I'd like to leave the world abetter place than I found it.....

For some years now I have been thinking of moving to the Himalayas to work with some of the pahadi communities up in the Kumaon Himalayas - now you could ask why go all the way to the Kumaon? Well, my answer is that the people up in the Kumaon are rather simple, undemanding folks who have never got their fair share of development expenditure because they do not pressure their elected representatives or community leaders. I also think the communities in the Himalayas could do with some organising and some education that few, if any, are willing or inclined to provide them.

One NGO that seems to be doing yeoman service in this neglected part of India is the CHIRAG Trust (Central Himalayan Rural Action Group) setup by the Lalls in 1987. They literally went to the people, lived among them, learnt from them, loved them, started with what they knew and built on the foundation they had. Today this Trust works in as many as 200+ villages in Uttarakhand in multiple areas such as water shed management, forestry, agriculture, primary health, education, women's issues and knowledge development. This seems like something I'd enjoy doing and would seriously consider pursuing once I'm done with Corporate life and life in the city.

I'd very much like to work in the area of Permaculture which is really a term that encompasses sustainable agriculture and sustainable living. There is so much of our living and farming that needs to be thought through again in order to ensure that we return our homesteads to a sustainable state. Simple things like using energy efficient cooking systems that do not denude our surroundings, fully utilising what nature provides us for free and ensuring that our aquifers are constantly recharged by ensuring that run-off is minimised - I love the idea of 'swales' which the Australian permaculturist Bill Mollison has promoted worldwide - swales are nothing but trenches cut into the land along contours with a view towards trapping water that would otherwise have run off and allowing this trapped water to recharge the local aquifers. These swales have been shown to greatly enhance the ability of barren lands to support plant life and thereby return them to a productive state.

This way I would have done my bit towards aligning myself to the only credo I believe is worth living for - leaving the world and my surroundings a better place than I found it.

No guarantees in life

Lots has been happening all around me in the last ten days or so. First there was this call from my cousin in Trivandrum to tell me that her husband (a recently retired rocket scientist from the Indian Space Research Organisation) suddenly felt dizzy and passed out in their drawing room after returning from a long drive. He was taken to the hospital and it turns out that he had had a heart attack so an angiogram was ordered and that showed atleast three 90% blocks on the main Coronary artery of the heart. It was decided to go in for an open heart triple bypass operation which incidentally has just gotten over today. For now, all seems well. What perhaps must be a huge blessing for this cousin and her husband is that all costs of the operation are borne by the ISRO health plan to which they were subscribed. These are the small mercies of working in India's public sector.

Then one evening last week there was this call from a school friend of mine who was almost in tears at the other end of the phone as she broke the news to me that her younger sister, just 41 years old, was diagnosed with a Stage IV cancer (Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma). Suddenly, one's whole life flashes before one's eyes because it just doesn't seem plausible that someone so young, whom I had seen a couple of days earlier, is suddenly dealt this bolt from the blue. It dawns upon you that life can be very unfair and there are no guarantees whatsoever in life. The impermanence of life itself makes one wonder why we fight and compete so hard in life when it may be that you are not around tomorrow to enjoy the fruits of your fights. All of a sudden my friend's life and that of her sister's seems to have been turned upside down and the dreariness of life seems to mar what used to be the brightness of life for all these folks. When, cancer hits so close to home one is somehow unnerved by the closeness of it all - it could have been me is the constant refrain in my head. Well, I guess there are no guarantees in life.

Tree Love, its not true love

If you have driven along the scenic East Coast Road from Chennai towards Mamallapuram (aka Mahabalipuram) you may have noticed a peculiar phenomenon of the Palmyrah tree growing through a Banyan tree - several instance of the monocot growing through this dicot can be seen all along the way to the temple town. It almost seems to suggest some form of symbiotic relationship between the two species. A kind of give-and-take relationship between the two completely different plant species.

For years I tried to understand the relationship between the two plants and even asked several botanists of repute about this phenomenon and nobody could quite give me an explanation.
It was only recently that I chanced upon the answer to this botanical riddle while watching a crow eat the fruit of the banyan tree on the campus of the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras. The crow sat on one of the leaves of a young palmyrah tree and tried to prise open with its beak a bright red, ripe banyan fruit - a part of the open fruit dropped from the crows beak and rolled down the sloping leaf, towards the palmyrah trunk and lodged in the ample axil of the palmyrah leaf. The axil of the palmyrah leaf is deep and can hold a substantial amount of water and other plant debris which, overtime, rots and provides a fertile seeding ground for the several seeds in the banyan fruit. The seeds germinate in the axil of the young palmyrah and the roots begin to grow out of the axil and downwards towards the soil while the palm grows towards the sun. Soon the banyan roots reach the ground and draw enough sustenance from the soil to allow the banyan to grow rapidly upwards and claim its share of the sun's energy.

Here is a case of a purely physical relationship between two plants where one plant actually gets its initial sustenance from another and eventually takes over and outgrows and even smothers the nurturer, in time! Who said life is fair?

31st Jan has come and gone!

Well, the day dawned sooner than expected and before we knew it Ammu's engagement is over and everybody has returned to their various bases! We started out with a head count of less than 100 people who would attend the engagement which is essentially meant to be a small family affair. On the day we found we had close to 300 people from so many places - there were people from Delhi, Lucknow, Goa, Mumbai, Bangalore, Tuticorin, Calicut, Chennai, Trivandrum and even Sydney, Australia! It was one of the nicest occasions I have been privy to because it was a truly happy time that every body had. A lot of the credit must go to Ammu's maternal Uncle and Aunt (Sunil and Ammu) who, in true matriarchal tradition, took it upon themselves to arrange everything for the function.

Ammu is now formally engaged to Arun Nair and she looked so happy to be engaged. I fervently hope she will always be as happy and will have many occasions to cherish in her married life. It was also a pleasure meeting with Arun's extended family who are such simple, pleasant people with no airs at all. I am sure Ammu will fit in to the family like a hand fits a glove.

It would be unfair to close this blog without some pictures of the happy occasion so here goes: