Kolkata rediscovered on an Uber ride

Goats strung together and hustled away

Yesterday evening I was going from Dhakuria to Shambazar by Uber. We were a little past Park Circus Maidan when he announced 'Google abhi Convent Road se raasta dikha raha hai'. I was surprised. Circular Road diye jabo na. 'Nahi yeh paanch minute short raasta hai, koi red light nahi hai' bole he drove into a darkish gulli off the main road near Sales tax bahaban. Soon we were on Canal West road passing under a railway bridge behind Sealdah station. The day before on a Sunday we had marvelled how neat and clean the relatively empty streets in Jadavpur and beyond towards Baisnabghata Patuli in deepest South Kolkata  were. Small parks, with benches, smartly coloured railings on pavements , the roads recently swept. But here Beleghata in the middle of the city it was grimy and nothing seemed to be different from the late 70s when my way to school passed this way. I asked the driver 'jaldi hoga is raaste se?' He answered confidently 'Han, abhi kuch din pahle jab Mamta Bannerji ne shahar mein log bhar diya tha maine bis bais trip kiya tha. Google ke bharose. Gali ke raaste se koi jaam nahi.' He assured me. The road meanwhile was getting darker with trucks, thela, rickshaw on one side and line of tottering lean-to shanties on the other. A little past where the road crossed the Narkeldanga Main Road the road was blocked, there was a pandal and some celebration taking place. My driver cursed but was still in good humour. We were directed across a narrow bridge on the khal or canal which was barely wide enough for the car. And there were many motor cycles and some cars too jostling for space so the the passage was slow.
I was not prepared for what I saw on the other side of the canal - on Canal East road. Suddenly we were in the midst of what seemed a mideaval marketplace. The one product sold being goats. There were goats by the thousands all around us. Lots of 8 to 10 goats were strung together on a rope and while one man hauled them another was beating them on the rump. And they banged and rattled against the car all the while bleating hoarsely as they were guided between the cars. Needless to say we were now stuck. The driver jumped off to investigate the jam. He came back a while later announced that there was a truck trying to come from the other side causing the impasse. He somehow managed to turn the car and we ploughed our way back into the goat mandi. On one side of the road the goats were lined up and were being tied in batches. Behind them were bamboo corrals lining the canalThere were also many small trucks which may have brought these goats from villages into the city. On the other side there was a milling crowd and some officious looking men sitting on benches or stools handling chits of paper. They looked like the men managing the transactions. Even inside the closed and air-conditioned car, the smell of goats was becoming overwhelming. As we crawled onto Narkeldanga Main Road, I changed my destination. It was too late and I had to go to Purbasha now. We had hardly gone a few hundred metres towards Phulbagan when the driver swerved into another ill lit narrow street. 'Arre Kya hua, main road se nahi jayenge'. 'Age jam tha Google isi ko short bata raha hai' he announced as he navigated the narrow lanes in Kankurgachi. His confidence still unshaken. Thankfully the path was narrow winding but clear. It took me nearly two hours from Dhakuria to Purbasha and we had followed Google maps the whole way.
(written on Jan 29, 2019)

The Riddle of Rwanda

Last week I was in Rwanda for the International Conference on Family Planning. I had long wished to visit Rwanda, intrigued how a country was coping with a genocide that had killed nearly 1 million people and affected almost everyone. The border police at the immigration counter was very polite, Rwanda has a visa on arrival policy and it did not make getting a visa difficult at all. Travelling on my flight was an Indian skilled labourer who had landed without a visa and without a penny in foreign exchange. I did a bit of translation for him but the immigration officer did not seem to lose his cool at this man who couldn’t understand much English, did not have a visa, did not have a hotel address, did not have any foreign exchange and only waved a letter of invitation to work as a fitter for a Rwandan steel company. Thankfully he had the telephone number of a contact and the immigration officer seemed inclined to make a call on his behalf using his personal phone when I finished my business and moved on.

The Ultra Modern Kigali Convention Centre

Kigali is an unbelievably clean city. There were municipal workers trimming hedges with mechanized trimmers and others following behind sweeping up the cut leaves. The city had a smell of diesel fumes which reminded me of Delhi before CNG was introduced, but that didn’t mean anything else was dirty. Plastic bags had been banned since 2000. The streets had very orderly traffic, though the motorcycle taxis did weave their way in and out to find their way to the head of the traffic at the lights. I did a few trips on these motorcycle taxis and the trips were fun and very cheap compared to the taxi ride – 300 Rwandan franc for a trip which was 7000 by taxi.

On a motorcycle taxi

I was keen to learn how Rwandan society was being built up after the Genocide, and I was little cautious whether I should talk about it with Rwandan colleagues. I approached one colleague cautiously and he was not the least averse to discuss it. He showed us his scar across the back of his neck where he had been hacked by a machete. He was the only survivor in his family and he was seven year old in 1994. Did he have any resentment? How did two people who were involved in so much bloodshed live together now? Our questions were many. He told us that his family home was still next door to the family who killed his family. But now was there no sense of resentment or recrimination? How was that possible we asked? We learnt from him and from our visit to the Genocide memorial next day that Rwanda had adopted a unique Truth and Reconciliation and justice mechanism. And if everyone who was a murderer was in jail, it could mean up to a third of the country would be incarcerated. How could a society afford that? How could a society re-build itself from such a situation?
The solution was a three tiered justice system with the crimes classified into four categories. This was recognizing that even though everyone accused may have been a murderer, their culpabilities were different. The men who had been part of hatching the genocide, planning the process, planting the seeds of hatred were tried at the International Criminal Justice system set up at Arusha, Tanzania, and they received the harshest punishments – up to 35 years imprisonment. Those who were part of the organized hunt and slaughter gangs were tried in local criminal courts and also given somewhat long sentences. Those who went after their neighbours with a machete or an axe were tried by a local council or the gachacha. These men were given an opportunity to confess and seek an apology, and if they did their punishment was primarily community service. If they didn’t, they had a short stint in jail. In order to build a sense of community every last Saturday of the month the entire country observes three hours of community service or Umuganda in which everyone participates.

Trimming the roadside hedges and lawns

The Rwandan efforts of rebuilding their nation and consolidating unity, is supervised with a firm hand by their President of 20 years Paul Kigame. There are police everywhere, directing traffic vigorously in the evening rush hour, watching unobtrusively from below a tree with their automatic weapons cradled in their arms. Our conference venue was bristling with security with a thorough check at the gate and screening of the barcoded identity card at the many doors of the main building. When returning the airport security was the most unique I have witnessed. The car was searched with all passengers and luggage taken off. The luggage went through a canine check, and we had to pass through the routine metal detector. This three part process was a little off-putting.


Rwanda is supposed to have a doubtful human rights regime, with little free speech and strong coercive presence of the government. According to the Humanrights watch report of 2018 there are extra-judicial executions, arbitrary detentions, including for petty crimes, and journalists are harassed. I believe all of it, having seen the somewhat overtly coercive police presence. But at the same time from what people talked of, and from what the data shows there is strong economic growth with improvement in health and educational indicators. Women form more than 50% of the parliament. There are civil society organisations working around health and gender I even met someone who was part of an human rights organization working with prisoners. The idea of social unity and development is very strong with Ministers in charge of districts, and senior government functionaries and leaders belonging to a ‘Unity Club’. The idea of learning from the hate and the genocide comes through very strongly through the Genocide Memorial in Kigali and the few others around the country.  The idea of ‘ubumuntu’ or being human is promoted explicitly and an annual art festival is also organized around this theme.

We paid our respects at the mass graves a the
Kigali Memorial Centre

In today’s world of rising intolerance, zenophobia and fundamentalism, the visit to Kigali was in some senses uplifting, as I think I saw an alternative model of healing together as a community which is embedded in local culture and traditions. It also challenges some of my human rights notions around the importance of civil political rights vs economic social and cultural rights. Does an apology suffice in the case of a ‘murder’? In the longer run will people really ‘forgive’ their neighbours who killed their family? Does strong arm administration have any role in a ‘rights and justice’ system – where some people’s rights to expression may be subsumed under the logic of ‘greater good for greater numbers’? The evidence shows that there is both call for peace, humanity and equity within an authoritarian system. Perhaps this is the best for a society recovering from genocide.

Who am I to judge?
( Written on Nov 20, 2018)

Living Together ( June 2016)

Every time I am in Europe I am struck by the diversity of people and cultures that I see on the streets, on public transport, in the shops and markets. Of course the greatest diversity is in the kinds of restaurants one gets to sample in most big European cities. I have more often than not avoided getting into an Indian restaurant, but that evening both Jashodhara and I were very hungry. We had landed in Lisbon in the afternoon, and after quickly checking into our room went to the old city which was a very interesting place we were told. We had walked around for quite some time, and soon we were very hungry. And we were now in that part of the city without any obvious cafes spread out into the streets. Around a corner I thought I saw an Italian restaurant – we went in to check out – and it turned out to be a hybrid Indian – Italian one. This was our first interaction with such a hybrid outside the subcontinent. In any other condition we would have not gone in, but there was a young South Asian with a disarming smile who welcomed us and in we went. There were big images and idols of Buddha and also of the Dalai Lama everywhere. We were a little confused about the antecedents of the owner, but things became clear when we asked for clarification about an item on the menu. The young man went and fetched a ‘cheat sheet’ which had things written in Bangla and the penny dropped. Here was an Indo-Italian restaurant serving curries and kebabs and pizza and pasta being run by a Bangladeshi in Lisbon. A true global potpourri! But we still hadn’t figured out the Buddha and Dalai Lama influence when the owner came up and introduced himself. He was from among a small and dwindling population of Buddhists from Comilla district in Bangladesh. We who grew up in West Bengal learn of the Buddhist Pal dynasty which had ruled Bengal in the past, but this for me was the first encounter with a Buddhist Bengali and that too in a distant land. 

Some more dots got connected in the mind with the recent string of hate crimes in Bangladesh, one which had even included a Buddhist monk. The Bangladeshi interaction in Lisbon continued through the next hours in Lisbon as we dropped into souvenir shop and then a mini-market, both run by Bangladeshis. Needless to say we were given small discounts in all these shops without even asking for it.

The next leg of our journey was to Faial – a small island in the middle of the Atlantic, belonging to the Autonomous Region of Azores. Here the South Asian influence, both among tourists and residents was not surprisingly very low. The town of Horta was small and very laid back, with a marina brimming with small boats. The once whaling centre is now a refuelling point between the eastern coast of the American continent and the western coast of Europe, and a port of call for people sailing between the Caribbean, or the Bahamas or the US and European countries. The walls around the marina were covered with small rectangular drawings marking the different boats and their voyages. Everyone 

in Horta seemed to be involved in the ‘sea’ business, and Diya appeared to know every third person on the streets, more so in the neighbourhood of Porto Pim which was to one corner and had a small cove and a beach. This is where Diya was sharing a small house with three other researchers from DOP, or the Department of Fisheries of the University of Azores. Her house mates were young researchers from Italy, Greece and Spain. The MSc programme that Diya was doing EMBC+, was designed with diversity in mind. Coordinated by the University of Ghent in Belgium it includes other universities in Spain, France, Sweden, Portugal and Ireland. Not surprisingly the students are from a diverse background and the course itself requires them to move from one university to another selecting preferred courses and ecologies.

After five days in the sunny Azores I went to Sweden to attend a ‘business’ meeting.
We were participants from all across the globe, which was not surprising because it was a meeting of a global network. There were more Europeans than from the other continents, but too was not surprising because we were in Europe. The venue for our meeting was a ‘folk school’ in a secluded village not far from Stockholm. I say secluded because the school campus, though just an hour out of Stockholm was surrounded by forests and a lake, and did not have internet connection beyond the main administrative building. Our rooms were the school boarding dorms which had just been vacated as the students had left for their summer vacations. But this school was different. Along with the students lived some ‘Friends’. These ‘Friends’ were differently abled people who lived in small cottages with their care-givers. We had occasion to interact with some of these ‘Friends’ who were perfectly competent to share their thoughts and emotions with us, communicating through tapping on an alphabet chart, which was then conveyed to us by their care-givers. What they said was not only eloquent but also very poignant – pithy and spiritual at the same time. One of them had also written had written a book of poetry. The students who came to this ‘folk school’ I am sure learnt many important lessons about life, living with ‘Friends’.

Sweden has special provisions for people who are differently able or physically or mentally challenged. The municipality in which such a person is born is tasked with the responsibility for providing support. Earlier the focus was more on institutional care, but now specially trained care givers come home to provide the necessary support. This allows the person to live an emotionally adjusted live close to their family. I wondered about the needs of care giving for such persons in India. In most cases such people are considered a ‘burden’, in many cases hidden from others because having such a family member is stigmatising. Whatever care is possible and provided, is completely a matter of private means and desire. Sweden is of course a much richer country, and can afford to provide such universal social security but also respect the human rights of all its citizens. But I wonder whether as a civilisation, caring for such special people, is just an economic decision or does it signify something more moral about our responsibility towards others. And are we in India not losing out on this even though our economic growth is currently unparalleled. I wonder how many parents in India, who send their children to private schools would send them to a school like the one I visited. I feel much richer even from that very short visit.

The big international story of the period I was Europe was Brexit. England voted to get out of the EU. Many other separatist voices have become louder in the other countries of the European Union. This is a complete antithesis to the more amalgamated diversity that I have been extolling here. Xenophobia is making a big come back all around the world. Not so long ago there were the Paris bombings and the response to such incidents and the Syrian refugees had put a strain on the Union. In the US the presidential candidate is promising to build a wall with Mexico and getting the Mexicans to pay for it, while in India Chief Ministers are rustling up their own budgets to do the same. South Asians from across the Indian borders in the West or the East, speaking the same language, sharing the same histories, are happy to continue their differences, even after relinquishing their passports and submitting to a new culture in Europe or in the US. Religion and ethnicity are become increasingly divisive in world globalised through a common economic order and domestic strife. The reasons may seem different but the malaise seems to be the same, and is probably assuming epidemic proportions.

I am an optimist and I strongly believe in change through endeavour. I cannot end without sharing two powerful images from two other cities that we visited during this European sojourn. Jashodhara, Diya and I regrouped in Amsterdam before we made our way to Ghent to attend Diya’s thesis presentation and graduation. We went to the Amsterdam city Centre for the evening and it became very late as we walked by the ‘graacht’ under the slowly darkening summer sky. It was past 11 when we boarded the tram at Centraal Station to back to go where we were staying. The tram came on time and we paid our fare to the woman tram driver smartly carrying her hijab like any male cab driver or pilot would his peaked cap. It was nearly midnight as the tram went off into the night, a confident woman driver taking her passengers home, a sight I dare say I would not have witnessed in her home country. The second image is from Ghent, which seems much less ‘touristic’ but is no less culturally/ethnically diverse. It has a large international student population, but what struck me has been an image I saw from the 4th floor balcony of the flat we were staying. There is a school next door, and we had been waking up to the sound of the school getting down to business every day. Today in afternoon I saw children from different backgrounds playing together, completely engrossed in the present. A group of boys running behind a ball, no obvious team formation in sight. 

Three girls taking turns in hopping across a rope which two of them twirled swung round and round. These were children sharing a common present through a public school system. I hope they will learn more about each other – the European, the African, the East Asian and the South Asian, than we do in India through our private schooling system where we hardly encounter the ‘other’ and the ‘different’.

When we grew up – I hardly remember there being a Muslim boy in my class in school or those who we say belong to the Scheduled Castes and Tribes. I came across the SC/ST students in college because there was reservation. There was some resentment then, there is much more resentment now among the so called ‘general’ category because they see ‘their’ seats getting usurped by the ‘undeserving’. In a class of 150 students, I can recall just two Muslim students, even though the Muslim are nearly one quarter of West Bengal’s populations. And I don’t see these things changing, not from the economic changes that have swept across the country, and nor from the political changes. And the deeply entrenched inequality in our country will not let the technological revolution bridge these divides.

I know Europe has a bloody history – a history that saw it colonising the rest of the world, a history of domination and bloodshed and of the holocaust that extended till not so long ago. But through its ravaging rapacious acts the many countries of Europe have also brought the rest of the world much closer to their own shores. Many people of many colours and faiths now try to find a new future here. Perhaps their children will show us a new way to live together.

Footloose in Budapest

The iconic river Danube is central to Budapest’s identity and it runs right through the centre of the city dividing it into two parts, Buda and Pest, which were actually two cities united to create Budapest in the 1873. The most imposing structure by the river is the Buda castle which dominates the river front, especially if you are on the Pest side. The river is full of life, especially tour boats going up and down the river with tourists enjoying the view of the magnificent buildings on the riverside. It was summer and the peak tourist season, and there were the larger cruise boats with cabins and decks which took tourists on a longer tour on the river. The most imposing building on the Pest side of the river is undoubtedly the Parliament building. It is best viewed from the other side, because walking below it and taking the grand sweep gives you a crick in the neck. On the river bank, close to the Parliament building is an iconic installation of Shoes on the Danube. This installation of 60 pairs of metal shoes of different sizes put up in 2005 is a memorial to the victims who were shot into the Danube by the Nazis in 1944 -45. It’s a reminder of the excesses that we humans are capable of, and a lesson that we still haven’t learnt.  

On either side of the Danube is the heart of the tourist district, lined with statues, walkways and cafes. The Pest side is of course is more lively as it is flat, has more shops and markets, while the other side has the Buda palace perched upon a hill. The hillside is now an open park and a climb up to the palace is gentle though there is a funicular railway for those who are so inclined. The palace has extensive gardens and walkways littered with statues and other objects d’arts. The view of Pest from the gardens is spectacular with the St Isteban Basilica and the Parliament buildings being the most noteworthy.

Europe is currently in the grips of a refugee crisis and Hungary is right in the middle of it as a stream of refugees from Syria and other places are travelling through the country to reach Germany. When I was Budapest the flood of refugees hadn’t started, but there were many signs of a troubled past – not so long ago. Last year the Government had built a monument to mark the occupation of Hungary by Nazi Germany. Unfortunately this didn’t go down to well by the citizens, who saw it as an effort to rewrite history. Hungary was a collaborator, and not a victim of the Nazi’s and thousands of Jews had been sent off to the concentration camps. This was a history the people didn’t want the Government to forget, and so they had started their own installation of every day bric a brac and mementos of those times around the Government monument and had stopped it from being officially inaugurated.

This was my second visit Budapest, and unlike the last I had a little more time to explore the city. I visited the Jewish quarters, home today to one of the largest synagogues in Europe. The Nazis had walled in the entire area, and over 70,000 people lived in the Budapest ghetto. Some of the building still bore the bullet marks of the firing so many years ago. I felt a distinct chill as I walked down those streets. Behind the Synagogue was a modern monument – the Garden of Justice with the sculpture of a large tree with small silver leaves. Each leaf bore the name of one victim of the Holocaust and the trunk bore the names of others who supported them. Clearly Budapest was a city which was still coming to terms with its past.

Another place I had to go this time was the Varosliget or the City Park where I was told were a number of historical monuments and palaces. My hotel was next to the St Isteban Cathedral and right behind it started the grand Andrassy Ut (or Avenue), which went straight up to Varosliget. Andrassy Ut was a broad avenue with a grand history, and stately buildings on both sides. Seeing a Metro station at the corner I went down. The Budapest metro was quite unlike anything I had seen before. Everything was on a smaller and a more intimate scale. The wood panelled stations, the yellow toy-trains, with compartments of 16 seats looked quaint. I later learnt that it was the oldest underground railway of continental Europe and had been built specifically to take people to the Varosliget without disturbing the stately Andrassy Ut.  Four stations later I got off at Hosok Tere ( Heroes Square) and walked the short distance to the Millennium Emlekmu (Monument). The City Park, the Andrassy Ut and the underground railway were all part of the Millennium celebrations in 1896.

While the Millennium Monument in the Hosok Tere was the grand centre-piece, scattered all around were a number of museums, a castles, the zoo and the Szechenyi Medicinal Baths. All these monuments were built around the celebration of the Millennium Exhibition celebrating a thousand years of   Magyar conquest of the Carpathian basin leading to the establishing of a Hungarian nation. The monument consists of a central cenotaph with two arrays of statues on either side depicting Magyar chiefs on the one side and Saints who are revered in Hungary on the other. From what I could make out that the Millennium celebration was a grand affair within the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and it seems that the countries and cities of Europe and USA of those times were trying to outdo each other in grand celebrations. Paris had its own Exposition in 1889, celebrating a hundred years of the Fall of Bastille, with the construction of the Eiffel Tower. Like the Eiffel Tower the Heroes Square continues to be mega a tourist attraction, though Europe of today is probably much chastened after its colonial excesses and brutal World Wars.       

I didn’t have much time as I was leaving in the afternoon, so I rushed to the Vajdahunyad castle which was right behind. It is a copy of different historical styles including a Transylvanian castle. It was originally made of cardboard and wood it is reconstructed with brick, and today houses the Museum of Agriculture. I was keen on visiting this castle because I had read an announcement that there would be free folk music concert here at 10.30. When I walked into the castle I was disappointed because there seemed to be no arrangements for a concert, and no keen audience either. I was studying the carving on the door of a Chapel when I suddenly heard the sound of bagpipe. Turning around I saw a long haired man walking in the compound playing his bagpipe which seemed to be made from the leather of one whole sheep or similar sized animal. The interest of the visitors was piqued and as he walked into the museum building a folk band started playing from one of the castle galleries. We stood around below the gallery enjoying the music, but I didn’t have much time on hand I left after a while.

I was not prepared for what I saw next. Right outside the castle, on the lawns of the City Park, an open air exhibition and stage was a Hare Krishna event. On the stage a woman was dancing to the rhythm of a mridangam, and ranged around were stalls selling books, music and clothes. All the devotees were Caucasian. I had seen the Hare Krishna devotees in many places in the US and the UK but I hadn’t thought that the movement started by a Bengali from Kolkata Abhay Charan De (subsequently Swami Prabhupada) had spread so far and wide. While our current ruling party is worrying about battling cultural invasion from the west, I wonder what they feel proud of this Indian religious movement that seems to have a visible global following. Something tells me that it may not be the case because the Hare Krishna devotees seem very passive and gentle when compared to the Bajarangi bhais.

My next destination was the Szechenyi Medicinal Baths, famed to be the largest public medicinal bath in the world. The building housing the bath was so grand (like most Budapest buildings) that for a minute I couldn’t believe that these were indeed public facilities. Unlike the image of public swimming pools that I have in my mind- the building was more like a palace or a concert hall – very ornate and completely covered. I walked in with trepidation – the foyer was truly like that of a palace, with elaborate statues and carving. But there were two ticket windows discreetly placed on either side of the semi circular space. People had come with their small backpacks and were buying tickets the very reasonably priced tickets. I looked at my watch – I simply didn’t have the time to take dip. Resolving that I must come back again I rushed out and went down to the Metro station right outside, a little anxious that I would make the taxi which was to take me to the airport wait.

Here is a short film of this trip     

Diasporic Connect

Our Prime Minister has just returned from another international tour – this time around the islands in the Indian Ocean – including Mauritius and Madagascar that have a strong diasporic presence. In fact the diaspora has been a matter of great concern for our PM. His visit to the US included a film star like appearance at the Madison Square Gardens in New York City. Following this he soon changed the rules for the PIO programme making it initially a life time validity programme, and then merging it with the OCI programme, granting all PIO automatic quasi-citizenship status. Clearly the diasporic Indian is very important in the scheme of things especially at this point in time. According to recent estimates over 2 million people of Indian origin live in the US and about 1.4 million in the UK. Even though the numbers are high they are miniscule. However their friendships and opinion counts high, at least for the Indian Government.

I have recently made two visits to the UK and the US and during this period met with some of the diaspora. Indeed I know many. Many among my friends and family opted to go and live outside India, an option thousands of Indians seek even today. For the first time in years I took time out to meet old friends. I was very warmly welcomed and felt very comfortable. With some friends one could carry on the conversation as if you were meeting them only after a few days and not a few decades. Old memories became vivid through their retelling after many years. The food too was familiar just like the conversation. Just the vistas were different. It was no longer College Street or Esplanade in Kolkata. And I think I will continue to seek and meet old friends as my work takes me around the world.

However I doubt that the reasons I felt nice and warm with old friends and family are the same reasons for which the Indian government seeks their friendship. These are the same people who left India for better employment opportunities in mills and factories as the industrialisation rebooted in UK after the Second World War. They also include the crème de la crème who left as part of the brain-drain, after receiving subsidised education in the IITs or Medical Colleges. A recent newspaper report said that the majority of H1B visas would benefit India and the 60,000 or more places would be filled within a few days. Clearly the thirst to go to the US is still far from over. In the US I was told that the waiting time for getting a green card was about 8 years for an Indian. Regretfully I was told, the quotas are the same for all countries, and more Indians seemed to be applying than anyone else. Migration to the UK saw its heydays in the 1950’s and 60’s when due to labour shortages England actively encouraged migration from its colonies as a result of which there are more sub-Continental foodstuff available under one supermarket rood in Manchester or Birmingham than anywhere in the sub-Continent.  

While the living conditions, including the food available at the local supermarket, are better in the UK and the USA, I wonder whether it was that alone that drew the millions who left India under different conditions at different points in time. They must have seen problems in their past lives in India, and probably the Government would like to consider their opinion and support to correct those specific issues. Consider for example the doctor of Indian origin in the UK. Such a doctor practices rational medicine, doesn’t know what cut practice is, attends regular and ongoing training even when she or he is a consultant and gets their practice audited and doesn’t drink and drive. These doctors would serve as excellent role models for Indian doctors who have been known to call for revision of the still to be implemented Clinical Establishment Act calling it too restrictive. However even though I am familiar with health policy makers, I don’t know of any such plan to engage the diasporic doctor, and we seem to be taking our healthcare related advice from other sources.

One area where the NRI appears to be contributing economically is in inward remittances. According to estimates India is the world’s largest receiver of inward remittances and is upward of 70 billion US dollars and exceeded the total FDI in 2012-13 by a large margin. However the remittances are highest from West Asia and probably from the skilled and unskilled migrant worker rather than from the settled white collar person of Indian origin. I am not sure our PM has too much of an interest in the interest and opinion of such a person about India.

One thing that has always struck me is the Indian-ness of the Indian diaspora. Most if not all their friends are Indians, they celebrate Indian festivals with great gusto, they are also familiar with the Bollywood gossip.  They care deeply about India and being Indian, and above all they have strong opinions about what is wrong with India. I don’t grudge them their opinion, after all it was strong enough for them to leave. Many of these people however now think our PM will be deliver the goods, make India into a better place. I have however not been able to clearly understand what this actually means. India has corruption, but the current government is not the one which has sung any different tune on this issue. India is crowded and dirty, correction, Indian cities are crowded. I know villages in UP which are getting emptied as people move out in search of livelihoods.

The Indian education system sucks. Yes the public educational system is getting progressively eroded due to lack of investment, the best minds are out of the country and because people in positions of power never send their children to these institutions. But even then a few excellent schools, colleges and universities exist, those from which many of the diaspora graduated. The same works for the public health system which has contributed a large number of doctors to the NHS in England and to the health system in the US. Today it is increasingly becoming a second class health system, and an option only for the poor, as the corporate hospitals are luring patients and profit through practices which in any other profession would be called racketeering.

My cousin who has left India over 30 years ago said to me recently that we Indians in the US are stuck in the same day we arrived. She was very wise. The diasporic Indian’s imagination of India remains frozen in time while India itself moves on. Many things that were out of kilter 15, 20 or 25 years ago remain out of kilter today, but many things have changed as well. For one the very idea of ‘imported’ has disappeared with all things foreign jostling on the shelves alongside their desi counterpart, both having been probably manufactured in China.

Historically migration has been one of the strongest economic and cultural influences anywhere. What the Indian government may not fully appreciate is that the influence is stronger in the country of immigration, thus intrinsically India does not stand to benefit much from this community. India itself is a result of human movements over the millennia. It may sound bizarre now but the north west frontiers of  Ashoka’s Buddhist kingdom which less than a hundred years earlier was the site of the showdown with Alexander the Great, is today in Afghanistan. No wonder the Taliban did not appreciate the Bamian Buddhas, and the Gandhara school Buddha figurines do not probably represent a person from the Terai region of UP. Similarly the historical Taxila University ruins lie close to Peshawar. However to disabuse any friend who would use such evidence to build a larger pan ‘Hindu’ legacy of Akhand Bharat I would like to point out that these are Buddhist examples. Moving a few centuries we find that the delectable Biriyani may have travelled from Persia to Delhi, Lucknow, Hyderabad and Kolkata or that it came from the steppes of today’s Kazakistan. India, many say is the result of successive waves of in-migration both across the Himalayas as well as from the sea. And then there are the many indigenous people who often get missed when we count Indians.

People from India too have moved out over the ages. Examples from South East Asia abound with Hinduism and Buddhism being strong influences across the region. European Roma people are also said to have moved out of India about a thousand years ago. And then there were British indentured labour ( girmitiya) distribution which took place between 1830’s and 1920’s and transported 3.5 million Indians across the world from Mauritius to the West Indies. Clearly movement of people both into and out of India is part of our history and heritage. But that historical India is no more, and the contemporary geo-political India was born on August 15, 1947. It was not, at least in my mind, the most auspicious birth.        

Clearly our PM has a vision for the Indian diaspora, and having seen him have one I too have the glimmer of one such image shaping up in my mind. While a person of Indian origin rooting for an imagined India in the global North, does boost the global image of India, I think the diasporic Indian can do much more.

My first call to the diasporic India is to re-imagine India. India is much more beyond the political boundaries that were defined in 1947. I find it difficult to reconcile with a situation where the Bengali speaker of Indian calls the Bengali speaker of Bangladeshi origin Bangladeshi and not Bengali when both hold a US or British passport. I think it is a tragedy that we hold our linguistic identities high in India, and our nationalist identities high when outside. A large problem in India and this holds true for most of the other South Asian nations as well, is that we tend to define ourselves by excluding part of our own past. Thus as an Indian of Bengali speaking origin, I am alienated from Chittagong district in what is now Bangladesh where my grandfather grew up. It is only as an adult that I learnt that the many familiar place names I grew up hearing of, were actually not in West Bengal but in a foreign land. Worse still is the religious identity, which has now become a ‘normative’ Hindu for the Indian passport holder. As a Bengali speaker I find it hard explain to other Indian Bengali speakers that there are many more Muslim Bengali speakers in the world. First I call on the diasporic Indian to imagine the diversity of India rather than the nationality of India.

I agree with most diasporic Indians that much is not right in what we could call the re-imagined India. I also believe that that disengagement of the ‘capable class’ with the local political processes has much to do with the current situation. Today the diasporic Indian is expected to have no interest in the political processes, since they are not an immediate stakeholder. Also their own response when they were direct stakeholders, was not one of engagement but withdrawal. So I would request them to stay disengaged with the direct politics. However they should engage with the social and economic processes of their re-imagined India. In most cases the diasporic Indian has benefitted from the atmosphere of opportunity provided in the new country. While they may have suffered from some xenophobia, they must also realise that their own efforts and opportunities available outweighed the constraints. I ask the diasporic Indian to introspect both on their efforts and opportunities which helped them survive if not flourish in a new land. Armed with this insight of a new value system, I call the diasporic Indian to support the creation of such opportunities for the not so privileged back at home. It would a reversal of the brain drain, when we have our diasporic cousins supporting us for developing innovative solutions for deeply entrenched and hierarchical systems which constrain the growth and opportunities for the underprivileged including women, here in India. I know of people who have done it, but not enough.

The home country person always looks in awe at the migrant. They have new stories, new encounters in a new land. The migrant on the other hand while appearing suave and ‘on top of it’ is often struggling to balance their own identity with the culture shock of coming to a new world. Increasingly Bollywood films are gathering more and more money in their foreign territories as the diasporic Indian uses it to affirm their own identity. I ask the diasporic Indian to not use Indian film or television shows as form of second hand cultural affirmation and seek their own experience of diversity in their realities. I don’t mean that they should disavow Indian art and culture, but it should be a part of a multicultural experience that their current lives are. I call such diasporic Indians to come and share with us their stories of integration and diversity. As a country and as a people we need to know that the world outside is beautifully multi coloured and multi-cultural and not get drawn by monolithic imaginations of stunted and short-sighted leaders.  

Andamans - Tropical Paradise

Last week we went to the Andamans. Our daughter Diya was joining the masters course in Marine Biology of the Pondicherry University which is offered from its campus in Port Blair. We went there for the ostensible purpose of settling her in, but more importantly we wanted to see a new and exotic place, and spend some time together. We also wanted to make up for the very little parenting that we had done during the last two years while she had roamed about the cities and beaches of Southern India, familiarising herself with the discipline and relevant researchers.

Sea, volcanic rocks on the coast line and swaying palms

We left for Port Blair, with little idea of what to expect.  While shopping to equip Diya for her stay there we had pondered about what to get and what one could safely assume would be available there. Was there a Bata shop there in Port Blair? Better not take chances, and Diya bought the pair of sneakers she wanted in Delhi itself. Would there be ATMs, or a branch of Union Bank, where we banked? We took the chance and went with our plastic money and cheque book hoping that the upgrading of banking systems around the country allow us to withdraw money locally to make the necessary deposits and payments related to her admission.

 As the plane descended from the clouds the sea and islands became visible. Diya started taking pictures of the dark islands ringed with a deep aquamarine blue. I tried to match what I saw with my mental picture of the Maldives as I had visited Male some years ago. As we came closer and came thundering to a halt on the runway I realised the picture was entirely different. Male is tiny – there was no space on the island for the airport, which was on a neighbouring island and the runway seemed to dip into the sea. Here it didn’t seem like an island at all with building nestling among what appeared to be coconut palms all around.  The terrain was thickly forested and hilly. The arrival section of the airport was small but well appointed with a very efficient prepaid taxi service and soon we were settled in our suite in a guest house.

Dwarfed by the huge trees with buttress roots

Over the next four days we slowly got acquainted with Port Blair and its surroundings and fell in love with the place. The South Andaman island on which Port Blair is situated, is a large landmass, and you when you can’t see the sea, the sense we got was that we were in the hills – not in the Himalayas but probably in the north east. The vegetation was so luxuriously thick and green - with the trees tall and stately and a layered under growth of a profusion of bushes and climbers. However you are hardly ever very far from a view of the sea or of water flowing down a creek to the sea. We took a thirty kilometre drive to the southern-most point of the island – chidiya tapu and the road wound through hills and went past the shoreline and we passed many small clusters of houses and shops with quaint names like Burmanala and Rangachang.

Port Blair has sea all around, but let that not fool anyone that there are beaches everywhere as well. The city has a tiny beach called Corvyn’s Cove and we drove past it on our way to the Chidiya Tapu, which is one of the few beaches on the island. This is because the islands are volcanic and what we could make out was that sandy beaches were only found where the coast line curved in to create sheltered, tucked in spots. The Chidiya tapu beach is not big or long as beaches go, but has an interesting character.  First the approach to the beach is by crossing a hilly ridge covered with thick forests. The beach is closed in and guarded and is ringed by thick forest. There are many large trees lying uprooted on the sand like giant sculpture. We had the beach to ourselves and our marine biologist daughter was exploring a creek when she suddenly shouted out – ‘here is a board saying way to view point’.  The board was nearly hidden, but following the way it  pointed we started climbing up the hill through a thick forest. It was magical. There was birdsong all around, but the forest was so thick that I couldn’t identify the birds at all. There were some parakeets, and drongos and swifts were flying higher up. I recalled my conversation with our driver a little while ago. I had asked him about the chidiya of chidiya tapu, and he had smiled and informed me – no birds, only beach and sunset view. Clearly the birds didn’t figure on the average tourists agenda. Unfortunately we had to come back before reaching the ‘viewpoint’ because it was getting close to 5pm, when the guards had informed us that the beach would close.

Closely examining a nautilus washed up on the Chidiya Tapu beach

We felt that it would be a pity to leave Andamans without a true beach experience. To visit the famed beaches of the Andamans, we were told one needs to go to Havelock island which is a three hour ferry ride away. Not having enough time for tourism we decided to give it a miss this time. Instead we decided to go to the North Bay beach which was close-by a mere 45 minutes by boat. The trip included a possibility of seeing corals through the glass bottom boat or snorkelling. We immediately thought it would be similar to a day trip we had taken from Pattaya (in Thailand) to a coral island a couple of years ago. We were very disappointed at first. North Bay beach is not on an island, just further up north along the coast. It didn’t have a golden or

Watching across the waters near Chidiya Tapu

white sandy beach like we had imagined. Instead we got off from the boat onto a coral encrusted fringe of land which was fenced from the sea. We paid a 10 rupee ticket to get onto the tiny beach which was ringed with shops selling beachwear, food and shell based trinkets. There was no beach to loll on, and the overall atmosphere didn’t seem welcoming or relaxing at all. Diya had encouraged us to take the snorkelling trip – the price was a little steep we thought at 500 rupees per person. We were so glad that we did – it made our day. I had some initial difficulty breathing through my mouth with my head under water. But soon we were led a little further into the sea and we could see the corals underneath. Then we saw the multicoloured fishes – the smaller clown fish and the damsel fish, the much larger parrot fishes and the drab groupers. It was an out of the world experience, but soon it was over. Having spent time in the water, we felt that we would continue to swim and we did. Like with all tours soon our guide started calling us. We got out but before leaving we felt we must have some fried fish. Keeping our guide waiting we asked one of the shops to quickly fry us a medium sized ‘pomfret’. We enjoyed a delicious snack on our way back to Port Blair while getting thoroughly drenched as the rain blew in through the open window and we were strictly told not to move to the other side for fear of upsetting the ferry.

Landing at North Bay beach - no sand on this beach

An island sojourn is incomplete without seafood and there was no way we would let that happen here. Close to where we were staying was the New Lighthouse Restaurant, an open air restaurant and beer bar run by the city municipality. It was right next to the Rajiv Gandhi water sport complex and jetty. The surroundings are pretty, but the restaurant itself is very ordinary in its get up. We made friends with the Bengali wait staff and so the service we received was excellent. They had glass aquaria close to the open kitchen which had live crabs and prawns and lobsters of different sizes laid out on ice. Diya opted for a crab curry and Montuli wanted prawns cooked in coconut milk Kerala style. The food was delicious though the crab curry was a little spicy. We  had two more meals here before Diya said that we should explore more places. Using the very slow internet connection on our smartphone she found out about a restaurant called Mandalay and an auto driver agreed to take us there. Mandalay we discovered was the restaurant of the Fortune Bay Resort hotel, among the poshest hotels in town. The open air dining area  overlooked the sea  with the lighthouse on the seashore across the water. They say this is the view on the twenty rupee note – and it turned out to be true, but one never notices these things. We had prawns once again, this time cooked with crushed pepper, and tuna cooked in a spicy coconut milk sauce. The food was excellent while the prices were comparable to that at the New Lighthouse restaurant, while the ambience was infinitely better.

Cellular Jai

The town of Port Blair is small, but much larger than what we expected. It is like a hill town with an undulating terrain. Unlike most Indian towns the houses are not crowded together and it does not appear claustrophic. The town was very clean and the traffic seemed orderly with traffic policewomen at most crossings. The city has busses and auto rickshaws and there is was an unhurried air in the city. Coming from the unruly crowds and chaotic traffic of Delhi, it seem idyllic. Women were everywhere. Many shops in Aberdeen Bazar, the main market place, had women as shop attendants, some had women in charge. It was interesting to see that a large hardware and vehicle spare parts shop was also managed by women. Probably the city is less pretty when there are more tourists, and when it doesn’t rain so much. The rainfall was spectacular, and it rained every day we were there. However it was dry much of the time. But when it rained, it poured. Our room had a tin roof and had sound damping ceiling under it. When it rained, we could hardly hear each other speak. From the windows it seemed that a vertical wall of water was coming down. Half an hour or forty five minutes later it would be over. The roads were slick, but there was no water-logging the water had all flowed down the hill. Water is a part of life in Port Blair and the residents seem adjusted to it.

View from an upper corridor in the jail

No description of Port Blair is complete without a reference to the Cellular jail. In fact as children growing up in Kolkata, it was the first thing we learnt about the Andamans. The many stories of Bengali patriots who had been incarcerated there, had made the Cellular jail both a source of horror and awe. The jail comprising of over 800 individual cells or single rooms was originally in the form of a seven armed star radiating from a central watch pillar. It reminded me of the concept of ‘panopticon’ described by Jeremy Bentham – a prison where the inmates are constantly under watch. Today three of the arms remain while the rest have made way for the GB Pant Hospital campus. We saw the sound and light show in the evening and visited the jail premises now converted into a museum during the day. The story of the Andaman Cellular jail and the life of its inmates is a story of youth struggling against oppression, and of unbelievable cruelty of man on man. In some ways it reminded me of the inspiring Apartheid and Liliesleaf museums in Johanesburg

However this is not a well-known story even though it is not from so long ago – the jail was closed in the 30’s barely 70 years ago.  The Cellular Jail was commissioned in 1903 and the centenary celebrated in 2003 -04. It was the time of the BJP led NDA rule in India, and that perhaps explains why Vinayak Damodar Savarkar gets undue importance

Jail Museum

and mention in the museum. The jail museum also provides an insight into the armed struggle that was part of the independence movement.  Unfortunately this aspect of our freedom movement has been airbrushed by the moral high ground of the non-violent struggles championed by Mohandas Gandhi. While going through the story of the jail and its valiant inmates I was able to understand and sympathise with the use of religious and cultural identity by some of the inmates to mark their struggle against the colonial oppressors. There was concurrent story of solidarity between Indian patriots of different religions who came together for a number of strikes against the atrocities committed against them in this jail. Unfortunately today many of our politicians, following Savarkar’s lead still use religion to mark their political identity and a tradition used to mark struggle in Andaman today divides Indian citizens like nothing else.

Diya’s classes started on the 15^th of July, and so we were ready to return to mainland India and  to our work life. We are glad that Diya will spend the next two years in Port Blair, giving us reason to return and continue our interrupted love affair.

A Spurious Relationship

Every time there is a discussion on a sustainable development or on environmental issues a discussion on population becomes inevitable. It would appear that these two issues are joined at the hip, at least in India. While the world debates environmental issues in far-off Rio, on the occasion of the twentieth year of the Earth Summit, citizen’s of Delhi are reeling from a very hot summer with huge shortages of electricity and water. This makes for a classic case for applying the environment – population logic with climate change neatly tied into the argument. The middle-class denizen of Delhi can additionally fume about the daily increments to the 20 million or more people already in the city, complaining of crowds, price-rise and population in the same breath. Population it may thus appear is the one BIG problem which leads to many of our middle-class woes.    

India’s population is now over 1.2 billion and growing. Most would argue that alone should qualify as a big problem. While the first statement is true, it does not provide the whole picture. Imagine driving very fast on a highway when you see an errant driver coming from the other side. You brake, the tyres screech, and you avoid hitting the other person, and coming out you see that your tyre marks are there for over 200 meters on the stretch of road. It is the same with India’s population- it is in that phase when the brakes are applied and still the car keeps moving! You see it growing while the brakes are securely applied. India’s population growth is decelerating rapidly – however it is still moving and we cannot see the tyre marks. There are two other points that we who live in urban area miss when we complain about growing crowds.

A city like Delhi is growing rapidly, but it does not grow because of high birth rates – it grows due to high immigration rates. And while the youth of middle class India seeks fresher pastures abroad those of the rural hinterland come to Delhi. Today many villages comprise mostly of children, women and old people, and the population there is rapidly dwindling.

For every long term resident in Delhi family the ‘shaadi’ season is full of competing invitations , a sign that India is country of young people. Now these young people are getting married and also reproducing. These couples have small families but since there are many more couples now, compared to earlier times and school admissions are increasing becoming difficult.

This brings me to the issue of shortages – seats in schools or colleges or space for parking our cars or to electricity and water. The most persuasive argument seems to be that if there were fewer people to ask for these services then the problem would be solved. Presto the problem is in the number of people! Let me provide a different way of looking at the same problem. Do all 20 million Delhi-wallas consume electricity, water, parking space or nursery school seats equally? Do all have cars, or refrigerators, or dream of sending their children to the neighbourhood private school. The issue here is partly due to our rising aspirations, and partly poor planning. Countries with greater per capita consumption of electricity or of cars seem to be managing better.

India is going through rapid socio-economic transformations, and this is leading to changes in our population structure, its aspirations and ability to spend and consume and I believe its ability to understand the complexities that these changes bring about. I am sure we will understand that the ‘population problem’ is more a result of applying old ways of thinking to new realities. I am also sure we will realise that for sustainable environmental planning the rates of consumption matter most. I know we will also understand the true relationship between environment and population and will become conscious about our own aspirations and consumption patterns, before blaming the poor who appear to crowd our streets having nowhere else to go.