A Global Sikh!

In the summer of 2003, I was commissioned by BBC Radio to do a couple of stories out of Punjab. After the obligatory interview in Chandigarh with the state's political bosses, a friend suggested I meet a rather resourceful Keenu farmer in Hoshiarpur, who was also writing for The Times of India. My interest was piqued -- a farmer and a journalist.

On a dusty summer afternoon as I drove into the sprawling Keenu farm, I was greeted by this genteel, soft spoken, young man. We introduced ourselves. He said, with a smile, "I am Khushwant... Khushwant Singh." And then quickly added, "No kin of my more famous namesake."

He went to the kitchen and got me a tall cool glass of fruit juice. And then very seriously proceeded to guide me who should I speak to for my story. He was most generous with his contacts, and arranged for me to stay the night in his lovely farmhouse.

That evening I made acquaintance with a different Khushwant. He was more jovial, cracked one bad joke after the other, started slowly with his whiskey and then by the end of a long evening had drunk me under the table. Late that week as I drove back to Delhi, I realised Khushwant was most unlike any farmer I had met, and even more unlike any journalist I had known.

After that first meeting, we often spoke on the phone. We would discuss stories, discuss the relative decline in recent years of the states we came from, Bengal and Punjab. He spoke about Punjab agriculture and Punjab journalism with equal passion and considerable knowledge. We spoke about Subhas Chandra Bose and Bhagat Singh. And for good measure, we discussed at length how exotic Punjabans and Bangalans were. Conversations with Khushwant have always been as varied as the man is.

Over the past four years as he has grown to be one of my better friends, I have met him many times and almost each time I have seen a different side, a new facet of the man. I have seen him upset, even angry about farmer suicides and female foeticides. He fumes about the rising drug consumption in the state and the high unemployment rate. I have seen him covering Jassi, the serial wife from London who duped a dozen odd men into marrying her, and breaking into laughter as he lapsed into Punjabi : "O mainu gaaliya kad rahi si (she was abusing me)".

Then one day he called me from Hoshiarpur and made this grand announcement, "Oye puttarr, I have decided to write a book." He paused, let the news sink in and then added : "A book on Sikhs." Now, I have been a journalist for some years and have heard a few book-writing announcements in my time. In a good year, I myself am overcome, at least a couple of times, to finally pen that masterpiece which I know is churning inside me.

So I didn't take this threat very seriously. Even though, there were a few conversations after that in which he outlined how he planned to travel to different parts of the world and meet members of the Sikh community who had gone on to make a difference to the lives of the people they have lived amongst. As I learnt about the ambitious travel plans, I grew more sceptical about the literary enterprise.

That is, until one day I had this urge to spend a few days in the hills, and called Khushwant seeking his company. "But I am off to UK on Saturday," he said. "I have these interviews lined up for the book," he said over the phone. Suddenly I realised the sardar was serious about the book.

Rest, as they say, is history. I have been privy over animated phone calls and excited face-to-face conversations how interesting Fauja Singh was, and how difficult it was to initially meet Gurinder Chaddha. Over the past year and a half, the man has lived and breathed his book. Last year, I went to Hoshiarpur to watch the World Cup soccer finals together on TV, this year disconsolate over India's early exit from the World Cup I called him up, looking for emtional support. On both occasions, all he wanted to do was discuss his damned book.

And there have been times when I have spotted a mistake or two in one of the chapters he had sent me and I called him up to discuss it. From the other end, an excited voice asked "Dhoom 2 dekhi hai? Both Ash and Bipasha look hot, yaar."

Oh well, that's Khushwant Singh for you. Farmer and journalist. And now a writer. Its still early days to comment on the book, but if it is anything like its author, it should be one heck of a read.

Go smell the coffee, Rahul!

Seriously, guys, I have often wondered, more than once, if I missed my true calling by not becoming a sports journalist. My first article in journalism was a profile of the stylish New Zealand batsman Martin Crowe, just before the 1987 World Cup of cricket.

There was both opportunity and more-than-occasional desire to write more on one of my more favourite subjects, but I chose not to do anything with those opportunities. There is a lot going for a career spent chasing cricket stories and watching interesting matches all over the cricketing globe. A career that could so easily have been, but, alas, never was!

On the other hand, given the passions that the game rouses in me, it is just as well that I didn't go onto become a cricket scribe. Or else, the most frequently mentioned medical event of this blogspace-- the cardiac arrest of yours truely that happened last year -- would pehaps have happened a tad earlier.

It is just not the cricketing actions of the Boys in Blue that cause such turmoil in my heart, though it must be said that the side's oft-demonstrated ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of near-certain victory does play havoc with one's cardiovascular system and would perhaps even be behind the odd ulcer that might be insidiously growing inside me.

Methinks the more serious damage to my health, over the years, has definitely been caused by the way the game is run (or not) in this country. Baffling team selections, inexplicable persistence with some players while the more deserving were cast aside, often impacted on my bloodstream with serious consequence.

As I sit to pen this, not everything feels as it should inside me, and my heart can be caught casting an accusatory glance at the TV set, where India has just bashed the living daylights out of Test cricket's favourite punching bag, Bangladesh.

You would think my latest lament about how things are in Indian cricket is rather poorly timed, coming as it does after the somewhat spectacular performance by the B-in-B (only the first instance in the history of Test cricket where the top four batsmen have gone on to score hundreds) in what is surely a revenge series if there ever was one.

I just can't help but feel a great opportunity to rebuild has been lost. After the much-publicised and not-entirely-unexpected (that is, if you go strictly by cricketing form and not hype) early exit from theWorld Cup, the Bangladesh tour provided an ideal opportunity to put the Indian cricket house in order.

Indian skipper Rahul Dravid's decision to go in with five specialist bowlers, and thereby restricting the number of specialist batsmen to five, has evidently worked. But the success of this strategy or for that matter Tendulkar's 36th and 37th Test hundreds or Zaheer Khan's first five wicket haul in four years has to be seen in proper perspective. That these successes have been achieved against a side that has notched just a solitary Test win in 44 matches.

Given the fact that far more sterner test lies in wait, playing England in England and then hosting Pakistan, the five-batsmen strategy makes little sense.It is at best a temporary strategy that can only be tried against a weak side like Bangladesh. I can't imagine India playing in Lord's with just five specialist batsmen plus Dhoni, or for that matter, taking the field against Pakistan without six specialist batsmen.

Even the best cricket team inthe world, Australia plays with six specialist batsmen, this despite the redoubtable Adam Gilchrist at the number seven spot. As Steve Waugh once said, Gilchrist would perhaps be as effective at the number six slot, but the sight of him walking in at number seven often breaks the bowling side's morale.

Ditto for Clive Lloyd's strategy of the four-man pace attack. You would think Andy Roberts, Michael Holding and Malcolm Marshall, between them, would dsmantle most batting sides, but Lloyd always wanted the extra firepower of the big bird Joel Garner, in addition to Roberts, Holding and Marshall. Chetan Chauhan, long time opening partner of Sunil Gavaskar, once told me, after one has faced a hostile opening spell from Roberts and Holding, then handled the liquid pace of Marshall, one of the most discouraging and hearbreaking sights for a batsman was to see the big Joel Garner loosening up at deep fine leg, preparing to bowl.

More recently, Sourav Ganguly's decision to use Dravid as a wicket keeper in one-dayers allowed India to go in with seven batsmen. Not many bowlers in the world enjoy the prospect of bowling against a side where the redoubtable Dravid comes in as the seventh batsman. After that famous 326-run-chase at Lord's in 2003, the then English captain Nasser Hussain said : "This Indian side is packed with batsmen, they just keep coming at you."

That is the whole idea. To keep coming at you. Ask the Australians and they would tell you, it intimidates most opposition on most days.

Instead, India opts for the extra cushion of a fifth specialist bowler against Bangladesh. What should be a matter of serious concern for India is if five bowlers are needed to bowl out Bangladesh, how are four expected to deliver the goods against far better batting line-ups? Logically, wouldn't it be a better idea to practice taking 20 wickets with four spcialist bowlers against Bangladesh, than one fine day asking the bowlers to do the same against England, South Africa or Australia?

Even more worryingly, Dravid's much-touted five-batsman strategy ensures one of India's finest Test batsmen VVS Laxman remains benched, and devoid of crucial match practice before the more important business against England begins. Also one gets the feeling, more than just strategic thinking was behind Laxman being dropped (unlike a Tendulkar or a Ganguly, he doesn't even get to hide behind the fig leaf of being "rested") from the side against Bangladesh.

A cricket board that has perfected the art of taking symbolic stands rather than taking any concrete measures, had earlier "rested" the senior pros Tendulkar and Ganguly in the one-dayers against Bangladesh. Though it was oficially denied, the move was seen by many as a slap on the wrists of the duo who allgedly didn't pull their weight in the disastrous World Cup campaign.

As Greg Chapell quit and Dravid appeared unwilling to lead the side, the Indian cricket board made a characteristically symbolic gesture of mollifying an angry Dravid by making Tendulkar and Ganguly sit out the Bangladesh one-dayers.

Howver, both had to be restored to the Test side quickly to dispell any talk of a witch hunt. As the Indian criket board continued to play footsie with the game, the easiest way to restore status quo was to keep Laxman out of the side, though it can be argued even in a five-batsman Test team, the very very stylish Hyderbadi commands a place on the basis of his past performance. I hope no one seriously thinks that despite his promise and pluck, Dinesh Kartik deserves a place in the side ahead of Laxman.

Laxman's problem is his ability to negotiate boardroom politics doesn't quite match his exquisite onside play. Thus, forever the first batsman to be axed out of a one-day side, he finds it increasingly difficult to make it to the Test eleven.

Remember Jawagal Srniath?

The most successful quick bowler in Indian cricket after Kapil Dev. The fellow would have picked up 100or even perhaps 150 more Test wickets had he played more often for India when he was younger and a yard or two quicker. Instead Srinath cooled his heels in the sidelines, as the once great Kapil Dev lumbered onto his Test record haul.

Some cricketers are more expendable than others. Srinath was one of them, so is Laxman.

Equally baffling as Laxman's absence from the Test side are a few other selections. Virender Sehwag, in the midst of batting horrors, finds a place in the one-day side against Bangladesh, but not in the Test team. Even a cursory glance at his record would tell you, Sehwag has been a world class prformer in Test matches, while his one-day batting, though occasionally explosive, has seldom been consistent. Yet after really one poor Test series against South Africa, he is out of the Test side, but continues to retain his place as an opener in one-dayers, despite the extended run of failures.

The story gets curiouser with Sourav Ganguly, whose career record is exactly opposite of Sehwag's. However, the man with over 10,000 one-day runs and India's man of the series against Sri Lanka in the last one day series before the World Cup and India's highest run-getter in theWorld Cup, is rested in one-dayers, and then waltzes into the Indian Test team ahead of the likes of VVS Laxman and India's best young middle order hope, Yuvraj Singh.

First the recently departed (that is, from Indian cricket) Greg Chapell spoke about "the process". Now it is the Indian captain Rahul Dravid's favourite buzz word. I am trying so very hard here to understand "the process" that allows for such decisions which fly in the face of common cricketing logic. If there is a method, oops, sorrryyy, a process, behind this madness, can someone care to elaborate?

Oh the wise Indian captain, we, the blue billion, wait in delicious suspense.

Ritwiks, a Bookshop Bar by the Sea

During the first years of their marriage, my parents lived in the picturesque Nancouri island, part of the Andaman and Nicobar chain of islands off the eastern coast of India. Nancouri has a natural horse-shoe shaped harbour and is located in the more secluded Nicobar part of the island chain, which is why the Indian government did, at some point of time, toy with the idea of turning it into an international free port.

Thankfully, the Indian navy shot down the idea, and another island paradise, and the local population, was saved -- at least temporarily -- from commercial sodomy, oops, exploitation (this is a family blog, Rajan, he chided himself).

Coming back to the days my parents spent in Nancouri, my mother tells me a story which, among the many from that part of the world, is one of my favourites.

The Nicobaris are a very friendly lot. Everytime you make eye contact with one, he is most likely going to smile back at you. My father, who spent a few years in Nicobar, says the Nicobaris would always be laughing, as if there was a private joke that was going on between them.

In Nancouri a few of the Nicobaris worked as domestic helps at the homes of government officials like my father. As domestic helps, they were very clean hygienically and very honest, recalls my mother. They would rarely quibble about the amount they would charge as salary or complain about the amount of work they had to do.

The young man who used to be in the employ of my parents was very friendly and very hardworking, says Ma. Often his friends would come and visit him and it is the custom among Nicobaris to always see off your visitor to the door. So, my mother says, it wasn't unusual for him to disappear for a few minutes as he would bid goodbye to his friends.

However, one morning when he had gone to leave another of his friends, he didn't come back. My mother grew increasingly worried, wondering both about his well being as well as the household chores that needed to be done. Later in the day she informed my Dad, that the young Nicobari help had been gone almost the whole day. My Dad made a few enquiries about his whereabouts, but couldn't find him.

Over the next few days, there was no news of him. My parents were worried if he was alright. They were also contemplating whether they should hire a new help. Then, as suddenly as he had disappeared, he reappeared one fine morning. A familiar smiling face peeped in through the kitchen window and asked : "Naukri hai?"

My mother was initially anxious if he was ok, then her concern gave way to anger, when she realised he was fine and wasn't about to explain or apologize for his prolonged absence. All he said was he had gone fishing with his friends and was now back.

Usually slow to rouse to anger, my Ma was hopping mad that morning and she waded into him, all guns blazing. She told him, how worried they had been about his well being. She asked him why he hadn't informed her before leaving. She told him how unprofessional his conduct had been. It was a tongue lashing that would have left most ordinary mortals quaking in their boots. Not this man though.

He heard my mother through patiently, with a faintly amused expression on his face. Then, without a care or worry in the world, a huge smile on his face which suggested that my mother's plea in the name of professionalism had clearly missed its mark, he repeated the query he had made from the kitchen window -- "Naukri hai?"

It was a reaction that left my mother spluttering, the wind completely taken out of her sail, she was at a loss for words. As my mother stood there speechless, our man coolly walked into the kitchen and took his position.

I have a friend in Delhi who, after working for a year at a stretch, quits his job and goes on a (for the lack of a more apt word) "walkabout". I have seen him follow this almost-annual routine for the past fifteen odd years. For as long as the money that he has saved lasts, he does not come back. He holes up somewhere, or just travels to some new place (he is known to be partial to the hills). Then he comes back to Delhi, only when he absolutely has to, knocks on the doors of prospective employers with a "Naukri hai?" query.

Oh, I want to do that, too. But somehow never manage to. Never have the courage to. I am too attached to my worldly comforts, the sense of responsibility (in the broader, social sense that we know it) too deeply ingrained to take a step that would just make you happy. Such a silly thing that, anyway, chasing happiness. Not the most practical or worldly wise thing to do.

Fo those of us unable (perhaps even disabled) to go on these "walkabouts", because in my friend's words, "You people have raised the stakes yourselves", all I can say is it is up to us really to lower those stakes. I can't do it on an annual basis, but I will be damned if I don't have a long-term plan.

Many years ago, I was sure how I wanted to spend the later years of my life. I wanted a two-floor wooden building with glass windows at the edge of a beach , with a book shop on the ground floor and a small eatery on the floor above, selling seafood and wine. I saw myself as a serious consumer on both the floors. It was 1986, to be precise, when I had just completed my post-graduation and was travelling through Andamans. I was all by myself on a lovely lonely beach and I dreamed with my eyes wide open of this seaside bookshop and bar.

Twenty years on, as i am much closer to the aforementioned later years, the dream is still intact. As lot of things which were once important to me slip from my grip, I hold on to it, this dream, with a determination that is often uncharacteristically fierce. On good days, the dream makes me incredibly happy. On bad days, the dream just appears a lot more distant than what it should be.

The only thing that's perhaps changed in my mind over the years is the name of the bookshop-bar. Instead of Rajan's, I think i will settle for Ritwik's.

Writing as a therapy...

A few days ago, I had written to a friend who wasn't too well that writing can be, and often is, therapeutic. This is what he wrote back:

I wrote a few pages during the last week. Wasn't worth the paper it was written on. My ailment ain't worth of this therapy.

Ghalib said that a hundred years ago...

Dard minnat-kashe dava naa hua,
Main naa atchha hua, bura naa hua.

Just how good does this get?

My blog turns one month old today. I had originally thought I would observe the completion of the first month with something interesting posting here.

No such luck though. After a long day, tired and immodest, all I can think of is a little pat on my back for finally starting to write, after several false starts. While I have always had a lot of things in my mind that I wanted to put down in words, whenever I tried to pen the same words I didn't find the task very easy. So it has taken a certain amount of effort and a lot of good, old-fashioned prodding by several good friends to get me going.

Happily for me, there have been days in the past month when I have woken up energised and rather excited about the writing that awaited me. Whether the words that followed should have been inflicted upon unsuspecting blog readers is another matter altogether.

What should be of more concern to the same unsuspecting readers is that something tells me that I am going to be blogging for sometime to come now.

Don't tell me now, you haven't been warned!

On that alarming note, I retire tonight, with a MacAruthur like "I shall return" promise.

Did Ye Know...

... In the year of 1977, when the Janata Party came to power unseating Congress for the first time since Independence, and Morarji Desai became the Prime Minister, Prohibition was clamped in Delhi.

Overnight, the Delhi Administration's department of Excise, entrusted with the task of organising and monitoring the sale of liquor in Delhi, was disbanded. Instead, a new department, the deprtment of Prohibition, was created.

Prohibition was a subject close to Morarji Bhai's heart and the department of prohibition went about its business of discouraging the sale and consumption of liquor in Delhi with a great degree of seriousness. In 1980, when Mrs. G won the elections and came back to power again, things changed once again.

Prohibition was lifted, and the department of Excise was resurrected to carry on with its old business. Mrs. G' s advisors told her it would be politically incorrect to be seen as a government that was completely against Prohibition. So, it was decided that the department of Prohibition, downsized considerably, would however still carry out the occasional anti-alcohol campaign.

Now THIS is the really interesting part of the story...

For reasons best known to themselves, and reasons that have never been quite explained since, the Delhi government, in its infinite wisdom, created the joint post of Commissioner of Excise and Director of Prohibition. Thus, in effect, the same man who was entrusted with the task of encouraging and promoting the sale of liquor in Delhi was also given the job of discouraging the sale and consumption of alcohol in the Indian capital.

For thirteen long years, this administrative anomaly continued and Delhi's Excise Commissioner was also the director of Prohibition. A succession of brave officials, to their credit, held the dual post, without ever officially communicating they had any difficulty in managing such contradictory chores.

I had the pleasure of meeting one of the last incumbents of this unique office. On record he refused to comment on the rather interesting nature of his job, except for once mumbling under his breath that officials much senior than him had created the dual post and it wasn't the job of lesser mortals like him to question the wisdom behind such a major administrative initiative.

Off the record, the man did admit that someone with a multiple personality disorder would have been ideal to do justice to the dual posting.

When Calvin Klein meets Stone Age

Exactly five years after the Supreme Court of India ordered its closure, the government of Andaman and Nicobar islands, in direct defiance of the order of the highest court of the land, continues to keep the Andaman Trunk Road (ATR) open.

The controversial 340-km-long road goes right through the habitat of the Jarawas, one of the oldest hunter-gatherer communities in the world. Only two hundred and fifty odd Jarawas survive today. And the closure of the road is considered to be critical to the survival of the Jarawas.

London-based Survival International, an international organisation which fights for tribal rights, has declared the Jarawas among the “three most endangered tribes” in the world.

On Tuesday, May 8, Survival International again called upon the authorities in Andaman and Nicobar islands to close the ATR, as per the Supreme Court orders of five years ago.

The Jarawas live on Middle Andaman Island, in territory they have inhabited for thousands of years. In 1957, the government of India created a reserve of 700 square kilometres, surrounded by police posts and manned by a 400-strong force.

Ostensibly the idea was to protect the Jarawas from outside incursions, but in reality the reserve was built to contain the Jarawas within that area.

And, almost overnight, the erstwhile lord and masters of the Andaman Sea found themselves confined to a limited piece of real estate. A piece of real estate, through which in 1969, the government of Andaman and Nicobar islands, in its infinite wisdom, decided to construct a major inter-island road.

From 1970 to 1989, when the Andaman Trunk Road was being constructed, the Jarawas on several occasions attacked the construction workers, thereby expressing their objection to the construction of the road in no uncertain manner. Anthropologists and environmental groups working in the Andaman islands had for long warned against the wisdom of constructing a road that goes right through the middle of the Jarawa reserve.

The authorities persisted with the construction of the road that links Port Blair, the capital of Andaman and Nicobar islands, in south Andamans, with Diglipur in north Andamans. In the 1970s, when I was a schoolboy, it used to take more than a day and a half on a steam ship to travel from Port Blair to Diglipur. Now the same journey can be made by road in less than twelve hours, thanks to the ATR..

But the construction of the ATR brought in its wake not just settlers, but poachers who eyed the rich tree cover of the Jarawa reserve. As incidents of poaching increased, and tension among the Jarawas and the settlers who lived around the ATR mounted, environmentalists and anthropologists were convinced that Jarawas would in the not-so-distant future become extinct if the ATR was not closed down.

Acting on a petition filed by local environmental groups, prominently among them SANE (Save Andaman and Nicobar Ecology) and backed by Survival International, the Supreme Court in May 2002 had ordered the closure of the Andaman Trunk Road. An order that lies unimplemented even after five years of its passing.

As we drive down the gleaming tarmaced road starting from Port Blair, a top environmentalist who has battled the Andaman administration for several years, tells me : “Each day this road remains open, it brings the Jarawas closer to extinction.” About 15 kilometres down the road, bang on the middle, sits a huge, abandoned road roller – perhaps the most poignant symbol of the insensitivity with which the authorities in Andamans have tried to steamroll the opposition to the construction of this road.

As we move into Baratng in Middle Andamans, the heart of the Jarawa reserve, one can see makeshift straw shelters on roadsides which act as police pickets. Policemen can be seen lounging idly, their backs against the straw shelters, puffing away at cigarettes. Cigarettes that, my environmentalist friend tells me, find their way to the Jarawas.

In order to ensure the road remains closed, the Andaman government had set up police pickets at different intervals along the Andaman Trunk Road. Apart from the human and vehicular traffic on the road, today the single biggest threat to the survival of the Jarawas is posed by the policemen manning these pickets.

Though authorities in Port Blair claim otherwise, the policemen appear hardly sensitized to handle the delicate issue that they have been asked to oversee. Not only there have been reports of growing addiction to tobacco among the Jarawas, as a direct result of easy access to cigarettes through the police personnel on duty, there has been the odd case of policemen trying to sexually exploit the Jarawa women.

The contact of outsiders travelling on this road exposes the Jarawas to all kind of medical diseases that these people may be carrying with them. There have been several earlier instances of large numbers of tribals dying following contact with members of the outside world.

Worse, outside contact is exposing the Jarawas to a lifestyle that they can ill afford to adopt. There is a picture of a Jarawa woman being given a packet of biscuits by a passenger in a bus. As a bus carrying settlers enters Baratang, you can see on the roof of the bus, a group of Jarawas who have decided to hitch a ride into town. They purposefully make their way into shops, often buying stuff in exchange of honey they have collected from the forest.

Among them is a boy no more than 15 or 16, wearing a worn out Calvin Kline tee shirt. My environmentalist friend points out to the sight and comments ruefully : “Calvin Kline meets Stone Age, huh?”

I speak to some of the shopkeepers who deal with Jarawas on a daily basis. They are the settlers who have built houses along the ATR, set up shops there. They are unanimous in their contempt for the Jarawas. "These people are uncivilized. For them this road is not important. For us it is a lifeline," says one.

A number of them have been settled there by the Andaman administration, others have moved on their own. Now they add up to a sizeable vote bank that no political party in Andamans is willing to antagonize.

Manoranjan Bhakta, solitary representative of the Andaman islands in the Indian Parliament, calls for a holistic approach to the whole issue. He says the Andaman government remains committed to protect the interests of the Jarawas. But Bhakta says the Andaman administration cannot overlook the interests of people it has brought from different parts of mainland India and settled them around Andaman Trunk Road.

Politicians have their own compulsions. They need votes. And in electoral terms, the two hundred and fifty odd Jarawas don’t matter at all, in comparison to the 12,000-strong settler votes. Any politician worth his salt would tell you, that is a bit of a no-contest.

Problem is, if only the Jarawa knew his anthropological arithmetic, he would tell you that three decades of settlers’ existence in Andamans weighed against a civilization as old as perhaps mankind itself, is also a bit of a no-contest.