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.
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
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.
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