MacLeodGanj And The Monk of the Himalayas..

After the Kashmir jaunt, there was another itinerary on my list and I was not going to miss it - Dharamshala in Himachal Pradesh, and not too far from Amritsar. The abode of the Most Holy Dalai Lama!
So one Saturday when I was off work I proceeded to the Amristar Inter State Bus terminal. I had enquired earlier, and the bearded Sikh had informed me that there was just one direct bus to Dharamshala from Amritsar and it was a Himachal State Transport bus that departed daily evening.
I noted that the Amritsar Inter State Bus stop was sanitised like the bus stands in my home state, a far cry away from dirty, infested bus terminals of North India usually packed with beggars. The Golden Temple effect I guessed. I recoiled at the memory of the dirty, heavily congested bus stops that I had experienced till then, especially the one at Jammu.
While on the bus I noticed there were two foreign couple seated some seats behind me, en route to the same destination.
One was a young man - woman hippy couple. The brunette was short and slightly built, with very curly dark hair spoke fluent English, though she she seemed more European than American or British, while her bespectacled companion kept mostly to himself; and the other was a pair of well built, sun tanned young men who looked Spanish, but seemed to have travelled from Australia. They were travelling all over the world picking up temporary janitorial jobs as they moved, to handle their daily expenses, I came to know from their idle banter.
One of the hippy men asked the brunette if the companion was her husband, but the woman replied matter of fact that they were not, but that is what they posing as to avoid being lynched by the "moral police", she added with a laugh!
Their talked moved to their experience in India, and the brunette remarked that India was so many countries rolled into one - with deserts, beaches, snow capped mountain peaks, forests, dense cities, backwaters, palaces and temples. To me that seemed to make sense and I agreed how true that was!
When we reached Dharamshala a good eight hours or so later, it was pretty dark. I came to learn that Dharamshala was actually a commercial centre while the Dalai Lama and his Tibetan followers actually resided a couple of kilometres on the upper reaches of Dharamshala near the foothills of the Himalayas, a hill station with the anglicised name of MacLeodGanj.
Since it was pretty late, I decided to put up at a hotel and leave the sight seeing for the next day. From Dharamshala I took a cab and asked the driver to take me to a not too expensive hotel. After a twenty minute ride we pulled up in front of a modern building that was built on a cliff overlooking the valley below. Two young locals arranged a single room for me from where I had a breathtaking view the twinkling lights of MacLeodGanj, the deep valley below and a snow covered peak rising above it.
I was feeling cold and got one of the young chaps to get me a bottle of gin from nearby bar. I got a little drunk and then faced a unique problem. I was smoking heavily and to keep the air moving and prevent being suffocated with the cigarette smoke, I had opened the ventilators above the windows, and when that didn't make it any better, put on the overhead fan as well.
The temperature outside was sub-zero and after a wash in the lukewarm tap water in the bath, I was literally freezing. Having heard of hypothermia and frost bite, I was not willing to take any chances. I put on two shirts and my jacket over it and slept with my socks and pants on. That make me warmer and I dozed off. A sight for sore eyes!
The next day I walked from the hotel up a steep incline towards MacLeodGanj town, which was literally nothing much but a few shanty buildings on either side of the road, with old wizened Tibetan women sitting outside, knitting woollen sweaters and socks, the men selling Buddhist mementos in improvised stalls. I noted one particular seedy building with a sign outside "Massage Parlour". Aware of the real purpose of massage parlours in Nepal and Thailand, I was a bit intrigued by the sign but didn't allow my curiosity to get the better of me and I moved on.
As it was already lunch time I decided to have lunch at a Tibetan eatery a ordered some soup and an unpronounceable  dish whose name I didn't grasp. It was nothing to write home about except that it was heavily laced with herbs and spices with floating boiled chicken morsels that reminded me more of medical tonic than food. Guessed it kept the Tibetan warm in the cold weather.
Since I had nothing much to do I decided to walk up the few kilometres up a steep incline towards what was Upper Dharamshala. I enjoyed the crisp cool fresh air as I walked up and decided to have  a quick omelette and noodles at a small wayside eatery intriguingly called "By Mistake". Well, it was "by mistake" that I had come across it in the first place! I noticed the same foreign couple who I had met in the bus walking up the mountain track behind me and the young woman who seemed to recognise me, smiled and yelled a "Hallo". I waved back.
It was there I met a young fellow traveller who accompanied me all the way up the the way up to upper Dharamshala. I welcomed his company and we started chatting about nothing in particular. It seemed he was originally from Himachal Pradesh but worked as a dairy engineer in Maharashtra, and every once in a year returned to Dharamshala and MacLeodGanj to have a walk up this very same mountain path,
As we made our way up, he relented to my request of couple of snaps of me against the breathtaking background of pine trees and the valley below. At one point we came across an old Buddhist monk with a walking stick trudging the way down. The old monk was taken aback when I asked him if I could take a snap of him with me. Nevertheless he nodded, and my friend took snaps and I reciprocated in kind. The monk understood English and we said our Thank You's before moving on.
As we made our way to the end of the trail, I noticed a couple of brand new cars parked on either side along the way, in the middle of nowhere and gathering dust. Seemed like some people had decided to visit but then decided to stay on, taken away by the rustic charm of MacLeodGanj!
At the summit we had our reward of hot piping tea and my companion decided to part ways with me as he had made up his mind to climb the forbidding hill that lay ahead with no visible way up. He pointed to a small temple at the top with a fluttering saffron flag atop. My friend said he was going to climb up all the way and take blessings of the gods. He was already breathing heavily but he had made up his mind to climb all the way up.
When I returned to MacLeodGanj, I did the usual tourist thing and visited the Dalai Lama's Buddhist monastery, the de facto capital of the Tibetan government in exile.
Prayer time was over and I entered the heavily guarded monastery teeming with Tibetan monks after a careful body check by Tibetan security. Nothing much to remark except I noticed that the sanctum sanctorum had piles and piles of Swiss chocolates and sweets neatly arranged into small mountains untouched by man or animal. Enough for the monks to survive a siege for months in case there was one! The chocolates were gifts by foreign well wishers and some even had unmoved tags saying "Gift from Germany by ..." etc. The Tibetan cause seemed to be popular across the world, cutting across nationalities.

On my way back to Dharamshala by bus to Amritsar via Pathankot, I was caught by the irony of Kashmir and MacLeodGanj, just a few hundred kilometres from each other - one, where a people complained of being subjugated by their government, and the other where refugees subjugated by their own government, had decided to call home!

Socialist, Secular and Democratic Any More?

When I was in Kuwait several years back, I wrote an email to a friend with the following content. I came across it recently and thought it would be fun to retrospect on it. However it made me think about something else too.

Every expatriate in Kuwait has some grouse against their Kuwaiti masters. They summarize:

Belief: Islamic countries have very tough laws. Arabs are very self disciplined.
Expatriate's interpretation: Kuwait's laws are made for expatriates, to protect Kuwaitis. The Kuwaitis have no law unto themselves. The more things come under the ban the more they thrive in secret.

Belief: Islamic law comes down heavily on those who pursue the three vices.
Expatriate's opinion who spent some time in a Bahrain office: That makes places like Bahrain and Nepal all the more a favorite getaway for the rich Arab where all three vices are take place with the knowledge of their Islam patrons back  home.

Belief: Kuwait being very rich can afford to provide a lot of free public services.
Expatriate's interpretation: Everything is designed keeping in mind the welfare of the Kuwaiti. Land phones which Arab locals frequent are free. Mobiles which are more of utility to the expat are too expensive to keep; even incoming calls to mobiles are charged.

Belief: Since there is no politics in Kuwait and political parties are banned and the power of the State is supreme, there is no place for corruption.
Expatriate's Interpretation: The vice of corruption is practiced by individuals under a system called "vaastha" or influence. For example, if an influential Arab has powerful links in the government power structure, he can manipulate them to suit his needs.

Whitewash: Kuwait is a lot more freer in than many other Islamic countries.
Expatriate's opinion: Expats can own utilities such as taxis or visa sponsorship only under the patronage of a Kuwaiti. The Kuwaiti gains by every entrepreneurial move of the expat.

The English daily, The Kuwait Times that I used to frequent (it is free) reveals how self indulgent the Kuwaitis are. Editorial headlines scream such silly questions like: What would we do without our Chicken? (they eat it for breakfast, lunch and supper) What would we do without our housemaids? (Housemaids are the most exploited lot in Gulf countries, working almost 24 X 7 hours and cater to the whimsical needs of lazy Arabs who practically do no work and plead stressful lives as an excuse)

Germany too has some things in common with Kuwait. Both are very ethnocentric and cannot comprehend an alien culture and are more of a closed society. But while Germany thrives on its technical expertise and skilled manpower sources, Kuwait exploits some silly black liquid deep under it's soil.

Belief: Ramadan is a period of penance and of self cleansing for the Muslim Arab.
Expatriate's interpretation: The spirit of Ramadan is self-restraint. But when they do not want others to drink or eat during the ROJA, that very spirit is broken.

That makes me think, if our government says a certain item is holy to a section and others who don't feel that way too have to bow to the diktat, are we in any way better than these Arab nations known to be among the most uncivilized and undemocratic? I am not asking any questions, nor giving any answers to any questions. But can we call our nation democratic per Se? 

Party Yuh Hi Chaalegi!

I had reached Srinagar by air, but I decided that my return trip would be by land to Amritsar via Jammu and Pathankot. I had decided to travel overnight. The journey turned out to be more interesting and dangerous than I had bargained for!
When I reached the Tourist Center, from where all state run buses run to Jammu, I was dismayed to find they ran only during the day. But as somebody pointed out there were plenty of private vehicles that would take me to Jammu for half the fare. There were all sorts of vehicles from Srinagar to Jammu - Tata Sumo, taxis, SUVs - and Tempo Travellers (a cross between an SUV and a van). They ran on a share basis, which meant that you shared even the taxis with other fellow passengers.
I decided not to take the Sumo or taxi, which I felt would be very uncomfortable if jammed with passengers. Instead I decided to take a Tempo Traveller. It would leave in another half an hour at 7 pm, and reach Jammu at dawn said the young driver who was incessantly hollering "Jammu! Jammu!". And the fare was reasonable. I preferred the Tempo Traveller since it's impossible to cram it with more than 11 people and the seats were comfortable so that you could doze off at night with the vibrations minimal.
As soon as we got the mandated 11 people and I handed a couple of 500 rupee notes to the driver, we were off. I noticed that the Kashmiri driver was very young, who just seemed to have got his driver's license, but watching him navigate left me no doubt of his driving prowess. It soon got dark and outside it was pitch darkness. Among our passengers was a young Sardarji who wore a baseball cap over his patka. The Sardarji was a jovial type and he kept the rest of us passengers entertained and had us in splits with his offhand jokes. He even had a mock conversation with his girlfriend on his mobile and made a public parody of their love talk. There was a long conversation with her on the topic of mobile phones and prepaid cards. When he told her over the phone that he had always believed her father was a doctor, but not of the veterinary kind, he had all the  passengers laughing till they were literally ROFL.
The driver was playing Hindi and Urdu songs on the inbuilt music player for quite some time now. I recalled some of them from two decades back- played by Muslim paan thela wallahs in rural Maharashtra. The van picked up a few travelers en route, including some people who seemed to be apple merchants and the Traveller was properly packed to capacity.
The young driver picked up his first cigarette and was soon merrily puffing away and began chain smoking. Just a few hours later we were stopped by some army men. The driver was asked for his identification papers and driving license which he nervously handed over to the army man. A torch was shone into each of our faces through the driver window, and sensing trouble I too kept my identification papers ready. But I guessed some money changed hands and soon we were off. Since Srinagar was far behind us, I thought the rest of the travel would be untoward. How wrong I was!
After this adventure, the young Kashmiri driver, again chain smoking, had the music player back again at full blast. The Sardarji got restless and shouted to no one in particular to stop smoking. Sardarjis as a rule don't smoke and their abstinence has religious intonations. The driver paid no heed. It was my turn to complain. I asked the driver to lower the volume since the incessant music was blasting my eardrums. He lowered it for a few minutes but put it to full blast again. All of us passengers who were desperately trying to catch some sleep but were hapless.
At around two in the night I got up to find that the vehicle had stopped and the driver was having a heated conversation with somebody. It turned out that they were policemen who had stopped the vehicle. A long line of truck laded with goods were parked all along the road. The driver got restless and the conversation got more heated as I could hear the policeman cursing as he almost hit the driver. No good. The Tempo Traveller we were told, was not going anywhere till dawn.
We were informed that the local DGP of Police had put enacted a new decree that vehicles could move from Srinagar to Jammu only during day hours starting from 6 am. I got off the vehicle, since there was nothing else to do. I pulled out a cigarette and noted that one side of the road descended into a deep ravine and far far down I could see lights from a hydroelectric project in progress. It was then that I truly appreciated the driver's driving skills. One wrong move and we would be hurtling down that precipice and find mention in some news item as one more accident, that so often happens in Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarkhand. Particularly when the tar on the roads disintegrates into potholes around treacherous bends.
I was joined by a young Kashmiri co-traveler who also lit a cigarette and asked me whether I knew someone called Ram Singh. It seemed this Ram Singh had to be feared and respected and only an ignoramus would not have heard of Ram Singh. The young guy informed me that Ram Singh was the DGP, and what Ram Singh says is the rule. No vehicles to Jammu till morning! Police were the law here.
We walked toward the police check-post and found a huge log obstructing the road preventing vehicles from barging ahead.
The apple merchant was having an animated conversation with the young Kashmiri driver.
"You don't know how to deal with these people", he was admonishing the driver. If the driver couldn't deal with the police, he said he would. He was contemplating giving a bribe. The driver protested that he didn't have enough money to bribe off all these policemen. An hour later, a hundred rupees was collected from each passenger, seemingly a bribe was paid, yet the vehicle was not allowed to proceed!
I returned to the warmth of the Traveller since it was pretty cold outside and I was shivering in the near zero temperature in spite of my jacket.
An hour later, the driver returned to the Traveller, and said there was no option but to return to Srinagar and start off in the morning again. When we were halfway to Jammu! The passengers protested. One of the passengers said he knew an alternate route and they could give it a try. After some thought, the driver decided not to, reason being that road too was probably blocked. The driver talked to someone over his mobile and informed us that one of his friends who was updated on exactly which bases were covered by the police was on the same route, so they would wait it out for his advice. True to his words, soon a Tata Sumo joined the long queue of vehicles at the road block. Our driver had some quick words with the his driver friend and returned to his seat. He said there was an alternate route they could take where he bet that we would be let through.
So the Tempo Traveller followed the Sumo till we reached a road barrier, which was lifted after a friendly conversation with some plainclothes men and we were on our way to Jammu! We had been stuck up for nearly one hour!
The music was blaring again and the driver was heavily smoking again in-spite of protests from both me and the Sardarji. The driver told us half apologetically that he was just trying to ward off sleep and the music helped him stay awake.
One particular song was being played incessantly in a loop at full volume. From the song, I could catch the words of a a male baritone voice mouthing"Aunty Police Bulayeegi.. Party Yuh Hi Chaalegi!" I found the reference to "police" and "party" funny. The party seemed to be us rag-tag group of passengers!
In-spite of the din, I soon fell asleep.
It was dawn when we reached Jammu. The driver had indeed made up for lost time.
I noticed that Jammu was much warmer almost hot, even at that early hour. Seemed like India after all.
I could hardly see any of the Kashmiri types around - the ones in the long black cloaks or Muslim women in black. However there seemed to be plenty of Sardarjis and lots of North India types, some obviously on pilgrimage. Jammu seemed to be more modern with flyovers and was the standard concrete jungle that any Indian capital is.
Now I now had to locate a bus to Pathankot in Punjab. That was some journey! The party finally dispersed!

The Guide

My initial desire was to describe my North Indian jaunt in a sequence, especially the Kashmir part. But I find that some incidents are noteworthy than the rest and hence demand attention.
I got up late in the afternoon that day. The hotel had Kashimiri pulao and Kashmiri rice on the menu. Since both were Kashmiri, I guessed they would be cheaper, so I ordered them both, with gravy. The rice turned out to be soggy, short grained and looked overcooked,  but on eating I found that it actually tasted good. The pulao was nothing out of the ordinary, but nonetheless eatable, but oily. I had wondered how rice grew on the rocky, snow covered, cold terrain of Kashmir, but later found that this variety of rice grows on low lying areas surrounding Dal Lake, that lies in the middle of Srinagar.
After brunch, I asked the elderly gentleman who ran the lodge how I could make it to Gulmarg- "The path of Roses (in Kashmiri)" where I planned to take a gondola ride and if luck permitted, experience snow for the first time. He explained that if I planned to take public transport (run down private vans) I would have to change vehicles thrice, which didn't look too appealing.

It was Deepavali, which the whole nation was at that moment celebrating with gusto, but Srinagar was shut down at the behest of some local leaders who were protesting the meager aid provided to Kashmir by the Center, post-flooding of the Jhelum that ran through the center of Srinagar. The streets were empty and all you saw was gun toting army-men, armored vehicles and a few locals on bikes and a few cars, and the aforesaid rickety vans crammed with ill dressed people. Even the J&K Bank ATMs that were usually reliable, were out of cash and everything was plunged in deep gloom literally, after the day-night power blackout.

I happened to find a tourist agency near Dal Lake, where I could hire a chauffeured car to Gulmarg for a couple of thousand rupees, which happened to be less since it was off-season.
Soon the driver with a bushy beard and shaved mustache wearing the traditional black winter cloak that looked more like a blanket wrapped around him, was driving me all the way to Gulmarg on scenic roads. He occasionally withdrew his hands from the sleeves letting them loosely hand around his shoulder giving him a ghost like look which unnerved me. He was in a mood talkative mood and seemed to be at ease with outsiders. I thought he was trying to probe my religious tendencies when he asked me whether I had been to the Shankaracharya Mutt temple on the banks of the Jhelum. He said he had luckily parked his car below the temple, and his vehicle was saved from the ravages of the flood since the Mutt was at a higher altitude. He went on to describe how many and how badly vehicles were damaged due to the Jhelum floods, leaving almost nothing untouched in it's wake.
I told him I was not a Hindu.
"Then, are you a Muslim?", he asked, surprised a bit.
"Neither",said I, "I am a Christian."
Taking this in his stride, he then told me that then I must definitely visit the antique Church on the foothills of Gulmarg, which had been built during the British times.
The driver en route, stopped to have a hookah and when he spoke with locals in Kashmiri, it felt more like Arabic or Persian to me than Urdu, but in fact Kashmiri is more of a mixture of Urdu, Pharisee, Arabic and English and is usually written in the Urdu script. English is part of Kashmiri today, the driver told me with a grin, when I inquired inquisitively.
What happened next after that was the usual tourist thing, up the gondola ,the horse ride to Gulmarg Phase I; Phase II being closed due to heavy snow and windy weather, and the trip back to our waiting taxi.
One more person had joined us before the trip to Gulmarg, a young man in his thirties who was a government recognized guide, mandatory for the trip up, I was told. I noted his piercing, shifty eyes, rugged features, and his quiet demeanor, who seemed to be bored with the guide routine. There was a sense of  foreboding about him that seemed to give him a troubled look, so it seemed.
The guide seemed to be familiar with a locals and many of them waved to him in greeting which he acknowledged with a few gruff words. When we reached the taxi park, back from the climb up the snow clad mountain, we found that our driver had not yet returned from his namaz, which he had said he would be performing at the Jama Mazjid nearby, as was his practice on all his trips to Gulmarg. As I was hungry I decided to have vegetable noodles at a small shack with tea, while the guide preferred to have just biscuits.
Leaning towards me on the table where we sat he said. "You know Kashmir is a mistake. When the British partitioned United India, they made Hindustan and Pakistan. But they forgot Kashmir. Kashmir neither part of India, nor of Pakistan, was left out. They forgot Kashmir. And that is where all the trouble lies and where all the mess started."
I nodded, not knowing what to say.
"You see", he said, "I have taken many Western tourists on this route many a thousand times and I have asked them the same very thing, and you know what they say? The West just does business. They don't care or bother if it is India or Pakistan. They sell deadly weapons to both parties and make money. That's how they work."
He went on. "When Raja Hari Singh pleaded India to save Kashmir from the marauding Pakistani troops, Gandhiji sent the Indian army. The army came and they never went back. Why? Why did this happen to Kashmir?", he repeated softly. There was deep feeling in his voice. It was as if he was talking of an unwanted orphan. Not an object of desire for two warring nations.
He leaned towards me conspiratorially. "Do you know there are more army-men in Kashmir than Kashmiris? And how many Kashmiris have been killed since?" I did not venture to reply,

I had seen the many Indian army-men stationed all over Srinagar including Lal Chowk where I had put up. I had actually seen them randomly stopping cars and bike riders, and letting them go after a cursory body-search and identification check. It was as if every Kashimiri was a suspect.
I had also seen a random group of young Kashmiri gathered near a defunct ATM, men smelling of expensive perfume, chanting slogans to the affect of "Louto! Louto!" meaning "Go back!" obviously to the long men in the queue at the ATM, but could be a message for the army as well. At Lal Chowk there was a sudden flurry of activity as a group of young men rushed to an old rickety building for some reasons know only to them, followed by clueless unorderly gun toting army militia. I has seen banners of Arafat and Khomenei all over Srinagar. Spray painted slogans saying "Death to Israel!" just as I had seen "Leave Tibet!" slogans in Dharamshala. This seemed to be another part of the world. Kashmiri youth, I felt, were more politically aware than any Indian state I know except perhaps Kerala.

I thought over and reminded the guide that it was not Gandhiji, but Menon, at the behest of Nehru and Patel who had sent the army. He acknowledged this with some thought.
"Raja Hari Singh was a traitor", he reiterated. "Hari Singh sold Kashmir and his countrymen."
To him, it seemed, Kashmir or Kashmiris had not yet assimilated into India after all those years of protests, strife, army presence and international notoriety at the behest of Pakistan amid the continuing low key war all along the Kashmir border with Pakistan. There was still a long way to go before men like him would be convinced that Kashmir had a part to play in the planned scheme of things. At that point I told him as a matter of fact that Hari Singh wanted an independent Kashmir which was not practical since Kashmir did not have any natural resources such as minerals or any other noteworthy source of  natural wealth, except for its scenic beauty. The guide paused and considered this. I was glad that my bookish knowledge was at least pushing this one sided conversation forward.
I didn't dare another opinion, so the guide continued "I have been to the forbidden land - POK- Pakistan Occupied Kashmir. I have relatives there and I went to visit them", he explained.
"The people in POK are twenty years behind us", he informed me."Uncivilized nomadic tribal shepherds who live in shanty huts."
At that point of time our driver returned from his namaz and the talk turned to currency - whether it was Indian or Pakistani currency that was stronger. As it turned out, they used a wrong yardstick to measure this - the equivalence to the dollar. The driver was of the opinion that the Indian rupee was stronger since you got more dollars for a rupee than a Pakistani rupee. But the guide disagreed.
On the way back, the driver continued with another of his lengthy talks and told me "You have visited Kashmir in the winter. But anyone who visits Kashmir returns three more times - once for each season. You have to come back again in Summer, Spring and Winter to be bewitched by its natural beauty, now that you have visited it in Autumn!"
I doubted this very much, noting how Kashimir had become a cesspool of political and civil violence and unrest.

Mission Kashmir - Part I

At Amritsar, Punjab, we all got a week off from work, after a successful deployment. I decided Kashmir was not too far off to warrant a quick visit. The same evening after work, I packed my bags and flew off to Srinagar. I chose air travel to reduce the journey time and fatigue, as I figured out anyway I would be travelling by land on my way back.
The journey was uneventful, except that foreigners alighting at Srinagar airport had to go through a separate procedure and made to sign a a register and other formalities in spite of having checked in at an Indian airport earlier. No chances being taken I guess, in this disturbed land.
As soon as I alighted from the airport complex I was greeted by a light chill and a gust of fresh air that smelled of pine trees.
I was surprised to find that I was not badgered at the airport by the usual crowd of taxi drivers you usually find at international airports. It was November and off season for the tourism industry and not many people were visiting after the devastating floods caused by the overfilling of the Jhelum river that runs through the middle of Srinagar city.
I quickly located a run down rickety state transport owned van parked discreetly in a corner just outside the airport gates. I was lucky to not having to hire a taxi (who as usual charge exorbitant rates at airports), but the bus fare was still very high, almost double the normal rate. I argued with the conductor but he showed me the stamped bus ticket endorsed by J&K Public Transport. "Get down anywhere...", he said. "Same fare".
I had no clue where to get down to search for decent boarding, so I asked a Sardarji, probably an inter-state businessman, sitting opposite me if he had any clue as to where I could spend the night without spending a fortune. He recommended getting down at Lal Chowk, just before the last stop.
"Plenty of hotels there", he said. "So you might find what you are looking for".
"By the way", he added."I noticed there were not many people on the flight from Amritsar.. right?"
I nodded.
As the early morning sun rose, warming the air a tad bit, I noticed  young Kashmiri women on the street. Their famed beauty of fair skin and rosy cheeks was evident but what surprised we that they being Muslim, they still did not adhere to the hijab or the purdah. Modern Muslims, I guessed.
The other thing that I noticed was that Srinagar seemed to be living in another age, a larger copy of what I had seen at hill stations such as Mussoorie and later at Dharamashala. The buildings were very modest, some built of wood and no notable structures that struck out as modern. Was the rustic charm being preserved for tourists?
The evidence that all was not well in Kashmir was the presence of Indian Army soldiers. They were everywhere, toting machine guns, eyeing everybody and everything suspiciously. But they paid no heed to our bus. Tourists didn't figure in their list of  people to be questioned, especially one just out of the airport to the government run Tourist Center? Among those uniformed militia I could recognize some hefty men from my native Kerala, with bushy mustaches and beer induced ruddy cheeks.
I got down at Lal Chowk, when the bus driver called out the stop aloud.
I got down and made my way to one of the better looking hotels that didn't look too expensive. Lal Chowk wore  a look of utter destruction and desolation. There was hardly anybody on the streets, except for a few businessmen selling cheap jackets to a bunch of young Kashmiri men who were probably preparing for the harsh winter ahead.
There were huge piles of trash and flotsam on the streets, reminders of the earlier floods, still not yet cleared after nearly a month; and repair work was in progress in most of the shops, especially the basements which were completely destroyed along with the stored merchandise by the flood waters from the Jhelum river. The frustration was evident when I met a couple of Kashmiris later on my trip. Srinagar was already a city under siege and the flooding of the Jhelum had only added salt to the festering wounds. . Lal Chowk would be famous a few months later for the arbitrary search and detain operations by army men of youth residing in and around Lal Chowk,
I noticed temporary structures around street corners where lone army men were on the lookout. It seemed the army men outnumbered the locals, which was something echoed later by many of the Kashmiris I met later.
I decided to have a cuppa tea, I bought some cigarettes, found a cheap tea stall in an alley and had tea with sweet Kashmiri bread. I was a bit apprehensive about so many militiamen on the streets, so before lighting the cigarette, I asked the cigarette seller whether it was safe to smoke on the streets. "Of course!", he replied, and I noticed he was doing brisk business as it was Diwali day, all government offices were closed and most other business was at a standstill.
My next trip was to Dal Lake, since it is bang in the middle of Srinagar. I will leave that for another post, to talk not about the Shikara (traditional Kashmiri row boat operated by a single boats man- the Shikarawallah) ride, but what the Shikarawallah had to say on the one and half hour ride.

Of Love, Greed And Revenge - A True Life Story

Preeth and Preethi met each other by fluke of chance at a cafe inside a Technology park in Bangalore where they both worked in different software companies. They were soon blindly in love.
They were as unlike each other as a peahen is to a peacock. Preethi was practical, logical and a go-getter with a calm demeanor. Preeth was boisterous, temperamental, impulsive and prone to wild moods. Preethi fell for Preeth for his wildly care free attitude and typical north Indian good looks, while she herself was short, diminutive and a little short of pretty.
A year after their marriage, their relationship floundered. Preeth got a placement in the Noida offshoot of his parent MNC company, while Preethi continued her job at Bangalore. Preeth was still in love with Preethi, this time with an eye on the lucrative salary that she drew as assistant manager at a mediocre company, in-spite of having just a year's experience in the field. To him she was a source of easy money, in addition to the hefty salary that he himself drew. When Preethi brought her parents to Bangalore to look after her toddler daughter and to keep her company in an increasingly alienated world, Preeth fell all the more spurned. He called her many a times a day trying to  persuade her to join him in Noida and warned her in no uncertain terms to keep away from her parents. To him, they were the devil incarnate. Torn between the vows of marriage and her comparatively happy life at Bangalore, Preethi managed to take a month's emergency leave from her company and flew to Noida to join Preeth, leaving her daughter in the care of her aging parents.
When she arrived at Noida, she was surprised to be met by repeated, sometimes threatening demands from Preeth to mutually subscribe to a one crore flat in Noida payable over a period of twenty years. Being the rational and thoughtful person she was, Preethi refused. Firstly, she didn't want to stay at Noida, and secondly to her the idea was foolish, their married life still being in infancy. After a stormy month together, she returned to Noida with her parents. She rejoined her company and the status of her communicator at office read - "Finally glad to be at my workplace".
Her co-workers noticed she was subdued and frequently late at work, which was not her norm. The reason was she had late night calls from Preeth and they argued heatedly into the late night hours.
Preeth, at Noida, was meanwhile undergoing a metamorphosis. He was on the verge of paranoia. His hatred for Preeth and her parents, who to him were mere parasites, reached unbearable levels. The only thought on his mind now, day and night, was Preethi and her parents and an unexplained urge for revenge.
One night, a day prior to the festival of lights, he packed his bag and a kirpan (a Sikh ceremonial dagger) that he found in his father's collection of memorabilia. He was not a Sikh, but at that moment, that was the only weapon he could get hands on at short notice, that could destruct . He felt the edge of the kirpan, and satisfactorily noted that it was still sharp since the last time his father had got it polished.
Preethi meanwhile was just returning from office with a heart shaped mud oil lamp painted a deep red, in her purse, that her friends had gifted her that day, along with ceremonial Diwali sweets. Early morning that day she had adorned her hands with the deep reddish brown "mehndi", the temporary tattoo that Indian women decorate their hands prior to an auspicious event. She was not to realize that the red fetish she had was going to have ominous overtones that night.
That same night Preeth was on the 3 am flight to Bangalore, a place which now he loathed, which to him was now Preethi's new home. He arrived at Preethi's rented flat at dawn. He was greeted by Preethi's parents, but they felt something was amiss when they looked at Preeth's blood red, sleepless eyes. Preeth barged in without a word, found Preethi at the kitchen and a loud altercation followed. Preethi's parents sensed something was amiss and carried the toddler kid to the open garden four flats below.
Preethi was stabbed five times in her stomach with the kirpan. Preeth had lost all sense and rationality. He just wanted to finish his torment and tormentors once and for all. Preethi screamed and lay bleeding. Preeth, felt a strange mixture of nausea and relief sweep him and he calmly waited for the police to arrive, to turn himself in.
****
"Education does not make an educated man...", the old man commented, to no one in particular. He was a Bangalore old-timer and had just read the Preethi Arora murder story in the next day's morning newspaper. "Well, these things happen all the time," commented his wife. "Especially with these software people".
"Yes that's true", said the old man and soon forgot the sordid news story he had just read and turned to page 3 to glance at the day's TV schedule for the Friday night Bollywood blockbuster.

Nehru's Tryst With Destiny

I recently completed reading "Freedom At Midnight" by Dominique La Pierre and Larry Collins. I must say I discovered a lot of things absolutely not mentioned in the history books right from third standard to the tenth. Our history books seem to have been written by people with selective amnesia which goes to show how much our education system has degraded. The book is not totally without flaws since it is written by a Frenchman and an Australian two decades back. They have been more than a bit patronizing in the way they have written the book, but can be forgiven for that, as Europeans and Australians can write only the way they think - as Europeans and Australians. The book tells a lot about what happened during partition and the inner story which finds just a mention in our history books as a line or two. The saddening part is that after nearly 65 years, India is still fighting the maladies that has plagued it for centuries - communal riots, poverty, illiteracy and a newer malady - corruption. Why do Indians deserve this? After being guided through the earlier years by visionaries such as Gandhi, Nehru, Menon and Sardar Patel does it still have to be known to the world as a nation of illiterates, of religious bigots and where literary authors have to sell their books by depicting India's poverty in all its glory? I do agree that Nehru's and Gandhi's ideas might not hold much water in a modern world and Indians have indeed taken mostly wise decisions throughout the years, post independence, but still the old demons remain. India is the world's largest democracy, but are our elections just a token public relations exercise as one wiki leaks cable pointed out? Do Indians really benefit from this independence and has it done them any real good? Why are politicians still elected based on caste, class and religion and not on their individual merit? Is independence and democracy just buzz words that has no meaning to the ordinary man out on the farms, out in rural India? Gandhi had preached that every Indian politician and bureaucrat should first learn the ropes of his  trade in the villages of rural India. This might not sound very realistic in a modern world but it is true that most of our doctors and engineers live in the cities and the farmers in rural India have improved their lifestyle just a tad bit, migrating to cities where they believe their future lies. Rahul Gandhi and few of our politicians have lived with villagers in villages for a day or two in what might be a lesson out of Gandhi's book, but was this nothing more than a PR exercise? Has it really benefited the villagers or Rahul Gandhi? India did have it's white revolution(milk), green revolution(food self sufficiency) and technology revolution in the recent years and it's growth rate is enviable. But why can't we still end our past maladies after 65 years - those of communal riots, rural poverty and corruption? And why are basic infrastructure such as quality education, basic sanitation, quality medical care, human rights and rural jobs still a precious luxury for the vast majority of Indians? Gandhi talked about these seventy years back but sad to say our politicians are involved in their own private games and hobbies and know as much of Indian history as an Italian does. Our politicians are the modern day maharajahs - who Nehru and Patel hated so much in their heydays.

The weirdest elections in Indian History

I am apolitical. In fact I think politics only when I read the newspapers or read news on the internet. But some of the events happening around us have involved almost everyone - including the aam aadmi (common man).
Let me give an anecdote that happened on a busy road in the middle of Bangalore a few days back.
I was returning back from the center of Bangalore city after some personal work on my Activa scooter when I was stopped by some traffic policemen who had set up an ambush along a curve of the road.
My first thought was that I was on a one way road. No. Had I inadvertently jumped a traffic signal? No, that was not the case too.
The policemen seemed to be checking expired vehicle insurances. They had already stopped a dozen motorists and were going through their papers. A brash young traffic policeman pointed out to me that my papers were all right - but my insurance would expire the next day. I nodded sheepishly, mumbling something about getting it done tomorrow.
Then he got interested in my registration plates. My vehicle was a Kerala registered vehicle bearing the tell-tale KL letters. "Aah! Out of state vehicle I see", he said delightedly in broken English for my benefit. "I need to see your Road Tax papers from Karnataka Road Transport Office or the No Objection Certificate from the Karanataka RTO!"
I said I did not since I was planning to be in Karnataka for just a few months, which was a perfectly valid reason. The RTO rules do not mandate an NOC or payment of road tax if the duration of stay is short. How else would one motor to Chennai to Goa on a holiday trip in that case?
When I was in Chennai for a short period of 6 months, I had paid the lifetime road tax for the same Activa to avoid being hounded by Tamilnadu traffic

policemen; but Bangalore is different; there are vehicle rolling on the roads from all over India - Delhi, UP, AP, HP, Pondicherry, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and the like. And the traffic policemen never bother. And Techies are literate - they usually know their rights.
What surprised me was that the brash traffic policeman suggested that I pay a bribe.
I protested saying that I had already paid Tamilnadu road tax, and I couldn't be expected to pay road tax in every state where I go for short stints.
He was unrelenting. "The only option we have is to confiscate your vehicle. And you will have to appear in court", he said with a smug smile.
"Or", he added, pointing to the elderly traffic inspector casually leaning against his bike."You can pay our respected Sir Rs. 300. Just a small nominal fee for you. Kindly request him".
I thought about the strange existing political situation in the country now. A maverick group called the Aam Aadmi Party was counting on its battle against corruption to win the general elections in just a few weeks and all major political parties were engaged in a debate against corruption. How the hell did these traffic policemen aspire to get away with a corrupt act in such times? The AAP was then actively campaigning against all sorts of corruption bottom up and such an action weeks later would have caused the traffic inspector's summary dismissal and probably a jail term too if the AAP came into power! However Karnataka State was then ruled by the Congress, which was expecting major losses in this general elections.
Was this traffic inspector's last attempt at a bribe before he retired or was he just thumbing his nose at the authorities in power or who planned to come in power? Was this his message to say that AAP or not, I am still the man in charge around here.
For me this was a crisis. I either pay the bribe or have my vehicle towed away. And court appearances was unthinkable.
So I handed over 300 rupees to the elderly traffic inspector, who looked at me carefully and handed 100 rupees back. I had bribed someone for the second time in my life!
Is this the beginning of a new era for corruption? Just as there are loopholes to escape the law so there are loopholes to get trapped. No person would prefer to get his vehicle impounded under some arcane law, than paying a couple of hundred rupees to get away scot-free, for example.
Is the Indian way of corruption only going to meta morph into the sophisticated corruption that exists in Gulf countries called "vaasta"? Or the criminal sophistication of the organized Mafia in countries such as Italy?

On Penpals

Today we have Facebook and a host of social networking sites where we have people whom we know intimately, those who we know well and even those whom we don't know that well. We all come on a common forum and associate digitally. But did you know that long before this happened there were old timers(like me) who had friends called penpals - who had never met each other, who had never talked to each other over the phone, but communicated all the time through ordinary post? Yes, and they trusted each other with full conviction and there was no need for subterfuge like the ones we see on Facebook or Twitter, such as fake profiles, gender and age faking. There was no subterfuge of the kind we saw sometime back on Yahoo chat rooms and Messenger profiles, either. The pen did the talking - hence the name - penpal.
When I was just beginning to read Enid Blyton novels for children of the age group 8-10, I had this deep seated wish to have a penpal, if possible several penpals.
Those days, some magazines had a special page dedicated to penpals - mostly international, but that didn't go very well with me. You might face the same subterfuge we now see on social networking sites.
So I asked my Non Resident uncles and aunts, who were scattered all over the world - Sierra Leone, Nigeria, Oman, Kuwait, et al- all of them science or English teachers, and even two uncles who worked on merchant navy ships, travelling all across the globe- to find a suitable penpal for me. Yes, this was sometime in the early eighties.
One aunt in Nigeria responded that her students even in the teens could not put together an English word. I got the same response from my other relatives working in the other African countries.
My aunt said, "It would be very difficult to find a penpal for you here. We don't want to connect you to an idiot." She did send a short note describing the politics, geography, trade and tribal groups of Nigeria.
I had a cousin of nearly my same age who stayed with his parents in Kuwait at that time, so I asked him if he could be my penpal. We could start by exchanging postal stamps, I said. I had a sizable stamp and coin collection those days, mostly inherited from another uncle also in Kuwait.
My cousin in Kuwait replied to my letter with the customary - how are you? how are your dad and mum?  - the "Dr Livingstone I presume" stuff. That was the first and last mail from him. Either he was not very good at English, or didn't have the patience or time to write letters or found postal communication boring. But he did include a couple of dozen Kuwaiti stamps with that air mail.
And let me add one thing - air mail from the Gulf countries took about one month to reach, unlike the spontaneous email!
My desire for a penpal went unrealized for some years.
I had a series of postal communication with one of my uncles in Oman who worked as an English teacher in a government school there, following a suggestion by my father. My uncle replied to each of my letter diligently.
He became my de facto penpal after that! I must mention that I had at that time never met this uncle in person and neither the cousin in Kuwait I mentioned earlier, for the times they visited Kerala never coincided with our annual migratory visits to Kerala.
Communicating with children is not as easy as some people make it to be. It is not coming down to the child's level, but just the opposite! Successful communication with a child is rather complex, and there is a need to see through the child's eyes. I think that is why we don't see a lot many successful children's books in the market. An adult forgets how it feels to be a child during the growing up period.
But this uncle was special. Whenever he wrote to my dad and mum he would include a short note for me and sometimes he wrote to me with a short note for my parents. I eagerly awaited his letters.
Oman at that time was facing an oil boom and was one of the richest countries in the world. Following modernization by the then Sultan Qaboos, it was a liberal place to be. There were migrant workers from all over Africa, the Middle East - Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Sri Lanka to name a few.
And these migrant workers wrote home, and didn't use the dollar phone cards as they do now.
So when I requested my uncle for stamps he made a public request to the students in his class to gather any stamps they had at home and come to class with them; complete with instructions(which I had given him) on how to tear off the stamps from the cover without damaging them. I got a flood of stamps in each letter from my uncle after that. That made waiting for those letters from Oman all the more exciting notwithstanding the fact that a letter took one or one and a half month to reach either side, though air mail.
The remoteness of the village in Maharashtra where we stayed at that time must have added to the delay.
The process of communicating to and fro was painful but I would never swap that for the modern day social networking that caters to instant gratification and causes the addiction of the likes Facebook users report.

When the tweets never stopped.

This post is a trip down memory lane. And it might not be very accurate since it reminisces my childhood days and today I am much much older and might miss many of the beautiful things I might have noticed as a child.
The first thing that comes to my mind on my visits to my native Kerala these days is the change in the flora and fauna since my childhood days.
Not drastically but still quite subtle changes.
The weeds that lined the country roads then were some type of fern like plants that folded their leaves on touching them. We used to call them the "touch-me-not"s. I have never come across these plants lately.
The farmlands used to teem with insects and it was not rare to find a couple of scorpions hanging by their venomous tails, the sting being tied with a string to a banana shoot by some naughty schoolchild who didn't want to decimate the poor scorpion but neither let it escape his torment.
There were these huge centipedes that crawled anywhere and everywhere and which would curl into a spiral on physical contact, making them look like bulbous one rupee coins - the "atta". The roads teemed with them during the rainy season and vehicles and pedestrians using the road squashed them pretty hard. The scorpions are no longer to be seen (for the good?!), and neither these centipedes and millipedes.
If you dug the earth it would be impossible to go a few inches deeper into the earth before scooping up these giant earthworms. Earthworms, they say are good to keep the soil fertile - for vermi-compost. Now they use fertilizers in the tonnes. During the rainy season the rivulets sprang from springs that were almost perennial. No longer! Now the water table has sunk deep and to get water the year round you would need a very deep well. The streams are a once in a week affair that dry off soon after the rains.
I remember as a child we used to play a little game. When we visited our uncles and aunts in their houses in the vicinity we first checked the water wells. And since it was in the monsoons that we visited Kerala, the water table being quite high we could touch the water surface in the wells with our small hands. No longer. The water no longer comes to arm level now and the traditional mode of using bucket and rope is now replaced by motor pumps to reach the receding water table.
And the ants. I remember at least three varieties of ants - the big black ants, the small red ones - which you could never avoid getting bitten by if you used the small trails that crisscrossed the farms, and the smaller harmless ones that could be found all over the kitchen and store rooms.
And how cam I miss the sparrows? The chirps of the sparrows is now just a figment of memory - they are nowhere to be seen.
I remember one night, one of us kids had a cold and one electric light in the house was kept on in case of an emergency. I got up that night to a sight I have never seen before. The light in the room had attracted thousands of migratory locusts so thick that you would think there was snowfall. In suicide missions they rammed themselves against the light as their wings fell off and they lay twitching on the floor. Seems my grandfather was accustomed to this sight and he let loose the Alsatian dog we had and the two cats, and all the three pets had a sumptuous feast of butter soft locust meat.
I wonder whether we are actually changing the world around us in a time bracket of just quarter of a century? Traditionally cocoa, pepper, tapioca (kappa) and coffee were grown along with banana plantains in the midst of rubber trees. But now the cash crops are solely rubber, pineapple and vanilla. The rubber trees tend to draw a lot of ground water, the pineapple and vanilla in addition to the coconut trees, are protected by massive sprays of insecticides.
All these chemicals that we inject into the soil, are they changing the face of the earth? A point to ponder.

Being Thankful For Life's Smaller Mercies...

The average man leads a quiet life of desperation, said Thoreau.
This is but natural, to submit to the lowest common denominator. But need it be? There are three main spheres that concern the average man today.
The first is himself. Every organ in his body is performing its function to make him live a full fledged active life. Every piece of his flesh is coordinating with another to breathe life into him. His whole body functions like a well oiled machine. Should he not be grateful for this? That each passing day, his body has endured the forces of nature, performs its duty well and makes him move on, even as the clock ticks another second, his heart beating muffled drumbeats to the grave - to quote Longfellow?
Should he not be grateful for this? That not one part of the complex structure that he is, has not had a major malfunction, so far?
The other sphere is his interaction with fellow human beings. The average man has a family or at least is known to a certain ring of people around him. That is his social environment. He has good friends, enemies and others who don't care but know that he exists. Should he not be proud of his existence and his contribution to such a complex social structure. Friends may come, friends may go, relatives may turn against him, or he may find neutral companions at his office; considering the complex social politics that make all this happen. All this is his social environment around him, his own little world. Should he not be proud, that come what may this private social world is intact? Minus a friend or foe now, add a fried or foe next, or just plain onlookers who know his name and or where he lives?
The third sphere which is more of a lifeless nature are the machines around him that have so inconspicuously crept into his life that he now takes them for granted. Should not a man be grateful that each passing moment not one electronic, mechanical, electro-mechanical, digital, electrical device - et al, has never ever failed him in a way so as to cripple him, stop him in his tracks where he is helpless or grind his life to a stop. These man made devices that were introduced into human life ever since the stone man started creating tools, have now evolved into machines and devices, has never failed you in a manner so as to drastically reduce your quality of life. Should you not be thankful for this?
Every man should learn not be desperate about the larger forces of life beyond his control, but be thankful for the smaller mercies of life, if he has to appreciate the purpose of his existence.

Hunters And Gatherers

"Some men are born hunters, and some gatherers. This has been inherited from our primitive ancestors who gathered fruits and nuts for survival, or hunted animals to survive."
Albert Figurado was a born tinkerer and a collector of riff-raff. He was a vehicle mechanic and he saw value in everything he stumbled across - a nut-bolt on the road, washers of varying sizes, discarded screw drivers, ink pens without caps or caps without the pen, refill points, electric wires of varying lengths, a broken kaleidoscope, an ancient mariner's compass of no real utility, discarded magnetic compasses, disintegrating rubber tubes, broken plugs, unusable hardware, an old bust Polaroid camera, an ancient radio, a ballot box he had once bought at an auction.
Each of these he collected and stored them in neat little boxes in his garage. He would find use for each of these objects, which to any other person would have been worthless, and constructed odd looking pens ,with parts from three or four discarded pens; created objects of utility from discarded objects which other wise would have found its way to the town dump or lay rusting on the road. If anything in his house needed repair, he never went out shopping to buy the needed stuff, he made use of his collection to fabricate contraptions that served his purpose. He took pride in this activity and anything and everything he came across was recycled to create hybrid odd but usable instruments.
As he grew old, and his five children were scattered across the world in five different continents, his passion evolved to a finer variation. He no longer collected discarded parts, in fact he disposed all of them with the garbage one fine day. He was now interested in a new passion. He asked his sons abroad to send him stuff that he could use to make his life easier.
But the point was he never in fact used any of these. So he became the owner of a dozen Maglite torches of varying models - some that ran on batteries, others on rechargeable batteries, some with LEDs, others with bright fluorescent bulbs. He asked for cameras, and each of his sons sent across cameras of different variations, for what they thought was their duty as obedient sons. Albert was the owner of a microwave, an induction stove, a flat TV.
But one fine day when there was a massive power surge and each of them went kaput, he still kept them. They were beyond repair but he collected them, the born collector he was. His sons as usual came to his rescue, and bought a replacement for each of these. His collection of ceramic pottery was carefully preserved, but never used, hopefully bearing the prospect of some use in the future. He asked his sons for mobiles, and he got five of them, one each from his five sons. But he never used these and they lay charging all day long on the electric sockets.
He became the owner of laptops; but alas he was technology illiterate, so he never used them. He owned three of them at once and each of them disintegrated for want of use. That folks is the story of Albert Figurado, the born collector. His sons waited and waited to see when he would become hunters, like them....

Education instills Corruption and the Greed of Money at an Early Age

I have had brushes with corruption - both ideological and practical in my years of study. I am going to cut a long story short in this post.
The school where I completed my higher secondary studies was in a remote part of Maharashtra which was practically lawless. I was in the tenth standard and we shared our examination center with a local vernacular language school.
The day of the exam I was aghast seeing exam bound school girls stuffing study-help books into their panties - making them seem to be in advanced stages of pregnancy - one place which certainly no flying squad would dare to explore. The boys were not shy either. With their favorite teachers conducting the exam, they became extremely bold and indulged in mass copying. The other teachers had to turn a blind eye since these teachers had been bribed heavily on the pretext of paying tuition-after-school fees. The tuition never took place, but help during the exams was guaranteed.
At the other exam center in town, which was the vernacular school itself, it was mayhem. But the irony of the whole thing was that in spite of having study guides next to them while giving the exam, the over-all passing score was as low as 18 % while 35% was the pass marks for each subject.
However the very next year that same school had a district topper - perhaps this was one guy who could read the study guides and locate the correct answers very fast. And of course, if you didn't know where to find the answers the friendly supervisor was always ready to help with the page number in the textbook, or hand over a copy of the answer sheet of a good student who had finished earlier. Usually the help was in the form of the hint of the final correct answer. So the question was there, your friendly supervisor gave you the answer and you had to write the gobbledygook in between the question and the answer. The exam paper valuators were so hassled and understaffed that they rarely looked at the whole solution; if the correct answer was there at the last line, that was just fine.
Now to the head hunters of exam paper evaluators. Once on my way to my degree college which was a good eight hours journey from my residence at that time, I came into contact with a guy who was travelling to the same destination as me. When I told him where I was from in Maharashtra, he said, that he knew the place well. In fact he had traveled there to meet a certain "Peter Benedict", to whom the exam papers for a high school from a neighboring district had been allotted.
Benedict Peter was our family friend and a teacher at the same school where I studied and was know for his steadfast credibility. I asked this gentleman whether he got anything out of Mr Peter; that is the tampering the answer papers, but he nodded with a 'No', but added that he got those answer sheets allotted to a more friendly teacher who was more agreeable to him. Probably this guy on the bus had connections at high places. How this system worked was, the student left blank spaces in the answer sheet, which was then submitted to the appropriate evaluator; the evaluator himself filled in the blanks with the correct answers. So lawfully there was no trace of any wrongdoing once the marks were allotted!
My next brush came when I was staying in a hostel while doing my higher secondary. We had a budding doctor who was the son of a vice chancellor in Madhya Pradesh, and studied in a local medical college - after giving capitation fees, of course. I never saw him studying even though medical studies are notorious for their bookish culture. This guy used to be away whole nights at sleazy places and partying with shady friends.. The night before the medical studies I found him not sitting with his books, as the rest of his brethren would be doing at that moment. He confided in me that he had accurate information that the medicine question papers had leaked and he would be away all night trying to find places where they could be located.
In the twelfth standard the education system just broke down in most schools. Physics, Chemistry, Biology and Math teachers were in high demand in the college where I studied because some of these teachers were actually on the board who set the papers. So the second year of high school, there were no classes, just students queuing up for tutions at these teacher's residences, joining the rat race at an early stage in the true sense. I for once. balked at tuition; it just didn't fit my study style. I wanted to understand what I learnt and not be spoon fed by an automaton PhD in Math(I feel most PhDs are misfits and not fit for any kind of teaching job; but of course there are huge exceptions!).
So we had no classes at college, attendance was nil, and I was burning the midnight oil at the hostel, equipped with a table lamp and books sitting late into the night on the hostel terrace. We had a certain English teacher I will call AZM whose classes ran full houses in the preparatory previous year. That was because of his huge grasp of the English language, love for literature and English and a witty disposition.
But the very next year his classes were empty, save for a few girls. His class was almost always the first class on the timetable and I made it a point not to miss the English classes, while the others were busy attending tuition classes and giving mock tests in IIT style. The word spread that AZM was actually taking classes, and some of the students realized that they were not going to learn any English in tuitions from Science teachers who stumbled with basics of the language. So the numbers swelled till they ran up to two dozen - mostly them planning to go for higher studies in the US of A.
But only till the mid of that year. Exams were fast approaching and the science tuition masters, who were raking as much as a thousand rupees per course- a huge sum in the late 1980s - upped their ante and went into war mode with their mock exams and hints for the oncoming exam. Of course they had to do it; their reputation would depend on the number of students appearing in the merit list that year, which of course would pay rich dividends the next year too - to continue the vicious cycle. I for once, never saw the inside of these tuition classes.
The day of my Chemistry practical exams I was to experience the cost of not adhering to the tuition culture. The chemistry teacher who had among his tuition candidates my close competitor student in Chemistry who was just a fraction of marks behind me in ranking, pointed out to the visiting external supervisor that I was the brightest student on campus and that he must test my knowledge. The usual ploy is to wine and dine the visiting supervisors so that they didn't create any problems during the practical exams for the favored candidates, but gave full marks blindly - depending on the quality of the wine and dine of course. Pointing me out as exceptional meant that I was about to face some "gotcha" questions that the others would not, since the supervisor would then definitely take up the challenge and try to match his wits with mine. Fortunately the question - answer results were positive but I can never forgive this particular scheming S*o*B.
The event of the actual higher secondary exam capped it all. A week before the exam, I was approached by a friend who was also training with one of the high profile tutors. He wanted to make a deal with me. There was a certain Bihari guy who he knew who had access to the leaked papers for the oncoming exams. My friend told me that if I could afford to shell out a couple of five hundred rupees per paper, I too could have access to the leaks. I didn't believe him; but a few minutes before the exam the next day, he handed over a sheaf of papers. "These are the leaked papers, he told me, mark my words, this is just a sample of what I can provide you."
I didn't give a second thought to the papers, for two reasons. I didn't believe they were genuine, and secondly I was afraid I would get nervous hunting the answers to the papers and forget what I had already prepared. When I returned from the exam hall I compared the leaks with the original question paper. They were almost identical, save for a few questions. However I didn't proceed with any of this monkey business - and that was good, because the third day all the question papers were replaced by new ones, from what I heard from my friend. The board keeps about six sets of question papers and in case of a leak, one of these sets of question papers replaces the original.
But I had the last laugh. When the results came out, I got higher marks in all subjects than this friend, who had attended Physics, Maths, Chemistry and Biology tuition in addition to the steroid of leaked question papers. I was just getting to realize how complicated and warped the education system was becoming. During my graduation I had another brush with corruption in education. The system was thus: you gave the exams, but you were usually made to fail by a few marks and then a week after the results were announced, you usually filed for re-evaluation.
The concept of re-evaluation was just incredulous to me. How on earth could another evaluator re-judge the evaluated answers by the first examiner? The trick was re-evaluators were paid handsomely for the re-evaluation process, since the board found it hard to get examiners  for the re-evaluation process. The the re-examiners were also contacted by the examinees and bribed to get the extra 7 - 10 marks required to get through.
So after every exam you found a huge number of borderline cases all crying out for re-evaluation. That was the whole intention of failing the students; border line at the first attempt; and giving them a second chance through re-evaluation to pump in the few extra marks required to get through. And the teachers made some quick bucks too.
I guess the situation is worse in states like Bihar and Uttar Pradesh which are practically lawless. Well I have rambled enough, but gives some food for thought.
Engineers and Doctors with worthless degrees and feeble brains? - would you allow nation-building by such lame ducks. Reforms are necessary - but the Government almost always seem to move in the wrong direction, and hiccups later. Thank god for small mercies!
Before the the ilk of Anna Hazare and Kiran Bedi confront the government machinery like David did before Goliath, they must sit and ponder how the very concept originates at the grass roots.

Documentaries and Phantoms

This retelling is set in a remote desertland of Western Maharashtra were farmers grew cash rich due to one major factor- the diversion of water from the river Godavari to irrigation canals that turned barren land into fertile soil fit enough to grow sugarcane which grows in dry and hot climates but requires water throughout the year.
My father was a teacher in one of the public schools that sprang up following the setting up of huge sugar factories whose management wanted affordable public school education for the rich farmers in the region. Me and my younger brother were students in this all-boys public school.
There was a unique ritual in this public school. As a matter of convention, films were shown every Saturday so that all the boarding students had their dose of entertainment. My father was familiar with the operation of the film projector. So he was handed the task of running the projector as well as procuring films for the Saturday open air shows. My father, being a post graduate in Botany preferred to get educational films mostly on nature of a more didactic nature. He procured these documentary films by corresponding with the Canadian, Australian, German and Russian embassies who had a rich store of documentary films shot on high quality film.
The kids at the school however were not much in favour of these films which they called "daku - military" - a pun on docu - mentary.(daku for dacoit in hindi, and their sworn enemies the military police!)
We brothers however eagerly awaited films on our favorite comic heroes - the Phantom, Mandrake and the like. Walt Disney movies then were yet to gain widespread acceptance in India. One fine day we came to know from the grapevine that a film called - The Phantom of the Opera - was to be screened that Saturday. Expecting it to be a movie on the Phantom - the ghost who never dies... we excitedly waited for the start of the show. Unfortunately we were disappointed to the core as it was no Phantom movie, but rather a soap opera! We went home disappointed, but later were satisfied by the screening of a Tarzan movie and a movie called "Saboo and the Jungle".
Does anybody remember the names of any of the movies mentioned in this post? For I have heard a lot of positive feedback as an adult on Phantom of the Opera, but that Saturday it was just one disappointment for us.

The Mallu Aunty and the Hyderabad Dudes

I heard this remarkable conversation on a train. The train I boarded for my hometown was a long distance one. I was alone with two guys who were travelling all the way from the source that was Hyderabad and one other guy who had boarded the train one stop before me. At the next stop a feisty lady got in with a teenage girl.
"Only two stops..", she told the other passengers to indicate that she was on a short journey. As soon as she settled down she wanted to know was where they were from and what was their destination. The long journey travellers explained that they were from Andhra Pradesh and that they were on their way to the holy temple town of Sabarimalai. It was their seventh trip they explained. Then this lady went on to ask whether thye were studying. No, they replied, we are in HR management.
The talk on went to the different inter-state cultures. One of the young men asked her a rhetorical question whether Vidya Balan was from Kerala. Yes, she replied, but women in Kerala did not go to see those types of movies! But Dirty Picture is a good movie reiterated one of the young men, and Vidya Balan is a superb actress. Kannada movies are much better than Telugu movies stated the lady with an air of finality.
Why, asked the young men. Your Telugu movies have a lot of violence she said. To change the topic one of the young men noted that girls in Kerala were very 'decent'. Not like Hyderabad girls, he added.
I really couldn't imangine his idea of 'decent'.
We are more hygienic than people from other states, declared the middle aged woman. Also we do not sit on the floor like you people, we always use a chair or stool.
One of the young men smirked, "Madam, so you think we are not hygienic. I don't think so. It's all in the mind. It's the mindset, the way of thinking". By this time I was so embarassed that I wished the conversation would end quietly rather than in verbal tirades.
The talk went on to similarities between the South Indian languages, Malyalam Tamil Telugu and Kannada. Say "zha", said the lady. It is a real tongue twister she added. The young men tried pronouncing this malayalam syllable but were unsuccessful, much to the delight of the lady. About water, the lady said, her family was forced to drink chlorinated water in the city. I don't like the taste she said, making a face. The well water we get in our hometown is as good as mineral water. I don't like the taste of chlorine!
One guy took out a bottle of what looked like medicine, pointed at it and informed the lady - ayurvedic medicine. Let me have a look said the lady. No, it's not medicine was her verdict. This is a food supplement. The young guy took back the bottle, read the label and said "Aaah! So this is a food supplement after all!" That was where she picked up the thread, and said,"I am a deputy manager with Ranbaxy; our HO is in Delhi you know".
All the time she was saying something to the Malayalee boy(the other guy in the train who got in one stop before me), in Malayalam. Noting that she was very cozy with the young chap, one of the Hyderabad boys commented, "Your son madam?" No, she replied unflustered. I was just talking to him in our native tongue. But he's not my son.
A beggar appeared from nowhere asking for alms. The Sabarimalai pilgrims did their holy duty by handing over a few coins. The lady however admonished her daughter in Malayalam,"Never give alms to beggars. Should not encourage begging."

The Story of the Aimless Policeman

This is one anectode which did not make it to the last post, but should have. I was not a witness to this, but was recounted to me by someone who did.
I have seen policemen in uniform smoking in public and in public places, when they are actually supposed to nab people who do this, and fine them. But this story is about a more conscientious one of his lot.
I was returning home from office and hastily flagged an autorickshaw for the trip.
This auto driver was in a good mood and out of the blue came up with an experience he had recently.
Apparently one day he had been flagged down by a policeman.
"Where to?" asked the auto driver, apprehensive that he may have been on the wrong side of the law.
"Nowhere in particular", replied the policeman. "I just want to have a smoke. Just drive around till I finish it."
Saying this the policeman took out a cigarette, lit it and added, "Don't worry about the fare. I will pay you for this trip."
The auto driver recounted this to me and looking back at me, said with a knowing smile, "You know policemen aren't supposed to smoke in public. So I took this guy around in circles in my auto, till he had smoked his cigarette and dropped him at the very place where he boarded it."
"And he did pay me the fare," he added with a twinke in his eyes.
Talk about policemen on a wild goose chase!

Oh, the Pleasures of Sin!

Two rather funny incidents concerning government officials come to my mind and looking back at them I can't help smiling.
The first happened when I boarded the night train to my hometown when I usually board a reserved compartment forsaking the unreserved one which is smelly and unhygienic. Malayalees are a conscientious lot and they adhere to rules no matter how slight the risk of being in the wrong. So following the rule, be a Roman In Rome I usually ask the TTE for a reservation to Kottayam from Kochi trading my unreserved ticket for a reservation, though the distance is almost negligible and does not really warrant a reservation and usually the TTEs turn a blind eye to those who board the reserved compartment on this short trip. Most often it happens that the TTE asks me to first get into the train, but I never see him again!
This night the TTE was an old fatherly gentleman who had alcohol on his breath. I approached him and asked for a reservation.
Come with me he said, and I followed him like a meek lamb.
Pointing to the Air Conditioned coach he asked me to board it. I protested saying I wanted just an ordinary reservation, not an A/C.
He patiently explained to me like a father admonishing an errant child that there was not much difference in the fare of an air-conditioned coach and a regular one.
I decided to humour him and boarded the train.
A few minutes later I saw the old gentleman again. I paid him the difference in fare, and to my surprise he asked me- Do you want a receipt?
Nonplussed, I said as you please, then hesitantly, 'yes'. Don't worry he said, pocketed the money, and trundled off without handing me the upgraded ticket, maybe to find a seat to sleep off his intoxication.
I could almost sense Anna Hazare turning over in his sleep.
The other incident happened when I went to a government office in search of a gazetted officer to attest my identification proof. On entering I was told that all the officers were in a meeting, and I would have to wait.
As I waited near the security guy's desk a cup of what looked like black coffee was sourced from the meeting hall. The security smiled contentedly, as if this happened regularly during the meetings, took a sip of the evil looking decoction and mumbled, Really good strong stuff! And he smiled at me as if he was sharing a dirty joke with me.
I had a faint feeling that all the officers at the meeting were having sips of black coffee laced with alcohol. In an official business meeting! In the presence of female employees!
That turned out to be true. When I met the officer for the attestation, I caught a whiff of alcohol on his breath. The coffee had indeed been laced with liquor! The conclusive hint was that the government beverage outlet was just opposite this government office, and maybe the alcohol was a business complement.

The Intrepid Malayalee goes travelling

You see a person in a train, whom you can't place. You doubt whether he is a Malayalee because he does not have the usual walrus moustache, the oily hair or the malayalee accent.
Well when you notice that he has got into the train at 3 am in the night and has set his mobile alarm for 6 am in the morning, and having slept for just 3 hours still goes to the basin to wash his teeth for an infinite period of time, a homespun towel draped across his shoulders, you can be sure then that he belongs to the malayalee tribe. As Douglas Adam quotes in the HitchHiker's guide to the galaxy
<quote>
A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value - you can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapours; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a mini raft down the slow heavy river Moth; wet it for use in hand-to- hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or to avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (a mindboggingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can't see it, it can't see you - daft as a bush, but very ravenous); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.
</quote>
It may not be for these reasons that the malayalee carries his threadbare towel (homespun, because it is easy to clean it by just wringing it), but all the same it is a malayalee trademark - a symbol of hygiene.
In fact most labourers in Kerala can be found with a red towel wrapped across their head as they go about their menial tasks and when he comes home the first thing he will do is wring the sweat and water out of the "toowal" and have a long renovating bath with the costliest herbal soap available in the market.
Mark these actions. You can bet he was brought up in the best of malayalee tradition.
To a malayalee sleep is sacrosant. He will never disturb his body clock, come what may, I think even if there were to be a mild earthquake.
Another malayalee trait is the habit of constantly worrying. If he reaches a bus stop and has just missed a bus by five minutes, he will spent ages fretting about it. And he can be even verbal about it. "If I was just five minutes early..." to all who care to listen!
This is in sharp contrast to the laid back attitude of rural north india. Time does not flow, it stops. If a bus is missed, of course there will be another bus coming, even though it might be after a good six hours!
I am posting a flowchart that shows what we must worry about, and when nothing can be gained by crying over split milk. But that goes against the malayalee mindset!

Good Old Y.M.C.A. Days

The YMCA, Nagpur, in the late 1980's was a cool place to live in. Bang in the heart of Nagpur city, it encompassed a space large enough to cover two football fields. It was here that I spent two years while I completed my post-matriculation.
The original British built structure that faced the main road was rented off to small businesses and it shielded us, living in a newer structure, from the city traffic and noise, to do our own thing. Nagpur was in those days considered the third greenest city in India, and you had to visit the YMCA to indeed experience the fact that there could actually be a vast stretch of shady wooded land in the middle of this hot sweltering city; a part of the city's colonial legacy. We woke up each morning not to the honks of traffic on the road but to the trills of songbirds.
The inmates were mostly Bengali, Keralites, Manipuri and Africans, and a few engineering students from North India and Andhra Pradesh.
We inmates knew each other on a first name basis and shared jokes, vibes, fights and banter; and the food of course.
The YMCA warden in those days was a shady guy with a distinctly Marwadi name, though a Christian. And he went about his ways in a business like fashion that lived up to his name.
In those days, when a two-wheeler was a luxury, this chap had a Maruti van, a Kinetic Honda, a Bajaj socoter in addition to his trusty Ambassador car. His son, and I studied at the same college, and I could often spot this spoilt brat come to College in his Maruti van, bunk all his classes, and party with his friends. But then he was in the commerce stream which was what rich kids of rich businessmen did those days, while I was into Science and had to mark my attendance each day, lest I miss my Calculus lectures and have to sit with my books extra time.
Of course we had our fraternity with our counterparts in the YWCA which was just behind our building but the approach to which was a full circle across the central junction in Nagpur. One of my Manipuri friends had a sister staying at the YWCA and whenever he got a chance he would pester me to accompany him to meet his dear sister, though I suspect this "sister" was not of the actual blood kind!
I saw gradual changes coming to the YMCA in the second year of my stay. The entire area in front of the British built facade was built over and turned into a lavish wedding reception hall and lawn. Not a bad idea, we thought. And when the food at the mess got too boring, we would sneak our way to the reception hall at night and have a feast at the unsuspecting groom's expense!
In the middle of the second year I moved over to another hostel, on the outskirts of town. And it was then that the entire YMCA land was sold off for an ultra-modern medical college and hospital to come up. Nobody staying in Nagpur is unaware of the Lata Mangeshkar College of Medicine and Hospital, named after the great singer. Well, the very ground on which we played football, where the Manipuri's roasted their pork in mustard oil, the Africans cut their hair in punk style, was now teeming with construction workers, and in just a couple of years mighty buildings replaced the YMCA Men's Hostel. What happened to the YMCA then? The present day YMCA Hostel in Nagpur is a small building which might be able to house just 1/10th of the original capacity it had.
What happened? we wondered. How come this blatant commercialization by an institution that was supposed to do social service? There were rumors that the warden had made a good commission selling off YMCA land for commercial purposes, and every person on the YMCA managing board, including those at the very top, had their share of it too.
Those days corruption was fashionable, and the sooner you made money selling off land that was not yours, smaller the chances of getting caught.

North Bridge is Falling Down!

I have an unusual fad. From as far back as my college days, I remember going to the railway station at the dead of night to have a cuppa tea. What began as a break from late night study during college days turned out to be a habit. Those days my nightly cycle rides to Nagpur Central Railway Station was not only to enjoy the cool serene night air but also to enjoy the exotic tea served at a corner tea stall. The tea was laced with cardamom and you just didn't swallow it, but swirled it around your mouth like some wine taster tasting his favorite choice. Another reason was that the railway station was the only place which had some semblance of night life, the only place where you could get tea at 1 at night.
The habit lingered and I still find myself making a short trip to the railway station in the late evenings or early morning, this time on my two wheeler; to have that cuppa tea, this time at Kochi Town railway station. And yes, railway stations are the only places with night life in Kochi too.
My job at the gig where I worked some years back ended at 2 am or 3 am at night since I was supposed to work in tandem with my US counterpart. So on Friday nights I was dropped off at the North Railway station by the company cab so that I could catch my night train to Kottayam on my way home. And I had the chance of savoring the tea at tea stalls in front of Ernakulam North railway station, though I wouldn't say the tea is very exotic.
Ernakulam North has a very important landmark - the North Overbridge. Life teems not only on it, but below it too, and the North Railway Station is a stone's throw away from it. I would say my favorite landmark in Kochi is the North Bridge, an arterial bridge over the North-South railway tracks. Before I caught my night train home, if I got the time, I browsed the internet at an all-night internet parlor just below the North bridge. Ernakulam North Railway Station and it's North Bridge was my favorite haunt in Kochi.
The North Bridge is going to be pulled down shortly since it is deemed as being too old, having being built along with it's counterpart, the South Over Bridge, in the early 1960's. This reconstruction work is going to throw Kochi into near chaos as many native to Kochi know. The North Bridge links two very congested and busy parts of Ernakulam (Kochi). It's so important to the city that the bridge won't be pulled down before some dry runs on traffic management, and widening of alternate roads happen. Kochi will be missing one of it's very important landmarks for some time, once the North Bridge is pulled down to make way for it's successor.