Mountain Stories: When the Beatles Came to Town

My wife and I recently returned from a lovely Himalayan vacation. The base I use for all my Himalayan sojourns is the town of Almora, tucked away at 5,500 feet in the Kumaon Himalayas. Apart from the spectacular natural beauty on offer in this part of the world, I have a deep emotional connection to this place. My grandfather was so taken in by the beauty and splendour of the Indian Himalayas, he decided to retire there in 1969. As a child, I made annual pilgrimages to Almora every October to meet my grandfather and soak up the atmosphere of the Himalayas. Most of my most vivid, important childhood memories are from the mountains, where as a child, I spent hours tinkering in my grandfather’s beautiful garden and watching the play of light and shade, cloud and sunshine on the deep, dark forests and snow-covered mountains.

Over the years, the town of Almora has grown exponentially. Like most Indian towns, the growth has been largely unplanned and haphazard. As a result, most of the town has become dirty and crowded. However, my grandfather’s neighbourhood has remained largely unchanged.

But this blog is not about Almora or even the Himalayas. It is about the legend of the Beatles coming to a little village above Almora back in 1968. That the Beatles visited the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s ashram in Rishikesh in 1968 is a documented fact. That they stayed in Rishikesh for three months is also well-documented. However, reliable sources tell me that three of the four Beatles (John, Paul and George) visited a little village above Almora now called “Crank’s Ridge” back in 1968.

Before I get into details, I need to tell you where Crank’s Ridge is. It is located about six kilometres above the town of Almora, at about 6,500 feet. The forested ridge is on the sunny side of the mountain, which means that it does not get too cold, even in the depths of winter. It has a truly spectacular view of the Himalayas, with the 25,600 foot high Nanda Devi peak dominating the horizon. It also has a reputation for being a place with a spiritual aura around it. Famous Indian mystic Swami Vivekananda lived and meditated here in the 1890s. Ever since then, it has seen a steady stream of famous artists, musicians, mystics and cranks (hence the name “Crank’s Ridge” – check it out on wikipedia).

American beat generation poet Allan Ginsberg visited here in 1962, and felt it was a “little like the Catskills in upstate New York, only more spiritual”. Sixties guru and University of California Berkeley professor Timothy Leary lived here for extended periods of time in the 1950s and 1960s. Singers Bob Dylan and Cat Stevens also visited here, as did noted Buddhist scholar Robert Thurman, father of the delectable Uma Thurman. In fact, the young Uma Thurman also probably lived here for a little while. Indian dance maestro Uday Shankar (brother of sitar player Ravi Shankar) set up a school for Indian classical dance here in the 1930s. Indian film-maker Guru Dutt also lived here for sometime in the 1950s. These are all documented facts.

Wikipedia also says that Crank’s Ridge is “a cult destination, it now has a small community of backpackers and ex-hippies settled there ever since the place gained the reputation of being a Power Centre during the hippie hey-days. This reputation is due to the alleged gap in the Van Allen Belt above the ridge, a perception arguably strengthened by the free and easy availability of hemp on the slopes. There is also a Buddhist meditation center on the ridge”.

All in all, Crank’s Ridge is a place worth visiting, and I go there every time I am in the mountains. And now, patient reader, I will come back to the question I raised a few paragraphs ago. Did three of the four Beatles visit here in 1968, or is this just another shaggy-dog story? An individual I know and respect has irrefutable proof that Timothy Leary was indeed a frequent visitor to Crank’s Ridge and the town of Almora. Leary was a very close friend of the Beatles. The Beatles were in Rishikesh in 1968. Rishikesh is also a town in the Himalayan foothills, about 250 kilometers away from Almora and Crank’s Ridge. I also have it from reliable sources that George Harrison made several trips to Almora and Crank’s Ridge in the 1970s. This is not surprising, since of all the Beatles, Harrison was the one most attached to India and was also a keen student of Indian music and Hinduism.

If indeed the Beatles made the long and winding journey to Almora and Crank’s Ridge from Rishikesh back in 1968, they would have followed much the same route we did this year. They would have traveled via Deoprayag, Rudgraprayag, Gwaldam and Kausani. Like us, they would probably have had a night-halt at the town of Rudraprayag, the confluence (“sangam”) of the Alakananda and Mandakini rivers, which together form the mighty Ganges. Here one road leads up to that holiest of Hindu pilgrimage towns – Badrinath. Another road leads towards Gwaldam and Almora.

Of course, Almora was a much smaller, more picturesque town back in 1968. Crank’s Ridge today boasts of several high-class resorts, an excellent multi-cuisine Continental restaurant and lovely cottages where old ex-hippies from all over the world live. The place has a real multi-cultural, laid-back feel to it. But back in 1968, it would have been just a collection of stone and slate mountain houses where villagers lived and eked out a living in the terraced fields below.

But could John, Paul and George have come here in 1968? It is not only possible, it is likely. John and George would definitely have been interested. I am not so sure about Paul. George was already sold on India, Indian mythology and music. At the time, John was sold on the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. It is very, very possible that they came to Crank’s Ridge in 1968. If that is indeed the case, it is also possible that some of the songs on the landmark 1968 Beatles “White Album” were written here. The Beatles themselves have said that most of the “White Album” was written in India.

I find this whole hypothesis fascinating. Could “Across the Universe” or “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” have been written above Almora, Uttarakhand? It is possible.
Did the three Beatles visit Almora and Crank’s Ridge in 1968? What do you think?

Indian Heroes: The Mangal Deep School for the Mentally Handicapped

The last few weeks, and indeed months, have brought us nothing but bad news in India. The economic slowdown was the first bit of bad news we heard about. Then the spate of terror bombings across the country, culminating in the mowing down of innocents in Mumbai two weeks ago. Our politicians seem too weak-kneed, incompetent and corrupt to deal with the situation.

Heroes seem hard to find in this day and age. But they still exist, as I found to my pleasant surprise. It is just that they are hidden and not easy to find. They quietly go about their business, saving lives one by one, against all odds.

This is the story of the Mangal Deep School for Mentally Handicapped Children in the mountain town of Almora, deep in the Himalayan state of Uttarakhand. On our recent trip to the Himalayas, my wife and I were taken to meet the founder, students and staff of this school. I was wary. Many Indian NGOs (non-governmental agencies) that are ostensibly set up to provide social welfare and justice are just as corrupt and inefficient as their governmental counterparts. Many of them use monies received from well-meaning donors to feather their own nests, instead of using the funds to benefit their intended audience. I am personally aware of two or three such NGOs that have duped me in the past.

So the Mangal Deep School for Mentally Handicapped Children came as a very pleasant surprise. Set on a picturesque ridge in a village below the town of Almora, the school premises commands a very impressive view of the Central Himalayan Ranges.

The school was started ten years ago, with a student population of only five children. Today, it has grown to cater to fifty children with special needs. The founder and staff of the school are extraordinarily dedicated. Over the years, they have learnt to cater to students with many different needs (the latest student to enrol is autistic). They have learnt this on their own, with little or no support from state and central governmental agencies (more on this later). The school was set up by a retired college teacher who used her entire pension and retirement funds to start the school. She must be nearly seventy years old, but she is indefatigable and always cheerful. I have not seen such positive energy in people half her age. She is also self-effacing to a fault. Over the years, this extraordinary lady and her staff have learnt to deal with students with varying kinds of special needs, indifferent, occasionally hostile parents, a sceptical and conservative society, and apathetic and often corrupt governmental agencies. And they do all this with a smile on their face.

But the real stars of the school are the students themselves. Each student is taught a vocation based on their talents, so that they become financially independent and help support their families, who are often poor. We were astonished to find the high levels of artistic ability that these children possessed. They make high-quality dinner and place mats, greetings cards, hand-woven carpets and gift bags, among other things. You and I would pay big bucks for these items in any big-city mall. The school has succeeded in making the students financially independent and gone a long way in helping many of them enhance their worth in the eyes of their families. The students are also taught to read and write And all of this is done with smiles and good cheer.

The less said about assistance the government is supposed to provide, the better. The number of approvals required to receive allocated financial assistance from the government are many, and frankly, quite ridiculous. Every governmental agency in the chain wants its own cut or bribe. It is truly shocking. I knew corruption in Indian government agencies was endemic, but the extent and the brazenness of it left me speechless, when I found out details. I know who these corrupt governmental agencies are, but I will not name them in this blog, because it may get the school into trouble. Suffice to say, the school authorities have squarely refused to pay bribes to obtain the financial assistance promised to them. Like in most other facets of Indian life, the government is an obstacle to overcome, and not a facilitator.

But let me come back to the school and its founder and staff. They work hard, against all odds, to cater to a forgotten and neglected section of our society. They ask for very little in return. They do this only because this is the right thing to do. They soldier on and prevail in the face of daunting adversity that would deter most other people (it would certainly deter me). In my book, this makes them true heroes. Forget our self-obsessed celluloid stars in Bollywood and our overpaid, over-hyped cricketers. What this school is doing is noble, it is real, it is right.

For many years, I have felt guilty of not even attempting to return a little bit to the country that made me – India. Now I have the opportunity to do so, in a small way. My wife and I intend contributing what we can to help the Mangal Deep School grow and flourish. At this point in time, modest financial assistance is all we can offer. If we choose to settle down and live in that part of the country some years from now (this is very much part of the grand plan), we will find other ways we can contribute.

If you are interested in finding out more about the Mangal Deep School, please contact me. Do something good, feel something real. Thanks.

Politics: In Defence of George Bush Jr.

I expect this to be a deeply unpopular blog with plenty of adverse comments. How can you defend George Bush Jr, people will ask? Look at the mess he has made, especially in Iraq. Look at his approval ratings – barely 25% of Americans approve of his presidency at the moment. He is dyslexic, clueless about foreign affairs and policy and knows very little about macro-economics. His prior experience as a businessman and owner of a baseball team show him to be a failure. So how can you defend him?

To begin my defence, let us first list the facts. All of what I have mentioned in the previous paragraph is true. George Bush made a huge mistake going into Iraq, a country that under Saddam Hussein was a tyranny. However, it was a secular, reasonably moderate country in the Middle East. Crucially, Iraq under Saddam Hussein was an important counterweight to the other key player in the region – Iran. As long as you had these two countries balancing each other out, the world was a safer place. Now that Iraq is no longer a rival, Iran has aspirations of becoming a regional superpower and there is nothing the US can do to stop them.

There were no Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) in Iraq either. I agree that Iraq was Bush’s one big mistake. Because of that expensive error of judgment, the US became deeply unpopular throughout much of the Islamic world. Dubya’s father, the far more capable and intelligent George Bush Sr., did the right thing during the first Gulf War in 1991. He bombed the hell out of Saddam Hussein, destroyed the Iraqi Army and left, having taught Saddam a lesson for invading Kuwait. That war was won in days, it was inexpensive and the body count was low.

But if you take the Iraq War out of the equation, how would George Bush Jr. fare as a president? Would his legacy be viewed more favourably? Here again, it depends on your perspective. Bush did nothing to help in managing the two big domestic economic crises that an aging America faces – Social Security and Medicare. He refused to tackle the key problem of prohibitively priced healthcare insurance - a problem that deprives tens of millions of Americans from getting access to affordable healthcare. At the beginning of his presidency, he laughed off concerns about global warming, saying these fears were exaggerated. He did not encourage American automakers to develop alternative fuels.

But George Bush Jr. also did quite a few good things. The most important among these (for countries such as India and China) was that he encouraged and supported free trade. As a result, China became the manufacturing hub of the world. Its economy grew by leaps and bounds, and millions of Chinese were pulled out of poverty. India became the services and information technology hub of the world. The explosive growth of India’s services sector in the last decade owes a lot to George Bush Jr. He made it easier for qualified foreigners to live and work in the United States, by liberalising immigration policies. During his presidency, the U economy remained robust and grew faster than it had in decades, which created jobs for Americans, Indians and Chinese alike.

George Bush Jr went out of his way to work with India on the Indo-US civil nuclear deal. I do not claim to be an expert on this deal, but when people like former Indian President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam and Indian National Security Adviser K. Narayanan support the deal, I assume that it is in India’s best interests. He stayed out of the Kashmir issue, and said it was a bilateral matter that needed to be resolved between India and Pakistan.

It is easy (and completely wrong) to blame George Bush Jr. for the current economic recession in the US. The fact is that he had nothing to do with it. The legislation to provide supposedly “affordable housing” to those who could not afford it was one that was passed many years ago, by his opponents the Democratic Party. This legislation was a populist one designed to garner votes. Dubya in reality, tried hard to nullify this legislation. The fact is that Dubya presided over the largest global economic expansion in history – one spanning six years from 2001 to 2007. Thanks to the economic policies of his government, the U.S, China, India and many other countries prospered.

It is possible that history will be a little kinder to George Bush Jr. From an American viewpoint, Bush started the Iraq War, and did nothing to combat global warming, resolve the healthcare crisis or reduce that country’s dependence on foreign oil. But he also ensured seven years of unprecedented economic growth. From an Indian viewpoint, he was a friend of India and his policies were consistently pro-India. Therefore, his legacy for Americans will be a mixed one. His legacy for India however, will be uniformly positive.

This does not mean that I have anything against Barack Obama. I wish him well. But there are a couple of areas of concern. The first is his view on outsourcing. He has said that he will find ways to penalise American companies that are “shipping jobs overseas”. This is like the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena saying that jobs in Maharashtra should be reserved for only Marathi speaking people. The fact is that all employers around the world will always find ways to reduce their costs of production. Lower costs of production means that consumers like you and me pay lower prices for goods and services. I sincerely do hope that Obama does not try and curb US outsourcing work to other countries, because this is something that is mutually beneficial.

The other warning sign is that Obama plans to appoint Bill Clinton as “envoy” to help “resolve” the Kashmir issue between India and Pakistan. This is being done in the mistaken belief that Pakistan will fight terrorism better if they had all their troops stationed on the Afghanistan border. Also of course, now that Hillary Clinton is no longer a candidate for US President, Bill needs something to do to keep him gainfully occupied. This desire to appoint an “envoy” to “solve” the Kashmir problem is worrisome. Kashmir is a bilateral problem between India and Pakistan.

But it is still early days. Obama is intelligent, charismatic and seems to be a unifier. He has overcome formidable obstacles to become the President-elect. He appears to be very serious about combating global warming. He has publicly stated that he will encourage research into alternative fuels and reduce America’s dependence on foreign oil. He appears serious about resolving America’s healthcare and social security crises.

But will he be a good friend to India? Only time will tell.

Observations: In Praise of Hybrids

Barack Obama has won the U.S. Presidential election. Plenty has already been said about his historic victory, so I am not going to give you my take on it. Suffice to say, the challenges facing him are daunting. The most important and immediate challenge he faces is finding ways to resuscitate the U.S. economy. A normal remedy would include a massive increase in public spending, which is what Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) did during the Great Depression, seventy years ago. However, Obama will find this difficult to do since the U.S. federal deficit is already at an all-time high. Besides, any additional public spending would probably mean an increase in taxes as well as the potential threat of higher inflation. In a time where people are losing jobs, this will be an extremely unpopular thing to do. It will be interesting to see how he deals with the global economic crisis. A silver lining will be the fact that the Democrats have gained substantially in the races for the Senate as well as the House of Representatives. This should make it easier for him to introduce any legislation he has in mind to improve the world’s economic situation. Yes, it is the world’s economic situation that will be determined by Obama’s policies, and not just America’s.

But I digress. This blog is not about Obama’s victory. Instead, it is about something that many people do not know or consider important. The media all over the world has been waxing eloquent about Obama being the first “black/African-American” person to become the U.S. President. Actually, Obama is not black. He is of mixed race. His father was an African-American, while his mother was white. The media always needs to categorise whatever they report, so it is convenient to slot Obama as a black man. Like I said a little earlier, this is not a fact.

Obama (like Yours Truly) is a hybrid. He is a racial hybrid; while I am an ethnic hybrid (my father is a Bengali, while my mother is a Kannadiga). In my own small way, I have faced similar problems. Indians I meet always ask me my ethnic background. There is no simple way to answer this question. I either say “Bengali” if I want to give them a short answer. If I am in a chatty mood, I give them the long answer, which is: “My father is a Bengali who grew up in Mumbai. My mother is a Konkani-speaking Kannadiga who grew up in Karnataka. I was born and raised in a Roman Catholic neighbourhood in Bombay, so I frequently went to church. In the impressionable years of my youth, I spent six years living and studying in America, which made me very independent-minded and shaped my identity”.

This last encyclopaedic answer effectively shuts people up. It is also the correct answer. There are many people who find it difficult to categorise me. In their minds, I am a “Bengali”. This is incorrect, but I guess it works for them. Understanding the truth sometimes requires patience, the ability to listen and the realization that every question in the world does not have a neat answer which can be put into a box. Many people aren’t interested in the truth; they only need an answer that can be easily categorised.

I can vouch for the fact that there are plenty of positives about being a hybrid. For Obama, it is being able to reach out to people across races and classes, Democrats and Republicans, to develop consensus. He can relate to blacks as well as whites. He has enough of a perspective to understand the unique challenges and advantages faced by both races. In my own small way, I can relate. I can understand the Bengali language as well as its customs, traditions and rituals. I can also understand my mother’s language and heritage. Add to that the fact that I grew up in cosmopolitan Bombay, and lived and worked across cultures and countries, and this puts me in a pretty unique position.

There are narrow-minded Indians who feel that the ethnic group they belong to is somehow superior to other ethnic groups in the country. There have been enough instances of this in the national news lately. Frankly, I find this laughable. Obviously, these individuals and groups have their heads buried in the sand.

My advice to them is simple – pull your head out of your ass and take a look around you. The world is large and diverse. India is only a small part of what the world has to offer. Take the time out to learn and understand the various cultures and ethnic groups in India. You may be astonished to learn that many of your deep-rooted beliefs are inaccurate and just plain wrong. You may be surprised to find that some of the traditions and histories of other ethnic groups are actually richer and more interesting than your own.

For my outlook on life, I have my parents to thank. They brought me up to be an Indian and a citizen of the world. They taught me to be independent minded, to search for the truth, and to refuse to settle for easy, incorrect answers. Sometimes, the search for the truth can be a frustrating and unsettling experience. It can also be lonely. It requires the searcher to constantly learn new things, and to frequently challenge cherished long-standing beliefs. Each person’s search for the truth is his or her own, and there are no prefabricated paths for you to walk on. To quote the lines of an old song by Van Morrison; “No Guru, No Method, No Teacher”.

So I wish Barack Obama all the best in his quest to rejuvenate America, the greatest country in the world. He is faced with some formidable problems – an ailing economy, an unpopular war and an empty treasury. But he also has a unique set of qualities and a diverse background. He is neither black nor white; he grew up in the American heartland of Chicago, but also in Indonesia and Kenya, he understands the problems of poor inner cities in America, but also studied at Harvard. He is a hybrid, and like all hybrids, he can understand issues that many others cannot. He may or may not succeed in his quest. But as a hybrid, I am rooting for him.

Thanks for listening!!

India: The Bombay I Knew and Loved

The Bombay I knew had clean, quiet, tree-lined suburban streets where on public holidays, we played hockey, football and cricket. If the ball went out in the middle of the street, you ran out to pick it up without a second thought. Today you would get run over in less than a nano-second by some brat driving around in his daddy’s luxury SUV.

In the Bombay I knew, there was no cable TV. Kids were encouraged to come out and play after school. If you didn’t play sports, your peers called you a wimp. There were no fancy gyms. If you wanted to exercise, you sweated it out in your building compound or on the street, just like all the other kids. On afternoons when you had time to spare, you went to “town” to watch Kanga League cricket matches at the Oval Maidan. Today, I do not see kids playing anymore. They are too caught up with computer games and homework, no doubt.

In the Bombay I knew, there was only black and white television, on which you watched “Chhayageet” and Sunil Gavaskar making one of his interminably long test match centuries. “Another innings of dedication, determination and application”, the commentators used to intone. On the way back from school, you stopped by the local paan-waala to listen to the latest cricket score on his handy, nifty transistor radio. You don’t see too many of those anymore either.

In the Bombay I knew, you tuned into Radio Ceylon at night to listen to all the latest American pop hits.

In the Bombay I knew, there were rows and rows of lovely cottages facing the sea. You wondered what it would be like to live in one of them. They are all gone now, replaced by matchbox style high-rise buildings, where you pay the equivalent of a lifetime’s income for a quality of life that is non-existent.

In the Bombay I knew, Bandra Reclamation was one huge field, where kids played all day long in the summertime. Today the place is one giant slum.

On lazy, hot summer days, you went to Bandra Fort to sneak a cigarette or satiate your raging teenage hormones by making out with a girlfriend. In those days, Bandra Fort was almost off-limits. There were rumours of smugglers landing there on dark nights with gold biscuits and counterfeit electronic goods. People said that jackals lurked in the ruins of the fort and howled at night. Today, it is home to a five-star hotel. The smugglers and jackals (if they really existed) are long gone.

In the Bombay I knew, you went to Jude’s Bakery in Bandra early in the morning to buy kadak-pav and ate it with maska, and a cup of hot steaming tea.

In the Bombay I knew, you learnt how to drive in your dad’s old stick-shift 1974 Ambassador car. You had never heard of air-conditioning, automatic transmission, power steering or power windows.

The Bombay I knew was the most diverse, tolerant and cosmopolitan city in India. Nobody asked you where you were from. Nobody called you an “outsider”. At school, nobody asked you your religion, your caste or your ethnic background. Nobody felt superior to you if they belonged to a different community. Nobody laughed at your community’s festivals and customs. All of us were from Bombay, and that was enough.

In the Bombay I knew, you went to Parsi weddings at Khusro Baug, where old Parsi men drank Sosyo raspberry juice, ate caramel custard made in Ratan Tata Institute and quarrelled with waiters about how small the chicken legs on their plate were. Everybody had a great time.

In the Bombay I knew, you spoke either English or “Bambaiyaa Hindi” with your friends. The language, like the city of Bombay, was a melting pot of several different Indian languages. You used words like “raapchik” and “pochaaoed” (the latter was an obscene Bandra special and possibly not in use in the rest of the city). When you saw your friend coming down the street, you yelled “Aey, yer bugger” (another Bandra special).

In the Bombay I knew, you celebrated Diwali with your Hindu friends. During Durga Puja, you pretended to be a good Bengali and went to the Pujo-Baadi in Shivaji Park, mainly to eat the delicious singhadaas and sandesh. On Christmas and New Years’ you went for midnight mass with your Catholic friends (my neighbourhood at the time was predominantly Catholic), partly to check out the pretty young women who attended in hordes. On occasions such as baptisms and funerals of neighbours you knew, you dressed up and went to church. On Christmas Eve, groups of young kids would come and sing Christmas carols below your window. In return, you gave them some money to enjoy themselves.

In the Bombay I knew, there were no expensive nightclubs and discos. Setting up a party was a project. There were no cell phones, and landline phones worked only sometimes. You partied on your friend’s terrace. You hired a stereo and listened to Eddie Grant singing “Electric Avenue” at full volume. You cringed when your friend with poor taste in music suddenly played “Funky Town”.

In the Bombay I knew, you went and bought alcohol from “Aunty’s” on “dry” days. Aunty was a woman who lived in Shirley Rajan village in Bandra, and sold liquor at exorbitant prices to desperate teenagers on “dry days”. She lived on the second floor. You whistled when you got to her building, and her assistant, a little boy, came running up to you. You told him what brand of whisky you wanted and gave him the money. He ran up the stairs and handed over the money to “Aunty” who then proceeded to lower the bottle containing the beverage of your choice in a basket attached to a rope. It was a very smooth operation.

On weekends, you went out for drives with your family and dog to places like Aarey Milk Colony in Goregaon (with the traffic, slums and pollution today, this must seem unimaginable). You ate vada-pav outside Churchgate Station, had a few beers with the freaks at Café Mondegar and ate huge lunches at George’s Restaurant in Fort. If you were in the mood for a steak, you walked down to Wayside Inn on Rampart Row, where doddering elderly waiters with bad attitudes served you the best steaks in Bombay. Wayside Inn is gone and in its place is a fancy, glitzy restaurant with no character or personality.

Yes, I remember that Bombay well, the beautiful city with the sea on one side and the rolling Western Ghats on the other, easily the most important and enlightened city in India.

In light of recent events, that Bombay is gone forever. Bombay represented the mess that was India, but also all that was good and great. It was a grand experiment which showed us what we could achieve as a nation if we put all our regional and religious divisions behind us. It taught me what being Indian really meant. It taught me to judge people based on who they were as individuals, and not on what language they spoke at home or which part of the country they came from. I miss that Bombay, I miss that India.

Politics: Will the Real Rahul Baba Please Stand Up?

Imagine that you work for an old family-run firm. The firm has been owned and managed for generations by the same dynasty. Imagine also, that the firm is currently run by a matriarch. The matriarch is a very savvy, egotistical woman who projects the firm as being democratic, modern and progressive, whereas in reality, it is the opposite - traditional, autocratic and conservative. The firm has many faithful retainers like you. To keep herself in power, the matriarch brooks no opposition and often plays the faithful retainers off against each other.

The matriarch has invited you to her home for dinner. As someone who has spent his whole career with the firm, you definitely make it a point to attend. It is a signal honour, to be recognised and invited to her home for dinner. However, somewhere deep inside, you feel a sense of resentment. You view yourself as an intelligent and capable employee, who if given half a chance, would do a really great job of running the firm.

Once at the party, you mill around and talk to the other family retainers who have also been invited. You also deferentially greet the matriarch’s precocious young son. It is very clear to everyone present at the party that the son is being groomed for a leadership role, though his skills have never really been tested. On the rare occasions that the son has been given any real responsibilities within the firm, he has failed to perform. This fact is kept under wraps as the matriarch invariably finds a scapegoat when things go wrong.

The matriarch’s philosophy is simple – take credit for herself and her son when things go well, pin responsibility on others when they go badly. This deepens your sense of resentment and insecurity, but you are helpless. After all, many family retainers like you have been sidelined by the matriarch when things have not gone well for the firm. You have no choice but to bow in deference to the matriarch and her son. After all, who else can run this family firm? All your life you have been conditioned to believe that only the family the matriarch belongs to is capable of doing so.

This scenario pretty much captures the way things are run within India’s Congress Party. Sonia Gandhi rules with an iron hand. Manmohan Singh is the regent, keeping the Prime Minister’s chair warm for Rahul Gandhi or Rahul “baba” as he is still known. Rahul “baba” is now forty years old, and it is time for him to grow up.

He has been hovering on the fringes of India’s political scene for years now. The problem with him is that he appears to be well-intentioned, but has yet to demonstrate any leadership or administrative skills. He does not have any ministerial portfolio. The Congress Party carefully stage-manages his few public appearances. I can think of two or three such instances recently. The first was last year, when he went to meet the Prime Minister about the implementation of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS). The NREGS was already being implemented nation-wide without Rahul baba’s help. But the Congress Party made it a point to send out several detailed press releases on Rahul baba’s meeting with Manmohan Singh. This stage-managed event was designed to show how much Rahul baba cared for the rural poor.

Another such event took place recently, where Rahul baba was photographed helping low-caste Dalit farmers build earthen dams. Here again, the press release and photographs focused on how Rahul baba’s heart bled for the poor, not what was being done to alleviate the miseries of the Dalit farmers in question. He is being projected as being well-intentioned and articulate. Unfortunately, that is not enough to govern a country. Every politician (including and especially the villainous ones), claim to have the country’s best interests at heart, and all of them say that all they want to do is “serve” the country.

There is nothing wrong with Mama (Sonia Gandhi) trying to project Rahul Gandhi as India’s next Prime Minister. This is the way “democracy” works in the Congress Party. But what the rest of the country needs to know is whether Rahul baba has the actual skills, intelligence and gumption to run the nation. His past record is not inspiring. He graduated from St. Stephen’s College in Delhi about twenty years ago. There were vague reports that he “studied” at Harvard University in the US. This means nothing, because anyone who is rich and well-connected can take a few summer classes for fun at Harvard University. The point is, he did not graduate or complete any degree at Harvard (or anywhere else).

He has never really worked or held a regular job in the last twenty years. Even within the Congress Party, he has never ever been directly responsible for conceiving or implementing any of the various public-works schemes the government has come up with. In terms of garnering votes for the Congress, his record is disastrous. He pulls in the crowds everywhere he goes, but these people never seem to vote for him. To date, every time he has campaigned for the Congress, the party has lost elections. This pattern has been repeated – in Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka, Gujarat and many other places. Rahul Gandhi’s presence at campaign rallies are the kiss of death (at least so far).

Before I am accused of being a supporter of the BJP or any opposition political party, let me say here that I have nothing against Rahul baba in person. The point is – I have nothing positive to say about him either, because nobody seems to know exactly what he stands for. Being blandly polite is not enough. What are his views on the economy, and reducing poverty in India? How does he propose to deal with terrorism? How does he propose to handle India’s huge environmental problems? How does he plan to tackle an overstaffed corrupt bureaucracy that feels it is not accountable to the people of India?

It is possible that Rahul Gandhi is extremely intelligent, well-intentioned and capable. If so, this is India’s best kept secret. But for the rest of us to know what he is really made of, he needs to be plain-spoken and take up a position of real responsibility within the government. To paraphrase an old rap song – “Will the real Rahul Gandhi please stand up, please stand up, please stand up?”

Politics: Don’t Cry For Me, West Bengal

I am only part Bengali, and I have never lived in West Bengal. I have visited Kolkata only three times in my life, and my only frame of reference of my heritage are ancient sepia-tinted photographs of an old, palatial ancestral house on the banks of the mighty Ganges River that I have never seen. How green was my valley. Well, I saw it when I was one year old, so that doesn’t count.

Still, I do have a soft corner for the state, and it saddens me to see how this once-mighty state is now one of the poorest and most backward parts of India. This was not always so. For two hundred years until the 1960s, West Bengal was India’s leading state in terms of industry, education and thought. The state played an important role in the freedom movement, and produced great writers, poets and intellectuals.

For a little while recently, it appeared that the state was finally making attempts to shed the stupor and anti-industry attitude that has characterised it over the last forty-odd years. The state’s Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya is that rarest of politicians – a man who genuinely believes in the welfare and happiness of his constituency. He is a Communist, but he is one of the very few political leaders in India that I have great personal regard for. I disagree with his political ideology, but heartily endorse his concern for the welfare of the people of West Bengal. Unlike his fellow comrades, he is a pragmatist who believes fervently in change and he has scant respect for long-dead retrograde Communist ideologies. He stirred up a controversy recently when he said that strikes by workers were counterproductive, hurt common people and should be banned. His Stalinist colleagues in the Communist Party were not amused. India’s communists make careers out of encouraging and sponsoring industrial strikes.

So the decision by the Tatas, India’s most respected India’s industrial house, to set up the first Nano car manufacturing plant in West Bengal was a matter of great pride and honour for the state and its administration. The Nano car has gotten a lot of attention globally as the world’s first car priced below US $ 2,500. Many hoped this prestigious project would mark the turning point for Bengal’s fortunes and end the long darkness in which the state has lived for the last forty years.

Unfortunately, that was not to be, thanks to that shrill rabble-rouser, Mamata Banerjee. Like everything in India that can actually make a difference in the lives of its citizens, the project has become the victim of politics. Even politicians supporting the project suddenly reversed gears. Witness Information and Broadcasting Minister Priya Ranjan Das Munshi from the Congress Party calling Ratan Tata’s withdrawal speech (in which squarely blamed Mamata Banerjee for the pull-out) “arrogant”. I am not sure how Ratan Tata’s speech could be classified as being arrogant. He has a right to be upset because his company Tata Motors has invested millions of dollars in Singur. Indian politicians are always upset whenever someone is honest and speaks the truth, since they are so used to lying all the time.

Three months ago, when the Communists were part of the Congress led coalition government at the Centre, this same minister was scathingly critical of Mamata Banerjee and her destructive, intimidatory tactics at Singur. At that time, Das Munshi (nauseatingly fawned over and referred to as “Priyoda” by news anchor Barkha Dutt) was all for the Nano car project at Singur. Now that the Congress is trying to ally with Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress party, suddenly the plight of a few farmers in Singur has become very important, and Ratan Tata is a villain.

That apart, what exactly is the ground reality in Singur? The truth has been obscured by political posturing, misinformation and lying by Mamata Banerjee and her cohorts. The truth is this - a total of 13,000 farmers were told to give up land for the Nano project, of which 11,000 farmers or 85% gave up their land willingly. All of this overwhelming majority of individuals and families were subsistence farmers who were living in near-poverty and realized that the Nano project gave them an opportunity to educate their children and get them skilled jobs in the industrial sector. A small minority (15%) of farmers opposed this project and did not want to part with their land. It is not clear as to whether they did not want to sell their land at all or whether they were holding out for greater compensation. Mamata Banerjee and her colleagues never gave us a chance to find out.

Once Mamata started her violent anti-Nano agitation, she was joined by many self-professed “protectors of the poor” – a motley bunch of individuals and groups who claim that they represent the poor, but whose actual objective is to keep people mired in misery and poverty. Chief among these was Anuradha Talwar, a fat, hairy aggressive woman in her mid-fifties, who looks like a frustrated housewife from Lajpat Nagar in Delhi. Once people like her got involved in the agitation, the truth about Singur was obscured, sadly forever.

Now that the Tatas have finally decided to move out of Singur, there is a sense of dismay and dismay among most residents there. Many of them were landless laborers who were depending on the plant to provide them with jobs and livelihoods. Now they have been left stranded – without either their land or jobs. Of course, Mamata Banerjee and Anuradha Talwar have pronounced this a “victory of the people” and left. Who will now pick up the pieces for the poor of Singur, now that they have been deserted by their “protectors”?

In a recent debate on Singur, a senior editor of one of India’s leading business magazines brought up an important point. Mamata Banerjee and Anuradha Talwar ferried in thousands of people into Singur during the anti-Nano agitation. These people were outsiders, brought in solely to spread chaos and destruction and prevent the Nano plant from functioning. A back of the envelope calculation revealed that feeding and housing these thousands of agitators for 25 odd days cost about Rs. 1.5 crore per day, adding up to about Rs. 40 crore for the duration of the agitation . Who was paying for this? Anuradha Talwar claimed she did not know who was footing the bill, which is strange since she was the one who organized the agitation. The journalist also went on to add that in fact, the agitation was paid for by “a leading two wheeler manufacturer who is also planning to launch a small car in the US $ 3,000 price range”. He declined to name this company, but the answer was obvious – Bajaj Auto. Rahul Bajaj is collaborating with Renault to make a car similar to the Nano at a similar price. Bajaj is one of India’s richest industrialists. However, one does not know whether he tried to sabotage the Nano car plant at Singur. Ratan Tata has also repeatedly said that vested business interests have tried to sabotage the production of the Nano car. He is not one to make such allegations lightly, so the allegation could be true.

So once again, politics has prevailed as an obstacle in India’s progress. It is sad, it is tragic. The only silver lining in all of this is that Mamata Banerjee is now rightly being vilified by the people of Singur. They have realized that she is solely responsible for their plight, and for the Tatas’ pullout from Singur. She will lose the next round of elections there. However, it is cold comfort.

Buddhadeb Bhattacharya is still determined to industrialize his state. He realizes that it is not possible for such large numbers of people to eke out a livelihood on such small amounts of land. 65% of India’s population is dependent on agriculture, which contributes only 23% to India’s GDP. This is not a sustainable situation, which Bhattacharya realises. I wish him all the best in his endeavour. We have so few politicians who genuinely care about their constituencies – he is one of them. More power to him.

India - The Enemy Within

The current ruling coalition government led by the Congress Party is set to be humiliated internationally, because the Indian Communists (who provide “outside” support to the coalition) are opposing the India-US nuclear deal. The Indian Prime Minister has staked his personal reputation as well as that of the nation on this deal. This does not bother the Communists. The Communists say (falsely) that the deal will make India a vassal state of the US. They are well aware that with rising inflation and a worsening economy, the Congress will be loath call their bluff and call for an early general election. They have the Congress party down, and nearly out. Let us look at the facts and the track record of our Indian Communists:

• Communist China (a country idolized by Indian Communists) has signed an identical nuclear deal with the US. Do Indian communists feel that China is a vassal state of the US?
• Erstwhile communist state Russia is exhorting India to sign the deal, saying it will help in the development of the country.
• It has been established beyond all doubt that the deal will provide power and fuel starved India access to unlimited amounts of clean, inexpensive nuclear energy that the country sorely needs if it is to join the ranks of developed nations in the 21st century. Besides, China is now providing Pakistan with sophisticated nuclear technology. Can you imagine what will happen if Pakistan develops sophisticated nuclear technology and India doesn’t?

The Congress Party, dominant partner in the current ruling coalition government has been sleeping with the enemy for the last four and a half years. The Communists have taken every opportunity to embarrass, humiliate and denigrate their “allies”, the Congress.

• They have not allowed foreign direct investment in the country’s retail and insurance sectors. This would have created millions of much needed jobs in India’s hinterlands.
• They have not allowed the Congress to disinvest in chronically loss-making public sector enterprises, a move that would have brought in much needed funds for strengthening public education and enhancing India’s appalling road and port infrastructure.
• A recent international survey showed that India is a “soft target” for international terrorism. India is the country with the second largest number of victims of international terrorism – second only to Iraq. The current government has done nothing to curb terrorism – it is shameful. Yet our Communists believe that terrorism within our country is not something that demands attention and a solution. In their view, it is a mere “law and order” problem. Nothing could be further from the truth. Maybe our “comrades” should ask the families and loved ones of the hundreds who died in the horrific Mumbai suburban train blasts if terrorism is only a “law and order” problem.
• The Indian Communists are strong supporters of China. Over the last year or so, China has been flexing its military muscle by sending its troops into Indian territory in the north-eastern states of Arunachal Pradesh and Sikkim. The Chinese do not recognize the international border and claim the entire state of Arunachal Pradesh and upper Assam as part of they call “greater Tibet”. India’s response to these Chinese transgressions has been feeble, partly because the Communists have not allowed India to protest. It is important to remember that during the Indo-China war of 1962, the Indian Communists were the only party in India that celebrated when China won!! To date, Indian Communists claim that India was the aggressor in that war – a claim that has been proved wholly wrong by documented historical facts.
• Critics of the Indian Communists also claim that they support the destructive Maoist insurgency that has now taken hold of large parts of central and eastern India. I do not know if this allegation is true, but it is certainly a possibility. What is beyond dispute is that the Maoist insurgency has grown exponentially more powerful and threatening since the current ruling coalition and their allies (read: the Communists) came to power at the Centre four and a half years ago.

Matters have not been helped by a weak, timid Congress party. The Congress who have a much larger number of seats in Parliament, have been completely bullied into submission on every single issue by the Communists, who have not more than 11% of all the seats in the Indian Lok Sabha (Parliament). I am no great supporter of the Indian Congress party, but there is no doubt that it is one of the only two parties in India (the Bharatiya Janata Party is the other) that can lay claim to being a pan-Indian, progressive political party. The decline of the Congress, while self-inflicted, is still sad. The Communists have actively plotted and connived to wound the Congress Party over the last few years. And they are allies of the Congress in the current political dispensation. With friends like these, who needs enemies?

Make no mistake about it. The biggest threat to India and our vibrant, diverse democracy comes not from Pakistan, China or religious fundamentalists. It comes from the Indian Communists – the enemy within. To make matters worse, Indian communists are not nearly as progressive as their Chinese counterparts. China today is a capitalist dictatorship – a communist country only in name. Thanks to extensive economic reforms in that country, China today has transformed itself into a powerful, developed nation. Our home-grown communists on the other hand, pine for the days of Stalin and Mao, men who impoverished their countries and murdered millions of their countrymen in the name of communism. Our comrades still use outdated, discredited terms in their speech – “capitalist roaders”, “imperialists and their running dogs”, etc. These are terms that have been discreetly eliminated from the vocabularies of their counterparts in China.

Our comrades would like to remodel India and make it like the China or Russia of the 1940s and 1950s, or the North Korea of today – an extreme left-wing totalitarian state that robs its citizens of their basic liberties and ships off dissidents to gulags (when it does not kill them). If you think I am joking, look at rural West Bengal – an Indian state ruled by the Communists for the last thirty years. Most Bengalis with an education and initiative to succeed have left the state to seek greener pastures elsewhere in the country, or overseas. The economy of West Bengal is in shambles, A similar situation would have prevailed in the other Indian state run by the Communists – Kerala, if it wasn’t for the vast amounts of money repatriated to that state by residents who live and work (largely in menial jobs) in the Middle East. Kerala’s economy is afloat in large part, due to the state’s “remittance economy”. Therefore, the economic track record of our Communists does not inspire confidence.

Mikhail Gorbachev and Deng Xiao-ping were visionaries, who realized that there was nothing romantic or desirable in keeping their countrymen impoverished and disenfranchised. They realized that communism as a political and more importantly, as an economic system was flawed and was not working. Thanks to them, Russia and China are well on the way to prosperity and power today. Russia has become a capitalist country with some degree of democracy. China has become a capitalist dictatorship that pays only lip service to communism. Somehow, these changes in Russia and China bypassed our home-grown communists, who still whole-heartedly believe in the old-style communist dogma propagated by Mao Zedong – it doesn’t matter how you come to power or who you have to kill to achieve it, as long as you rule, absolutely and totally. For them, “power flows from the barrel of a gun”, as Mao so succinctly put it. There is no room for debate or disagreement, and economic prosperity is anathema.

Educated middle-class Indians who now constitute 30% of the country’s population are often accused of not caring enough about India. There is a simple way to show that you care about this country of ours, which is on the verge of greatness. There will be a general election shortly – it is anywhere between three to twelve months away (depending on how political events unfold in the next few weeks). Make sure you vote.

On one side is progress and prosperity. On the other, is the abyss of despair and continued impoverishment – as embodied by India’s communists. I am not a believer in totalitarianism. The Indian Communists have a right to contest elections, just like every other political party out there. And you have the right and the duty to vote - for your conscience, and the continued progress of our great nation. Please do so – and send these enemies of our nation back to the political wilderness from where they emerged. Make sure you vote. Make sure your voice is heard. You deserve it. India deserves it.

Why Lawns Are Like Dogs (And Other Stories)

You must be wondering about the title of this blog. Do not fear. By the time you get to the end of it (and I sincerely hope that you will be your usual patient self and read the whole thing), you will hopefully know what I am talking about.

Why exactly, are lawns like dogs, you ask?? Let me start at the beginning. I spent the first few months of this year searching for an apartment in the Indian city of Pune, the self-professed education and information technology hub of India (and it is actually). Making the decision to move to Pune from Babylon-like Bombay was not an easy one, I assure you. Having made that decision, I spent a few hectic days in February, scouting out potential homes in Pune. My search started in the desert-like surroundings of Kharadi, a far-flung corner of Pune that the real estate agent optimistically told me was “within the boundaries of the Pune Municipal Corporation”. His words offered me little comfort. Kharadi turned out to be a sort of rural India setting, dusty and in the middle of nowhere. There is a futuristic Information Technology (IT) Park coming up there, but it will take about three years before the place becomes habitable. Also, the nearest trees seemed to be about two kilometres away, a smudge on the distant horizon. I was reminded of my recent stay in the Middle East. And I wasn’t even sure that they were trees. It could have been a mirage on a hot afternoon. The place felt like a tropical version of Siberia.

Besides, I don’t think the real estate agent was too impressed by me. He showed up for our meeting wearing a designer suit and Armani shades, in a luxury air-conditioned sedan. I showed up in a frayed T-shirt and shorts, on the back of the wife-to-be’s trusty, dusty, beat-up old scooter. No doubt, he was expecting a hotshot NRI (Non-Resident Indian) with loads of petrodollars to spare. Instead, he got me.

The apartment complex I saw in Kharadi consisted of about ten tall apartment buildings each of which was nine stories high. The complex was euphemistically named “___________ Gardens”. I do not want to be sued by the builder, hence the “___________”. On close observation (actually even a cursory one would have been sufficient), I saw that the “Gardens” bit in the name was a complete misnomer. It was hot in the middle of February, and the only vegetation that approximated a tree was a stunted shrub in the huge, dusty parking lot. The proposed “garden” so prominently displayed on the real estate hoardings was about the size of a large postage stamp. The shrub itself looked lonely and traumatized and my heart went out to it. So Kharadi was no longer in contention as the dream home for Yours Truly.

To cut a long story short, we settled on a house in the upscale, lively Kalyani-nagar suburb of Pune, home to globetrotting IT yuppies and Bollywood femme fatales (or so I am given to understand). Here I must acknowledge the decisiveness of the wife-to-be, because without her making the decision, I would never have bought the place. She is well aware of my tendency to dawdle and overanalyze. Suffice to say that we are the proud owners of a bright, airy apartment that is quiet, dust free and yet very conveniently located. I have already discovered all the good bars and restaurants in the area. Also, liquor stores here deliver intoxicants to your doorstep based on just a phone call, just like at home in Bombay! Verily, my cup of joy overfloweth (literally, on weekends).

There is a nice “joggers” park nearby complete with a running track and a laughing club consisting of slightly demented senior citizens. Apart from getting my daily dose of exercise which offsets my less-than-healthy lifestyle, I also learn a lot from my daily visits to the joggers’ park, thanks to the loud middle-aged ladies who also drop by every morning. I sit on a park bench after my workout and eavesdrop on their conversations about the best recipes for “choley” (chickpeas) and the benefits of “katora” (push-up) blouses for older women. Because of my ability to discreetly eavesdrop, I have become a lot wiser in the last few weeks. Needless to say, the wife-to-be frowns on this tendency of mine to eavesdrop on other people’s conversations, but I do need my share of entertainment now, don’t I? I feel a smarter, better man for my eavesdropping. I often feel the urge to join these middle-aged housewives on their bench and contribute to their discussions (I am sure that my well thought-out views on push-up blouses and chickpea recipes are worth hearing), but I have been strongly dissuaded from doing this by the wife-to-be.

And now, finally, we will get to what you have been waiting impatiently to hear – why lawns are like dogs. You must remember that I was born and brought up in the city of Bombay (known now as Mumbai), which has one of the highest real estate prices in the world. Owning an apartment there in a nice neighbourhood is a luxury and beyond the means of even upper middle class people. Owning an apartment with a balcony (veranda) is unheard of. It is something reserved for movie stars and billionaire industrialists who have companies listed on the NASDAQ and New York Stock Exchange. Imagine then my excitement, when I found out that the fourth floor apartment I bought in Pune had a balcony that measured about two fifty square feet, open to the sky and overlooking a vast expanse of flowering trees as well as a working women’s hostel (very important, that last fact).

The inner gardener in me decided that a lawn on this big veranda would be appropriate, little knowing the consequences of this landmark decision. The lawn looks great, no two ways about it. But it has become the apple of the wife-to-be’s eye, much to my chagrin. Just the other day, she returned from a long day at work. I of course am unemployed at the moment, and was expecting her to tenderly ask me how my day went (at the moment, my days are spent washing dishes and making sure that the toilet bowls are spotlessly clean). Instead, the first question I was asked was whether I had watered the lawn that day. When I feebly protested that my hectic cooking and cleaning schedule for the day had not permitted me the time to do so, I got an earful.

Recently, I suggested that we get away to a nearby hill resort town for the weekend, considering that the monsoon is here and the weather is just about perfect. Her reply was instantaneous and final. “We cannot do that”, she said. “Who will water the lawn?” It is obvious that the lawn has replaced me in the wife-to-be’s affections. She is Lord Emsworth to my Angus McAllister (for those of you familiar with that beloved creation of humorist P.G. Wodehouse). I am resigned to my fate. I have come to the conclusion that lawns are like dogs. They require constant care and hog all the attention. Now if you will excuse me, I have to go. The lawn needs watering.

Where Life Is Cheap

Another day, another series of bomb blasts, another sixty innocent people lie bloody and dead on the streets of another Indian city. And yet again our nation’s Home Minister intones that “Indians are courageous and will never succumb to the nefarious designs of terrorists”. Sorry, it just isn’t enough anymore. Terrorist strikes on Indian civilians in public places (trains, temples, mosques, bazaars) have killed hundreds of people in the last couple of years. Last year alone there were four deadly terrorist strikes – in May, August, October and November. To my knowledge, not a single terrorist has yet been convicted.

Why is this? Indian opposition parties allege (with much justification) that this government is “soft” on terror. Unfortunately, this allegation is true. The country’s intelligence gathering machinery is in a shambles. There is no coordination between the police and intelligence forces in the Centre and the states. In such situations, “human intelligence” – agents on the ground, make all the difference. And these individuals are few and far between. There is no coordinated governmental strategy to fight terrorism – of any stripe. While terrorists from the failed states across our borders strike with impunity, the last few years have seen the ominous and swift rise of two new home-grown sources of terrorism – fundamentalists within the borders of India and the Naxalites (Maoists). The Maoists now rule about 15% of India’s territory – where the government’s rule of law is virtually non-existent. The territory ruled by Maoists is primarily in the poor Northern states – especially Bihar, Orissa, Chhatisgarh, Jharkhand and parts of Andhra Pradesh. Lately, they have been spreading their tentacles into other “developed” states as well, including Maharashtra and Karnataka.

This government, which has been in power for nearly five years, has no clue about how to deal with terrorism – from across the border or the home-grown variety. They have had enough time to put in place a comprehensive strategy to deal with both. But they haven’t. Why? Apologists for the ruling governmental coalition say that a strategy to combat terrorism in India does not exist because the current government is comprised of a “rainbow” coalition of political parties, and the Prime Minister cannot put together a strategy because there is no consensus. The Leftists, for example, view terrorism merely as a “law and order” problem. It is not a law and order problem. Terrorists (both the fundamentalist and Maoist varieties) want to destroy the country and the very foundations and principles India represents – diversity, tolerance, justice, religious harmony, a thousand separate streams flowing into one mighty river. This is not merely a law and order problem.

The solutions are simple.

1. Put together a centralized Homeland Security type of program that concentrates on recruiting and training agents that can gather and act on terrorism related information before an attack takes place. This is not very difficult. Other countries across the world have done this successfully. The Indian Prime Minister sounded very petulant and ineffective yesterday when he said that such a centralized program was desirable, but “the states were not willing to cooperate”. This is not something he needs to build consensus on. Even opposition parties will agree with this (in fact, they are the ones who have been stridently demanding it). For a government that has shoved several controversial measures down people’s throats in the last few years (the caste-based “quota system” in higher education is the latest example), doing something positive and widely regarded as desirable should not be difficult. Even if it is difficult, it needs to be done, whether or not the states agree. Governing a diverse country such as India is a difficult job. If he does not want a difficult job, he should step down. Whining about it in public is an excuse and unbecoming of a man of the Indian Prime Minister’s stature.

2. Enact or bring back stringent anti-terrorist laws such as the POTA (Prevention of Terrorist Activities) Act that allows for the interrogation of those suspected of terrorist activities and makes it a non-bailable offence. Some human rights activists have claimed that there have been gross violations of human rights as a result of POTA. That is possible. However, what needs to be done is ensuring proper implementation of laws such as POTA, not discarding them. That is like throwing the baby out with the bathwater. After all, laws prohibiting murder and theft have not been repealed because of the possibility of innocent people being convicted. The objective should be to ensure that no human rights violations take place, not the repealing of the law. The current ruling coalition cynically repealed the POTA law promptly after coming into power, in a bid to get votes from India’s minorities. The fact is that Indian minorities want the same things that India’s religious Hindu majority does – law and order, jobs, roads, education, healthcare. Terrorist bombs do not discriminate between killing Hindu and Muslim – they kill indiscriminately.

3. Set up “fast-track” courts to swiftly mete out justice to those convicted of terrorism. India’s judicial system is among the slowest in the world. Those terrorists accused in the 1993 Mumbai blasts were convicted only in 2007 – a delay of fourteen years, and this was a high-profile case in the full glare of the media!! This is simply unacceptable.

4. Get somebody who means business to implement the suggestions listed above. Our current Home Minister is an object of ridicule and contempt. He has no administrative skills or track record to speak of (can somebody name even one of his accomplishments after he has spent a lifetime in politics?), and spends his time reviewing police parades in far-flung rural districts and using the government airplane to visit his home-town when he gets homesick. His only qualification for the job is the fact that he has been a loyal Gandhi-Nehru dynasty sycophant for the last thirty years. The Home Minister is the second most powerful person in the country. The individual is entrusted with providing one billion people with internal security. It is a tough job and requires a tough, competent individual in charge. Surely, as Indian citizens, we deserve much, much better?

So why are these suggestions, which are so obvious, not being implemented? It is because in India, life is cheap. And it is not just our politicians to blame. All of us will forget last week’s Jaipur blasts soon. Unless, God forbid, someone we know or love is hurt or killed. We will forget it until the next time terrorists strike, killing another set of innocent people.

Do not forget. Hold your government accountable to do what is right by the people who elected them – the long-suffering citizens of India, Hindus, Muslims, Christians – all of us. India and its values, traditions and culture of religious diversity is unique. It deserves to be treasured and protected.

Literary Musings: Naipaul, The History of the Vanquished and the Search for Identity

“Most of us know the parents and grandparents we come from. But that would only be a fragment of the truth. We cannot understand all the traits we have inherited. Sometimes, we can be strangers to ourselves”.

I have just started reading the V.S. Naipaul book “A Way In The World”, my first Naipaul book in a few years. As a reader, it is a pleasure to be back. Nobody writes quite like “Sir Vidia” Naipaul, though many try. Like quite a few of Naipaul’s books, this one too is concerned with ordinary people caught in a no-man’s land as far as their identities are concerned. Like Naipaul (who was born of parents of Indian origin in Trinidad in the West Indies, and who then left for England in his teens), the characters of many of his books face a similar identity crisis. Are they Indians, are they West Indians, are they English, or are they all of the above? These various identities all manifest themselves in Naipaul’s finely etched characters, often with tragic consequences. Naipaul has spent a lifetime exploring the search for individual and collective identity.

And in all of Naipaul’s books, there is always a suggestion of huge underlying tragedies lying just below the surface. In his book “A Turn In the South” published in 1989 for example, which dealt with his travels in the American Deep South, it is the enduring legacy of slavery and the way it continues to affect Southerners of all races a hundred and thirty years after it was abolished. In “Beyond Belief” (published in the 1990s), it was about how Pakistan had failed to reinvent itself after Partition from India in 1947. A five thousand year old common history and culture was forgotten (and indeed reviled) overnight, leading to tragic consequences and for want of a better word, an amputated state with people who were suddenly told that their ancient heritage was irrelevant and worth abandoning.

In Naipaul’s view, these nations and peoples have never recovered, and have lost their own identities in the bargain. They are “wounded civilizations”. When Naipaul was deservedly (and belatedly) awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2001, the Nobel Prize Committee said “Naipaul is (Joseph) Conrad's heir as the annalist of the destinies of empires in the moral sense: what they do to human beings. His authority as a narrator is grounded in the memory of what others have forgotten, the history of the vanquished”.

Of course, no writer I have read is able to write about such weighty topics and express these existential dilemmas as well as Naipaul. He has the ability to say so much with so few words. His writing style is economical, even sparse. Yet no one quite captures the essence of a person or place quite like Naipaul. A few writers, such as Paul Theroux (“Sir Vidia’s shadow”) have tried over the years. Theroux has his own compelling writing style, and it is evident that he is strongly influenced by Naipaul. However, Theroux’s sensibilities remain American and his perception and judgment of his environment is primarily from an American standpoint. Theroux also does not possess the historical perspective of the past that Naipaul does.

Naipaul is different. In his travel books, Naipaul is the eternal traveller, the observer, the perpetual outsider. He is a stranger to his surroundings and is yet intimately aware of them – an unusual combination. His knowledge of the past and local histories of the places he visits is astonishing. Being the perpetual outsider has its advantages as far as his writing goes. Also, his intelligence and perception of the reality he finds himself in (wherever he goes) is most acute. Combine this with his formidable writing skills, and you have an irresistible combination, a unique view of the world. While his writing is weighty and thought-provoking, it never comes across as self-important or presumptuous, maudlin or sentimental. There is no hyperbole or exaggeration, just a keen sense of the past and present and an eye for detail that is unsurpassed.

Naipaul’s skill and ability in describing a foreign place and its people runs in the family. His younger brother Shiva Naipaul was also a brilliant writer who wrote about travel and the search for identity in a very good book titled “Beyond the Dragon’s Mouth”. Read it if you get the opportunity. You will not regret it. Shiva died in tragic circumstances in 1985 at the age of only forty. After his death the British newspaper the Spectator established the Shiva Naipaul Memorial Prize for "the writer best able to describe a visit to a foreign place or people...of a culture evidently alien to the writer". There are those who feel that Shiva would have surpassed his older brother as a writer had he lived.

But let me get back to V.S. Naipaul. His writing in many cases is prophetic – his 1989 book on India “A Million Mutinies Now” examines how India is almost always on the verge of imploding, beset as it is by caste, religious and linguistic tensions that are in some cases, thousands of years old. Happily, this particular prophecy about India has still not come to pass, though the recent riots in Mumbai bear evidence of what Naipaul writes about.

Of course, Naipaul swore never to return to India after his first visit there in the early 1960s, which led to the book “An Area of Darkness”. As a person of Indian descent, Naipaul was disillusioned with India and felt that India and its peoples had been traumatized by centuries of invasion and colonial rule. He thought of India as spiritually exhausted, an isolationist state clinging to the empty symbols and rituals of an ancient past whose spirit was dead. He swore never to return. But return he did, many times.

His subsequent books on India have turned out to be progressively more optimistic. He has admitted that in India, somehow the ancient past co-exists (sometimes uneasily) with the present. In no other country in the world has this happened. The “history of the vanquished” has still not been written as far as India is concerned. India is the only country in the world where the “pagan” past is still alive and well.

In his books, Naipaul often explores the idea of what can best be termed as ‘racial” or “genetic” memory. Possibly some ancient genetic memory was stirred in Naipaul on his initial visit to India. So though he was troubled and distressed by much that he saw in India and there was not much about his sensibilities that was Indian, could it be that some long-dormant genetic memory of the emerald-green fields and sugarcane plantations of his ancestors in Eastern Uttar Pradesh drew him back again and again to the land of his forefathers? Did Naipaul, the eternal outsider, finally get a glimpse of home? It is possible.

His ancestors moved halfway across the world in the late nineteenth century to escape the crushing poverty of the North Indian plains and to find a better life. It is possible that Naipaul came back a century later to the land his ancestors left and found home in the bargain. For a man who is an outsider wherever he is and whose world view was, is and remains bleak, it must have come as quite a surprise.

So if I wake up one morning from a vivid dream of sitting by the side of the Ganges River in Bengal, with the fog rolling up the river and the sky full of rain, with the smell of wet earth and vegetation and with fishing boats outlined in the hazy distance, if I wake up with the distinct feeling of intimately knowing a place I have never been to, I will remember V.S. Naipaul and his supposition of genetic inheritance and memory. Because home may be a place you have never ever been to before.

Getting Older: Caution!! Wrong Elephants

You are wondering about the title of this blog. What has getting older got to do with wrong elephants? And what exactly are wrong elephants in the first place? Both your questions are very valid, dear reader. Congratulate yourself on your perspicacity and your ability to cut to the chase and ask the really important questions.

So what exactly are wrong elephants and what do they have to do with getting older? Allow me to elaborate. They say that it is easy to notice aging, except in one’s own mirror. I have been waking up every morning for the last few years and as I look at myself in the mirror, nothing about my appearance seems to have changed very much (except my receding hairline).

However, I would be fooling myself if I think that age is not catching up with me. It is. I feel tired if I drink too much and stay up late the night before. I ache if I work out a little more than my normal routine. My body does not respond as nimbly and promptly as it used to when my mind commands. This can sometimes be embarrassing. When I play tennis, I find myself about two steps behind where I used to be when I was twenty five. My mind thinks it can reach a service return on the far side of the court. My body meanwhile says “Hey, hold it!! What the hell do you think you are trying to do here?” When I play air guitar, my leaps and scissor kicks are not as high as they used to be. I get the sneaking feeling that I am no longer a serious contender for the next World Air Guitar Championships. My list of complaints is endless, and the depressing part is that it is only going to get worse. There is no remedy.

When is he going to get to the wrong elephants bit, you are asking impatiently (though I know that you are very polite and patient and will wait until I do). A year ago, I went to my local optometrist as I seemed to be having problems with my distance vision. The optometrist was a kindly bespectacled grey-haired man with crinkly eyes, about forty five years old. I was forty then, but somehow he seemed ancient. No way am I ever going to get that old, I thought to myself. Poor man, I thought, he is forced to wear bifocals. After my eye exam, he looked at me and said smugly, “You are getting older. You are going to need bifocals soon”. As I mentioned, he wore bifocals himself, and there was an air of immense satisfaction in his voice. Welcome to the club, he seemed to be saying, you didn’t think you could escape, did you?

Partly because I didn’t want to accept the fact that I am getting older, and partly because I didn’t want to give my optometrist the satisfaction of being right, I chose to ignore his advice. Of course, it has come back to haunt me. Last week I was in India, trundling down the Mumbai-Pune expressway at a hundred and ten kilometres an hour. Dusk was approaching, the sky was clear, the weather was perfect and I was enjoying the sight of a fiery sunset over the hills of the Western Ghats. As we passed one of the rest stops at dusk, a large signboard suddenly caught my attention in the gathering gloom. “Caution”, it said, “Wrong Elephants”.

I was naturally mystified and intrigued by the message on the signboard. For an instant, the sign seemed to make sense at a metaphysical level. I felt like I was reliving an acid flashback (though I have never “dropped” acid). I felt like I was in a drug-induced dream, though I was completely sober. Wrong elephants, I thought to myself, oh yes, that makes perfect sense. Then the rational part of my brain took over. No, this does not make sense. What are wrong elephants, and why are we being told to be careful of them on the side of a motorway? And taking that argument one step further, what are “right” elephants? Do we need to be careful of right elephants as well?

Pulling myself together, I squinted and took another look at the signboard. It read “Caution, Wrong Entrants”. It dawned on me that my optometrist was right. I am getting older. He is waiting for me at the entrance of the Bifocal Club, full of superficial sympathy and support on the outside, while chuckling to himself on the inside. I will probably have to take up his recommendation of bifocal glasses soon, and my days of spotting wrong elephants will be over forever. I am getting older, and like that line from a song in my youth goes, “It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine”.

Sooner or later, I will be welcoming you to the Bifocal Club. It is inevitable. See you there.

Observations: “The Difference Between Being Admired and Being Loved”

Let me start this off by saying that I am not a big cricket fan. I stopped watching test match cricket some years ago. I didn’t get sucked into the hoopla surrounding India’s big victory at the 20/20 Cricket World Cup last year either (though of course winning that tournament was a sporting triumph for the nation).

But I did watch India beat Australia in the Perth Test Match a few days ago. It was an interesting game. This blog is not about cricket, in case you are wondering. It is about human nature, and about how what we admire and what we love are often two different things. I will use the Indian test captain Anil Kumble to illustrate a point. As usual, I will take a bit of time to get to the point, so do be patient with me.

Anil Kumble is one of the world’s quieter people. As a test match bowler, he has tirelessly served Indian cricket for seventeen years. Quite frequently, he has won matches for India with his bowling. In fact, he is expected to win matches for India with his bowling. But you never hear about him off the cricket field. He is not viewed as sexy or glamorous. He is not a barrel of laughs and he is not the life and soul of the party. He is not a macho breast-beater in the mould of some of his more popular team-mates. He is not on the list of cricketers chosen to model clothes by Indian fashion designers. He doesn’t attend parties that are reported on Page Three of the newspapers. He is not photographed cavorting with Bollywood actresses. He doesn’t endorse soft drinks or car tyres. In fact, you rarely see or hear about him off the cricket field.

Why is this? It is because as cricket commentator Harsha Bhogle said at the end of the Perth test match – “He is not viewed as advertising material”. Kumble is widely admired – for his intelligence (he is an engineer by training), his command over the English language (witness the interviews he gave at the end of the Perth test), his bowling (for reasons already mentioned), his courage, professionalism and temperament (he once came out to bat in a test match in the West Indies despite having his jaw broken the previous day) and his dignity and maturity (his management of the Indian team and the hostile Australian media at the end of the acrimonious Sydney test match a few weeks ago).

On the face of it, these attributes should make him one of India’s best loved sports figures. But that is not the case. He is admired, but not loved. There is a difference. We love our wayward, dashing Yuvraj Singhs. Never mind that Yuvraj Singh performs well only intermittently. Never mind that he seems to have grown a double chin and that his attitude and temperament are often called into question. The fact remains that he is apparently loved even when he fails, and even when his attitude on the field and his team playing skills are suspect. Consistent performances on the field are apparently not a pre-requisite for loving Yuvraj Singh. However, such performances are definitely a pre-requisite for admiring Anil Kumble. We expect him to be reliable, to win matches, to be humble, intelligent, mature. Anything less and people start baying for his blood.

Why do we expect so much from those we admire, but so little from those we love? I have used Anil Kumble only as an example, but I hope that you get my drift. Kumble is the diligent, reliable honest husband forever being cuckolded for the dashing, untrustworthy flamboyant lover. This is not only applicable to the cricket or sports world. It seems to apply to all spheres of life.

Why is it so? I do not know. Could it be the relentless and fickle media and advertising industries that build up and pull down shallow temporary heroes, while ignoring or taking for granted the real ones? That could be part of the problem. The news seems full of trivial, titillating stories about cardboard celebrities, while the real news that we should know about is often drowned by useless chatter.

Is this a recent phenomenon or has it always been with us? I suspect that it has always been around, though it seems to have accelerated in recent years, thanks to the media explosion all over the world – 24 hour news channels desperately trying to manufacture “easy” news where none really exists. This is not just an Indian phenomenon, it exists everywhere. In the United Kingdom for example, the tabloids outsell the “respectable” newspapers by a considerable margin. The same is true in the United States.

What is unnerving is that the idea that we as a society seem to have stopped admiring (and loving) genuine heroes, because they are quiet and reliable and well, boring. Qualities that we were taught were good as children (honesty, modesty, strength, dignity and integrity) are often viewed as yesterday’s news. They are not sexy enough to warrant our sustained attention. Nobody wants to read about what a decent guy Anil Kumble is. But everyone seems very keen to know who Yuvraj Singh is dating. Someone recently said that this phenomenon was “Page Three moving to Page One”.

As a result of this phenomenon, glory and adulation is showered on those who do not deserve it, while genuine heroes languish in relative obscurity. I am not trying to disrespect Yuvraj Singh here (if you happen to be a fan of his). He is talented but has not done justice to his talent. Kumble on the other hand, is not the most talented bowler in the world. Yet he has relentlessly focused and challenged himself every time he has stepped onto the field. He has done the most with the limited bowling talent at his disposal. His stamina and mental strength are phenomenal, and he has often triumphed in the face of daunting odds. Surely, this (in addition to all his other considerable attributes) should inspire love on the part of Indian sporting public?

Of course, there are those people who are both admired and loved – in the Indian sporting world, Kapil Dev and Sachin Tendulkar come to mind. But they are exceptions to the rule.

Like everyone else, I have also fallen prey to this – expecting too much from the people I admire, and too little from the ones I love (as well as taking them for granted occasionally).

So this blog is dedicated to the people I admire – you deserve our admiration as well as our love.