dense, obsessed, asinine, gauche, gumption less, bird-witted, desipient, unstable idiots on our planet is officially at about 240 million, which translates to about 72% of the population of the United States (do not read anything more into this). These are people (crypto buyers, not Americans) who wake up all animated in the morning and shout, “Is there a new scheme to defraud me?” and if they hear an echo, they do a funds transfer.”

In the last year since that deeply sentimental story, I had been rubbing my journalistic hands and eagerly waiting to do a follow-up breaking story on this.  And then this Giant Idiot who set up a crypto exchange thing called FTX goes and dirties the carpet now and the Crypto Idiots are exiting in droves, thereby nipping a promising career (mine) in the bud.  
ps: I said bud, not dud.  

Now think about this for a sec: Mr. Giant Idiot’s name is Sam Bankman-Fried and those private equity shipwrecks still gave him money.  I mean, would you – someone with common sense untainted by a finance education – give, like, three hundred million (dollars, not yen) to a guy called Suresh Bheja- Fried?  There’s a museum somewhere - Gallery of Pantheon of Idiots – with exhibits marked ‘DO NOT touch’ and in the room reserved for private equity, it says, ‘Specimens: Private Equity.  DEFINITELY Out of touch.’ because they have cotton wool doused in argemon oil between their ears and spend their days inhaling hydrogen.  

The reason I am so upset, troubled, distressed, is that this Giant Idiot has messed up my aspirations to serious Journalism because I had forecasted that, “The most heartening news is that the population of Idiots is exploding and new precious insights are a daily occurrence”, which forecast is now not even worth its weight in dogecoin or something.  

 
After all this FTX stuff, Bitcoin - which is for Puritanical Idiots only, a sub-species that believes in the Real Thing and which was worth Rs 37 lakhs last year this day - is now worth only 14 lakhs, in fake money.  So, because of this Bheja-Fried guy - who urgently needs a haircut, will someone please oblige? – all those who made heaps of fake money, have now got less fake money.  

So, for the sake of furthering that thing called Deep Research, please consider buying a few bitcoins as they slide down (to raise funds, you can sell your Rolls Royce on Olx. If the buyer has my name, it will be a coincidence, I promise). 

Two hands and One Mouth Don't Make a Threesome

Following some thought-provoking analyses, I have concluded that there are 19 things that irritate me most (this does not include people asking me how I earn money; that is part of the list of 24,987 things that irritate me second most).  Of the List-Of-19, the one at the top is the sight of someone digging his nose with deep introspection in the hope of recovering some lithium for his electric scooter.  But a close second is when cab drivers insist on doing more things at the same time than are possible with various parts of their (visible) anatomy.  Possible, that is, even for cab drivers, who are certified lunatics in general.
Now, I am all for multi-tasking: I can sleep and dream at the same time.  But that is about the limit.   In case you didn’t know, George Bush – that guy with the IQ of a desiccated coconut – could either chew gum or think and when he tried to do both, there was a chemical reaction and potassium permanganate fumes surrounded him (from the usual look on his mug, you could reliably conclude that other fumes surrounded him too, but Facebook is watching, so I will curb the urge).  And he ran the US for many years, which only proves that you don’t need to multi-task (no, no, he didn’t run the US, as in Usain Bolt, he ran the US as in doing things to screw up the economy and inventing weapons of mass destruction (ie, himself).  There’s a subtle difference.).  Look, even Quick Gun Murugan only shoots when eating paan and coming across a newly painted wall.  

But cab drivers don’t learn from these noble people (Bush, Quick Gun and me, that is).  Two days ago, a cab driver did the following at a traffic light, all at the same time: speak on the phone which was pressed to his ear with his right hand, eat something that had once been a paratha with his left, do a U-turn on the busiest road on the planet at 11 am and stare like a cross-eyed scowling owl at a guy on a bike.  This bike guy looked livid and  seemed to want to strike up a vibrant conversation, beginning with the profound familial Kannada term, Magane, which, when strictly translated means Son and when loosely translated does not mean I Love You, My Son. 
Now, here’s the crux: the biker was also multi-tasking; he had a parallel conversation going - on a phone hidden under his helmet - which is now a certified internationally-accepted, peer-reviewed, accredited behaviour of an imbecile crossed with a toothbrush (and there’s a new danger-keep-away logo being created for it).  But, of course, this was not enough multi-tasking for him – he kept adjusting a large bag on the petrol tank, had carefully chosen words for the cabbie, some of which reflected on his, the cabbie’s, ancestry, and returned hostile glances that were javelined at him by the rest of humanity who were waiting to cross.  
So, all in all, good clean fun and I am now of the revised view that, if people did not multi-task, if they did just one thing at a time (like the Germans), the world would be a decidedly dismal place (no, I did not say Germany) and, because there would be no re-work and repair and recrimination and recourse and reversal and returns, our GDP – which is nearly five trillion minus some change when fake news last came in - would suck (no, I really did not say Germany).

A Rogue Who Nearly Became A Bigger Rogue (ie, An Economist)

Somewhere in the course of my education, I lost my way and considered – only briefly, I promise you – becoming an economist.
 
Ok, ok, I know what you are thinking with an involuntary shudder and your eyes rolling upwards.  How could this guy, a normal (well, relatively, shall we say?) self-respecting, law-abiding, well-nourished chap, who loves walnuts dipped in chocolate and never grew a beard and has an IQ – when reports last came in - above 22, from a decent middle-class background with family values that included watching Hum Log and bargaining with auto drivers and rinsing empty milk sachets to extract eleven additional molecules to that half-litre…. how could this guy even think that he should study Economics?  Yes, I know, I know, it can happen to anyone and Society should be forgiving. 
 
Now for the good news: I redeemed myself by flipping through an Econ textbook.  What I saw there was that one bane of human civilization which everyone agrees is an unnecessary evil but nobody does anything about: it’s called Math, and economics is full of it, all of it designed by sadists who have had their eyebrows pierced against their will.  I would rather swim with a starving Great White Shark in a baby pool.  So, economics took a back seat (in another car). 
 
Later on, in Misguided Life (don’t shudder, this para ends quickly), I even started teaching economics to a bunch of homicidal, ideologically-vacuumed, disengaged, moribund misanthropes – we called them college students to provide a veneer of respectability.  We had classes on aggregate demand, full employment and marginal revenue and pretended that none of this was fiction (mind you, this was before demonetization as well).  I even once managed a class on GDP without anyone needing first aid or asking me if there was a book by Jeffrey Archer on it.
 
Some of the misanthropes who had an axe to grind with teachers as a retardant sub-species asked questions – when they were awake – like “Sir, what happens to the GDP multiplier if a helicopter drops five thousand rupees from above into each poor household in India”.  Now, you see how dangerous these misanthropes are – since I had no fricking smart-aleck idea, I would say, “It will cause inflation.” and then suggest reading material that only Robinson Crusoe would attempt to read. 
p.s.: generally, everything causes inflation.  That’s why Economics is hot air. 

Some of the other misanthropes were delightfully funny with quotes from the textbook which began with “Since human beings are rational decision makers….”, after which we would all laugh so much that we needed a break.  Then, we’d have tests where I would ask questions from the Real World (i.e., newspaper), questions like, if National Income increases by 8 percent a year, how much water hyacinth will the Godavari carry in five years?
No, I made that up.  But you get the picture.

I did all this Economics instruction for no income, just fun, mind you.  Let me repeat that in case you have missed it: I did all this teaching just for Fun, which is incontrovertible evidence that the apparently mildest person – one, for example, who loves walnuts dipped in chocolate - has a streak of barbarism hidden somewhere along with two fangs.  

Stuck In The Mud (No, Not Me)

 The other day I did something that I am really good at: got the car stuck in mud, this time on the dirt track leading to Random Rubble (the farm).  I am an old practiced hand at this, so when I get a car stuck in mud, I do a thorough, systematic job following a CMM Level 5 process, with Six Sigma for company.  This time the car swayed sideways like Mariappa after his evening brew and the wheels got stuck in a deep groove formed by a tractor.  We – the car and I – sunk so low down that I could plant tomatoes and palak on my accelerator, no questions asked.  
So, I switched off the engine and waited for help.

Muniyappa was the first to walk by.  By way of intimate introduction, this Error-of-Evolution has the Intelligence Quotient that falls in-between that of a plastic chair and a caterpillar.  He had a puzzled look and tapped the car’s bonnet, expecting it, no doubt, to be made of banana fibre or Sentient Life or something.

“Sir, why did you not take this route?” he said, pointing helpfully to what I should have done.  I tried telling him that I didn’t see the mud from the driver’s seat, but gave up after the third attempt because Seenappa and two of his buddies landed up and asked me the same question, shaking their heads and grinning like that asinine scarecrow with a pot for a head in the avarekkai field.  

Everyone and his mother-in-law then got into a big argument on whether the car should be pushed forwards or backwards to get it out.  I suggested that they include up and down as well in the list of options, but sarcasm is generally wasted in my village after it is translated into Telegu.  Then Ramappa – whom I call Universe Boss because Society in general is carefully wary of him - turned up with his A2 cows and stated emphatically that we would propel the car forward. Forward, he growled again, so everyone, including the cows, nodded their heads with Deep Understanding.  

So, when I started the car and revved the engine on first gear, three out of the five stalwarts in attendance, including Error-of-Evolution, pushed backwards with all their might.  The car dug itself deeper in, of course, and Ramappa got three bucket loads of mud on his shirt, after which he used words for his fellow-countrymen that may be classified as Higher Education In Pursuit Of Infinite Reality.

Muniyappa stood aside and looked at me thoughtfully. “Sir, you should not have taken this route,” he said, shaking his head like he was doing a stress test for the Timken ball bearings at the base of his thick skull.   

Ramappa then began to fill in the grooves with mud – the first sensible thing that anyone had done – while everyone else agreed that we needed a tractor, though no one knew why, while Venkatesh kept us engrossed with three tragic, deeply emotional stories of cars-in-mud that had become discounted scrap metal.  When Ramappa was done filling in mud and swearing at the others, everyone promised this time that they would only push forwards which, I am happy to report from the trenches, worked out.  So, the car was saved from being scrap metal (for the moment.  Watch this space).

I then parked the car by the gate just ahead and Muniyappa landed up, this time examining the wiper blade intently and testing it on his finger.  
“Sir, tell me,”he said, “why did you drive into the mud?”