The Long Silence by Shashi Deshpande

This is a work of fiction for which author won the Sahitya academy award way back in 1990. These days I am trying locate quality Indian literature and Sahitya academy award is one such parameter to locate them. Last week I found this book in a bookstore and I just grabbed it.

It is a story of an urban middle class women, born in a small place but living in Mumbai, whose identity is trapped in being a wife and a mother, amongst other family relationships, who feels she has lived in silence all her life, only in the end to realize that it was her choice and not something others had imposed on her. It is actually not a story; these are monologues happening in the mind of the protagonist Jaya, as she is hits a point in life where things around her may change, status quo may go, although it does not happen in the end. It all happens in her mind, she keeps thinking about things that happened, that did not happen, that could have happened, that should have happened, that may happen and that may not happen. In a period of few days, she goes through all her life, talking about all her relationships with each and every member in the family and with other people around her, her hiding behind the veil of a wife and a writer.

Since the story is set in a period before and after independence, you may find yourself not relating to a few things. If you are an independent woman who has lived with her own identity, again you may not relate to it. But if you are a housewife, whose career as the author puts is home and husband only, and hence her dependence on the marriage, you may relate a lot to it. As far as men are concerned, am not sure how they would relate to it.

I found the writing style a bit confusing, she jumped with the speed of thought, moving between places and periods. The editing on the book could have been better, paragraphs and sections merge into each other. 3-4 parts of the books did not make any logical meaning to me.

Read it if you like to read the thoughts of a mind, lot of which you would identify with.

Unsung UP II – Amroha

Amroha is a small town in North West Uttar Pradesh, close to Moradabad. If you are driving from Delhi you have to take NH 24 and drive for about 100-110 kms and you reach this small town. I happened to visit it for a family function, though I must admit that June is a perfectly wrong time to visit this area.

Amroha got its name from Aam i.e. Mango and Ruha which is a variety of fish that is found in abundance here. We did pick up a whole lot of Mangoes, but being a vegetarian, obviously did not look out for the fishes. Before this trip my only association of Amroha was the writer Kamaal Amrohi who hailed from this town.

Like I always say if you go with an open mind, most trips would offer you a surprise and often a pleasant one. On this trip I discovered that this small town is actually the hub of manufacturing Dholaks and Tablas. There are numerous small scale manufacturing units that produce Dholaks and other percussion instruments. They use the wood from Mango and Sheesham trees to curve out the multiple sized and shaped hollow blocks which are later fitted with animal skin, mostly goat skin, so create the instrument. The manufacturing is completely manual and simple with each piece of wood cut and chopped and then carved and cut, followed by fixing the skin and then painting. It’s a small scale industry with each unit producing about 100 instruments a day, but the town as a whole produces somewhere around five to six thousand instruments. They distribute these instruments across the country and also export it to all major geographies. Being small scale they fall under handicrafts, and hence do not have to pay any taxes on the products they sell.

You can walk around in the bylanes and see the instruments being manufactured everywhere; some do only parts of the instrument, some do the whole and sum just assemble it and market it. Being a Muslim dominated area, there are lots of master craftsmen, who show their craft in making these musical pieces. It is amazing to see this place buzzing with all kinds of musical instruments. There are other handicrafts as well that come from this place like carpets or Kaaleens and wooden toys.

On the way to Amroha, you can also stop by Garh Mukteshwar on the banks of River Ganga. It is a place of religious importance where lots of Hindus come to take a dip in the holy Ganga. There is an ancient temple which has Shivalingas from ancient times, which have mythological stories associated with them.

I am not sure if I can recommend a trip to this place, but if you are passing by, you can probably stop by for few hours and have a peep into this town.

Discover Delhi – IV: Sulabh Museum

Sulabh museum, a one of its kind toilets museum had been on my list of ‘to be visited’ places for a long time. Now that I live in Gurgaon, it was not too far for me but it still took me 4 months to finally go and visit it. I have been a big fan of Dr Bindeshwar Pathak since the time I first read about him and in any innovation summit that I attended, I always asked why is he not there and why is his innovation not featured as a case study, but I guess he is beyond all this, busy doing what he has chosen as his mission in life, relieving mankind of manual scavenging.

Sulabh International museum of Toilets is located in one corner of Delhi in Dwarka on Palam Dabri road, you can locate it on Google maps, but when you reach there and ask for directions ask for Sulabh office and not museum, as most people know this complex as office and not museum. Outside the gate, very obviously is a Sulabh Shauchalya, or a public toilet, but to discover what is behind it you have to enter the office gate. At the reception one of the curators will welcome you and take you to the museum in the complex.

As of now the whole museum is located in one big hall, where you can spend good 2-3 hours learning about how we reached today’s levels of sanitation. There are some interesting facts drawn from the earliest history of toilets, tracing back its origins to Harappan civilization when there were underground sewage facilities and there for squatting toilets. The museum takes you through the toilets of ancient, medieval and modern eras. The oldest ones are depicted through some pictures and fact sheets, there are lots of models from the medieval era and there actual ones from modern world. There are interesting pieces where the height of laziness is depicted through toilets used by rich and famous. There are practices like human mobile toilets which make you wonder if they were really so. There are stories of phrases that came out of disposal practices. There is lot of trivia scattered throughout the jam packed hall. You can have a look at some of the futuristic toilets as well, some for your adventure trips and some that you can carry along and some that are bio degradable so you can use and throw.

Outside the hall there are demo toilets that have been developed by Sulabh, and the curator will very meticulously explain you the operation of each toilet and where and why that is used. For example there is small spiral open air toilet without a door, which gives the user a feeling of being in the open while hidden from all sides. There are toilets for areas where there are no laid sewage pipelines and hence the waste needs to be disposed or decomposed where it originates. When you listen you would wonder why this should not be done everywhere. There are pits that are made using the local material and can support a small family for years together. The cheapest toilet made with old gunny bags supported by Bamboos costs less than what we urban people can spend on a single dinner. Then they have a small laboratory where they are developing and testing new technologies. They are currently working on Duckweed based waste water treatment technologies. As you go around and reach the back of entry gate you see a small treatment plant which treats the human waste from the public toilet in the front and cleans the water to the extent that it can be used for anything but drinking, generates gas which is used in the kitchen and the solid waste left is used as manure, fed back to the plants.

They have created a door out of the human waste that has been kept for demo outside the museum hall. It is an experimental product which has nothing else as input except the human waste and glue. Their tests prove that there are no bacteria in the solid product and it is completely safe for use. They are working on making furniture out of it. Well if you can have products made out of elephant waste, why not human waste.

What I found delightfully amazing in the museum is the fact that all the staff members were not only proud to be working with Sulabh, were proud of what they have done and what they are trying to achieve, but they were all extremely polite and ready to share their knowledge and talk about it. They were talking like owners and treating the visitors like guests unlike most professionally managed places where most people are trying just to do their jobs and refuse to look beyond the precise job description. Each and every member of the organization was a delight to interact with. They were absolutely courteous in their conduct and very open in listening to ideas and sharing their thought processes. At the cost of being biased I got a feel of being at an absolutely Indian organization which has not yet been spoilt by the processes and mechanizations of the western or the modern world. Hats off for creating and maintaining such a culture right in the middle of the hustle bustle of a busy metropolis…

For more information on this museum and this 20,000 strong organization which has set records in constructing toilets and maintaining them across the world, do visit their website. I can assure you that you will find some amazing information about sanitation and you would want to get up and do something about it.

I would strongly recommend it to anyone, after all toilets is something that we all universally use every day of our lives. Entry to the museum is free and it is open Monday to Saturday from 10:30 Am to 5:30 PM, except national holidays.

Tourism Best Described

I was reading 'Branding India' by Amitabh Kant and came across this quote by former prime minister Vajpayee:

'Now we know why terrorism has hit tourism the most. Tourism is a foe of terrorism. Whereas terrorism feeds on intolerance, tourism breeds tolerance and empathy. Terrorism has no respect for human life. In contrast, tourism teaches us to savour and celebrate all that is beautiful in nature and human life. Terrorism seeks to erect walls of hatred between faiths and communities. Tourism breaks such barriers.Terrorism detests pluralism, whereas tourism celebrates it. Terrorism has no respect for human life. Tourism pays a tribute to all that is beautiful in nature and human life. Terrorism may have temporarily hit tourism in this metaphorical battle between the two. But tourism will make a major contribution to the eventual defeat of terrorism and all other manifestations of fanaticism.'

Can there be a better reason to promote tourism?

Coastal Karnataka: A rewinding trip

I was in Karnataka after 4 months, had last visited coastal Karnataka 5 years back and stayed in Mangalore some 7 years back. This time of course the trip was very different as we landed in Mangalore on a hot and humid May morning. We drove to Kundapura where we planned to stay in a river island resort, while stopping for lunch in Udupi.

The much hyped Mangalore Goa highway is a dangerous place to say the least. The two lane highway does not have any divider and has villages all along the highway. People on foot, on bicycle, on auto just walk past the road, without looking at either side, leaving the responsibility of their safety to vehicle drivers of highway. On the whole stretch we were close to knocking down a biker, came close to having a brush with few pedestrians and close enough to be hit bang on by vehicle coming from opposite direction. There is an urgent need for the over bridges for people to cross the road, and of course people need to be a little more cautious while crossing.

The backwaters of western coast have lots of islands, usually referred as river islands. They are in all kinds of sizes and shapes and some enterprising entrepreneurs have converted some of these islands into eco resorts, by built interesting cottages where you can be on top of the river flowing below you, amongst the trees that have been grown for generating fruits and in general the local flora. Some of these islands are big enough and support as small population of few thousands and they use boats as a primary transport to travel to and from the mainland. Some islands are only few acres and make a perfect size for a small resort. They have few cottages scattered across the island with a common kitchen and dining area with a caretaker to cook the exotic local food for you. To put your entire luggage in a boat and use it a primary means to travel to and from the island adds to the exoticness of the whole experience. This area is known for heavy monsoon, so if you are lucky you will get to see the heavy downpour falling on the backwaters and the plantations around you, it is almost like music to ears.

The beach is never too far from any of these places and since it is western coast, you can enjoy a nice sunset. The beaches are not too crowded and are long enough for you to go on a long walk and lose yourself with the horizon in sight. It is so peaceful to walk on the almost lonely beach that you tend to loose concept of time and distance. We walked on the Kodi beach which had only one big restaurant and miles of stretch on both sides inviting you for a long walk. There are no lighthouses and we could not see any big ships like the ones you see near Mangalore.

All in all a well enjoyed trip on a patch of earth that is still green and yet to be urbanized completely.

Being a Politician

Politicians are one species that most of us like to hate. In my conversations with people from more than twenty odd countries, I found that all of them unanimously and genuinely believe that politicians in their country are the worst. I wonder if there is any other class of people which generates such a unanimous opinion about themselves across all kinds of diversities. So much so, that the phrase Good Politician is always a perfect example of an Oxymoron.

Recent Lok Sabha elections gave us another opportunity to see the media focus on politicians, staking their claim to be in power and then re-aligning their strategies once they got the mandate from the public. As I sat through the hours of footage covering a whole lot of politicians and their election campaigns, read the reams and reams of paper on them and got all kinds of humorous messages in mail box, my mind started thinking of what it would be like to be a politician. What would motivate one to be a politician, assuming that most of us are not inclined to take it up as a career option, what would keep them going even in the age when most of their peer would have retired and are leading a laid back life, why would the rich and famous go and plead to the public to choose them as their leader. These are some of the thoughts that crossed my mind:

First of all to be a politician, you need extremely good health. You should be fighting fit to be able to work around the clock, be available to people and appear energetic enough to be able to lead people. If you look at the schedules of the politicians in last few months, you would admire their energy. Of course they say that power itself gives you the energy to go, but then your physical body has to co-operate with you. Imagine Advani going around the country and talking to millions and managing leaders both in his party and in the other parties at this ripe age, and also keeping himself abreast with all the current affairs and constantly creating a strategy in mind while responding to public via media. Imagine the high level of mental alertness required almost 24 by 7.

Next you need to have a very thick skin. You should be able to hear any comment about yourself and your intentions, let people speculate about your intentions, lets opponents tear you apart, but still be able to smile in public. At the same time you should be able to take in yours stride the potential positive things that are said to you that you may know are not true. You should be able to balance the praises and brickbats that come your way and be not driven by either of them. You should be able to listen to everything that is said to you and about you and not be impacted by either and do what you want to do. You should be ready for your friends turning foes at any time and be ready to kiss and make up with people who you are fighting today. You should be able to manage your emotions all the time unless you decide to use them to your advantage. Think of it how many of us can do that and virtually every politician does that all the time.

You need to be extremely good communicator, even if you do not have excellent language skills. You need to communicate with potentially everyone in the society, the people who would vote you to power, the media which keeps you under constant surveillance, businesses who fund you with an intention to help them back, your own people whom you have to hold together and your opponents who need to be kept in check all the time. How many of us can mange so many diverse set of people simultaneously and get them all together to be able to lead them and make them believe that you are actually serving them. You need to be able to let people decide, what you actually want them to decide.

You should be ready for a grind at least once in five years, if not earlier. Come election time and no matter how rich or famous you are, you have to hit the road, go through the grind, eat what you get on the way, with the people and be ready to rough it out. It may seem glamorous, but even after having chartered plans to your disposal, it is not easy to criss-cross the country, address rallies, meet the local workers who would have worked day in and day out for your visit, take stock of things while keeping an eye on what everyone else is doing, what media is saying and are they covering you enough or not. You are bound to fall off and on, you should be able to get up and start running again, till you either step forward or fall again.

You need to be multi-dimensional, you should be able to switch from topic to topic and have view on most of them and if required be able to change your views based on the situation. Today you could be from one constituency, tomorrow you may be asked to contest from another and you have to do it, connect with the locals, learn the local language, and convince people that you will take care of them. Today you may be asked handle one portfolio, tomorrow another and something else the next day, you are expected to not only understand all the nuances of the portfolio you handle but also give the best performance as expected by millions of people, who between themselves would have thousands of ways to measure you. You need to be extremely flexible and adaptable, both for the expectations from you and for the environment in which you may land up.

It is usually not apparent but you do need to have nerves of steel and a hell lot of grit to be able to be a politician. Any other qualities or characteristics that you think are required for being a politician…?