A Coimbatore TamBrahm in a Habsburg court

The sun is out in all its blazing glory! Exactly two weeks after it staged its disappearing act. I’m light at heart and high in spirits!

For the last three weeks, I’ve been letting the sights of the city sink into my eyes. This is a beautiful city, there can be no doubt about it. Even on the greyest of days, and in the face of the dullest weather, this is a fact one cannot gainsay.

However, I’ve really not done any sight-seeing. Struggling to come to grips with the sudden onset of cold, wet weather, I’ve allowed myself to be led by the nose by automatons. Of which, two have become surreally close buddies. Tram 52 and the U4. Every morning I mutely coast along a longish length of Linzerstrasse, followed by a turn into an almost equally longish stretch of Mariahilferstrasse. In the evenings, I mutely coast back. Except on some occasions, when I take the underground. But every journey is a journey undertaken in muteness. To be in a land where you cannot speak the language is some experience. But traveling by tram is relatively better. Because it travels over the ground it gives you a sense of life.

But yesterday, disgusted at myself for turning up for work for the third consecutive Saturday, I allowed a brief appearing act of the sun to give me an excuse that let me march out onto the streets of Vienna. I traveled to the St. Stephan’s Cathedral and walked down the old city. Briefly I peeped over the banners of an anti-Israel demonstration and lent my solidarity. I marvelled at the wares of itinerant artists and the music of indigent violinists. I took wistful rides on the horse-driven carriages. And walking down the streets of the old city I wondered what the Austro-Hungarian Emperors would have made of me, a puritanical TamBrahm, lounging in a Habsburg courtyard.

In circumstances such as these – alien language, alien culture, an excessive sense of order (as may appear to an Indian whose exit amidst much jostling and queue-breaking at the New Delhi airport is followed, upon touchdown, by a bewilderingly sanitized and agonizingly empty environs) and self-imposed poverty – it is perhaps inevitable for a sense of loneliness and longing for company to sprout. One of the first people I was introduced to was MT – and I took an instant liking to her. We talked academics, Austria and India; shared Indian food, cake and coffee, and in the process, found common interests. The conditions were ripe for one’s heart to mellow. One was taking it day-by-day, looking forward to some sunshine in the midst of the depressing weather, wondering all the time whether there was a possibility of anything more than what met one’s eye. And one fine day, not very long ago, words were dropped about a boyfriend, so that with a sharp stab of pain and a dizzy spin of the head, the roller coaster drew to a halt, bringing to an abrupt end one's little would-be romance!

But the bright spot so far has been the cooking! Unencumbered by a loving grandmother, who felt that the entry of a male – no matter that it was her grandson – into the kitchen implied a shirking of responsibility on her part, I have been engaging in some interesting culinary experiments. My pongal is a stepbrother of khichdi, and I eat it with rasam. Last week, my sambar turned out watery (my mother advised me to use rice flour, an ingredient missing from my limited pantry, to thicken it) and the cabbage curry burnt. But elation stemmed from small achievements: fine tomato rice, puliyodarai, rasam and chapattis!

For consolation, I brace myself with the hope that padhai na sahi, ladki na sahi, Hindustani dhaba hi sahi! In the worst event perhaps, I can open an Indian eating joint. ;)

Well, so long, till next time!

A trip to Bengalooru

Last Saturday I was in Bengalooru, taking a much-needed break from dusty, rainless Coimbatore. An invitation to a Ramachandra Guha discussion from a generous reader of this blog served as an excellent excuse for me to break away from an existence that was becoming dangerously humdrum.

Bengalooru was delightful. Luckily, I didn’t run into too much pollution or traffic. It rained, but not at the wrong times. Despite all the construction that is happening in and around the city, Bengalooru continues to have sizeable wooded, green spaces.

On the train from Coimbatore I wondered why Guha was addressing an elite audience of only twenty-five (which is how the talk had been advertised). Guiltily, I asked myself why I had to be a part of this elite gathering.

My sense of guilt eased when I picked up Thursday’s Times of India (its Bangalore edition is relatively sober compared to the Mumbai and Delhi editions) and saw that Guha had been lecturing on the same topic – Will India be a superpower? – the previous day at the National Institute of Advanced Study (NIAS) in the city. And, as I discovered during the course of the discussion on Saturday, Guha has been engaging on this question quite actively. I came away from the discussion with the satisfaction of having listened to a genuinely public intellectual whose questioning of India’s aspirations to superpower status is very much desirable.

Guha’s arguments on the grave challenges that wannabe-superpower India faces are available on the net (they were first published in a recent Outlook issue). He thinks India may not become a superpower and doesn’t want it to be one. Needless to say, his views have generated much heat, particularly among the middle class, which has prospered greatly from the bull run on the Indian economy in recent years, and is now in a hurry to take on the world. I do not propose going into Guha’s arguments beyond stating that I hold broadly similar views with some disagreements, and adding that it takes considerable boldness for someone to air contrary views publicly on a holy cow of an issue in the way Guha has done.

The interesting part of the discussion, in my opinion, came in the form of the questions asked by some of the young people present (I presume they were college students). It seemed very likely that they were listening to Guha’s views for the first time and it was apparent that they were quite bewildered. One of them thought that India had done well on all fronts despite the many challenges she had faced in the years since independence and therefore why could the country not surmount present dangers and become a superpower well nigh? Guha responded, of course, but the boy pressed his question, seemingly unconvinced. Another question came from a young lady, who wanted to know that if India was not going to be a superpower then what were we to tell our children?! A third question, from a young man sitting next to me, was dripping with penitence – how could the common man try to 'solve' the various problems (Naxalism, religious fundamentalism, widening economic inequality, abysmal socio-economic status of adivasis, environmental degradation etc. that had been discussed earlier) that he had brought upon himself?

The appeal lay not in the quality of these questions as much as in the way they were asked, disbelief and naivete couched in a certain diffidence that is characteristic of that age when one is introduced to a world outside of one’s orbit. My thoughts went back ten years ago to the time that I had myself taken tentative steps into college life. Perhaps it is the nostalgia that makes me dwell on the youngsters so much, but the experience showed just how against the grain it is to take a contrary stand on an issue that the urban Indian middle class, by and large, would like to treat as close to its heart as to that of a zealot.

But then, Bengalooru was much more than the Ram Guha discussion. It was a trip on which I caught up with friends, aunts and cousins, and sampled my former room-mate's excellent culinary skills. There were moments when I was confronted by chauvinism: a driver-conductor duo at the Shivajinagar bus stand refused to give me directions unless I spoke to them in Kannada; and there were moments when absolute strangers, also Kannadiga, gave me extensive guidance on where to get off and how to make my way to such-and-such place on such-and-such road. With their help at hand, I let myself sink into the fairly luxurious interiors of the Bengalooru Mahanagar Palike townbuses as I crisscrossed the city, listened to abuse of the newly constructed international airport (someone likened it to a cowshed unfit for cows), lunched at an Andhra restaurant called Bheema’s, eavesdropped on passers-by talking in various tongues, and caught my return train to Coimbatore feeling very cosmopolitan!

(PS: I call Bangalore Bengalooru for purely idiosyncratic reasons - because I love the way it sounds. It is also closer to one of the legends about the city’s origins, of a king separated from his hunting companions who stayed over for the night in an old woman’s hut. The old woman fed him with what little that she had, some boiled lentils or ‘bendha kalluru’, giving rise to the name Bengalooru for the place where she lived. The tale is also narrated in R. K. Narayan’s “The Emerald Route”.)

A forest and its people

(Am recycling an old travel piece. The reason? Have been thinking of Joseph, Douglas et al for a while. I wonder how they're doing. It's been a long time.)

It is a fine morning and as I peer out of the window, the azure waters of the Indian Ocean lap at the shores of Malindi, a little tourist town on the Kenyan coast. This delightful town, an important yesteryear port, has an interesting Indian connection: this is where Vasco da Gama is believed to have hired a guide who led him successfully to India in 1498, thereby capping the long search for a sea route from Europe to the sub-continent. After two days of rain the sky looks gay and friendly, and I think I can finally move out of Malindi. I have been staying at the dharamshala attached to the Malindi Swaminarayan Temple. It is the month of May, which is the slack tourist season, and the town is enveloped in tropical ennui. But it gives me the opportunity to make friends with the temple keeper, David, an elderly African who has been around for more than twenty years. To my astonishment, I discover that it is David who cleans out the sanctum sanctorum, lights the incense and adorns the deities everyday. He has been doing this ever since the temple priest passed away some weeks ago. A new one, who must belong to the Swaminarayan sect, is yet to be found. Till then, for all practical purposes, the priest at this Hindu temple is a Christian African who takes immense pride in his work! I see this auspicious confluence of religion and race as a good omen and set off to the village of Gede.

Gede is 18 kilometres south of Malindi and is known for the Gede Ruins, the site of an Arab-African settlement that is believed to have flourished between the 13th and 17th centuries. This is now a Kenyan National Monument and is managed (remarkably well, one must add) by the National Museums of Kenya (NMK). My own interest in Gede lies in NMK but for a different reason. The NMK is the site of a ‘kipepeo’ (Swahili for butterfly) farm and on the day of my visit, is teeming with farmers from nearby villages carrying butterfly pupae for sale. The pupae are exported to live butterfly exhibits in Europe and serve as an important source of income for the farmers. The butterfly farm is an outcome of the remarkable Kipepeo Project, a community-based butterfly farming project developed with the specific intention of getting local communities to develop a stake in the conservation of the neighbouring Arabuko Sokoke Forest.

As a matter of fact, it is the Arabuko Sokoke Forest that has drawn me to Gede, about 120 kilometres away from the port city of Mombasa. For Arabuko Sokoke is the largest remaining fragment of rich tropical forest that once stretched across the East African coast. About 42,000 hectares in size, the forest is rich in biodiversity and is regarded as the second most important forest for bird conservation in mainland Africa. It is the home of the enigmatic Clarke’s Weaver bird (Ploceus golandi), which is found nowhere else in the world, and of the Sokoke Scops Owl (Otus ireneae), which is found at only one other site, in north-east Tanzania. These are only two of the more than 230 bird species recorded in Arabuko Sokoke. Also found here are three rare, near-endemic mammals: the Golden-rumped Elephant Shrew (Rhynchocyon chrysopygus), Ader’s Duiker (Cephalophys adersi) and the Sokoke Bushy-tailed Mongoose (Bdeogale crassicauda omnivora). The forest also supports a population of the African elephant (Loxodonta africana).

As much as I am interested in its wildlife, I am also interested in the people living around the forest. These are mainly the Giriama, an indigenous people who are believed to have originated from present-day Somalia, which lies to Kenya’s north-east. From Gede therefore, I move onward to the village of Dida, which hugs the Arabuko Sokoke Forest in the southwest. I plan to be there for a few days.

The road to Dida is a dirt trail often cutting across the forest. The forest hangs low on either side and travelling here at twilight or later can be quite eerie. My escort is an immensely friendly forester who gets me engaged in a conversation on elephants. He keeps me riveted with anecdotes that illustrate the pachyderm’s intelligence. Among his stories is one of a villager plucked off his bicycle and dashed to the ground as an act of revenge. I swallow, and utter a silent prayer to Ganesha, hoping that I will remain in his good books, at least till I leave the forest.

In Dida I am entrusted to the care of the forest guard, Douglas, who beams as he receives me, having been informed by radio of my arrival. He lives in what turns out to be one of the few concrete structures in the village. It is also very old and looks as if it might collapse any moment. I consider invoking Viswakarma, the divine architect. There is no electricity in Dida, as in most other villages around the forest. However, as I step into the house, I can see that Douglas has taken great pains to make things comfortable for me. His own bedroom has been made over to my disposal with a couple of small kerosene lamps to light it up at night.

One of the first people I meet the next day is Joseph ‘Radio’ Kajomo. 35-year old Joseph has an honest face and an earnest way of talking that makes me take to him instantly. He volunteers to take me around the village and I accept at once. For the next few days Joseph is my constant companion. He carries a small radio with him all the time, which is the only connection to the world in these parts with neither electricity nor newspapers. I am taken to his house where he proudly throws open a battered trunk containing his proud possessions - books. His star possession is an old encyclopaedia set, purchased eight years ago from a second hand bookshop in Mombasa. It cost him 15,000 Kenyan Shillings (approximately 9,000 Indian rupees), a small fortune that he repaid from his farm income in instalments over eight long years.

One of the butterfly farmers whom I met in Gede the previous day lives in Dida. A message of invitation is sent out for me to Douglas, who arranges for me to meet Felix and his wife at their house. Felix is 43, has a gentle beard and a generous grin. I learn that he was once an inveterate small-time timber poacher, who went to prison thrice. After being introduced to butterfly farming though, he has turned over a new leaf. Butterfly farming helps supplements his income from growing maize and plantains. He is now strongly in support of protecting the forest. Felix’s grin grows wider and wider as I am being told all this. “From thief to conservator,” he says, “that’s my story!”

Joseph takes me around Dida and its neighbouring villages, Kafitsoni and Kahingoni. The houses are all located far apart and it takes quite some walking. We talk as we walk; when we fall silent the radio crackles to life. I meet some interesting, even inspiring, people. One of these is an elderly widow, Kadzo Masha, with a reputation for industry. Beginning as a widowed landless labourer, Masha raised her children well and was able to buy land for her family through sheer hard work. At 74, she works daylong on her farm and keeps a beautiful home. I ask Joseph to tell her that she reminds me of my grandmother. Masha is very pleased. “God bless you”, she says.

The staple food in these parts is warri, boiled flour eaten with baked kidney beans. I partake of this simple but filling meal at the home of Thomas Barawa, a village elder. He explains that the people are suffering ever since their entry into the forest was forbidden some years ago, on grounds of conservation. They are now forced to depend on the market for basic necessities such as firewood and charcoal; their nutritional status has fallen since they can no longer enter the forest to hunt small animals, pluck fruits or collect honey.

Before I realise, it is time for me to leave. I want to pay Douglas for all his troubles but he declines. “You are like my brother”, he beams at me, his hands resting on my shoulders. “I cannot take money from you.” Douglas supports a family of three children - they live in his village further south – on his meagre salary. I am overwhelmed by his gesture. As for my guide, Joseph, I dare not even mention that I would like to pay him. It would be an affront after the camaraderie that we have developed. Douglas and Joseph see me off on a rickety minibus to the town of Kilifi, where there will be a connecting bus to Gede. My friends in Dida may be poor, I say to myself, but they have something that money cannot buy. Dignity. I look back towards Dida and say softly, “I came, I saw, I was conquered.” Never mind if Caesar turns in his grave.

(An edited version of this piece was published in The Hindu Magazine, 8 July 2007.)

High upon the High Tatras

A slightly edited version of the following travel piece of mine, based on a hike up the High Tatras mountains in Slovakia last summer, was published in The Telegraph from Kolkata last Saturday, 23 May 2008 (http://www.telegraphindia.com/1080524/jsp/personaltt/story_9310441.jsp):

View from Malá Studená dolina ; Photographs by Gualter Baptista, reproduced with permission

The sight in front of us is stunning. At an altitude of 2,015 metres, we are perched on a rare piece of flat rock, between an endless expanse of cottony blue-grey sky on top and rock-cradled green slopes below, together merging into a panoramic view of the far countryside. To our backs, the craggy granite cliffs of the High Tatras rise up spectacularly, almost casting their shadows upon us. A little to our left lies an alpine lake, fed by melting ice and so freezing cold that my hands are still numb after having dipped into its waters. This is Malá Studená dolina (the Little Cold Valley) in the High Tatras, a mountain range stretching across the border between Slovakia and Poland. We are on the Slovak side, in a region called Vysoké Tatry.

The High Tatras are a part of the Tatra mountains, distinct from the Alps but noted for their similar appearance, climate and flora. They are breathtakingly beautiful. For the past week, from our hotel in the village of Stará Lesná in the plains below, we have been watching the snow-streaked peaks dally with clouds of varying hues of black and white. The summer is upon us but the late June weather is whimsical. At one moment thick, dark clouds are huddled around the mountains, as if locked in an embrace, and there is a wet chill in the air. Within hours, they turn white and wispy and move away, as if breaking up after a lovers’ tiff. In a few hours they are back again, this time as a boundless sheet of spongy white, standing well aloof over the mountains. And just as you wonder if they are going to make up, the clouds descend ever so lightly on the peaks, sealing their pact of reunion with a delicate kiss.

Enticed by their beauty, we resolve to go up the High Tatras over the weekend. Awakening to a brilliant Sunday morning, perfect for a hike, we walk down to the village of Tatranská Lomnica, which is the starting point for a cableway that can take you all the way up to Lomnický štít, the second highest peak in the High Tatras, at an altitude of 2,634 metres. We take a cable car midway to Skalnaté Pleso (or Rocky Lake), a popular picnic spot and the site of an astronomical observatory. The lake is crystal clear and we can see down to its bottom as we lean across the wooden bridge passing over it.

Cable car at Skalnaté Pleso

There are hiking trails branching out from Skalnaté Pleso. The trails are well laid out and marked with different colours, so that is possible to go on a hike by oneself without undue fear of getting lost. Nevertheless, our group is led by Norbert, an earnest young academic from Hungary who is today doubling up as our guide. He has carefully chalked out the plans for the hike and it is reassuring to have him around. We take the red trail, which winds around the edge of the mountains, offering superb views of the valley and plains below. About an hour later, it leads us to Zamkovského chata. The chata or mountain cottage is a remarkable feature of the High Tatras. A small number of them dot the mountains, and they are the only way of spending a night for hikers who wish to avoid the tourist resorts at the foothills. Interestingly, the High Tatras are a part of the Tatras National Park (TANAP), and camping is forbidden. The chatas are thus invaluable for hikers who want to explore the mountains over a few days. They provide refreshments and fairly inexpensive accommodation; they may also have a kitchen. Each chata is managed by a chatar, or inn-keeper, some of whom are a legend by themselves. One such is Viktor Beranek, who keeps the Chata pod Rysmi at the popular Rysy peak. Unlike many of his counterparts, he refuses to have supplies brought up to his chata by helicopter and prefers to carry them up over a four-hour trek on foot in time-honoured tradition.

We halt only briefly at Zamkovského chata; Norbert is soon leading us on the green trail that diverges from the red trail here. The path is now narrow and steep, and climbs up against a swift-flowing mountain stream. At one point just before the trail slopes up sharply, some of our fellow hikers find a fine spot on the banks of the stream to break for lunch. The sun is still bright, and upon finishing a light lunch of apples and sandwiches, it is tempting to stretch out to laze on the rocks with feet dangling into the water.

Hiking in the High Tatras is a popular pastime at this time of the year and it is not just young people who are into it. On our way, we come across barely-ten-year-olds with their parents, and middle-aged persons who politely sidestep to let you climb past. Most amazing of all is the sight of elderly couples negotiating the way with their hiking sticks, in eloquent testimony to their fitness and zest for life.

As we resume our trek, the stream flowing past us narrows to a brook and then eventually disappears. Soon we come to one of its sources, a crunchy stretch of ice. We walk across gingerly, stepping sideways to avoid slipping. The trail, now completely rock, twists its arduous way up. The distance between the hikers widens and we seem to be all on our own. I am glad for the green marks painted on the rocks.

The Tatras National Park represented by a Tatra chamois

I keep my eyes open for a Tatra chamois (Rupicapra rupicapra tatrica), the mountain-goat, which is the pride of these mountains. This subspecies of the handsome mammal, with a reddish coat and curved, hooked horns, is critically endangered and is placed by the IUCN in its Red List of Threatened Species. Less than 500 of these beasts are known to survive and it is little wonder that the TANAP can be found symbolically represented by a majestic chamois, with its neck arched so that its magnificent horns are on full view. The TANAP covers a breadth of 740 square kilometres, which includes not only forest but also these mountains, with all their twenty five peaks and a hundred lakes. In this extensive area, the chamois shares space with lynx, brown bears, marmots, golden eagles and wolves, but none of them quite match up to its stature. It is in a league of its own.

The Tatra chamois manages to evade us but we are euphoric as we finally reach Malá Studená dolina (which is where we found ourselves at the beginning of this piece!). Limpid waters fill the five splendid tarns, or mountain lakes, here, a reminder of the glaciation of the past. Also here lies Teryho chata, the highest of all mountain cottages in the High Tatras. Teryho chata has 24 beds and charges 280 Slovak crowns (roughly 500 Indian rupees) a night. At an altitude of over 2000 metres with nowhere else to spend the night, this is certainly cheap. Miro Jilek, the inn-keeper, is known for his exceptional brew of Teryho tea – and his hospitality. Apparently, no visitor in need of shelter is turned away. If the beds are full one is free to stretch oneself across the tables or even the floor.

A tarn or mountain lake

As we munch biscuits and savour the sight from the vantage point that we have temporarily colonised, the clouds suddenly start to hang low, blotting out the sun. A cold wind begins to blow. It’s time for us to leave our regal perch. We retrace our steps - but only partially, for Norbert is soon leading us through another trail that takes us into forested parts of the TANAP in the lower reaches of the mountains. We briskly make our way under the forest canopy, negotiating occasional waterfalls and clearings randomly strewn with tree stumps and fallen trunks of spruce. In mid-November 2004, a 180 kilometre-per-hour windstorm swept through the TANAP, uprooting trees and causing mayhem over an extensive area. Subsequently commercial interests sought to remove the fallen and damaged trees and tourism developers have used the opportunity to lobby for increased human activity and recreational facilities. These developments have generated much concern among civil society groups, including scientists, who fear for the fragile ecology of the TANAP and the High Tatras.

The descent is relatively quick although we are hiking all the way down without taking the cable car. Soon the forest is thinning and the meadows are visible in the distance. Eventually our trail opens out on to a road leading right to our village. As we step out of the woods the Slovak sun is out again, casting its warm glow on the evening. We look up to see the mighty Tatras stand tall and clear. Looks like they’ve had a lovers’ tiff again.