The river of romance

The bridge across the river looked like a concrete monstrosity. It was a late, moonlit night. The milky light from the sky lit up the white expanse of sand. The river flowed quietly. The huge banyan trees abutting the river watched on, carrying tales of a million years within their ancient trunks. It was a still moment. There are vast expanses of green paddy fields on either side and the wind blows ruffling the fields in unique wavy patterns. Then the train came rushing forth, with noisy clatter, breaking the stillness of the night. Then all was quiet...That was Nila river or Bharathapuzha known in local parlance. A river that spawned great poetry, a river that witnessed the tectonic shifts of history.

 In our collective memory, the river always flowed, filling it with moments of  romance. A romance where you don’t share the presence of a human to share your anguish and pain of this life....of beauty that one day fades...of emotions and tempers that might break the rhythm of a workday life. This was romance of a strange kind. It is the romance of communion with life, with nature.... Ten kilometres up the river, a tributary called Mangalam river flows.. a good 200 metres away from the home I was raised in. Often I remember of a lonely childhood with only books and crazy dreams for company. Often, late at night, we would sit on the white sand. And listen to the rumble of the train, a faint sound 15 kms away from Lakkidi bridge, where the Nila flows. Nila is the poet’s river. Great many poets and writers drew their inspiration and sustenance from the river.

In monsoon, the river changed its’ colours. It looked darker. The sky is overcast and it is raining for days on end. The wind is cold and harsh. The sand banks have disappeared from sight. Twigs, logs and branches got washed away in the wild flow of the river.  One could no longer see the the bottom of the river or little fish that would brush against your legs when you took bath in the flowing water. You could no longer cross the river walking. Little boats are pressed into service.   The river today is ravaged. When I barely stop on the bridge, my memories go back in time. How the river looked then. The sand has vanished today, a victim of the inexorable process of development, building concrete homes for humans. Twenty five years back, if someone had told me that man’s primary urge to have a roof over his head, a shelter to keep his family safe, could plunder the river of all its’ sand, I wouldn’t have believed it. The paddy fields are dotted with concrete homes. The moonlight has a tinge of tears. In summer the river is dry. There are patches of vegetation and water along the river. The river no more flows...  

  Around five years back, when I was working in Delhi, I saw an article by a journalist called Akber Ayub in The Hindu on the slowly dying Nila river. I wrote to the journalist and asked him if I could do something to save the river. He said he gets lot of mails of similar kind. I kept a few copies of the article and gave it to friends who, I knew, cared for the river. I spoke to a senior bureaucrat in Kerala government, who swore that there is little that civil society can do. The government has already put in place plans to save the river. But each year I go back to my home town, I see the river a little more denuded. A little less in its element. A little closer to death. We can do nothing but grieve over something that has died inside us...

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‘But Ma’am must have been briefed, surely?’

‘Of course,’ said the Queen, ‘but briefing is not reading. In fact it is the antithesis of reading. Briefing is terse, factual and to the point. Reading is untidy, discursive and perpetually inviting. Briefing closes down a subject. Reading opens it up.’   

- Alan Bennet in the ‘Uncommon reader’.

 I read the above lines several times. It struck me as very relevant to Delhi bureaucrats, who come with little domain knowledge and are briefed by specialists. Policy making evolves through several rounds of briefing which closes down the subject instead of opening up, as Bennett’s Queen would say.    

      I have been reading this short book and the book sort of grew on me.  When I ordered it on flipkart for a princely sum of Rs 577, I expected a hardback tome. When it arrived, it was all of 120 odd pages, a paperback, half the size of an A4 size paper. I also had this vague feeling that I had read this before, but had forgotten about it.

        Possess this book. It will possess you surely. It is about the Queen of England who, in old age, falls prey to the joys of reading and its’ unintentional, but comic fallout. The Palace staff, cabinet ministers, Archbishop of Canterbury and others are put to severe inconvenience, having an erudite Monarch, who dares to improvise her speeches. How would it be if the Queen were to ask, by way of polite conversation, what you thought of Bronte or Jean Genet, instead of asking you whether you had come far and whether the traffic was nasty? A chance visit to the travelling library sets off a hilarious sequence of events. This is a great book. A Bibliophile’s book.

The Contrarian Babu

The contrarian Babu is almost always a misfit in polite society. Life in the bureaucracy is getting increasingly difficult. Accountability grows, discretion reduces and one is always exposed to public scrutiny. In a world full of worshippers of First world ways and success, it is hard to strike a jarring note. When I talked about misdirected policies to invite FDI in education in this blog, many of my good friends chided me. They call me a commie, a medievalist and what not. What rankles most is when they accuse me of having acquired a foreign degree for myself and is now arguing against letting other countrymen from getting one. I had also written about how foolish it is to expect those who clear IIM/IIT entrance exams to fund their education by loans. Recently two of my colleagues(including my Office peon who sent his son to Engineering, paying a modest amount as capitation fee in a second rung college) have failed to get education loans from State Bank despite being government servants with steady income streams. Proves my point, I suppose..

My reasons for opposing FDI in multi-brand retail are similar. In the real world, none of the arguments for it hold water. It is the lazy Babu’s fancy solution to show growth in numbers.  Some standard arguments for apologists of the proposal are-  it would help to channelize investments to establish cold chains, it would beget fair price for farmers, it helps disintermediation of markets and it helps employment generation. I see it more as a failure of administration. If we can send rockets and missiles, can’t we set up cold chains? If we can set up science labs, IITs and IIMs, can’t we set up institutions that facilitate access for farmers to markets and slash the role of intermediaries? Employment generation is the most specious of all arguments.

While in Australia, I realized that mostly available jobs for students were that of checkout counter staff in supermarkets. Students would be paid 8-10 dollars per hour. The other alternative is to get into stacking inventory or packaging. Slowly these jobs were also vanishing. In big city markets, billing was being automated to such an extent that one could dump a bag full of purchases into a huge enclosure and the total bill amount would be displayed. One could then proceed to pay with credit cards. In other words, big retailers, while thirsting to grow, do not want to employ humans. Employing humans is a problem as the violence in Maruti plant in Manesar has shown. For a country with so much entrepreneurial energy and huge reservoir of manpower, asking Walmart to set up shop is like a huge admission of failure of governance. It exposes our faulty vision and lack of imagination. Soon teeming millions dependent on farm incomes or small retail shops will move to checkout counters of Walmart and from there they would vanish one day, unsung….un-mourned.

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When Metallica played in Bangalore, I was there with my son.    The huge towers of speakers were very close, from where every clash of cymbal, every roll of drum and every thrum of the lead or bass guitar was emanating with deep unexplored depths. If one suffered from minor heart ailments, one particularly sustained roll of drums could dispatch you to early death. The song Nothing else matters sent the crowd into raptures. It was a slushy day and the ground was wet. As I came out of the concert, I realized that except for the band members of Metallica, none were in my age group. We made an odd  combination. The entire crowd was in the twenties and thirties. My son is 17 and I am 49. As for Chathu, he hadn’t progressed to imbibing beer and letting his hair down.  So he was saddled with his humorless father. One realizes slowly what embarrassment one turns into in old age

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I read “Beyond the lines”by Kuldip Nayar. It is an easy read, which gives interesting insights into several important phases of the nation’s history. A bit pompous in patches, the writer is wont to name-drop occasionally. For instance, the Press Officer to Minister would not have as much access to the Minister these days. When the writer talk of his proximity to Shastri or Pant, it is hard to believe it- especially since yours truly has worked in the silly building called South Block. Nevertheless he married well (A Governor’s daughter, no less), developed great connections and went to jail during emergency. But what I found heartrending was his nostalgia of undivided India. As a Pakistan buff, I thought Kuldip Nayar’s peace constituency is shrinking in this country. We have to live with the ghosts of the past. When I read the Dawn (Pakistani newspaper), I realize how much the ordinary citizens of that country cherish the shared past.  It is only with peace that both countries can get down to the business of development. Instead of lighting candles at Wagah, I would like to hear the youth of India and Pakistan play and sing Bob Dylan’s Blowing in the wind at Wagah one day.

  I also read “Dividing Lines by K N Raghavan- a book on the China war recommended by an acquaintance. The book is kind of a ready reckoner of the China war of 1962. It is neatly organized into the buildup, the war itself and the various perspectives around what caused it and how it panned out. It was amusing to learn that the author is a fellow bureaucrat one batch junior to self and the Missus from the Civil services- a medical doctor and a customs Official. I wonder where he got the time to write a book. It must have taken tremendous self-discipline. I had read most of the stuff he relied on to write this book. But it takes a lot of thought and research to neatly put it into a book. Hats off to K N Raghavan!!

  I also read two Malayalam books. Both came heavily recommended. One was by Subash Chandran- (Introduction to man- Manushyanu oru Aamukham) and Benyamin (Goat Life- Aadujeevitham). Both are young authors. I was impressed by the confident handling of language of Subash Chandran, his ability to shrink the whole sweep and magnitude of several ordinary lives into a tightly written tale, the characters leaving a lasting impression on the reader’s mind. Benyamin tells a touching tale- of a Malayali who landed in the Gulf and ends up being a shepherd, ruthlessly exploited and tortured. The tale brings tears to one’s eyes. It is a story straight from the heart.  Both these young, confident writers had one thing in common. They do not follow any method of world-prize winning literature. I see a great future for these writers. That they are at least ten years younger than me gives great hope about the future of Malayalam literature.

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The sedate Bureaucrat is usually full of self importance- for he is the Master of all he surveys... Along comes the odd event that exposes him as the straw man; full of flaws and it embarrasses him terribly. Failures ought to be remembered, for they contain valuable lessons in them. Embarrassments are best forgotten. When I am confronted by failures in the workplace, I want to throw it all away, retire to my village, sit under a tree and read books. When I am confronted by embarrassments on the personal front, I want to kick myself to death. When life is on a roll, it helps to remember one’s embarrassments and failures and laugh at oneself. When the chips are down, you can always draw solace from the fact that in the end, you are nobody. As the book of Job in the Bible says, you came unto earth with nothing; you go from here with nothing…- No property, no gadgets, no shares and debentures; only a handful of experiences; of joy, sorrow, heartbreaks, fleeting jealousies and oceans of love....