supriyogupta

[supriyogupta]

The Mirzapur of Oakley

He was, in a sense, the last British India businessman. Edward Oakley passed away today in Delhi though his story was forged in the grotty little town of Mirzapur on the banks of the Ganges.

Edward was a British India businessman playing the role of a British gentleman in India with all the panache of a white carpet baron. It was a role that he loved to play to the hilt to the utter discomfiture of those around him.

He would deliberately make himself obnoxious and it gave him great pleasure to extract reactions for his most outrageous statements.

Sitting in the verandah of his massive bungalow in Mirzapur, his loyal Man Friday, Bhagwan Das, would wipe his perspiring bald head, as he would sigh with deliberate affectation, "This is a tough life". You almost pitied the man as he soldiered through eight courses churned out by the cook trained by his Mother or sister over the years.

Or he would needle my woefully cut-off existence in the boondocks of Mirzapur by helpfully informing me that North Korea had invaded South Korea (they hadn't!) and then took pleasure in watching a newsman squirm (as my instinct was to rush to a radio or television) while he kept me on my seat talking inanities about life in general.

At my wedding in Mysore, for which he travelled down, he solemnly and loudly informed me thrice over, "lambs to slaughter". (The photograph here is of Edward with Jessica Karumbiah)

To a prominent British correspondent's equally renowned girlfriend he announced that the 'talk in London was that you are his kept'.

In latter years, the power of email gave him the opportunity to harangue the world with his "Epistolary Christmas Confidences", dishing out choice epithets for both British and Indian politicians. He was in equal parts British and Indian and held politicians on both sides with equal contempt.

But underneath the genial humbug was a hard-nosed businessman not afraid to take tough decisions, even at his own cost.

Edward decided to lead the charge against child labour by not only cleaning up looms working for OBEETEE but also coaxing the industry to move in the same direction even as NGOs were content to use the plight of children to garner global attention.

From introducing modern dye houses to new designs, Edward shaped a modern company that today is 100 years old, still makes the finest carpets and is a brand to be reckoned with.

***

Our meeting was pure happenstance.

Summarily ordered at The Observer of Business & Politics to chase Advani for his first speech which he was going to deliver in Vaishali a few months after the demolition of Babri Masjid, I found myself happily parked in the First Class AC coupe of the Magadh Express that shuttled between Delhi and Patna. (Bless the admin guy who was told to get a ticket at any cost for a relatively rookie assistant editor).

In a short while came a passel of suitcases and a man with an impressive entourage which took charge of the space. He settled down among the flurry of attendants and coolies. His countenance bore all the resemblance of a tough UP baron and I dug deeper into my book to escape any potential conflict with the notorious gangsters of UP.

Once the man settled down, he proceeded to question me in a very cultured manner in impeccable English and an inherent sense of courtesy and culture that would shame any royal today.

That was my introduction to Vishnu Raj Sharma or, as I got to know over time, Vinoo.

As my answers rolled out, I could sense a rising excitement in Vinoo. After a while, he could barely contain his excitement and proceed to interrogate me on my views on child labour. I knew little and didn't even have enough to bullshit my way through.

Vinoo figured I needed full education and marched me down the corridor of a now speeding train to the other end of the coach and the other coupe where I had my first sight of a gentle walrus shaped Englishman, Edward Oakley.

As it transpired, Edward Oakley was the owner and the last descendant and inheritor of a firm set up in 1920 by Oakley, Bowden & Taylor who founded OBEETEE in Mirzapur, India.

Some of the finest carpets in the country came from OBEETEE whose hand made woollen carpets were many a notch above their contemporary competitors.

The carpet belt was then feted as the dollar belt of India and yet the industry was under attack on all fronts, largely due to its own failings. Child labour was rampant. Chemical dyes had resulted in countries moving to ban Indian carpets and NGOs were hounding and making a career out of attacking the industry.

Much of this and more poured out in that train journey, watered by the finest of scotches and an abundant supply of ice.

We parted in Allahabad next morning with the offer of a job to be a part of the machinery to end child labour in the carpet industry, an effort that Edward had decided to champion even while being at odds with Kailash Satyarthi who was building his reputation on highlighting the wretched conditions of children in the industry.

Over the next few months, I managed to convince myself that my destiny, acumen and excellence lay in the carpet industry.

I took up the offer to visit Mirzapur and proceeded to stay there for six months till I realized that if carpets were an elephant and hit me on the head, I would still have little clue about knots, designs, warps and wefts.

But those six months were an object lesson on how a British businessman had built an impressive and modern machinery in the early 1990s that was in the business of carpets - a product that was not even made in their own facilities but in village homes.

Over the months, for me it also became a story of an extremely humane set of people of impeccable manners, superb ethics and a sound business.

***

The story of Edward was also a story about him and his man Friday Bhagwan Das. Bhagwan Das was ever present at his elbow for every whim and need. His shadow if you please. Always without footgear, Bhagwan Das was often seen to be a power unto himself as he interpreted for the household the wishes of the master or carried messages to other people.

And then, so the story goes, Bhagwan Das' son fell into a pit dug for construction within the compound of the bungalow.

Edward was shattered. He took over the upbringing of Bhagwan Das' two daughters. Over the years, he sent them to the finest of boarding schools and then to England and educated them like his own daughters.

Long after Bhagwan Das passed away, Edward played the guardian angel and only late last year, the elder daughter was married off in London.

*** Here's another happenstance.

Two decades and more later, a friend called up and asked me to meet a lady who was trying to find her next calling, but not in our line of business. Going through her CV, I saw that her early years were in Mirzapur.

If nothing else but to get the story of how things had moved on in Mirzapur or Miserypur as it was popularly called, I looked forward to the meeting.

After a bit of chatter, we talked about her family. I asked where her father worked.

She said it was a small firm in Mirzapur.

Name?

OBEETEE.

And her father's name?

Vishnu Raj Sharma.

[supriyogupta]

THE RAGE OF TEESTA

This is part fact, part fiction. I know this happened. I was there. But I don’t remember anything of what did happen. I went back to the house once when young and recalled nothing. And don’t even now recall much of that place from that visit. So, this is a mostly imaginary reconstruction from snatches of conversation, from some retelling from a very long time back that created its own impressions.

October 2018, 50 years later, I started writing this reconstruction using imagination. Maybe it happened this way, maybe it did not. But the end was the same. And set us on a journey like many in similar situation would have, touching so many more lives, sacrifices from so many people whose lives we invaded. So, here’s the story. A tribute to my father. And a note in history for those to follow.

And the picture, soon after the floods when we were on our way to Ajmer for what turned out to be all the growing years with my Pishi and Pishamoshai – my father’s sister and husband. In the process, having another father figure whose values I seem to have imbibed. That story, another day.

***

There was a strange stillness to the night. He woke from his sleep, his subconscious possibly nudged by sounds it was not used to. Like the lapping of water. Or maybe pieces of metal gently knocking together. As he reached for the light, it wouldn’t come on. But his eyes got adjusted to the dark. And a cold dread seized his heart. There was water gently rising on the floor. Pots and pans and assorted light furniture floated lazily around. Even as he watched, he saw the water rising by the passing minute.

At 5’11, he was tall and wide, filled with strength that came naturally with that frame. He rushed from window to window, trying to check any space that allowed for an exit. The household had come to life. The two kids, one had turned two and the other had turned four in June. His wife, of slender build, had started moving valuables out of the way of the water. His younger brother, suffering from acute schizophrenia, sat listlessly watching the water rise.

Was it hours, was it minutes, but he knew that they were not just marooned but the water would rise and engulf them all soon. The mighty Teesta had breached despite the high earth bund that separated the house from the raging tributary of the Brahmaputra. It was October 4, turning to October 5, and in the annals of Indian floods, it would go down in the history as the highest flooding ever.

But he did not know that. All that he knew as the rising water crept up the leg of the bed in the dark night and furniture started floating that the water would cover the low lying house within the hour. Marshalling the whole family on the bed first, he desperately looked for a way out. Opening the doors would bring in the full force of the water and sweep away his wife and kids and even maybe his brother whose state of apathy was such that he would put up little resistance to the swirling waters.

As the water rose swiftly, there was only one way out. He had to move the family to the roof, and quickly. The single storied house had a roof made of galvanized sheets and no stairs to a terrace. Across the blackness of the yard, he could make out, through the suffused light of a full moon covered by clouds, the high storied building which housed the kitchen and had a concrete roof well above the reach of the water.

With a retrieved hammer and metal rod, he clambered atop the steel almirah and began hammering away at the galvanized sheets, trying to break them loose from their moorings. Blow after blow after blow fell on the unyielding tin roof. Still in his lungi and banyian, sweat poured while he relentlessly pounded away. He looked down to see his wife had put the kids atop the wooden chest and held on to them. The waters had crested the top of the beds and were still rising. His brother sat listlessly on the bed watching without reacting as the waters lapped around his folded knees. He resumed his assault with increasing desperation till, finally, the tin sheets gave way, torn from their moorings and yet resistant. With bare hands he now grasped the edges. As they cut into his hands he folded them to his will, bit by bloody bit till they allowed first a fist hold and then a hand hold and then a bit more. With a final push, one sheet surrendered and toppled over.

He jumped on the bed where the water had climbed to his knees. His brother stood, grasping a little the dire situation. Who should he send up first? His wife wouldn’t go up without the kids but the kids themselves wouldn’t be safe if they were there by themselves. His brother would have to be the first one up. Through the rafters, he cajoled his brother up on to the roof. The water was now rushing into the house, possibly having tamed a door or window. He hurried to first send up the elder boy, all of 4, while his wife held on to the younger one. The pressure of the water bore on them as he came off the top of one cupboard clutching the child. He grasped his wife, no more than a slender stick, and propelled mother and child against the force of the water till he had them atop the other almirah right below the open roof. The water had now risen to his chest as he put her on his shoulder and levered them through the gap in the roof. As the mother extended the younger one to the waiting hands of the brother, the child slipped through the hands and fell. The falling two year old however had extended his hands in reflex and grasped the bare rafters and hung on. With a quick heave the dangling child was plucked out of the waters and handed back to the roof. And then the father climbed on to the roof.

He looked around. There were few houses around and those that were had disappeared under water. He sat on the roof, recovering his breath. Giving his stretched muscles a rest. The children were cold, clinging to their mother for warmth. He gingerly walked on the slippery sloped roof, hoping to find a place from where he could reach the high storied kitchen. His brother could swim but would have to be guided through lest he went adrift by the strange workings of his mind. Which meant he would now have to make three trips across that fast flowing water – a few hundred yards but in the crazy push of water, as difficult as crossing a river in full spate.

There was no time to lose. Grasping his brother’s hand he jumped into the water and with, some encouragement from the rushing waters, made it to the terrace of the kitchen with strong strokes. Hurriedly pushing the still passive fellow up on to the terrace, he jumped back into the waters. And, suddenly, he realized that the journey back would be a fight against the mighty river flowing in the opposite direction. With each stroke, he would move forward only to be relentlessly pushed back and away. The few yards became more as the force of the river kept pushing him back and away from both the houses. Gasping with pain, fear and short of breath, he kept his eyes firmly on the huddled wife and children perched precariously atop the tiled roof watching his struggle to make it back. As he swam and swam, his mind kept working on the different angles that would help cut the force of the tide and give him some relief from the relentless push of the fast moving currents. Pushed back, over and over again, he suddenly got relief when the flowing waters pushed him onto a log and then the shield of the house that gave a bit of a respite from the currents. He quickly steered the log towards the house, keeping it between himself and the currents. Where the journey with his brother was but a handful of minutes, the journey back was well over a quarter of an hour.

He had little time to lose. His wife, looking faint and weak, passed the two children to him. He had them both perch on the log while holding on to him and propelled the log back towards the high storied house. He had to be more careful. Neither child was big enough to swim and one slip, one misstep and they would be lost for ever. A hand around each child, he pushed the log and dog paddled desperately towards the kitchen. The currents, mercifully, were back in favour and boosted his progress but away from the house. Thrashing with an arm, exhorting the kids to hold on, taking deep breaths, he swam as he had never swum before. His lungs were ready to burst. His arms falling off in pain and strain, he swam on. Pushing the two children into the hands of his brother, he collapsed on the terrace. Panting, gasping, he lay on the terrace for long minutes recovering his breath, his strength. He knew he was in no shape to make the journey back to get his wife until he recovered enough. With deep breaths, he tried to get his breath back. He told his kids to keep speaking to their mother over the rush of the waters so she knew he was coming back. Quarter of an hour later, he was ready to make the journey back.

He plunged back into the murky water, now cluttered with household junk from many houses around that had given up their more buoyant artefacts. He could make some of them out as they floated past like little boats. An occasional floating chest divested of its innards would suddenly block his way. Somehow, the current seemed stronger. Or was he just too tired to make it back. Just a quarter way across and he felt he should turn back and surrender to the inexorable drag of the sharp current. And yet something kept him going. He would stop and tread water, every time pushed back a few feet. The wind picked up from time to time, buffeting. He did not know how long it took him but he finally reached and clambered up the slippery slope of the tin roof. Cutting and maiming his hands, collapsed gasping for a long time.

Many deep breaths later, he called out to his wife.

There was no response.

****

For those who want to know a more real view of the 1968 flood of Teesta, here are a few posts I recently discovered: https://supriyogupta.tumblr.com/post/177414894294/the-teesta-floods-of-1968

[supriyogupta]

The Teesta Floods of 1968

The 50th Anniversary of the Teesta Floods of 1968 would be soon upon us.

As a survivor, though just 2, and in order that the few recollections do not get wiped away, I am copy pasting with the link of one of the eyewitnesses:

http://akdcts.blogspot.com/2011/08/eyewitness-to-teesta-floods-1968.html

http://akdcts.blogspot.com/2011/10/teesta-floods-of-1968.html

The Teesta Barrage

Yesterday was the 43rd anniversary of the Teesta flood of 1968 which caused untold devastation and changed the landscape of North Bengal to some extent.

In one of my earlier posts,I had carried a scholarly contribution By Mr Swapan Sen, who was the Assistant Engineer of the Irrigation and Waterways Directorate of the West Bengal Government and was posted in the area at that fateful time.

In today's post he recounts the horrors of that day and recreates the memories of many brave men(including, I must add, himself) who fought against the elements, albeit unsuccessfully to save the people of North Bengal from the calamity. Without their efforts, the death toll and the scale of devastation would probably have been much greater than it actually was.While the Teesta is in the news nowadays for political reasons, nobody really remembers those terrible days. This is an important memoir of the floods of 1968. .

The Teesta Flood 1968- a real life story ( Part 1) By Mr Swapan Sen

It was 2nd of October, 1968. This being Gandhiji’s birthday was a holiday for all but not for me. My colleague Dipankar Chakraborty, who was the Assistant Engineer of the Moinaguri Subdivision of the Irrigation & Waterways Directorate’s Jalpaiguri Division, had gone on leave and I was to look after his work in addition to my own at Jalpaiguri. Rain was pouring down incessantly from the previous evening and at about 8 AM that day, I received a telephone call from our Executive Engineer, Kamakshya Prasad Chowdhury (Kamakshyada to all his junior colleagues) asking me to go to Moinaguri and take a look at the Domohani embankment. So I was on my way to Moinaguri in my Jeep not knowing what to expect.

Reaching our office at Moinaguri, I called for Sri Monoranjan Adhikary, the senior-most and the most experienced Sub-Assistant Engineer of the Sub-division. Together we set out for an inspection of the Domohani embankment which was crossing the Railway Bridge on the Teesta. I had little experience with the behavior of the mighty Teesta. So at the Domohani gauge-site, the spectacle seemed quite frightening. The river water was nearly touching the danger-mark and the river seemed to be endless between the two embankments of Jalpaiguri and Moinaguri. The country-side slope of the Domohani embankment, protecting Moinaguri, had slipped away at places. But these slippages were visibly old. Mr. Adhikary and I called up local men for covering the countryside slopes with gunny bags filled with earth with the hope that this would slow down the seepage of river-water through the embankment soil and prevent further slippage.

The water level of the river kept on rising and towards the evening it went beyond the danger-mark. As dusk set in, it became practically impossible to do any fruitful work amidst incessant rains and darkness. I decided to stay on at Moinaguri and went back to the office. I rang up Kamakshyada and narrated what I had seen at the embankment-site and the fact that it was impossible to work with a handful of local labour during the night and continuing heavy rains. Sensing fear in my voice, he told me not to panic, as the embankments, as experienced by him, are never breached by mere seepage unless the river-water itself flows over the top of the embankment.

I spent a very restless night in Dipankar’s living quarters. In the morning, I set out again with Mr. Adhikary, for the embankment. As I reached the embankment, what I saw was simply appalling. The river water had crossed the extreme danger level and there appeared to be, as we had been taught at our Engineering College, “sand-boiling” along the toe-line of the embankment on the country-side. Seeping across the embankment, the river-water was coming out with sand taken from the embankment along the toe-line through numerous holes. The sand coming out appeared to boil in the river water at the exits. It looked as if there were numerous pipes in the embankment through which the river-water was finding way to the other side. Evidently, if allowed to continue, this would eventually cause sinking of the crest of the embankment. We gathered the village people available nearby and sought for their help in covering the embankment toe with gunny bags filled with earth taken from wherever this was available. Soon other problems surfaced. There were large-scale slippages on the country-side slope of the embankment and the top of the embankment, as apprehended, started sinking at places. As our brave men kept on collecting and depositing earth in their bid to repair the damages, I went down to the village and managed to phone Kamakshyada from the phone of a log-yard owner. He told me, he would try to come to the site but the condition of the protection embankment on the Jalpaiguri-side too was no better and he and other colleagues of mine were busy in protecting that embankment. He also told me to keep in touch with Utpal Bhadra, the Assistant engineer at the Head Office, who had been deputed by him especially to monitor the situation, maintain liaison with the District Administration and the Army for help.

It was clearly a losing battle we were fighting. We neither had the man-power, nor enough useable earth or sand nearby to cover the leaking toes and depressions of the crest of the embankment, that had started appearing in the upstream reaches of the embankment. The top of the embankment had also narrowed down in places due to slippages and it was hardly possible to access the upper reaches of the embankment in our Jeep any more. The rains were not also showing any signs of letting up. I conveyed to Utpal from the log-yard owner’s phone that we had to somehow save the people as a breach in the embankment seemed imminent. He said the Army has been asked to help and I should remain at the site till they arrive.

At about 12 Noon, Government Officials, including the Sub-divisional Officer, Jalpaiguri, arrived on the spot to ascertain the situation. Asked what I thought about the condition of the embankment, I told them that the prognosis was bad as the water was still rising and the embankment could give way; the people in nearby villages should therefore, be alerted and evacuated. I made the same request to a local political leader, Mr. Chikur Chanda, who had also arrived at the spot around the same time. I told him the village folks were not ready to leave their homes in the incessant rain and that they were to be convinced.

At about 3PM, the rise in the water-level seemed to slow down and the water-level, apparently reached a peak. This brought some solace to our anxious minds but little did we know what was lying in wait. With the dusk setting in, we had to return to our office. I was in rain-soaked clothes throughout the day and needed a change of clothes. I slipped into my nightdress, which was the only dry apparel then available with me. Mr. Adhikari too, went home for a change of clothes but came back to the office in an hour’s time. Just then, a radiogram message arrived from Teesta Bazaar and we learnt that the level of water at the Teesta Bazaar (Anderson Bridge) gauge site was rising rapidly, more than 6 inches in 30 minutes. The status reported was that of about 6 PM. We consulted our gauge-records and previous history of time taken by the river-water to reach Domohani from the Teesta Bazar. What we found, took our breath away. The water level at Teesta Bazaar had reached an all-time unbelievably high peak (20.4 m above the extreme danger level*). The time the river water takes to reach Domohani from the Teesta Bazaar gauge site, we found, was 6 to 8 hours. This meant the water level at the Domohani gauge site would reach its peak between 12-00 hours that night and 2 AM, the next morning.

We set out again for the embankment. As we reached the gauge-site of the embankment at about 12-00 hours, we found that the water level was just about a foot below the top of the embankment. It was dangerous to proceed further upstream along the embankment in our Jeep. To reach the log-yard owner’s place we had to pass below a Banyan tree, which had, by that time, started leaning on the embankment partially blocking our path. We managed to reach the log-yard in the village along the side-road leading off from the embankment. I could call up Utpal over the log-yard phone and he told me to stick to the site as the Army was to arrive to take charge of the embankment. Before I left, I told the owner of the Log-Yard to call up his neighbors and move to safe zones as quickly as possible. Apparently he was unwilling to leave his home and said he had no place to go amidst such incessant rain.

I had no alternative but to go back to the gauge-site and wait for the Army to arrive. This was a relatively safer zone as the gauge-site was close to the crossing of the Railway embankment and our protection embankment and this crossing was at a level several feet higher than the top of the embankment. On the way to this crossing I summoned my gauge-readers from their camp, rigged-up on a wooden-platform, by flashing the headlights of my Jeep and told them to be alert and stick close to the water-gauge and the Railway line. We turned our Jeep focusing the headlights on the water-gauge, very little of which was sticking out above the river water by then. We kept on waiting in our Jeep and trying to read the water-gauge with the Jeep’s headlight from time to time. (to be continued) 

The second and concluding part of Mr Swapan Sen's account of the Teesta floods of 1968.

http://akdcts.blogspot.com/2011/10/teesta-floods-1968-part-2.html

It was at about 2 AM that we realized that the gauge-stick was no longer visible. The top of the stick had apparently disappeared below the river-water and this meant that the river was flowing over the top of the embankment. The gauge-readers were nowhere in sight. I was worried that the camp of the gauge-readers would be washed away as soon as the embankment was breached. The men in the camp needed to be saved. Mr. Adhikary, got down from the Jeep and went in search of the gauge-readers. The tall figure vanished from the path of the Jeep-headlights as the brave man walked away towards the camp along the embankment. Minutes went by seeming like hours, but he did not come back. At last when I had given up hopes of seeing him alive again, a staggering figure emerged from the darkness. It was Mr. Adhikary. He came up to me, uttered, “I am sorry, Sir, I could not reach the camp. I fell into the river”, and then dropped on the ground apparently losing his senses. My driver, Kanu Mali and I jumped down from the Jeep and hoisted the heavy man on to the back sear of the Jeep. I told Kanu to turn the Jeep in the direction of the gauge-reader’s camp and flash its headlights. After several minutes, that seemed like ages, two figures appeared before the headlights of the Jeep - the gauge-readers. As I asked for the Gauge-register, they said they had not brought the record-book. Mr. Adhikari had, in the meantime regained his senses, and shouted at the gauge-readers urging them to go back and fetch the Register from their camp. The gauge-readers were obviously afraid of losing their lives, as the river-water was flowing over the embankment, but ultimately went back to their camp and fetched the Gauge-register. As they arrived with the Register, Mr. Adhikary snatched it away from them, embraced it as if this was his life, and kept on hysterically crying out, “Now everyone will believe us. This will prove that the Teesta has gone over the top of the embankment”.

I told Kanu to take me to Jalpaiguri, so that I could be with Kamakshyada and other colleagues. I asked the gauge-readers to board the Jeep and together we started for Jalpaiguri, across the road bridge on the other side of the river. As we entered the town of Jalpaiguri, we found that the streets were all water-logged, - possibly inundated by the waters of the overflowing rivulet Karala , which meanders through the town and meets the Teesta finally. Further inside the town, the water-level went on steadily increasing. As we reached the Police Station at the center of the town, Kanu, our driver, declared that the car-engine would stall if we proceeded further towards the Executive Engineer’s Bungalow. I told him to drop me at the Police Station so that they could, if possible, go back home at Moinaguri. They left assuring me that they would not take any undue risk to reach their homes. I found a policeman talking over a phone. I snatched the receiver from him after disclosing my identity and managed to connect Kamakshyada. He asked me to come to his place immediately. I was in no shape to make the half a mile journey to his residence alone. I was then running a high temperature and told him I could not come to his place. He told me to stick to the Police Station, where he would send some men to fetch me. I found an empty table, climbed up and lay down on the table. A few minutes later, the lights of the township went out. I was not also able to use the telephone thereafter as apparently, all the telephone lines too, went dead. I had lost all sense of time lying on the table, when someone shook me up awake and urged me to come down. I found it was two of our office-clerks, who had been sent down to fetch me from the Police Station. We waded through the waist- deep rapids then flowing through the town and after about 20 minutes reached Kamakshyada’s house. I was terribly excited and told him what I had been through and that the Teesta waters had overtopped the Domohani embankments. He said the Jalpaiguri embankments had also been likewise overtopped and told me to take rest and not to think about what has happened. I lay down on a bed and woke up in the morning only to hear someone weeping. It was Kamakshyada. He was looking out of the windows of his first floor and was watching helplessly carcasses of animals, trees and debris floating by. By then fifty five people from the Colony of the Irrigation Department’s Division Office had taken shelter in the first floor of Kamakshyada’s house, the ground floor having already gone under water. The water available in the overhead tanks of the house was insufficient for the people who had taken shelter. This was therefore required to be saved for drinking purposes only. The water level outside kept on rising till about 11 AM and at 4PM, this receded only by a couple of inches. It was evident we were all going to face serious crisis if the water level did not recede faster. It was 6th of October, 1968, 3 PM, when help arrived. Mr, Kutty, the Executive Engineer from Siliguri Division, arrived with his men, water, rice and other essentials wading through near waist-deep water and sludge. To us he seemed like God. He assured that all help will be available from his men and we were not to worry any more. Yes, we got a fresh lease of life but the townsfolk had by then suffered irreparable and inconsolable loss. Their sufferings would continue for many more months and for some, for many more years. After a few days I was able to reach my residential quarters, pack up a few things and leave for Kolkata, where my parents were anxiously waiting for me to come back home. Epilogue: The Domohani Gauge-register, that was saved, was unfortunately not available after the flood. My colleague Dipankar Chakraborty, who retired as the Chief Engineer of the Irrigation Department of the West Bengal Government, tells me he did not see this after he was called back from leave and took over charge of the Moinaguri Sub-division again. He says all documents in his office were destroyed by the flood water. Kamakshyada, my Executive Engineer, is no more. What he told me from his experience that the Teesta embankment would be breached only if the river water flowed over the top, proved to be true. I do not know if Mr. Adhikary, the braveheart, is still alive. The official records of the river-water levels at the Domohani gauge station will not be available any more to prove him right. (Acknowledgements: Dipankar Chakraborty, Chief Engineer (Retired), Irrigation Department of the West Bengal Government *Flash floods in India- Pritam Singh, A. S. Ramanathan and V. G. Ghanekar)

Comments on the Write Up

Reply

Pabitra Kumar MukhopadhyayAugust 8, 2016 at 2:50 PMReply

akdctsAugust 21, 2016 at 10:12 AM

I do not know how to express my coupled sense of nostalgia, sentiment and emotion – I just say ‘Hats Off Congratulations, Mr.Sen’ !! Often I had tried with ‘google’ search – amazing – found something now!! I am one of those witness-survivors – I distinctly remember those minutes, hours, days – we often recall too. Yes, we, a family of five, survived - our ‘didi’ who used to help our mother in domestic jobs and without whom we won’t have survived (she decided and insisted that we break open portion of the wooden ceiling and climb on to it – we did so), our parents who are no longer with us since 2002/2004, and my sister. If I am not trying to open up any controversy, please permit to add that the devastation in Jalpaiguri town occurred just after the mid-night of Friday, 4th October (wee hours/beginning of 5th October). To me, it appears from the blog that one day is somehow missing – sorry if I am confused. I observe that the following book is available (digitized - https://books.google.co.in/books/about/Report_on_the_Working_of_the_Flood_Warni.html?id=E1MMAQAAIAAJ): “Report on the Working of the Flood Warning System in the Jalpaiguri District During the Floods on the 3rd, 4th, and 5th of October, 1968”. [authored by the West Bengal Govt. Home Dept, Contributor: S. N. Ray, Published:1968]. The full book is not available on the website - only some very brief portions/excerpts appear, as below: -------------------------------------------- - - whether flood warning in respect of last flood in the Teesta was intimated to the people or not. The Government are making enquiries in the matter but it may be said that the Irrigation and Waterways Directorate staff sent all the messages required under the rules duly, including the message intimating that extreme warning-level had been crossed at Teesta Bazar on the 4th morning and that the gauge was rising rapidly. - - -------------------------------------------- 11. A control room was set up in the Deputy Commissioner’s Bungalow office (Phone Jalpaiguri-34) on 4th October,1968 and it started functioning round-the-clock at 07.45 hours soon after the receipt of the first message from Officer-in-charge, Kalimpong Police Station. - - - ---------Presumably Radiogram Message------- BDO MAYNAGURI SDO IRRGN SLG DE RLY SLG DC DJG SP DJG FROM: O/C KPG P.S. TISTA BRIDGE GAUGE CROSSED EXTREME WARNING STAGE LEVEL (683.00) AT 07.30 HRS TODAY (4.10.68) RISING RAPIDLY -------------------------------------------- What surprises me even today why no alarm was sounded in the town during the subsequent sixteen hours (8 am till mid-night). That was the talk all over the town and other affected places during post-flood days – I recall – I was 21, a student in a Calcutta college who was visiting parents during Durga Puja holidays, had reached Jalpaiguri on the morning of Saturday 28th September.

Mr Sen reacts to the comment above: I find the comments on the Teesta article quite interesting. Kindly convey my thanks to Mr. Pabitra Kumar Mukhopadhyaya. I did receive radiogram messages from Teesta Bazar on 3rd/4rth October,68 informing that Teesta water was rising rapidly (more than 6"/30 minutes). I am aware of the write-up of Mr. S.N.Ray, who was appointed as the single enquiry officer on the Jalpaiguri Flood. Following his report, the West Bengal Govt. transferred the then Executive Engineer Kamakshya Chowdhuri and the Superintending Engineer. I did not quite appreciate the step taken. The cause was something that could not be controlled by any human being at that time and the damage to the embankments, in my view, was aggravated by the the extremely limited waterway below the bridges. This was, I am afraid, recognized only after the damage took place. The waterway was increased from 13 spans to 20 spans below the bridges much later.

[supriyogupta]

Quest For Fighters: Get Ahead Of The Impending Artificial Intelligence Apartheid

Before I begin, let it be said that much of what follows here is a distillation of writings in various formats and virtually every sentence that follows can be Googled back to a source from where it has been extracted, usually verbatim in order to avoid hashing up through reinterpretation.

India debates fiercely today about fighter aircrafts it should buy. The filters we are using date back to the 1950s when strategic alliances were defined by the aircraft that each superpower was willing to ‘share’ with countries within their sphere of influence. India had played the Non-Aligned card to little avail and was mostly stuck with Russian aircraft along with a handful of British and French aircraft. As we embrace the free market of fighter aircraft sales, we are heading towards a moment in history when a different veil is coming down to separate the powers – one that will rocket the leaders away from the rest at a speed and pace that will define the next 200 years of power balance.

This is really about the technologies that have resulted in a harsh battle developing at the crossroad of technology, business and human development. Words like artificial intelligence, deep learning, neural networks are finding their way into mainstream lexicons. They represent a whole new civilizational process coming into play. The other day, a young Indian entrepreneur with a large online commerce platform, solemnly laid out the spectre of what he calls the “end of humanity” – when machines through self-learning have learnt to design, further develop and replicate themselves, eliminating jobs, wresting control and becoming autonomous in their behaviour.

Hang in there. Sounds a lot like a geek on weed? Ok. Here is something to chew on: In 1988, the U.S.S. Vincennes mistakenly destroyed an Iranian airbus due to an autonomous friend/foe radar system. The missing piece in 1988 was cognition and discrimination – understanding data correctly and then exercising discrimination at the point of engagement on the basis of superior processing capability. Artificial Intelligence has been around in defence – going as far back as the early part of the 20th Century ­– but its only recently with the ramping up of processing speed and the creation of neural networks that the ballgame is changing.

Even now, defence technology is fairly primitive. Russian Kalashnikov arms manufacturer has developed a fully automated combat module based on artificial neural networks which allows it to identify targets, learn and make decisions on its own. Kalashnikov promises to unveil a whole line of neural network based products. Primitive but already a bit scary that machines will decide on targets and take autonomous decisions. But Artificial Intelligence is going way ahead.

Let’s just take a quick look at a news that bypassed much of mainstream media but is definitely a direct pointer to how artificial intelligence is taking the art of warfare – actually, the art of warfare on century’s old game boards – to a different level, thereby setting the stage for real advancements on battlefields. And the real fun part is that the leader in this play is none other than Google. (As also, Amazon, Facebook and a host of others who are trying to get your free market choices narrowed down to a behavioural construct)

Here is a short update from Singularity Hub: “The AlphaGo AI that grabbed headlines last year after beating a master of the board game Go has just been trounced 100-0 by an updated version. And unlike its predecessor, the new system taught itself from first principles paving the way for AI that can think for itself.

When chess fell to AI in the 1990s, computer scientists looking for a new challenge turned to the millennia-old Chinese game Go, which despite its simpler rules has many more possible moves and often requires players to rely on instinct.

It was predicted it would be decades before an AI could beat a human master, but last year a program called AlphaGo developed by Google’s DeepMind subsidiary beat 18-time world champion Lee Sedol 4–1 in a series of matches in South Korea.

It was a watershed moment for AI research that showcased the power of the “reinforcement learning” approach championed by DeepMind. Not only did the system win, it also played some surprising yet highly effective moves that went against centuries of accumulated wisdom about how the game works.

Now, just a year later, DeepMind has unveiled a new version of the program called AlphaGo Zero in a paper in Nature that outperforms the version that beat Sedol on every metric. In just three days and 4.9 million training games, it reached the same level that took its predecessor several months and 30 million training games to achieve. It also did this on just four of Google’s tensor processing units—specialized chips for training neural networks—compared to 48 for AlphaGo.”

To understand where we are headed, we need to have some basic understanding of what these mean – at least today. Here is a simple explanation from nvidia:

“The easiest way to think of their relationship is to visualize them as concentric circles with AI — the idea that came first — the largest, then machine learning — which blossomed later, and finally deep learning — which is driving today’s AI explosion — fitting inside both. Over the past few years AI has exploded, and especially since 2015. Much of that has to do with the wide availability of GPUs that make parallel processing ever faster, cheaper, and more powerful. It also has to do with the simultaneous one-two punch of practically infinite storage and a flood of data of every stripe (that whole Big Data movement) – images, text, transactions, mapping data, you name it… Machine Learning at its most basic is the practice of using algorithms to parse data, learn from it, and then make a determination or prediction about something in the world. So rather than hand-coding software routines with a specific set of instructions to accomplish a particular task, the machine is “trained” using large amounts of data and algorithms that give it the ability to learn how to perform the task….Another algorithmic approach from the early machine-learning crowd, Artificial Neural Networks, came and mostly went over the decades. Neural Networks are inspired by our understanding of the biology of our brains – all those interconnections between the neurons. But, unlike a biological brain where any neuron can connect to any other neuron within a certain physical distance, these artificial neural networks have discrete layers, connections, and directions of data propagation.

You might, for example, take an image, chop it up into a bunch of tiles that are inputted into the first layer of the neural network. In the first layer individual neurons, then passes the data to a second layer. The second layer of neurons does its task, and so on, until the final layer and the final output is produced.

Each neuron assigns a weighting to its input — how correct or incorrect it is relative to the task being performed. The final output is then determined by the total of those weightings. So think of our stop sign example. Attributes of a stop sign image are chopped up and “examined” by the neurons — its octogonal shape, its fire-engine red color, its distinctive letters, its traffic-sign size, and its motion or lack thereof. The neural network’s task is to conclude whether this is a stop sign or not. It comes up with a “probability vector,” really a highly educated guess, based on the weighting. In our example the system might be 86% confident the image is a stop sign, 7% confident it’s a speed limit sign, and 5% it’s a kite stuck in a tree ,and so on — and the network architecture then tells the neural network whether it is right or not… Today, image recognition by machines trained via deep learning in some scenarios is better than humans, and that ranges from cats to identifying indicators for cancer in blood and tumors in MRI scans. Google’s AlphaGo learned the game, and trained for its Go match — it tuned its neural network — by playing against itself over and over and over. Deep Learning has enabled many practical applications of Machine Learning and by extension the overall field of AI. Deep Learning breaks down tasks in ways that makes all kinds of machine assists seem possible, even likely. Driverless cars, better preventive healthcare, even better movie recommendations, are all here today or on the horizon. AI is the present and the future. With Deep Learning’s help, AI may even get to that science fiction state we’ve so long imagined.”

Nonetheless, these are still primitive days in the AI, Neural Networks and Deep Learning space for defence which has typically led technology so long. The sector is desperately trying to learn from firms as diverse as Google to fashion and Facebook. Look around carefully and see how artificial intelligence, deep learning and neural networks are already changing your life. Facebook is slowly understanding you and feeding you with content you tend to agree with. That’s a software network that’s learning how you think and starts mimicking your behaviour. Extend such ‘learning’ to more complex situations. For instance, when faced with a mob with sticks, stone and also a few armed with guns, police forces find it difficult to distinguish under pressure and apply counter measures equally. What if a machine can separate these two as different threats and apply counter measures differently?

Now coming to the Gripen / Rafale / Eurofighter. Or any of the fighters currently under development as opposed to those that are getting souped up with a few impressive add ons which dont fundamentally change the performance or capabilities of the aircraft but make them look both modern and, of course, carry the tag of being experienced.

Here is what is not on the platter –though, admittedly, the news being put out today is at a fairly generic level: F-35s, F-22s and other fighter jets will soon use improved “artificial intelligence” to control nearby drone “wingmen” able to carry weapons, test enemy air defenses or perform intelligence, reconnaissance and surveillance missions in high risk areas.

Or how about: The U.S. Air Force, working with Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works have demonstrated another round of flight capabilities for an autonomous F-16 fighter jet, which is meant to show what an eventual “Unmanned Combat Air Vehicle” (UCAV) could do using technology they’ve developed. During this demonstration, the experimental aircraft was able to “autonomously plan and execute air-to-ground strike missions” based on mission information provided, as well as the assets made available by the planning team, but it was also able to react to unexpected changes during the mission, including “capability failures, route deviations and loss of communication,” according to a Lockheed news release. The talk of fighter aircraft town when it comes to technology is “an F-35 computer system, Autonomic Logistics Information System, that involves early applications of artificial intelligence wherein computers make assessments, go through checklists, organize information and make some decisions by themselves – without needing human intervention.”

The problem here is that ‘unmanned aircraft’ or collaborative wingmen is still at low levels of artificial intelligence and more about data linking, some degree of machine and a lot of pre-programming with some reactive scenario adjusting software that deals with unplanned – but not unexpected situations – with planned – and not self-learning – solutions.

The real big leap will take place in the very near future as processing capacity reaches mindboggling levels. The difference is that most aircraft today in the air are less smart than a standard Smart Phone and way, way dumber than iPhone X or Samsung 8. However, the future will be less hardware driven as focussed on how much AI can be integrated into the existing hardware.

At the same time, the ethics of AI is likely to lead to a situation very similar to the nuclear divide – with some countries storming ahead and then cordoning off the rest due to the growing fears of random and indiscriminate decision making by what are essentially machines. As Techcrunch points out, “Use of autonomous weapons on the battlefield is obviously controversial, of course. The UN seems to be moving towards a possible uniform ban on AI-powered weapons, and it’s obviously the basis for more than one dystopian sci-fi story. Critics argue use of autonomous weapons could increase the number of civilian deaths in warfare, and muddy responsibility for the loss of those lives – proponents essentially argue the opposite, saying use of autonomous systems will decrease casualties overall and lead to shorter, more decisive conflict.”

The future of air combat will be almost nothing like what we see, plan and project today. At the hub of future air battles will be aircraft with awesome levels of situational awareness married to neural networks that play a bit of a chess game, processing data, selecting options and launching engagements at a speed about ten times faster than your current Facebook suggesting friends or topics to read when you show your preference for a particular engagement. Meaning, almost instantly. If that sounds flippant, think about all the data that is married between your phone, your gmail, your social media and your browsing habits as you move very very randomly between hundreds of thousands of bytes of data. Compared to that, the elements and variables in the air in a war scenario are fairly limited, easily identifiable and highly predictable in trajectory, engagement options, capacity and capability.

So how are the world powers going about it?

According to The Hague Centre for Strategic Studies, “While still somewhat lagging behind on its great power rivals in terms of deep machine learning capabilities, the Russian Federation has displayed a steady commitment to developing and deploying a wide range of robotic military platforms, including unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs), with the full backing of its MoD and domestic industries: in January 2017, President Putin called for the creation of “autonomous robotic complexes”.

Speaking in 2015, Robert Work, the then-US deputy secretary of defense, emphasized “human-machine collaboration combat teaming”, arguing that: “Early adoption will be a key competitive advantage, while those that lag in investment will see their competitiveness slip”. In this speech to the Defense One National Security Forum conference, Work identified five pillars to the military future:

1 Autonomous deep learning machine systems which are able to see the patterns through the chaff of hybrid warfare, to give early warning that something is happening in gray zone conflict areas (such as the Ukraine), and which are able to respond at extreme speed, and under rapidly shrinking engagement windows. Such learning systems might, he argues, fill the gap in those fields – such as air defense or cyber defense – where human operators alone cannot achieve sufficient speed to stop or degrade a determined attack.

2. Human machine collaboration, which will include the promotion of so-called ‘Centaur’ warfighting, going from the observation that teams combining the strategic analysis of a human with the tactical acuity of a computer, reliably defeat either human-only or computer-only teams across many games.

3. Assisted human operations, where wearable electronics, uploadable combat apps; heads up displays, exoskeletons, and other systems, can enable humans on the front line to perform better in combat.

4. Advanced human-machine combat teaming where a human working with unmanned systems is able to take better decisions and undertake cooperative operations. Examples of these are the Army’s Apache and Gray Eagle UAV systems, which are designed to operate in conjunction. Other examples are drone ‘motherships’; electronic warfare networks, or swarming systems which will help transform operations by enabling one mission commander to direct a full swarm of micro-UAVs.

5. Network-enabled semi-autonomous weapons, where systems are both linked, and hardened to survive cyberattack.

But as the Hague Centre rightly concludes, “Our own hunch is that AI (and a number of attendant technological developments that are co-emerging around big data) may have a much more disruptive impact on the essence ‘defense’ than the focus on AI-enhanced physical robotics and how they might affect our current way of safeguarding defense suggest.”

While AI and policy is a big discussion in itself, returning to the opening question, India’s fighter aircraft purchase programme needs to be focussed on acquiring a platform whose avionics is expandable. Even as the Americans are trying hard to get Indians to focus on things like thrust and vectoring and so forth, the problem is that there is little porting capability in most aircraft for future AI capability to be incorporated.

Second, AI developments have just about reached the tipping point and are going to scale up quickly, very quickly. Even as India struggles with ‘design and development’ of basic fighter aircraft frameworks, the world of air defence is rocketing away that may well make much of what we are investing our time and effort in quite irrelevant. The key is to find a partner which is willing to bring India in from the front door and give a seat on the table of AI development now. Clearly, the US simply does not see India as a partner in key technology domains. On the other hand, the Swedes, French or Germans just might need the tech hands Indians end up bringing to the table for accelerating much of their thinking on AI. Companies like Saab have put on their board AI specialists – a clear recognition that the company would need to be taking tough decisions on future investments in that space.

The biggest reason India needs to get on board with a partner country willing to share the primary work table on AI is simply this: Very soon as autonomous machine intelligence starts dominating the space, the fear and threat of such technology getting into the wrong hands will start the ball rolling for the next generation of tech apartheid. India was for long a nuclear pariah, a missile pariah and a super computer pariah. All at the behest of sound American policing of the world where India was not seen to be a trustworthy partner. This time will be no different.

There is another BIG reason that the tech entrepreneur with a very successful online platform pointed out while reviewing this piece and I quote him verbatim: “Because of the self-reinforcing and exponential nature of AI progress, the gap between number 1 and number 2 will keep on increasing (in terms of capabilities and not in terms of months) as we move forward. Infact by the time it reaches its pinnacle, even a 3-6 month gap would mean 100X more capability (as opposed to 10%higher capability today)

Because of the domain agnostic nature of AI algorithms, it is possible to achieve much progress in the understanding and development using some other domain and then apply those learnings in a totally different domain. E.g the same deep mind that beat GO champions lowering the energy usage in google data centres. Hence it’s important to choose the domain / problem statements that provide a fertile ground for the AI to evolve fast rather than choosing the problem that you want solved. If you closely observe google, that is what they are doing. The ultimate objective is not to create AI for Olympic Games, but almost 90% of the early effort has been on games (GO being just one of those).”

[supriyogupta]

OUR INDIA TODAY

The Great Leader: We need to feel the need for change and lift ourselves up to attain development.

Presstitute: The Great Leader said feel yourself up

Bhakt 1: You cow! You killed what the Great Leader said

Presstitute 2: The Great Leader said kill the cow?

Great Leader: Holy Cow! I feel sad when a dog gets hit. Cow is our Madre. How can I say that!

Master Baiter: He called The Madre a Cow

The Madre: See, he wants to kill me!

Pappu: But Madre, you are not a Cow

Bhakt 2: Yes, Cow is our Madre. But Madre is not our Madre. And Madre is not a Cow. Otherwise she would be a Holy Cow. And only Hindu Cows are Holy.

Concerned Citizen: So much tension! There is Big Bash Sale on Amazon. Let’s shop.

Concerned Actor: Everyone has forgotten my award. Take it back. Of course, because of the Cow. Before that, a selfie please.

Concerned Writer: Everyone has forgotten what I wrote. Take mine back too. What Cow? She didn’t give me the award.

Supreme Anchor: The Nation Wants to know what the @#$$*@ are we debating tonight. And has anyone found the Cow?

Ram Bhakt: Cow dead sir. In someone’s fridge. We are burning the chap.

Sickular Libtard: How dare you burn the fridge? This is why we have global warming.

TERI Tory: We have Nobel prize for heating up things. And we are worshipful of Cows and don’t feel them up.

Aaptard: I will cycle to work to save the cow and the cow eater. Because it’s the police who have to save the cow and the cow eater that is under Centre’s command.

Concerned Citizen: So much tension! There are great offers on Pepperfry. Let’s shop. Do they have a fridge? Can we run a sweet photo on Facebook and ask for money for the fridge.

Indian Buffett: Shop till you drop but where are these guys making money?

Pope Of Banks: Yes, we need to be very tolerant and give large tax breaks to these billion dollar discount merchants. I have no beef about GMV creating artificial markets that will collapse when the money runs out.

Presstitute 3: Pope of Banks says be tolerant about beef.

SS Storm Troopers: No worries, we have blackened his face.

Khakhi Half Pant: All sala anti-nationals. Behead the cow eater. Does the Pope eat Cow?

The Great Leader: Good Question. I have missed out the Vatican. Chalk Rome up for next week please and I will pop in and see the Pope. I will not be cowed down!

[supriyogupta]

To be back in Kodagu - at the right time and  right place…

By JESSICA KARUMBIAH

Sitting in a traffic jam, in the middle of a road- the road itself more imagined than real – most of it submerged because of poor drainage and the visible parts pockmarked with deep portholes with everybody cursing the weather, the government and the inept driving skills of the guy in front of him – I begin to wonder what I was thinking of so many years ago when I could not wait to leave Kodagu. At eighteen, living in Kodagu, I hated the monsoons – the incessant rains, the mould, the leeches, the wet mud, the bone chilling damp- lots to complain about but definitely no traffic jams!

Sitting here right now, older and wiser, I am ready to romance the monsoons in Kodagu – the sound of the rain drumming on the tiled roof interrupted by the staccato beat of the  rain on the metal sheet of the roof valley. The lingering fragrance of sambrani (benzoin resin) in all the rooms and clothes, the comforting warmth of the earthen pots with live coal and the smell of bemble curry ( tender bamboo shoots), Kumm (mushroom) curry and on the 3rd day of August Maddu Thoppu (medicinal leaf, Justica Wynaasensis ) Payasa. To be honest, I simply abhorred the maddu thoppu payasa, which was definitely an acquired taste with its strange medicinal scent and flavor. I used to somehow manage a few swallows in the face of dire threats and much cajoling. But now that I have not had the opportunity to have it for so many years, I have an inexplicable hunger for it.

As the south western monsoon gathers strength during Kakkada –mid July to mid August- maddu thoppu, a nondescript plant which grows wild in the Western ghats all through the year, comes into its own. It is believed that for eighteen days starting mid July the properties of eighteen different kinds of medicines are accumulated in the plant until it is at its most potent on the eighteenth day - 3rd August- . It is best consumed on this day. The aqueous bluish purple color extracted from the leaves and stems of Justicia Wynaadensis is used in the preparation of a sweet in Kodagu. This traditional practice is believed to keep the people healthy throughout the year. Although some folks do make the maddu Thoppu payasa or puttu (dumpling) over the next few days, it is believed the potency begins to wan over the next eighteen days till the end of Kakkada when it is back to its innocuous existence.

Talking of inexplicable hunger, something else I loved unequivocally and really miss is Ginnu, a sweet and spiced custard made from the milk of newly calved cows. A newly calved cow produces colostrum in the first few days after giving birth. The very first milk is discarded, before the calf is allowed to feed. The milk used for making ginnu is usually from the second and third milking (and before you start working yourself into a fit of righteous indignation about depriving the poor calf of colostrum, cows produce a substantial amount of milk – more than adequate to meet the needs of the calf, with plenty to spare – and very little of it is used to prepare the sweet, so the calves in Kodagu are not emotionally scarred or traumatized for life).Preparations from colostrum is not unique to Kodagu. It is a part of local cuisine across Karnataka and Tamilnadu. Many countries in Europe make cheese from colostrum.   Speaking for myself, I have never eaten it outside of Kodagu.  I would make sure I visited relatives, near and distant (in blood and miles), if I knew that they had a newly calved cow on the estate because it would definitely mean that Ginnu would be offered.

It has been many years since I ate either maddu thoppu payasa or Ginnu. It has always been a case of never being at the right place, at the right time.

Maddu  Thoppu Payasa

 1kg Maddu  Thoppu leaves and tender stem

A little over  2 Lt. of water

Half kg  jiggery

250 gm broken  rice

Salt to taste

Shredded  coconut

.1.  Strip, wash and clean the leaves and tender stem. Crush and soak in cold  water. Ensure the leaves are properly submerged. Allow to soak overnight. The  juice from the leaves and stem seeps into the water and changes it colour to  a deep shade of indigo or violet. Strain the water and discard the leaves.

2. .Bring the  2Lt. of liquid extract to boil. The water will give out a strong medicinal aroma.

3.  Mix the jiggery into a small quantity of  this liquid. Heat over a low flame until the jiggery melts to form a syrup.  Keep aside.

4. Wash and  add the broken rice to the boiling liquid and allow to cook until it reaches  the consistency of porridge.

5. Stir in the  jaggery syrup.

6. Add salt to  taste. If you prefer it sweeter, add more jaggery as required.

Serve hot or  cold with shredded coconut.

Ginnu  

1 Lt. of milk from either the second or third milking.

2 cups of regular milk

1 cup of sugar

1 tsp of powdered cardamom

1cup of shredded coconut

 Heat one cup of regular milk. Stir in the sugar until it is completely dissolved. Remove from the fire.

Add the rest of the milk (both regular and colostrum). Add cardamom powder and shredded coconut.

Steam, for approximately 45 minutes or until the custard has set, in a deep dish covered with a lid.

Serve warm or chilled.

Note: Do not try to un mould the custard once it has set.

[supriyogupta]

Corridors of Power: How Governments Differ

A few days back, I met my fourth minister in the past five years in the portals of North and South Block – that impressive, towering stone edifice that sits imposingly on top of Raisina Hill, almost as if it were the abode of the Gods. Over time, I realised that even the most seasoned veterans of industry and academia were overawed by the occasion.

For me the purposes were usually simple and didn’t involve anything more than an advocacy of a change in a law that was a no-brainer or a policy nudge that would address suffering of the millions. In short, none of my “asks” were motivated by the potential to earn millions.

This note is more about how the ministers have differed (two from this government and two from the previous one) in their responses – though all were supportive of the action required.

In short, the issue was a no-brainer, the ministers were supportive, the issues were for social good and there wasn’t any aspect that could be deemed as being of monetary interest to anyone.

This, then, was the difference, without naming names.

In each of the instances with the previous government, the ministers having expressed overwhelming support looked you straight in the eye and said, “Good initiative, you must do it.”

“Huh? But aren’t you the one with the power?”

Soundless mirth. Or choking sounds later, the minister would point out that he could really do very little. But if ‘we’ (the honourable Citizens of India) got the various departments, divisions, secretaries (joint secretaries upwards), planning commission all on the same page, maybe (looking at me pityingly) a note would be put up to them which they would be happy to sign off.

One Minister went so far as to counsel that we have a question raised in Parliament because only then the bureaucracy felt compelled to move forward. The other suggested helpfully that I get the media to write about it so that people would start asking why the change didn’t take place.

Interestingly, one of these conversations took place sitting in the PMO of that time. Incidentally, trying to meet most of the ministers we really needed to meet was a fruitless exercise – the only ones you met were the more accessible, less afraid ones. (Actually, amusing that the Media makes so much of how Modi’s ministers are ‘afraid’ - Ask any set of people engaging the previous government how easy it was to meet a minister unless you knew a fixer who was chummy with the minister.)

Strangely, the bureaucracy was very supportive, quite balanced and whatever little change did take place on the issues was because they saw sense in what we said and moved forward. But, typically, barely we had got one joint secretary on board, it was time for him to move on. At last count, we went through about six joint secretaries on one issue – all of them, once they understood the issue, were willing to step up to the plate.

Era changes. New government. The issues have dragged on. So, with renewed energy, we meet the new ministers.  

The meeting with one minister was set up in short time. His office got a quick grasp of the issue. He was quite well briefed and came straight to the point – why on earth has it taken so long? His response was quite different from the song of the ministers of the previous government – “I don’t want to make promises but I will find out what is the issue.” Given that the issue wasn’t under the direct governance of the ministry, it was a fair enough response.

The meeting with the other minister, though it took a bit more time, was just as straightforward. There was a clear “we will do it” followed by calls to the joint secretary. The Minister fixed up the appointment with the joint secretary – the date, the time and clear prompts to meet because the issue was important.

The discussion was cordial. When invited to a global conclave where how India changed its laws on a corporate social issue was to be the cynosure of discussions, he wryly pointed out that the Prime Minister had made it clear that they should travel when the issue was important and the reason for the minister’s presence was compelling. We walked away from the meeting with the next step not only defined but the minister’s office actually having pursued and fixed the next meeting.

The meeting with the joint secretary was matter of fact and he - in the tradition of joint secretaries before him - had a quick grasp of the issue, came out supportive and set up the next steps. 

Somehow the whole process was both familiar and unfamiliar. Ministers willing to push the buttons was the unfamiliar part in the new government. Bureaucracy willing to stretch itself continues here too. And yet, things don’t seem to be moving any faster. Has the process of decision making become too antiquated, too hobbled by incidents and protocols that even well intentioned people can’t move with energy? Do we need a whole new way of looking at governance - and even more processes of validation that doesn’t penalize decision takers and decision makers? 

One got the sense from both ministers that while they were trying to move at a fast clip, they had reconciled to the process of the government – which despite the best of intentions of the people who put policy to paper was simply not suited to speed, risk taking or objective judgment. 

Something, somewhere has to give and in the past we have seen leaders trying to break the mould getting hopelessly mired in charges of corruption, browbeating or worse. Here’s hoping that there will be long term changes that will move the needle on governance.

.

��a�

[supriyogupta]

The Marathon

The sweltering noon seemed to take a turn for the worse for Motabhai Billimoria Kabir as his occasionally friendly neighbour Bhavuk Rashtrawadi Sewak eased himself through the gate into his house. Bhavuk had inserted Rashtrawadi into his name following in the footsteps of a corporate doyen who had added a similar nationalist sentiment into the family name to elevate their ambitions from the mundane to the level of national service.  Motabhai contemplated with mild distaste Bhavuk’s progress in his fawn coloured pure cotton Chino shorts and a shimmery white Marks & Spencer half-shirt. He mused that all that the bugger lacked was a little cap and a lathi. He pondered as he took a swig of his Corona chilled to perfection the unfairness of life as he went through the motions of polite greeting, the motions of hospitality, the offer of a beer.

Bhavuk, however, was a man on a mission. Much though he despised Motabhai for being of an indeterminate breed with a name suggesting multiple genealogies, he found that the man reflected that part of the Indian cultural context that eluded him – the non-attached Indian liberal non-ideologue. Bhavuk couldn’t figure out this specimen who was right of centre on business issues, left of centre on rural poverty, health and education, nationalist on national issues but pacifist on smaller pesky neighbours, dead centre on religious issues and generally taking the lead from his wife and daughter on issues of gender.

But let it pass, Bhavuk was here on a more important mission. He had come here to share his next big resolve and he wanted to hear out this wishy washy Indian symbolizing much of the ideological torpidity arising from years of Congressi rule to see what could be the possible objections.

“Motabhai, I have made an important decision.”

Motabhai raised his left eyebrow in mild inquiry even as he focussed on Bhavuk’s neatly manicured hands. Clearly, here was a regular visitor to the posh Affinity salon around the corner.

“I will lead a movement to ban Marathons of all sorts. Half-Marathons, Full marathons, Quarter Marathons. These are un-Indian and against our national culture.”

Motabhai digested this with another swig of his fast diminishing Corona.

“And this has nothing to do with the opposition to Yoga by Muslim and Christian groups, Bahwook?”, Motabhai enjoyed adding inflections to names to give vent to his true feelings. 

International Yoga Day was just a day away and the orchestration by Prime Minister Moody had ruffled all sorts of feathers though much of the country had gone along with the idea in its usual phlegmatic way with equanimity to match.

Bhavuk blanched for he didn’t expect the issue to be put back to him in so naked a fashion. “I know what the Mullahs are saying and what Father John is saying. But if the Americans can do Yoga and the Japanese, there is nothing wrong with us doing it for good physical health. But my objections to the Marathon are rooted deep in our culture”.

“How so?”, Motabhai inquired dutifully as he motioned to a passing servant for a switch of bottles.

Bhavuk came into his own, “Marathons are un-Indian. We have never run as Indians. I have looked at the Shastras. I have studied the Mahabharata and Ramayan to check on this point. And I can say with confidence that in no time of our history have we ever run. We have ridden horses. We have used the Pushpak Vimana. We used Chariots. We even got on to howdahs and palanquins but never have we run. That is a Christian invention. They started running since Pheidippides ran.”

“But Bahwook, Pheidippides ran well before Christianity came along, mere bhai,” Motabhai tried to deflect the developing argument. He detested arguments. And he specially detested his stolen Saturday afternoons over beer getting spoilt by a heated argument.

But it was difficult to put Bhavuk off his stride when he had just about got flowing. “Greek, Christian, how does it matter? It doesn’t matter to the Yoga Day opponents that the Namaz has half a dozen yogic positions. The important part is that Indian bodies are not suited to running. We have short legs and our body weight is unevenly distributed.” He scanned Motabhai’s almost recumbent figure with its gentle paunch and short fat legs.

“We have had runners and dakias for ages you know,” Motabhai feebly protested -- the protest more directed at being drawn into a debate he did not wish to be a part of.

“Work, sir, work for some castes” Bhavuk waved it away, “But we have never run as a nation. Ram did not run to Lanka. The Pandavas did not run even when their palace was getting burnt. We rode horses. We rode elephants. Even donkeys. But we never ran. The Marathon business is very Christian. We must do away with it. And see how orchestrated it is. They accuse us of getting government machinery going but what about all the money that cellphone companies like Fairtel and Codaphone spend on spreading Christian values for their Half Marathon. So much money? Does anyone ask them if their priority is to eliminate poverty or to get people to run marathons for brand glory.”

Motabhai finally rose to the bait, his favourite brand having been called to question, “But Fairtel is not Christian!”

“That is where you are wrong, Motabhai. Look at all the people who were funding them. Christian. Anyway, that is not important. What is important is that Marathons and Half Marathons are usually run towards the West, away from the Sun. That is Un-Indian. They start by saying ‘ready,steady, go’. All this very, very UnIndian.” Bhavuk said triumphantly.

“Is this your opposition to the opposition to Om chanting and Surya Namaskar?” Motabhai looked amused. Bhavuk shot him a look that revealed a flicker of admiration that Motabhai wasn’t that daft after all.

“But I told you, this has nothing to do with the International Yoga Day. That has been sanctioned by the UN. Has the UN sanctioned any Marathons? No! Never! Because it belongs to one religion. See it was promoted by the Italian lady and her son. Do they do Yoga? No!”

Motabhai had little stomach for a protracted argument but inspite of himself was moved to comment. “But Raoul did go for Vipassana, no?”

Bhavuk smiled. Chuckled. The gales to follow were visible so Motabhai moved to scotch the approaching merriment “The issue is not Yoga or Marathon, Bahwook. It’s about forcing people to do what they want or not want to do. Granted the arguments became unnecessarily dragged into issues that had nothing to do with it but..” He looked at Bhavuk.

Somewhere Bhavuk had got out of this exchange what he wanted. With a smirk, he got ready to go.

“Where are you off to?” Motabhai queried, more to get a sense whether he needed to set in motion any evacuation procedures in case Bhavuk had any further ideas of coming back any time soon.

The smirk widened. “Just around the colony. I am rounding up the laggards for tomorrow’s Yoga session. No pressure, no worries and it is for their own good. They even get to take their own Selfies and post it. In fact, we will track those who don’t have a Yoga selfie and encourage them in time for the next Yoga Day.”

ټ^����

[supriyogupta]

Amazing Vistas 1: Sweden

[supriyogupta]

Opening Shop

Photo: If I had a fish shop in Istanbul, this is what the fresh catch from the Sea of Marmara would look like.

***

There is a little ritual every morning. The disassembled laptop is put together. The screen wiped. The external screen, mouse and screen plugged in. Resolution checked for clarity. The cellphone charger plugged in. A quick spray of room freshner. A glass of water and a cup of weak tea on the table. I am ready for business.

My shop is open.

                                            ***

I am usually early. I am the first appointment. The dentist's attendant is fussing around lining up the drill bits. The towel. Water in a paper cup. The doctor walks in. Cheerily welcomes, intersperses a few passing phrases to keep the conversation going. But his mind is elsewhere. More fussing around with drill bits, light, the suction tube, water. He pads around checking switches and the hum of the drill. Soon he is satisfied, cuts his chatter and says his first real business words: "Open wide".

His shop is open.

                                                  ***

I am early again. The pharmacist is delighted to see his first customer standing patiently outside his shop. This is the fellow that every doctor prescribes very expensive medicines to for strange illnesses - mostly out of spite because they see so little of him. His "boys" are hanging around. He fishes out his keys and hands it over to them. One dives down to take off the heavy padlocks. The shutters go up with a steely clatter. He stops his boys from crossing the threshold. Bends down and touches the floor and raises his hand to his forehead. Once. twice. thrice. Now its safe to go in. The boys rush in and start moving the display units stacked together out into the open. Much heaving, panting, sweating later, all the units are out there in the open. The Pharmacist fishes out three sticks of incense, lights it with a flourish and swiftly waves the smoky stick over the open cash box. A swift tour of the shop with the incense stick. He heaves a sigh of relief and smiles, reaches out for the prescription. 

His shop is open.

***

I am catching the early morning flight to Mumbai. On the road, the cab sleepily stops at the red light just before the D1 terminal.

A girl, not yet in her teens, is waving her mother across the road. Dressed in a dusty skirt and top, she angrily tells her mother to get on with it.

The mother walks to the middle, still trying to make up her mind as to which side of the road would be her 'beat' today. She is followed by an erratically traversing young boy. The mother is carrying a bag. Her husband follows with another bag and crosses over determinedly. He knows which side gives the best bet at that time of the day.

The boy, even younger than the girl, however, has other things on his mind. In the middle of the road, the traffic island has a little six inch by six inch 'temple'. He bows down. Touches his head six times to the steps of the 'temple' and the idol. He kisses an invisible talisman.

On the opposite side, the girl is fishing out long plastic planes from her bag. The mother already has an armful. So does the dad. The little boy's rituals are over. He happily skips behind his father, grabs a plastic plane and rushes over to a car headed to the airport with a little child looking longingly at the plastic plane. He waves the plastic plane under the child's nose, tantalisingly. 

His shop is open.

****

[supriyogupta]

Days In Miserypur: Child Labour, Kailash Satyarthi, Nobel Prize and All That!

Another Indian - an addition to a very small number - now has a Nobel Prize. Kailash Satyarthi.

Never met him.

But a little over two decades ago, I decided to chuck journalism and do 'real things' on the back of happenstance - leading up to six months of close encounters with Satyarthi's campaigns.

Chasing L K Advani to Vaishali, Bihar, to report on his first public rally after the Babri Masjid demolition, I happened to share the train compartment with two gentlemen from one of the finest carpet makers in the world. The gentlemen were carrying on a legacy in carpet making that spanned over a century. They were two of the handful of 'square' businessmen in a  trade that was fundamentally crooked, nasty, rapacious and exploitative.

Delighted to find themselves with a 'reasonable' journalist, they invited me over to Mirzapur (the epicenter of carpet making in India) to see for myself the issue that had the Carpet industry in turmoil.

A gentleman called Senator Tom Harkin had set in motion an anti-child labour bill that would wipe out Indian carpet exports to the US. The discussions over the next few months ended in my taking up a job in Mirzapur (fondly christened Miserypur by its residents) to get involved in weeding out children working on looms.

Over the next six months, I roamed the villages of Mirzapur and Bhadohi -- in the stretch from Allahabad to Varanasi -- visiting looms, sitting in on industry discussions and meeting  government officials.

The man who was hogging the headlines was Kailash Satyarthi. Having launched his career on child labour, Satyarthi was quick to latch on to his real audience: The West. Raids were carried out on all "suspect" organizations to oblige hungry news channels and news publications.

It isn't really strange that "Satyarthi who?" was the common reaction even among serious media persons in India when the Nobel Prize was announced. They were never his "target audience".

Having jettisoned from Swami Agnivesh whose Bandhua Mukti Morcha had set the ball rolling on bonded labour, Satyarthi quickly built himself a reputation on child labour. 

His methods were much the same of many a NGO working in India  - generate bad and indiscriminate publicity in the West, magnify the issue globally by extreme visualization and hope the world turns the screws on India. His American-European support base is evident not only in the awards that have been on him showered by organizations there, but also that the European Parliament nominated him for the Nobel prize.

Whatever his path, there is little doubt that the Satyarthi factor unleashed enough terror 20 years ago among the carpet barons to force them to substantially clean up their act. There is little doubt that the carpet industry needed a Satyarthi to goad it into action. Left to themselves, despite the dollars, most of them were petty shopkeepers who didn't care much either for product quality or human values.

Some quick points of reference: Carpet ‘factories’ don’t make carpets. Carpets are made in village homes on looms that the householder owns. It was rare then to find large, consolidated loom-holders. These looms were spread across a territory that ranged from Gorakhpur to Agra but the main concentration was in the Mirzapur-Bhadohi-Varanasi belt. Each entrepreneur-villager is a freeholder and can take a contract as he pleases. He shifts allegiances based on the best price and order though quality conscious companies make a lot of effort to ensure that highly skilled loom-holders don’t move to others.

At any given time, a village house could have multiple looms, each working for carpets on order from different companies. Children and women of the house often joined in.

The household members were different from the children brought in – typically from Bihar – as bonded labour. The parents of 'bonded children' had handed them over to pay off a loan they had taken from the contractor. With different companies having different levels of sensitivity to the child labour issue, often a loom-holder would have only adults working on a carpet for the company that insisted on adult labour while 12 to 14 year-olds were at work on another loom where a carpet for another less-'sensitive' company was being woven.

Children, incidentally, made for poor weavers as they neither had the skills nor was the much publicized “nimble fingers” of much use.

Here then are notes from two decades ago, written more as a record of 'stories' I saw. (Needless to say, I returned to journalism post haste once the realization dawned that I was unlikely to ever figure out colours, designs and knots.)  Please note that these are notes from 1993 – unchanged – so the data points are that much old.

ENTREPRENEURS WITHOUT ENTERPRISE

For all the money that the carpet industry makes – and that too in greenbacks – the carpet barons are little more than ‘dukandaars’ – a term preferred by the Imperial British over the present profusion of ‘exporters’, ‘manufacturers’ and ‘traders’. Very little of the Rs 800 crore that the Mirzapur-Bhadohi-Varanasi belt earns is ploughed back or invested in capital intensive ventures that would take the industry to the next level. Instead, the money goes into purchase of land and building of ‘fortresses’.

The lack of enterprise is evident in the dependence of the industry on visiting buyers and agents. Marketing is an alien concept – as true for the market leaders as for the smallest of firms.

Worse, the industry has little use for innovation – popular designs are churned out in bulk till the market collapses or shifts to another quality or design. The limited innovations of the market leaders are copied overnight without even a by-your-leave. And yet the lure of easy money is adding ‘entrepreneurs’ to the carpet industry almost every other day.

CHILD LABOUR IN THE CARPET INDUSTRY

When one of the market leaders surveyed the looms, they found that around 9 per cent of the workforce were children below the age of 14. When the company had finished cleaning up their act, they had suffered a 30 per cent loss of production as other loom holders moved out as well.

The biggest deterrent to removing children from the looms was not the commonly argued loss of livelihood for families but the fear that it would mean surrendering production (looms) to less scrupulous companies. However, with Senator Harkin (Note: This was written in the year 1993) threatening legislation that would effectively choke off import of Indian carpets into the US, the industry is becoming increasingly aware that the rules are beginning to change.

Their response has been pure panic.

WHO IS A CHILD?

The Indian law says one below the age of 14. The ILO says less than 15 at the very least. If Harkin has his way, the carpet industry would have to do better than the Indian law.

Of course, the question remains as to whether a child is a child. Working on the loom in his undervest, Dinesh looks 12. The labour department books the loom owner. Photographed with his clothes on, he looks 15 and the Deputy labour Commissioner, Allahabad, admits as much. The final judge as per the Factory’s Act is the CMO.

And the going price for a CMO certificate is Rs 180.

NGOS:  SOCIAL ACTIVISTS OR INTERNATIONAL DRAMATISTS?

(The headline is as written 20 years ago)

When Kailash Satyarthi raided Ramkanthi, he had a rich haul. 150 children were 'caught' on looms. Photographers came along for the 'raid', the local media went to town and even the Delhi edition of the Times of India carried on its front page a brief story.

An indignant buzz arose from the carpet barons who had tales of 15-year-olds being included to satisfy the 'target' head count and rice being scattered on the ground and children forced to eat it for the benefit of accompanying media.

A little different is the story of a reasonably large sized company with a strong anti-child labour policy. They had no children on their looms. And yet Kailash Satyarthi raided and “found” children on their looms. Since it was the market leader, it made helluva lot of sense to target them. Not to be outdone, the company checked and found that neither the loom belonged to them nor had Satyarthi got his facts right.

In desperation, they handed Satyarthi a list of all looms weaving for them and asked him to check it out.

They haven’t heard from him since.

HIS FATHER’S LOOM

Is there a difference between the child who has been 'recruited' from Palamu (one of the poorest and drought hit districts of Bihar) by a loom-owner for Rs 2000 to be trained in the art of knotting by hand on an exquisite “leechi” and the boy who helps his father at his loom?

The boy from Bihar is escaping starvation but is tied to the loom -- away from home, dependent on food and shelter from his master who maybe as merciful as his conscience allows him to be.

For the boy at home, life is much more easygoing. He doesn’t sit on the loom till he has had his fill of food, frolic and often a couple of hours at school under the big tree.

The Indian law says there is a difference. The ILO says there is none and Senator Tom Harkin is blissfully unaware that there is such a distinction. For the simple social engineering that Harkin ‘sahaab’ is doing, the consequences would be either be mind-bogglingly complex or a tired but typical Indian response of accepting what is fated and moving on.

Evidence of the former is the increasing number of women and girls on looms. Of the latter, there is sullen acceptance of having to close shop when the Labour and Factories department invade the area.

Carpet manufacturers sound a dire warning of the art dying out if children of the family are stopped from working on the loom.

(Postscript: 20 years later, it would interesting to see if the next generation left the loom for good because they didn’t learn the art at an early enough stage)

THE CHILD EARNER

There is little doubt that child labour benefits everyone – from the loom-owner to the bleeding heart exporters, sanctimonious customers, publicity and funds starved NGOs to the story-seeking media.

For the child earner, however, there are no options, no relief. Senator Harkin’s pious “This bill is about breaking the cycle of poverty by getting these kids out of factories and into schools” is just so many words.

For the Bill fails to tie up the deprivation of livelihood that it would entail to any means of staving off the resultant starvation.

ONE HUNDRED DAYS IN MISERYPUR

Tired and muddy, the Ganges lazily curls in and away from the city of Mirzapur, its sangam upstream a forgotten chapter as it courses listlessly past.

Spanning the river is the Lal Bahadur Shastri bridge – its toll gate demarcating ordered humanity from the chaos of neglect.

Mirzapur is the city of maliks and mazdoors, of dust and grime, of rubble strewn paths pretending to be roads, of filth and squalor and utter unconcern.

PUBLIC ENEMY NO.1: THE LABOUR DEPARTMENT

Deputy Labour Commissioner Pradeep Srivastava was leading his men on a child labour raid. Walking into the house of a loom holder, he saw the lady of the house pulling a quilt to cover two children. After a tug of war, the quilt was pulled aside and two ten-year olds leapt up and rushed out.

As Srivastava turned to follow, the woman barred his way and shut the door. Taking off her pallu, she advanced on the hapless deputy labour commissioner. “Shall I scream that you are molesting me? You, a government servant, will not only lose your job, the villagers will skin you alive.”

For a moment, Srivastava was dumbfounded. All his years in the field had not prepared him for this.

Humbled, he called his men off.

The labour department has no friends in the carpet industry. There are, of course, very few like Pradeep Srivastava. Most labour officers have chosen to cohabit with the carpet barons than live in penury. The result has been utter disregard for labour laws. The blame for child labour attaining such gigantic proportions must squarely lie with the labour department. 

[supriyogupta]

Haider And The Story of Kashmir

A few weeks back, flying to Delhi from Bangalore, a young Sardar was trapped in the middle seat next to mine. He spent much of the flight watching a movie on his phone with an unusual stillness. The occasional glance at his screen showed Sikh actors, a Punjab setting in a movie that seemed to have rich political overtones. As the plane landed, taxied and moved to its bay, the movie was reaching its crescendo with two actors being led to the gallows. The young Sardar quietly wiped a tear.

A little searching on the net showed up "Kaum de Heere" - a film on Indira Gandhi's assassins/assassination that was banned in India in August. Bans have little merit in a world where all nets, doors, walls and boundaries to information have got porous. 

The fact that the movie came close to getting released - banned just a day before it was to play - shows a certain maturing of our political discourse. It will still get watched and, possibly, has been watched across Punjab already -- though not in cinema halls. 

Which brings me to Haider, the Vishal Bhardwaj adaptation of Hamlet, set in Kashmir of 1995. It is an unabashed indictment of how India handles the situation in Kashmir. The film is an unsparing, adept, stark capture of the situation in Kashmir in 1995 (though some elements from more recent history creep in). There is Hamlet too, but for those riveted by the political story, it would be more of a footnote.

There is little doubt that there is not much contrived or manufactured in the film on how it reports the situation.

Many parts of the movie went well outside the needs of the Shakespearean drama to etch out the larger tragedy of Kashmir. Many a time, the sub-plot of how Kashmiris were treated takes over the main plot. The identification of the doctor as a militant supporter during a "crackdown" was an unnecessary artifice meant to drive home the humiliation heaped on the citizens. Much later in the movie, it becomes apparent that the "informer" (the uncle) had given the army the lead. So, what was the need for capturing, in all its starkness, what happens in a crackdown - that rather elaborate holding out of the identity card; the masked informer sitting in the jeep; the plucking of a possibly innocent suspect so that the real target could be one of many...?

There are other giveaway moments on how the movie is more a report on Kashmir than the tragedy of Hamlet. None more so than the smartly underplayed dig at the army when the commanding officer trots out the line on the Indian Army being the most disciplined army in the world.

Vishal Bhardwaj, incidentally, is well aware of the damage he intends to cause - a giveaway being the little tribute to the Indian army in the closing scrolls for its role in the Kashmir floods. A bit of a fig leaf, if you will - possibly stapled on with the intention of having a straw if one were required. 

That said, it was a report on Kashmir of 1995. A state and the city of Srinagar that I had seen up close in October 1992 (My report from that time http://tinyurl.com/nscrhlq) over a week of staying on a houseboat on Dal Lake. Much of Haider resonates with me for I have seen that phase when Kashmir verily was a jail - for both sides. When the J&K Police earned fame for being even more bloodied than the militants and the armed forces. Of people who would disappear because dead bodies of "terrorists" gave rich cash rewards.  Of a city where there were 'militant held' places and 'army held' places. The South Indian soldier was indeed the norm and the fleeing Kashmiri youth (to India or across the border) had left the city empty of young voices. The hijab was in but not the burqa. It wasn't as Indian Army-dominant a period as Bhardwaj would have one  believe.

Those were testy times when you were ever ready to dive into the nearest sheltering portico when militants would come out and fire at will. The soldiers were afraid - fighting a war they were ill-prepared for in a terrain that was alien to them. The by-and-large dark skinned South Indian soldier sat shivering in the cold bunkers - gun at the ready.

They were outmatched by much better prepared militant groups - better armed, more aware of the terrain and clearly well ahead of the army in enjoying the support of the locals. There was a robust sense in the state that the collapse of the Soviet Union was augury of what was to come.

If Haider fails in being honest, it is possibly in showing - except in a very cartoonish manner (when a Carl Gustaf is unleashed on the doctor's house to the thunderous declamation by the army officer that he will not lose a single soldier to the bloody militants), the sheer enormity of the battle that the armed forces had to fight.

Civilians and intruders were hard to separate and militants held the upper hand in every manner. Haider ignores the reality of the insurgency in the 1990s being largely driven by outsiders and mercenaries. The Kashmiri youth were fodder for the militants and the Indian forces had no political discourse to counter them. If Haider was Bhardwaj's report on Kashmir, it fails in a sense to give the "balance" that should have depicted the many killings, torture, rape and worse by the militant groups. Where young Kashmiri girls were fair game for the militants. Where keeping a young man at home was a declaration of being "Indian" and, therefore, a target for the terrorist commanders.

Interestingly, there is a clumsy attempt to tell the "Indian" side of the story through black and white vignettes with a reference to the incidents around partition. These, of course, were overshadowed by the 'mad' Haider's theatrics at Lal Chowk.

The script had no space to deal with the dilemmas on the other side and the story hangs together on the narrative of full endorsement to the cry for azadi.

And yet, that is not why I write this piece. It is more to go back to the earlier question - have we today become politically mature enough to accept such a film with all its shortcomings? Apparently yes, despite all the #boycottHaider hash tags.

The audience watches the movie without squirming. As a nation, we are beginning to face up to our realities. The sense of disempowerment that led people to taking to the streets with stones is getting replaced by a sense of having a voice. And, to that extent, we are possibly both more intolerant (a fine art having being perfected by groups on all sides of the political divide and executed with maniacal zeal and varying tones on social media) and more tolerant because we don't need to burn down cinema halls to voice our dissent. There is time and space to debate Vishal's interpretation - and no matter how the narrative walks on one side of the road, there would be -- in parts of Kashmir at least -- the belief that their "side" of the story has been depicted well. 

Haider, in a sense, is a test for all of us in many ways.

And for those wanting to read a review of the film from an interpretation of Hamlet point of view, I would commend the capture by the New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/03/movies/haider-puts-an-indian-twist-on-hamlet.html?_r=0

[supriyogupta]

Why I Will Probably Not Pick Up The Broom

This has nothing to do with politics. About being a Bhakt or not. Or about caste, creed, religion, middle class mindset. Or being cynical. Or being just a damned naysayer. Or for that matter an armchair critic.

Not a bit.

In fact, to prove the contrary, I can point to a laboured five years and bunches of money that has gone into setting up an eco adventure camp in Coorg as a counterpoint to all the construction that threatens to make the lovely hill district yet another messy, squalid, Nainital or Mussoorie To dwell on the point just a wee bit more, the camp is quite stringent on ensuring that not even a cigarette butt, plastic wrap or foreign material makes its presence felt anywhere within the radius of the camp. And we do more. Try not to disturb nature. Avoid cutting down growing trees while clearing undergrowth and working hard to ensure that any construction that happens should be such that nature can take it all back when and if we move out.

So, in a fashion, over half a decade, I have picked a very large broom.

But not this time around. I am impressed with the intentions. I am humbled by the way in which I see my friends in high places, leaders of society and good neighbours have taken on the mantle. I will even go so far as to laud the people who will set off a chain of selfies posted with the broom in hand.

And yet, I would like to step back and say, is this what will make India clean? 

That question has many layers and I suspect not a question that the campaign addresses. Unfortunately, your and my contribution to the mess is there but much of the accumulation of garbage has less to do with people not keeping their surroundings clean, or behaving negligently. Yes, the ethos stinks and it needs a wake up call. True, those all acts of misdemeanor add up and do reflect a particularly abhorrent part of our character. The ethos needs to change and to the extent each person is sensitized about picking up his own rubbish and disposing it appropriately, the campaign does make sense. But will that be enough?

I fear that this Swacch Bharat was yet another aspect of tokenism and symbolism with which the new government has been getting by. Unlike our former prime minister who said too little and gradually acted as much, the present prime minister is spending a lot of time in building the communication - and the actions are yet to follow.

The real question is what will make India clean? The answer does lie in a more complex set of answers - and there will be mountainous numbers to back it.

However, lets start at some of the basics.

First, lets dust out the laws and get them going on the ground. Simple example, here is a December 2012 PIB release notifying penalties for creating filth: 

http://pib.nic.in/newsite/erelease.aspx?relid=90826

The Ministry of Railways has issued a notification containing rules on prohibition of activities affecting cleanliness and hygiene in the Railway premises along with penalties for contravention of these rules. The Indian Railways (Penalties for activities affecting cleanliness at Railway premises) Rules 2012 have been notified in the Extraordinary Gazette of India, Part II, Section 3, Sub-section (i) vide Gazette Notification no. GSR 846(E) dt. 26.11.2012. 

Under these notified rules, no person shall (i) throw or deposit litter in any occupied or unoccupied Railway premises or the carriage except in authorised places; (ii) cook, bathe, spit, urinate, defecate, feed animal or birds, repair or wash vehicles, washing utensils or clothes or any other objects or keep any type of storage in any Railway premises except in such facilities or conveniences specifically provided for any of these purposes; (iii) paste or put up any poster or write or draw anything or matter in any compartment or carriage of the Railway or any premises thereof, without any lawful authority; (iv) indulge in defacing Railway property. 

The fine is Rs 500. Make it Rs 5000. Give a share - upfront - to the Railway Police if you please. Extend these concepts to every institutionalized area that generates large volumes of garbage. Let colonies get penalized and householders be fined for garbage lying anywhere within 500 metres of the colony. Ditto for restaurants. Street vendors pay for any garbage - self created or not - within 10 metres of where they stand. The moot point is that sentiment isn't enough - for action to take place, there has to be leadership and more.

Laws such as these are there by the basket and the kilo. Get them cracking. Delhi and Gurgaon have shown the way to crackdown on drunk driving - random checks at random places; uncompromising fines. Suddenly, the two cities have some very sober and wary drivers. 

Second, there is the disposal issue. The first step of an effective cleanliness programme is an effective waste disposal chain. While our supply chains have got more and more effective, every format of the other end has stayed moribund. There is little new age thinking. Even the poshest of colonies have, at best, a garbage van that picks up the daily junk and dutifully evacuates it at the closest open ground or landfill or worse. Unfortunately, all the garbage collected on October 2nd probably didn't travel much further than the intentions.

One would have loved to hear the Prime Minister talk about a billion dollar investment in setting up a waste disposal chain and putting out a blueprint and left the mohalla safai business to his corporators. That billion dollars needs to go into creating in each city a modern fleet of waste disposal collectors; a scientific mapping of waste generated in each city block, each grid area; a fleet of trucks and a whole infrastructure for disposal. Today, civic authorities provided infrastructure barely matches the volume of garbage that accummulates in an area - the net result is overflow, accumulation and birth of pestilence.

Third, I would have liked the Prime Minister to stand with the community of young and old who make a living out of scavenging. I would like him to announce a big programme that will give them a livelihood of dignity. The young need to be in schools. The old need to be preserved from diseases, deprivation and homelessness. I would like to see a programme announced to ensure that this mass of workers are given rights that would make them more them scavengers - and make them into the police for cleanliness.

As a footnote - does my picking up the broom stop any of the above from happening? The answer clearly is no. 

But the issue is simple - as the Prime Minister and the Government leads the campaign, I would like to think of this as going to war.

True, the soldiers need to be mobilized - but they are not sitting in the drawing rooms and taking selfies. They are on the ground. If you mean business, work the real troops. The equipment needs to be in place. Spend precious prime ministerial time getting the artillery and the heavy fighters in place. Get the resources organized for a long drawn battle.

Here is a government that can do it. So, let the brooms rest. And lets see a plan in action that has the same impact that NREGA had in rural India.

[supriyogupta]

Holes in Holisticism

Written 20 years ago, this article challenged the imposition of a new world ideological framework. My academic days were still on so the article makes for heavy reading but the simple thought was that the 'victorious' West ready to impose western liberalism as a model of governance was way off. 

[supriyogupta]

The Ugly Bystander

No man is an island, Entire of itself. Each is a piece of the continent, A part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less. As well as if a promontory were. As well as if a manor of thine own Or of thine friend's were. Each man's death diminishes me, For I am involved in mankind. Therefore, send not to know For whom the bell tolls, It tolls for thee.

Every man was an island as the recounting of the survivor tells us:

“After throwing us off the bus, they tried to mow us down but I saved my friend by pulling her away in the nick of time. We were without clothes. We tried to stop passersby. Several auto rickshaws, cars and bikes slowed down but none stopped for about 20 to 25 minutes. Then, someone on patrolling, stopped and called the police,” he told Zee News. 

He said nobody, including the police, gave them clothes or called an ambulance. “They were just watching us,” he said, adding that after repeated requests, someone gave him a part of a bed sheet to cover his friend.  The victim’s friend said that he carried his badly injured friend to the PCR van on his own as “the policemen didn’t help us because my friend was bleeding profusely and they were probably worried about their clothes”.  “Nobody from the public helped us. People were probably afraid that if they helped us, they would become witnesses to the crime and would be asked to come to the police station and court,” he told the channel. 

He said that one cannot change mindsets by lighting candles. "You have to help people on the road when they need help,” he added.  He rued the people’s indifference towards him and his friend when they were lying on the road. “They (the people) had cars, they could have taken us to the hospital. Every minute was important for us. But they didn’t. Who will change this attitude?” he asked.  "If you can help someone, help them. If a single person had helped me that night, things would have been different. There is no need to close Metro stations and stop the public from expressing themselves. People should be allowed to have faith in the system," he went on to say. 

We are getting more involved than ever before.  We take out candle light marches. We press the “Like” button on Facebook.  We express online, on mobiles, on television. We are no longer afraid to “get involved”.

  Or are we?

  As the friend of the braveheart so scathingly recounts, none came to their aid. It would be unsurprising if the bloody battle in the bus was noticed by people in cars, buses and two-wheelers running alongside and yet no one did anything. It is equally unsurprising that no one stopped to help and those who stopped, gawked rather than acted.

  Is this about Delhi? Or is it human nature? In Mumbai, “lafde mein nahin padne ka” is almost a byword for why people in this teeming city keep to themselves. Pallavi Purakaystha, a lawyer, failed to get her neighbours’ aid when she was being attacked in the wee hours.

 In most instances, the manual for survival in the urban landscape is “not to get involved.” Conversely, communities that get involved are often guilty of vigilantism or mob fury. A public thrashing in Kolkata dissuades even the most foolhardy from that strange Indian coinage, “eve teasing”.  And yet, Bengal’s reputation of being women friendly is quickly losing its sheen. Most stories of vigilantism are retrograde, regressive and usually steeped in outdated cultural mores. The Khaps sit at the opposite end of the bystander, imposing retribution in the name of social and moral good.

 It would be quite easy to dismiss the non-involvement of people to a moral flaw of some. It would be easy to pretend that all those who marched with candles would have stepped forward if they had happened to be in the vicinity of the crime.  And all those who didn’t were of a different species, cut from a different cloth and brought together on that horrific night.

 It would be equally easy to put the full weight of non-involvement of people on the door step of the police for the endless trials that follow involvement in preventing or reporting a crime, an accident or an incident.

 On the contrary, there is a deeper psychology at play. One that defines the modern civilization around the world: The presence of the individual as a bystander despite his sense of outrage at a wrong being perpetrated.

 An excellent article by  Dacher Keltner and Jason Marsh from the University of Berkley makes some compelling points about the “bystander”:

 “The bystander is a modern archetype, from the Holocaust to the genocide in Rwanda to the current environmental crisis,” says Charles Garfield, a clinical professor of psychology at the University of California, San Francisco, School of Medicine. “Why,” asked Garfield, “do some people respond to these crises while others don’t?”

 Every day we serve as bystanders to the world around us—not just to people in need on the street but to larger social, political, and environmental problems that concern us, but which we feel powerless to address on our own. Indeed, the bystander phenomenon pervades the history of the past century.

 (http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/we_are_all_bystanders)

http://www.psychwiki.com/wiki/The_Bystander_Apathy_Effect

 Being a bystander is neither a developing world thing nor one limited to any social or cultural context. In October 2009, two dozen teenagers watched the gang rape of a 15-year-old girl outside her school homecoming dance in Richmond, California but no one did anything. The attack lasted two-and-a-half hours and the girl was found semiconscious under a bench only someone overheard witnesses discussing the assault notified the police. 

 The Newsweek blog says that “Experts in the prevention of sexual violence say that although this was an extreme and particularly horrific case, the fact that the witnesses failed to intervene isn’t too surprising. “They’re not anomalies,” says Dorothy Edwards, director of the Violence Intervention and Prevention Center at the University of Kentucky. “Everyone likes to think, ‘If I were there, I would’ve done something.’ But being passive is not atypical.” 

 Two social psychologists, John Darley and Bibb Latane, looked deeper into the question of why 38 people in Queens, New York, did nothing to stop the murder of Kitty Genovese in 1964 by a serial killer despite having either witnessed the attack or heard Genovese’s screams.

 Through multiple simulations, they deduced that presence of other people results in diffusion of responsibility: The belief that someone else will do something. According to Darley and Latane, “When study participants thought there were other witnesses to the emergency, they felt less personal responsibility to intervene.”

 Other researchers have pointed to the “confusion of responsibility” where bystanders fail to help someone in distress because they don’t want to be mistaken for the cause of that distress. In the Indian instance, the “lafde mein nahin padne ka” is the collective consciousness that contends that going to the police or getting involved will result in a prolonged and possibly life changing brush with the law and the process of the law.

 Darley and Latane also found that bystanders tended to mimic each other. If there was no obvious response to an outrage or an accident, others would also tend to follow the pattern.

 While that explains the gawkers and the bystanders, what it doesn’t do is explain those people who do intervene, who do go out on the limb and who are driven to act rather than choose to turn away. From the horrors of the Holocaust emerged stories that went against the grain of people looking the other way.  Those who chose to protect, at great risk to themselves, were ordinary folk with a strong sense of moral responsibility for others.

 Samuel and Peral Oliner in their study of 400 people who rescued Jews during the Holocaust say that  rescuers shared some deep personality traits, which they described as their “capacity for extensive relationships—their stronger sense of attachment to others and their feelings of responsibility for the welfare of others.”

 They also found that these tendencies had been instilled in many rescuers from the time they were young children, often stemming from parents who displayed more tolerance, care, and empathy toward their children and toward people different from themselves.

 Much of India is in transition. The current generation of parents possibly grew up a milieu where the sole motivation was to be educated or adventurous enough to “get out” of their street, village, and country. Going abroad was the sign of success not simply because it was an economic opportunity but it also rested on the belief that any place outside India was cleaner, safer, more welcoming and more law abiding.

 The obverse side of this “go out and make a life abroad” was the constant admonishment to children not to “get involved” with things happening outside your doorstep: not to get involved with slum kids or children not in your school or social background, not to get involved in fights on the street, political rallies or demonstrations. “Good families” inculcated the value of “non-involvement”.

Around the world, a lot of effort is going into anti-bystander education. A key principle of the education is to get students in schools to resist bullying directed at peers or those in the vicinity. One of the most critical progress paths in the process of changing bystander behaviour is to get people to express their concerns. The marchers at India Gate had no agenda that would keep a panel discussion going as they failed initially to articulate a view point beyond “We want Justice” to roving television cameras even as they threw themselves in front of tear gas and water cannons.

 In a fashion, these marchers were making a far more seminal point: We want to get involved. We will not hide or shut our doors. We are willing to come in the line of fire.

 At the same time it is important to note the point that Darley made in his research: That bystander behaviour is often an outcome of group behaviour and that most people behave the way they do  with the same mindset that often is at the crux of mob violence or rioting: The belief of social acceptance because everyone around is a participant to same pattern.

 Therefore, among the first steps hereon is the formulation of a Good Samaritan law that obliges people to offer assistance and provides them protection from subsequent legal action. In Argentina, the penal code provides that "a person who endangers the life or health of another, either by putting a person in jeopardy or abandoning to their fate a person unable to cope alone who must be cared for ... will be imprisoned for between 2 and 6 years". The jury is still out on whether stringent bystander laws are needed to stop people from walking away from the scene of sexual violence or a crime without even calling in the police.

 However, the real change will need to start in schools and colleges where the curricula needs to include anti-bystander education.  In the United States, a number of programs are being implemented to teach students to stop violence. The MVP (Mentors in Violence Prevention) program, which was developed in 1993 at Northeastern University’s Center for the Study of Sports in Society, tries to teach students how to stop violence when they see it. The Green Dot program, launched at the University of Kentucky has “spread like wildfire” to more than 20 states.

 Victoria Banyard, codirector of Bringing In the Bystander, a bystander-intervention program at the University of New Hampshire, says that parents and teachers should remember that “good” kids can become bystanders, too. So how can you prevent your kid from becoming a bystander? Banyard says that bystander awareness, in many cases, really needs to be taught. “We need to help people develop and practice the specific skills so that when they’re in the moment, they’re doing something positive to help,” she says. 

 That, in itself, may not be sufficient. It is important to involve companies with large work forces to mandatorily train their employees in anti-bystander programs. The adult must play a role today in preventing crime or in at least providing assistance. Involving employees, rewarding them and getting companies to take pride in the acts of courage of their workforce will go a long way in putting on the roads a group of people ready to stop being bystanders.

[supriyogupta]

  Blue Skies are a rarity in London, blessed as it is with, as the Londoner said, with two kinds of weather: Rain and Cold. But here we were in London with the city served sunny side up. Weather is clearly top of mind for the people of the isles that form the UK. From the dressed up gladiator in the Roman Baths at Bath to the Scottish tour conductor, it was weather, and the good fortune of no rain, that occupied their thoughts. Not that a little bit of rain would have really been too off the plate for the family which had escaped the searing heat of Delhi at its peak summer.

We arrived at Gatwick on a ten day barnstorm of the British Isles after having learnt the hard way that visas and passports shouldn’t be taken too lightly and the pain of dealing with outsourced Visa sections. The original plan was a London-Paris trip but was pulled up short against a new Schengen rule that effectively made passports with 20 years validity illegal once they are a decade old. Combined with an almost offensive treatment at the French VFS section in New Delhi, the plan got quickly tailored to an England-Scotland holiday.

 And what a fortuitous change it turned out to be though there was yet another lesson learned: Don’t buy Eurostar tickets too early, specially if they are non-refundable. There is simply no way in which you can cancel them though you can take a shot at selling them on the Net on a number of sites that helpfully provide an alternative to this very un-English oversight, though be warned that it isn’t really legal. That said, don’t buy Eurostar tickets too late either as we learnt during our last trip: There just wouldn’t be any left. Personally, though, I prefer the bus and ferry across the English Channel where the white cliffs of Dover stay with you for a while as you gently cross the channel and the French coast floats into view. For shoe-string travelers, though, cost counts, specially when you are a family of four trying to consume as much of the world as possible in every summer break. And buses are more expensive as is an air hop to Paris so the Eurostar stays a no-brainer and a convenient one.

 The beauty of shoe-string travel is the choices that get thrown up, specially if you are avoiding the more expensive (never mind the advertising) packaged tours. A well timed booking of tickets to London can give you basement prices though they may carry the odd stopover. For a family of four, we shelled out a little over Rs 1,00,000 in the top of the line Emirates though it did carry a stopover of seven hours in Dubai on the way out.

 Trip Advisor is an excellent way to home in on affordable Bed & Breakfast lodgings or apartments. The apartment in Edinburgh turned out to be a dream home stay and the Caring Hotel at London turned out to be an efficient enough hotel though with very cramped loos. Its always good to reach out directly to the properties as they are more likely to give you the best price though travel sites often give you surprisingly good deals.

  London is an all seasons sojourn for tourists. But summer brings to life an amazing cacophony of languages that seem to invade the city. KensingtonGardens, GreenPark and Hyde Park is replete with Arab family camp downs with lavish spreads. East European voices drown out English speakers. American tourists crowd the Big Bus and the Original London tours and, charmingly, the English from the rest of the British Isles come to tour the city. So do the Aussies, the Canadians and of course the Indian in good strength. Of course, while you can spot the Aussie, the American and the Canadian on the bus tours and the various sights of London, Oxford Circus and Bond Street are jammed with a human avalanche where every fourth biped (birds included) is an Indian with the gleam of shopping in their eye. That said, the weak Euro and Pound had invited a surge of traffic into London and Selfridges was as comfortable as Big Bazaar on a Sunday noon day. The long days with the sun shining bright late into the evening is an invitation to the Indians and the people of the world used to going to bed with the sun to party late into the evening.

 London’s character changes with its neighbourhoods and have often little to do with any of the Anglo Saxon tribes. Queensway and Bayswater, for instance, are a nice mix of Malaysian, Arab, Mediterranean and Middle Eastern cultures and the restaurants reflect the culinary diversity. From some delectable Peking Duck to Malaysian Chicken Curry with rice, the spread is fairly satisfying for the gourmet. For those with a more modest means to spend on food, duck into the ever present Pret A Manger that gives very affordable, natural and tasteful sandwiches, baguettes, wraps in its 225 odd stores. Of course, you can duck into any of the supermarkets and pick up these and packaged foods but Pret A Manger does stand out as our little discovery of the trip.

 The key is to look out for the unusual while taking the usual tours in London. An evening in glass covered Covent Garden market is worth a trip with its open piazza and performers ranging from jugglers to mime artists and a choice of cafes. We walked into a crowd performance of “O Sole Mio” as enthusiastic Italian tourists joined the street performer for a rousing rendition. Avoiding the Cafes, an open cart serving delicious Spanish paella and a little tucked away pie shop turned out to be two gems of the market. The Covent Garden market also tucks away a rather interesting assortment of shops selling everything from costume jewellery to seaweed cosmetics.

 Equally fun is to do ‘touristy’ things in London. Hop on to either the Original Bus Tour or the London Big Bus Tour and hop off wherever you please. The Red Tour is specially fun as it comes with a tour guides who speak with their tongue firmly locked in their cheek. The Royal family, save the Queen and the Royal Children, are often at the receiving end of these narrations that take you through the fabric and history of London. The facts are often coloured over but, nonetheless, entertaining. If you traveling on the Bus Tours through London this summer-autumn, look out for the Elephants that have mushroomed across the city as a part of the Elephant Parade that draws attention to the endangered Asian elephant. Don’t be surprised to see some Elephants decked up in IPL team colours. Check out the “Nelson’s Ship in a Bottle” by Anglo-Nigerian artist Yinka Shonibare in Trafalgar Square, filling the empty fourth plinth. Keep an eye out for the performers outside Ripley’s Believe It or Not and Hamleys, the large but not particularly overwhelming toy shop. As you cross the Thames, keep a lookout for the unusual modern symbols of London, the odd shaped building dubbed the Gherkin by those unimpressed by Sir Norman Foster’s St Mary Ax though the building has gone on to become among the most admired. Or the Big Eye, the huge wheel that gives a panoramic view of the city. The Thames cruise is, of course, a must do, if nothing else for the salty commentary of life on the banks of the Thames rendered by the captain of the cruise ship as he points out the National Theatre, the MI-5 and, of course, the Westminster.

  The London Dungeon is a good ghoul stop over with its dramatic rendition of real and fictional fiends of London. At the Tower of London, wait for one of the Tower Guards, the Beefeaters or Yeoman Warders to give you the tour with compelling tales of treachery, traitors and deceit and executions at the Tower Hill as also the lay of the Tower against the Thames. In case he doesn’t draw your attention to the Ravens, do take a look at the plump, plush black birds which hop around, unable to fly due to clipped wings. Tradition dating back to Charles II has it that six ravens must stay in the tower or else both the WhiteTower and the monarch will fall. There are currently seven, a spare to mitigate risk of the kingdom falling for the lack of ravens. The Crown Jewels are on view and while the entry does tend to be a little crowded, it usually eases out as the flow of tourists gets into a pattern.

 On the other hand, Westminister Abbey is probably a far better representation of British history over the past couple of centuries, even though the Abbey itself dates back a thousand years. For those with a keen sense of history, the Abbey is good place to take time out on as the roots of English literature and theatre, economics and politics, science and discovery all stand represented in good measure. From tombs to memorials, the Abbey contains within its elegant walls a moving chronicle of the passage of time and the shaping of British fortunes.

 As the day of Bus Hopping on the London Tour buses ends, it is good to sit back and look at the pubs that have tried to keep their unique identity. Most pubs with a ‘look’ do have some history to them but take your time making up your mind between the beers off the tap, ales and the branded stuff. Much though the romance of a beer off the tap, it still doesn’t mean that the warm bitter beer is the stuff you are really looking for. Finding a good place to eat is never really a challenge but our culinary expedition for finding just the right Fish and Chips was a bit disappointing.

 In London, our first encounter with this traditional British dish was in an Indian joint in the marketplace behind the Covent Garden Market. Having put out a fairly decent and crisp Fish and Chips, the Chef informed us that his other job was as a diplomat in the Indian High Commission.  Subsequent encounters in London with beer battered haddock and various avatars of fish and chips outside the Tower of London and eateries across the city didn’t really rise too far above the Indian version of the ‘fish fry’.

 With a football fanatic in the family, it was destined that a trip to England would involve a football tour. The Chelsea Club sitting in the Stamford Stadium in Fullham was just the right pick for this year given their sterling performance this season. The walk into the stadium itself is a delight with Chelsea fans of all ages fitting themselves into all the photo ops that had been created on the walls around the stadium. The tour itself takes you through the memorabilia into the stadium and the dressing rooms with a saucy commentary on the performance of Arsenal, Manchester United and other less well off teams. The big attraction this season is that you can pose with all of Chelsea’s trophies of the season: Barclays Premier League trophy, and the FA Cup.

  Out of London and into the English countryside, there are many a day trips that can help cover a lot of ground. Else, take a car and drive around the country and see for yourself. We chose the former and headed off to Windsor, Stonehenge and Bath. The WindsorCastle is a revelation. This home of the Royal Family and the oldest continuously occupied castle dates back to the time of William the Conqueror who set up castles at a distance of a day’s march a thousand years ago. The Queen’s favourite weekend home, the WindsorCastle has on public view the State Apartments, St George’s Chapel and Queen Mary’s Doll House. Having landed up at the changing of the guards, we tarried a little even as the clock is an unrelenting master in the day trip tours, leaving little time to explore the castle fully. That said, the audio guides help you quickly spot pieces of history which would other miss the eye. Look up when you at the St George’s Chapel and see the panoply of crests, each with a tale to tell. Queen Mary’s Doll House was never made for a child and houses but for the Queen by Princess Marie Louise and is a collection of miniature items that actually work and are representative of how a royal family might live in the 1920s.

 Stonehenge, on the other hand, is possibly a tick in the box. Now that the stones have been cordoned off, you might as well see them from outside the fencing without losing too much. But cast your eye around the countryside and look for small circular mounds. These are burial mounds with often as many as fifty graves tucked inside. And, as you look around, figure how those stones got there all the way from Welsh quarries.

 On the way to Bath, stopover for lunch at the charming Lacock village, taken over by the UK National Trust and now the epicenter for many a film and television shoot, including Harry Potter. The GeorgeInn at Lacock is a preferred luncheon place but let them know well before that you are on your way. The Inn boasts of a dog wheel turned spit that is still working, dating back to the days when dogs worked the tread wheel that turned the spit. While a wander around Lacock gives a picture perfect view of an English village, nip across to the back of The George Inn to a little shop with a range of woolen garments, a reminder of the days when Lacock was at the centre of the Wool Trade.

 Moving on to Bath, the spas of the Romans, was once known as Aquae Sulis and dated back to Celtic times, though what you see today goes back only to the Roman inhabitations of AD 43. Legends of the curative value of the hot sulphur springs in Bath were probably well established well before, but it was the Romans with their very un-European fascination for bathing who converted the city into Spa Central for the Roman Empire. The Bath Abbey adjacent to the Roman Bath dates back to the 7th Century is also worth a look around. Check out the PultneyBridge across the river Avon, built along the lines of Florence’s Ponte Vecchio.

Day tour over, its time to move on to Scotland, but not before our guide warbles eloquently all the way back to London about the perfect English summer day!

 TRAVEL TIPS

 1/ KLM and Emirates if tracked over time give some excellent rates.

2/ Definition of Child varies from location to location. While airlines treat anyone over 12 as adults, the London Underground gives them the honour at 15.

3/ Buy an Oyster card to travel around London. It works on both the bus and the Underground system and is much cheaper. For children under 15, its better to buy the day ticket at two pounds a head. Children under 10 are free on the Underground.

4/ The British National Rail Pass is an excellent way to get around the country. The three day passes also take care of the trip to Heathrow and Gatwick a

5/ If you thought Baksheesh was an Indian concept, think again. For virtually every service delivered, you will get an open exhortation to tips, with various degrees of bluntness. So keep some loose change handy at all times.

6/ Booking on the Net is usually safe and problem free but do check if the hotel or establishment will get a pre-approval and if cancellation charges would be applied.

7/ If you take the London bus tours, it might be handy to buy entrance tickets to the Tower of London, the Dungeon and other sites on offer along with your bus ticket. You get a discount and you don’t have to stand in a line.

 8/ Logic and costs need not go together. It is cheaper to buy a Delhi- London-Delhi ticket than a Delhi-London-Paris-Delhi ticket even after counting the cost of a return Paris-London ticket. Also, return tickets on the same airline, same route are cheaper than booking one way.

9/ Book your day trips out of London before leaving but no real need to pay for all stops or even lunch. You can do your own thing and cut costs. 

[supriyogupta]

Well before the days of the Internet, 'acceptable' nudity was transmitted through newspaper reports.. one such on Fergie unbared triggered this comparison of media interest in Fergie naked vs the Somalian naked