Job hunts are great …after you have worked the job hunt and miscellaneous nick-nacks, the rest of the day is all yours. You are free to explore areas you never would have!!My days have stitched into them a series of walks!! There is the walk through Chembur, the walk to Telecom Factory. Best of all is the cross-over from Govandi(West) to Govandi(East)!!

Govandi (West) is this forgotten and often ignored quarter of Mumbai. More ignored than forgotten, it has to rank among the filthiest (not to be confused with poorest, the people here have more money/happiness than you think) parts of Mumbai. Open, overflowing drains and kids shitting on the sides of the roads are standard. Development is encroaching quickly, the realtors are now politically & systematically moving in. As the Eastern corridor is readied, expect the construction / redevelopment activity to spike. The transformation here should beat most of the suburbs of Mumbai that went from first gear to fifth with nothing in between.

The ride to Govandi Station on the western side is an overcrowded road teeming with hawkers of all sorts and rickshaws jostling with pedestrians for space. The approach to the station from the road can be described as a gangway at best. No more than 6 feet across, jammed on both sides with shops. It is about 150 feet long, wet most of the year, if not rain then overflowing ‘moreys’ from a series of eateries. In my mind it is busy for most of the ticks of the day.

At the entrance of the gangway is a restaurant selling savories, there are samosas and pakodas, not to mention jalebies and rasgollas! Adjacent to it is a country liquor den, a filthy curtain acting as a doorway to its dingy interiors. On the right you have a couple of mobile accessory outlets and a shop selling artificial jewellery.

A few feet further to the left is another shop selling meat based savouries and opposite are couple of illegal picture shows. The poster outside says ‘ Ek Tha Tiger ‘ in addition to a couple of Bhojpuri picture posters that boast skimpily clad buxom women purportedly gyrating to item numbers.

At the end of the western gangway are 3 completely worn down to the brick steps that lead up to the North-bound station platform. The moment you hit the platform, there is an overhead bridge to the left. Until very recently, people could walk across the tracks, however the railways in their safety drive to prevent persons crossing the tracks have blocked all such paths and instead built these over-bridges. There is one, at either end of the platform.

This southern end bridge sets down in the middle of existing tenements. The gangway now continues on the Eastern side! Diagonally opposite to the bridge exit is a mutton shop and it is normal to see a goat in the process of being hallaled!! The blood just flows away into the drain beside it. The flow pattern reminds me of ‘Psycho ‘! There are fish & chicken hawkers beside this shop, the smells and sights here are interesting & overpowering, that’s putting it mildly!!

A U turn and short walk later you once again walk past another country liquor bar. I am sure this is a 24/7 bar as I have never seen it closed! I have witnessed it open at 0700hrs!! Investigations reveal this place caters to the night shift workers getting off duty ;o)!! It does not even pretend to have a filthy curtain!!A quick glance into the dim interiors reveals enervated men hunched over the tables nursing their drinks in quiet solitude. Notes from famous ‘Ghum ka Gaanas’ subtly hit your eardrums as you pass by. I’m always reminded of Aamir Khan’s dialogue to Salman Khan after one of their many cuff-ups in ‘Andaz Apna Apna’ ….’ Ghum ka Saathi Rum’!! (Old Monk Ho jaaye!)

20 metres later you push past a Maharashtrian restaurant. This restaurant has probably the best fish and Maharashtrian curries in the locality. Today’s specials are Rawas, Waal and Gobi Masala. The restaurant is always packed and in true 21st century Mumbai style has two large, overflowing and open BMC approved trash cans outside to the rear. Continuing the style they block and stink up one of the arterial passageways out of Govandi Station.

Naaz photo studio , India probably needs lots of these to capture family memories and create portfolios for aspiring actors/models. The board displayed outside also speaks of passport/visa photos.

Aditi Beauty Parlour, every woman wants to look her best!! Doors always shut tight, I wonder what goes on inside ;o)

All the aforementioned structures are topped with tin/asbestos sheets…..speaks volumes of successive corrupt governments legalizing vote-banks!!

15 metres further ahead is a Monginis cake shop!! I am sure they have 3 main categories of customers, the children’s birthday party category, where party boxes are made, sold and delivered to homes in the neighborhood, the colleagues (employees at the growing number of offices and factories in the vicinity ) getting a birthday-boy to sponsor a ‘ Daru ‘ party at the nearby Krishna Bar ( bars named after Gods!….probably Shiva would be Ok with it ) and cut a cheap cake which is not actually cheap, and finally the walk-in who just wants to have a puff/tart/quiche/pastry of some sort. I personally adore their potato shells, and when soaked in Yoghurt, it is better than chaat!! Just add a little boiled and crushed potato and chilli powder (no salt, the shells have enough) and you are rock on!!

A little ahead are a series of Bania shops that deal in jewellery, grain and general grocery and of course your ubiquitous Vada-Pav stalls. There are Marathi ‘Baikoes’ selling sprouts, greens and vegetables (the fruits are always sold by the Bhaiyyas!), the chicken shop and your ‘Kanda-Batata’ shops. Not one medical store so far, this comes a few metres ahead, right next to Appollo Wine Shop!! I have always found this ironic!!

This gangway from the West to East v/v probably gets at least 2,50,000 footfalls a day, no wonder you see these businesses thrive. An average of INR 50 per person means this series of about 150 shops (both sides of the line) churn out approx INR 1.25Crore per day!! Wow…now that is some economy!

I have lived in this area now for over 40 years and never experienced this before. I wonder why?? Is this an awakening of some sort?? I am sure it is…..U just need to open your eyes, ears and other senses to experience and more importantly appreciate such stuff! The Bungee jump is still in dive mode!!

The similarity between the deep seas and deep space is that both environments are completely inhospitable to humans…

Pretty much the same way the first satellite in space ( Sputnik-1957 ) was a small yet major step for mankind…the first midget submarines were also the same…
…
Yet we devote so much of our time to airplanes and spaceships that we rarely acknowledge these levithians….

Here are four nuclear submarine wrecks you might want to check out…
USS Thresher – 1961
USS Scorpion – 1968
K-278 Komsolets – 1989
K-141 Kursk – 2000

The Komsolets had a Titanium double hull and could actually dive to 1300mts xtreme and 1500mts crush depth!! Double that of any other subs xcept submersibles like the Trieste…..went all the way to 10916mts…the base of the Mariana Trench….the deepest point of any of the Earth’s oceans….

For some reason Russia likes to sink their nuclear subs in the Barents Sea!! Probably because their biggest submarine port was there….compelling stuff!!

Wonder if such a title can be applied to about a dozen EU countries….leading lives of comfort ( some countries have more companies than population!! ) while the rest of world slogs and the corrupt few take the honest majority for a ride…..in my eyes Switzerland leads followed by many other chors !!

And we Indians want to do Switzerland first on our EU jaunts……but then that is a different story ;o

‘ Tatkal ‘ means on the spot! This is a word that has it’s origins in Sanskrit. In India various government bodies have adopted this word as theirs such as the passport offices and Indian railways. My story has to do with the Indian Railways.

The family wanted to go on a holiday to Tamil Nadu and the tickets were still on waitlist ( for over two months ). The Indian Railways has this system called ‘ Tatkal’ wherein you can book your tickets a day prior to the date of departure at an extra charge. This is a ridiculous system as tickets that have been booked well in advance remain on the waitlist and the tickets that have been booked in ‘Tatkal ‘ get confirmed out of turn.

On 07May12 at 0330hrs the Missus and I landed up at Chembur station to get in line for the ‘ Tatkal ‘booking. 0330hrs!! you might ask, yes that is the time you need to get there as you have a window of approx 20 minutes before the limited seats are taken off the system. You have two queues, one is for the gents and the other is for ladies and senior citizens. The queues themselves build up by the minute and when the windows open up at 0800hrs, the gents queue has about 100 persons and the ladies and senior citizen’s queue has about 25 persons.

Once the Missus was safely ensconced in her slot in the queue, and had battened down for the four and half hour wait ( she was the third person in the queue ), the restless person that I am decided to take a walk around Chembur Station at this ungodly hour. Everything is quiet around the station, and what would normally be a bustling place is now deserted.

At 0400hrs you get the first gaggle of newspaper boys assembling immediately outside the station. We are very used to just opening our front doors in the morning and finding a newspaper tucked into the doorhandle. But have we ever stopped to wonder how the distribution network works?

By 0415hrs the place outside the station is a hive of frenetic activity. The first newspaper vans have made their appearance, these vans are contracted to the individual printing presses that print the papers, be it The Times of India or the Hindustan Times etc. As each individual van stops the boys gather around the van and the person inside the van picks up individual bundles neatly packed in plastic and labeled with the individual names of the distributors, I heard familiar names such as Sebastian ( the distributor at my old home ) and Balaji ( my current distributor ). By 0445hrs all the vans have dropped their loads and moved on. Now over the next 30 minutes the individual paper boys assembles his load as per his route. The entire 600feet in front of the station is taken over by the boys assembling their loads. There must have been at least 100 of them. By 0515hrs all the boys have disappeared leaving behind only the debris of their packages, which add to the trash of the previous day.

At around 0430hrs just as the newspaper boys activity was picking up I decided to continue my walk around, I saw Mumbai Toys what was formerly Bombay Toys….probably trying to be politically correct !! The milk vans only made their appearance around 0500hrs.

Inside the compound of the of the station dominated by billboards divided equally between Jewellers, English Speaking classes and Computer classes….probably high on aspirational value for the middle class teenagers of today,there were 4 youth sitting on a ‘ Khatta ‘ and drinking whisky as though they owned the place, they were also using foul language loudly. I wondered how could they be so comfortable here? It would only be later that I figured they were touts.

At around 0515hrs I felt a rather familiar feeling…..the need to take a dump! So I let the Missus know that I was going home and would be back in 30 minutes. No sooner had I completed the dump when my phone rang and the Missus asked me to come to the station immediately. It turns out the lady who was in second position in the line was also a tout and she was punching the lady in front of her, both of them had slept on the platform. The Missus had intervened, but she was nervous. She also asked me to call her sister, which I did.

By now the touts had finshed their round of whisky and were having tea, and soon they would be in the line. There were no cops in sight, they would only appear around 0630hrs. And what an appearance, the cops were checking each passenger’s booking and forms and they ruthlessly threw each tout out of the line by the scruff of the neck. The lady tout seeing this pretended to faint….

When finally the counters opened at 0800hrs the cops had to almost lathi charge to keep the line under control, the Missus got her tickets by 0805hrs!! That was quick….the wait of four and half hours for a 2 minute transaction….this is India!!

Now that I am officially the Monk who chucked his Honda City….well not actually a monk, but I did chuck it, I decided to walk into places I never would have.

Last evening I decided to walk into the large slum opposite my house….as I started walking past a row of filthy auto garages that had garbage dumped on the road next to them, the first thing I noticed was a young boy, not more than 16 or 17 years pushing the latest KTM Duke motorcycle. This motorcycle has been setting the sales charts on fire and has ubercool value attached to it and yet here it was, right in the middle of Asia’s biggest slum!!

As I walked further past restaurants that were grilling kebabs…..the smells of which were made in heaven, and yet I somehow did not dare to touch them, I saw a few kids riding cycles. Now you do expect kids from all economic and social strata to ride cycles, but these bikes looked like high end stuff (Trek’s and Maxit’s), not your run off the mill Hero’s and Atlas’s. These bikes are stolen was my first thought, but then I thought so many?? There probably is a second hand bike shop somewhere in Shivaji Nagar and these boys are buying them from there….yet these cycles were right there in the middle of Asia’s biggest slum!!

The road curved to the right and as I was walking past a row of scrap and poultry shops, I suddenly noticed a little pigeon hole of a shop selling flat screen TV’s!! The board of the shop rather incongruously had ‘ Airtel ‘ to the left and ‘ Samsung ‘ to the right. A little further down there was a cell tower set up in the little gap between two shanties. Imagine selling the latest flat screens and mobiles right here in the middle of Asia’s biggest slum!!

The walk now took me over a bridge and there was huge digging being done as the ‘ Eastern Freeway ‘, the latest infrastructure project in Mumbai that promises a South Mumbai to Chembur, journey in 22 minutes is being readied. This meant there was a big mess, and I needed to step off the road and take a little side path, there at the bottom of the path again I came across shops that were cheek a jowl and two of them stood out, one was a Bajaj motorcycle service centre where motorcycles of varying ages were being serviced and the next shop were two buffalo’s and this shop made and sold dung cakes that are used for burning. This contrast of the latest versus the oldest continued to shock me right in the middle of Asia’s biggest slum!!

A few feet further from here was a man with a handlebar mustache and a golf hat placed jauntily at an angle on his head, standing right next to bright red and ivory coloured Vespa scooter, model probably of the 1970’s and on the front mud guard rather nicely placed was a reasonable rendition of an airliner!! I could not resist it and so asked the man, whose name is Manohar if I could take a picture of him along with his scooter and he readily agreed, as we shook hands, he told me that the garage behind was his and he did this sort of work and his pride of procession was a similar coloured Lambretta scooter of 1962 vintage, inside his garage was a flatbed Chevy truck of 1970’s vintage which he said was used film shooting!! All this right in the middle of Asia’s biggest slum!!

As the walk continued all around me was grinding filth and what I perceived poverty, and yet every little shanty had a TV and a ‘ Videocon ‘ dish on its roof. So, were these person’s actually poor or was prosperity slowly trickling into this poorest of the poor pocket in Mumbai??

All around me I saw progress, I saw all person’s between 6 and 60 hard at work, be it in restaurants, scrap yards, garages or illegal picture houses. There were young boys and old ladies sitting outside country liquor bar’s selling boiled eggs to the labourers who had a drink after a hard day’s work and were returning back to their little shanty they called home. I saw laughter wherever I walked, this showed that the happiness quotient was high!

The walk also convinced me that sometimes you need to slow down and look around you, I had driven this route a 1000 times before in my ‘ Honda City ‘, the old ‘ Honda City Mani ‘ used to look straight ahead and refuse to look what he perceived as the dregs of society ( some of them probably are ), but also all around of him he saw enterprise. This is what makes Mumbai and through Mumbai, India what it is!!

This also convinced me that giving up the Corporate job was probably the best thing that happened to me, I was now firmly on a path of discovery, the bungee jump is well and truly on its way….

Independence Movement of India

Good Morning Ladies and Gentlemen and my dear friends. Today is the 15Aug2012 and is our 65th Independence Day. On this occasion we wish to share with you a few inspiring facts about the great people who made India’s independence possible.

The British Traders also known as ‘ The East India Company ‘ first entered ‘ The Indian Subcontinent ( and this includes India, Pakistan & Bangladesh ) ‘ in 1612 and from then over the next 200 years, they grew their influence on local politics by systematically defeating first the Portugese and Dutch militaries and then various princely states of India one by one. The decline of the Mughal empire gave them the power they were looking for and thus, they entered Indian politics.

The first real challenge to the British Empire was the rebellion of 1857. The Indian Sepoys in military service had to bite the top of the cartridges used in their rifles and these tops were made from pig fat!! This went against the religious beliefs of most Indians and upset the Sepoys. ‘ Mangal Pandey ‘ a 29 year old sepoy at Barrackpore inspired his companions to rebel against their British superiors and they killed a ranking officer. ‘ Mangal Pandey ‘ was sentenced to death for this. However the rebellion quickly spread to Meerut, Oudh and the North Western Provinces. This rebellion raged for almost two years and the last major battle was on 17Jun1858 in Gwalior where the brave and courageous ‘ Rani Laxmibai ‘ also known as ‘ Jhansi Ki Rani ‘ was killed.

In the decades following the rebellion Indian leadership finally emerged. Dadabhai Naoroji also known as ‘ The Grand Old Man of India ‘ along with Surendranath Banerjee founded the Indian National Association in 1876. This was the first attempt at getting all India under one umbrella. This was also a big challenge as India had a number of Princely states all running independently.

‘Swaraj’ means freedom and the great Bal Gangadhar Tilak also known as ‘ Lokmanya’, who was deeply opposed to anything British famously said ‘ Swaraj is my Birthright and I shall have it’. He was a great champion of freedom of expression and went to great lengths to have the voice of India heard.

No Independence Day speech can proceed without mention of ‘ Shaheed Bhagat Singh ‘ the young Indian nationalist who was considered one of the most influencial revolutionaries of the Indian Freedom Movement. At the tender age of 24 he along with Rajguru and Sukhdev laid down their lives for the cause. We salute you, oh great ones !

In 1915 Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, also known as ‘ Mahatma Gandhi ‘ returned to India from South Africa. Over the next 32 years he would tirelessly spearhead India’s freedom struggle against the British. He did this through ‘ Non Violence ‘ and economic independence . Some his great movements were ‘ The Civil Disobedience Movement ‘, ‘ The Quit India Movement ‘ and ‘ The Dandi March ‘.

Some of our other great freedom fighters were:
Dr Rajendra Prasad – Independent India’s first President
Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru – Independent India’s first Prime Minister
Sardar Vallabhai Patel – The Iron Man of India
Rabindranth Tagore – Also known as ‘ Gurudev ‘ , author of our National Anthem
Lala Lajpat Rai – Also known as Punjab Kesari
Subhash Chandra Bose – Also known as Netaji
Lal Bahadur Shastri – Jai Jawan, Jai Kisan
Chandrashekhar Azad – The Liberated One
Abdul Kalam Azad – Also known as Maulana Azad

The list can go on , however India’s freedom would only have been possible because each and every Indian decided that Freedom was his birthright.

We take this opportunity to salute each and every great soul who contributed to the freedom of our great country. JAI HIND!!

Mumbai Rioters To Be Arrested After Eid Festivities
This is what the Cops have to say!! Jesus I feel like I am living in some Banana Republic!! God Help India….2 days after our 65th Indepedence Day….Gobsmacked!!

Passport !!

06Apr11, 0845hrs

My passport has less than six months of validity left on it and I need to apply for a new one. This is the first passport I am applying for in India in over 20 years and the experience was to prove interesting.

By the time I get to the Bengal Chemicals building in Prabhadevi, Central Mumbai the queue has already achieved serpentine proportions. There must be at least 100 persons in before me! There was only one line for everything and everybody irrespective whether you had a child in your arms or were a senior citizen or were disabled, you had to be in the line.

Being April, the Sun was already up and shining brightly, this meant the little shop opposite the building did brisk business selling water bottles. The person’s fortunate enough to have chauffer driven A/C cars had them parked out front to catch a respite from the oppressive heat and they only added to the traffic woes outside…until a traffic cop came and got them to move. Once the cop moved on, the cars came back!!

Naïve that I am, I actually was dressed for work as I thought that this would only take an hour or so!! Well was I in for a surprise. Soon my office shirt was drenched in sweat and I could feel beads of perspiration moving down my ass crack ;o)

06Apr11, 0930hrs

By now the queue had achieved ‘ Anaconda ‘ proportions and must have been at least 700 feet long. I already felt as though I had been here forever and as there was no shade to be had, the Sun beat down mercilessly. There was still an hour to go before the office commenced work.

06Apr11, 0945hrs

The watchmen made their appearance and began letting the lost souls waiting in the queue, into the compound. They were basically forming 3 queues inside the compound. One for fresh applications, one for disputes ( errors in the passport ) and one for miscellaneous other facilities.

06Apr11, 1030hrs

Once the office commenced work, a uniformed watchwoman looked closely at each person entering lest someone try and jump queue. I finally entered at 1115hrs, and had some respite from the heat in the air-conditioned environs. The office had 33 counters…and only 5 were in use!! I sometimes wonder how do, these government offices work!

06Apr11, 1230hrs

I finally got my turn, the lady at counter, a female babu went through my documents accepted them, cancelled my old passport and told me to line up at the next counter to pay. Here after another 30 minute wait I got my turn and the man in here insisted on exact change even though he had all the change in the world. I finally emerged at 1315hrs, thinking that was done and dusted….little did I know what was in store for me.

25Apr11, 2100hrs

I got a frantic call from my Sister–In–Law, who said that a cop had come to verify the address and he says that I do not live there. I told her that I will deal with it tomorrow.

26Apr11, 0900hrs

I landed up at the cop station, and cop there says that he knew me and when he saw somebody else at the door of our ancestral house he knew that I did not live there. I told him that the ancestral house was my permanent address, and I had bought my own house where I currently reside, the previous year. He said that as far as the cops were concerned, you had to live at the address. I wondered how do terrorists and criminals get their passports so easily. After an undertaking was taken, I tried to tip him as was normal and he turned around and said, get your passport first….Oh Oh…I thought, this sounds ominous.

The chain that leads to a passport is like this, you go into the passport office and submit your application. This application has to be done in triplicate. Two copies go to your local cop station, who in turn come to your residence to verify that you are not a terrorist or anti social element and of course they make some money as well. Once the verification process is complete, one verified copy of your application heads back to the passport office, while stays back at the cop station for their records.

In my case, I had to wait for a summons from the passport office, and  submit an application correction ( in triplicate ). Then go through the verification process again. It just does not matter whether you have had a passport for a zillion bigillion years prior to the current application.

20May12

The application process has now been going on for 45 days, and I am back in the old passport office, having taken a day off from work to get this done. This time as I was smarter from my previous experience, I landed up at 0800hrs for a 1030hrs start. I am reasonably to the fore of the queue.

They start letting persons into the office at 1030hrs, it is exactly as I remember it from 20 years ago. The narrow stairway that leads up to the first floor has the same claustrophobic feel, and once inside the office you have the same low ceiling that only adds to the feeling of claustrophobia. The office is packed with people…if you ask me it is a stampede waiting to happen.

You, once again have over 25 counters, and this time only two are open, every person has to go through a mandatory 30 minute wait before they get to the head of the line. On a pillar is board hanging at an awkward angle on one screw, telling you the documents you need for a new passport. The person in front of me has been chasing a passport for almost a year now. His application date read 10Aug10!!

Once the person at the counter checks your application status, he then directs you to one of a row of cabins where an assistant passport officer ( ARPO ) sits. However before that I have to fill up ( in triplicate ) the application correction form affixing my photograph on each.

When this is done, you go to the designated ARPO’s cabin and submit your form, which is given only a cursory glance and dumped into the pile of forms on the desk, and you are told the verification will happen again. This entire process takes at least two hours.

Right there in the middle of the office roams a white cat ( I am convinced this was once a human, but a quest for a passport changed him into a cat!! ).

15Jun11

A cop from the Shivaji Nagar police station lands up at home and tells my wife that I need to present myself to the police station.

18Jun11, Shivaji Nagar,Police Station

For those of you who do not know, Shivaji Nagar is just one vast slum. Starting in the 1960’s when migrants came to Mumbai, they had no other place to go, so they just encroached on the mangroves. Since it also has proximity to the Deonar dumping ground, there is a huge scrap industry that attracts all kinds of unwanted elements, starting from the rag-pickers to the drug dealers that sell them their drugs. Anger levels which are always simmering just below the surface are ready to spike at a moment’s notice with little or no provocation.

The policemen assigned to this station look at it as a punishment. The station itself is little more than a glorified shanty, the roof is made of asbestos sheets, and the thin brick walls can barely keep the elements out, the windows are all wooden ( for obvious reasons ) and hang on their hinges at awkward angles.

To get to the passport section you have to pass through the station and go up an iron staircase that might as well have been a ladder. Shackled at the bottom of the staircase is a prisoner sleeping!! ( probably got into a drunken or drug induced brawl ).

You climb up the staircase and wait for the officers to come. The work gets done fairly soon and costs INR 200 per each of the two officers. Once the basic verification is done you have to then wait for your second summons to meet the main inspector in the afternoon.

I got there at 1600hrs and let the officers know that I was there, as I waited, I suddenly heard a huge commotion and in a matter of seconds about 300 people had decended on the station and all of them were speaking at the top of their voices. To one side you had about 10 snappily dressed youth all of them having paan stained teeth, and to the other you had a gaggle of men and women. The rest of the 300 people were spectators!!

Looking at my alarm the officer said don’t worry ‘ Yeh, yahan ka har din ki baat hai, ek chutki bajao aur sab bhaag jayenge! ‘ ( this is an everyday occurance here, one snap of your fingers and all of them will disappear ). And the mob did disperse as quickly as it appeared!! ( reminds me of twisters, appearing and disappearing as suddenly as they came ).

The inspector duly checked my papers and signed them off, surprisingly he did not ask for money!

05Jul11

I have once again received my summons to appear at the passport office, which duly have. I have so far had to take 4 days of leave to chase this passport down. I once again have to go through process of pulling out my file which takes about 2 hours. The cat that was once upon a time a human is still there and still completely chilled out.

After a patient wait, I am once again up against the ARPO, this time she says that all your papers are in order, and now I have to pay INR5,000 as a penalty for mis-information!! I tell her that I will pay right now, she says that no, you will get another summons and you have to pay then!! She also takes a hand written declaration from me telling that I am OK with paying the penalty…..that is covering their back sides.

05Aug11

This has now been going on for four months, the summons has arrived and it says nothing about having to pay INR5,000, it just tells me to show up at the passport office on a particular day.

I have now done that and paid up the amount (I just cannot go on anymore with this ). The receipt only says received INR 5,000…….

15Sept11

The passport finally arrives…and guess what, they got my name wrong, my first name is now Rayaprolu ManiKumar and my last name is Sarma……I could not be bothered anymore…..

Total lapsed time over 5 and months!!!And 6 days of leave….      

I have always had a passion for writing and have now decided to give vent to my own expression…….below is my very first blog

The Closed Loop Ecosystem 

Last evening I had this wonderfull experience. Here I was all by myself at ‘ Namaste Farms ‘, when gradually my mind began to wander. 

On the farm we have a few Nepali workers. While most of the time we would laugh, joke and play cricket together, I could not help but wonder what drove this ragtag bunch of cousins so far from their little mountain village ‘ Dhuni ‘high up in the Himalayas. Each of them earned maybe INR 7,000 and maybe went home for a month or so every other year. It takes them 4 days just to get home!! 2 to get to the Nepal border near Gorakhpur and a further 2 by bus to get to their hamlet. 

Tiku and I got talking…..He said that his little village had maybe 150-200 dwellings. Each dwelling had a minimum of 4 persons. 

Nepal as country has suffered from apathy, corruption and general remoteness for centuries. Generation after generation of kings and monarchs have only done what has suited them and that is almost nothing. The nett current result is that, of a population of 26million, literacy is below 50%, healthcare only barely exists and per capita income remains low. 

So how has this and the simple lifestyle of the mountain villagers impacted this little hamlet called ‘ Dhuni ‘? The answer is ‘ little ‘!! These people are continuing to live their life as they did for centuries. With a few modern modifications ofcourse. 

Every little dwelling has it’s own little plot of land. On this land they grow crops such as wheat, rice, masur and other lentils.In it’s own form of subsistence farming, whatever each family grows it keeps for its own use. Furthermore each family will normally have at least one buffalo for their milk needs and one goat for meat purposes. In addition they have a few chickens. Fruits such as oranges and bananas grow wild and it appears that their basic food needs are served with almost no cash transactions. The only cash transaction that I was able to ascertain was when they slaughter a goat. As the meat of a goat is too much for one family they sell the rest at approx NPR 150 per kg. This the family that bought the meat has to pay in cash even if at a much later date. The barter system does not really exist here. 

The size of each house is approximately 750-1000 sq ft. Each house is built at multiple levels normally into the size of a mountain. At the lowest level is the stable. The next level or two is the living area and they store their grain and hay right at the very top. The cooking area is normally at level two. So are the houses warm….not really says Tiku. They are made of stone if they want to heat the place they normally light the ‘ Chulha ‘ in the kitchen. Of course in winter they have to bundle up under layers of clothes. The toilets are outside the house. 

Now that food and shelter are taken care of at almost no cost, why do so many men from their village leave for Mumbai in search of employment, when for centuries they did not? 

I think the answer lies in self improvement. For centuries they lived a life of grinding poverty, living off the land, the modern day changed all that. In pretty much the same way that Indians started heading to the Gulf in search of opportunities, these villagers also started doing the same. They are all illiterate or semiliterate at best. Places like Mumbai offer them opportunities that just did not exist. The INR 7,000 that they earn is almost completely saved. This money when sent back to their villages betters the lives of their families….no different from the Malbari in the Gulf. So why not the Gulf?? 

As the conversation with Tiku carried on, I asked if his village had electricity, and he said yes…but he also said that they generate their own power!! This got my ears all perked up….what was this guy talking about?? Turns out that there is mountain river that flows thru their village, as there was no sign of the national electric grid reaching their village anytime soon, they went to a local ‘ Sanstha ‘ for help and guidance, this NGO then put them on the track of green power….the NGO supplied them all the materials needed and the villagers had to work on their electric power generator system…they had to build a canal and large holding tank that siphoned off water from the river….they then had to install a turbine and generator set along with wiring into the village….once all this was done…the NGO technicians came in and commissioned the entire system. This one caught me by complete surprise and I googled it….National Geographic ran an article on Nepal Micro Hydo systems…there are some 2,300 of them across Nepal and they employ about 5,000 people at the rate of 2 per Micro Hydo…and who pays the salaries?? To power each bulb the individual household has to pay NPR 30 per month and this goes towards salaries…apparently these systems are more reliable than the national grid and in fact their excess power has to be bled off as there is no storage facility and it is a closed loop. 

The more I heard of this little village, the more enthralled I was by this line of conversation, for the first time I was actually looking at an ecosystem that was a closed loop by itself. Despite repeated probing I could not really come up with a breach. 

I asked Tiku, who were the traders in the village, he said that they were the villagers themselves. Did any outsiders ever come to the village, he said no. Who were the doctors in the village, he said that the two doctors were from outside…this was the only point of external dependence I could find. 

So what drove these guys to work in Mumbai?? I think there comes a time when the harsh life needs a few basic comforts and these can only be bought with money….the ecosystem in the village was built around self sustinence and the result is that there is almost no cash in the system….they boys working in Mumbai and the Gulf were changing that. 

Lastly I asked, would he prefer Mumbai or the village?? He did not have an answer….