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:

Writing for fun

One of the things I always wanted to do was write - I embarked upon a story based on my experience in boarding school and went part way through the story but I soon hit upon the typical writer's block. So I figured, maybe I should attempt writing a short story before I embark on a full book. Sometime, in early December I set out to write a short story also based around the old school - I soon discovered that it was fun, I went about writing it a few paragraphs at a time and over the last few weeks it has taken a certain form which I found I actually liked. I'm not too sure anybody would want to read my story so I'll put it in safe storage here on my blog and haul it out when I think its time to show it around! So here it is.

If you are one of the few who stumbled upon my blog and have taken the trouble to read the short story below - do be kind enough to tell me what you feel about the story by clicking on the comment link below.

Lily of the Valley

By Sailendra Bhaskar

It was the winter of 1970, the blustery winds bent the tops of the tall eucalyptus trees, the winds howled as they rushed through the valley bringing a strong drizzle which made it feel like a Siberian winter in the tropics. Marge, who was the Matron of Oakshott House hugged her water-proof Macintosh to herself as she made her way down from the dining hall to her two room residence on the south end of the cottage she was in charge of. The boarder children who she was the house mother of were all away for the Christmas holidays but her own two children were with her. Soon they too would arrive from Ooty on their father's scooter; she wondered how they would manage in the rain and made a mental note to start up the wood fire in the living room so that they could warm themselves when they get home.

Sean was seven and Salomi was four when their father Krishnan who worked as a Project Officer with the Indo-German Agricultural Development Project in the Ooty area when he met with this big made, but well proportioned blonde German woman named Chantal who worked for GTZ the German government agency that oversaw the IGADP. Chantal was older than Krishnan but the attraction grew between them when they needed to spend late hours together drafting the weekly reports they had to send back to Germany by telex. She took it upon herself to teach the tall, brown-eyed Badaga boy German and Krishnan on his part enjoyed the female company and loved the new language. Earlier, Krishnan made it a point to get back to the valley and his family atleast by dinner time every day but these days his working late meant that he had to stay back in the project office quite often. It was cold and dreary in the project office, there really was no place to sleep but a hold-all came in handy on such nights. Chantal would order her ayah to bring her dinner, roast chicken and Roesti (pronounced Roshti) made from Nilgiri potato, to the project office for Krishnan and her to share. On some nights there would be German chardonnay imported all the way from the Pfalz. On such nights Chantal would fall asleep at her desk, Krishnan would open up his hold-all which was always tucked away under his office table, lay his bed out and gently wake her and tell her she could sleep in his bed while he would curl up on the office sofa and sleep.

Marge had the living room fire going in a jiffy, she didnt need to work too hard at it because Sean had carefully stashed away quite a bit of eucalyptus wood under the lean-to behind the box-room where it wouldn't get wet. Sean loved to use the wood-cutter's axe and split logs for the home fire when he had nothing else to do. Salomi would sit nearby below the luckote tree and watch her older brother expertly dismember those logs with an axe that was almost as tall as him. Marge, got close up to the fire to take in its warmth and hoped Krishnan would bring the children soon because it was already dark, dreary and wet but she also knew that if that woman boss of his was around it may be very late before Krishnan gets away from work. But this time Krishnan had the children for an excuse to get away early from Chantal, she thought.

Theirs had been a marriage made in school, Krishnan was her classmate in the boarding school that she was now employed in but he was not a boarder. He was a day scholar who lived down in the village of Shantoor where his parents were traditional Badaga farmers. Krishnan's father felt that his boy needed to get a better education than the kind offered by the village school and so he trudged up the hill to the big school where they housed and taught children of Anglo-Indian lineage in English. He had heard that the children there got to learn lots more than in the village school so he approached the tall, swarthy, black-suited Principal of the school and in his broken English requested for admission for his elder son, Krishnan. The Principal seemed taken in by the request of this Badaga potato farmer wearing the traditional white mundu and seelay, a long piece of thick special weave of cotton with distinctive borders in black and zari, and a white turban. Before long the Principal had acquiesced to this request of the native and thus it was that Krishnan got to attend this very English public school. It never ceased to amaze the young Badaga boy how big the school campus was, the beautiful steeple with its clock could be seen even from his home in Shantoor but what he loved most was the peel of the bell in the steeple which echoed all through the valley at all times in the day. It was that bell that signaled the end of a class period or lunch time or dinner time - everything. It was in Standard three, he must have been all of eight years old, when Krishnan was asked to sit next to Marge in class by the Class Teacher Mrs Paul. His classmates made fun of him because he was made to sit near a girl but Marge made up for all that by telling him he should ignore them. Krishnan and Marge soon became the best of friends, he would carry chocolates for her (and nobody else) when he came to school from home and she would save up her bun at break time and slip it into his desk - Krishnan was never keen to run down to the dining hall for break because he preferred to stay on the school flat and play 'alees' (marbles) with his mates.

The years went by and soon it was the final year in school, Marge and Krishnan were a long standing pair and everybody knew they were in it for the long run except Krishnan's parents who had heard about his dalliance with a pretty Anglo Indian girl. They made it clear to him that they don't want to hear anything about marriage to this Christian girl because that would be bad news for the family among the Badaga community. Marge's own family in Podanur, a railway colony not far from Coimbatore were less than pleased about the news they were getting from school that she was going steady with a tribal boy from the hills. How could she associate with a Hindu and that too a tribal, they asked? Her parents decided she would be sent to the Secretarial training college in Madras after school so maybe Marge would forget about the tribal boy when she gets to the big city. But lady luck had other things in mind because Krishnan's parents decided he would do his pre-university course in Christian College, Tambaram on the outskirts of the city of Madras.

Krishnan went on to graduate in Botany (the first graduate Badaga from his village) from the college in Tambaram but way before he had finished his graduation Marge had finished her one-year secretarial course and returned to the hills to seek employment in the old school as a secretary to the Headmaster. Krishnan's visits to his village increased manifold when Marge returned to the valley. His parents had been warning him of his continued association with Marge and even threatened to bodily harm her if he continued to meet and associate with her. Krishnan meanwhile had grown too fond of Marge to take those threats lightly, he warned his parents and relatives that if he heard of any such intimidation happening to his friend he would not take it lightly - relations at home became severely strained almost to the point of breaking. Then one day he heard from Marge that the village sarpanch had gone to meet the Principal of the school to tell him that the community didn't approve of the relationship between this Christian girl and their young lad. Krishnan was summoned by the Principal and told about this meeting with the sarpanch, his reaction was one of absolute anger. He requested the use of the Principal's telephone and made a few calls to Ooty and then asked Marge to come with him to his friend the Sub-registrar's office in Ooty where the two signed the marriage register and pronounced themselves man and wife. Marge got the Principal to give her leave of absence from work for a few weeks and headed to Madras where Krishnan worked with a Pharmaceutical company. It wasn't long before Marge was pregnant with Sean, that was when her parents relented and accepted her back into the family along with Krishnan. His parents however were still smarting from the afront of his marrying without the community's ok but they too were willing to let bygones be bygones when they heard that their daughter-in-law had produced a male child for their son.

It was a hand to mouth existence that Marge and Krishnan led, the pharmaceutical company job simply didn't pay enough and the rents were sky high as also the cost of living in the big city. But it was a happy life together with little Sean and her husband, soon he would be three and could be sent to a kindergarten and maybe Marge could get a job at the kindergarten and supplement their income. That wasn't to be because Marge soon discovered that she was expecting again and this time around she was fraught with violent bouts of morning sickness that made her woozy for most of the day. She could barely manage the chores around the home, she couldn't even iron Krishnan's clothes for him because if she looked down she'd begin to feel woozy. So invariably the clothes would be given to the the local pin-man to iron - he did a good job of ironing but it cost quite a bit. The ironed clothes came back individually placed in between old newspapers so while Sean played about in the yard in front of the house Marge would browse through the old newspaper bits and suddenly one day she saw the advertisement 'Wanted Project Officer for NGO in the Nilgiris' - she showed it to Krishnan when he got home and he seemed hardly interested but she prevailed on him to apply because the qualifications matched with Krishnan's and the salary was more than double what he was currently earning. Reluctantly, Krishnan wrote out his application and Marge waddled to the local post office and posted the application.

Before long they were back in the Nilgiris, Marge's morning sickness had all but disappeared once they got to the hills and Krishnan was enjoying his new job where he had to train Badaga farmers how to grow high yielding potato and other vegetables on the newly terraced Nilgiri hill slopes. Salomi was born without further difficulties and she thrived in the beautiful climate of the Ketti valley. Marge soon resumed working in the school office and would rush home at lunch time to breast feed little Salomi. Sean was in Kindergarten by now and enjoying his time in Smith House where the little ones lived and went to school in the same building. By the time Sean was five the matron of Oakshott cottage, Mrs Hawkins and her family migrated to Australia leaving the post vacant - Marge felt she would enjoy the job of Matron more than the mundane office job she had - besides it paid a little better and she would get a rent-free two bedroom tenement to stay in on campus. She approached the Principal with the idea, he did think twice because Marge was quite young to be managing the senior boys cottage but he liked her work ethic and felt that the family could do with the additional income and accommodation so the boys in Oakshott wound up getting a smart new matron.

The matron's job was quite demanding, she had to manage the accounting of clothes that the dhobis took to wash, she had to arrange the washed and ironed clothes in specific cubby holes in the larder when the dhobi came back with the clothes. Then there was the supervising of the boys' doing their house work and sweeping of the area around the cottage. On Wednesdays she had to ensure the boys all wrote letters home and on Fridays the boys got to withdraw small amounts of money to use in the school tuck shop or sometimes slightly larger sums of money to go out to Ooty on Ooty Saturdays. She made sure the dorm beds were made well and the dorm was maintained in an clean and orderly fashion.It was only when the boys went home for the holidays that things got quite boring because there was not much to do. During those days she fussed over her two children and made them special food. She even walked them down to Shantoor to spend time with their paternal grandparents who would dote on the kids. Their only crib being that the children couldn't understand their Badaga language.

Krishnan meanwhile immersed himself in his work and because he was Badaga he had no trouble at all getting his kinsfolk to adopt the modern agricultural techniques that the Germans were advocating. The weekly reports that he helped Chantal send out to Germany showed considerable progress and the German Agricultural Development Agency GTZ was most gratified by the progress being made in the far away hills of South India. They found the work done by Chantal in India excellent and wanted her to head a similar GTZ team in Ghana
where they were attempting to get the local tribespeople to adopt cultivation of Jatropha in their arid lands. The seeds of this perrenial shrub could be used to extract oils that could light up their nomadic villages and provide the tribes a sustainable livelihood. Chantal, however was most comfortable in her current job and was enjoying her personal and professional life in the Nilgiris and a change of job to Team Leader in Ghana didn't seem so inviting. Besides there was Krishnan, she had become so fond of him and his two children that she couldn't think of leaving them and going to Africa. She spoke with Krishnan about what the GTZ wanted from her and she saw his face go ashen. She reached out and pulled him to her and hugged him and told him she wouldn’t go anywhere without him and his children.

The rain on that evening was torrential, how was he to take the two little ones on his scooter all the way down to Ketti from Ooty he wondered. The telephones were not working and there was no power - the generator kicked in and could hardly be heard because it rained so hard. Chantal walked over to the telex machine and there was a four line message from Germany which had obviously arrived some time ago. She tore off the message from the machine and read it, all the while shaking her head from side to side and looking up at Krishnan. She had to leave immediately; she had been ordered to take up the job in Ghana and needed to go to Bonn before she headed out to Accra.

Marge, stoked the fire in the living room, the chimney coughed into life on that wet evening, the initial smoke in the room made her cough so she hastened to open the windows just a wee bit so the smoke would go out. She knew it was going to be difficult for Krishnan to bring the kids on his scooter in the pouring rain but she was sure he will come as soon as the rain subsides. She put the radio on and tuned it to Radio Ceylon and there was The Drifters with her all time favourite hit ‘Save the last dance for me’. She was reminded of the Anglo Indian dances back in her home town of Podanur, a faint smile came across her pretty face as she thought of how long it has been since she went to a dance because Krishnan had no interest in dancing. She promised herself that next holidays she will take the children and spend some time with her parents in the Railway Colony and will make it a point to go for the Christmas Ball. She wondered who she would dance with; it had been so long since she ventured on to the dance floor. It was dark and dreary outside and the rain was not letting up - it looked like she would have to spend the night alone because there was no way Krishnan and the children could make it in this torrent. She sat by the fire and fell asleep, the fire crackled as eucalyptus oil emanated from the hot wood and suddenly she awoke to the sound of the bursting of an oil bubble in the fireplace. She had been dreaming, a most weird dream in which she saw Sean and Salomi waving to her as they climbed the steps leading up to an airplane door and there was Krishnan bringing up the rear and waving her goodbye with the most beatific of smiles. He blew kisses to her as he disappeared into the Lufthansa aircraft.

The rain subsided early morning, Marge grabbed an umbrella just in case and headed to the school office from where she hoped to call Krishnan's office to find out what happened to her husband and her kids. The phone in the Indo-German project office wouldn't ring, she realised it must be out of order what with that godawful rain last night. She made her way back to her cottage and wondered how she could find out whats happening with her husband and children. It was noon when she heard the ringing of the postman's cycle bell outside, he had a telegram to deliver, she wondered who would send her a telegram - she used her index finger to tear open the telegram which read ' We had to go sweetheart, will see you when we can, Love Krish'.

January 2010

Time seems to fly by faster these days!

Its past mid-January in the year 20-10 - it almost seems like we were ringing in the new year just yesterday and here we are already two weeks into the second decade of the 2nd millennium! I guess when you get to the top of the hill its pretty fast going when you are heading down hill! Life never seemed to rocket by so soon before I was 50!!

Its also the impending engagement and marriage of the daughter that seems to make time want to rush by, I feel. In another 13 days Ammu will be engaged and a few months on and she'll be married! Somehow I don't feel old enough to be a father-in-law - this fact dawned upon me only yesterday when I spoke with a distant cousin in Mumbai who was rather surprised when I said I was calling to invite her father for Ammu's engagement! She seemed to think that it was too early days yet for me to be changing status from father to father-in-law! But then again, that's what is on the cards so whether I like it or not or whether I'm old enough or not I am going to be father-in-law soon enough!

Funnily, it was just the other day that Sudha and I were talking about parent's age when kids get married and she came up with the fact that her mother was a grand mother before she was 50 and here she was turning 50 and her kid will just be getting married! The saving grace was that as we look around us there are plenty of parents who are well past 50 and the children are no where near marriage!

Carpe diem

The last week too went by in a flash it would seem. There was much happening all around and that must be whats causing me to feel like the world is going by at a crazy speed. Ashwin completed his Centre for Marine Engineering Training Phase II program at Lonavla and on the 1st of Jan 2010 he was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant in the Indian Navy.

Almost immediately they had their Stripe wetting ceremony - a Naval tradition that goes back to the time of Lord Nelson when officers of the British Navy sometimes got promoted at sea and got their new stripes on board - these stripes tend to look rather fresh and shiny when laid against their older stripes so other senior officers wet the new promotee's stripes with beer or alcohol to dullen them to match the old stripes! Ofcourse, the ceremony then moves into high gear with a lot of alcohol flowing and people getting rather drunk.

Then next I hear that Ashwin has been asked to be the Staff Officer for the visit of an Admiral to INS Shivaji so he had to head off to Mumbai airport and pick up the top Navy brass and ferry him (sitting properly on his left) to his base.
Thereafter he had to be around the Admiral till he left base. That left Ashwin with almost no time to pack and make his move to Mumbai to meet with his sister and brother-in-law-to-be before he left for Vizag where he would join the Submarine training school.

Come Sunday afternoon and we get a call from Ashwin saying he has reached INS Satavahana in Vizag - he is almost intimidated by the size of everything around - his room is located atop a hill while everything else is at the base of the hill which means he is going to have to go up and down that hill a fair number of times every day. This morning they start their training - it all starts with Escape Training School where the trainees enter a 100' tower filled with water, from the base of the tower and train to reach the top of the tower in as little time as possible! Its all very physical and one can see he is going to have to be 200% fit in order to be able to complete the next one year successfully! Can only wish him good luck and tell him Carpe diem!