The great debt

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It was the 25th of January this year, a day before Republic Day, when we were roaming the beautiful old campus of the Indian Institute of Advanced Studies (IIAS), Shimla built during the days of the British Raj like most of Shimla, perched on the edge of a steep mountain side looking out to the higher permanently snow capped ranges of the Himalayas. The sun was on its way down; its mellow mood cast a mesmerizing golden glow on the magnificent building and the little on-campus canteen where we were taking a  break after a day of walking around the picturesque little hill town and we were absorbed in the delightful view before us. Then among the handful of tourists also wandering through the campus, I heard one of them bring up a theory which is very commonly thrown around especially among us, the educated English speaking, so-called 'elite' and which never fails to irritate me ever so much.

"We owe the British so much for everything that they have done for us!" is a refrain still heard frequently around our country and unfortunately even from the nearest and dearest ones within my own family. "Without the British, there would have been no English based education system, no consequent social reform of traditional Indian society, no Indian Railways, no internationally renowned Indian Armed Forces and indeed no concept of India as a country. We would be more like the Baltic countries permanently engaged in fruitless battles against each other. Gandhi's non-violent freedom struggle wouldn't have worked against any other colonizers as the others were not as cultured as the Brits." is the elaboration given on the above point. While all that is probably true but do we actually owe them anything at all considering that it is a historical fact that we were taken over by the Brits (like most of the world at that point of time) and every tiny little benefit or the most major benefits that happened during their rule were mostly unintended side-effects of an oppressive system set up by them to enhance their Empire which in time were used against them. It's like saying Adolf Hitler was cute just because he actually had a major role to play in the development of the Volkswagen Beetle.

"Still..." say the Brit lovers, "Would we have been able to build all those roads to our remote Himalayan hill stations, discovered our own lost heritage through archaeological finds in dense jungles, built those magnificent monuments and structures which house our government now and developed a stable, hopelessly complicated yet magically (at least 20%) functional democracy?" Who really knows what would have happened if Robert Clive had not won the Battle of Plassey? Who knows how peaceful or violent India would have been if it hadn't seen the vicious bloodshed of British fuelled Partition? Who knows what stage of development this land we call India today would have progressed to if we didn't have a group of foreign masters driving us to grow indigo while the rest of the world rapidly developed their technology in the golden age of the Industrial Revolution, a critical time when most of the countries which we now call 'developed nations' made hay? These are questions which can never have a conclusive answer, no matter how good or harrowing a hypothetical situation we simulate or no matter how patriotic or pessimistic we feel about the potential of our nation.

One thing I am sure of as of today is that our erstwhile colonizers did make pot-loads of money at our expense while they did what they did, good or bad or someplace grey. So for all the social change and infrastructure 'development' that they engaged in; building roads, bridges, administrative systems, education systems and what not, I have a very relevant question, relevant especially in the modern world's way of looking at things for anyone who says that we must somehow be completely grateful to the English for their contribution as opposed to having a realistic view that yes, we gained on some important grounds but that's mere co-incidence not gracious planning. The all important question is - Tell me, o kind sir, who footed the bill? 

Mechanical poet

Long due and well deserved is what a servicing means to our 10 year old Maruti 800. The appealingly named 'moonbeam silver' colour of its body has suffered too much from the vagaries of the weather and now should more appropriately be called 'just about silver'. My Dad is a very safe driver, as safe as anyone can be, considering that even the safest driver has no control over some other madman driving on the road who might just crash into your safe driver tag and ruin it for good but even he couldn't prevent the minor dents and scratches which have appeared all over the car during its decade of existence on Indian roads. The left rear door has a gluey door lock and the the left rear door inner handle is half chewed thanks to my dog's itchy gum teeth developing phase when she was carted around to wherever my parents went. And the final fact being that my Dad is not a very big fan of company approved service stations and so our car had seen very little of the inside of the huge Maruti service station only a few kilometres from our house in Bharuch.

But carting the three of us (Mom, Dad and me) and a dog through 2300 kilometres on a east-west sojourn across India without a single major problem (only a minor coolant issue near Mehkar, MH which was resolved in a jiffy by a local mechanic) was good enough to finally earn it its equivalent of a luxury bath and even Dad couldn't protest too strongly about it. So it got the royal treatment with a carburettor overhaul, engine oil change, complete vacuuming of all the dust collected from across India and a long session in one of those wonderfully effective car showers of repair garages out of which every car no matter how old & beaten up comes bright and shiny. I was there when one of the mechanics was finishing the spruce up and I swear that if the car had a face, it would've smiled!

Smiled not just because it was fresh and clean again, but also because of the central role played by it in many a family adventure the highlights of which would have been the Bharuch to Mussoorie and back drive in 2005 and the Bharuch-Calcutta mega road trip less than a month ago apart from numerous trips to Bombay, Pune, Baroda and Surat. What after all had it not seen? The steep roads and the striking beauty of the Himalayas; the lush forested ghats with "Go slow, elephant crossing" road signs of Orissa; the flickering green fields over endless expanses all across rural India as the sun played hide and seek with some feeble monsoon clouds; the tumble and tussle of Bombay traffic and the divine glimpse of Marine Drive bordered by the Arabian Sea at 2:00 AM in the morning as it both cursed and praised the endless energy of the Maximum City; the divine stretches of roads between Udaipur to Ahmedabad, and Mumbai to Pune as India began to prove that we can make roads as good as any other nation in the world - just a random sampling of all the paths that it has merrily wandered on. Our car like the members of our family has the footloose soul of a travelling gypsy. Given a chance, it could compose one or two original songs for the road! 

Rainman

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It rains aplenty during the course of a Calcutta monsoon and the best part is not being able to predict when the darkest of dark clouds would decide to let loose their payload of cold, clear water putting off temporarily the stifling humid heat that seems to stalk around in the city otherwise letting loose rivulets of sweat down every single face. You could drive your motorcycle all the way to work and back with the clouds blotting out the sun but there might be not a single drop of rain or within 15 minutes of a weakened sun casting its fading glow around, the heavens could open up pelting down rain at a rate which can only be described as furious. So the plan of action could  be (a) to carry a umbrella and raincoat all of the time (not at all uncommon in this town, a home of chronic hypochondriacs) or (b) to bide your luck, not carry any kind of umbrella/raincoat and thank your lucky stars that you could get where you wanted to get to without getting drenched or just be gleeful on the inside if the rain caught you out while falsely remonstrating to others how you never expected it to come down just then. I am a firm proponent of plan (b) therefore I frequently find myself inverting my shoes to let out the water which had seeped in through sloshing through in-rain puddles. I am rather fond of taking on the monsoon's might and losing. Defeat somehow doesn't taste like defeat when it means raindrops rolling down your face and the playing of tin roof melodies in celebration!

The ways of the old

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On the occasional Friday, I need to take my guitar along to my after-office classes. Not wanting to risk breaking it on the front of a bus which swerved too close to my motorcycle on Calcutta's cramped roads, I have to abandon my favourite mode of transport for that day and go the bus-autorickshaw-autorickshaw route to work which the majority of my co-workers take. After a jittery bus ride to the Sealdah station which never abandons its reputation of being a constant example of the term 'human sea', I now need to take the auto-rickshaw (autos) to Chingrihata. A lot of people hate autos for the monstrous traffic jams that their tendency to sneak into the smallest possible gaps in the slow moving traffic causes. I on the other hand think they are rather funny with their whirring engine noises and fun to ride since they convey an illusion of being at high speed even at 40 kmph thanks to their rickety light little body frames. Its like having a convertible experience on 3 wheels!

The auto route from Sealdah to Chingrihata follows a road which embodies all the problems you would think define Indian driving conditions. On a mostly very smooth stretch of road, a couple of terrible patches would pop out of thin air, the surprise element in their attack critical to inflicting the maximum damage to your vehicle. Apart from the usual mess that a busy two lane road sees with buses, trucks, motorcycles, hand pulled loads, cycles, cycle-rickshaws and auto-rickshaws all trying to overtake each other with very little success and thereby blocking the oncoming traffic, the situation is compounded by the bazaar which lines the road on both sides with fruit and vegetable vendors comfortably settling down on the road itself. Its great daily entertainment if you include the the honking horns and bells of a huge variety and the volatile emotions of the drivers, cyclists & walkers in the mix, entertainment as long as there is someone else doing the driving for you or you are riding something of negligible external dimensions like a motorcycle enabling you to slink your way through the often stalled traffic. If it rains, wading through standing water at a low enough speed so that the walking crowds don't get splashed and therefore angry is another challenge in store for the hapless driver.

My destination is at the very end of the auto route at the auto stand itself so I along with my fellow passengers take it easy as getting worked up over bad traffic and long delays is not something which is of constructive value considering the road we are on. It is more of an accepted fact and the extra time required to negotiate this portion of our commute is incorporated into our schedules. For someone who needs to disembark on a section of road somewhere in between, the Bengali for "Brother, could you stop to the left?" is what seemed really curious to me once I gave it a little thought. The Bengali version of the request goes "Dada, ektuu baa dikey baandhben?" which literally translates to "Brother, could you please tie it to the left?"

Almost all of Bengal is composed of fertile flatlands with more than generous amounts of tropical rainfall and a numerous little rivers which at one time and age must have been the main routes of transportation through boats and ferries. No wonder that fish is such an integral part of the Bengali diet. To see a reflection of that old way of life, a remnant of a totally different world, in those few words adapted to a modern context was quite a strange feeling. The original use of "Tie it to the left" can only be explained as a request to the boatman to stop at the left bank of a narrow river or canal. Without tying the boat would just drift ahead on the river current. The rivers, once the lifeline of many a civilization may have been pushed away to the rural landscapes by relentless urban development but they continue to make their presence felt, in our daily language, and at the back of our minds.

"The road like a river of flowing might,

Wheels like oars on the tugging tide,

Much we have changed or so we are told,
Yet alive through thoughts... the ways of the old."

A post a day...

Its an utopian ideal, a promise broken without exception every time I make it, a promise broken so many times that I have out of shame stopped counting. Yet I convinced myself to take it up once more. It is within the realm of possibility, I assured myself. Can't you even take 15 minutes daily off your insanely wasteful time scheduling for the one thing that never seems like work, I question the man in the mirror? Yes, I will write one post on my blog a day, I had told myself the day before yesterday. Even if it meant writing something so essentially purposeless as this post. And here I am, writing this post to make up for yesterday because as you would expect I have already messed up on my "a post a day" promise once again.

Judgement Day

It had been sometime in May 2006, when I had sworn myself off voluntarily writing any more exams. My engineering B.Tech degree was done and I was through with formal studies. As the world around me went crazy over CAT, GRE, GATE, GMAT, ICS and various other similarly acronymed monsters, I preferred to fade way in the background as attending sleepy afternoon classes and end of term exams were not my definition of fun. So I decided to begin work instead and have steadily stuck to my wise decision! It did turn out that the first few months at work were more like an exam every day without a pre-defined syllabus but at least there was no one grading the sheets and minimum attendance meant a healthy sum of money being deposited at the end of every month. With my long American stint being the proverbial cherry on the cake, I was happy... some would say too happy. Things were coming to a head and vindictive spirits had to have their own.

So it was that an exam was announced at work. The month long technical training in welding types that we had had was to be put to the test and we were told of the date 2 weeks in advance. I was shell shocked! 4 years of corporate life and no one had even suggested an evaluation of this level. It was like a forgotten nightmare had returned to haunt me. So worried was I that like so many of  past semester exams, I managed to avoid touching the study material before today, that was the long announced day of reckoning. I woke up early to try and make a last minute hash of the vast sea of welding knowledge before me, all the while praying for divine intervention in postponing the exam, parrying the danger away even if only for a while. At the time when  I usually leave, it started raining... really really heavily. I cheered up "This is it then! Divine intervention at its best. 4-5 hours of this deluge and all of Calcutta would soon bring out their monsoon time swimming trunks." The joy was very cruelly short lived! The rain stopped abruptly after about 15 minutes almost as if someone had suddenly grabbed it by the neck and chucked it out of a 15th floor window. 

Grumbling and still rolling the abysmally small morsels of information about welding in my head, I looked around for my helmet, found it too easily and hoisted myself onto my motorcycle to make my way to work. And what do you know... the rains came to life again when I was halfway between work and home, on an long open section of the road without sufficient tree cover and drenched me to the bone without rhyme or reason. The first shelter I found under a big enough tree, I stopped and lo behold, the rain immediately ceased too. Here was another opportunity presented to me. With my soaked clothes, walking into my office's Air Conditioned interiors meant death by pneumonia or such like, therefore giving me a solid reason to return home and stay there. But a brighter idea blazed inside my not-as-bright mind.

The self-incepted plan was that I would still go to work despite my wet dog like condition. Going back home now would entail coming back to work in a fresh set of clothes by lunchtime as the exam was scheduled for 16:00 hours. So my master plan was to attend work and then when the chills/mild fever came to me just after lunch, as they surely would inside the cool environs of my workplace, leave for home citing authentic sickness. But as my luck for the day would have it, the clothes dried themselves to the driest possible in the billowing AC breeze and in the time that I was hoping it would take but none of the evaporation had the slightest ill-effect on me. I felt as hale and hearty as an ox roaming free on a meadow. No chills, zero colds, not even the ghost of a fever. 16:00 hours came and so did the adversary from whom I had been on the run for the past 4 years. Today was as far as I am concerned, my Judgement Day and nothing could save me from my sad, ugly, lazy fate!

Dog dreams

All this buzz about "Inception" and its central theme of dreams has got me thinking. What might dogs dream of or specifically little dachshunds dream of? As incredible as it may seem, dogs dream too and if human dreams are sometimes so strange, how strange would a dog's dream be? When my dog is up to something in her dream world, it is quite easy to tell. Look at her and she is fast asleep, curled up in a ball, taking a break from being the guardian  of all items in the house and from being the security personnel in charge of sniffing every incoming visitor but in that sleep state she starts making a soft sound which can best be approximated as "Knip! Knip! Knip!... Knip! Knip! Knip!" as though she is barking away at something deep inside her canine mind.

Does she see her original mom and siblings, not her adopted human family? Or does she dream of being a big dog, a significant physical presence when she ventures out into the street for her daily week as opposed to the long tube with legs persona that Nature has gifted her with? Maybe she fulfills her wish of being able to climb the walls of our house like Spiderman if only to get to the geckos which roam on them and whom she keeps eying with a hunter's intentions never mind the 15 vertical feet of unwalkable air that lie in between. Better still, her most pleasant dream might be to live in a house made of bones. I guess we'll never find out unless someone makes one of those talking collar things that they show affixed on Charles F. Muntz's dogs in that great movie "Up"!