Last week of April

Even though Banaras and it's erratic power supply becomes more intolerable this week, there was excitement that kept me going. One afternoon, Rakesh of Harmony Books called me and asked if I would be interested in working as a research assistant to a student from America. I was reluctant at first but I am glad I did not decline Leda's wonderful project on 'Maternity and Child care in Varanasi'. Leda and I went around town meeting with famous and in-famous O.B's, doctors, Axillary Nurse Midwives, trained dai's /nurses. During these meetings and interviews with Indian doctors, I found an appalling lack of passion. The doctors we met were uninspiring and lifeless souls who had little or no passion for life and the life-giving process. I am not complaining here about the urge to make money- but a much more malicious disease. Indian doctors never smile, they attend their patients by often not making an eye contact. While their hands are busy doing the business, their eyes are on the prescription. Before you have made yourself comfortable on the twirling patients stool, the assistant brings the next impatient patient.

I recently met a medical student who wishes to practice in America (It's her father's dream). After speaking with her for about half and hour on her professional and personal life, I did not have a heart to tell her that this was not her spot. I certainly could not tell her that by working harder than the other students in her medical exams (which she feels was a prestige issue) is a wasted effort, she is fulfilling only one person's dream.

Wish we had more doctors who looked into their patients eyes without feeling burdened by the look in them.

Delhi in April

On the 10th of April, the Shiv Ganga Express reached New Delhi railway station at 11.00 a.m, four hours after it's scheduled time of arrival. The delay added to my frustration and agony caused by overtly affectionate newly-wed co-passengers. To kill time, I was scribbling notes on my pad; they read something like: Flavours, Rajdhani, Subway, Momos , Dilli haat, Spirit, Veda (the culinary delights I'd been deprived of in Varanasi). My co-passengers took my seeming focus on the notepad as an opportunity to make more romantic sounds. Shiv Ganga's arrival finally ended my agony, after stopping at every possible small station en route to Delhi.

Once I'd battled with auto and taxi drivers, I reached a friend's apartment in the noisy part of Greater Kailash I. I was not particularly pleased with the architect after seeing the apartment's design. After spending a night at the apartment, I was completely convinced the architect had no sense at all. There was no ventilation, the apartment faced the noisiest side of the building, the kitchen was massive and yet didn't seem functional for your average Indian cook, and there was no light. Living in that flat I discovered one of my hidden desires- remodelling badly constructed houses.

Delhi was the stimulus I needed to turn my lethargic bones into motion. By 4:00 pm every day I experienced a cherished sense of achievement. In Banaras, I feel a sense of achievement in getting my staff at home to do any kind of work. In a span of four working days in Delhi, within the constraints of the ever-so-short government working hours, I went to banks in two different directions, a clinic, and the state electricity department. I also held meetings in my office and strategized for the coming days. Post office hours, I hogged on incredible food, met friends and watched films. My favourite of all was Juno. Delhi in April is not exactly fun but the air-conditioner that rarely goes out from a power cut makes up for it.

Hindu Disneyland

I recently learned of a phrase used in the intellectual circles of America- Hindu Disneyland . I found this term so fascinating that like every other 'smart Alec' Indian, I am renaming it (for a more localized effect) Appu-Ghar Hinduism. There are many physical and physiological similarities between the two cults. It is common to see a Hindu bringing his maha-family of mother, father, widowed mother-in-law, visiting married sister with the 'jijaji', the kids, bhaiya, bhabi and the wife to a sacred Hindu site. As soon as the over-speeding, dust-covered Qualises (often with a neighbouring state's number plate) halt screechingly outside the pilgrimage center, the kids jump out and the men start looking for holes. The women complain about the long journey and their crushed sarees and pick up the water bottles that they most likely bought during the last trip.

During my recent trip to the Hindu holy site of Gupt-Godavari (litt. secret Godavari river), I had an opportunity to observe 'Appu-Ghar Hinduism' in action. In the late 1980s, to visit Appu-Ghar was not really the coolest thing to do, but we, the kids of upper-middle class parents, loved it. I loved the rides, ice-cream stands, and the Maggie counter; I loved shopping for some random thing I convinced my parents, I desperately needed, the inaudible announcements and the process of sticking with your parents in the crowds. The trip was more fun in a bigger group, it would give the kids a rare opportunity to wander around while mummy and aunties would share stories of their cruel mother-in-laws. The other hot topic was 'my kids'. I thought this exercise was an unsaid competetion of 'I suffered more' or 'I am a better mummy'. Nevertheless I loved Appu-Ghar.

The younger ladies walk together gossiping, sharing their shopping stories or casual neighbourhood stories that the listeners comment about. A common element is that these women are all dressed in their best 'outside home' clothes. They wear matching bangles, lipstick, bindis and Tulsi-inspired mid-hair vermillion that often shoots out like an arrow on their foreheads. The men walk talking about cell-phone or car models--Indian men genuinely refrain from talking about other kinds of models during family 'holy-site outings'. The group walks into the cave or temple together laughing and talking, unobservant of anything that surrounds them. At Gupt-Godavari they all enter a gufa, a cave under a barren surface from where the Godavari waters emerge-cool and clean. The group decides to play black-out with the family by calling out their names aloud. The names echo-they love it. A few others follow the trick. They also make indefinably blank eye-contact with the passerbys who have had their darshan. Smiling at strangers is such an un-Indian act but what is surely Indian is joining the passerbys in their loud 'hail God' calls. The group returns outside after darshan and resumes chatting about new topics.

Flames in a barren forest

Tall, dry, slim trunks supporting orangy-crimson blooms dominated our way to Jaitwara. Our airconditioned Innova sped through the narrow stretch of road between Gupt-Godavari Caves, where we had spent our morning, and Jaitwara. This town, close to Satna, is a small bauxite mining center in Madhya Pradesh. Our van filled with girly screams of 'papa!' to slow down. Papa momentarily acceded to decelerating, but couldn't resist the surprisingly smooth roads. Speeding past us were a few motorcyclists covered in colours. Despite a fleeting glimpse, I could not miss the distinct vermillion tilaks with random rice grains on their forheads. This was a day after Holi and people seemed to have forgotten the cardinal rule of rest after Dhulendi. A group of faceless village boys intending to have 'fun' tried to stop our speeding luxury. They were fully drenched and covered in colours, so dark and indiscriminate that I wondered if Holi was a festival of colour or muck. Our experienced driver, the 'papa' to four of our wonderful companions, deftly tried swerving the car to a 'no-danger' point from the boys. But those boys quickly remaneouvered: they motioned to let us by then hurled a bucket full of cow dung on the van, turning the rear glass opaque. The backview-less van rushed through a gorgeous landscape of brown-yellow hills, spreading trees, golden wheat farms, flowering mango orchards, dry plateaus, and valleys covered in old and new leaves. Now writing a month later, I may say that it was fun speeding through those valleys to Jaitwara. It could also be that this journey ended with a short visit to a wonderfully warm family. I must send the family a postcard soon. Their house and in fact their entire town was covered in a fine red dust. As they satisified my curiosity about the cause of the distinctive dust, I thought to myself that my Class X chemistry teacher must have never seen the metals described in Chapter 1 of our textbook. He never told us that before it becomes aluminum, bauxite is red.


But what is certain is that my class X Physics teacher knew nothing about Chapter 1 ( Metals and Non- Metals). He never told us that bauxite is red in colour.

Barefoot Soldiers

Google search gives away 33,500 hits on Tilonia. Tilonia is a tiny little place, smaller than the campus of Doon School where Mr. Bunker Roy was educated . In 1972, Sanjit Bunker Roy, a three time national squash champion, set up the Barefoot College at Tilonia. Barefoot is a place to unlearn and learn.

I visited Tilonia on 17th March with a view of visiting an NGO- like many others I had visited before. When I returned home to Delhi that evening, I wished my high school curriculum incorporated some 'unlearning' that the Barefoot emphasizes on.

What sets the College apart from the other NGO's, I have visited before are the barefooters who work there without a consideration for the weekends or office hours. The barefooted soldiers I met; Vasu ( a middle-class city intellectual born in the late 50's) , Dr. Bhattacharya ( practiced medicine at Ajmer and studied briefly in the U.K) , Bhagwat Nandan ( head of the solar energy department), Aunti ji (who I met at the dispensary) over the course of a four hour visit were all unique individuals. They all had their own reasons to be at the institute. They all unlearnt what they had learnt earlier in life- at medical school, at university, at home or at work. They live in a world where expertise on fixing a hyperbolic solar cooker gets them the coveted title of an engineer. At the centre, we met weavers who made music with their looms, toy makers (used waste material), durrie makers, electric circuit making Barefoot engineers teaching other students from Bhutan, Africa and India (outside of Tilonia) . The entire atmosphere was like a Gandhian ashram except the Western Union money transfers. The food cooked by an all men team was made using a solar cooker. I ended up eating a lot of food- was delicious.

It was interesting to see women fixing the mirror discs and fixing electric circuits and men cooking food using their products to cook delicious food.

Visit Barefoot to help a chip fall freely off your shoulder.

Brahma's Progeny

Two weeks ago, I spent a wonderful Sunday in Pushkar, Rajasthan. Pushkar is quaint, white-washed, colourful and surprisingly peaceful --as any pilgrim town compared to Banaras would be. I stayed at the wonderfully located Pushkar Palace--above the lake. My room, though not good value for the money, had a projecting balcony that I had never had the chance to take advantage of. The phone calls, travel arrangements and tiresome journey kept me away from the view. To overcome my guilt, I slept that night with the balcony door open to the lake. It was nothing short of the scene from Chaudhavin ka Chand, where gauzy curtains caress a half-sleepy Wahida Rehman's face.

Pushkar is rewarding-it has the trees, marigold gardens, women in Rajasthani costume (with covered heads and plunging necklines) picking the flowers (offering a small bouquet for me), chiming camels, a wonderful reflexologist (a better human being) and silence. But my memories of Pushkar are also scarred with reports of sexual abuse and hippy orgies, plastic trash-covered dunes, mushrooming hotels and their clueless owners.

I had heard that riding a camel cart is a good way to release oneself- I did just that and walked right into the setting sun over the stunted hills. The headless neem trees (used for animals) and shiny black plastic covering the sand eventually led me to a perfect spot- in between two sister hills. The silence was eerie and adding to the unnaturalness was haunting music played on an ektara by two young boys. The two did not go to a school-there are no good jobs anyways. The camel driver, son of a mining labourer sends his son to a private school. The government schools offer no education. His eldest son is a graduate and wants to study law. "There are no jobs, why should he waste more years", he says wryly.

My camel driver was a 40 year old, light-eyed man. Accompanying him was his 8 year old. The father wished to take another route on the way back to the hotel, asked his son to check whether the gate to the exit was open. Deepak sped off, signaling his father to keep moving to the gate. A minute later, his uncertain father asked him to double check. Deepak ran faster than any 8 year old I had seen at the Blue Bells School sports day. Apologetically, he waved a big NO. Running and gaping, Deepak took a 20 second break to breathe and climbed into the cart. The two shared no more words and rode us through the well-lit Pushkar bazaars. I spent the rest of the evening wondering, "When was the last time I did something for my father?”