Theater that pays

Two kinds of people hover about the driver's window in Delhi - stoplight denizens such as vendors and beggars, and petrol pump attendants.

The former, while a great deal more pesky, are by far the more benign. When a petrol pump attendant offers to clean your windscreen, and engages you in small talk, or patters on about windscreens, don't look him in the eye. 

Watch that meter! 

This morning, I was in a particularly benign mood - it was Holi, there was not much traffic on the streets, and I was going to drink a friend's home to drink a cold beer in the warm sun. I paid for Rs. 2000 worth of petrol - roughly 27 liters - and then chatted with the smiling, blue-faced attendant who asked me to squirt water on my wind-screen, so he could squeegee it off. I didn't stop to think, "Nobody ever asked me to do that before; they use the squeegee to rinse the windscreen with water." After I had spread some of the good cheer around and received the receipt for my money, I turned the key, and noticed my tank was way less than half-full. I asked the attendant to look at the gauge. He protested, but weakly, and concurred that the amount of gas filled was less than Rs. 2,000 worth. I told him we could do get into a whole drama of reporting and tests, or he should top my tank up by as much as they had tried to steal.

He quietly added another 10 liters into my tank, and I quietly drove away.

I wonder how many times a day this drama of distraction works.

Lucrative theater! Barry John once told a group of young actors we were working with - look at beggars on the street. See how realistically they act. Their very livelihood depends on how convincing they are at evoking the right emotions. 

The petrol pump attendants are equally professional actors, ensemble performers. It requires at least 2 or 3 of them to have worked the whole act out. I wonder how often they change the script. Over their chai, at the beginning of the day, do they toss a few improv ideas around - today, let's try it with a scratch card offer. Or, how about you try - Uncle, how come you've stopped coming to our pump so frequently? 

It is a sad commentary on our nation that you always have to have your wits about you. Even in the most mundane of transactions, there's every chance you'll be fleeced.

2013 - Finding Meaning

2013

“If running is the answer, then what is the question?” Ron wrote me, provocative as always, when I told him I had taken to long-distance running.  To stay the course, you have to slow down your mind, turn it from outside in, use your awareness to ease your body, even while pushing it. Running became easier in 2013, and I ran 3 half-marathons, all at an even pace, and without the fatigue of my first long run, in 2011, where I melted at the finish line.

Can I find more lightness in running, more grace?

And in life?

There was grace in my birth. India reminds you of your privileged circumstances every minute - when domestic staff do your laundry and your dishes, when you see people cooking on the pavement outside the hospital in which they hope a family member will recover.

For my son Kedar, I pray the inheritance of grace doesn’t harden to a sense of entitlement. This summer, we took him to Ladakh, to volunteer at government schools in the remotest villages of the region. “This is the failure of the demographic dividend”, I told him when we left Turtuk, where the children sat cross-legged on gunny sheeting, the school’s only atlas was irretrievably locked in the Principal’s cupboard, and science experiments would be just another remote account in textbooks. “How can these children ever jump the great divide between how you learn and they do?”

From the Nubra Valley, we returned to the dusty, faintly hippie cosmopolitanism of Leh, where smudgy cakes and stodgy Italian food were on offer, alongside Ladakhi momos and roadside kebabs. On the last leg of our Ladakh trip, high above the cobalt waters of Tso Moriri, we heaved our carcasses up to the snow at 16,000 feet, and for the first time that summer, I felt reasonably fit. We were all stretched, though, and Kedar said he had never been so exhausted in his life. Yet, when we returned to Delhi, he said he would go back to Ladakh any time.

Earlier that summer, Kedar had taken two flights and a long ferry ride out to Havelock Island, in the Andamans, where he earned his Advanced Open Water Diving spurs. The shark and the mating octopi he saw on the dive are among the highlights of his year. His first major adventure without his parents. Letting go…

This was also the second year I let go of my annual autumn trek.  With Pa’s condition frail, time away from the family seems an indulgence. We had planned a short circuit around the base of Stok Kangri when we were in Ladakh, but the freak June weather made us abandon our plans; instead, we stayed in Leh, and watched the horrific images on television, as the Chorobar tarn burst, washing away the Kedarnath settlement. The temple still stands, and I hope the new settlement that comes up around it will be more restrained, more aesthetic. On my first trip to Kedarnath in 1969, I was exalted by its beauty, by a sense that it connected us into a cosmos of deep velvety blue, lit by intense silver stars. Since then, I have watched with dismay as it deteriorated into an ugly, plastic-littered slum.

In 2013, I made several visits to Sangam Vihar, supposedly Delhi’s largest colony. At its northern fringes, where it borders the opulent Sainik Farms, this settlement is becoming distinctly middle-class, with 3-storeyed structures painted in crisp white paint. Three kilometres deeper in, though, land dealers carve agricultural land into hanky-sized plots which house more recent immigrants into Delhi. Joint families of 3 generations sleep in one room, and spend the day on the narrow lanes that grid Sangam Vihar. At the end of one such lane, we bought 150 square feet of land for a man who has worked part-time at our home for over twenty years, and seen two earlier home investments go sour. Three months after the papers were transacted, and four little brick columns erected to mark the plot, it became apparent Prakash would never find the money to build even the tiniest hovel; in for a penny, in for a pound – I commissioned a local contractor to build Prakash his home. The family was extremely happy, and the room, with an attached loo, is larger than the one they currently rent, but a part of me felt like I had forever condemned a family to a space that is really too small for decent living. In India, you can put every dime you earn into lifting people out of pitiable poverty. How much you do, and how you do it, is a function of what we call ‘apni apni shraddha’, your level of devotion.

Premila’s devotion is to another patch of turf, in Satoli village, where we have had our mountain home for nearly two decades. This is where we spent the first 6 years of our life together, and Kedar grew from a freshly minted baby to a school-going boy. This is where he learned to walk and talk, to swim in the tank shaded by peach trees, and to put his favourite movies into our clunky desk-top computer. Over the last 10 years, Satoli has seen a rush of second homes, and Premi’s recurrent nightmare has been a row of town-houses overlooking our little patch of heaven. Every year, we have put some money into buying pieces of the forest behind us, and into stitching together the little holdings that make up the meadow to our west. As our quilt of land grows larger, we feel more comfort in the prospect of a peaceful return to Satoli.

That is still a few years away – Kedar needs to finish school, and be guided into University and beyond. My father’s retreat from the world is at the same time organic and distressing; though my younger sister Kanika takes on the main responsibility of caring for him, my presence supports her, and Kedar and Premi are two touch points for my father, two lamps of light in his world that is increasingly clouded and timeless. By the serenity of his mien, I like to believe that his clouds are not threatening or obscuring, but vast cushions of comfort, intimations of the eternity beyond.

Have a wonderful 2014.

Sand Mafias and Sunday Swims

Delhi's best swimming spots lie at its fringes, in the Asola-Bhati sanctuary along the Faridabad border. Decades of quarrying hollowed out vast jagged craters in the red soil of kikar forests, where nilgai and hyena roam. When concern for the environment led to a ban on quarrying in the 90s, this 35 sq. km. enclave was declared a protected area, and the cavities began to fill with rain water.

The finest of these water bodies, Bhardwaj Lake, lies about 4 km. from the nearest human settlement, so the water is unpolluted by human or industrial waste. Judging by the dimensions of other quarries in the south of Delhi, its depth is considerable, so the silt settles far below the swimmer, who has the exquisite pleasure of stroking through clear, fresh water under open skies, without having to drive too far from home. In the summer, the one hour walk to and from Bhardwaj Lake does seem something of a chore, and by September this year, I had abandoned it for ICTM 2, named after the College of Traffic Management, from which you can get to the water in a 20 minute trot.

The urban detritus of partying students litters the shore of ICTM 2, smashed beer bottles and shredded styrofoam cups, empty packets of chips and namkeen, cigarette stubs and plastic cutlery; inexplicably, even men's undergarments and fragments of sarees. But when you dive out into the water, it is cool, dark and clear, and in a minute, you are with your breath and your stroke, with the lowing of cattle on the far cliff and the wheeling of a kite high above the scrub. Even the silver glimmer of a jet that was held by the earth at Palam just minutes ago adds to the sense of being isolated, privileged.

One morning, when the sky was bright with post-monsoon freshness, we had just gathered our wet swimming things, and begun to cross the rocks to the path that climbs out of the lake. Yielding a stout lathi, a sinewy young man of about 20 bounded down the hill towards us, a wispy teenager in his wake. He didn't stop until he was within touching distance of me, and raised his lathi to block our path. "Chai-paani ko kharcha", he demanded.

"What for?" I asked.

"Anything could happen to you..." the old threat-promise that a gangster will protect you from himself.

"And who gave you the responsibility to protect us?", I asked.

"Bhadana."

The word meant nothing to me, so he explained, "Bhadana, MLA. You want to talk to him?" He reached for his cell phone.

"Sure," I shrugged. Our would-be protector dialled a number, and held the phone to his ear. "Can't get through... the network...."

The reference to a higher authority, the lack of a connection - the threat seemed to fade. We passed by him, even as he demanded his protection money, and threatened to meet us again.

The very next time I came to ICTM 2, the same young man was running down the rocky trail, running with an enviable animality and infectious joy. I smiled at him, and he responded, with an uncertain smile that couldn't quite summon up a grimace. Later, as Sharad and I were about to enter the water, he appeared by the rocks, and regarded me somewhat uncertainly. "Swim?" I asked him. "No." he shook his head.

We stroked away, and did a fast lap to the far bank and back. "You don't get tired?" he regarded me. "Your breath doesn't swell?" He was intrigued by this grey-haired old man. Intrigued, and challenged. "Let me find something", he muttered, and went off to beachcomb. By the time I surfaced on the far side, he was in the water, wearing discarded underwear from the ICTM 2 picnic spot. His young energy almost made up for his lack of technique, and he dog-paddled across to me, his breath rasping with the effort, his eyes alight with the joy of accomplishment. I waited for him to reach me, and kept him quiet company for a few seconds. "Very good. Not too tired?"
 "I never tire!"

I waited half a minute, then, "Let's head back." A strange companionship.

A few weeks later, the swimming season now coming to a close, I visited ICTM 2 with a band of hard-core athletes. One of my company was struggling to put on his wet-suit, the other setting his GPS-enabled watch to his triathlon target distance of 2 km., while I postponed  swapping my last warm layer for the cold water. A skinny man of about 30 drifted down to us, unshaven and unkempt, but very much at home.
"Going to swim?".
"Yes."
"You can't."
I wasn't sure whether that meant we shouldn't, or may not, so, "Oh, we swim here every week."
"You must be coming very early, but I don't allow any one to swim here. In fact, you're not even allowed to come here, if you read the board."
"Never saw the board", I said, now getting ready to wade in.

Half an hour later, my companions were doing their last lap, but I had conceded to the cold of the water, and was pulling on my fleece jacket. "You give me a hundred rupees each." Quite matter of fact.

"You live in Anangpur?" I asked him.
"Yes, but I work here. Looking after Bhadana's sand."
"Sand?"
"Yes, there's sand everywhere - didn't you know?"
I hadn't really noticed, but I guess...
"Yes, he employs me. One day, he will make this into a landscape to rival Gurgaon, or Delhi, with bright lights everywhere."
"Unlikely. The Central Government has declared this a nature reserve, and that's not going to change in a hurry."
"You're probably right. Anyway, the JCBs run through the night, and in the morning, we don't let people come in. But you swim really well, Uncleji."
By now, my friends were climbing out of the water, and I turned to help them gather their gear. The guard of sand piles faded up the hill. "Nice meeting you - see you soon."

I missed my swim the next weekend, attending to business in my mountain village, but as my friends crossed the road at the Traffic College, they encountered a slightly hysterical young woman in over-sized dark glasses and pink fleece jacket. "Don't go that way, we were mugged." Two friends followed, another girl, and their male companion. "We've called the police, and 'The Colonel'. The guy had a knife."

"I don't know who the Colonel is", my friend Mohit recounted the incident. "But Sanju's a big guy, and Sonny's 6'2", so we decided to keep going. To be safe, though, we headed all the way out to Bhardwaj Lake, where we've never seen any local activity."

All the same, we decided to scour the Google maps for another water body in which to log our swims. Economic benefit and political power make for strong vested interests, and when they co-opt the under-employed, you have the makings of systematic violence, which is hardly worth challenging for a weekend outing.

Us and Them

The mornings are turning cool now, and this is probably the last time I'll swim in the Bhatti lakes this year.

About a kilometer in to the approach road, a pile of rocks signals that the quarries have been closed for business. It also serves as the marker for runners from Anangpur that their morning run is done. Many of their faces are familiar, and we exchange pleasantries as they stretch and bend before walking back to their homes.

"Lots of your friends are running around these parts."
"My friends?"
"Yes, the English-speaking kind."
"I heard there is some kind of race going on."
"A hundred - hundred and fifty of them. Up and down, through the night, little torches attached to their foreheads."

I know, of course, that running enthusiasts from Gurgaon have staged a Bhatti ultra-marathon this weekend, and it wouldn't be too much of stretch to say several of them are friends. I ask, though,

"Why don't you join them?"
"We don't have that kind of time. It's OK for these kind of people, who have lots of time. We have work to do, families to feed; it's OK to come out for an hour or two in the morning, but then we have to get back to reality."
"They work through the week. But, yes, they have the weekends off."
"Yeah, they punch things into the computer. But we have work, real work. And tension."
"True, that. Anyway, I'm off for my weekend swim..."

Us, and Them.
Clearly, I'm part of the 'Them'... the computer-punching, English speaking types.

Triumphalism among US Left

The polarisation of views in the US is amazing. I don't meet many Republicans, since it seems only the Liberals travel abroad, but the uniformity of views (and derision of the conservative heartland) is staggering, like some extremely sophisticated indoctrination. Like me, I don't think the Democratic liberals meet any Conservatives - they talk to each other, nod to each other, and assume that anyone who thinks otherwise is an asshole.

And this is what Clive Crook says:
"One of the things that strikes me as a foreigner living in the U.S. is that American metropolitan liberals despise every kind of bigotry, except the kind directed at the dumb hicks who inhabit the middle of the country. I mean, those people vote Republican!".

Here's his piece for Bloomberg:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-10-22/democrats-are-stupid-too.html

Fit at Fifty

Of course, I'm not fifty - I finished 57 years on planet earth this July. But this title is easier on the ear and year..

Last Sunday, I went swimming with a group of people, all around 30 years old. One of them sent me a facebook message that afternoon - I hope I can be as fit as you at 57. How do you do it?

I thought it was a question worth reflecting on, and this is what followed:

Fit at Fifty – and beyond

      1.   It’s got to be important to you. If not, our urban lifestyle, with its sedentary work and mechanised transport, makes it easy to live comfortably without moving the major muscles of the body, or driving the cardio-vascular system to levels which cause it to remain in fine tick.

     

     2.  Find sports you enjoy. Learn the techniques of the sport as early as you can, so the return to effort is high – whether it is the most efficient stroke in swimming, the right form in running, or how to optimise gearing and saddle height on a cycle. Once the muscle memory is in place, you will be able to pursue the sport well into your 60s and 70s, without huffing and puffing like a grampus, and without too many muscle pains and sprains. And since you enjoy it, the impulse to pursue it will not be dampened by the ups and downs of life.

   

      3.       Seek out like-minded friends. Research has shown that your levels of fitness are seriously influenced by the company you keep. So, if you have friends who are strong swimmers, you will at some level, strive to keep up with them. And, you will also learn about technique and equipment from each other. It also helps if you occasionally compete. Preparing for a race or match is a great motivator – not so much to beat the others, or the clock, but to do your best.

     

      4.       Measure it. Nothing works like tracking your own progress – speed, time spent, distance covered. Cumulating these on a monthly basis shows you how much time and effort you’ve put into the sport, and reduces the room for self-made excuses. It also helps you to push your fitness/sports time to the front of the queue of competing demands for your time. And gradually, you’ll learn what I have learned, that there is rarely a time when you don’t return from a ride, run, or swim feeling better – much, much better – than when you set out. Irrespective of how lousy or demotivated you felt before you set out!

      5.       Be well! I can’t stress enough the importance of keeping illness at bay. Every time one falls sick, and has to take time off from sports activities, the curve of improvement droops, and there is a huge setback to one’s fitness levels. In fact, a double whammy operates – firstly, you have lost several days of practice, which always results in a drop in performance; secondly, the body is struggling to repair itself, rather than build on itself. This obviously raises the question of how to keep well.

     6.       Listen to your body. I have learned a lot from the broad principles of Ayurveda, which tell you that food is the best medicine – and the worst poison; and that there are no universal principles of good food and bad food. Each of us is unique, though Ayurveda tries to classify us according to the ‘doshas’, or essential characteristics of our body types. And while I have read some of the detail of what food works for the ‘vata’ types, and what for the ‘kapha’, I think the most important take-away is, if you observe your body carefully, it will tell you what it needs to eat, and more importantly what it most definitely doesn’t.

This self-awareness does not come easily. The lessons and sensitivity develop slowly, and have to fight against widely accepted stereotypes (for example, if you want strong muscles, you must eat lots of animal protein) as well as the culture of our upbringing. But listen carefully to your own body – what food makes it feel strong, what makes it feel light, what makes it feel sluggish. Some foods will cause your body temperature to rise, others will make your intestines go cold. Listen to the effect different forms of food have on you.

Sleeping late suits some, waking early suits others. Monitor how you feel in the morning, especially if you have changed your sleep routine. Allow your body to tell you when it is feeling thirsty; and don’t eat when you aren’t hungry. Try not to let the mind interfere in this signalling. If you learn to listen to your own body, you will become much more resilient, with a highly developed immune system.

      7.       Be flexible. Flexibility of the body prolongs your active years. It needs to be cultivated. Though many sports will engender flexibility of the joints used (swimming for example), others tend to lead to stiffness – running is one. Cultivating a practice that enhances flexibility – yoga and tai chi are two of the best known – is hugely helpful, and reduces the chances of injury or strain as a result of intense sport activity.

      8.       Push yourself, but not too hard. In general, we are too soft on ourselves, and stop well before we reach the limit of our potential. One has to keep pushing the envelope, of distance run, passes scaled, or time in the water. This does not mean exhausting oneself or ending up with muscle strain, or cramps. Often it means slowing down, quietly observing one’s own ‘form’, the unnecessary exertions that do not add to speed. Whenever you find yourself gasping for breath, straining, or over-heating, ask yourseIf if you can do it slower, more easily. Usually, you can; then your breathing slows, your movement is more fluid, and you find you can run that extra mile!

Surprise Yourself. Run those extra miles.

Education on a Sunday morning

A Sunday morning. We drive to the fringe of the Asola-Bhati sanctuary, on the Delhi-Haryana border. As we park our cars, a knot of teenage boys pass cheerily by, heading in the same direction as us.

A few minutes later we catch up, and it registers, via the acute sensibility that we Indians have for class and place, that these are not boys from the adjoining Gujjar villages, but from an urban slum.
 "Where're are you heading?", I ask them.
 "To the lake."
"Have you been there before?"
"No, have you?"

When I tell them I have, a flood of questions follow - how deep is it? Can you swim? Can your children swim? Then, as I answer obligingly, the questions get more personal, "What do you do?"
That's a difficult one to answer under the best of circumstances, so I tell them one of the many truths, "I used to teach - English". No, not in a school-school, but in a private center, to teach English to adults.

"And you've retired now?"
"Yes."
"Then how do you manage for money?"
Another boy is slightly embarrassed by his friend's transgression of propriety and interjects, "Oh he must not be having any money problems. He must own his house."
I admit as much, and he says, "We pay rent."
The others chime in, "Yes, we too."

"So where is 'home'?", I ask. It is in the nature of Delhi that their parents come from every state in North India - Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh.

"And your family?" they ask me. I tell them we're essentially Dilli-wallahs, though my parents came from Punjab. They nod. "And that's your son?", they point to my teenager, walking a few paces ahead, with family friends.

"And that girl with him? Which country is she from?"
Of Tamil-Swiss parentage, Mallika's origins would be difficult to pinpoint, so I am not surprised when they say, "She must be from another country."
I nod.
"From Bombay."
"And Bombay is another country?", I ask.
They look at each other, one nods, one shrugs...I let it pass.
"Actually, she's from Bangalore", I tell them. "Anyone know where that is?"
"Yes, I've seen it in the railway station - New Delhi to Bangalore City."
"And do you know where it is?"
Silence.
"Which state?"
Silence.
"Anyone heard of Karnataka?"
"Karnataka." A couple of them repeat the name, but it is clear it has little resonance.
"It is the capital of Karnataka."

We are approaching the lake, an abandoned stone quarry, now filled with rain water. Even though the water level is higher than I've ever seen, its still a good 100 feet below us, and the first viewing is always impressive. The boys hoot and whistle.
 "Wow! It must be deep!"
"Uncle, we won't swim in it! Are you sure you'll swim in it?"
"There must be dinosaurs in the lake."
"Dinosaurs?" I check the boy's face to see whether it is a joke. It isn't.
"Dinosaurs! Do you think dinosaurs still walk the earth?"
Not one of the boys is sure how to answer. I don't want to be harsh, so I say, evenly, "Dinosaurs disappeared from the earth millions of years ago."
They digest this. "And what about pythons?"
"Don't know about pythons, but I don't think this is the terrain for pythons."

Glad for the company, the boys splash around the shallows of the lake, while we do laps of its placid surface.

On the way home they talk of what they will do with the rest of Sunday. "I have lots of homework," one says. "Yes, I must study my Economics", says the other.

I don't dare to ask...