Illuminating lesser-known lives

In the winter of 1999, I journeyed by the Grand Trunk Express from New Delhi to Chennai Central, clutching a book that I had picked up out of pure fancy for its title, An Anthropologist among the Marxists and other Essays, at a bookshop in Connaught Place some weeks earlier. When I returned to the harsh embrace of the Delhi cold to begin the last term of my second undergraduate year I did so with the thrill of having read a refreshing collection of essays that had kindled some sort of an intellectual urge. The following year I was lucky enough to be nominated for an award that let me choose books worth a modest sum. Intrigued by the repertoire of an author who, at the time, wrote a fortnightly column on cricket history in The Hindu, while bookshops carried his works on (what I then saw merely as) environmental issues, I picked up another of his books, Savaging the Civilized: Verrier Elwin, His Tribals & India. (In the meantime I had devoured Wickets in the East, a delightful collection of cricketing anecdotes in the possession of my cricketer room-mate.) I read through Savaging the Civilized even as my final year exams were just around the corner but found it simply unputdownable. The consequences, I might ruefully add, were far from pleasant. I flunked one of my papers, although in all fairness, the book was only one of other far more crucial factors responsible.

It is now ten years since I acquired the acquaintance of Ramachandra Guha through his books (and on more than one occasion, in person) and have never had reason to be unduly disappointed given his prolific output. I do not necessarily agree with him on all things; nor do I particularly appreciate his polemical, even if bold, manner of joining issue with fellow writers; nonetheless I enjoy reading him. While I have particularly enjoyed his writings on environmental history as well as cricket, it is his superb biographical portraits of relatively lesser-known Indians that I cherish the most. His essays on Dharma Kumar and CS Venkatachar are among my top favourites and those on M Krishnan, TG Vaidyanathan, CV Subbarao, PK Srinivasan and DR Nagaraj come a close second. To Guha's expanding repertory has been added, rather recently, one more portrait, that of the late K Balagopal, whose life holds especial value in these turbulent times as the Maoist insurgency threatens to consume almost a third of India. This is an essay which, like it or not, deserves to be read.

http://www.indiatogether.com/2009/nov/rgh-leftist.htm

Awaara hoon

What do you do when you meet an ex-flame after many years and realise with a pang that you've lived these years in the delusion that you had gotten over it but that, in fact, a bit of your heart still seems to be pledged to her?

You sing "Hum Tujhse Muhabbat Karke Sanam".



Hahahahahahahaha!!!

The bazaar of Palampur

Many years ago I read a story entitled 'The Day-Dreaming Darzee of Darzeeganj'. I have forgotten what it was about save that it was about, well, a darzee. But I remember being struck by its poignance although I remember none of its details. The only reason I invoke it now is because it seems to have been acting upon my sub-conscious in the title I'm using for this post. But there is also something RK Narayan-esque about it, isn't it? It seems to go with his book titles such as 'The Vendor of Sweets' or 'The Painter of Signs'. The difference, of course, is Palampur is a place, not a person. More along Sarojini Naidu's alley, perhaps? ('In the Bazaars of Hyderabad'?)

The Palampur bazaar is indeed a delight. Palampur is a fairly old town; the police station is still housed in a quaint colonial era building. The sights of the bazaar took me twenty years down memory lane: this is how markets used to be in the 1980s, I said to myself, though now I think it was just an overdose of nostalgia at work. I like small towns, and the visits to Palampur during my stay in Rakkad were like a dash of opium.

The Palampur I'm talking of lies in Himachal Pradesh, by the way, and is not to be confused with the Jain temple-town of Palanpur in Gujarat. It lies on the way to Baijnath, which is home to a beautiful temple, apparently dating back to the early 13th century and with plenty of mythology attached to it. Palampur is three kilometres away from the fabulous Kangra Valley Railway, on which, rather unfortunately, I could not hitch a ride. The narrow gauge railtrack has a width of roughly 2 feet 6 inches, and stretches for a length of 164 kilometres from Pathankot to Jogindernagar.


And lest I'm hauled up for not mentioning this, let me add that Palampur has plenty of tea-gardens, whose produce is the well-known Kangra tea. Kangra, because that's the valley stretching between the Dhauladhars and the Shivaliks, in which Palampur is nestled.

The pictures, I should say, were all taken by ringsinmypond. Her pictures are bright even if her poetry is melancholic.

Memories of Rakkad

I had almost forgotten about the existence of this blog when bethebird wrote in last week saying that it cannot be that I have nothing to write about. I was, to be honest, quite flattered although also a little wary for bethebird is an impish sort and at times I'm not sure how far to take her at face value. In any case, I have had but one ardent reader - Mampi - to whom I am deeply grateful for the attention that she has bestowed on my songs of sixpence.

A great deal has happened between my last post and now. I was living in a little village called Rakkad near Dharamsala. It was a lovely place to be in with lovely people around. For this post I will simply post some pictures taken by my friends RL and ringsinmypond.


The banana tree in the picture above is almost as tall as a mid-sized coconut palm making it impossible for the fruit to be plucked from the ground. The very fact that it is thriving far from its home in the tropical south makes clear the enormous implications of climatic change for the Himalaya.

Songs of Sixpence rises sphinx-like from the ashes!

Talk of tall claims! Nonetheless, seven and a half months of disappearance later, Songs of Sixpence is back. And appositely, on another day of election results, in another country, my own. Do I have a reasonably unique distinction of having gone through national elections in two different countries in less than eight months? Unlike 29 September 2008, 16 May 2009 seems relatively more heartening. The UPA is leading. Not that I root for them but only that they seem to be the lesser evil among the others.

Hopefully, I will be back again.

Till then, here's my tanner for Manmohan.

Elections in Austria

A day after I walked through the portals of the Habsburg Empire (see previous post), Austria went to the polls. All of Austria voted on a single day, which would be a novelty to any Indian, used as we are to multi-phase polling. (But of course, all of Austria’s electorate – numbering approximately 6.5 million – is probably smaller than that of many of our state capitals.) In the run-up to the elections there was little to indicate that the country was at the hustings. There were no cutouts, no graffiti, no mega-posters, no traffic jams. No public rallies, no loudspeakers, no locality-wise, let alone door-to-door, campaigning. The only indications of the election were the posters, blow-ups of the leaders of the various political parties, all put up in the place of regular advertisements, at tram or bus-stops, or along the sidewalks. The two main political parties, the Social Democrats (SPÖ) and the conservative People’s Party (ÖVP), competed between themselves, luring voters with the promise of “Die neue Wahl”: The New Choice, and “Die bessere Wahl”: The Better Choice. (I may add that the translations are not authentic.) Also in the fray were the Greens, the Liberal Party and two right-wing parties, the Freedom Party and the Alliance for the Future of Austria. The right-wing parties, as one may imagine, have an open dislike for immigrants and Muslims, a proclivity for Nazi policies, and their agenda includes, in addition to a full-stop to further immigration, deportation of foreign migrants as well as an anti-EU stance that demands the return of certain powers to Austria currently vested in the EU.

The results, announced the same night, have come as a nasty shock. The right-wing parties together nearly doubled their presence in the new Austrian parliament, polling about 29% of the popular vote, only marginally lower than the front-running Social Democrats, who polled 29.7%, and more than the People’s Party, who came second with 25.6%. The numbers for the two main political parties are their lowest since the Second World War. They seem to have paid the price of their internal bickering as coalition partners in a grand coalition; the current elections - snap polls really since they were not due until two more years - were a result of the their failure to work together in the incumbent government. The fractured mandate of the current elections gives rise to the very real possibility of at least one of the two right-wing parties becoming a part of the new government, although protracted negotiations may precede the formation of a new coalition.

The implications of the elections cannot be more blunt. Clearly, Austria, as indeed various parts of Europe, is in the grips of a spreading xenophobia, notwithstanding suggestions from political commentators that the vote-swing in favour of the right-wing parties may be read more as a negative vote for the two main political parties, as a petulant response to their inability to collaborate in the incumbent coalition.

At the root of xenophobia lies insecurity. And human beings seem to be growing insecure across the world. Not least in our very own Mumbai.

The New Zealand Herald seems to have carried a more interesting analysis of the Austrian political developments than other news portals on the net. Take a look.

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!

Lustlos!

I'm writing this in a long overdue bid to rescue a collection of cyber-writings slipping ever deeper into the dustbins of trivial history with every passing day. To the left of my keyboard lies a desultory pair of glasses over a sheaf of papers claiming to unravel the secret of institutional change. To my right, there's a mouse. (Well, what did you expect?) The weather outside has slipped into gloom once again. I am in an alien land, far from the delightful, sunny landscape on the outskirts of my hometown. And for no particular reason, with nothing even remotely resembling the emotions they describe, I'm humming these lines in the mind:

Perhaps I had a wicked childhood, perhaps I had a miserable youth

But somewhere in my wicked, miserable past, there must have been a moment of truth

For here you are standing there loving me, whether or not you should

So somewhere in my youth or childhood, I must have done something good

Nothing comes from nothing, nothing ever could

So somewhere in my youth or childhood, I must have done something good.

No, I’m not bored. Just listless!

Guess where I am?

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”.)

Profit from rising oil prices?

At a time when rising oil prices are spelling misery for a lot of people, there seems to be a perverse touch to this call to investors: http://www.valueresearchonline.com/story/h2_storyview.asp?str=100024

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.)