PUNJAB – 23 YEARS AFTER
By Ajit Chaudhuri
I bunged the family into the car and set off with a sense of déjà vu. The last time I had travelled in Punjab was in December 1984 – the dark days after Operation Bluestar and Mrs. Gandhi’s assassination. I still remember the journey from Delhi, and the way the Punjab Roadways bus changed its music from Hindi and Punjabi pop to aggressive religious stuff that began with ‘Raj Karega Khalsa’, and the way I was one of four people in the bus with cut hair. I still remember the sandbags in the Golden Temple and the bullet holes in Harminder Saheb. I still remember the empty youth hostel in Amritsar, where I shared the whole building with the two cops posted outside.
I also remember the humour, warmth and friendliness of people I met, even in hotbeds like Gurdaspur and Batala. The way I got off the bus at some vague place outside Phagwara with a stomach upset, and was given a bottle with some water and sent off into the fields for a crap, and then given a place to just lie down and relax until I felt better. The way people sat on top of the bus in the freezing temperatures as though they were in the comfort of their drawing room easy chair, the way the conductor swung from inside to the top and back inside while the bus was at full speed, and the way people gave me some protected space on top because I was cold. The way the jampacked minibus from Wagah to Amritsar kept cramming in more people, the conductor saying ‘go to the back, go to the back’, until somebody said ‘yes, yes, there’s a balcony at the back’ – a bit lame now but very funny in Punjabi and in the situation. These guys are very different from our Delhi Punjus, I remember thinking.
Why did I go to Punjab then? Because I did not know whether it would be part of the country for long, and therefore if I had to see these places I would need to do so soon. Laughable now – it is India’s no. 1 state (according to the annual India Today State of State surveys) on most indicators except sex ratios. It says something about our country.
This time, the journey into Punjab was mostly in Haryana – national highway 10 via Rohtak, Hissar and Sirsa before crossing into Punjab at Mandi Dabwali and driving another 70 or so kilometres into Bhatinda – one of those rare occasions today where one can do 400 km without paying a toll tax. The ordinariness of Punjab’s roads took me by surprise; the highways throughout were better in Haryana (sorry Punjus, but little brother is one over you there). We spent two nights and a day in Bhatinda before heading off to Amritsar, taking in Wagah, the Golden Temple and Amritsari food over half a day and one night, and then back to Delhi on national highway 1 (the old Delhi – Lahore road).
Why the visit? Less high-funda reasons from 1984 – the push factors were that my kids had there pooja holidays and that our colony in Delhi turns into a cesspool at this time, and the pull factor was that I have cousins (technically Aunt and Uncle) in the Army who we had not seen for some time and who offered the kids a ride in a tank.
Bhatinda was a delight! My cousin commands a cavalry unit, and had us billeted in the unit’s mess. This sounds basic, but actually entailed two 2-room suites with separate dressing rooms, fridges stocked with beer, cold drinks and goodies, and meals in a dining room with tiger skins, deer heads and tank replicas. When we weren’t sleeping, gossiping and partying, we were cavorting around the countryside in a T-72 tank. The kids were neither seen nor heard for the most part. The relatives are lucky to have got us to leave.
My cousins also got a colleague, who commands an armoured unit somewhere between Amritsar and the Indo-Pak border, to put us up. He also very kindly organised a military escort for us to the border and then to Amritsar to see the Golden Temple.
I had seen the flag down ceremony at the Wagah border in 1984. At the time, there were about 20-25 of us general public watching the ceremony, the BSF and Pakistan Rangers (the paramilitary forces on both sides that control the border and conduct the ceremony) were in near perfect sync, and it was pretty obvious that they knew each other well despite the various aggressive gestures during the ceremony. Rumour had it that they used to booze it up together in the evenings, and party with Bangladeshi women (most illegal crossers of the border were poor Bangladeshis with only one asset available for bribes). After the ceremony, we were allowed up to the gate to peer at the Pakistanis and vice versa and wonder at how we looked exactly alike. I remember that there was one cute chick among them who had smiled at me, and I had contemplated writing my name and phone number on a paper plane and sending it across.
There are now huge crowds on both sides of the border, with stadium like facilities to seat them, and the soldiers on both sides seem to have been selected for their looks. The Pakistanis look different to us – the women are mostly covered, and the sexes are segregated. They play loud religious music in the build up to sundown, and they are constantly making calls to Allah. Apparently they also pay ten bucks each to watch, unlike us. The Indian crowd is much more restrained and confident, as is the Indian component of the ceremony. The Pakistani Rangers retain their aggressive gestures while the BSF dropped theirs – the Rangers explaining to the Indian side that nobody on their side would pay ten bucks to watch unless they did all that stuff. Neo-liberalism zindabad!
The Golden Temple in the late evening is truly beautiful. We put stuff on our heads, got rid of our shoes and went in, even into the Harminder Sahib in the centre. A peaceful and satisfying experience, much like it was in 1984. While we were there at the time of the langar, we decided to skip this for some Amritsari food at a restaurant called Crystal somewhere nearby – tandoori chicken, dal makhni and the works.
I am now back in Delhi, where we have all settled into our normal routine – the time in Punjab, the food, the T-72s, the border and the Pakistanis, the Golden Temple lit up in the evening, the long drives, and the Army hospitality are all in the past. I only hope that my next visit is not 23 years away.
Friday, October 19, 2007
Friday, August 10, 2007
A MID-TERM REVIEW OF MY ADULTHOOD
A MID-TERM REVIEW OF MY ADULTHOOD
By Ajit Chaudhuri, written in August 2007
I will shortly turn 44 years old. Assuming that I reach the ripe old age of 66, the booze, meaty rich food, stress, bad lifestyle, et al notwithstanding, this is the two-thirds point of my life. I look back at the day that I turned 22, on August 16th 1985, the one-thirds point. I had an honours degree in Economics and little else – no money, a job with no prospects (teaching at a school in Rajasthan, far away from my friends and family), no girlfriend, and no future. I was happy enough in that there was food on the table and I was playing a little football and anyway there was little that I could do about my situation. I celebrated my birthday alone, and wrote ten things that I had to do in my life – not professional, not connected with achievements or money, just things that I should do. I list these out especially for the benefit of my nephew Eshaan, who had just been born at the time and who turned 22 a few days back. At this point, midway between making the list and my expected demise, I also explore the extent to which these ambitions have been achieved.
1. See a Tiger in the wild: Yes, done, twice so far – once in the Corbett National Park and once in the Panna Wildlife Sanctuary, both times in the early 2000s. The sight of a Tiger in the wild is much more magnificent than the ability of the English language to describe magnificence, and so I will not even try. Suffice to say that it is a much, much better experience than I could possibly have imagined back in 1985. And I envy my kids, who were there on both occasions and who have thus achieved this before age 10. But then, given the rate at which India’s Tiger population is diminishing, this experience may not be available to them later in their lives.
2. Travel overland from Murmansk to Vladivostok: Nope, not done, and I see the prospects of doing this journey across Russia diminishing by the day.
3. Take a journey in a helicopter: Yes, done thanks to my tsunami relief and rehabilitation duties in the Nicobar Islands. I travelled from Port Blair to Komorta once, in January 2005, and Port Blair to Car Nicobar, Campbell Bay and back in August 2007. This too is difficult to describe – the take off, the noise, the way the Nicobar Islands appear from the air, as little round green bits of land with concentric rings of golden beach and then light blue to aquamarine to deep blue sea all the way around them. My expectations of 1985 have been met in every way.
4. See the Northern Lights: Nope, despite my best efforts. I went to Tromso (Norway) in winter, which at 70 degrees latitude is well inside the Arctic Circle, in 2001 but the damned lights refused to oblige. This was a fascinating experience in every other sense, from the violence of the snowstorms to the absence of daylight to the glimpse of life in the far north. Another time – but I would have to rob a bank.
5. Trek at over 18,000 feet altitude: Yes, done, once in 1995 on a trek from Leh in Ladakh to Kaza in Spiti while crossing the Parang La pass. Why the number 18,000? Because the highest road in the world, across the Khardung La Pass, is at 17 thousand something. The trek, like most treks, was rough, tough and a test of endurance – but I am glad that I did it and survived to tell the tale. And no, I would not attempt it again!
6. Have an affair with an older woman: Nope, sadly not achieved, and I must admit to this one having moved off the ambition list over the years – even younger women have been too old for me for some time now.
7. Travel to the corners of the country – Mizoram, Kutch, Indira Point in the A&N Islands and across the Indus in the north: Yes, mostly achieved! I went to Mizoram three times in 1996 and 1997, crossed the Indus many times in Leh and Kargil districts of J&K in 1997 and 1998 including walking across it when it was a solid block of ice in –30 temperature, and visited Kutch many times from 1988 onwards. Indira Point does not exist courtesy the tsunami, but I have visited the southernmost Great Nicobar Island. All are must visits to those of us born under a wandering star.
8. Watch a World Cup Football match live in a stadium: Again, not done despite my best efforts. I visited Germany in 2006, during the World Cup, but was unable to gain entry into a stadium for a match. South Africa 2010 – here I come!
9. Take a long journey on an Enfield Bullet: Yes, many times on my beloved DBW 1768! The longest was a six-day journey from Baroda to Bangalore back in 1990, alone, slowly and peacefully, with a detour through Saputara and Nashik (and thereby an avoidance of Bombay) and a day’s break in Pune. Definitely worth it!
10. Save someone’s life: Nope, not yet that I know of!
By Ajit Chaudhuri, written in August 2007
I will shortly turn 44 years old. Assuming that I reach the ripe old age of 66, the booze, meaty rich food, stress, bad lifestyle, et al notwithstanding, this is the two-thirds point of my life. I look back at the day that I turned 22, on August 16th 1985, the one-thirds point. I had an honours degree in Economics and little else – no money, a job with no prospects (teaching at a school in Rajasthan, far away from my friends and family), no girlfriend, and no future. I was happy enough in that there was food on the table and I was playing a little football and anyway there was little that I could do about my situation. I celebrated my birthday alone, and wrote ten things that I had to do in my life – not professional, not connected with achievements or money, just things that I should do. I list these out especially for the benefit of my nephew Eshaan, who had just been born at the time and who turned 22 a few days back. At this point, midway between making the list and my expected demise, I also explore the extent to which these ambitions have been achieved.
1. See a Tiger in the wild: Yes, done, twice so far – once in the Corbett National Park and once in the Panna Wildlife Sanctuary, both times in the early 2000s. The sight of a Tiger in the wild is much more magnificent than the ability of the English language to describe magnificence, and so I will not even try. Suffice to say that it is a much, much better experience than I could possibly have imagined back in 1985. And I envy my kids, who were there on both occasions and who have thus achieved this before age 10. But then, given the rate at which India’s Tiger population is diminishing, this experience may not be available to them later in their lives.
2. Travel overland from Murmansk to Vladivostok: Nope, not done, and I see the prospects of doing this journey across Russia diminishing by the day.
3. Take a journey in a helicopter: Yes, done thanks to my tsunami relief and rehabilitation duties in the Nicobar Islands. I travelled from Port Blair to Komorta once, in January 2005, and Port Blair to Car Nicobar, Campbell Bay and back in August 2007. This too is difficult to describe – the take off, the noise, the way the Nicobar Islands appear from the air, as little round green bits of land with concentric rings of golden beach and then light blue to aquamarine to deep blue sea all the way around them. My expectations of 1985 have been met in every way.
4. See the Northern Lights: Nope, despite my best efforts. I went to Tromso (Norway) in winter, which at 70 degrees latitude is well inside the Arctic Circle, in 2001 but the damned lights refused to oblige. This was a fascinating experience in every other sense, from the violence of the snowstorms to the absence of daylight to the glimpse of life in the far north. Another time – but I would have to rob a bank.
5. Trek at over 18,000 feet altitude: Yes, done, once in 1995 on a trek from Leh in Ladakh to Kaza in Spiti while crossing the Parang La pass. Why the number 18,000? Because the highest road in the world, across the Khardung La Pass, is at 17 thousand something. The trek, like most treks, was rough, tough and a test of endurance – but I am glad that I did it and survived to tell the tale. And no, I would not attempt it again!
6. Have an affair with an older woman: Nope, sadly not achieved, and I must admit to this one having moved off the ambition list over the years – even younger women have been too old for me for some time now.
7. Travel to the corners of the country – Mizoram, Kutch, Indira Point in the A&N Islands and across the Indus in the north: Yes, mostly achieved! I went to Mizoram three times in 1996 and 1997, crossed the Indus many times in Leh and Kargil districts of J&K in 1997 and 1998 including walking across it when it was a solid block of ice in –30 temperature, and visited Kutch many times from 1988 onwards. Indira Point does not exist courtesy the tsunami, but I have visited the southernmost Great Nicobar Island. All are must visits to those of us born under a wandering star.
8. Watch a World Cup Football match live in a stadium: Again, not done despite my best efforts. I visited Germany in 2006, during the World Cup, but was unable to gain entry into a stadium for a match. South Africa 2010 – here I come!
9. Take a long journey on an Enfield Bullet: Yes, many times on my beloved DBW 1768! The longest was a six-day journey from Baroda to Bangalore back in 1990, alone, slowly and peacefully, with a detour through Saputara and Nashik (and thereby an avoidance of Bombay) and a day’s break in Pune. Definitely worth it!
10. Save someone’s life: Nope, not yet that I know of!
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
TEN BEST PLACES TO EAT IN INDIA
THE TEN BEST PLACES IN INDIA TO EAT
By Ajit Chaudhuri - July 2007
To the genuine foodie, there is one and only one criteria by which to judge a restaurant – the food! Whether the Maitre Dei welcomes you in French, whether the waitresses are topless, whether the décor is resplendent, whether the wine cellar is well stocked, whether the view is splendid – these are all irrelevant! The service matters to the extent that it adds to the eating – the rotis need to arrive hot and on time, as do the second (and third) servings.
What follows is my take on the ten best places to eat in this country. I have eaten in each and every one of them many times, and over years, and can personally vouch for consistent excellence. I write this in the chronological order of my familiarity with the restaurant (and not in any order of merit). The list does tend to leave out some fantastic places that I have eaten in only once – may be the subject of another list another time - and many that I have yet to try.
1. Bukhara – Maurya Sheraton – Delhi
This restaurant is famous! It is in a 5-star hotel, and is expensive. You cannot book a table in advance here – you have to hang around outside and wait for a table to be free – and this takes time, it is always full. And you have to be careful – the place attracts the well-dressed sort of crooks that steal handbags, laptops and whatnot (an attempt was made on my wife’s handbag once – maybe a one off, maybe not). But – the food is worth having to enter a snotty hotel you would not normally be seen dead in, worth the dollops of money you would have to pay, and worth the hanging around with Delhi’s hoi polloi outside the restaurant with your hands on your belongings. The cuisine is from the Northwest Frontier, and the Sikandari Raan, the kebabs and the Dal Makhni makes you think that perfection does exist. I am unable to eat here too often, the leanness of my wallet being the major constraint, and haven’t for some time. But if I get an opportunity (please read as ‘someone willing to take me’) I would jump at it.
2. Chhotu-Motu – Outside Railway Station – Bikaner
This restaurant serves puris made in desi ghee, hot aloo bhaji and a certain pickle type of thing, topped up with tea or makhaniya lassi. There is a certain taste to the aloo bhaji that I have yet to experience anywhere else, and while you know that the puris will contribute to your cholesterol levels you will still indulge in that second plateful of five. The restaurant’s location is convenient – the Bikaner Mail from Delhi arrives early morning, one just steps out of the station and settles down to breakfast at Chhotu-Motu’s, and it is only after stuffing oneself that one continues for the day. Worth a visit to this otherwise rather unremarkable town!
3. Pawan Dhaba – Outside Bus Stand – Barmer
This one is the most obscure of the listing – it is a mere hole in the outer wall of Barmer’s Bus Stand, with a few benches out encroaching on the desert sand between the wall and the road, and it serves only dinner. The clientele, usually 3 or 4 other people at any point of time, are mostly farmers visiting Barmer town and bus drivers and conductors. But the food – fresh bajra rotis that resemble thick plates, served with a wet sabzi and khato (a Rajasthani kadhi)! The rotis need to be softened and crumpled in desi ghee and then mixed into the sabzi, and eaten while gulping the khato on the side. I usually also add some curds into the combination, into which I mix some jeera, lal mirch and salt. A full meal for one in the early and mid-1990s used to cost about Rs. 12. And it has never disappointed!
4. Tundey Kebabs – Kashmiri Mohalla – Lucknow
I once spent a month or so, back in 1996, in Lucknow on a survey. It was a month without vegetables in the diet, the city has so much to offer for the carnivorous foodie. And one place stood out – the Tundey-Kebab joint in the alleyways of Kashmiri Mohalla in old Lucknow. These are beef kebabs cooked on huge flat pans and then cut up and served hot to the multitudes, who eat it standing there or pack it up to knock off later. It is an experience!
5. Karim’s – Jama Masjid – Delhi
This is another famous restaurant that is on everybody’s list – but if you’ve ever been there you will know why. The Jama Masjid Karim’s is not to be mixed up with its poncy imitation at Nizamuddin. This is the original and, to the foodie, the only one. It is now easy to reach –the Metro from Connaught Place to Chawri Bazaar, a cycle rickshaw at Rs. 5 per person and voila, there you are. It is not an expensive or fancy restaurant, but a certain ‘we are simply the best’ arrogance permeates through the décor, the service, and the food. And it has to be said that it is almost as good as it thinks it is.
6. Gopi – Ellisbridge – Ahmedabad
Everyone wonders why I only stay in the rather crummy Hotel Golden Plaza when visiting or passing Ahmedabad, and why I never eat when on the evening Delhi to Ahmedabad flight. Both have to do with the existence of Gopi – the hotel’s proximity to it, and my need to have an empty stomach before tucking in to the Kathiawadi thali there (Gopi also offers the regular Gujarati thali with sweet dal and all, and I have yet to eat it). The Kathiawadi thali is served only in the evenings and is served in two forms – the Kathiawadi Fix and the Kathiawadi Unlimited. The latter is advisable only when seriously hungry to do justice to multiple helpings of dal, kadhi, three types of vegetables, white butter, chaanch, a choice of wheat or bajra rotis and various knick-knacks like farsaand, pakodas, and whatnot.
7. Annapurna – Bhuj
Under normal circumstances, I go through withdrawal symptoms if I am forced to eat vegetarian food for more than 3 meals consecutively. That I have no such difficulties in Bhuj is thanks to a small restaurant that is within walking distance of my regular hotel. Annapurna serves Kutchi food, not the sugar-in-the-dal stuff that is available across Gujarat, it is spicy, oily, curdy and is eaten with coarse Bajra rotis that are soaked and crumpled in home-made white butter (with fresh ones served hot just as you finish the previous one), washed down with chaanch and rounded off with a sweet shrikhand. You come out stuffed to the gills in about Rs. 50. Annapurna is the main reason for all my hard work under the Kutchi sun not resulting in a corresponding reduction in the waistline (and my wife suspecting that the time away from home was probably in Mumbai’s nightclubs).
8. Bar-b-q – Park Street – Kolkata
Punjabified Chinese food, but this is as good as it gets. The Sichuan cooking is genuinely spicy, the Hot and Sour Soup is both hot and sour, and the waiters do not look at you vaguely when you ask for a bowl and chopsticks.
9. Ponnaswamy – Royapettah – Chennai
South Indian non-vegetarian cooking at its very best – varieties of sea food, chicken and mutton, and even exotic stuff like rabbit and whatnot are available at extremely reasonable rates, eaten with rice, appam or porrotta.
10. Ahdoos – Lal Chowk – Srinagar
The Ahdoos Hotel, like Srinagar itself, has seen better days. And you can imagine this restaurant once having been a bustling and happening place. But some things do not deteriorate easily, and quality of cooking and service is one of them (more so when there are no alternative job opportunities for waiters and cooks). The wazwaan here is out of this world – the rishta, the goshtaba, the tabak maaz, the yakhni, followed by pherni for dessert. It sounds horrible to say this, but I am grateful to the earthquake for having introduced me to these pleasures.
By Ajit Chaudhuri - July 2007
To the genuine foodie, there is one and only one criteria by which to judge a restaurant – the food! Whether the Maitre Dei welcomes you in French, whether the waitresses are topless, whether the décor is resplendent, whether the wine cellar is well stocked, whether the view is splendid – these are all irrelevant! The service matters to the extent that it adds to the eating – the rotis need to arrive hot and on time, as do the second (and third) servings.
What follows is my take on the ten best places to eat in this country. I have eaten in each and every one of them many times, and over years, and can personally vouch for consistent excellence. I write this in the chronological order of my familiarity with the restaurant (and not in any order of merit). The list does tend to leave out some fantastic places that I have eaten in only once – may be the subject of another list another time - and many that I have yet to try.
1. Bukhara – Maurya Sheraton – Delhi
This restaurant is famous! It is in a 5-star hotel, and is expensive. You cannot book a table in advance here – you have to hang around outside and wait for a table to be free – and this takes time, it is always full. And you have to be careful – the place attracts the well-dressed sort of crooks that steal handbags, laptops and whatnot (an attempt was made on my wife’s handbag once – maybe a one off, maybe not). But – the food is worth having to enter a snotty hotel you would not normally be seen dead in, worth the dollops of money you would have to pay, and worth the hanging around with Delhi’s hoi polloi outside the restaurant with your hands on your belongings. The cuisine is from the Northwest Frontier, and the Sikandari Raan, the kebabs and the Dal Makhni makes you think that perfection does exist. I am unable to eat here too often, the leanness of my wallet being the major constraint, and haven’t for some time. But if I get an opportunity (please read as ‘someone willing to take me’) I would jump at it.
2. Chhotu-Motu – Outside Railway Station – Bikaner
This restaurant serves puris made in desi ghee, hot aloo bhaji and a certain pickle type of thing, topped up with tea or makhaniya lassi. There is a certain taste to the aloo bhaji that I have yet to experience anywhere else, and while you know that the puris will contribute to your cholesterol levels you will still indulge in that second plateful of five. The restaurant’s location is convenient – the Bikaner Mail from Delhi arrives early morning, one just steps out of the station and settles down to breakfast at Chhotu-Motu’s, and it is only after stuffing oneself that one continues for the day. Worth a visit to this otherwise rather unremarkable town!
3. Pawan Dhaba – Outside Bus Stand – Barmer
This one is the most obscure of the listing – it is a mere hole in the outer wall of Barmer’s Bus Stand, with a few benches out encroaching on the desert sand between the wall and the road, and it serves only dinner. The clientele, usually 3 or 4 other people at any point of time, are mostly farmers visiting Barmer town and bus drivers and conductors. But the food – fresh bajra rotis that resemble thick plates, served with a wet sabzi and khato (a Rajasthani kadhi)! The rotis need to be softened and crumpled in desi ghee and then mixed into the sabzi, and eaten while gulping the khato on the side. I usually also add some curds into the combination, into which I mix some jeera, lal mirch and salt. A full meal for one in the early and mid-1990s used to cost about Rs. 12. And it has never disappointed!
4. Tundey Kebabs – Kashmiri Mohalla – Lucknow
I once spent a month or so, back in 1996, in Lucknow on a survey. It was a month without vegetables in the diet, the city has so much to offer for the carnivorous foodie. And one place stood out – the Tundey-Kebab joint in the alleyways of Kashmiri Mohalla in old Lucknow. These are beef kebabs cooked on huge flat pans and then cut up and served hot to the multitudes, who eat it standing there or pack it up to knock off later. It is an experience!
5. Karim’s – Jama Masjid – Delhi
This is another famous restaurant that is on everybody’s list – but if you’ve ever been there you will know why. The Jama Masjid Karim’s is not to be mixed up with its poncy imitation at Nizamuddin. This is the original and, to the foodie, the only one. It is now easy to reach –the Metro from Connaught Place to Chawri Bazaar, a cycle rickshaw at Rs. 5 per person and voila, there you are. It is not an expensive or fancy restaurant, but a certain ‘we are simply the best’ arrogance permeates through the décor, the service, and the food. And it has to be said that it is almost as good as it thinks it is.
6. Gopi – Ellisbridge – Ahmedabad
Everyone wonders why I only stay in the rather crummy Hotel Golden Plaza when visiting or passing Ahmedabad, and why I never eat when on the evening Delhi to Ahmedabad flight. Both have to do with the existence of Gopi – the hotel’s proximity to it, and my need to have an empty stomach before tucking in to the Kathiawadi thali there (Gopi also offers the regular Gujarati thali with sweet dal and all, and I have yet to eat it). The Kathiawadi thali is served only in the evenings and is served in two forms – the Kathiawadi Fix and the Kathiawadi Unlimited. The latter is advisable only when seriously hungry to do justice to multiple helpings of dal, kadhi, three types of vegetables, white butter, chaanch, a choice of wheat or bajra rotis and various knick-knacks like farsaand, pakodas, and whatnot.
7. Annapurna – Bhuj
Under normal circumstances, I go through withdrawal symptoms if I am forced to eat vegetarian food for more than 3 meals consecutively. That I have no such difficulties in Bhuj is thanks to a small restaurant that is within walking distance of my regular hotel. Annapurna serves Kutchi food, not the sugar-in-the-dal stuff that is available across Gujarat, it is spicy, oily, curdy and is eaten with coarse Bajra rotis that are soaked and crumpled in home-made white butter (with fresh ones served hot just as you finish the previous one), washed down with chaanch and rounded off with a sweet shrikhand. You come out stuffed to the gills in about Rs. 50. Annapurna is the main reason for all my hard work under the Kutchi sun not resulting in a corresponding reduction in the waistline (and my wife suspecting that the time away from home was probably in Mumbai’s nightclubs).
8. Bar-b-q – Park Street – Kolkata
Punjabified Chinese food, but this is as good as it gets. The Sichuan cooking is genuinely spicy, the Hot and Sour Soup is both hot and sour, and the waiters do not look at you vaguely when you ask for a bowl and chopsticks.
9. Ponnaswamy – Royapettah – Chennai
South Indian non-vegetarian cooking at its very best – varieties of sea food, chicken and mutton, and even exotic stuff like rabbit and whatnot are available at extremely reasonable rates, eaten with rice, appam or porrotta.
10. Ahdoos – Lal Chowk – Srinagar
The Ahdoos Hotel, like Srinagar itself, has seen better days. And you can imagine this restaurant once having been a bustling and happening place. But some things do not deteriorate easily, and quality of cooking and service is one of them (more so when there are no alternative job opportunities for waiters and cooks). The wazwaan here is out of this world – the rishta, the goshtaba, the tabak maaz, the yakhni, followed by pherni for dessert. It sounds horrible to say this, but I am grateful to the earthquake for having introduced me to these pleasures.
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
Drying Out - Kutch
DRYING OUT – THE SEVEN WONDERS OF KUTCH
Ajit Chaudhuri
“You will come to Kutch crying, and you will leave Kutch crying!”[1]
Written in July 2007
Background: I have been to Kutch many, many times – I have long lost count – a few times by choice, but mostly because of work. I have been in many guises – as a broke student, as a trainer to local women’s groups, as a representative of a development donor agency, as a tourist with my family, and as an aid worker in the aftermath of drought and an earthquake. Familiarity has yet to breed contempt. Why? Certainly because it is large, remote and colourful! The people are nice, the food is great, and the women combine good looks with backless blouses. There are many exciting places to see and experience, many of which I am yet to do. And also because of something intangible – the n + 1th visit offers the possibility of learning something new, every single time.
Kutch is a real corner! It is among India’s largest districts, and is also its western-most. It is separated from the rest of India (and from Pakistan) by a curious land form called the rann, salty marshlands that appear to have been formed from the Arabian Sea receding, home to abundant wildlife (and the natural habitat of the Wild Ass) and birds (such as the Great Indian Bustard[2]) but inimical to human survival because of heat and salinity. The Kutchis are a colourful people; they speak a dialect that spans Gujarati, Marwari and Sindhi, they are equally divided between Hindus and Muslims, and they are great seafarers and businessmen. Kutch is also a disaster-prone area, suffering droughts and cyclones at regular intervals and major earthquakes about once every fifty years.
Kutch is reachable by various means. The most boring is the daily flight from Mumbai that takes one directly to the district headquarters, Bhuj. Boring because flights are intrinsically boring, and boring also because the route is operated only by Jet Airways[3] and you get a glimpse of the airline in a non-competitive environment – unreasonably high fares, vegetarian food only, and no support from the airline when they cancel the flight. There are also trains, but these are convenient only if you are coming from Mumbai. The easiest is by road, with two routes in – one from the east from Palanpur via Radhanpur, Santhalpur westward into Kutch, and the other from the south-east from Ahmedabad via Morbi. A third and much shorter route from Ahmedabad was added through Dhrangadhra in the mid-1990s, ultimately joining the Morbi route and cutting the distance between Ahmedabad and Bhuj to about 350 km.
Kutch too has its wonders – and in this age of the seventh month of the seventh year I identify seven of them that I have experienced and would strongly recommend. I write them in the order of chronology of my own visit to each of them.
Narayan Sarovar: This is possibly the western-most place in India – it is a lake just next to Sir Creek (across which lies Karachi), and a small town called Koteshwar. I visited in October 1988 along with my batchmates Som and Balu, all of us broke students at the time in search of a place as far away as possible from anywhere else. We took a Gujarat Roadways bus from Bhuj that went through Nakhatrana and Matanamad and ended up in the evening in this tiny town where the only place to stay was some religious complex. One room for the three of us – Rs. 1.50 with dinner included, and no, I haven’t mistakenly put the dot – but we had to sing ‘Ram Ram’ while being served dinner and put up with suspicious looks from the complex authorities because Som and Balu were both bearded. This was unfortunate, because we decided to head back to Bhuj the next morning rather than put up with another day of that sort of crap. Before that, we did manage to look around at the sea and the saltpans on all sides, make friends with some fellow Bongs at the Border Security Force outpost, and watch the sun go down for the day on India in one of the most beautiful sunsets I have experienced. I wish that we had been able to spend another day or two there, Ram Ram and all (at that price I would be willing to sing anything including gangsta rap), but I suspect that my friends were quite happy to head back to the bright lights of Bhuj town.
Bhuj: KMVS Annual Day Function: I have once had the opportunity, somewhere in the mid-1990s, to attend a Women’s Day function at the Kutch Mahila Vikas Sangathan (KMVS - this is a district level federation of women’s groups) office in Bhuj. No, I was not an invitee – I just happened to be visiting at the time and they were probably too polite to tell me to shove off because of my gender. So there I was, with about a thousand women from all over Kutch around me, in all sizes, ages and colours. It is, no doubt, political incorrect to size up women at occasions to commemorate Women’s Day, but I have never regretted doing so at this one. The speeches wound down and the dancing began, including one called the Ahir dance that remains etched in memory – black clad Ahir women moving in circles to the beat of one drum. It had a rhythm and synchronicity that is difficult to describe. All good things come to an end, however, and this one wound down because the NGO type khadi-clad babes, without exception with two left feet, insisted on joining in and screwing it up in the name of sisterhood.
Bhuj: Annapurna: Under normal circumstances, I go through withdrawal symptoms if I am forced to eat vegetarian food for more than 3 meals consecutively. That I have no such difficulties in Bhuj is thanks to a small restaurant that is walking distance from my regular hotel. Annapurna serves Kutchi food, not the sugar-in-the-dal stuff that is available across Gujarat, it is spicy, oily, curdy and is eaten with coarse Bajra rotis that are soaked and crumpled in home-made white butter (with fresh ones served hot just as you finish the previous one), washed down with chaanch and rounded off with a sweet shrikhand. You come out stuffed to the gills in about Rs. 50. Annapurna is the main reason for all my hard work under the Kutchi sun not resulting in a corresponding reduction in the waistline (and my wife suspecting that the time away from home was probably actually in Mumbai living it up with Ash and Sush). Honourable mention in this regard must be made of the Egg-wallah next to Bhuj bus stand, who makes a mean double-desi-omelette cooked in butter in the morning and follows it up with strong tea.
Vyar: This is a village in Nakhatrana tehsil that is mainly populated by the Rabari community. Rabaris, for those who don’t know it, are a cattle herding and rearing community who are distinctive in dress and whose women are particularly beautiful (the men, for those interested, are very good looking too). Vyar itself is nestled in a slightly undulating part of Kutch that turns green and stunning in the aftermath of the rains. Care Today, who I work for, had supported the building of a series of check dams in the village and I had gone there several times to check the project out. The celebration that we had on completion of the project back in 2000 was a wonderful experience – beautiful women decked out in coloured ghagras and backless cholis in the backdrop of green undulating land, and a great meal as well. Bhachibai, who led the community’s effort to build the check dams, went on to become the village sarpanch and it was a pleasure to meet her again last month and to see the change in her stature that the project initiated.
Hodka: Hodka falls about 70 km north of Bhuj, on an island in the rann and right on its banks. KMVS decided in 2005 to try out an indigenous tourism model here – this involved them designing and setting up a tourist resort, and enabling the village community to own, run, work in, and make profits from it. I was persuaded to spend a night here as a paying customer cum guinea pig in February 2006 (my antics over the years in KMVS catching up with me). I arrived at night and left early the next morning, but saw enough to come again ten months later, of my own accord, and spend a few days with my wife, children and dog. The resort itself is wonderful – remote, beautiful, spacious, luxurious, affordable (well, reasonably so), clean and hassle-free but, no booze. The service was worth a mention – the village boys did things in a way that was correct without being obsequious. The kids could be left to do their own thing, there was some entertainment every evening (local folk groups and whatnot – all male), and food was both good and plentiful. We also visited India Bridge, the last civilian point in India on a dry water body that has so much salt that it looks like it has snowed – this and the nearby quicksand made an impression on my two boys, with a recall of the latter and a small mention of the possibility of leaving them within ensuring immediate better behaviour.
Chhaari Dhaand: This is a huge water body north of Bhuj, and it is to my deep regret that I discovered it only in December 2006 – in the aftermath of a good monsoon, with large colonies of birds to see, including the famous pink flamingos out in all their majesty. This is in the middle of nowhere, there are no roads or anything and therefore a vehicle that can perform off the road and a guide who knows the way are necessities. The family spent a day to remember in my old Qualis, making our way slowly around the water body checking out the birds. But, if you visit, do remember to carry food and water – you will not see any settlements or people for long stretches and there are no shops of any sort anywhere in the vicinity. And the flamingos? To quote the kids – Awesome!
Dholavira: The words ‘remote’ and ‘middle of nowhere’ are often used to describe Kutch and many places within it. I feel that I have finally discovered where it applies most of all. Dholavira is a famous place – an ancient Indian settlement was discovered here in the late seventies and is still being excavated – but very few people know where it is, or that it falls in Kutch. I did know, and it has always been on my list of places to take time out to see, except that I never did until just recently (July 2007). The opportunity arose because of a cancelled Jet Airways flight from Bhuj to Mumbai and the airline’s official (a bimbo of the highest order) refusing to make arrangements for accommodation and acting as if she was doing me a favour by putting me on the next day’s flight – I decided to make my way to Ahmedabad by road and subsequently, upon the advice of my local colleagues, to do so via Dholavira (adding exactly 220 km to the journey). So, eastwards from Bhuj towards Rapar, north across a long stretch of rann and then west across more rann until I reached a little island and the site of what was a flourishing port city 4 millenniums ago when this was all sea. The site is fascinating – much larger than the other well known one in Gujarat (which is Lothal), and still being excavated so there are plenty of terracotta ornaments and whatnot lying around all over the place. The Archaeology Survey of India, who handle the excavation, have a decent museum at the site and are helpful and informative. Most refreshing was the attitude of the locals in the nearby village – happy to have visitors for the new faces and the possibility of newspapers and conversation. One old man said that they are so cut off that a haircut costs Rs. 150 – travel 90 kilometers to the nearest barber (who is in Rapar), have a haircut, eat some food, and return.
Kutch is going to change. Large tracts of land have been acquired for Special Economic Zones, making full use of the peoples’ low education levels and the considerable availability of commons. The towns, all flattened by the 2001 earthquake, are now fancy and laden with infrastructure that sits uneasily on old attitudes and norms. All roads will shortly have tollbooths every twenty or so kilometres. The traditional economy is quickly transforming, skilled people are moving in from all over India, and the scope for cattle rearing and pastoral nomadic lifestyles is rapidly diminishing. If you have yet to visit – you need to do so soon. Because, as the old song goes, ‘I will never be the same!’
[1] This is a Kutchi saying that refers to its position as a punishment posting for government servants within Gujarat, and the fact that people are transferred out with the same reluctance that they come in with.
[2] An old limerick goes – the Bustard is an incredible fowl, extremely satisfying to the bowel, saved from what would be, illegitimacy, by the grace of just one vowel.
[3] Indian Airlines (now Indian) used to operate, but closed down once Jet Airways settled on the route.
Ajit Chaudhuri
“You will come to Kutch crying, and you will leave Kutch crying!”[1]
Written in July 2007
Background: I have been to Kutch many, many times – I have long lost count – a few times by choice, but mostly because of work. I have been in many guises – as a broke student, as a trainer to local women’s groups, as a representative of a development donor agency, as a tourist with my family, and as an aid worker in the aftermath of drought and an earthquake. Familiarity has yet to breed contempt. Why? Certainly because it is large, remote and colourful! The people are nice, the food is great, and the women combine good looks with backless blouses. There are many exciting places to see and experience, many of which I am yet to do. And also because of something intangible – the n + 1th visit offers the possibility of learning something new, every single time.
Kutch is a real corner! It is among India’s largest districts, and is also its western-most. It is separated from the rest of India (and from Pakistan) by a curious land form called the rann, salty marshlands that appear to have been formed from the Arabian Sea receding, home to abundant wildlife (and the natural habitat of the Wild Ass) and birds (such as the Great Indian Bustard[2]) but inimical to human survival because of heat and salinity. The Kutchis are a colourful people; they speak a dialect that spans Gujarati, Marwari and Sindhi, they are equally divided between Hindus and Muslims, and they are great seafarers and businessmen. Kutch is also a disaster-prone area, suffering droughts and cyclones at regular intervals and major earthquakes about once every fifty years.
Kutch is reachable by various means. The most boring is the daily flight from Mumbai that takes one directly to the district headquarters, Bhuj. Boring because flights are intrinsically boring, and boring also because the route is operated only by Jet Airways[3] and you get a glimpse of the airline in a non-competitive environment – unreasonably high fares, vegetarian food only, and no support from the airline when they cancel the flight. There are also trains, but these are convenient only if you are coming from Mumbai. The easiest is by road, with two routes in – one from the east from Palanpur via Radhanpur, Santhalpur westward into Kutch, and the other from the south-east from Ahmedabad via Morbi. A third and much shorter route from Ahmedabad was added through Dhrangadhra in the mid-1990s, ultimately joining the Morbi route and cutting the distance between Ahmedabad and Bhuj to about 350 km.
Kutch too has its wonders – and in this age of the seventh month of the seventh year I identify seven of them that I have experienced and would strongly recommend. I write them in the order of chronology of my own visit to each of them.
Narayan Sarovar: This is possibly the western-most place in India – it is a lake just next to Sir Creek (across which lies Karachi), and a small town called Koteshwar. I visited in October 1988 along with my batchmates Som and Balu, all of us broke students at the time in search of a place as far away as possible from anywhere else. We took a Gujarat Roadways bus from Bhuj that went through Nakhatrana and Matanamad and ended up in the evening in this tiny town where the only place to stay was some religious complex. One room for the three of us – Rs. 1.50 with dinner included, and no, I haven’t mistakenly put the dot – but we had to sing ‘Ram Ram’ while being served dinner and put up with suspicious looks from the complex authorities because Som and Balu were both bearded. This was unfortunate, because we decided to head back to Bhuj the next morning rather than put up with another day of that sort of crap. Before that, we did manage to look around at the sea and the saltpans on all sides, make friends with some fellow Bongs at the Border Security Force outpost, and watch the sun go down for the day on India in one of the most beautiful sunsets I have experienced. I wish that we had been able to spend another day or two there, Ram Ram and all (at that price I would be willing to sing anything including gangsta rap), but I suspect that my friends were quite happy to head back to the bright lights of Bhuj town.
Bhuj: KMVS Annual Day Function: I have once had the opportunity, somewhere in the mid-1990s, to attend a Women’s Day function at the Kutch Mahila Vikas Sangathan (KMVS - this is a district level federation of women’s groups) office in Bhuj. No, I was not an invitee – I just happened to be visiting at the time and they were probably too polite to tell me to shove off because of my gender. So there I was, with about a thousand women from all over Kutch around me, in all sizes, ages and colours. It is, no doubt, political incorrect to size up women at occasions to commemorate Women’s Day, but I have never regretted doing so at this one. The speeches wound down and the dancing began, including one called the Ahir dance that remains etched in memory – black clad Ahir women moving in circles to the beat of one drum. It had a rhythm and synchronicity that is difficult to describe. All good things come to an end, however, and this one wound down because the NGO type khadi-clad babes, without exception with two left feet, insisted on joining in and screwing it up in the name of sisterhood.
Bhuj: Annapurna: Under normal circumstances, I go through withdrawal symptoms if I am forced to eat vegetarian food for more than 3 meals consecutively. That I have no such difficulties in Bhuj is thanks to a small restaurant that is walking distance from my regular hotel. Annapurna serves Kutchi food, not the sugar-in-the-dal stuff that is available across Gujarat, it is spicy, oily, curdy and is eaten with coarse Bajra rotis that are soaked and crumpled in home-made white butter (with fresh ones served hot just as you finish the previous one), washed down with chaanch and rounded off with a sweet shrikhand. You come out stuffed to the gills in about Rs. 50. Annapurna is the main reason for all my hard work under the Kutchi sun not resulting in a corresponding reduction in the waistline (and my wife suspecting that the time away from home was probably actually in Mumbai living it up with Ash and Sush). Honourable mention in this regard must be made of the Egg-wallah next to Bhuj bus stand, who makes a mean double-desi-omelette cooked in butter in the morning and follows it up with strong tea.
Vyar: This is a village in Nakhatrana tehsil that is mainly populated by the Rabari community. Rabaris, for those who don’t know it, are a cattle herding and rearing community who are distinctive in dress and whose women are particularly beautiful (the men, for those interested, are very good looking too). Vyar itself is nestled in a slightly undulating part of Kutch that turns green and stunning in the aftermath of the rains. Care Today, who I work for, had supported the building of a series of check dams in the village and I had gone there several times to check the project out. The celebration that we had on completion of the project back in 2000 was a wonderful experience – beautiful women decked out in coloured ghagras and backless cholis in the backdrop of green undulating land, and a great meal as well. Bhachibai, who led the community’s effort to build the check dams, went on to become the village sarpanch and it was a pleasure to meet her again last month and to see the change in her stature that the project initiated.
Hodka: Hodka falls about 70 km north of Bhuj, on an island in the rann and right on its banks. KMVS decided in 2005 to try out an indigenous tourism model here – this involved them designing and setting up a tourist resort, and enabling the village community to own, run, work in, and make profits from it. I was persuaded to spend a night here as a paying customer cum guinea pig in February 2006 (my antics over the years in KMVS catching up with me). I arrived at night and left early the next morning, but saw enough to come again ten months later, of my own accord, and spend a few days with my wife, children and dog. The resort itself is wonderful – remote, beautiful, spacious, luxurious, affordable (well, reasonably so), clean and hassle-free but, no booze. The service was worth a mention – the village boys did things in a way that was correct without being obsequious. The kids could be left to do their own thing, there was some entertainment every evening (local folk groups and whatnot – all male), and food was both good and plentiful. We also visited India Bridge, the last civilian point in India on a dry water body that has so much salt that it looks like it has snowed – this and the nearby quicksand made an impression on my two boys, with a recall of the latter and a small mention of the possibility of leaving them within ensuring immediate better behaviour.
Chhaari Dhaand: This is a huge water body north of Bhuj, and it is to my deep regret that I discovered it only in December 2006 – in the aftermath of a good monsoon, with large colonies of birds to see, including the famous pink flamingos out in all their majesty. This is in the middle of nowhere, there are no roads or anything and therefore a vehicle that can perform off the road and a guide who knows the way are necessities. The family spent a day to remember in my old Qualis, making our way slowly around the water body checking out the birds. But, if you visit, do remember to carry food and water – you will not see any settlements or people for long stretches and there are no shops of any sort anywhere in the vicinity. And the flamingos? To quote the kids – Awesome!
Dholavira: The words ‘remote’ and ‘middle of nowhere’ are often used to describe Kutch and many places within it. I feel that I have finally discovered where it applies most of all. Dholavira is a famous place – an ancient Indian settlement was discovered here in the late seventies and is still being excavated – but very few people know where it is, or that it falls in Kutch. I did know, and it has always been on my list of places to take time out to see, except that I never did until just recently (July 2007). The opportunity arose because of a cancelled Jet Airways flight from Bhuj to Mumbai and the airline’s official (a bimbo of the highest order) refusing to make arrangements for accommodation and acting as if she was doing me a favour by putting me on the next day’s flight – I decided to make my way to Ahmedabad by road and subsequently, upon the advice of my local colleagues, to do so via Dholavira (adding exactly 220 km to the journey). So, eastwards from Bhuj towards Rapar, north across a long stretch of rann and then west across more rann until I reached a little island and the site of what was a flourishing port city 4 millenniums ago when this was all sea. The site is fascinating – much larger than the other well known one in Gujarat (which is Lothal), and still being excavated so there are plenty of terracotta ornaments and whatnot lying around all over the place. The Archaeology Survey of India, who handle the excavation, have a decent museum at the site and are helpful and informative. Most refreshing was the attitude of the locals in the nearby village – happy to have visitors for the new faces and the possibility of newspapers and conversation. One old man said that they are so cut off that a haircut costs Rs. 150 – travel 90 kilometers to the nearest barber (who is in Rapar), have a haircut, eat some food, and return.
Kutch is going to change. Large tracts of land have been acquired for Special Economic Zones, making full use of the peoples’ low education levels and the considerable availability of commons. The towns, all flattened by the 2001 earthquake, are now fancy and laden with infrastructure that sits uneasily on old attitudes and norms. All roads will shortly have tollbooths every twenty or so kilometres. The traditional economy is quickly transforming, skilled people are moving in from all over India, and the scope for cattle rearing and pastoral nomadic lifestyles is rapidly diminishing. If you have yet to visit – you need to do so soon. Because, as the old song goes, ‘I will never be the same!’
[1] This is a Kutchi saying that refers to its position as a punishment posting for government servants within Gujarat, and the fact that people are transferred out with the same reluctance that they come in with.
[2] An old limerick goes – the Bustard is an incredible fowl, extremely satisfying to the bowel, saved from what would be, illegitimacy, by the grace of just one vowel.
[3] Indian Airlines (now Indian) used to operate, but closed down once Jet Airways settled on the route.
Monday, July 9, 2007
ISLANDS IN THE SUN
A 2-pager by Ajit Chaudhuri
Introduction: One of the (admittedly minor) effects of the tsunami was that I visited a part of our country that I had never seen before – an increasingly rare occurrence in a career spent roaming around at other people’s expense. The Andaman and Nicobar Islands is a chain of 562 islands in the Bay of Bengal, in which the population of about 362,000 inhabit 38. Port Blair, its headquarters, is about 2 hours by flight east from Chennai or alternatively about 60 hours by ship. The Nicobar islands are quite distinct from those in the Andamans and are separated from them by the ten-degree channel, they have a population of about 40,000 consisting mainly of Nicobarese tribes, government servants and Tamil settlers. The Andamans consist mainly of settlers from Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Bengal, descendants of prisoners who settled here and ‘primitive’ tribes such as the Jarawa, the Onge and the Sentinelese. What follows are my observations from the twenty or so days I spent in the state.
The Place: A region, in my opinion, should be judged on three indicators only – the visual appeal of the place, the beauty of its women, and the quality of its cuisine – all else is unimportant. A&N scores a 911! The islands are astoundingly beautiful from any angle, many of them just green forested circles with a continuous yellow ring of beach around them. The sea is also multicoloured, with light green and then aquamarine rings around the islands giving way to deep blue as one moves further out. About the women, suffice to say that your eyes won’t be under strain here! A young lady reporter (with looks like the hero’s sister in Hindi films, who has to say “Bhaiya” a few times and heat his food when he returns from his nocturnal adventures) from the Telegraph had come down from Kolkata and was given Aishwarya Rai like treatment. Not much scope for the likes of me, you would think, except that we happened to sleep together on a ship between Hut Bay and Port Blair (as my wife, mother and father also read these 2-pagers I will reluctantly mention that the Reuters correspondent and the Deputy Director of the Shipping Department were sleeping in between us) and shared a comfortable friendship and several evenings together thereafter, to the consternation of the blades of Port Blair.
The Distances: The distances in A&N hit you. All internal journeys have to be done on ship (except for the favoured few who have helicopters at their disposal) and travel times are massive. The journey from Kamorta Island in the middle Nicobars to Port Blair in the southern Andamans took me 48 hours – all of which was spent on the deck because no cabins were available (only for babus) and the bunks were full of puke. This wasn’t particularly unpleasant, nights under the stars and all, except for crossing the rough ten-degree channel that had the ship rocking and rolling (apparently Bernoulli’s Principle applies here) and the likes of me contemplating life at the wrong end of the food chain in these shark infested waters. The shorter journeys in smaller ships across open and rough sea were much worse, especially when one travelled against the waves, as were the journeys on boats to get from the ships on to land because the jetties were destroyed.
The 26th of December: What actually happened? First, the earthquake! I was on Kachal on the 24th of January when an earthquake of 6.2 centered in Sumatra hit the island (there have been more than 100 earthquakes over 5 in the past few weeks) and can only imagine what a 9 must have been like. People came out of their houses, and, a few minutes later, saw the sea recede. Those who ran for their lives away from the sea and on to the central higher ground are alive today – those who were curious, or stopped to pick up belongings, or to pray, or to help others, did not make it. The police inspector in Kapanga tried to do his duty by shepherding others to safety (dead), another settlement of 1050 people in West Bay held a community prayer after the earthquake (4 are alive today). In Little Andamans, much further to the north, there were a series of four waves with about ten minute gaps in between, of which the third and the fourth were particularly vicious, twenty meter walls of water arriving at you at the speed a plane takes off.
The Ban: The Nancowry division, consisting of the islands Chowra, Kachal, Kamorta, Nancowry, Teresa and Trinket, is off limits to outsiders unless the government issues you a tribal area permit. I got one by hanging around government officers in Port Blair, meeting the Lt. Governor and kissing a lot of backside, nobody else did. A ban on media and NGOs after the tsunami is being strictly enforced. The reasons are not being articulated and rumours are rife – that the government is mismanaging relief, that the bodies are much more than the official figures, that there is something to hide, etc. There has been controversy over the numbers here, mainly because a large number of Tamil labourers had been illegally brought in by contractors and settled in coastal hamlets, and there is no record of who these people are, how many, and how many have died. Certainly, the numbers don’t match! The relief, too, is being mismanaged in this region, with the relief camps getting enough food and water but little else, with the whole area still looking like the tsunami had hit yesterday, with bodies still coming in with the tide and with huge quantities of everything on earth lying around in Port Blair but very little making its way here. But this would be the result of a media ban and not the cause of it.
More likely is the fact that the Nicobars sit at the head of the Mallacca Straits, the busiest shipping lane in the world, and are thus of strategic importance in the great game being played between China, the US and India. About 90 percent of China’s external trade passes through here, and thus we have a hold that counters any aggression in the Himalayas. The mandarins simply don’t want people poking around in this region.
The Taipans: Life must have been nice here! The Nicobarese tribals on these tiny islands lived in little settlements along with their school, church and football field, with all financial requirements being met by coconut plantations that were plentiful. They are governed through a system of elected village captains who deal with the outside world and managed government schemes. My quest for institutions through which to implement relief and rehabilitation activities on the islands led me to the tribal federations and the cooperative marketing federations that buy and sell the copra – all these turned out to be fronts for trading empires a la some of James Clavell’s novels. There is a constant game of chess between the Gujarati Jadwets, the Kamorta-based Rasheeds and the Tamils, all trying to outmaneuver each other with their ships, their fronts, their alliances and their patronage systems. They are now competing for the rehabilitation cake.
Infrastructure and Accommodation: Interestingly, no buildings in the state were destroyed in the earthquake – it was the tsunami that caused all the destruction to infrastructure. A local wag said that this was because the state public works department did all construction and they made their money by over-invoicing and not by under-constructing. The destruction of infrastructure was complete in the Nicobars, where all the jetties and all buildings on the coast, schools, churches, hospitals, police stations, government quarters, don’t exist any more. The temple left standing on Kachal had settlers of a certain mentality feeling that ‘mine is bigger (oops, better!) than yours’.
A list of places to stay across Nancowry division would begin and end with the PWD Guest House in Kamorta, fabulously located on a hill that overlooks the harbour and having a running kitchen, well worth being on the right side of the local Assistant Commissioner who controls the right to stay here. Kachal was the pits, with severe food, water, electricity and accommodation shortages. The poor head of administration there, an IAS officer from Delhi who was sent there for relief duty and turned out to be a friend of my batchmate Amir, is staying along with five others in a two-room office where they also work, eat, and do everything else. An army Colonel and his men and a 19-member relief team from Sirsa in Haryana were putting up in the church in the high center of the island, to the consternation of my namesake Father Ajit Ekka and his staff. He tried to get them to leave by bringing in a batch of trainee nuns from Jharkhand, but I suspect it had the opposite effect.
Will the Place Recover? Difficult to say! Jetties take a long time to rebuild, and all supplies depend upon the jetties. Coconut trees take seven to ten years to grow back, what will the Nicobarese do until then? The banking system has been washed away, and no records exist either with the account holders or with the bank, what will people do for their immediate cash requirements? 79 children on Kachal are supposed to be sitting for their class X and XII, how that will happen with all schools on the coastlines, and all their teachers, washed away. Earthquakes are hitting the Nicobars every day, undermining the little remaining confidence. Most of the village captains are dead and there is a serious leadership vaccum. On the other hand, time is a great healer. And other disaster areas in India have, in the long run, become better places for those who survived with the huge investment in infrastructure. A&N may not be an exception.
A 2-pager by Ajit Chaudhuri
Introduction: One of the (admittedly minor) effects of the tsunami was that I visited a part of our country that I had never seen before – an increasingly rare occurrence in a career spent roaming around at other people’s expense. The Andaman and Nicobar Islands is a chain of 562 islands in the Bay of Bengal, in which the population of about 362,000 inhabit 38. Port Blair, its headquarters, is about 2 hours by flight east from Chennai or alternatively about 60 hours by ship. The Nicobar islands are quite distinct from those in the Andamans and are separated from them by the ten-degree channel, they have a population of about 40,000 consisting mainly of Nicobarese tribes, government servants and Tamil settlers. The Andamans consist mainly of settlers from Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Bengal, descendants of prisoners who settled here and ‘primitive’ tribes such as the Jarawa, the Onge and the Sentinelese. What follows are my observations from the twenty or so days I spent in the state.
The Place: A region, in my opinion, should be judged on three indicators only – the visual appeal of the place, the beauty of its women, and the quality of its cuisine – all else is unimportant. A&N scores a 911! The islands are astoundingly beautiful from any angle, many of them just green forested circles with a continuous yellow ring of beach around them. The sea is also multicoloured, with light green and then aquamarine rings around the islands giving way to deep blue as one moves further out. About the women, suffice to say that your eyes won’t be under strain here! A young lady reporter (with looks like the hero’s sister in Hindi films, who has to say “Bhaiya” a few times and heat his food when he returns from his nocturnal adventures) from the Telegraph had come down from Kolkata and was given Aishwarya Rai like treatment. Not much scope for the likes of me, you would think, except that we happened to sleep together on a ship between Hut Bay and Port Blair (as my wife, mother and father also read these 2-pagers I will reluctantly mention that the Reuters correspondent and the Deputy Director of the Shipping Department were sleeping in between us) and shared a comfortable friendship and several evenings together thereafter, to the consternation of the blades of Port Blair.
The Distances: The distances in A&N hit you. All internal journeys have to be done on ship (except for the favoured few who have helicopters at their disposal) and travel times are massive. The journey from Kamorta Island in the middle Nicobars to Port Blair in the southern Andamans took me 48 hours – all of which was spent on the deck because no cabins were available (only for babus) and the bunks were full of puke. This wasn’t particularly unpleasant, nights under the stars and all, except for crossing the rough ten-degree channel that had the ship rocking and rolling (apparently Bernoulli’s Principle applies here) and the likes of me contemplating life at the wrong end of the food chain in these shark infested waters. The shorter journeys in smaller ships across open and rough sea were much worse, especially when one travelled against the waves, as were the journeys on boats to get from the ships on to land because the jetties were destroyed.
The 26th of December: What actually happened? First, the earthquake! I was on Kachal on the 24th of January when an earthquake of 6.2 centered in Sumatra hit the island (there have been more than 100 earthquakes over 5 in the past few weeks) and can only imagine what a 9 must have been like. People came out of their houses, and, a few minutes later, saw the sea recede. Those who ran for their lives away from the sea and on to the central higher ground are alive today – those who were curious, or stopped to pick up belongings, or to pray, or to help others, did not make it. The police inspector in Kapanga tried to do his duty by shepherding others to safety (dead), another settlement of 1050 people in West Bay held a community prayer after the earthquake (4 are alive today). In Little Andamans, much further to the north, there were a series of four waves with about ten minute gaps in between, of which the third and the fourth were particularly vicious, twenty meter walls of water arriving at you at the speed a plane takes off.
The Ban: The Nancowry division, consisting of the islands Chowra, Kachal, Kamorta, Nancowry, Teresa and Trinket, is off limits to outsiders unless the government issues you a tribal area permit. I got one by hanging around government officers in Port Blair, meeting the Lt. Governor and kissing a lot of backside, nobody else did. A ban on media and NGOs after the tsunami is being strictly enforced. The reasons are not being articulated and rumours are rife – that the government is mismanaging relief, that the bodies are much more than the official figures, that there is something to hide, etc. There has been controversy over the numbers here, mainly because a large number of Tamil labourers had been illegally brought in by contractors and settled in coastal hamlets, and there is no record of who these people are, how many, and how many have died. Certainly, the numbers don’t match! The relief, too, is being mismanaged in this region, with the relief camps getting enough food and water but little else, with the whole area still looking like the tsunami had hit yesterday, with bodies still coming in with the tide and with huge quantities of everything on earth lying around in Port Blair but very little making its way here. But this would be the result of a media ban and not the cause of it.
More likely is the fact that the Nicobars sit at the head of the Mallacca Straits, the busiest shipping lane in the world, and are thus of strategic importance in the great game being played between China, the US and India. About 90 percent of China’s external trade passes through here, and thus we have a hold that counters any aggression in the Himalayas. The mandarins simply don’t want people poking around in this region.
The Taipans: Life must have been nice here! The Nicobarese tribals on these tiny islands lived in little settlements along with their school, church and football field, with all financial requirements being met by coconut plantations that were plentiful. They are governed through a system of elected village captains who deal with the outside world and managed government schemes. My quest for institutions through which to implement relief and rehabilitation activities on the islands led me to the tribal federations and the cooperative marketing federations that buy and sell the copra – all these turned out to be fronts for trading empires a la some of James Clavell’s novels. There is a constant game of chess between the Gujarati Jadwets, the Kamorta-based Rasheeds and the Tamils, all trying to outmaneuver each other with their ships, their fronts, their alliances and their patronage systems. They are now competing for the rehabilitation cake.
Infrastructure and Accommodation: Interestingly, no buildings in the state were destroyed in the earthquake – it was the tsunami that caused all the destruction to infrastructure. A local wag said that this was because the state public works department did all construction and they made their money by over-invoicing and not by under-constructing. The destruction of infrastructure was complete in the Nicobars, where all the jetties and all buildings on the coast, schools, churches, hospitals, police stations, government quarters, don’t exist any more. The temple left standing on Kachal had settlers of a certain mentality feeling that ‘mine is bigger (oops, better!) than yours’.
A list of places to stay across Nancowry division would begin and end with the PWD Guest House in Kamorta, fabulously located on a hill that overlooks the harbour and having a running kitchen, well worth being on the right side of the local Assistant Commissioner who controls the right to stay here. Kachal was the pits, with severe food, water, electricity and accommodation shortages. The poor head of administration there, an IAS officer from Delhi who was sent there for relief duty and turned out to be a friend of my batchmate Amir, is staying along with five others in a two-room office where they also work, eat, and do everything else. An army Colonel and his men and a 19-member relief team from Sirsa in Haryana were putting up in the church in the high center of the island, to the consternation of my namesake Father Ajit Ekka and his staff. He tried to get them to leave by bringing in a batch of trainee nuns from Jharkhand, but I suspect it had the opposite effect.
Will the Place Recover? Difficult to say! Jetties take a long time to rebuild, and all supplies depend upon the jetties. Coconut trees take seven to ten years to grow back, what will the Nicobarese do until then? The banking system has been washed away, and no records exist either with the account holders or with the bank, what will people do for their immediate cash requirements? 79 children on Kachal are supposed to be sitting for their class X and XII, how that will happen with all schools on the coastlines, and all their teachers, washed away. Earthquakes are hitting the Nicobars every day, undermining the little remaining confidence. Most of the village captains are dead and there is a serious leadership vaccum. On the other hand, time is a great healer. And other disaster areas in India have, in the long run, become better places for those who survived with the huge investment in infrastructure. A&N may not be an exception.
Tuesday, May 1, 2007
Drying Out - Banaskantha
DRYING OUT: BANASKANTHA
Ajit Chaudhuri
Visited in October 1988
Written in November 1995
Anyone who has gone through the grind of management school would have come across the term ‘mid-term projects’ wherein you are sent out in the midst of your course to an organisation to do some real work for a period of ten weeks or so. Motivation to select a particular assignment varies – among the common ones are; it looks good on your future CV, it takes you home, it’s an assignment for two and thereby gives you the opportunity to spend time with your girlfriend at some organisation’s expense. Me and a (male, I might add sadly) friend chose an obscure and vague project with Banas Dairy at Palanpur simply because we could get to see a part of the world we hadn’t as yet and, possibly more importantly, it was unlikely we would have to do any serious work.
We were right on both counts! Banas Dairy had no clue what to do with two bright young soon-to-be management graduates and its Managing Director almost had a heart attack when he discovered that he would have to put up with us for slightly longer than the week he had thought while formulating the project. We had no idea what ‘enquiring into the efficacy of first-line supervision of village milk societies and suggesting methods to increase milk procurement’ entailed, but soon got into the business of procuring a map of the district, selecting thirty far-flung villages and insisting upon visiting them.
Our status as visiting management cats enabled us to bulldoze our way through – we would disappear into the countryside for ten days at a time along with a jeep, driver and interpreter, live off the land, take our night halts in the villages, meet a large number of interesting people and then return to Palanpur (which, after field trips like these, would seem like Bombay for a while) before setting off again. The result was a thoroughly enjoyable project, lots of travel and lolling around and just enough work (or pretence of it) to impress the daylights out of Banas Dairy on counts of diligence and rigour.
Banaskantha (pronounced Banaaskaantha), in which Banas Dairy operates and from which it gets its name, is the northernmost district of Gujarat and, to my mind, its most beautiful. It is geographically diverse – as you travel from east to west you come across heavily forested hills, then agricultural plains, desert, and finally swampy uninhabited marshlands known locally as rann which forms the district’s border with Pakistan. To the south and east lie Mehsana and Sabarkantha districts respectively, to the north lie three districts of Rajasthan, Sirohi, Jalor and Barmer. To the west, along with Pakistan, is Kutch. Banaskantha is divided into eleven tehsils, all of which we roamed around in.
Danta, the easternmost tehsil, is all hill and forest with tribal communities staying deep within. Tucked inside these hills is a booming town of some religious significance or the other called Ambaji. The best way to judge the size of a town is to find out how many film halls it has. Ambaji had two, so we stayed two days, which gives you an idea of what was on offer in the list of exciting things to do in town. The restaurants seemed to offer more variety than the entertainment industry – we were introduced to innovative delicacies such as ‘green piss masala’ and ‘switcarn veg soop’.
The central part of the district was a cow belt, with a popular Indian breed of cattle, the Kankrej, getting its name from a tehsil in these parts. The milk societies here were highly active, and spending time studying them was good fun. We soon got into a routine, getting into a village in the afternoon, resting, watching the milk collection, chatting with people until late at night, getting a tour of the village early the next morning, looking into the books of the milk society, and then pushing off into the next one.
The highlight of the day would be watching the evening milk collection. It is mainly the young ladies of the village who bring the day’s output to the milk society, so we would sit around the society building trying to look as official as possible while observing them with the sun setting into the background. Pure, unadulterated pleasure!
That Banaskantha is a border district is very obvious, especially when travelling within the tehsils adjoining Pakistan. The smugglers here are not the usual run-of-the-mill, small time fellows one normally finds in all of India’s borders, who are constantly running shy of the police and security forces. The area falls on the highly lucrative grand trunk route of drugs, Afghanistan via Karachi and Bombay to the US, and the men involved are appropriately nasty – well armed, willing to return fire, and distrustful of strangers in their villages, especially after dark.
This is where travelling through the local dairy cooperative has its advantages. Banas Dairy was enough of a people’s organisation for us to stay in these villages, meet people and chat to them even about things like the drug trade. At the same time, it was enough of a government organization for us to be allowed through check posts without the usual grilling, and to get accommodation at official guest houses (albeit the worst rooms, and only when no one, from peons upwards, needed it for any purpose whatsoever).
In talking with people, we got to understand what the modus operandi was. Banaskantha and Pakistan are separated by a thirty to fifty kilometre stretch of rann which is uninhabited and nearly impossible for humans to cross because of quicksand. Camels, however, can detect quicksand and are therefore able to cross relatively easily. Their insides are stuffed with drugs that side, they wander across on their own, they are picked up here, shot, and the drugs are taken out and transported to Bombay. Simple! This was borne out by the fact that, for some officially unexplained reason, the price of camels in western Banaskantha was very high.
In between the travel we slacked off at the dairy’s main office just outside the district headquarters, Palanpur. The guest house we were put up in was comfortable and Karsanbhai, the man Friday, a good cook though a trifle generous with his sugar in the dal. Time was spent eating, sleeping, seeing movies in town, and spending a maximum of one hour at the office mulling over papers and whatnot.
The height of excitement was a visit to a fair one evening, where we saw an assortment of acts guaranteed to zap the peasantry. There was a ‘Ride of Death’ in which a fellow on a Rajdoot motorcycle drives up and down around the insides of a large wooden circular drum with a female pillion waving her hands to the paying public. There was also the usual assortment of photo studios (with cut-outs of Amitabh Bachhan, Dharmendra and Rekha to pose with you) and fortune tellers. The most fascinating stall was ‘Hiralal Gadha, the talking donkey’ in which the paying public would form a circle around a man and his donkey and the man would ask the donkey who was the tallest, shortest, oldest, etc., etc., person in the room and the donkey would walk around and point to the person by touching her/him with its nose. Once the donkey’s credentials were established, the pair would have some fun at the audience’s expense – pointing out the biggest miser, the man nagged most by his wife, etc. Good fun all around!
The visit to Banaskantha ended with a presentation by us to the dairy’s management on our findings and a discussion about what could be done. To our shock and horror, those guys decided to implement much of what we suggested. To my further shock and horror, today, seven years later, the dairy is still functional and, I am told, profitable.
Ajit Chaudhuri
Visited in October 1988
Written in November 1995
Anyone who has gone through the grind of management school would have come across the term ‘mid-term projects’ wherein you are sent out in the midst of your course to an organisation to do some real work for a period of ten weeks or so. Motivation to select a particular assignment varies – among the common ones are; it looks good on your future CV, it takes you home, it’s an assignment for two and thereby gives you the opportunity to spend time with your girlfriend at some organisation’s expense. Me and a (male, I might add sadly) friend chose an obscure and vague project with Banas Dairy at Palanpur simply because we could get to see a part of the world we hadn’t as yet and, possibly more importantly, it was unlikely we would have to do any serious work.
We were right on both counts! Banas Dairy had no clue what to do with two bright young soon-to-be management graduates and its Managing Director almost had a heart attack when he discovered that he would have to put up with us for slightly longer than the week he had thought while formulating the project. We had no idea what ‘enquiring into the efficacy of first-line supervision of village milk societies and suggesting methods to increase milk procurement’ entailed, but soon got into the business of procuring a map of the district, selecting thirty far-flung villages and insisting upon visiting them.
Our status as visiting management cats enabled us to bulldoze our way through – we would disappear into the countryside for ten days at a time along with a jeep, driver and interpreter, live off the land, take our night halts in the villages, meet a large number of interesting people and then return to Palanpur (which, after field trips like these, would seem like Bombay for a while) before setting off again. The result was a thoroughly enjoyable project, lots of travel and lolling around and just enough work (or pretence of it) to impress the daylights out of Banas Dairy on counts of diligence and rigour.
Banaskantha (pronounced Banaaskaantha), in which Banas Dairy operates and from which it gets its name, is the northernmost district of Gujarat and, to my mind, its most beautiful. It is geographically diverse – as you travel from east to west you come across heavily forested hills, then agricultural plains, desert, and finally swampy uninhabited marshlands known locally as rann which forms the district’s border with Pakistan. To the south and east lie Mehsana and Sabarkantha districts respectively, to the north lie three districts of Rajasthan, Sirohi, Jalor and Barmer. To the west, along with Pakistan, is Kutch. Banaskantha is divided into eleven tehsils, all of which we roamed around in.
Danta, the easternmost tehsil, is all hill and forest with tribal communities staying deep within. Tucked inside these hills is a booming town of some religious significance or the other called Ambaji. The best way to judge the size of a town is to find out how many film halls it has. Ambaji had two, so we stayed two days, which gives you an idea of what was on offer in the list of exciting things to do in town. The restaurants seemed to offer more variety than the entertainment industry – we were introduced to innovative delicacies such as ‘green piss masala’ and ‘switcarn veg soop’.
The central part of the district was a cow belt, with a popular Indian breed of cattle, the Kankrej, getting its name from a tehsil in these parts. The milk societies here were highly active, and spending time studying them was good fun. We soon got into a routine, getting into a village in the afternoon, resting, watching the milk collection, chatting with people until late at night, getting a tour of the village early the next morning, looking into the books of the milk society, and then pushing off into the next one.
The highlight of the day would be watching the evening milk collection. It is mainly the young ladies of the village who bring the day’s output to the milk society, so we would sit around the society building trying to look as official as possible while observing them with the sun setting into the background. Pure, unadulterated pleasure!
That Banaskantha is a border district is very obvious, especially when travelling within the tehsils adjoining Pakistan. The smugglers here are not the usual run-of-the-mill, small time fellows one normally finds in all of India’s borders, who are constantly running shy of the police and security forces. The area falls on the highly lucrative grand trunk route of drugs, Afghanistan via Karachi and Bombay to the US, and the men involved are appropriately nasty – well armed, willing to return fire, and distrustful of strangers in their villages, especially after dark.
This is where travelling through the local dairy cooperative has its advantages. Banas Dairy was enough of a people’s organisation for us to stay in these villages, meet people and chat to them even about things like the drug trade. At the same time, it was enough of a government organization for us to be allowed through check posts without the usual grilling, and to get accommodation at official guest houses (albeit the worst rooms, and only when no one, from peons upwards, needed it for any purpose whatsoever).
In talking with people, we got to understand what the modus operandi was. Banaskantha and Pakistan are separated by a thirty to fifty kilometre stretch of rann which is uninhabited and nearly impossible for humans to cross because of quicksand. Camels, however, can detect quicksand and are therefore able to cross relatively easily. Their insides are stuffed with drugs that side, they wander across on their own, they are picked up here, shot, and the drugs are taken out and transported to Bombay. Simple! This was borne out by the fact that, for some officially unexplained reason, the price of camels in western Banaskantha was very high.
In between the travel we slacked off at the dairy’s main office just outside the district headquarters, Palanpur. The guest house we were put up in was comfortable and Karsanbhai, the man Friday, a good cook though a trifle generous with his sugar in the dal. Time was spent eating, sleeping, seeing movies in town, and spending a maximum of one hour at the office mulling over papers and whatnot.
The height of excitement was a visit to a fair one evening, where we saw an assortment of acts guaranteed to zap the peasantry. There was a ‘Ride of Death’ in which a fellow on a Rajdoot motorcycle drives up and down around the insides of a large wooden circular drum with a female pillion waving her hands to the paying public. There was also the usual assortment of photo studios (with cut-outs of Amitabh Bachhan, Dharmendra and Rekha to pose with you) and fortune tellers. The most fascinating stall was ‘Hiralal Gadha, the talking donkey’ in which the paying public would form a circle around a man and his donkey and the man would ask the donkey who was the tallest, shortest, oldest, etc., etc., person in the room and the donkey would walk around and point to the person by touching her/him with its nose. Once the donkey’s credentials were established, the pair would have some fun at the audience’s expense – pointing out the biggest miser, the man nagged most by his wife, etc. Good fun all around!
The visit to Banaskantha ended with a presentation by us to the dairy’s management on our findings and a discussion about what could be done. To our shock and horror, those guys decided to implement much of what we suggested. To my further shock and horror, today, seven years later, the dairy is still functional and, I am told, profitable.
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
THE HIGH SPOTS - BHUTAN
THE HIGH SPOTS – BHUTAN
Ajit Chaudhuri
Visited: January 1988
Written: November 1995
It is indeed strange that a travel addict such as myself has seen so little of such a large part of the country, the east, and I consider my education incomplete for this. It was as a student that I last went that side, a field assignment to northern Bihar in the winter of 1987-1988 to provide some management support to a village-based organization there.
Anyone spending ten weeks in Bihar would need some diversion, and I was no exception. The holding of the Jawaharlal Nehru football tournament in nearby Siliguri provided me with the necessary incentive to make some excuse and bunk off towards Patna, meet up with some fellow enthusiasts and then head to Siliguri to watch football.
There will be those among you who feel that this is not sufficient reason to abandon one’s duty for a 2-week period, and I think I would agree with you today. In 1988, however, the Nehru football tournament was still a prestigious affair and countries sent their best teams. The USSR would be coming with the team that would represent them at the Seoul Olympics, and watching them was definitely worth it. And so, three of us headed from Patna to Mokamma by train and onwards from there by bus to Barauni, where we managed to procure reservations on the Northeast Express to New Jalpaiguri.
The train arrived late, and at night, and with all Barauni quota berths occupied by unauthorised general passengers, no uncommon occurrence in these parts. We strode into our compartment and, in our loudest and most commanding voices, proceeded to wake everyone up. By the time the travelling public realised that we were neither mafia lords nor naxalites our berths were clear and we slept peacefully until NJP the next morning.
It was due to there being a long gap between USSR vs. Bulgaria and USSR vs. China, the two matches we wanted to see, that the idea of heading towards Bhutan was mooted. The main attraction was the adventure of foreign travel without the necessity of passports, visas, foreign exchange and any planning – just hop into a bus for a few hours and hey presto, you are abroad. But Bhutan has a lot more to offer than just being an easily accessible (if one is in Siliguri) foreign country.
Tickets were booked from Siliguri to Phuntsholing on a Bhutan transport bus, our first experience of a foreign bus service. The journey was standard fare, through thick forests and stops at little roadside joints with a breakdown at a breathtakingly beautiful place in the middle of tea gardens for which the bus was repaired by tying parts of the engine to each other with borrowed hankies – just like India.
It was India! Only the last five minutes of an 8-hour journey was spent abroad, when we crossed a huge gate that brought us into Bhutan and its border city, Phuntsholing. After conducting formalities befitting the occasion of one’s first steps on foreign soil such as kissing the ground and putting some dust into our pockets, we set off to explore.
It was here that the difference between India and Bhutan was most obvious. The Indian town of Jaigaon and the Bhutanese city of Phuntsholing are a continuation of each other, forming a single urban area separated by a border gate and a drain, with free movement from this side into that and vice versa. Jaigaon, however, is a typical dirty little town with potholes, rubbish all over and poor drainage whereas a step across takes you into this clean city with good roads and an organized look about it.
It was also here that we learnt the golden rule of foreign travel – stay away from Indians. We initially ignored all the fancy looking centrally located hotels to find some sidey Indian-owned joint, where the fellow immediately tried to crook us by charging more for less while acting as if he was doing us a big favour because we were fellow countrymen. So it was back to one of the fancy centrally located hotels, where we spent a thoroughly comfortable two days at half the price.
Enquiries revealed that a journey to Thimphu was possible on Toyota vans run by the government. The peasantry, however, did the journey at one-third the cost on the three Bhutan roadways buses that plied daily between the two cities, imaginatively referred to as the first bus, second bus and third bus.
It was only on the morning of our journey, well after we had reserved tickets on the third bus, that somebody mentioned that we needed permits to go beyond Phuntsholing. Some desparate measures were undertaken – running off to India House, the issuing authority, and then running after the babu and kissing his backside – and we were able to board the bus with the necessary documents.
The day’s journey revealed much about Bhutan. A small country with just mountain, forest and little pockets of human habitation in between, unlike our other neighbours people here have a positive attitude towards India and Indians. The special relationship the two countries share is in evidence everywhere, the roads and hydel projects are Indian built, and Indian currency is universally accepted and in fact even preferred. While foreigners experience severe difficulties in obtaining the necessary permission to travek around, for Indians it is relatively easy.
Food habits here are quite different from mainstream India, the standard fare being pork and beef, with vegetables (and vegetarianism) completely absent except in a few ridiculously expensive Indian owned eateries. Tibetan style cooking is popular and Momos and Thukpas are available everywhere. The local Bhutanese delicacy is a dish called Ematachi, a sort of chilli curry that we had only when we felt brave (and did not have to travel the next day). Booze is cheap, freely available and widely consumed.
The final leg of the journey involves negotiating a windy pass into a long valley at the end of which, surrounded on three sides by snow capped mountains, lies one of the most beautiful cities in the world. Thimphu is small and well planned, with perfect roads and a distinctive architecture.
One of the vagaries of tourism is that the more tourists a place attracts, the more unattractive it becomes to tourists. There is nothing more putting off to the holidaymaker than to make for this beautiful destination and find that one is sharing it with a large number of other holidaymakers. In Bhutan you will have no such problems. As a policy, the government actively discourages tourism by putting various obstacles in the way of would-be visitors. The result is that those such as us who do make their way into the country find the perfect destination – a land of stunning beauty with few modern eyesores littering the landscape and people in whom the ‘make a buck off the tourists while you can’ attitude is completely absent.
It says something about a place when you can find a cheap clean room in the heart of town with a view of snow from two windows and the sound of a stream running 24 hours a day, as we did. An additional facility was a movie hall just outside, with ‘Meri Jung’ running for three shows a day to packed crowds. Thimphu, unlike Phuntsholing, is in the heart of the mountains and is freezing cold in winter. While snow had not yet fallen in the valley, the minimum temperature was –3 centigrade and necessitated a peg of the local brew, Saunfi, as soon as one emerged from the razai in the morning and onwards.
A place, no matter how beautiful, is only as pleasant as the people who live in it. And this is where Bhutan scores another plus. People here are normal, friendly and unagressive. Thimphu being a small place, one met quite a few of the same people while roaming around, and we made friends. Our exploratory visits to the mountains around enabled us to meet the same sort of people – people unafraid to open their homes and introduce their families to three strange men.
There were quirks, though! One was the aversion to queues in Thimphu. As there were only three buses plying daily back to Phuntsholing, we felt it would be a good idea to book in advance. The ticket window, however, was a complete free for all, around 15 to 20 people pushing, shoving, grunting and groaning to get a hand into the window slot, with the spirit of free competition not vitiating a good-humoured atmosphere. For half an hour the three of us took turns at getting into the crowd and using our height and weight advantage only to be shoved out red-faced. Then we hit upon a plan, using the principle ‘when in Rome’ and copying the technique of the successful ticket buyers, of making it a team effort with me getting into the crowd and the other two pushing me so that I got into the gaps. We soon got our tickets and the feeling of satisfaction was great.
The return trip came only too soon, back to Phuntsholing and from there to Siliguri where we watched the Soviets beat the Chinese in a furiously-paced match.
Much water has flown down the Ganga in the seven years since that journey. The Soviet team we travelled all that distance to watch play beat the Romario-led Brazilians in the final for the gold medal – a match the three of us watched together on TV. Today, the Soviet Union does not exist! Bhutan too has undergone social tensions within and is not the Shangri-La one saw in 1988. And one of the friends who accompanied me is no more, having passed away in a drowning accident a few months ago.
But if I get the opportunity to go there again, I would accept in a flash – no added incentive of football in Siliguri required. There are places that are still names on a map to me, such as Paro and Haa Dzong. And I have miles to go before I sleep.
Ajit Chaudhuri
Visited: January 1988
Written: November 1995
It is indeed strange that a travel addict such as myself has seen so little of such a large part of the country, the east, and I consider my education incomplete for this. It was as a student that I last went that side, a field assignment to northern Bihar in the winter of 1987-1988 to provide some management support to a village-based organization there.
Anyone spending ten weeks in Bihar would need some diversion, and I was no exception. The holding of the Jawaharlal Nehru football tournament in nearby Siliguri provided me with the necessary incentive to make some excuse and bunk off towards Patna, meet up with some fellow enthusiasts and then head to Siliguri to watch football.
There will be those among you who feel that this is not sufficient reason to abandon one’s duty for a 2-week period, and I think I would agree with you today. In 1988, however, the Nehru football tournament was still a prestigious affair and countries sent their best teams. The USSR would be coming with the team that would represent them at the Seoul Olympics, and watching them was definitely worth it. And so, three of us headed from Patna to Mokamma by train and onwards from there by bus to Barauni, where we managed to procure reservations on the Northeast Express to New Jalpaiguri.
The train arrived late, and at night, and with all Barauni quota berths occupied by unauthorised general passengers, no uncommon occurrence in these parts. We strode into our compartment and, in our loudest and most commanding voices, proceeded to wake everyone up. By the time the travelling public realised that we were neither mafia lords nor naxalites our berths were clear and we slept peacefully until NJP the next morning.
It was due to there being a long gap between USSR vs. Bulgaria and USSR vs. China, the two matches we wanted to see, that the idea of heading towards Bhutan was mooted. The main attraction was the adventure of foreign travel without the necessity of passports, visas, foreign exchange and any planning – just hop into a bus for a few hours and hey presto, you are abroad. But Bhutan has a lot more to offer than just being an easily accessible (if one is in Siliguri) foreign country.
Tickets were booked from Siliguri to Phuntsholing on a Bhutan transport bus, our first experience of a foreign bus service. The journey was standard fare, through thick forests and stops at little roadside joints with a breakdown at a breathtakingly beautiful place in the middle of tea gardens for which the bus was repaired by tying parts of the engine to each other with borrowed hankies – just like India.
It was India! Only the last five minutes of an 8-hour journey was spent abroad, when we crossed a huge gate that brought us into Bhutan and its border city, Phuntsholing. After conducting formalities befitting the occasion of one’s first steps on foreign soil such as kissing the ground and putting some dust into our pockets, we set off to explore.
It was here that the difference between India and Bhutan was most obvious. The Indian town of Jaigaon and the Bhutanese city of Phuntsholing are a continuation of each other, forming a single urban area separated by a border gate and a drain, with free movement from this side into that and vice versa. Jaigaon, however, is a typical dirty little town with potholes, rubbish all over and poor drainage whereas a step across takes you into this clean city with good roads and an organized look about it.
It was also here that we learnt the golden rule of foreign travel – stay away from Indians. We initially ignored all the fancy looking centrally located hotels to find some sidey Indian-owned joint, where the fellow immediately tried to crook us by charging more for less while acting as if he was doing us a big favour because we were fellow countrymen. So it was back to one of the fancy centrally located hotels, where we spent a thoroughly comfortable two days at half the price.
Enquiries revealed that a journey to Thimphu was possible on Toyota vans run by the government. The peasantry, however, did the journey at one-third the cost on the three Bhutan roadways buses that plied daily between the two cities, imaginatively referred to as the first bus, second bus and third bus.
It was only on the morning of our journey, well after we had reserved tickets on the third bus, that somebody mentioned that we needed permits to go beyond Phuntsholing. Some desparate measures were undertaken – running off to India House, the issuing authority, and then running after the babu and kissing his backside – and we were able to board the bus with the necessary documents.
The day’s journey revealed much about Bhutan. A small country with just mountain, forest and little pockets of human habitation in between, unlike our other neighbours people here have a positive attitude towards India and Indians. The special relationship the two countries share is in evidence everywhere, the roads and hydel projects are Indian built, and Indian currency is universally accepted and in fact even preferred. While foreigners experience severe difficulties in obtaining the necessary permission to travek around, for Indians it is relatively easy.
Food habits here are quite different from mainstream India, the standard fare being pork and beef, with vegetables (and vegetarianism) completely absent except in a few ridiculously expensive Indian owned eateries. Tibetan style cooking is popular and Momos and Thukpas are available everywhere. The local Bhutanese delicacy is a dish called Ematachi, a sort of chilli curry that we had only when we felt brave (and did not have to travel the next day). Booze is cheap, freely available and widely consumed.
The final leg of the journey involves negotiating a windy pass into a long valley at the end of which, surrounded on three sides by snow capped mountains, lies one of the most beautiful cities in the world. Thimphu is small and well planned, with perfect roads and a distinctive architecture.
One of the vagaries of tourism is that the more tourists a place attracts, the more unattractive it becomes to tourists. There is nothing more putting off to the holidaymaker than to make for this beautiful destination and find that one is sharing it with a large number of other holidaymakers. In Bhutan you will have no such problems. As a policy, the government actively discourages tourism by putting various obstacles in the way of would-be visitors. The result is that those such as us who do make their way into the country find the perfect destination – a land of stunning beauty with few modern eyesores littering the landscape and people in whom the ‘make a buck off the tourists while you can’ attitude is completely absent.
It says something about a place when you can find a cheap clean room in the heart of town with a view of snow from two windows and the sound of a stream running 24 hours a day, as we did. An additional facility was a movie hall just outside, with ‘Meri Jung’ running for three shows a day to packed crowds. Thimphu, unlike Phuntsholing, is in the heart of the mountains and is freezing cold in winter. While snow had not yet fallen in the valley, the minimum temperature was –3 centigrade and necessitated a peg of the local brew, Saunfi, as soon as one emerged from the razai in the morning and onwards.
A place, no matter how beautiful, is only as pleasant as the people who live in it. And this is where Bhutan scores another plus. People here are normal, friendly and unagressive. Thimphu being a small place, one met quite a few of the same people while roaming around, and we made friends. Our exploratory visits to the mountains around enabled us to meet the same sort of people – people unafraid to open their homes and introduce their families to three strange men.
There were quirks, though! One was the aversion to queues in Thimphu. As there were only three buses plying daily back to Phuntsholing, we felt it would be a good idea to book in advance. The ticket window, however, was a complete free for all, around 15 to 20 people pushing, shoving, grunting and groaning to get a hand into the window slot, with the spirit of free competition not vitiating a good-humoured atmosphere. For half an hour the three of us took turns at getting into the crowd and using our height and weight advantage only to be shoved out red-faced. Then we hit upon a plan, using the principle ‘when in Rome’ and copying the technique of the successful ticket buyers, of making it a team effort with me getting into the crowd and the other two pushing me so that I got into the gaps. We soon got our tickets and the feeling of satisfaction was great.
The return trip came only too soon, back to Phuntsholing and from there to Siliguri where we watched the Soviets beat the Chinese in a furiously-paced match.
Much water has flown down the Ganga in the seven years since that journey. The Soviet team we travelled all that distance to watch play beat the Romario-led Brazilians in the final for the gold medal – a match the three of us watched together on TV. Today, the Soviet Union does not exist! Bhutan too has undergone social tensions within and is not the Shangri-La one saw in 1988. And one of the friends who accompanied me is no more, having passed away in a drowning accident a few months ago.
But if I get the opportunity to go there again, I would accept in a flash – no added incentive of football in Siliguri required. There are places that are still names on a map to me, such as Paro and Haa Dzong. And I have miles to go before I sleep.
Sunday, March 18, 2007
Another World - Bihar
ANOTHER WORLD
Gokkula, Muzafarpur District, Bihar
Ajit Chaudhuri
Visited: December 1987 to February 1988
Written: May 1995
Anyone heading for an unfamiliar destination would carry some pre-conceived notions on the experiences likely to be undergone during his/her visit – at least to the extent of whether they would be positive or negative. Tahiti carries visions of grass-skirted nymphets dancing all around you, New York of being mugged and Brazil of high quality football being played everywhere. The impressions one leaves with are usually different, some more and some less. But it is a rare occasion when one’s notions undergo a complete about turn – when all you see on Tahiti’s beaches are fat old Aunties, when meandering around Central Park at midnight enables you to meet only philanthropists and when Sao Paolo versus Santos reminds you of Mohan Bagan versus East Bengal.
This has happened to me just once – Bihar.
My initial emotion upon being told that I was to spend ten weeks with a small voluntary agency in some corner of Muzaffarpur district in Bihar was, to understate things, not positive – something of a cross between sheer fright and a feeling of how on earth did this happen to me. Bihar was a place existing only in newspapers and in conversations with Bihari friends at University. A place of extreme caste differences leading to massacres every now and then. A place ruled by mustachioed landlords who had absolute command over land and everything on it as far as the eye could see, with dusky tribal beauties dancing to their bidding and private armies to settle scores. A place where value for life was close to zero, indirectly proportional to the murder rate, where crime and corruption were rampant across all walks of life. My sole ambition (my attempts to duck out of the assignment did not succeed) was to come out of there alive. Advice from Bihari friends to do so was a) do not get into any trouble and b) if you do get into trouble i) speak only in English and ii) act as if you own the place.
It was thus with quivering knees that me and two fellow sufferers headed from Delhi to Patna, further on to Muzaffarpur via Vaishali, then to Jafarpur and then the village (Gokkula) where we were expected to act as big shot management consultants for a period of 3 months to an organization called Paroo Prakhand Samajik Vikas Pariyojana (PPSVP), known to the local public as the Praajikt.
It was at Muzaffarpur bus stand that Bihar started coming to life, where the bus connecting Muzaffarpur to Gokkula was identified not by its number or destination but by a name. Yes, the bus had a name – Balam Pardesiyan! Balam Pardesiyan was an old and decrepit relic of the Tata Mercedes tie-up, which carried as many people on top as it did inside. It had no papers, and therefore did not run on days in which the owner (who doubles up as the conductor) had information of checking by the RTO. Identification of buses by their names, I soon found, was not restricted to Balam Pardesiyan. Exotic ames for buses operating in mofussil Muzaffarpur abounded – Crack Fighter, Jet Fighter, Jungle Tiger – the names rolled easily of tongues unfamiliar with English. Balam Pardesiyan was a particularly sweet bus – it went along from Gokkula to Muzaffarpur and back every day (unless there was checking), covering an over fifty-kilometer journey in over three hours. On one journey an old man desperately needed to exercise his bowels, so the bus stopped, waited for him to find a bottle of water and do the job, and then proceeded along as though this was a regular occurrence.
Upon reaching the campus at some unearthly hour of the night, we found that we were not expected. The campus had had a dacoity two days earlier, thereby taking their minds of minor matters such as hosting of management experts. The three of us were put into a jhopdi and told that discussions regarding our futures could well take place the next day.
The Project must have had some pull with the local administration, because a police picket was set up within the campus itself so as to restore calm in the aftermath of the dacoity. And that’s where we met Sharmaji.
I had often read, especially in Louis L’Amour, of people who had the gift of story telling. Sharmaji was one of those. He was a constable in the local police station (at the block headquarters in Paroo, 10 km from Gokkula) who was in the picket, and when he was not on duty he was sitting around a fire and telling us about life in Bihar. He had a habot of ending each sentence with a ‘samjhiye na’, with a variety of musical intonations, ‘samjhiiiiiiye na’, ‘samjhiya naaaaa’, and so on, and his stories had two themes – himself and marriages Bihari style. We got to know a lot about him, why, as a BA, he was only a constable in the police, how he got out of doing morning PT during his training by giving tuitions to the commandant’s daughter, how he handled ‘keermeenals’ during interrogation, etcetera.
Marriages were equally interesting and, in later talks with people, I found that what he talked about was generally true though it did not seem so in those younger innocent days when we were first there. That in Begusarai district the BA final exams were always held under armed guards so that fathers of marriageable girls did not whisk away suitable boys at gunpoint. That a marriageable boy would be dealing with three or four girls’ parties, and the ones that were rejected would invariably attempt to thwart the marriage, which was why weapons were always carried by baraats. That, in one case, the boy did not like the looks of the girl when he saw her (which was at the marriage) and the girl’s side, foreseeing the eventuality, had blocked off all exits. So he escaped by jumping out of a bathroom window. So the girl’s side promptly caught hold of one of his friends, also eligible, and forced him to marry her. So at the time of the garlanding, he promptly went and garlanded one of the girl’s friends (presumable better looking). I also learnt that, whatever the circumstances of the wedding, it was recognized and respected.
Though the first, Sharmaji was not the only interesting person we met during the sojourn. Another such person was Bhuvanshwar Dayal Singh, the largest landlord of the area who at 6 foot 3 sttod out in an area of largely short people. BD Singh was approximately 55 years of age and had only two interests in life, his evening bhang and cricket, the former being a longtime attraction and the latter having developed over the previous year or two.
Despite him being a board member of the Project (an uninterested one whose opinion of the Project Director was that he, the PD, was a ‘Ghapchoo’), it was cricket that sparked a friendship between this old man and the three of us that lasted throughout our visit. Once the police picket was removed, we started getting bored in the evenings and therefore one day headed towards the village grounds where the boys were playing cricket, which we promptly joined. A white-haired, oldish, bespectacled man in a white dhoti and kurta was the umpire, fondly (sometimes not particularly fondly) referred to by the boys as Umpire Dhotiwala. He had taken up the job because he found that evening cricket among boys led to fights, and fights in that part of Bihar extend from boys to their families to their caste biraadari. With his presence there was no question of a show of dissent, forget about fights. Cricket slowly got to him. Being past the age of hitting sixes or having batsmen ducking to his bouncers, he took up the umpiring aspect seriously and regularly went to Muzaffarpur (this part had no electricity) when cricket was telecast so that he could watch the umpires. What he saw was promptly replicated on the village maidan in Gokkula, the only concession being that of his attire. He found us a minefield of information on the technical aspects of cricket, so it soon became a ritual after the game for us to head towards the teashop together where, for an hour or so, he would pump us with questions.
The area was a place where the friendliest of fellows could turn out to be dreaded criminals. One such was one of the cricketers, a young chap named Jalandhar, who became our sidekick over the course of the sojourn. He had decided not to go to school, the logic being that his three elder brothers had gone to school so as to cut grass for a living, something he could do perfectly well without schooling, thank you. He turned out to be the local expert and consultant on booth capturing.
Another was a fellow we had met while on our way on cycle to the Gandak river to have a bath, when he waved us down from inside his compound and sat us down for a cup of tea. He was a short, lame, bearded man with piercing eyes, with a hero-worshipping son and the gift of the gab. The tea session lasted two hours and we got to hear the story of his life, how he was a truck driver and had had an accident, how when he was operated upon no amount of anesthetic could knock him off, and how due to some mistaken identity he was once arrested and the police came in a jeep to do so (apparently it is a status symbol among a certain section of society when police come in a jeep to arrest you). He came across as a happy content man who had lived his life fully and was now watching his children grow. We went back to the Project and mentioned that we had met this fellow to find that he was the owner of the local illegal bomb factory.
Life there moved at a leisurely pace. We were woken up at around 7 am by the Project mess boy with tea and biscuits after which we lazed around inside our razais (Bihar winters get quite cold, and we remained in the jhopdi we were first put up in right through our stay) until it was warm enough to move outside. Baths were had at a handpump in our underwear in the open. Food was served at around 11 am and then again at 8 pm, between which time some work was done, some cricket was played and some gup was exchanged with all our friends there.
There were moments away from the normal run of things, such as when a ‘Nautanki’ (a form of folk art local to these parts) came to Gokkula and we sat up and watched an all-night performance. It had men doing all the men and women roles, and if you did not know that the latter were men you would be fooled. I almost walked up to one of the actors to say “Hey! What’s a respectable lady like you doing in a place like this?”. Lots of song and dance and great fun!
The time came for us to return to civilization. Tearful farewells and wild promises of returning were made. The culture shock began from Muzaffarpur onwards. Roads, electricity, busy people!
We kept up a correspondence for some time, exchanging cards and the occasional letter. This died out over the years. Today, that little part of the world and its people are still vivid in my memory. The hospitality to three strange men from a different part of the country, their warmth, their curiosity about our lives! I do not know if I ever want to go back. But today, when people talk of Bihar as comparable only with hell, I smile slowly and mention that it is that and much more – it is an experience.
Gokkula, Muzafarpur District, Bihar
Ajit Chaudhuri
Visited: December 1987 to February 1988
Written: May 1995
Anyone heading for an unfamiliar destination would carry some pre-conceived notions on the experiences likely to be undergone during his/her visit – at least to the extent of whether they would be positive or negative. Tahiti carries visions of grass-skirted nymphets dancing all around you, New York of being mugged and Brazil of high quality football being played everywhere. The impressions one leaves with are usually different, some more and some less. But it is a rare occasion when one’s notions undergo a complete about turn – when all you see on Tahiti’s beaches are fat old Aunties, when meandering around Central Park at midnight enables you to meet only philanthropists and when Sao Paolo versus Santos reminds you of Mohan Bagan versus East Bengal.
This has happened to me just once – Bihar.
My initial emotion upon being told that I was to spend ten weeks with a small voluntary agency in some corner of Muzaffarpur district in Bihar was, to understate things, not positive – something of a cross between sheer fright and a feeling of how on earth did this happen to me. Bihar was a place existing only in newspapers and in conversations with Bihari friends at University. A place of extreme caste differences leading to massacres every now and then. A place ruled by mustachioed landlords who had absolute command over land and everything on it as far as the eye could see, with dusky tribal beauties dancing to their bidding and private armies to settle scores. A place where value for life was close to zero, indirectly proportional to the murder rate, where crime and corruption were rampant across all walks of life. My sole ambition (my attempts to duck out of the assignment did not succeed) was to come out of there alive. Advice from Bihari friends to do so was a) do not get into any trouble and b) if you do get into trouble i) speak only in English and ii) act as if you own the place.
It was thus with quivering knees that me and two fellow sufferers headed from Delhi to Patna, further on to Muzaffarpur via Vaishali, then to Jafarpur and then the village (Gokkula) where we were expected to act as big shot management consultants for a period of 3 months to an organization called Paroo Prakhand Samajik Vikas Pariyojana (PPSVP), known to the local public as the Praajikt.
It was at Muzaffarpur bus stand that Bihar started coming to life, where the bus connecting Muzaffarpur to Gokkula was identified not by its number or destination but by a name. Yes, the bus had a name – Balam Pardesiyan! Balam Pardesiyan was an old and decrepit relic of the Tata Mercedes tie-up, which carried as many people on top as it did inside. It had no papers, and therefore did not run on days in which the owner (who doubles up as the conductor) had information of checking by the RTO. Identification of buses by their names, I soon found, was not restricted to Balam Pardesiyan. Exotic ames for buses operating in mofussil Muzaffarpur abounded – Crack Fighter, Jet Fighter, Jungle Tiger – the names rolled easily of tongues unfamiliar with English. Balam Pardesiyan was a particularly sweet bus – it went along from Gokkula to Muzaffarpur and back every day (unless there was checking), covering an over fifty-kilometer journey in over three hours. On one journey an old man desperately needed to exercise his bowels, so the bus stopped, waited for him to find a bottle of water and do the job, and then proceeded along as though this was a regular occurrence.
Upon reaching the campus at some unearthly hour of the night, we found that we were not expected. The campus had had a dacoity two days earlier, thereby taking their minds of minor matters such as hosting of management experts. The three of us were put into a jhopdi and told that discussions regarding our futures could well take place the next day.
The Project must have had some pull with the local administration, because a police picket was set up within the campus itself so as to restore calm in the aftermath of the dacoity. And that’s where we met Sharmaji.
I had often read, especially in Louis L’Amour, of people who had the gift of story telling. Sharmaji was one of those. He was a constable in the local police station (at the block headquarters in Paroo, 10 km from Gokkula) who was in the picket, and when he was not on duty he was sitting around a fire and telling us about life in Bihar. He had a habot of ending each sentence with a ‘samjhiye na’, with a variety of musical intonations, ‘samjhiiiiiiye na’, ‘samjhiya naaaaa’, and so on, and his stories had two themes – himself and marriages Bihari style. We got to know a lot about him, why, as a BA, he was only a constable in the police, how he got out of doing morning PT during his training by giving tuitions to the commandant’s daughter, how he handled ‘keermeenals’ during interrogation, etcetera.
Marriages were equally interesting and, in later talks with people, I found that what he talked about was generally true though it did not seem so in those younger innocent days when we were first there. That in Begusarai district the BA final exams were always held under armed guards so that fathers of marriageable girls did not whisk away suitable boys at gunpoint. That a marriageable boy would be dealing with three or four girls’ parties, and the ones that were rejected would invariably attempt to thwart the marriage, which was why weapons were always carried by baraats. That, in one case, the boy did not like the looks of the girl when he saw her (which was at the marriage) and the girl’s side, foreseeing the eventuality, had blocked off all exits. So he escaped by jumping out of a bathroom window. So the girl’s side promptly caught hold of one of his friends, also eligible, and forced him to marry her. So at the time of the garlanding, he promptly went and garlanded one of the girl’s friends (presumable better looking). I also learnt that, whatever the circumstances of the wedding, it was recognized and respected.
Though the first, Sharmaji was not the only interesting person we met during the sojourn. Another such person was Bhuvanshwar Dayal Singh, the largest landlord of the area who at 6 foot 3 sttod out in an area of largely short people. BD Singh was approximately 55 years of age and had only two interests in life, his evening bhang and cricket, the former being a longtime attraction and the latter having developed over the previous year or two.
Despite him being a board member of the Project (an uninterested one whose opinion of the Project Director was that he, the PD, was a ‘Ghapchoo’), it was cricket that sparked a friendship between this old man and the three of us that lasted throughout our visit. Once the police picket was removed, we started getting bored in the evenings and therefore one day headed towards the village grounds where the boys were playing cricket, which we promptly joined. A white-haired, oldish, bespectacled man in a white dhoti and kurta was the umpire, fondly (sometimes not particularly fondly) referred to by the boys as Umpire Dhotiwala. He had taken up the job because he found that evening cricket among boys led to fights, and fights in that part of Bihar extend from boys to their families to their caste biraadari. With his presence there was no question of a show of dissent, forget about fights. Cricket slowly got to him. Being past the age of hitting sixes or having batsmen ducking to his bouncers, he took up the umpiring aspect seriously and regularly went to Muzaffarpur (this part had no electricity) when cricket was telecast so that he could watch the umpires. What he saw was promptly replicated on the village maidan in Gokkula, the only concession being that of his attire. He found us a minefield of information on the technical aspects of cricket, so it soon became a ritual after the game for us to head towards the teashop together where, for an hour or so, he would pump us with questions.
The area was a place where the friendliest of fellows could turn out to be dreaded criminals. One such was one of the cricketers, a young chap named Jalandhar, who became our sidekick over the course of the sojourn. He had decided not to go to school, the logic being that his three elder brothers had gone to school so as to cut grass for a living, something he could do perfectly well without schooling, thank you. He turned out to be the local expert and consultant on booth capturing.
Another was a fellow we had met while on our way on cycle to the Gandak river to have a bath, when he waved us down from inside his compound and sat us down for a cup of tea. He was a short, lame, bearded man with piercing eyes, with a hero-worshipping son and the gift of the gab. The tea session lasted two hours and we got to hear the story of his life, how he was a truck driver and had had an accident, how when he was operated upon no amount of anesthetic could knock him off, and how due to some mistaken identity he was once arrested and the police came in a jeep to do so (apparently it is a status symbol among a certain section of society when police come in a jeep to arrest you). He came across as a happy content man who had lived his life fully and was now watching his children grow. We went back to the Project and mentioned that we had met this fellow to find that he was the owner of the local illegal bomb factory.
Life there moved at a leisurely pace. We were woken up at around 7 am by the Project mess boy with tea and biscuits after which we lazed around inside our razais (Bihar winters get quite cold, and we remained in the jhopdi we were first put up in right through our stay) until it was warm enough to move outside. Baths were had at a handpump in our underwear in the open. Food was served at around 11 am and then again at 8 pm, between which time some work was done, some cricket was played and some gup was exchanged with all our friends there.
There were moments away from the normal run of things, such as when a ‘Nautanki’ (a form of folk art local to these parts) came to Gokkula and we sat up and watched an all-night performance. It had men doing all the men and women roles, and if you did not know that the latter were men you would be fooled. I almost walked up to one of the actors to say “Hey! What’s a respectable lady like you doing in a place like this?”. Lots of song and dance and great fun!
The time came for us to return to civilization. Tearful farewells and wild promises of returning were made. The culture shock began from Muzaffarpur onwards. Roads, electricity, busy people!
We kept up a correspondence for some time, exchanging cards and the occasional letter. This died out over the years. Today, that little part of the world and its people are still vivid in my memory. The hospitality to three strange men from a different part of the country, their warmth, their curiosity about our lives! I do not know if I ever want to go back. But today, when people talk of Bihar as comparable only with hell, I smile slowly and mention that it is that and much more – it is an experience.
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
The Lake District
England’s Lake District
For once in my life, I decided to follow the tourist guides’ list of things one must do in England. A group of us, all Indians holding mid-career fellowships at LSE, decided to hire a large van and drive from London to the Lake District, spend two days in the salubrious environment of hills and dales and the nights in some B&B, and drive back over a long weekend. Some research on hiring a vehicle was conducted and a deal was struck with some firm in north London – to our relief an Indian driving license, or any driving license written in English, allows you to drive anywhere in the UK. We picked up the vehicle, a large Volkswagen, on an early Friday afternoon and duly hit the motorway pointing north. The Lake District by late evening, locate a Bed & Breakfast with a view, and start soaking in the environment was our official plan of action for the day.
The rest of England seemed to share our plans. All routes north had gigantic quantities of traffic moving at a snail’s pace, with jams, obstructions and blockages all along. Oh dear! We soon realized that we were not going to get anywhere near the Lake District unless we were planning on driving through the night, and decided on a night halt at some small town on the way. And thus, quite by chance, we hit upon Stafford by about 7 in the evening and found a place for the night. Having settled in, three of us males decided to hit the town center and check out the Friday evening action.
The town center was buzzing with life. Stafford is the local county (Staffordshire) headquarters and apparently the height of excitement for the local peasantry is to hit the town center on Friday evenings. Taxi after taxi came in, offloaded groups of young people dressed to get laid, and went off. This was pretty good fun to watch for a while, and to fancy our chances, until the throats started clamoring for some alcohol. We found a bar in which the crowd looked late twenties onwards and went in. It was crowded with huge men with bulging muscles, shaven heads and tattoos, the signature attire of right wing white supremacist groups, and with lovely women with next to nothing on, all drinking loudly and chatting each other up. The women were more of an incentive than the men were a deterrent, and so we made our way to the bar, got our drinks, and settled down within quick reach of the doors in case of the need for a hasty exit. By our second drink we realized that we were in no danger, the men were all perfectly friendly and nobody, despite this being the October after September 11th, gave us a hint of a suspicious look. By our third, we started circulating and by the fourth we were the targets of eye contact from unattached old women. We wrenched ourselves away after far too much to drink and a little more, all of us thinking that an ideal career would be as the official gigolo here.
We managed to leave Stafford the next morning and reach the Lake District by midday. A word about driving in the UK – apart from the fact that they also do it on the left side of the road, there are few similarities between there and in India. For one, it is necessary to know the rules, especially the right of way rules, and also necessary to observe them. This is surprisingly difficult for those of us who have learnt our driving here, where the rules are not really rules and where might is right. Second, it is not done to stop wherever one feels like – for a pee, to ask for directions, to pick up a paan, or any reason – one has to look for an exit to the road with space to park. Third, it is absolutely necessary to know the way, as one’s lane selections have to be spot on to reach the desired destination and not a completely different place, and taking a U-turn is near impossible. Having a navigator, someone who can read a map and point out the correct way and the correct lane choice, is an asset. Fourth, the driving rules on the motorways (the main highway system in Britain) are quite different from driving in the towns and on the lesser highways, which in turn is quite different from driving in London. Having said that, we were quite all right once our driver had got used to the vehicle and the driving etiquette, and that took about two hours on the road.
The less said about the Lake District that weekend, the better! Huge crowds, long queues, no accommodation, traffic jams - anyone who has been to Nainital or Mussoorie on a hot summer weekend will know the experience. We did manage to find parking space, but options for serious walking were limited by restrictions due to the foot-and-mouth epidemic and the need to find somewhere to sleep. We finally gave up the search by evening and decided that the best course of action would be to head to the next county, Lancashire, and find a small town where, like the previous night, there would be accommodation for seven people on a Saturday night.
We ended up, after a long and tiring search, in an old-style hotel in a coastal town called Morecambe just in time to settle in, grab an hour at the bar and find a place still open for dinner. The hotel bar was quite an experience – it was reasonably (but not very) packed with locals, all of whom were over 50, mostly lower middle and working class, with strange accents and tired faces, enjoying an evening out with the mates. Most were already plastered by the time we got in, and the talk was mainly on the fortunes of the local football team FC Morecambe, struggling away in the third division, to the exclusion of nearby Liverpool and Manchester United. Not at all the beautiful people associated with Saturday night drinking in a bar! The only barmaid, a middle-aged but buxom lady called Cindy (pronounced Sin-deh) did all the serving and washing up and still managed to find time to chat, telling us how difficult it was to get rid of those morons (i.e. the clientele) at closing up time, right in front of them. The hotel was not, in the slightest way, on the tourist track and they were all quite surprised at being found by a bunch of Indians on the road. Between Cindy and the drunks, we were made very welcome indeed.
The next day was spent returning to London, with an afternoon in Stratford-upon-Avon to add to our list of ‘been there, done that’. Stratford is famous for being the birthplace of William Shakespeare, and everything in the town is geared towards selling him to American tourists. The things to do in Stratford include seeing a play at the theatres along the river, visiting his birthplace, visiting his school, visiting his wife’s birthplace, visiting the restaurants he frequented, visiting the toilet he graced with his refuse (no, no, not seriously, but you get the drift). The best that Stratford had to offer on that Sunday afternoon was a visiting motorcycle gang, and thus a bewildering array of Harley Davidson, BMW and Kawasaki motorcycles all parked in formation along the river. I wonder if the riders had come to see a play.
The return to London was preceded by a great English dinner at one of the pubs in the countryside around Stratford, and was uneventful until we reached London and got thoroughly lost. All the map reading skills acquired on the highway went for a toss in central London’s one-ways and no-entries. We finally did manage to reach our residence, and to return the vehicle the next morning.
For once in my life, I decided to follow the tourist guides’ list of things one must do in England. A group of us, all Indians holding mid-career fellowships at LSE, decided to hire a large van and drive from London to the Lake District, spend two days in the salubrious environment of hills and dales and the nights in some B&B, and drive back over a long weekend. Some research on hiring a vehicle was conducted and a deal was struck with some firm in north London – to our relief an Indian driving license, or any driving license written in English, allows you to drive anywhere in the UK. We picked up the vehicle, a large Volkswagen, on an early Friday afternoon and duly hit the motorway pointing north. The Lake District by late evening, locate a Bed & Breakfast with a view, and start soaking in the environment was our official plan of action for the day.
The rest of England seemed to share our plans. All routes north had gigantic quantities of traffic moving at a snail’s pace, with jams, obstructions and blockages all along. Oh dear! We soon realized that we were not going to get anywhere near the Lake District unless we were planning on driving through the night, and decided on a night halt at some small town on the way. And thus, quite by chance, we hit upon Stafford by about 7 in the evening and found a place for the night. Having settled in, three of us males decided to hit the town center and check out the Friday evening action.
The town center was buzzing with life. Stafford is the local county (Staffordshire) headquarters and apparently the height of excitement for the local peasantry is to hit the town center on Friday evenings. Taxi after taxi came in, offloaded groups of young people dressed to get laid, and went off. This was pretty good fun to watch for a while, and to fancy our chances, until the throats started clamoring for some alcohol. We found a bar in which the crowd looked late twenties onwards and went in. It was crowded with huge men with bulging muscles, shaven heads and tattoos, the signature attire of right wing white supremacist groups, and with lovely women with next to nothing on, all drinking loudly and chatting each other up. The women were more of an incentive than the men were a deterrent, and so we made our way to the bar, got our drinks, and settled down within quick reach of the doors in case of the need for a hasty exit. By our second drink we realized that we were in no danger, the men were all perfectly friendly and nobody, despite this being the October after September 11th, gave us a hint of a suspicious look. By our third, we started circulating and by the fourth we were the targets of eye contact from unattached old women. We wrenched ourselves away after far too much to drink and a little more, all of us thinking that an ideal career would be as the official gigolo here.
We managed to leave Stafford the next morning and reach the Lake District by midday. A word about driving in the UK – apart from the fact that they also do it on the left side of the road, there are few similarities between there and in India. For one, it is necessary to know the rules, especially the right of way rules, and also necessary to observe them. This is surprisingly difficult for those of us who have learnt our driving here, where the rules are not really rules and where might is right. Second, it is not done to stop wherever one feels like – for a pee, to ask for directions, to pick up a paan, or any reason – one has to look for an exit to the road with space to park. Third, it is absolutely necessary to know the way, as one’s lane selections have to be spot on to reach the desired destination and not a completely different place, and taking a U-turn is near impossible. Having a navigator, someone who can read a map and point out the correct way and the correct lane choice, is an asset. Fourth, the driving rules on the motorways (the main highway system in Britain) are quite different from driving in the towns and on the lesser highways, which in turn is quite different from driving in London. Having said that, we were quite all right once our driver had got used to the vehicle and the driving etiquette, and that took about two hours on the road.
The less said about the Lake District that weekend, the better! Huge crowds, long queues, no accommodation, traffic jams - anyone who has been to Nainital or Mussoorie on a hot summer weekend will know the experience. We did manage to find parking space, but options for serious walking were limited by restrictions due to the foot-and-mouth epidemic and the need to find somewhere to sleep. We finally gave up the search by evening and decided that the best course of action would be to head to the next county, Lancashire, and find a small town where, like the previous night, there would be accommodation for seven people on a Saturday night.
We ended up, after a long and tiring search, in an old-style hotel in a coastal town called Morecambe just in time to settle in, grab an hour at the bar and find a place still open for dinner. The hotel bar was quite an experience – it was reasonably (but not very) packed with locals, all of whom were over 50, mostly lower middle and working class, with strange accents and tired faces, enjoying an evening out with the mates. Most were already plastered by the time we got in, and the talk was mainly on the fortunes of the local football team FC Morecambe, struggling away in the third division, to the exclusion of nearby Liverpool and Manchester United. Not at all the beautiful people associated with Saturday night drinking in a bar! The only barmaid, a middle-aged but buxom lady called Cindy (pronounced Sin-deh) did all the serving and washing up and still managed to find time to chat, telling us how difficult it was to get rid of those morons (i.e. the clientele) at closing up time, right in front of them. The hotel was not, in the slightest way, on the tourist track and they were all quite surprised at being found by a bunch of Indians on the road. Between Cindy and the drunks, we were made very welcome indeed.
The next day was spent returning to London, with an afternoon in Stratford-upon-Avon to add to our list of ‘been there, done that’. Stratford is famous for being the birthplace of William Shakespeare, and everything in the town is geared towards selling him to American tourists. The things to do in Stratford include seeing a play at the theatres along the river, visiting his birthplace, visiting his school, visiting his wife’s birthplace, visiting the restaurants he frequented, visiting the toilet he graced with his refuse (no, no, not seriously, but you get the drift). The best that Stratford had to offer on that Sunday afternoon was a visiting motorcycle gang, and thus a bewildering array of Harley Davidson, BMW and Kawasaki motorcycles all parked in formation along the river. I wonder if the riders had come to see a play.
The return to London was preceded by a great English dinner at one of the pubs in the countryside around Stratford, and was uneventful until we reached London and got thoroughly lost. All the map reading skills acquired on the highway went for a toss in central London’s one-ways and no-entries. We finally did manage to reach our residence, and to return the vehicle the next morning.
The Far North
The Far North
Being stuck in London in mid-November with a bit of cash and little to do does strange things to one’s mental balance. Some get tickets to the theatre; others try to pick up women (or men) in the fleshpots of Soho. The more unbalanced go to Upton Park to watch West Ham play football. I booked a holiday to Tromso.
If you are among the majority population, you would be, right now, asking the question ‘where the hell is Tromso?’ If, on the other hand, you are among that group of people familiar with matters within the Arctic Circle, you would know that Tromso, a thriving city of about 50,000 deep in the Norwegian Arctic zone, is also known as the ‘Paris of the North’. Located at about 70 degrees latitude on Norway’s western coast, it consists of a series of islands and advertises great scenery, art, culture, a university, museums, explorations in the arctic wilderness, the works. Which, no doubt, still begs the question ‘why Tromso? Isn’t all this stuff available in pleasanter places, obviating the necessity of crossing the Arctic circle in November?’
Precisely the point! If you are looking to visit a place which you have not been to, which no one you know has ever been to, which no one you know is ever going to go to, and which still can bring out that gleam of envy at cocktail parties, Tromso is it. Imagine a conversation at the next page three do with a diamond engulfed low neckline, well, you know, Scandinavian cruises are nice enough, all these fjords and stuff, but the fun is up north where the air has bite, the night is long and the clubs are hard. Or with one of those outdoor studs, yeah, at 10,000 feet in the Swiss Alps is OK, I guess, but if you are looking for the real thing there is little to beat the tundra in winter. Social success, and maybe a little more, guaranteed.
Such were my thoughts while boarding an (very) early SAS flight from London to Oslo, from where I was supposed to change on to a flight to Tromso. Two and a half hours to Oslo, a 45 minute changeover at Oslo airport, another two hours to Tromso and voila, lunch on the other side of the Arctic circle. Just like flying Bangalore to Delhi to Calcutta. An afternoon of rest and recreation before hitting the nightspots beckoned. Wait a minute, only 45 minutes between landing in Oslo and taking off for Tromso – would that not be a bit tight? Only if you are on Indian Airlines, I told myself, these Scandinavians do things with minute precision, no need for plan B.
The flight to Oslo was late. The queue at the immigration counter was long. The immigration officer, when I finally got in front of one, almost spluttered his coffee all over himself upon being told that an Indian was on his way to Tromso because he wanted a weekend break. “Damn the Schengen Agreement that we have to let these crazies into the country just because they have work in Bonn or Brussels!” he seemed to be muttering to himself as he examined my passport before finally recovering his sense of humour, wishing me a good stay and hoping I had a warm jacket. I was then told that I had to clear customs at Oslo as Tromso was not an international airport, and so to claim my baggage and check it in again to Tromso. My baggage, of course, came out last (or so it seemed) and off I went scurrying to find the departure counter for Tromso. I reckoned without a customs officer who saw my male Asian features as the answer to his boredom and who checked my baggage thoroughly. He looked at his watch wryly upon being told of my need for a little hurry and told me the flight would have already left. He was right!
Changing my ticket to the next flight (leave at 1330, arrive at 1530, the evening is still ahead) and checking in did not prove to be difficult. It was while waiting that we were told, in Norwegian, that all SAS internal flights were cancelled and that those of us who insisted on going to Tromso would be put on one of the evening Braathens (one of Norway’s internal airlines) flights. The next few hours at Oslo airport had my admiration for Indian Airlines increase manifold. Large numbers of stranded people, many women traveling with small children, huge queues, no information available, no one from the airline handling the problem – SAS had no idea how to handle a screw up. Bihar Roadways – you have competition.
It was during these hours that I came to the conclusion that these Norwegians are mad, and that I would never, never be able to live in this country. Not one word of protest, not one lost temper, they braved the queues, the chaos and the shitty treatment from the airline without a murmur. One lot took out guitars and took over the airport bar. Others just hung around. “Come on, folks, lets do something about this nonsense,” I exhorted my fellow passengers for Tromso, but they said something about this not being the Norwegian way, that they expect the system to take care of them. To hell with that, do in Oslo as you would in Haryana, I said to myself and went for the nearest uniformed official and told him that I had left London early morning, I hadn’t had anything to eat for a long time and I didn’t want to hang around in any queues. He promptly handed me a food voucher, did something on the computer and said not to worry, I was already booked on the flight and when it was announced I just had to get on. I promptly pulled my fellow passengers out of the queue and, after we all got our food vouchers, a group of us settled at the airport Pizza Express and waited for our flight in peace. A small victory for the non-Norwegian way!
Well, I finally did get to Tromso that night on a delayed, packed and chaotic (but quite enjoyable) Braathens flight. We landed in the midst of a violent storm, with snow pelting down and the plane heaving from side to side. When I finally stepped out of the shelter of the airport, with the cold and the snow hitting me from all sides, I surveyed my surroundings and said ‘Ah! The Arctic!’ The tiredness of a long and irritating journey had disappeared.
There are two things that distinguish Norway from the rest of Europe. The first is the toilet style. Actually, this distinguishes every country from every other country in Europe. Why a continent that has managed to synchronize its currencies cannot standardize the location of the flush in the toilet is a matter of bewilderment to the traveler. The second is the ‘Comfort With Hotel’ in Tromso, where I stayed. Situated on the waterfront, it was within walking distance from the town center and had included in the tariff breakfasts and dinners, Norwegian style meals with plenty of cold cuts and fish, and a lounge wherein the beer was free and unlimited. There was a dispenser in the dining hall that served a variety of coffees and hot chocolates around the clock, a pleasure when coming in from the outside cold. In a country where everything is unbelievably expensive, this was quite a boon. And in addition, the receptionist was lovely – bombshell looks, a great smile and genuine charm. I greatly enjoyed the little time I spent in the hotel.
I managed to figure out the geography of Tromso gradually over the weekend. The main island is essentially a series of steep hills with a coast around them. On this coast is the airport in the west, the town center and hotspots in the east, the university in the north and some museums in the south. People stay in houses along the hillsides. The hilltops are well forested and less populated, with plenty of walking areas available and a well preserved war cemetery reminding one of the days during world war two when the town was under German occupation. The town center had two parallel main roads where all the shopping was located. The coast had a road along it, and there were roads over and along the hills and under them through an intricate tunnel system. The roads at that time were all, with the exception of the tunnels, under piles of snow and heavy-duty snow clearing machines were in operation right through my visit. Buses were the only form of public transport, with an extensive system reaching all corners of the island. The only time I used one, an oldish lady who seemed to have Mad Max as a role model was driving and she zoomed around through the town, negotiating the combination of snow, ice, curves and inclines quite expertly. Taxis were also ubiquitous. Apart from cars and their own feet, locals were moving around on their skis, skates and sledge scooters.
Tromso is not your typical city. Sunlight, that most basic of God’s gifts, is seasonal here – abundant in summer and scarce in winter – there were about 4 hours of sunlight a day when I was there and I was told that the sun was going to set in end-November and would rise again only in February. The opposite occurs in summer, when your breakfast, lunch, dinner and nocturnal raid on the refrigerator are all conducted in broad daylight. The weather itself, cold and snowy at this time, is mild for Tromso’s latitude due to the effects of warm water currents along the Norwegian Sea. The climate a little inland, say in Kautokieno in the neighbouring county of Finnmark or at similar latitudes in Canada, Alaska and Russia, is much more severe. The people are quite distinct from the Norway that most people, including Norwegians, know (and they make sure to tell you that), with a ‘northern culture’ that is probably a result of the weather and the variable daylight. Tromso is also surprisingly cosmopolitan, with locals being a mix of northerners, migrants from the southern parts of Norway, the indigenous Saami people and a small Finn minority. There is a distinct attitude among the residents that those who have traveled to the far corners of India would recognize as the ‘Dilli door hai’ syndrome - they don’t care for too much direction from Oslo. Tourists are few at this time of the year, and most of the outsiders are young Norwegian conscripts taking a break during their military service. Interestingly, the beginnings of a Russian influence are also visible, with several of the Arctic tugs in the harbour having Russian markings and shops in the town Russian insignia. Actually this is not so surprising – Tromso is the main city of the Barents Euro Arctic Region (also called BEAR) in which four countries, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia, converge, and it was a center of flourishing international trade before 1917 that is in the process of being revived.
Traveling in Scandinavia is quite distinctive from the rest of western Europe – everyone, and everyone, speaks English, and food and drink are prohibitively expensive. The ability to speak English well is seen as a sign of education, and access into nightclubs and bars in Tromso are smoothened with a bit of highbrow English in an upper class Indian accent exercised upon bouncers and maitre deis. Food-wise, the specialties here are fish and reindeer meat. The best restaurant for Norwegian cooking, should you wish to try it, is Fiske Kompani (Norwegian for Fish Company, I suppose) and it offers a bewildering array of the former. It is quite difficult to make out what is what from the descriptions on the menu, as also to pronounce the long and complicated names in the singsong way that is typical of spoken Norwegian, so I advise pointing at something and saying ‘I want that!’ If you want to impress your date, eschew the wine and swallow the food down with aquavit, a macho Scandinavian drink that is had neat. And if you want to impress the waiter as well, tell him to skip the Danish stuff and get you the real thing – a Norwegian aquavit from a bottle that has crossed the equator. A meal for two, with wine and aquavit, came for about Rs. 3,000. And yes, I did impress my date.
Which brings me to a question that a section of the readership would, no doubt, be asking - where in Tromso do you meet single women? I did expend time and effort to find out, but a long weekend is probably too short a time for research of this nature. I did find a nightclub along the waterfront, with heavy metal music, lots of people in black leather and very vicious looking bouncers. The clientele were a combination of locals, army-wallahs on a free-weekend and sailors. I wasn’t there long enough to check out the action, but I am sure that there was plenty of it. I also succeeded in gate crashing an official party for foreign students at the local university, where I had gone to the university to meet a professor in my subject area and seen the notice up for the party the next evening. A mid-career fellowship at LSE, which I was undergoing at that time, did not exactly qualify me as a student but it did arm me with an LSE identity card and I suspected (correctly) that in Arctic Norway they are unlikely to know the difference. The party had about 35 people, of whom 25 were women, the liquor was subsidized, the music was good and the lingua franca was English. Just my scene! Most of the participants were Finn, mainly students of medicine and Norwegian (the language), mostly in their middle to late twenties and, as per the law of averages, some of the women were very nice looking. I was made very welcome indeed, though I did, to some extent, have to play down the fact that I was at one of the top institutions in the world whereas they were stuck in some corner.
In the daytime, possibilities for activity in mid-November Tromso include walking and checking out the museums. Walking offers two options – along the waterfront, and up in the hills. Both are quite beautiful and can be done for long stretches. The water, a mix of the Norwegian Sea, the Barents Sea and the north Atlantic Ocean, is blue and ice-free. The hills are well forested, and some parts are quite devoid of any obvious human inhabitation. Good walking boots, with ankle support and deep grip, are advisable as the snow in some parts is slippery and the inclines steep. Of the various museums, the university museum (for some reason located in the opposite side of the island to the university) was the one that offered interesting insights into the traditional lifestyle of the nomadic reindeer herding Sami community who are indigenous to this region, and into what the region looked like in the late nineteenth century. Quite different to now, I assure you. Production of a student identity card entitles one to a discount here. The polar museum, situated along the waterfront, offers insights into various polar expeditions, many of which set off from Tromso.
It was with great sadness that I set off to the airport on Sunday evening for an uneventful, though delayed, journey back to London via Oslo. There was only one item on my agenda that remained unfinished, and that was to see the northern lights. The Gods, unfortunately, did not oblige. Goodbye, the Arctic! Inshallah we meet again.
Being stuck in London in mid-November with a bit of cash and little to do does strange things to one’s mental balance. Some get tickets to the theatre; others try to pick up women (or men) in the fleshpots of Soho. The more unbalanced go to Upton Park to watch West Ham play football. I booked a holiday to Tromso.
If you are among the majority population, you would be, right now, asking the question ‘where the hell is Tromso?’ If, on the other hand, you are among that group of people familiar with matters within the Arctic Circle, you would know that Tromso, a thriving city of about 50,000 deep in the Norwegian Arctic zone, is also known as the ‘Paris of the North’. Located at about 70 degrees latitude on Norway’s western coast, it consists of a series of islands and advertises great scenery, art, culture, a university, museums, explorations in the arctic wilderness, the works. Which, no doubt, still begs the question ‘why Tromso? Isn’t all this stuff available in pleasanter places, obviating the necessity of crossing the Arctic circle in November?’
Precisely the point! If you are looking to visit a place which you have not been to, which no one you know has ever been to, which no one you know is ever going to go to, and which still can bring out that gleam of envy at cocktail parties, Tromso is it. Imagine a conversation at the next page three do with a diamond engulfed low neckline, well, you know, Scandinavian cruises are nice enough, all these fjords and stuff, but the fun is up north where the air has bite, the night is long and the clubs are hard. Or with one of those outdoor studs, yeah, at 10,000 feet in the Swiss Alps is OK, I guess, but if you are looking for the real thing there is little to beat the tundra in winter. Social success, and maybe a little more, guaranteed.
Such were my thoughts while boarding an (very) early SAS flight from London to Oslo, from where I was supposed to change on to a flight to Tromso. Two and a half hours to Oslo, a 45 minute changeover at Oslo airport, another two hours to Tromso and voila, lunch on the other side of the Arctic circle. Just like flying Bangalore to Delhi to Calcutta. An afternoon of rest and recreation before hitting the nightspots beckoned. Wait a minute, only 45 minutes between landing in Oslo and taking off for Tromso – would that not be a bit tight? Only if you are on Indian Airlines, I told myself, these Scandinavians do things with minute precision, no need for plan B.
The flight to Oslo was late. The queue at the immigration counter was long. The immigration officer, when I finally got in front of one, almost spluttered his coffee all over himself upon being told that an Indian was on his way to Tromso because he wanted a weekend break. “Damn the Schengen Agreement that we have to let these crazies into the country just because they have work in Bonn or Brussels!” he seemed to be muttering to himself as he examined my passport before finally recovering his sense of humour, wishing me a good stay and hoping I had a warm jacket. I was then told that I had to clear customs at Oslo as Tromso was not an international airport, and so to claim my baggage and check it in again to Tromso. My baggage, of course, came out last (or so it seemed) and off I went scurrying to find the departure counter for Tromso. I reckoned without a customs officer who saw my male Asian features as the answer to his boredom and who checked my baggage thoroughly. He looked at his watch wryly upon being told of my need for a little hurry and told me the flight would have already left. He was right!
Changing my ticket to the next flight (leave at 1330, arrive at 1530, the evening is still ahead) and checking in did not prove to be difficult. It was while waiting that we were told, in Norwegian, that all SAS internal flights were cancelled and that those of us who insisted on going to Tromso would be put on one of the evening Braathens (one of Norway’s internal airlines) flights. The next few hours at Oslo airport had my admiration for Indian Airlines increase manifold. Large numbers of stranded people, many women traveling with small children, huge queues, no information available, no one from the airline handling the problem – SAS had no idea how to handle a screw up. Bihar Roadways – you have competition.
It was during these hours that I came to the conclusion that these Norwegians are mad, and that I would never, never be able to live in this country. Not one word of protest, not one lost temper, they braved the queues, the chaos and the shitty treatment from the airline without a murmur. One lot took out guitars and took over the airport bar. Others just hung around. “Come on, folks, lets do something about this nonsense,” I exhorted my fellow passengers for Tromso, but they said something about this not being the Norwegian way, that they expect the system to take care of them. To hell with that, do in Oslo as you would in Haryana, I said to myself and went for the nearest uniformed official and told him that I had left London early morning, I hadn’t had anything to eat for a long time and I didn’t want to hang around in any queues. He promptly handed me a food voucher, did something on the computer and said not to worry, I was already booked on the flight and when it was announced I just had to get on. I promptly pulled my fellow passengers out of the queue and, after we all got our food vouchers, a group of us settled at the airport Pizza Express and waited for our flight in peace. A small victory for the non-Norwegian way!
Well, I finally did get to Tromso that night on a delayed, packed and chaotic (but quite enjoyable) Braathens flight. We landed in the midst of a violent storm, with snow pelting down and the plane heaving from side to side. When I finally stepped out of the shelter of the airport, with the cold and the snow hitting me from all sides, I surveyed my surroundings and said ‘Ah! The Arctic!’ The tiredness of a long and irritating journey had disappeared.
There are two things that distinguish Norway from the rest of Europe. The first is the toilet style. Actually, this distinguishes every country from every other country in Europe. Why a continent that has managed to synchronize its currencies cannot standardize the location of the flush in the toilet is a matter of bewilderment to the traveler. The second is the ‘Comfort With Hotel’ in Tromso, where I stayed. Situated on the waterfront, it was within walking distance from the town center and had included in the tariff breakfasts and dinners, Norwegian style meals with plenty of cold cuts and fish, and a lounge wherein the beer was free and unlimited. There was a dispenser in the dining hall that served a variety of coffees and hot chocolates around the clock, a pleasure when coming in from the outside cold. In a country where everything is unbelievably expensive, this was quite a boon. And in addition, the receptionist was lovely – bombshell looks, a great smile and genuine charm. I greatly enjoyed the little time I spent in the hotel.
I managed to figure out the geography of Tromso gradually over the weekend. The main island is essentially a series of steep hills with a coast around them. On this coast is the airport in the west, the town center and hotspots in the east, the university in the north and some museums in the south. People stay in houses along the hillsides. The hilltops are well forested and less populated, with plenty of walking areas available and a well preserved war cemetery reminding one of the days during world war two when the town was under German occupation. The town center had two parallel main roads where all the shopping was located. The coast had a road along it, and there were roads over and along the hills and under them through an intricate tunnel system. The roads at that time were all, with the exception of the tunnels, under piles of snow and heavy-duty snow clearing machines were in operation right through my visit. Buses were the only form of public transport, with an extensive system reaching all corners of the island. The only time I used one, an oldish lady who seemed to have Mad Max as a role model was driving and she zoomed around through the town, negotiating the combination of snow, ice, curves and inclines quite expertly. Taxis were also ubiquitous. Apart from cars and their own feet, locals were moving around on their skis, skates and sledge scooters.
Tromso is not your typical city. Sunlight, that most basic of God’s gifts, is seasonal here – abundant in summer and scarce in winter – there were about 4 hours of sunlight a day when I was there and I was told that the sun was going to set in end-November and would rise again only in February. The opposite occurs in summer, when your breakfast, lunch, dinner and nocturnal raid on the refrigerator are all conducted in broad daylight. The weather itself, cold and snowy at this time, is mild for Tromso’s latitude due to the effects of warm water currents along the Norwegian Sea. The climate a little inland, say in Kautokieno in the neighbouring county of Finnmark or at similar latitudes in Canada, Alaska and Russia, is much more severe. The people are quite distinct from the Norway that most people, including Norwegians, know (and they make sure to tell you that), with a ‘northern culture’ that is probably a result of the weather and the variable daylight. Tromso is also surprisingly cosmopolitan, with locals being a mix of northerners, migrants from the southern parts of Norway, the indigenous Saami people and a small Finn minority. There is a distinct attitude among the residents that those who have traveled to the far corners of India would recognize as the ‘Dilli door hai’ syndrome - they don’t care for too much direction from Oslo. Tourists are few at this time of the year, and most of the outsiders are young Norwegian conscripts taking a break during their military service. Interestingly, the beginnings of a Russian influence are also visible, with several of the Arctic tugs in the harbour having Russian markings and shops in the town Russian insignia. Actually this is not so surprising – Tromso is the main city of the Barents Euro Arctic Region (also called BEAR) in which four countries, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia, converge, and it was a center of flourishing international trade before 1917 that is in the process of being revived.
Traveling in Scandinavia is quite distinctive from the rest of western Europe – everyone, and everyone, speaks English, and food and drink are prohibitively expensive. The ability to speak English well is seen as a sign of education, and access into nightclubs and bars in Tromso are smoothened with a bit of highbrow English in an upper class Indian accent exercised upon bouncers and maitre deis. Food-wise, the specialties here are fish and reindeer meat. The best restaurant for Norwegian cooking, should you wish to try it, is Fiske Kompani (Norwegian for Fish Company, I suppose) and it offers a bewildering array of the former. It is quite difficult to make out what is what from the descriptions on the menu, as also to pronounce the long and complicated names in the singsong way that is typical of spoken Norwegian, so I advise pointing at something and saying ‘I want that!’ If you want to impress your date, eschew the wine and swallow the food down with aquavit, a macho Scandinavian drink that is had neat. And if you want to impress the waiter as well, tell him to skip the Danish stuff and get you the real thing – a Norwegian aquavit from a bottle that has crossed the equator. A meal for two, with wine and aquavit, came for about Rs. 3,000. And yes, I did impress my date.
Which brings me to a question that a section of the readership would, no doubt, be asking - where in Tromso do you meet single women? I did expend time and effort to find out, but a long weekend is probably too short a time for research of this nature. I did find a nightclub along the waterfront, with heavy metal music, lots of people in black leather and very vicious looking bouncers. The clientele were a combination of locals, army-wallahs on a free-weekend and sailors. I wasn’t there long enough to check out the action, but I am sure that there was plenty of it. I also succeeded in gate crashing an official party for foreign students at the local university, where I had gone to the university to meet a professor in my subject area and seen the notice up for the party the next evening. A mid-career fellowship at LSE, which I was undergoing at that time, did not exactly qualify me as a student but it did arm me with an LSE identity card and I suspected (correctly) that in Arctic Norway they are unlikely to know the difference. The party had about 35 people, of whom 25 were women, the liquor was subsidized, the music was good and the lingua franca was English. Just my scene! Most of the participants were Finn, mainly students of medicine and Norwegian (the language), mostly in their middle to late twenties and, as per the law of averages, some of the women were very nice looking. I was made very welcome indeed, though I did, to some extent, have to play down the fact that I was at one of the top institutions in the world whereas they were stuck in some corner.
In the daytime, possibilities for activity in mid-November Tromso include walking and checking out the museums. Walking offers two options – along the waterfront, and up in the hills. Both are quite beautiful and can be done for long stretches. The water, a mix of the Norwegian Sea, the Barents Sea and the north Atlantic Ocean, is blue and ice-free. The hills are well forested, and some parts are quite devoid of any obvious human inhabitation. Good walking boots, with ankle support and deep grip, are advisable as the snow in some parts is slippery and the inclines steep. Of the various museums, the university museum (for some reason located in the opposite side of the island to the university) was the one that offered interesting insights into the traditional lifestyle of the nomadic reindeer herding Sami community who are indigenous to this region, and into what the region looked like in the late nineteenth century. Quite different to now, I assure you. Production of a student identity card entitles one to a discount here. The polar museum, situated along the waterfront, offers insights into various polar expeditions, many of which set off from Tromso.
It was with great sadness that I set off to the airport on Sunday evening for an uneventful, though delayed, journey back to London via Oslo. There was only one item on my agenda that remained unfinished, and that was to see the northern lights. The Gods, unfortunately, did not oblige. Goodbye, the Arctic! Inshallah we meet again.
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