What can I say of a man I met once? And years later learnt that he died a tragic death? Did he make an impact? Did I sound like a pompous bureaucrat, talking of my life in Delhi? Or did we talk politics? Did he sound displeased with my unconventional views? Did he talk of the causes he passionately believed in? I can’t seem to place things right. When I read about his death, I was shocked. He seemed so alive. In death I knew him better. It was moving to read what his friends had to say about him. A life committed to making documentaries on environmental issues and lives of people affected by it. I remembered how modest he was, in spite of all the fire inside him.
Saratchandran left his job in the Gulf. He saved up enough to buy film making equipment, married the woman he loved and settled down in Ernakulam. He had no kids. His looks betrayed his age- 52 years at the time of death. He spent his life on causes he believed in. Not on professions that pay you or reimburse your travel bills. Making documentaries on Cola companies that drive down the ground water, on expressways that divide people of a town, on tribals affected by mining companies denuding forests in distant lands, against detention of activists. He participated in World Social Forum, other such ‘alternate’ events and documentary film festivals. One couldn’t always agree with his causes but he had intense passion behind his belief in them. He spent his life on his terms, spurning a life of relative comfort.
He came to our house one evening with Sunanda- his sister & Anil, his brother-in-law. Anil & Sunanda are friends from my days at University Campus in Trivandrum. Sarat was Anil’s favourite brother-in-law. Sarat readily agreed to take my son & Anil’s son to see “The Goblets of Fire” the then latest Harry Potter film in town. There were no volunteers among elders to do that. I remember picking up Sarat and the kids from the movie hall. We had dinner at home and they all left. He called me up once later to know whether DVD duplicating can be done in Nehru Place. (He would give copies of the human interest stories to audiences where his documentaries were not allowed to be screened, I learnt later)
The next I heard of him was about his death. On the night of his death, no one knew what exactly happened. Except that he got thrown off a crowded train. When I read more about him, I felt silly. There he was, spending an evening with us- never talking about his life or his favourite causes. We probably discussed the right recipe for fish curry and the madness that is Delhi. I felt silly that I didn’t probe his mind or try to understand what drives him. I felt silly that while we remain cocooned in our middle class safety zone, there are those like Sarat who chase their dreams for the world. Adieu to a life cut short by fate, to a man who dedicated his life to his beliefs. He leaves behind grieving for him a wife, siblings and parents.
Friday 30 April 2010
Sport in the time of innocence
The flight was delayed from Goa. I had reached the airport at 5.30 AM. I hadn’t slept through the night. Although the airport is only a short distance from the Guest House, all my journeys have been like this. I am ridden with anxiety about missing the flight, what if the Guest House caretakers oversleep and forget to wake me up with a cup of tea as instructed, what if the car doesn’t turn up to take me to the airport…. I twitch and turn in bed.
In the airport, I saw large kits being loaded on to the luggage scanner. There was excitement in the air. The Indian and Sri Lankan cricket teams were travelling in the same plane; I was told when I checked in. When I got into the flight I didn’t see any cricketer. Amazingly I could see all around me guys with who were connected to the business of cricket. There were Sponsors, media, advertisers, commentators, ex players and many guys in suits and black berries. Is this real? Am I the only “non-cricket” person in the flight? I wondered. Then I could see our modern day superheroes ambling in like gladiators to a Roman Coliseum. I could see a young, excited guy taking snaps of his idols in the plane. I saw a Sri Lankan player with funny coloured hair. The Executive class was full of the super heroes. The junior players were herded into the economy class. The guy sitting next to me was engrossed in a conversation about the advertising rights and other stuff I couldn’t follow. I slowly fell into a peaceful nap.
***********************
The great wars were fought in the summer. The sun burns bright and the paddy fields were barren after harvests. The earth was parched, dull brown in colour. The volleyball court was a patch of land; a paddy field in monsoon, which has been pounded to an even surface by players with constant serving, boosting, smashing and placing. The players wore lungis and some of them sported a towel tied tightly across the forehead- with the intention of going for a dip in the river nearby to wash away the sweat of the game and the dust of the day long toil. The bare chest players were the village working class society, strong guys who lead a brutal life on the fields all day. The upper crust was mostly onlookers with their fair, decadent bodies and life of leisure. They were equally enthused in the ongoing matches. The Muslims were strong, good players. But they would take breaks when the Mosque sounded Azzan for prayers. The matches were played until sunset. The players would call out to each other loudly to smash or boost. The teams were spontaneously formed on the basis of skill sets of each team. Official matches were played with the nearby village when the enthusiasm would run at its highest.
This silly pastime was looked down upon by village elders who sat on their haunches with sunken cheeks, white hair and tired, worn out bodies. “Waste of time”, they cursed as they puffed their bidis one more time and spit on to the bare earth. The matches were never scheduled in monsoon when most of the players would be busy ploughing the rain drenched lush green fields or planting saplings. Some would be busy fencing off the coconut groves and some, with low lying paddy fields would be worried about the eventual arrival of irrigation water. Some were busy studying for the exams almost guiltily when the rest of the family is busy rustling up the means of survival.
The game was in full swing. Points being notched up with great effort, lost in foolish mistakes. There is excitement in the air… No one talked of money: No one talked of valuations. The Panchayat Members, village Pradhan and Block Development Officers ignored the game and its’ proponents in the village. Some players were brilliant. They didn’t foresee a career in sports. In fact they didn’t foresee anything at all- Just a long life of toil and frugal living. A job as a constable in the State Police would be a great stroke of luck. They weren’t sponsored by sports equipment companies, soft drinks, airlines, razors, insurance companies or banks. They were playing for village pride. No one tried to nurture their talent… That was sport in the time of innocence…
In the airport, I saw large kits being loaded on to the luggage scanner. There was excitement in the air. The Indian and Sri Lankan cricket teams were travelling in the same plane; I was told when I checked in. When I got into the flight I didn’t see any cricketer. Amazingly I could see all around me guys with who were connected to the business of cricket. There were Sponsors, media, advertisers, commentators, ex players and many guys in suits and black berries. Is this real? Am I the only “non-cricket” person in the flight? I wondered. Then I could see our modern day superheroes ambling in like gladiators to a Roman Coliseum. I could see a young, excited guy taking snaps of his idols in the plane. I saw a Sri Lankan player with funny coloured hair. The Executive class was full of the super heroes. The junior players were herded into the economy class. The guy sitting next to me was engrossed in a conversation about the advertising rights and other stuff I couldn’t follow. I slowly fell into a peaceful nap.
***********************
The great wars were fought in the summer. The sun burns bright and the paddy fields were barren after harvests. The earth was parched, dull brown in colour. The volleyball court was a patch of land; a paddy field in monsoon, which has been pounded to an even surface by players with constant serving, boosting, smashing and placing. The players wore lungis and some of them sported a towel tied tightly across the forehead- with the intention of going for a dip in the river nearby to wash away the sweat of the game and the dust of the day long toil. The bare chest players were the village working class society, strong guys who lead a brutal life on the fields all day. The upper crust was mostly onlookers with their fair, decadent bodies and life of leisure. They were equally enthused in the ongoing matches. The Muslims were strong, good players. But they would take breaks when the Mosque sounded Azzan for prayers. The matches were played until sunset. The players would call out to each other loudly to smash or boost. The teams were spontaneously formed on the basis of skill sets of each team. Official matches were played with the nearby village when the enthusiasm would run at its highest.
This silly pastime was looked down upon by village elders who sat on their haunches with sunken cheeks, white hair and tired, worn out bodies. “Waste of time”, they cursed as they puffed their bidis one more time and spit on to the bare earth. The matches were never scheduled in monsoon when most of the players would be busy ploughing the rain drenched lush green fields or planting saplings. Some would be busy fencing off the coconut groves and some, with low lying paddy fields would be worried about the eventual arrival of irrigation water. Some were busy studying for the exams almost guiltily when the rest of the family is busy rustling up the means of survival.
The game was in full swing. Points being notched up with great effort, lost in foolish mistakes. There is excitement in the air… No one talked of money: No one talked of valuations. The Panchayat Members, village Pradhan and Block Development Officers ignored the game and its’ proponents in the village. Some players were brilliant. They didn’t foresee a career in sports. In fact they didn’t foresee anything at all- Just a long life of toil and frugal living. A job as a constable in the State Police would be a great stroke of luck. They weren’t sponsored by sports equipment companies, soft drinks, airlines, razors, insurance companies or banks. They were playing for village pride. No one tried to nurture their talent… That was sport in the time of innocence…
Monday 19 April 2010
A Railway Journey
It has been years since I had a long Railway journey. The Missus being in the Railways entitles me to privileges to travel in relative comfort in trains free of cost. In return I give up my LTC benefits. Things changed as I grew older in government. Flights became the norm. In a tough posting there have been occasions when one had to take a flight as many as eight times a month. Slowly I developed an intense dislike of the food served in flights and started longing for a Railway journey where one could lie back reading a book in air-conditioned comfort as the train rumbles on. There is of course the bonhomie among co- passengers which is sorely missing in a sanitized short plane ride. A night and day in an enclosed space often brings co-travelers a great deal closer.
I read a very interesting book by Biswanath Gosh called Chai Chai- about places one would stop on a Railway journey but would never get off. The author takes a break at stations one would only stop at on a long journey and spends a couple of days at each non-descript junction with a fame that befell them by virtue of being situated at the cross roads of Indian Railway lines. Places like Ballarshah, Itarsi and Shoranur…
With the Missus and Chathu in Chennai, I am back to one of those inevitable phases of separation among Government spouses. I was in the Rajdhani express to Chennai last week. In younger days one would wish for single attractive women to be your co-passengers. Now I only wish that no elderly person, pregnant woman or a mother with infant child one would displace me from the lower berth that has been allotted to me- With an unceasing back pain, I am no more in a mood to clamber on to upper or side berths where my long legs won’t fit in.
As soon as I got in and settled down in my lower berth, I could see a hyperactive elderly Mami (short term for an elderly Brahmin woman) who had her entire extended family travelling with her in various parts of the train. In a few moments she had convinced half the guys in my compartment to take up berths in other coaches so that she could travel in close proximity of her family. The males of her family left her to coordinate the brouhaha that accompanied this re-arrangement, which involved hectic consultations and negotiations with strangers before the train got moving. I must have sounded cussed when I refused to move citing a back pain and inability to lug my luggage around. (I wasn’ t fibbing- a year back I would have readily moved) But she offered to do the shifting of luggage also. But I discovered that in exchange I would be taking a upper side berth two coaches away, which is an inch and a half short of six feet (my height). I politely declined. So did the guy sitting in the lower berth facing me. He was going on a pilgrimage to Rameshwaram. He was from UP and I overheard him telling someone on his mobile that ever since his younger son expired he had been planning this pilgrimage- for the peace of his soul. Suddenly I felt a rush of grief and sympathy for this rather non-descript old man living with the burden of memories of a predeceased son.
The train started moving. Tea is served. The passengers are quiet and were busy reading, gazing out, plugged into their personal media players or talking on their mobiles. A young typical Tamilian Chennaite got talking. He, incidentally landed close to us as a result of the complex reshuffle of berths. Throughout the journey, he went about the task of helping North Indian travelers fix up appointments with Doctors in Chennai, book bus tickets to many destinations like Chidambaram and Trichy. “ Yeny place in Tamilnad, Saar, Yacee super deluxe buses are there. It is naat like Narth India, he said. But don’t trust the Aato chaps, he said, they bring a bad name to an otherwise lovely, warm city. Really a good Samaritan, salt of the earth, the kind of guy, who reinforces our faith in humanity. I also realized that he is the archetypal South Indian bumbler with a funny accent, poked fun at by pretty much everyone in the North of Vindhyas. By the end of the journey, most travelers had his two mobile numbers (one his brother’s and the other his) to be accessed in distress.
In my return journey, my co passenger was a Subedar Major in the Army travelling on posting from Ordnance Depot Avadi to Jammu. Since we both belonged to the same mother of all departments in the Government, we got chatting. Another Tamilian family (a couple working in State Govt with an only son) were going on LTC to Delhi, Shimla and Jaipur. There were feeble attempts between the Subedar and the Tamil family to communicate with each other. I realized how different they were. After several attempts both sides were communicating through me, with arguably good conversational abilities in both Tamil and Hindi(or bad, depending on how you look at it).
The food got worse in the return journey. With my Subedar friend threatening the caterers that Saab’s (i.e my) wife is a General Manager in the Railways and that this quality of food will not be tolerated. This sudden elevation of the status of Missus to GM (which is a couple of notches above her present exalted position- I haven’t reached her level; thanks to the slow pace of promotions in Defence Ministry Departments) failed to impress the caterers and they went about their task businesslike. The food and the general cleanliness of the train only got worse as we neared Delhi.
Years back, food used to be served in large round steel plates containing small steel bowls for vegetables and Dal. They were loaded from designated stations like Guntakkal, Itarsi, Gwalior and Jhansi. After each meal the plates were taken away, the wasted food containing only organic stuff dumped in large sacks and the plates and bowls go for washing. Now the caterers in spiffy uniforms give a whole lot of pouches. Pickle, Jam, butter, tea, milk powder and a whole lot of other stuff comes in small plastic or paper pouches which after use, contribute greatly to the degradation of the environment. The Railway tracks and the common areas near the toilets become inundated with plastic and paper garbage by the end of the long journey. These guys are clearly not equipped to deal with large mounds of recyclable garbage.
I really didn’t do much reading. I had hopes of finishing Niall Ferguson’s Ascent of Money on this trip. Instead, I just lay myself down and watched the landscape rushing by, past ravines, mountains, desolated countryside, cities and coasts. The whole experience puts you in a reflective mood, about life and its’ many uncertainties. Many years back I undertook journeys to join my post in Ahmedabad in a bank, to appear for interviews in the civil services, to meet a dear friend in Lucknow, to fight a court case in Allahabad, to meet my parents in Palghat. I remember a night interchange in Jhansi when I discovered that my berth has been sold by the TTE to another passenger for a small consideration. I remember becoming friends with an Australian school teacher of the Kodaikanal International School. I also have vivid recollections of an attractive lady journalist (where would she be now, I often wonder: we did keep in touch for some time), a student from BITS Pilani, an Assamese with whom I shared a joint, a Tirupur textile industrialist who played songs from the Hindi movie Chandni loudly in his first class compartment and survived on cucumber, carrots and copious amounts of whisky thoughout the journey. It is almost as if I see a microcosm of the country in these journeys. And these journeys are very different from three hour flights with snooty nosed guys who treasure their privacy and laptops so much.
I read a very interesting book by Biswanath Gosh called Chai Chai- about places one would stop on a Railway journey but would never get off. The author takes a break at stations one would only stop at on a long journey and spends a couple of days at each non-descript junction with a fame that befell them by virtue of being situated at the cross roads of Indian Railway lines. Places like Ballarshah, Itarsi and Shoranur…
With the Missus and Chathu in Chennai, I am back to one of those inevitable phases of separation among Government spouses. I was in the Rajdhani express to Chennai last week. In younger days one would wish for single attractive women to be your co-passengers. Now I only wish that no elderly person, pregnant woman or a mother with infant child one would displace me from the lower berth that has been allotted to me- With an unceasing back pain, I am no more in a mood to clamber on to upper or side berths where my long legs won’t fit in.
As soon as I got in and settled down in my lower berth, I could see a hyperactive elderly Mami (short term for an elderly Brahmin woman) who had her entire extended family travelling with her in various parts of the train. In a few moments she had convinced half the guys in my compartment to take up berths in other coaches so that she could travel in close proximity of her family. The males of her family left her to coordinate the brouhaha that accompanied this re-arrangement, which involved hectic consultations and negotiations with strangers before the train got moving. I must have sounded cussed when I refused to move citing a back pain and inability to lug my luggage around. (I wasn’ t fibbing- a year back I would have readily moved) But she offered to do the shifting of luggage also. But I discovered that in exchange I would be taking a upper side berth two coaches away, which is an inch and a half short of six feet (my height). I politely declined. So did the guy sitting in the lower berth facing me. He was going on a pilgrimage to Rameshwaram. He was from UP and I overheard him telling someone on his mobile that ever since his younger son expired he had been planning this pilgrimage- for the peace of his soul. Suddenly I felt a rush of grief and sympathy for this rather non-descript old man living with the burden of memories of a predeceased son.
The train started moving. Tea is served. The passengers are quiet and were busy reading, gazing out, plugged into their personal media players or talking on their mobiles. A young typical Tamilian Chennaite got talking. He, incidentally landed close to us as a result of the complex reshuffle of berths. Throughout the journey, he went about the task of helping North Indian travelers fix up appointments with Doctors in Chennai, book bus tickets to many destinations like Chidambaram and Trichy. “ Yeny place in Tamilnad, Saar, Yacee super deluxe buses are there. It is naat like Narth India, he said. But don’t trust the Aato chaps, he said, they bring a bad name to an otherwise lovely, warm city. Really a good Samaritan, salt of the earth, the kind of guy, who reinforces our faith in humanity. I also realized that he is the archetypal South Indian bumbler with a funny accent, poked fun at by pretty much everyone in the North of Vindhyas. By the end of the journey, most travelers had his two mobile numbers (one his brother’s and the other his) to be accessed in distress.
In my return journey, my co passenger was a Subedar Major in the Army travelling on posting from Ordnance Depot Avadi to Jammu. Since we both belonged to the same mother of all departments in the Government, we got chatting. Another Tamilian family (a couple working in State Govt with an only son) were going on LTC to Delhi, Shimla and Jaipur. There were feeble attempts between the Subedar and the Tamil family to communicate with each other. I realized how different they were. After several attempts both sides were communicating through me, with arguably good conversational abilities in both Tamil and Hindi(or bad, depending on how you look at it).
The food got worse in the return journey. With my Subedar friend threatening the caterers that Saab’s (i.e my) wife is a General Manager in the Railways and that this quality of food will not be tolerated. This sudden elevation of the status of Missus to GM (which is a couple of notches above her present exalted position- I haven’t reached her level; thanks to the slow pace of promotions in Defence Ministry Departments) failed to impress the caterers and they went about their task businesslike. The food and the general cleanliness of the train only got worse as we neared Delhi.
Years back, food used to be served in large round steel plates containing small steel bowls for vegetables and Dal. They were loaded from designated stations like Guntakkal, Itarsi, Gwalior and Jhansi. After each meal the plates were taken away, the wasted food containing only organic stuff dumped in large sacks and the plates and bowls go for washing. Now the caterers in spiffy uniforms give a whole lot of pouches. Pickle, Jam, butter, tea, milk powder and a whole lot of other stuff comes in small plastic or paper pouches which after use, contribute greatly to the degradation of the environment. The Railway tracks and the common areas near the toilets become inundated with plastic and paper garbage by the end of the long journey. These guys are clearly not equipped to deal with large mounds of recyclable garbage.
I really didn’t do much reading. I had hopes of finishing Niall Ferguson’s Ascent of Money on this trip. Instead, I just lay myself down and watched the landscape rushing by, past ravines, mountains, desolated countryside, cities and coasts. The whole experience puts you in a reflective mood, about life and its’ many uncertainties. Many years back I undertook journeys to join my post in Ahmedabad in a bank, to appear for interviews in the civil services, to meet a dear friend in Lucknow, to fight a court case in Allahabad, to meet my parents in Palghat. I remember a night interchange in Jhansi when I discovered that my berth has been sold by the TTE to another passenger for a small consideration. I remember becoming friends with an Australian school teacher of the Kodaikanal International School. I also have vivid recollections of an attractive lady journalist (where would she be now, I often wonder: we did keep in touch for some time), a student from BITS Pilani, an Assamese with whom I shared a joint, a Tirupur textile industrialist who played songs from the Hindi movie Chandni loudly in his first class compartment and survived on cucumber, carrots and copious amounts of whisky thoughout the journey. It is almost as if I see a microcosm of the country in these journeys. And these journeys are very different from three hour flights with snooty nosed guys who treasure their privacy and laptops so much.
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