India in a champagne bottle

This article was first published in DNA online on Friday 9 May 2014 a few days before the results of the Indian general elections were announced on Friday 16 May 2014...


Just a few more days remain before counting commences on May 16 for the 2014 Indian general elections. It has been, by most accounts, a divisive, personality-driven campaign that was mostly bereft of any convincing agenda. What agenda was there lasted a few days before divisiveness and personalities took centre-stage. And all of this came at the end of a decade of some progress, substantial growth and also a discontent that is now difficult to ignore. It has been a decade of lost opportunities, too, perhaps. I strongly believe it is time for a change; perhaps not a change of government as much as a change to the way we do things in India. This change is necessary so that we may realise the immense potential we have as a nation. A country that was poised to overtake all expectations of growth and development has stuttered and faltered like an unsure, immature and irresponsible adolescent on his first date.

One of our failures in the recent past has been a lack of vision at the very top: a vision that enables us to use the significant resources – that have been generated through impressive economic growth – to invest substantially in our rapidly declining social and physical infrastructure. And that is what development must be about. As Chapal Mehra writes in his piece in The Hindu ("What development? For whom?" The Hindu, May 6 2014), “Development in its simplest sense should be the ability of all Indians to realise their true potential without fear or obstacles. Development should address the lack of capabilities, knowledge, financial resources, and opportunity to step out of poverty and deprivation without fear. Development then is as much a process of providing services as of removing obstacles and giving freedom from all sorts of discrimination, exclusion, insufficient opportunities and fear of identity.” 

Growth does not automatically guarantee human development. And that is the change we must seek, so we may invest our significant resources in eradicating fear and building human capital. Despite all the remarkable progress and the possibilities, India has, in the words of Amartya Sen, “fallen behind many countries, including Bangladesh, in terms of quality of life.” We haven’t understood – leave alone invested enough in – education, healthcare and infrastructure to the extent we ought to have.

At a time when we ought to have invested in a future, we instead had India in a champagne bottle.

Yes, I know the stunning figures we could quote as a counter to that view. We have the largest, functioning, pluralistic democracy in the world. We have the largest army, a proliferation of mobile phones and a news readership that is the envy of the free press in much of the world. Even though our growth rate has slipped, many nations around the world would be happy to have such a growth rate as a distant aspiration. We have a middle class that is growing with each passing year. This middle class has greater ambitions for a better tomorrow, an aspiration that makes it work harder and longer, earn more and spend more on everything our parents would never even dream of owning.

We consume news like there is no tomorrow. While newspaper readership is shrinking in much of the developed world, most newspapers in India are doing extremely well and circulation figures are up. The Times of India, Dainik Jagran, Dainik Bhaskar and Malayala Manorama are among the top 12 newspapers in the world by circulation, and probably the only four in that group with subscription growth rates that are on the increase. We consume and read news while we wait in queue for our turn to be served in road-side restaurants, while waiting for our hair to be cut. Our auto-drivers and juice vendors read newspapers. We consume our news in English, Hindi, Malayalam, Telugu and all the other languages. Many homes will have a subscription to more than one newspaper, some in different languages as well. We have more all-news TV channels than any other nation in the world.

Our relationship with telephony is charming and absorbing all at once. The journey has been quite stunning for a country that, some 25 years ago, used to ask ordinary middle-class consumers to stand in queue for over a year before a landline telephone connection could be established in their homes. The under-privileged had no hope of getting such connectivity. India effectively leapfrogged an entire generation of technology and went from no connectivity to mobile connectivity. It started with PCO booths that sprung up on almost every street corner, from which we could make local, STD and ISD phone calls. As a people, we got used to talking. Today, we have more mobile phone users in India than anywhere else on the planet. Phone sales are growing at an incredible rate of 15 million mobile phones a month. In other words, there are as many new mobile phones sold in India every month as there are people in The Netherlands. There are some 900 million mobile phone subscribers in India –almost three times the population of the US.

As a result of all of this, there is, today, a real democratisation of information. Everyone in India is connected and is able to consume, use and distribute information in what is an amazing transformation that has taken place in our lifetime.

The information revolution has been undeniable and something we must be proud of. Now hold this up against the backdrop of a government scandal that accelerated this growth, which was as contemptible in its magnitude as it was abominable in its brazenness. Think what might have been if we had achieved this revolution without the stigma of a despicable scam. Is this ‘transaction cost’ – a necessary euphemism for scams perhaps – the cost of progress? Is this the cross we must bear so that we may unravel the story of a modern India, a story of lost opportunities and high ‘transaction costs’? Or is it the story of a champagne bottle?

It is undeniable though that, because of this information revolution, everyone is potentially empowered, from the point of view of participation in the democratic process, from the point of view of participation in informed critical argument and also from the point of view of social and commercial connectivity. Yet, in spite of all of this, most of us get our information through secondary sources. We must lay the blame at the doorstep of under-investment in education.

***

India has always been a story of education and the pursuit of knowledge that enables and drives social betterment. And that story must not change in India’s narrative, for it is only through informed critical argument that we will be able to banish fear and unleash the potential that exists. Without that, the democratic dividend that we often flaunt is quite meaningless. Only 23% of our children are enrolled in tertiary education – Algeria is at 31%, Albania at 55%, Mongolia at 61%, Chile at 74%, and Slovenia at 86%, just by way of comparison.

We must improve access to and quality of education and also develop skills through vocational training programmes. We aren’t doing enough in these areas. We, instead, have an entire population in a champagne bottle.

Modern India’s story must be one of development. We cannot have the information revolution sit side by side with an undereducated rural mass and malnourished children. As Chapal Mehra says, “The most basic indices of human development for the most vulnerable — being healthy, well-nourished, literate, and having equal opportunity without fear — are dependent on strong local governments, unbiased law enforcement and clean and effective public systems which work without prejudice.” 

Of all countries in the world, India has the maximum number of children suffering from malnutrition. We could attribute this to the lack of national wealth in pre-1990 India. India was poor and though it grated, the fact that malnourished children existed did not grate as much then as it does now. But since 1991, India has seen a 50% increase in GDP, and given this, our failure to address malnutrition is a travesty. Modern India must be more than concrete, connectivity, cinema, cuisine and cricket. We must address the champagne bottle.

***

I am convinced our progress depends substantially on knowledge creation and innovation, through science and technology, and through our ability to include traditional knowledge in our science and industrial innovation. My belief, also, is that we do this excellently in India. Examples exist of the way we have incorporated traditional, indigenous knowledge in fields such as botany in Ayurvedic medicine.

I am also convinced that India’s future prosperity as a nation will be driven by our ability to generate ideas that convert knowledge into impactful outcomes for public good and commercial success. Innovation is a critical driver not only for increased productivity and commercial success, but also for social causes and for achieving inclusive growth. We do this well, because we are, as a people creative in our approach to either coping with – or solving – the significant challenges facing society; jugaad is part of our everyday vocabulary. And it is through this that we are blessed with a native and innate creativity, one of the key ingredients to innovation. If only the ecosystem around us enabled us to tap into this potential – the story of the champagne bottle – we can achieve the kind of frugal innovation that we have achieved, through science and technology, in our space program.

In the science and technology space, we have been able to develop a space research program that is truly world class. We design satellites, build these and launch them masterfully not only for India but also for the rest of the world. And that is not merely because we are good at it, but because we can achieve impactful outcomes at a fraction of the cost that others require. When India recently launched the Mangalyaan space mission to Mars, what was remarkable – and this is a story that is well-known – was that the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) achieved the launch at a total cost of US$75 million. In other words, India launched a space mission to Mars at a quarter of the money it took to make the Hollywood film ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’. A few days after India launched its Mars probe, NASA launched Maven, its own Mars mission at a total cost of nearly eight times the Mangalyaan mission. We know how to innovate frugally. We also know how to operate, succeed, deliver and thrive in spite of what Dr Ramesh Mashelkar calls “technology denial regimes”, which have assisted our innovations in several sectors including nuclear technology, supercomputing and perhaps even the pharma sector.

So clearly, if we put our mind to it and if we are guided by a national challenge and a goal, just as we have, in other fields, we can build, achieve and sustain a development program that is inclusive and equitable.

***

India is an idea sustained and nurtured by a pluralism that enables us to tolerate and celebrate differences. Indeed it is this difference that makes us who we are, and gives us the ability to co-exist and yet, thrive. It gives us the ability to be accepting of any contrary idea, because we just do not need to agree on anything at all; my idea is as good as yours, we can agree to disagree on just about anything. However, this compelling story of pluralism is woefully incomplete if we do not agree on the fundamental principles of equality and justice. We live in an unequal India of haves and have-nots where ‘giving’ had to be legislated through a CSR bill. We live in an India where women are not entirely safe. We live in an India where a prime ministerial candidate might get elected to power on the promise of ensuring all houses have a toilet (houses that, I might add, may have a colour TV and a mobile phone).

To everyone who says we have good growth story, I say it is not enough. Yes, we do have growth rate of at least 6%. But why is it not 13%? We have the potential to get there, a potential that is stymied by those that are entrusted with charting our progress.

Today’s India is, to me a champagne bottle. This is a well-worn metaphor, but one that is applicable to the India I embrace, a land of immense opportunity, pluralism and vibrancy. Provided, that is, the cork in the champagne bottle is released, thereby allowing the bubbles to thrive, breathe and contribute.

- Mohan (@mohank)

The author is a cricket tragic, a keen trekker and a mathematician. He tweets at @mohank, and blogs at i3j3cricket.com and mohankaus.blogspot.com.

The idea of a 'back home'

This article was first published in DNA online on Thursday 23 January 2014.

It was the end of a long flight back to Mumbai from Melbourne last year. I was tired and itching to get back to the comfort of my own bed after having been on the road for the best part of the preceding month. The stewards were preparing for landing, and one of them who was going around collecting headsets smiled at me and remarked, “Nice to be back home, I’m sure.”

The question set me off-kilter. I didn’t know what or how to reply. I smiled sheepishly and waveringly, as though the steward had just asked me to explain the principles of general relativity.

I lived in Melbourne for 17 years before moving to Mumbai in 2009 for professional reasons. When the steward asked me that question, I wasn’t sure what “back home” meant anymore.

The irony is that in all my years in Melbourne, I would always refer to India as “back home”. I would talk almost longingly about the vibrancy, the anarchy, the energy and the chaos of life “back home”. I would weave in phrases about life “back home” in many normal conversations. So much so, that my Australian colleagues and friends would often ask if I intended to head “back home” to India some day in the future. “Back home” had become an integral part of my normal lexicon.

The clear empirical evidence there pointed to a reduction that, somehow, my memories, my senses and sensory experiences, directly or indirectly, considered that home wasn’t where I currently was. 

And mine is probably not an isolated experience. It is possibly a diasporic phenomenon.

We move our locations (either across countries or within a country) for a variety of reasons of course, not least because of better – or different – career opportunities, better living standards, safety and (in some extreme cases) fear of persecution.

And when we move, along with our skills, capabilities, expertise and aspirations, we also take with us memories: memories of our childhood; of school or college; of cricket matches we may have played or watched; of football teams we may have supported; of our parents and the values they imparted; of arguments we may have had; of friendships, partnerships and relationships; of movies we watched; of pranks we may have pulled. And more. We also carry with us the values that make us who we are. Most of these are imprinted in us through the early stages of life, when we soak up everything that is around us from our parents, relatives, friends and role models.

In a beautifully written article, The West Indian Front Room: Reflections on a Diasporic Phenomenon, Michael McMillan writes, 

“The front room was a contradictory space, where the efficacy of the display was sometimes more important than the authenticity of the objects, such as artificial flowers, plastic pineapple ice buckets, floral patterned carpet and wallpaper that never matched, and pictures of the scantily clad “Tina” next to The Last Supper. The dressing and maintenance of the front room reveals a form of “impression management,” as in the flexible presentation of self that brings up issues of “good grooming” among people of African descent. It was very much my mother’s room, and as a second-generation, black British person from an aspirant working-class family of Vincentian parentage, I have ambivalent memories of it. I must confess that growing up I was embarrassed about the front room’s aesthetics, as it seemed in “bad taste,” or had no taste at all; in other words, it was “kitsch”—a pejorative social code for working-class culture.”

And I could relate to that completely as I set up home in Melbourne. It was as if around me, I had objects that both validated and reinforced my own memories of “back home”. Moreover, I continually saw objects such as these in almost every home I visited, and these provided more reinforcement of these memories and values. It was hard to escape, or perhaps I did not want to escape them. I was comfortable with the notion of “back home”.

There were other significant behaviours and anchors too that played to the collective memory of “back home”. Though I was constantly striving to integrate – socially, culturally and politically – into the nation I had embraced as my current “home”, I was constantly and acutely aware of my origins; not only by my ‘front room’ but also by the clothes I wore, the way I spoke and the values I held.

Meanwhile, value systems were undergoing a quiet metamorphosis in India – if it is even possible to identify, leave alone quantify something as complex as an average set of values that characterise a society or system. But I held on to the values that I knew and cherished.

I would read the Sydney Morning Herald and The Hindu everyday. I attended and organised Indian classical music concerts, ate Indian food, attended Dandiya nights during Navratri, played cards during Diwali and got together with Indian friends regularly. And when we got together, we would speak in Tamil or Hindi or Telugu or Gujarati. I attended (and helped friends organise) Indian weddings and (sadly) cremations just the way these are conducted “back home”. I would regularly call family and friends “back home”. And I would occasionally send remittances “back home” and helped contribute to India being the country which receives most remittances from diaspora. Our homes became, in Michael McMillan’s words, a “museum of archived memories”. The objects in it become metaphors that constantly reminded us of our memories and values.

So, it was somewhat natural that for many like me, India was “back home” for much of the duration of our stay overseas. During holiday trips “back home” from Australia or the US or Great Britain, we may have despaired at (or criticised) the lack of progress or inadequate resources or lack of hygiene or inadequate facilities as we energetically shopped for more objects for our front rooms.

And then there are those, like me, who chose to return to India to work, after having lived and worked overseas for many years. We may have returned for a variety of reasons: professional, personal, or both. The longer we "returnees” lived overseas, the more difficult it is for us to reintegrate into the home of our origin. The readjustment is not only to a different pace of life but also to a community identity that is shaped by values very different to the ones locked away in our collective memories.

My reintegration was certainly very difficult. But, as I write here, my wife and I wanted to undergo the “returnee” experience mainly for ourselves. It was a decision that was self-imposed, selfish and self-focused. We returned because we wanted to, unlike Sumedh Mungee, whose article inspired my blog post linked above.

As a returnee, I needed to quickly re-emerge from the value time-warp I was in and readjust to a society and a culture that had changed quite dramatically. This was exceedingly difficult for me considering I – like many other returnees – had gained and absorbed an Australian identity even without actually realising it.

I was acutely aware of the common perception that returnees come with an attitude baggage that includes a seemingly never ending series of patronising attitudes. As a returnee, I did feel a sense of cultural alienation but was acutely aware that I did not want to be a passenger, an observer or, even worse, a tourist. This was “back home”, for heaven’s sake!

Without my noticing it however, over the last four years that I have lived in India, I must have realised that “back home” wasn’t really India anymore. Indeed, without my realising it, I hadn’t used the term “home” as often as I had, while I lived in Melbourne. The concept of “back home” itself had become quite alien to me. Certainly India did not resonate anymore as “back home”.

I realised this because the steward’s question completely shook me. After what seemed like an eternity, I answered awkwardly, “No, actually. I’m travelling from home to the city I currently work in.”

I was initially shocked at my own answer. But on reflection, I started to come to terms with that immediate and seemingly knee-jerk assertion.

It isn’t as though I have suddenly developed a sense of dislike for India. It is not as if I have given up on the concept of India or my love for the country. It is not as if I had discovered a new sense of detachment from India and her people. I love my life here in India as much as I did earlier, in my memories of India as a young lad. It is just that, to me, the “back home” question speaks more of the images that get associated with the roots of who and what I am today. For me, home is less about the place where my family resides or one strongly associated with my memories as a child. Nor is it just about the soil of the place I was born in.

Today, home is more about the place I am happiest, where I am most at ease, where I am least awkward, where my friends live, where I can run in peace, where I can laugh at or crack a silly joke without being judged, where I feel the air I breathe travel through my body, where I feel an unstoppable and relentless surge of energy inside me, where I sense and witness a clarity of thought, where I see maximal alignment of my own values with the values of the community I am a part of, where I want to (and feel that I can) contribute and make an impact to the society around me, where I can be who I want to be...

In that sense, home to me had become the place where my mind, body, intellect and soul are in sync with the earth, the environment, the community and the contexts around me. It had become the place where I fashioned for myself a sense of my own, unique identity. I had unwittingly allowed for the possibility that my home might even change with time and that, a few years from now, I might refer to New York or Toronto, say, as “back home”.

It is said that it is only when we step out of our existential comfort zones that we can see with clarity all that is important to us. This is particularly relevant in our world today where it is said that, for a variety of reasons – political, social and economic – over 250 million people live in a country other than the country of their birth, and over 700 million people migrate to a different “home” within their own country (read here).

My stint in India has allowed me to see more clearly that this concept of “back home” is mildly irrelevant in today’s world and that I had used it many a time without thinking about it clearly enough.

As the steward moved away from me, headset in hand, I drew her attention again and said, “No scratch that. I am travelling from what is currently “back home” to the place I currently work. Of course, this could all change next year.”

-- Mohan (@mohank)

You are lucky to be alive...

"You should thank us that you are here talking to me today." he said with a smile that spread across his handsome face. Then, as quickly as the smile painted his face, the warmth was replaced with a steely coldness as he added, with a sense of brutal finality, "In fact, you are lucky to be alive today."

There was a sense of army-like candour about what he said. But that was to be expected, for we were at an army camp. I sat directly across this smart young Sikh Major, camp commander of the army camp. The camp itself was set in a beautiful valley in the Himalayas, some 30 kilometres away from the India-China border. 

The army camp was beautifully organised, like most army barracks normally are. And as the handsome Sikh Major, took off his expensive-looking Rayban sun glasses, he looked like he had walked into the sets of "Saving Private Ryan", Despite the idyllic setting and the presence of the handsome Sikh, the Hollywood set analogy was spoilt by our presence. My friends and I were scraggly, dishevelled and unkempt after eight days of trekking in the Himalayas.

As I looked at Tom Hanks in a turban, I thought to myself, 'Yes. We were lucky to be alive after a particularly tough climb to Kala Khal (pass) the previous day.' But that wasn't what Tom Hanks was alluding to. The previous night. our camp site was under siege.

Our group had trekked from a place called Raj Kharak (approx height 3700m) to Kala Khal (at approx height 4500m). It was a brutally tough climb in which we needed all our energies, strength, skill and wits about us. Our calf muscles were screaming for mercy and relief as we stood at the pass with a sense of relief and achievement. Perhaps some of us felt that we were lucky to be alive! And as we stood and surveyed the impressive and imposing landscape around us, my eyes fixed on a neat arrangement of sheds in one of the meadows in the valley immediately below the pass. 

Our guide informed us that we were quite close to the India-China border and that the sheds we could see in the distance were part of an army camp. This camp itself was part of a series of army barracks that stretched from where we were to Nithi, which is on the India-China border. 

But that piece of information that our guide had just provided was quickly forgotten because we soon commenced the gruelling climb down to our camp for the night. This was to be at Bhujani, some 2 kilometres away from and at a clearing which was about 200m higher than the army camp. We focused on the climb down to camp, and for some of us this was tougher than the climb up to the pass.

By the time we got to our camp site, we were all physically wrecked. This had been the toughest day of trekking for each of us in our group. But this weary feeling was mixed with a sense of relief and achievement. For all of us in our group, this had been the toughest climb we had undertaken and we had all made it successfully. Yes, we did have many aches and bruises. But then, to a bunch of amateur trekkers/climbers, these are mere badges of honour! 

We tended to our aches, pains and bruises, had an early dinner, and repaired to out tents by 8pm that night. I talked to my tent-mate for about half an hour before dozing off. I think my friend may have been in the middle of a sentence, but I was too physically smashed to bother about nuances of politeness. I was asleep. Sound asleep. The quiet and serene environment was the perfect balm that soothed my burning calf muscles, the painful blisters on my feet and my bloodied toes.

That calm serenity would be shattered exactly 2 hours later. I was jolted out of my deep sleep by a cacophony of loud shouting and banging that ripped through the peaceful night. I heard lots of male voices scream a series of instructions in a mixture of Hindi and English; and the instructions were not polite. I was scared; very frightened. I feared the worst. I thought we were being attacked by dacoits.

Soon, someone unzipped the two layers of our tent and I heard a man bark, "bahar aajao, turant bahar niklo," (come out immediately). I was fully awake and completely scared as I sat up, clutching my sleeping bag. My fear was compounded when I stared right into the nozzle of a nasty looking rifle. I couldn't see the face at the end of the rifle because light from a torch blinded me. I withdrew my hands very very slowly from inside the warm comfort of my sleeping bag. I did not want the rifle guy to think I was pulling out a weapon of my own, for that would render my aches and pains quite meaningless! I put my hands up in the air and said "hum log mumbai se hai," (we are from mumbai) as I emerged head-first from inside the tent.

It was only then that I saw that the rifle guy was in army fatigues. These guys weren't dacoits. We weren't being ambushed. That comforted me somewhat, although I was still quite afraid. Around me I saw that my co-trekkers were also out of their tents. All of us wore expressions that spoke of a mix of bewilderment, fear and strange relief.

The army camp below had seen our night torches and camp fire, decided we were, potentially, infiltrators, spies or terrorists and had dispatched some soldiers to case us out. I didn't count but there seemed to be some 10-15 soldiers, all armed with rifles that glistened menacingly in the night light. All of them were incredibly young and it soon became quite apparent that they were as filled with nervous energy and adrenaline as we were, with fear. And when young men with fully loaded guns are in that state of excited, adrenaline-fuelled alertness they normally shoot first and talk later. 

They asked us questions about where we were from, where we travelled to and why we were camping where we were. We carefully explained our trek route and got them to realise that we weren't spies.

They asked if we had sought permission to trek. Our tour guide whipped out the permission certificate which he had procured from the Forestries Ministry in Joshimath prior to our trek. In a clear case of the right hand not bothering much about what the left hand needed to know, the Forestry Ministry did not bother informing the Army post.

After a half hour of heated argument and conversation, the army guys departed. I was too excited to sleep. I tossed and turned and nursed my aching muscles. I was also quite angry. 

Several questions raided  my head continuously: 

We had set up camp at 2.30pm that afternoon. Why did it take the army until 10.30pm to check us out?

If we were indeed terrorists or infiltrators, would we really announce ourselves through fluorescent yellow tents, torch lights and a camp fire?

What is the role of the Forest Department in all of this?

Questions. Questions. More questions.

My friends and I posed these and other similar questions as we talked about the previous night's incident. Our tour guide was extremely unhappy too. 

We posed these and other questions to Tom Hanks. He said that, as far as he was concerned, we could be just about any group. We could be friendly civilian tourists or, just as likely, be spies. He had no information of any civilian movement that night. He said he had a job to do and that was to protect the land. He said that with brutal frankness and cold professionalism, and added, "And given the context of where we are, any suspicious movements are nothing but unwanted threats that have to be eliminated immediately."

My anger was replaced with respect. The questions I had could wait for another day. We all shook hands with Tom Hanks. 

We were indeed lucky to be alive!

--Mohan (@mohank)

ps: I will try and write a separate post on the trek at a later date.

pps: For a collection of pictures I took during the trek, check out my Instagram feed (handle is @mohankaus).

Mumbai Police: A note of appreciation

For more than two and a half years now, I have been 'cyber-stalked' by a person who will, for obvious reasons, be nameless in this piece. Through this period, when the e-stalking continued somewhat unremittingly, I was the recipient of some 15-20 emails a day on average. These emails contained taunts, abuse, insults and objectionable material. These were directed at me initially. I did not know this person at all and all of this attention was totally unsolicited and unprovoked. Many of these emails left me totally dismayed and completely numb. Soon, the abuse extended to include my wife and a few close friends of mine too. Soon, every tweet of mine would be analyzed over several abusive emails. Some of the emails contained needlessly explicit material too. I blocked the sender and filtered their emails out, but they would change their email id and continue to send these totally depressing emails. Despite two warnings, the torrent of offense continued unabated.

In this period, I would often think of complaining to the authorities, but then I was always overwhelmed by a sense of lassitude. I did not act.

Many of us will have, I am sure, thought of paying a visit to the police to file a harassment case against a persistent online pest. We may have, at times, lacked the courage, the strength, the time and the motivation to go through with a complaint. In addition, we tend to believe myths that circulate about the police, especially in India, and fear the arduousness of the process. Either that or we may give up because we may have formed a view that the police are generally not effective anyway.

Yes, it is hard to go through with the process of lodging the complaint with all the accompanying paper work and the filing of that report.

But, do it. Do not believe the myths. Just file that complaint.

Some four weeks ago, after issuing a final warning to this e-stalker, I snapped out of my lethargy, mainly due to the advice of friends of mine who couldn't believe that I would tolerate the extent of insults and abuse I was coping with. I sleep-walked out of my indolence and reluctantly submitted a written complaint to the Cyber CrimeInvestigation Cell of Mumbai Police. Reluctantly, because of the perception I had formed that such processes are incredibly messy and often pointless.

A written complaint is not easy to construct. Mine was 60 pages long -- a three-page cover letter and annotated print outs of a sample of the emails I had received (there were too many emails -- on average 15 emails per day over a 3 year period -- to print them all out). I provided them with as much information as I could. Emails contain headers that enable them to track the perpetrator. I did not receive SMS's, but if people who read this have received many unwanted and unsolicited SMS's or Whatsapp messages from the same person, collate these in a report and include the time and content of these too.

I compiled my report and my cover letter and lodged it with the Cyber Cell. I expected that nothing would happen.

I was so wrong.

I followed up with them a week after I lodged my complaint. The inspector said "Leave it with us, we will take care of this and get back to you," something I haven't heard from any other person in that position. The voice was reassuring and the message was undeniably kind and calming. A week later, he called to say that they had made progress and that the case was being handled by an expert in his office. He gave me the name and number of this person and asked me to feel free to contact them. A few days later, the cyber cell had identified the cyber stalker, established the veracity of my report and warned the person to cease their unprovoked activities. That warning was enough to get the stalker off my back.

I wanted to share this for two reasons.

First, if you are being cyber harassed, do not sit on your hands for as long as I did. When someone uses technology, such as email, chat or SMS, to target a victim -- either known to them or unknown -- by sending them a stream of unsolicited material with an intent to harass, threaten, humiliate or intimidate, this is cyber-stalking. And it is wrong. It is very much like “physical” stalking and it is mostly anonymous and almost always unprovoked and/or unsolicited. Cyber stalkers often believe that their anonymity and perceived lack of traceability gives them the comfort and the safety of 'technological distance' from the victim. But they, like a physical stalker, intrude on the victim's digital footprint, which is as important these days as our physical space. All of us have a right to our peace of mind and our personal space. The point is this. The stalker often has no appreciation of the impact that their taunts and abuse have on the person whose privacy they routinely assault. They just do it to feed their own obsessions or fantasies. On the other hand, the abused seldom take action because of the perceived laboriousness or ineffectiveness of the complaints process.

Lesson-1: Do not wait for as long as I did. Complain immediately.

Second, I want to applaud the cyber crime investigation cell of the Mumbai Police. If ever you need any help do not hesitate to call them or write to them. Their complaints process is not really arduous if you truly value your space, peace and sanity. These guys are warm, friendly, understanding and extremely approachable. They are also quick to help and, going by my experience, they appear to resolve matters.

Lesson-2: Your complaint often gets looked into promptly and professionally.

The cyber crime investigation cell of the Mumbai Police is, in my experience, a very thorough and professional unit. We are quick to criticize the police but must also provide appreciation of the good work they do.

For me, this was an excellent example of quick, efficient work by the Mumbai Police.

Bravo guys. 

-- Mohan (@mohank)

Satyamev Jayate: Opportunistic or Responsible?

Satyamev Jayate: Opportunistic or Responsible? 

Time will tell...


Opinion is cheap. And there is plenty of that going around after the first episode of Satyamev Jayate aired, Sunday 6 May 2012. The show's producers may harvest all of these to construct the show differently. Or, they may not.

I have many people to thank for many things. For now, I will start with thanking Aamir Khan for my re-introduction to Bollywood cinema. I saw precious little commercial cinema that came out of India for over 13 years. One day, I stumbled upon "Dil Chahta Hai". I was hooked. Khan, the lead in that cult movie yanked me back into Bollywood. I reconnected with the genre and saw many a movie subsequently. However, I soon found out that the movie was as much an accident in this complex genre as my accidental encounter with it was! Bollywood, perpetually in search of a formula had merely found another one to exploit.

It is therefore, not surprising that Indian commercial TV follows the same idiom that Bollywood uses. The template reads: Continual and perpetual search for the next "formula". Serve flop after flop. Hit the jackpot with the formula of the year/decade. Milk it for all it is worth. Rinse. Repeat.

The TV 'formula' that seems to be working now is the reality show hosted by a major Bollywood personality. Have pretty face or stunning six/eight/twelve-pack? Fans stand outside your home in Bandra for hours on a hot Sunday afternoon to see you wave from your balcony? Come in. What? You haven't cooked a single meal in your life? You do not do extreme sport? You think an electrolyte is actually a new form of electricity? Do not worry. We will sand-paper the rough edges. We just need your face and body, not so much your intellect.

And so, I sat down to watch "Satyamev Jayate" with a healthy dose of cynicism. I admit. I was (potentially) just about to subject myself to another Bollywood actor telling me things he knew absolutely nothing about in an utterly convincing manner. After all, Priyanka Chopra had attempted to teach me about extreme endurance sport. Amitabh Bachchan had showered on me his expansive knowledge on all topics. Arjun Ramphal had taught me conflict resolution skills. Akshaye Kumar had taught me how to cook.

But I watched it because of Aamir Khan. I also watched it because I had been assaulted by the pre-show publicity. Even people living under a large immovable rock couldn't have missed news about the show. Social media was full of references to it, so were the papers. Although, as Harini Calamur (@calamur) records here, not many in the industry knew what it was going to be about. She says:

"I was curious about Satyameva Jayate, especially given that industry at large was scratching its collective head at both the timing (11 am on a Sunday Morning) and the content (serious, chat show, with no embellishment. Real people, real clothes, little make up – a show that puts the real back in reality). Many I spoke to, some as late as yesterday evening, were not sure if the show will be accepted by the audience."

The reach and canvass was broad. It was simulcast on 10 different TV channels and in 7 or 8 different languages. The Karnataka Government did not allow a Kannada dubbing of the show to be aired, ostensibly because it is against dubbed TV, although dubbed porn being viewed inside its Parliament building appears acceptable or even encouraged. The show was aired via community TV in many villages across India.

This, then, is a massive show. It has a popular figure asking tough questions. Each episode focused on one elephant in the room. The show will never run out of elephants or rooms. India is replete with elephants in search of a room; which is why I believe the producers are onto a gold mine here. I have no idea why no one has thought of this concept or the frame earlier.

And there is another bold move that sets this show apart. It is aired at Ramayan-time. A bold move. From my limited knowledge of the way Indian TV works -- assuming it does, that is -- apart from Star Wars, Mahabharata and Ramayan, not many other shows made it big in that Sunday-morning slot. The 11am time is family time in India. To show grotesque images of disfigured and badly punched up faces on a Sunday morning at 11am was as courageous as it was experimental. I would not have shown such graphic images. I may have issued a warning so that young unsuspecting kids did not accidentally see the gory and bloodied images that were shown. But then, perhaps the show did not want to air brush the truth. The images told the story of the victims. This was bold TV at family time.

But then Aamir Khan has always been bold.

After a monologue at the start, the show hit you. It took you on; played with your sensibilities. At one point in time, Aamir Khan had a tear in his eye. There were some irreverent and gratuitously pernicious suggestions on Twitter and other social media that the tear may have been made-for-TV drama. I refuse to accept that they were false tears. The stories were too raw and too hurtful. Any person with feeling and emotion would be affected by it -- even a brilliantly successful method actor. I had a tear too. And I act as well as I write. It was impossible not to feel hurt or anger at the stories that we heard. They were depressing. They were compelling. They weren't new. But they made you simultaneously angry and sad.

The show was well made. Harini Calamur has talked about it in her review. It had indeed put 'real' back into 'reality'. The victims spoke. It was their story. Aamir Khan did not tell us what we had to do. The show questioned us, our morality, our values, our silence and our tolerance of a continuing atrocity: female foeticide. And there are many more such societal ills that will follow. As I said, there are many elephants in search of a room.

But it wasn't as though we were seeing something we did not know already. Then again, did we really know it? Do we, as a society, need Khan to tell us we have a problem? And we do. Let us not stick our collective heads in the sand. And as G. Khamba says in another multi-layered review of  'Satyamev Jayate':

"The intention is noble, and props to him for even trying something like this on Indian television. He’s using his star power to “raise awareness”, and while personally I will always skeptical of that ... I hope some good will come of it. What and how? I don’t know, and I don’t even think anyone cares. People are just happy that Aamir Khan is “doing something”! And we as a people seem so starved of role models and hope that even “doing something” is enough..."

But there lies the problem too. A society that needs Khan and his star power to highlight these substantial ills needs some serious introspection. We need Amitabh Bachchan to ask us to think about eradicating polio. Until that time, we will not care about it.

The Government throws its hands in the air. The problem is just too hard. "Where do we even start?" it asks. The poor people throw their hands up in the air. "This problem is not ours," they say collectively. They just want their daily bread on the floor.

The lower middle class just wants to escape the lower middle class and become just-right-of-center middle class. For them, just putting bread on the table (yes a small hand-me-down table re-surfaced last year with a polished formica finish, but covered with now-dirty lace cloth) is hard enough.

The just-right-of-center middle class is tired of being just-right-of-center middle class for decades and  wants to get to being upper-middle class. "Just getting to work and back is a problem already."

The upper middle class just wants to escape being the upper middle class. "Sending our kids to the best schools is expensive enough. Don't distract us from the JEE exams and UPSC exams please. We are all studying for it. Yes. As I said, all of us are studying for these exams."

And the upper class just drive around in their expensive cars dissing the poor class for all the filth on the streets and the chaos at their airports.

Simply put, we have all, collectively, stopped caring for anything other than that which we need to worry about in our own lives. So yes, we do need Aamir Khan to tell us that we must care. We do need Aamir Khan to tell us that we need fundamental education in this regard. Such education on fundamental values ought to be provided in our homes and in our schools. However, are we enlightening our kids at home and school to think critically and in an ethically correct way or merely training them to get into good jobs that pay well? I am convinced it is the latter.

So the fact that we need Aamir Khan to "do this to us" is a much larger worry than the amount he is getting paid.

Ah yes. Khan's payment-per-episode. We focused on the amount he is getting paid first, as is our wont. For, if we do not like the message, why not shoot the messenger? In other words, every message has a bakra messenger. We collectively train our focus on the messenger as a mechanism to conveniently deny the very existence of the inconvenient message.

So, in the tried and tested manner that we have all become familiar with, Khan was severely criticized for charging Rs 3 Crore per episode. As G. Khamba said in his review: "I know for a fact that some of my friends who have been working their assess off on the ground for a pittance will be irked at so much attention being showered on issues they’ve been crying hoarse about for years and years purely because Aamir Khan has said it – but that’s just how we’ve become."

My irrational fear, however, is that we -- all of us -- will think that watching the show is our monumental and singular contribution to rectifying the ills that a show like this might highlight. After all, no one took notice when our Prime Minister called female foeticide (wait for it) a "national shame".

We are like this only. Even such derision has lost meaning.

My fear is that the show will be forgotten. The daily ride to work and back and constant quarrels with the auto-driver will completely occupy our 'bandwidth' and make us impervious to the ills around us. The truant maid will test our patience enough to distract us from the real ills that surround us. The re-surfacing of the formica table-top will occupy us so completely and thoroughly that all we have energy for is a commitment to watching the show at 11am every Sunday.

The show does play a role. It may remind us and fill us with guilt... Until the maid, auto-driver, metro journey assault us with their realities. But for that one hour on a Sunday and perhaps for a few hours after that, the show must occupy our minds. Perhaps a few people will get affected and decide to do something about these elephants and the rooms they reside in. The show is, therefore, good in my view.

But I do have one substantial problem with the show. And it worried me tremendously.

To the best of my knowledge, the show did not interview or showcase the work of a single NGO in the area that was under the microscope: female foeticide. And there are many NGOs and individuals that are doing substantially good work in this space already. Organisations like Jagruti, or Population First, for example. Or indeed, the work that Aamir Khan's colleague, Gul Panag has been doing in this space.

In that sense, by not standing on the shoulders of people and organisations that had preceded it, the show had a "messiah" feel to it. It ought to have acknowledged, more powerfully and more directly, the scale of the problem despite the work that is already being carried out by other people/NGOs.  And instead of being a mere promotional tool to increase "fan following" the show ought to use its online presence, social-media presence and online brand, as well as its strong brand in the non-Internet-enabled rural India to point to the wealth of resources that already exists.

The show has garnered interest from all walks of society. Of that I have no doubt. The show has two choices now: (a) It can remain a mere 'highlighter' of issues and reside in our collective conscience for a few hours before we get assaulted by practical realities of life, (b) It can also become a vehicle that points to useful resources that already exist, measure its impact and become a vehicle for real change.

We have many people who care enough in an "all care, no responsibility" mode of operation. We do not need another such entity. If the show chooses the former path, it should not cry foul if it is seen as an opportunistic commercial enterprise that made money through a society's collective misery, its ills, its warts and its pimples. The more responsible path would be the latter. It is a real choice that faces the producers. Now.

I am willing to give 'Satyamev Jayate' time to see if it indeed goes down the more responsible, latter path. I am not a cynic... not yet!

-- Mohan

PS:
9-May-2012: There have been shows like this in the past on TV. Shows like Visu's "Arattai Arangam" (on Sun TV) and Lakshmi's "Kadhaiyalla Nijam" have attempted such people-focused, socially-relevant issues in a "regional" context and setting. "Satyamev Jayate" is perhaps the first attempt to tackle social issues of national relevance, prevalence and importance and take it to a national audience.

Confront that surrealistically familiar stranger...

In an article written a few weeks back, Mr Sumedh Mungee wrote a piece on why he left India (again). His article received a fair bit of attention on blogs and the Interwebs. The article had over 400 comments on the NY Times site. Each of these comments had several "Recommends" too. Many of the comments spoke, sadly, to a "Good riddance, please do not come back" theme.

The reaction to a frank and honest article was along expected lines. 

But I was struck by Mr Mungee's conclusion: 

"I know India will rule the future. It’s just that I’ve realized—I’ve resigned myself to the fact—that I won’t be a part of that future." 

It is easy to dismiss that sentiment, like several of the respondents have, and say that it is Mr Mungee's loss and India's gain! That would be lazy. That would be egregious. 

I would like to request, instead, that Mr Mungee considers a return to India in the near future. 

After making several trips over the last 4 years or so, we decided to relocate to India last year. It wasn't an easy decision. There were many unknowns. However, we were clear about one thing. Just one thing. We were clear that we would come back with our eyes completely open and with clearly set/accepted/understood expectations. Expectations of others. Expectations of ourselves too.

At the time of writing this, we have now been in India for 18 months. It has been a crazy ride. It has been thoroughly confusing at times. It has been deflating and unrewarding at times. The paradoxes are too many to list although a healthy dose of humour helps (see this and this for examples).

But then "eyes open" and "clear expectations" are weasel words. 

What exactly do these mean?

****************

Mr Mungee gives the impression in his introductory comments that he left USA to return to India not to "fix India's problems". 

There is an implicitly hidden neat assumption in there that (a) there are indeed problems, (b) that these need "fixing", and (c) these are easily fixed by returning NRIs. 

Yes. It is entirely likely that there are problems that may be fixed (only) by returning NRIs.

But let us ignore that for a minute. Mr Mungee says that he wanted to leave the USA to "go back to Shri Thomas Friedman's India: an India that offered global companies, continental food, international schools and domestic help; an India that offered freedom from outsourcing and George W. Bush."

So it is clear that Mr Mungee did not want to come to India, but to an India that Shri (how nice) Thomas Friedman sketched for him. He did not wish to return to Manmohan Singh's India or Abdul Kalam's India or to the India that he would discover for himself. He wanted to return to an imagery and expectation of an India that had been conveniently -- and perhaps even erroneously -- sketched for him by Shriman Friedman.

And how did the lovely Sarvadhikari Shriman Thomas Friedman arrive at his sketch of India? As Sarah Leonard (@srl2126) noted on Twitter with a tinge of sarcasm, "Tom Friedman visits a country of 1 billion people this week, immerses himself in the great sea of humanity, meeting CEO after CEO after CEO."

And therein, potentially, lies Mr Mungee's own first problem that he might wish to spend some time fixing before embarking on fixing India's myriad problems. Mr Mungee probably built for himself an image of an India that was drawn for him by Shri Thomas Friendman. He wanted to return to Shriman Friedman's India and not the real India. They are different. 

Shriman Friendman's India is a bustling, thriving, lively crush of humanity that cannot crush India's confident march out of poverty, because there are cellphone towers, engineering schools and biotechnology schools at every street corner. It has billboards that advertise physics degrees, for heaven's sake!

It is a nice picture. It is a romantic picture. It is not a clear picture. Indeed, it may even be a wrong picture. But all of that is moot. The real issue here is that there is no Friedman's India. There isn't even a Kalam's India or a Chetan Bhagat's India or Nehru's India. 

India is what you make it out to be. India is what you experience it to be. India is.

And that is what I would use as my argument in attempting to convince Mr Mungee to return to India. Do not come back to Friedman's India or an India that needs fixing. 

We came back to India, instead, because we needed fixing.

And that is precisely where this "expectation setting" begins. This does not ignore the existence of India's many problems nor does it talk to the possibility (however remote) that we might contribute to alleviating these problems. That may well be the case. However, that is not the reason we returned. We returned because we needed fixing and India provided us with an opportunity to do so!

****************

Mr Mungee does state in the initial few paragraphs that he came prepared to experience an India that was "visually familiar but viscerally alien".

That is, once again, off the mark in my view. India can not be about either familiarity or instinct. It is about experience. And it talks to individual, personal experience.

Mr Mungee's expectations of his experience were wrong, in my view. He proceeded to set up home in upper middle-class, suburban Bengaluru. His daughter went to the best schools. Even his home was "American-friendly".

A friend of mine once went to Kenya for a holiday, stayed in an upmarket hotel and did not step outside the block that the Hotel was immersed in because it felt "so much like downtown Sydney"! Much like her, Mr Mungee may have missed the point too. I am not suggesting that Mr Mungee ought to have lived in the gullies and by-lanes of Suddhaguntapalya. But the fact that he aimed a re-creation of an American (or America-like) experience in India suggests to me that he did not work hard enough to create a personal experience for himself that was distinct, special and very possible -- India offers that to everyone that wants a personalized experience.

Much like my friend from Sydney who wanted to see and recreate downtown-Sydney in the very different and far-away Kenya, Mr Mungee gives me the impression that he wanted to carve out his own downtown-US-city experience. Which is fine. But such an expectation should come with a statutory warning: "Expect to be disappointed. Repeated and bullish insistence on this expectation is likely to lead to extreme depression and/or severe disappointment."

And this is precisely where this "expectation setting" continues. If I insist on recreating my little pocket of America or Australia inside the carefully constructed cocoon of my existence in India, I will have missed the opportunity of being confronted and assaulted by myself.

****************

Many people have tried to classify and categorize India. Neatly. They have mostly failed. Few people have succeeded. 

One legend that understood India for what she is, and, more importantly, did not attempt to change it, was the late Yehudi Menuhin, the legendary violinist. He says in his autobiography, "Unfinished Journey" (an excerpt found here) that he recognized early on in his interactions with India and her music that Indians rely predominantly on the individual spirit and an entrepreneurial mindset. Indians prefer that to a systems-organisation-mindset. In his autobiography, Yehudi Menuhin also says that a symphony orchestra type organisation for Indian classical music would just not work because each musician would want to express themselves differently, the way they thought was right or necessary! 

"Just because the Indian would unite himself with the infinite rather than with his neighbour, so his music assists the venture. Its purpose is to refine one's soul and discipline one's body, to make one sensitive to the infinite within one, to unite one's breath with the breath of space, one's vibrations with the vibrations of the cosmos. Outside the family, the Indian's concern does not easily fasten on the group. Europe's genius, on the other hand, has been to form individuals into communities, each accepting loss of freedom in the interests of the whole. Hence collective worship, hence armies and industries and parliamentary democracy, and hence chorales in which each voice has a certain independence but is nonetheless severely constrained by other voices."

One read of the above and you know why neat compartmentalization of India is impossible. So, attempts to classify India into neat compartments or buckets invariably fail. There aren't 1.2 billion buckets in the world, leave alone identifying labels for each of these 1.2 billion buckets!

Yet, Mr Mungee talks to three (yes, three) neat buckets to classify India: "airplane India", "scooter India" and "bullock-cart India".

Neat. But what about buckets like "scooter India but with iPhone in hand" or "bullock cart India but with the most modern LED TV in the thatched roof home" or "airplane company India" or "a few airplane companies and steel companies but still dependent on (and work with) bullock cart India", or the "airplane India but I will still not purchase the latest A. R. Rahman album, instead preferring to download the pirated copy" or the "autorikshaw driver India but will insist on either purchasing Dork 2 or not reading it at all". 

Each of these India's are unique, distinct and different. And there are more. Many more.

India cannot be classified neatly. And most attempts to do so have fallen flat.

At best I might marvel at how "scooter India" can fix "my Bose speakers" while, simultaneously chiding "tricycle India" for running over the feet of people who walk to some unknown destination on non-existent pavements.

To even begin to understand India in the manner of bibliosoph or a cataloger is, in my view, exercise in utter futility. It is complex system that does not attract bibliognosts readily. It is a multi-dimensional, complex, nonlinear, dynamical system with utterly unpredictable behaviour. We expect completely deterministic results. What we get instead is confusion to the chronicler/observer. Welcome to an anarchic chaos trapped inside a complex and seemingly orderly democracy. We are dealing with a complex chaotic system.

To try and find neat/precise solutions in such chaotic dynamical systems is a somewhat specious and nugatory exercise. And that is what chroniclers like Mr Mungee have tried to do. They try and find closed form descriptions by defining it as a problem that is in need of a solution! 

A more compelling and persuasive approach would be to ask if there is a steady state in such systems and how we might approach such a steady state which is even partially describable!

However, we did not come to classify (or even understand) India. We came, instead, because we needed to classify and understand ourselves. 

****************

So Mr Mugee arrived with an expectation of seeing Shriman Friedman's India and immediately carried out a task of cataloging that a senior librarian would have been proud of.

Immediately after that, he saw himself become more and more Indian and he hated himself for it. And that is where his problems really commenced. And this is where we begin to address the "eyes open" weasel word. 

Mr Mungee started to hate himself for designating separate dinnerware for his maid and for his family, because his children were down with amoebiasis! He was advised that it may have arisen from his maid's lack of hygiene. The maid who probably cooked his clean food and cleaned his house of unwanted bacterial elements was sadly responsible for introducing these unwanted elements into the body of his family. Ironic. But that is not the point. The point is that Mr Mungee designated separate plates and hated himself for it.

Like all his workmates and friends, Mr Mungee's cycle of distrust in his driver drove him to despair. 

Mr Mungee was locked in a road-rage incident against a hawker who dared to block his car's path. How dare "bullock cart India" block the progress of "airplane India"?

Mr Mungee saw him being continually confronted by deception and with each such mendacious behaviour, he found himself sucked into a vortex of trust-deficit that afflicts much of Indian society. And he hated it.

These are very honest accounts of a journey that Mr Mungee did not like. His was a compelling battle against who he was becoming! For him what he was becoming was a constant affray on his senses. And he was losing. Constantly.

He took the only action he could, to rebel against the "surrealistically familiar stranger" inside him. He quit to escape from inertia and denial.

This is really the crux of the decision in my view. Factors like "appropriate expectation setting" and "cataloging librarians" are useful but not critical in any journey like the one Mr Mungee undertook. What is of greatest importance is the battle within. 

And this is the battle that one faces in India. And provided one does not lapse into either inertia or denial, the resulting lesson is one that India is most capable of teaching.

We made the decision to move back to India because it presented us an opportunity to confront ourselves; it presented us a valuable opportunity to face our own worst enemies (ourselves). To accept defeat in such an exercise would be akin to the surrealistically familiar stranger in me mocking me for having won the battle against myself!

As I say in an earlier post, my life in Australia had become too regimented. Too planned. Incredibly structured. Too well-organised. There was an absence of anarchy in my life. There were few surprises to life. Moreover, my senses weren't attacked constantly. My principles weren't brought into question periodically. 

Here, it is. 

And when I see it alive, I know I am, myself, alive. I have made it define my existence. I constantly fight the "high-fidelity bigotry" where I can. I battle the "surround-sound-enabled stereotypes" when I see them. I also aim to battle the "chronic amoebiasis of the soul".

I am not going to provide examples here because these examples would serve to trivialize the exercise into one of bluster and self-aggrandizement. 

It is sufficient to say that we now have the opportunity to look at the surrealistically familiar stranger within ourselves and strive for sharper congruence and alignment. Again, we came back because we had to understand ourselves better. 

****************

So my message to Mr Mungee is simple: 

Come back to India because you want to see Mr Mungee's India and not Shri Friedman's India. Come back to India not to solve her problems (and these exist, let us not deny them) but so that you may undertake a journey to solve your problems (and these exist too, let us not deny them). The process of you confronting and vanquishing that surrealistically familiar stranger may well lead to India's problems being solved too. If your process of discovery does not solve India's problems, you will have undertaken a journey and benefited from what India taught you. 

And India affords that to any honest explorer.

To give up and head back would be to give up on oneself, and that just cannot be acceptable.

-- Mohan (@mohank)

Settling into life in Mumbai: A Licen...

It is now 18 months since we moved back to Mumbai. Girija and I had lived in Australia for many years prior to that. 


A few days back, we had organised a Twitter-inspired get-together -- a TweetUp -- at our appartment in Mumbai. The evening has been captured wonderfully in a blog-post by the lovely Naren Shenoy.

During the evening, I recounted -- badly, of course -- some of the initial struggles we had when settling into a "new normal" life in Mumbai.

"You are so incredibly bad at telling a story Mo," Girija said. She is good like that! She calls a spade a shovel and keeps me grounded. Always!

As I sulked and slithered into a corner that was happy to receive me, perhaps out of extreme sympathy, one of our guests (Twests, perhaps?) said, "Why don't you write these experiences down?"

I thought that that was a sensible idea since I do write better than I narrate -- now you know how terrible my narrations are!

And so, here I am... Using my hitherto suspended blog to write once again about things other than cricket.

The invitation and encouragement to blog about my experiences may have been driven by a momentary rush of face-saving empathy on the part of my friend. However, on reflection, I think it is a good idea to write because I believe I am caught in the middle of a truly fascinating process; a process of re-connecting and re-discovery.

I moved back to Mumbai in March 2010. I had been away from India for some 24 years. That is a long time to be away from a place. I needed to re-establish connect with the place and her people. Of course, in the time I had been away, I had made the pilgrimage to attend the Madras/Chennai "Music Season" almost every year since I had left. However, we soon realized that living in a place is quite different to making fleeting annual appearances during which one eats out almost everyday and when one attends classical music concerts in well-appointed air-conditioned halls.

"Living in a place like India is very different to visiting every now and then," I was warned by a friend!

"Unless you stand in a queue to purchase a train ticket, you have not really lived here," said a another.

I had lost all sense of what it was like to live and work in India.

It is now 18 months since we moved back, to live in India; a year and a half of immense paradoxes.

Initially, when we had just moved back to India in March 2010, I used my "Face Book" (FB) Status updates quite a bit to connect with the friends we had said goodbye to in Australia -- I wasn't much on Twitter then. I used my FB status updates to talk about life here. I would marvel at things that astounded us. I would also whinge and moan about things that weren't 'quite right'! Even when I whined, I was trying to laugh at the situation in a mock-tragic manner rather than ridicule the situation and the actors in it. That said, I did also post positive messages of some amazing things that we were seeing. I did marvel at the fact that we had our MTNL connection within 12 hours of applying for one -- that too on a Saturday! I did marvel at how 'easy' life had become in India. But "perception" is a funny thing! People remember the negative comments more than positive appreciation/affirmation.

One of my FB friends who lives in Chennai called me immediately after one such 'negative' FB status update and snorted angrily, "If you don't like it here, just pack your bags and go back."

I accepted and empathized with that sentiment even if I did not support it entirely. Mainly because that sentiment resonates strongly with a picture I have of Indians as people that love humor and love a laugh except when it is on us! And even when the laugh is on Indians, more often than not, only an Indian can be the originator or creator of such self-denigration.

In those initial days, I wasn't Indian enough; I had not earned my self-sledge rights. So the "go back" comment was par for the course.

Witness the Edison drama that played out when Joel Stein wrote an article in The Times. The 'race card' was used and waved quite easily. If the same article had been written by an Indian-Indian -- like say a Karan Thapar or Rajdeep Sardesai -- I submit that it would not have registered a blip on the race-card-scale!

I say "Indian-Indian" to indicate Indians who live in India. The Indian-Indian has self-sledge rights by virtue of his/her residency. Indians who live overseas are not considered "Indian" enough. The overseas-Indians who only visit here during their children's school holidays or for "Music Season" visits are commonly referred to as NRI's. Non-resident Indians is the official expansion of the acronym, although Not-Required Indians is a commonly accepted expansion too!

So one needs to earn self-mock stripes and you only earn it after spending (read: suffering) enough time here. It is like a prison sentence.

Indeed, a few months after I moved to Mumbai, a friend of mine said to me, "I totally agree" when I whined about needless traffic delays in Andheri West caused by a truck moving the wrong way on a one-way street!

I said to her, "But when I whined about exactly the same issue last year, while I was visiting, we had a three-hour argument! We argued about the impact of population and then moved quickly on to how discriminatory the ICC was against India, Ricky Ponting's misbehavior, Adam Gilchrist's ears, Arjuna Ranatunga throwing his weight around and the need for Sri Sri Ravishankar to have two titles in his name!"

She said, "Ah! But that was different. Now you have earned the right to complain!"

But I accept that some of what I wrote in those initial few months (on my FB updates) could be seen as "grating". In that sense, the "pack up your bags and go back" friend was right. But the intent of those FB Updates was less to "make fun of" or "laugh at" and more to share my somewhat unique experiences. 


I was seeing India with a different lens.

And to be constructively balanced about it, I was having an incredibly rich experience! My life in Australia had become too regimented. Too planned. Incredibly structured. Too well-organised. There was an absence of anarchy in my life. There were few surprises to life. Here, in India, at least in those initial months, every hour threw new surprises! I learned to cope in a highly ambiguous environment, interacting with highly ambiguous personalities! I soon acquired inter-personal skills that were hitherto buried or latent. I had to hit the ground running. I had no choice. I sharpened these hitherto absent skills considerably in order to "cut through" on many issues. As a mentor of mine often says, "In India, there is no point in climbing stairs, you have to land on the terrace using a helicopter!"

But, simple/small things used to get to me initially.

For example, I would constantly get irritated by the fact that people pressed the "Up" and "Down" button on elevators. Simultaneously! "Surely, they don't want to go up and down at the same time," I'd think to myself.

One day, I plucked enough courage: "Why did you press both buttons, madam", I asked one of these Up-Down-lift-button-pushers politely.

"Mein neeche jaane ke liye lift ko upar bula raha hoon," was the assured response ("I am calling the lift up so that I can go down")

A novel explanation for why both buttons needed to be pressed. I had no come-back to that.

Initially, I marveled at how simple English errors would cause me to break into a smile or a laugh.

For example, the other day, I was at a hotel in Bangalore. I had asked for a cab to pick me up at the hotel at 8.30am. At exactly 8.30am, I got a call from the hotel concierge. He said, "Sir, your car has been reported!" It took me a while to realize that my car had reported to the front desk and that it had not "been reported"!

And there was that bandh last year where some political party was protesting against price increases. A party spokesman claimed victory and in a passion-filled speech he said, "Prices have begun to rise. We are revolting!" I had to agree with the second statement!

And then, there would be some deeper frustrations.

For example, I would often get worked up about the fact that not many people would respond to a meeting request 'appropriately'. Back in Australia, I'd get a, "Yep, you are on mate." or a "You got to be kidding. No way. Get stuffed." The best I would get initially in India would be "That time should be ok" or "That time would be ok". Now what exactly does that mean? It took me a while to figure out that the presence of would/should/could in response to a meeting request means that the person is buying an option on a potential future cancellation! This made life quite complex for a neurotically organised and frenetically structured person like me. But I guess that is my problem and not their problem! And therein lies a fundamental dysfunctionality in the landscape -- far too many people worry about their issues and problems.

But like much else over here, I got used to that too... 


Until a few weeks back that is, when, in response to a meeting request, I had the person at the other end of the line saying, "I think that in all probability that date-time would be possibly ok!" Now, I can buy one option on a future cancellation. But I counted at least four in that particular form of extreme dithering!

Nothing, however, prepared me for my drivers' licence experience. The test was the biggest joke played out on me in the initial 5 months of my stay here. The way it works these days is that one has to go through a driving school in order to secure a drivers' licene.

So on the appointed day, my local driving school piled on 15 of its test-ready candidates into 4 cars. It is a surprise that these cars traveled 20 meters! However, somehow the 4 cars managed to reach the RTO office in a place called Wadala, located some 20 kilometers away! We were warned the previous day that we had to get there "on the dot" at 10.30am. "We cannot keep the inspector waiting," we were told.

So, we got there at 10.30am and waited... and waited... and waited... in the rain and out in the open and right next to an open drain! There were 5 other driving schools with their gaggle of test-ready candidates. In all, some 90 people, 20 cars and only 10 umbrellas waited patiently for the arrival of an inspector.

The inspector finally made an appearance at 2.30pm. By then I had already devoted 5 hours to this utterly useless exercise, and that was already 4 hours and 45 minutes too many. I was quite irritated -- especially considering the fact that I stood out in the rain and alongside an open/smelly ditch.

When the man arrived, there was a mad scramble by the entire collection of hungry, irritated test-ready candidates to get into the cars of their respective driving schools. The driving instructors from these schools meanwhile jockeyed for positions on the circuit. This was akin to a Formula-1 grid where cars and drivers often duck, weave and swerve in order to eke out a starting position on the grid for themselves: "Mark Weber would have no chance of surviving this mad scramble," I thought to myself.

Anyhow, the result of all of this frenetic activity was that 20 cars lined up one behind the other on a busy highway in Wadala. I was in car number 15.

And so, the procession set off with the candidate who was to be tested in the driver's seat and with the portly inspector in the front passenger seat. After each "test", which would last no more than 300 meters, the portly inspector would ask the candidate to stop and get out of the car. The test-driver would move to the back seat and the next candidate in the back seat would move to the driver's seat and take the "test". Once all test-candidates in one car had completed their "test", the portly inspector would get out of the "now completed" car, shoo that car and its contents away and move to the next car in the queue!

This uniquely ridiculous procession made several U-turns on this very busy highway. Several large trucks traveled on both directions on this highway. The fact that I did not witness an accident that day was a minor miracle. It was totally surreal and incredulous!

I had never seen anything quite like this before... ever! One part of my brain was exploding. The other laughed so hard, I had a head-ache. I sat there shaking my head at the ridiculousness of it all. This "procession test" went on for an hour before portly guy settled into the car I was in -- car number 15 in the mad-grid-scramble earlier on.

Portly guy asked me to sit behind the wheel and drive. I was quite irritated by then. Frankly, by then, I didn't care if I got my licence or not.

Portly guy announced: "Licen Test shuru!" ("Licen Test starts now!")

A point to note here is that the traffic inspectors call it a "licen" here and not "licence". I could never figure out why, but I would soon have the answer.

I settled down behind the wheel with the express intention of irritating portly guy. I asked him, "Should I wear a seat belt?" to which he said in Hindi, "No. Not required". I continued with tongue-pressed-firmly-in-cheek and asked if I had to adjust the rear-view mirror. I was met with a stony glare and a terse response, "I haven't got all day. Just drive now, will you?"

I drove fast. I changed three gears in 20 meters! I was angry.

Portly Guy: Stop! Looks like you have driven before.

Me: Yes

PG: Why did you not say this before?

Me: Why did you not ask me before?

PG: It is not written in this form.

Me: It was not asked on the form.

PG: Ok. Do not try to make too smart. Get down. (zyaada smart math ban-naa. uthar jaayiE)

As I got down from the test-car, I asked Portly Guy in my broken Hindi:

Me: "ab kya hoga?" ("What will happen now?")
PG: "ab aur kya hoga? Licen mil jayega do hafte mein". ("What else can happen now? You will get your LICEN in 2 weeks")

Pleased as punch, I pressed on, innocently:

Me: "Sir, isko aaap Licen kyon bolte hain?" ("Sir, why do you call it a LICEN")
PG (looks at form and then at me and says in a brusque and angry tone): "aaapko ek hi chahiye naaa?" ("You want only one no?")
Me: "haaaan, ek hi chahiye". ("Yes, only one")
PG "to theek hai. Licen hi hai. Ek Licen, do licens" ("So that is right. One Licen. Two Licens")

I had my licen in two weeks. But more importantly, I was finally able to figure out why the traffic cops call it a LICEN in these parts. One licen. Two licens!

Since then, that word has become part of our vocabulary at home. I need a licen from Girija to drink one glass of wine. If I feel like a second, I need a licens! A licen for one morning coffee. A licens for two!

Precious lessons, these.

-- Mohan