Bihar Diary

Trucked-Away!

Laying out research plots in the forests, taking measurements of tree girth and height and collecting soil samples are a routine that my field staff performs for nine to ten months in a year. It is a tough and risky job, more so in wildlife-rich and naxal-affected areas. We work for an organization called Forest Survey of India under the ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change and our Southern Zone office is located in Bengaluru. My team is in Bihar measuring the growing stock of forests and estimating the trees outside the forest areas both in rural and urban areas. On the first day of my visit to inspect the field work, I head towards Arrah and further west. All along the road is a caravan of trucks, mostly laden with sand. They are everywhere, moving like a jaywalker or parked haphazardly obstructing the traffic. As we approach the British-era two-storey Koilwar bridge on Sone river, the truck-induced traffic madness is an incomprehensible maze. Honking match and overtaking spree is on from either side and there is no escape. But our driver, who is capable of extracting oil from sand, squeezes some space between the crisscrossed trucks, gets into the terribly and illegally mined sand bed of Sone and Voila! We are out of the gridlock, driving over the bridge and at the same time a train passes above us with a heart-shattering noise.

Of local cuisine and Delhi belly

When I ask my driver whether he had breakfast, he smiles and replies, ‘nahin sir! Aaj aapko ek badiya jagah leke jaoonga’. I protest stressing that I have already had idli and dosa at a restaurant. But he insists that the famous hotel he is alluding to is on our way to Gaya and there will not be any detour. The much-recommended restaurant is a roadside stall and the swarm of flies engulfing the bun, pedha and other assortment of dishes dissuades me from trying the fare. Rajkumar returns triumphantly after a couple of minutes with a big, makkhan-filled, sliced bun. He reveals with visible appreciation that the owner sells at least five quintals of milk every day. I would have loved to taste all the local delicacies-litti chokha, tilkut, khaja, anarsa, dal pitha, sattu but most of the decent-looking restaurants and sweet shops in Patna do not offer most of these. Unable to say no again to Rajkumar, I try tilkut and anarsa from a push-cart vendor and my superfluous anxiety about Delhi-belly remains just that.

The Grace of a Leaf

Vishnupada temple at Gaya is a complete contrast to the spic and span environs of the Mahabodhi vihar. Pujaris tail you urging not to forget ‘pinda danam’ to the departed souls at the Falgu river. The afternoon sun is scorching and the temple floor has turned into embers. I complete the darshan of black granite-carved feet of Lord Vishnu in a jiffy and head to the Bodhi temple. Mobiles are not allowed inside the complex and the security is tight. This is the place where Lord Buddha attained enlightenment and the progeny of the original ashwattha tree under which the Great Man realized that the world is full of sorrows, is well-protected. Visitors are not allowed to pluck any leaf but can pick up the fallen ones. There is not much crowd and I wait patiently. After a few minutes, a perfectly skeletonized brown-coloured leaf floats gracefully down to the ground.

The Bucket List Bricks

On my way to check the inventory of trees in rural areas, I cross Jehanabad, of the infamy of Dalit’s massacre. Today is Ramzan and the road through the town is blocked by the mosque goers who kneel on the road in large numbers. Children, dressed in their finest, greet each other with excited giggles and hugs. Gun toting policemen keep a vigil but there is a feel of relaxed calmness in the air.

After counting the trees and checking the GPS location of the research plots, I take a detour to Nalanda in the evening. The memory of brick structures from the faded pictures of primary school text book comes back to me. Surprisingly, the ruins look no different. A guide takes me through the amazing relics of this once magnificent university. The small prayer chambers dug into the walls of the hostel rooms look claustrophobic. A group of young men jump over a ‘no entry’ barricade and clambers up the remains of a building for selfie. There are only a handful of security personnel here and the raucous group returns to the same spot after being shooed away. Mocked at and outnumbered, the guard leaves the spot cursing under his breath. At the edge of an edifice, inside the university complex, a religious ritual is taking place. A young woman, dressed to the nines and sitting on a wooden stool is surrounded by a group of elderly ladies. It looks like a happy occasion and preparations are on for a feast on the adjacent lawn. There is a crowd of curious onlookers perching atop a nearby tree and on the compound wall. The setting sun casts a wonderful orange hue on the bricks of the ruins creating a brilliant mélange.  No wanderer can keep Nalanda out of her bucket list.

The Real Test Of Change

Open drains, garbage mounds and the visibly unchecked sand trucks-these were not the images I was hoping for when I landed in Patna. But I am just a visitor here and the best judge of change can only be Rajkumar. And I ask him the question. “Things have improved a lot”, he replies with conviction. “Ten years ago, the city used to shut down by six in the evening because of the fear of criminals. Now we can walk on the streets at night and enjoy dinner at a hotel”. Three cheers for that. 

Bodhi Tree

                                                              Maha Bodhi Temple

                                              

                                                      Nalanda

New Light On The Lord

New Light On The Lord

        Only SL Bhairappa could have pulled this off. After a rather misogynistic and indifferent book called ‘Kavalu’, the most celebrated Kannada writer has taken a woman-centric approach towards Ramayana. In his latest book ‘Uttarakaanda’, he shines a torch on our Lord Rama from a different angle leaving the readers wonderstruck. In the preface, Bhairappa stresses that he has relied almost entirely on Valmiki’s Ramayana for writing Uttarakaanda. Even then, the content of the book will shock and entertain the discerning reader and the unquestioning believer alike. It also brings into fore our failure to appreciate Ramayana in its entirety. Through his wonderful prose, Bhairappa demonstrates that Ramayana is not only a hagiography on Lord Rama, but also an exposition on the virtues of Lakshmana. In this version of Ramayana, Rama is not the infallible god but an persnickety individual who sticks to his version of Dharma which seems opportunistic and inconsistent to Sita.

        If any writer other than Bhairappa had shown the temerity to write such a book which in essence questions the godliness of Lord Rama and pulls him down to the level of ordinary mortals, he/she would have been hauled over the coals. But many things what Bhairappa writes in Uttarakaanda have already been discussed before. In 1971, Viswanatha Satyanarayana, a well-known Telugu writer wrote Ramayana Kalpavruksham, extolling the virtues of the epic. As a riposte, Muppala Ranganayakamma, another famous Telugu writer with Marxist leanings came up with Ramayana Vishavruksham in 1974. In this book, she relied completely on Valmiki Ramayana to explain and demonstrate to the reader that all was not well in Rama Rajya. (Banjagere Jayaprakash has translated this book into Kannada). Just to quote a few examples: after agreeing to go for ‘vanavasa’ for fourten years, Rama loses his composure in the forests and curses his father Dasharatha for sending him away from the comforts of the palace and blames him for his carnal weakness towards Kaikeyi. In another instance, when Bharata goes to the jungle to persuade Rama to return to Ayodhya, Rama refuses and advises him how to be a just ruler. He tells Bharata, ‘women are never trustworthy. If you don’t keep a careful watch on the ladies of the palace, they may peep at other men from their zenana’.

Sita is the soul of this book who on several occasions thinks that Lakshmana is more pragmatic, understanding and just. During the Vanavasa, it is he who takes up the hard labour of setting up of camps, building huts, cultivating wild crops, collecting fruits and roots while Rama spends more time in appreciating the beauty of nature and discussing matters related to Dharma with Sita, Lakshmana or the sages they come across. Lakshmana prevents Sita from ‘agni pareeksha’ after Rama conquers Lanka and upbraids his brother for doubting his wife. After Rama makes him to abandon pregnant Sita in the forests, Lakshmana vows not to live in ‘Rama Rajya’ since he cannot understand Rama’s definition of Dharma and prefers to stay with his wife Urmila as a chief of a village outside the boundary of Ayodhya.

Sita is the quintessential daughter of mother earth - found abandoned on a ploughed field by King Janaka - and she characteristically takes up the rigours of agriculture during Vanavasa with help from Lakshmana. Later, after Rama deserts her, she again finds solace in farming near the ashrama of Sage Valmiki. When Rama shows willingness to accept her back, she chides him in the open court of ‘Dharma Sabha’ by asserting that he wanted her now as his wife only because of the requirements of Ashwamedha Yaaga. She walks out of the court saying that she can never accept him as the father of their children as he never fulfilled the duties of a father.

Indeed, this book needs to be read with an open mind and gradually savoured. It is heartening that Bhairappa does not hesitate to question the godliness of Rama through the words and actions of Sita and Lakshmana. After all, isn’t ours the land of Charvaakas?

Hasta Shilpa: A Cultural Marvel

The website of Hasta Shilpa Heritage village says that it is ‘a multi-dimensional cultural project which aims to restore and conserve nation’s cultural wealth in the form of traditional buildings and objects of art, craft and other artefacts of aesthetic interest’. I first read about Hastashilpa and its creator Late Sri Vijayanatha Shenoy more than two decades ago through an article in a popular Kannada magazine ‘Taranga’. At that time Sri Shenoy had built a new house in Manipal, aesthetically using the artefacts he had collected from all over Karnataka. His house became a big draw for tourists and his dedication towards conserving traditional buildings of yore attracted the attention of foreign embassies in Delhi. As accolades poured in, he was advised by his friends and well-wishers, including the then District Collector of Udupi, to develop a heritage village in a much larger area. The ambitious project is now on the verge of completion and has been thrown open to public. Spread over six acres, this cultural marvel is an ode to the relentless efforts of Sri Shenoy in bringing together the jewels of diverse heritage of Karnataka studded into a priceless crown in the form Hastashilpa. The emphasis is on the cultural heritage of Karnataka while there are a few exhibits from other parts of the country as well.

The royal court of Mudhola rulers, the last remaining wooden structures from the Vijayanagara empire, Kunjur chowki house of Brahmins, Raja Ravivarma’s efforts at printing of calendars, Mangalore Christian house, Harihara mandir where the wooden carvings are more than 700 years old, all recreated with such care and authenticity that it takes your breath away. Then you realize that this magnificent cultural heritage has survived in all its splendour just because of the conviction and devotion of one man. The guides of this facility, Mr Thomas and Ms Shanti make your journey through this wonderland complete with enthusiastic and anecdote-laced explanation for each exhibit. It was a great journey of discoveries for us to know that it took more than fifteen limestone slabs to print one calendar picture of an Indian god or goddess in pre-independence days. That the wooden structure from the Vijayanagara period has ten layers of assembly without any hinges or screws, which needs to be locked and unlocked in a particular sequence. That cool breeze is sucked in through the wooden window grills in the first floor of Kunjur Chowki house because of the design of the central courtyard. Just visit this place and be amazed. A word of caution. You need to book online in advance and the guided tour takes two and a half hours. There are only two slots in a day-one session in the morning and another in the afternoon. But it is worth every penny and every minute spent.

Stepping Back A Little

Stepping Back A Little

                Last year, we bought home a cane furniture set. It looks elegant and charming and did not cost us a bomb. The shop owner also threw in free service for five years and assured me that it would last for twenty years or more. He definitely did not exaggerate. Our first cane sofa set which was purchased in 2005 for a princely sum of Rs 5,000 would have lasted for another decade had we not exchanged it for the new one. At my village home in coastal Karnataka, till a couple of years back we had a rectangular cane box used to store soaps and detergents. It lasted for more than fifty years. Which plastic box will last that long? I am sure that most of us remember our younger days when we had cane/bamboo/wooden containers at home. It is very evident from the current trends that we are slowly rediscovering the values of traditional foods and household articles.

           Stone tawa instead of non-stick, fad of organic foods (god knows how much of it is actually organic and to what extent), cold-pressed oils and fruit juices, matka for cooking, wooden ladles. Hopefully, the good old days of provisions being packed in used newspapers would return.

                                     The Shopping Mania

               It is indeed bemusing to the uninitiated to hear that shopping can be a hobby. This trend of ‘shopping’ as a hobby was perhaps first noticed by my generation in the post-liberalization era, in the early 90s. You could read in movie magazines that the film stars ‘love to shop in London or Dubai’. Soon there were shopping festivals in metros and then the mall phenomenon caught on. Actually, there is nothing to oppose if some people ‘love shopping’ and it is snobbish to criticize it on ethical grounds. People who are rich, successful with the ‘have money, will spend’ attitude, in fact, help generate employment by their buying spree.

           But things are a bit different now. It all started with online shopping. My first purchase from flipkart was in 2011-some technical books for the office. I have been a regular at major online e-commerce sites ever since. These companies have generated thousands of jobs but also adversely affected livelihoods on the ground- in local kirana shops, mobile and electronic outlets. But customer is the king. If the rates are less, delivery prompt with Cash On Delivery and easy return option, why not?

         I have two issues with online shopping. Firstly, it is addictive. Just like the supermarkets, we succumb to the temptation of buying things which we actually may not need. ‘It will be of use later’, becomes an easy excuse for purchase. Even though we have sufficient clothes, purchases are done only because things are available at a bargain price. How completely opposite to the near obsession of many Japanese with minimalism these days!

          Secondly, we contribute immensely to the doom of this beautiful planet with each item we buy. Almost every product is wrapped in multiple layers of plastic. Amitav Ghosh, in his recent book ‘The Great Derangement’, writes how we trash our mother earth when we unpack the plastic wrapper from Amazon. It is estimated that products worth more than 3,000 crores were purchased from three major web portals last Dasara within a span of five days. That would definitely mean tonnes and tonnes of plastic spread over the country. Of late, I am seeing more of paper wrappings by these e-commerce giants and I hope that soon this will be the norm. 

        At the Nature Basket store of Godrej last week, I spotted a plastic-like packing material called ‘truegreen’. When I refused wrapping of a vegetable by this stuff, the employee informed me that it was not plastic but a recyclable material. But its look, feel and transparency were all similar to those of plastic. It was printed boldly on the material that it does not contain any plastic and is 100 percent biodegradable. Why don’t we see more of this trugreen thing everywhere? By the looks of it, it can replace plastic in a variety of utilities, especially as a thin/thick wrapping material.

Billu

            Billu is our pet dog. He is a dachshund, a year old and the centre of attention of my kids. We had a Labrador in Chhattisgarh briefly. That was five years back. With a heavy heart we parted ways when we shifted to Bengaluru. We thought that it would be difficult to take care of a dog in the city. So, despite repeated pleadings by our kids, we kept postponing the decision to own a pet here in Bengaluru. Last year, when four cuddly dachshund pups were born at my village home, our resistance was breached and one chocolate brown pup was brought to Bengaluru in all fanfare. In ever loving memory of our Labrador Billu, this pup too was given the same name.

           The timetable of kids has changed ever since. As soon as they are back from school, the bags and shoes are thrown in any which way and a dash is made towards the kennel. Billu struts proudly when he is taken for a walk and he has become the cynosure of the campus kids’ eyes. He is moody and many a times, irritating with his insistent barking at the slightest of pretexts. A scampering cockroach or ant, a squirrel hurrying up the tree or a crow that has come to peck at the discarded grains-all evoke a barrage of loud-throated barks from Billu, annoying us in our post-lunch siesta on weekends. Over the past 5-6 months, there has been an increase in the number of strays in the campus and so has been the frequency of Billu’s ceaseless barking. But dogs are always a package. If you like dogs, you will know that Dachshunds are emotional, loving, lively, curious and brave. They can be jealous too and a new entry into our campus- an adorable golden retriever with a crowd of admiring children around him- is already rousing this trait in Billu. 

Random Notes

Makki Ka Makki

Ok, fine, you saw this coming. Indian American kids have won the 9^th successive Scripps spelling bee competition. Well, this time two Indian American boys have shared it. Yaaawn…. What’s new? Actually nothing. But isn’t that amazing that how our education system has ingrained in our genes, the perfect art of rote learning, or mugging? Even when the Indian diaspora kids are born and brought up in the USA, this quality of rote learning is successfully passed down genetically from the parents. From whatever I have read, Spelling Bee competition is nothing but remembering the spellings and meanings of words (like Gesellschaft or rhinolophid-try pronouncing that!) which no one is going to use and which will be found in only one book-dictionary. Our kids are masters of mugging. Period.

This brings me to the kinds of marks the students score these days in 12^th. Anything less than 95% is ordinary now. A boy committed suicide recently before the CBSE class 10 results were announced fearing poor performance. He had scored 91 % ! When I see my children’s text books, it makes me sad that even now the emphasis is on reproduction of facts. Of course, there is a vast improvement in the text books now compared to what it was during our school days. But even then, I feel that the methodology does not engage or involve the children to make learning as something to look forward to.

Sankey Tank Walk

Sankey Tank, Malleshwaram is a walker’s delight in the mornings and lovebirds’ paradise in the evenings. The walking path is uneven and the banks of the lake are unstable at some stretches. Sign boards warn walkers not to lean against the railings. When the civil works began to address these problems, we thought that it would get over within a couple of months. But even after two long years of digging and concreting, the work is still on. Only one fourth of the total walkway length is being renovated at present and if the authorities decide to dig up the remaining stretch, Sankey would be an eyesore and walking would be hell for the next five years. I have filed two RTI applications with BBMP to know about the cost estimate, scope of the work etc but have not received any replies. So, I have focused again on walking now!

Last week, I came across a very brisk walker at the Sankey Tank. I am reasonably fast but nowhere close to this short, thin man in his forties. When I saw him walking for the first time, I too was fired up. I tried to match his strides but fell behind immediately and before I knew he almost disappeared out of sight around a corner! I also noticed that among the hundreds of walkers at Sankey Tank he had no competition. A super brisk walker friend of mine unfortunately finds the bed more tempting in the mornings than the walking track of Sankey Tank. Otherwise a race between the two would have set the Sankey lake afire.

But recently I gave a real fright to this undisputed walking champion. One morning after I had covered a hundred meters or so, I felt a flash of lightning zoom past. Then I spotted the walker in front of me, speeding as hurriedly as ever, as if he was already running very late for an important appointment. I suddenly increased my pace and almost caught up with him and he looked over his shoulders in obvious surprise. Then he got into the seventh gear and sped ahead of me. A couple of paces later, the walker was still stealthily looking behind with the corner of his eyes for competition. I allowed him to gain complacency about his lead and then smiling wickedly to myself, I softly sprinted to a distance of about five metres behind him. As I coolly walked beside him, his face showed astonishment. ‘How the …… this fellow reached me so fast’, he must have thought. Shaken, he got into the eighth gear and whizzed away from me, not failing to throw side-ward looks once in a while. Not intending to get caught, I did not continue the fun and walked at my usual pace. I hope that he realized how he almost lost the race for the first time at Sankey Tank. If he did, I am sure he had a hearty laugh.

The Deafening Silence of Bollywood

It is a no-brianer that Salman Khan does not know how to act. Allegedly an assaulter of women, a drunken driver cum murderer, a wildlife hunter and now, clearly a sickening speaker. But what is more sickening is the behaviour of Bollywood which has formed a protective shield of silence around him. Not a single actor has criticized Salman for his outrageous comment and asked for apology. His father had better sense and immediately asked for forgiveness on behalf of his son. Shah Rukh Khan ‘does not want to judge others’, Priyanka Chopra says, ‘there are so many issues pertaining to women which are much more important’ and when was the last time did anybody hear Big B taking a principled stand on any issue? What amazes me more is the fan following of Salman Khan. Is it for real?

Let There Be Love

Let There Be Love

A couple of months back, I read a devastating story about a high school girl committing suicide by jumping from the rooftop. She had been admonished the previous day by the school authorities for moving around with a boy. The boy and girl had been found to be spending time together in the school campus. They were ‘caught’, their parents summoned and advised. The girl could not bear the humiliation and a precious life was lost.

In the year 1989 when I was in class nine, I was in the belief that I was in love with a girl of the same school. Never mind that she was hardly aware of my existence. One weekend, I was traveling home from school with my friends and a teacher. We missed a connecting bus and had to walk six kilometres. We did it joyously along the tar road with dense forests on both sides. After sometime into the walk, my friends began pulling my leg over my love interest. The teacher overheard our conversation and asked one of my friends, ‘who is the girl’? After much prodding, my classmates let the secret out. The teacher laughed loudly, perhaps at the incredulity of the combination and then we trudged on. After that, the teacher would tease me occasionally but there was no reprimand or sermons or ‘I will tell your parents’ threat.

How come this simple act of liking another person - I don’t use the word love here because in case of youngsters it is mostly liking one another - generates such harsh reaction from the teachers these days?  Most kids pass through the stage of ‘teenage turmoil’ (remember this charming serial which used to be aired on DD in late eighties?) in which every second person of the opposite sex looks attractive and seems like a perfect future life partner. My 11 year old son is in ‘I-just-don’t-like-girls-at-all’ stage now and it is quite interesting and fascinating to see them under the thrall of each hormonal phase. When he tells about a friend of his (in the next hormonal level) liking a girl in his class, I make it a point to treat it casually and never laugh at it. Perhaps the teachers need better training and guidance on how to handle the teenagers with care, respect and more understanding.

To sum up on a positive note, my faith in humanity and love was restored recently. I had gone to my kids’ school and as I was waiting to meet the Principal, I saw a bunch of high school students - boys and girls - talking to each other. There were shy smiles on their lips and stars in their eyes. May the One bless them.

The World At Their Feet, Literally

The UPSC results are out and there is a great, deserved jubilation in more than a thousand houses. 1078 young, bright candidates have been selected by the UPSC to head various wings of the government. The son of a security guard, a rickshaw driver’s son, a Muslim boy who had to change his name to get a house on rent, a young topper in her first attempt - there are positive stories galore. We all rightly believe that in UPSC the selection process is fair and transparent and that only the deserving candidates get selected. Let us not once forget that all these hardworking candidates will be soon holding responsible positions affecting the way our country is governed. Let us hope and pray that they stay firmly grounded as they go high up the bureaucratic ladder and remain empathetic to the problems of the common man.

Another result and the same feeling of positivity! When I was at the HOPCOMS yesterday evening buying fruits and vegetables I happened to overhear a conversation. There were three people standing by the roadside-an old woman, a middle-aged man and a teenaged boy, all in soiled cloths and they looked like construction workers. The boy’s cloths were torn in places and from their attire, it was clear that they were migrant labourers from Northern parts of Karnataka.

The woman says to the man, ‘You look very happy! What happened? Where had you been?’

‘Just now returning after seeing the SSLC results. This boy has really done well. Got 62-63 percent’!

‘Ho, that’s great. He has passed the exam then, hasn’t he!?’

She pats the boy on his back and he gives away a toothy grin.

‘The marks are quite good, aren't they?’, the old woman asks again.

‘It is good. But the boy could have done better. 70-80 % is considered very good’.

‘What is the difference then?’

‘He should have scored 6-7 marks more’.

Then there is some casual chat and they disperse smiling. That definitely was one heart-warming story which made my day.

A Fervent Plea To The Foresters

Kuppalli, the birthplace of the great Kannada writer Kuvempu is a treat to the aesthetic senses. Kuvempu’s ancestral home, Kavimane, is carefully preserved and tastefully maintained. When we reach the popular tourist spot in the evening, there is a small crowd of enthusiasts going around the place. The setting is picturesque in the midst of Western Ghats. Surprisingly and thankfully, the surroundings are neat. Just outside the premises of Kavimane, a small canteen is dishing out bajjis but I don’t see any discarded plastic cups or plates. Of course, the place is not spotless but it passes the Swachch Bharat test handsomely.

Kavimane at Kuppallai

It is getting late for the sunset and we hurry to the sunset point near Agumbe town. ‘Will it be crowded’, I ask the driver. ’Of course’, he replies, ‘and today is Saturday’.  When we are five kilo metres away from the point, I see the sun dipping quickly behind a haze of mountains in a red ball. I am not disappointed as I have been to the place before, a good two decades back, just about the time when the location was popularized by the famous Rajkumar starrer ‘Aakasmika’.

The now famous sunset point is close to a forest check post. As we near the gate I see a virtual gridlock of vehicles ahead of us. The show is over and people are heading to their next destination. We are in fact caught in a traffic jam. The driver asks us to get down near a small series of steps that would lead us to a vantage point. The sunset would have looked lovely from here and I find the scenery-a panorama of forested landscape-enchanting. But distractingly, right below me is a sea of vehicles parked haphazardly all over the road. School buses, taxis, private cars, jeeps, buses with children on excursions-not less than 300-400 vehicles and a crowd of 2000-3000. And litter everywhere in all colours and forms. It is not out of place to mention here that the sunset point of Agumbe falls inside ‘Someshwara Wildlife Sanctuary’.

                     Scenes at the Sunset Point, Agumbe

People have every right to visit the places they want to and nobody should have problem with that. With increasing education, income and awareness more and more people are moving out and exploring new destinations and the tourist places are getting crowded. For the city dwellers, even a small stream or a mini-waterfall near the road in the countryside becomes a pit stop. Just like in the West, youngsters hit the roads on Saturday mornings and return to their city homes on Sunday nights with wonderful stories to share and flash drive full of pictures. Eco tourism is the in thing and you find hundreds of tour and trek organizers online. If there is one thing that is common for most of the travelling and tourism in India, that is forests. A vast majority of our treks, hikes, walks, drives, camps, visits, homestays, darshans, homages, campfires, safaris affect the forests either directly or indirectly. Sadly, the ‘eco’ part is missing in most of the tours and if we, the foresters don’t pull up our socks and brace for the challenge, we will have no place to hide when things go beyond redemption.

Kukke Subramanya, the once sleepy temple town in coastal Karnataka, now attracts hundreds of devotees every day and during weekends, thousands. While travelling from Bengaluru, after one crosses Sakleshpur, the landscape turns hilly and forested. The jungle gets denser as one nears Kukke Subramanya, after Gundya. The trail of litter too starts from Sakleshpur. It gets worse after Gundya. One can see people stopping midway for a meal break. A stream nearby comes handy. You can even see people cooking food on the roadside. When the job is done and the groups drive on, evidences in the shape of chips packets, water bottles, chocolate and biscuit wrappers, cigarette packs and not too uncommonly, liquor bottles, are left behind. Most of these areas on either side of the road happen to be reserve forests.

 In the divinely beautiful and serene Pangong lake, I have fished out an Lays packet while an army officer and his family was served juice and snacks right at the edge of the lake. In the wonderfully desolate Changthang grasslands and all along the Leh-Pangong route, one is sure to get distressed seeing the amount of litter thrown by the careless tourists. When I went to Ooty four years ago, I was heartbroken by the scene of utter carnage of filth unleashed by tourists in and around the town. The most abominable stretches of litter were to be seen in forest areas in the outskirts of Ooty. Broken beer bottles told a thousand stories of tourist hooliganism and official apathy.

While on a visit to Dehradun recently, I drove along the Mussorie road for a field exercise. Here is what I find on either side of this busy road.

                        On the Dehradun-Mussorie road

Interestingly, it is not that the foresters do not have any powers to streamline and regulate tourism and take action against the offenders using the existing laws. Section 27 (1) puts restriction on the entry of people inside a sanctuary and 27 (4) reads, “No person shall tease or molest any wild animal or litter the grounds or sanctuary”. Again, the Indian Forest Act of 1927 gives ample powers to the foresters to restrict the entry of tourists, regulate their movements and activities in reserved and protected forests. It really beats me why we are not utilizing these provisions.

I am sure that many of you might have observed that of late it has become a common practice to dump waste materials in the forest areas, especially near the towns and small cities. Lorries and mini trucks, pick-up vans silently dump the garbage into the forests, streamlets along the roadsides and speed away. I have seen this phenomenon mostly in and around Mangaluru and also in many parts of Kerala.

                                            Near Mangaluru

We, the foresters crib that the tsunami of developmental agenda is ignoring our concerns and we are easily and regularly overruled. But if we care and more importantly, if we dare, we can contribute immensely to maintain what we have within the realm of our jurisdiction. The domestic tourism industry is growing tremendously every year (the Tourism Ministry’s report for 2014 says ‘the number of Domestic Tourist Visits to all States/UTs is 1282 million and the annual growth rate is 12 % !!) and if we don’t act now to stop our forests from becoming dustbins, we will be held equally responsible just like the reckless tourists. Let us put barricades, restrict, calculate carrying capacity, monitor, educate, publish ads, punish the offenders, put CCTV cameras, shame the litterbugs, anything. Let us do something. Let us not wait for somebody else to do our jobs.

The Left and Right Of A Debate

A book written by a well-known journalist Rahul Pandita ‘Our Moon Has Blood Clots’ which I read last week, has impacted me deeply. Pandita has also published another popular work ‘Hello Bastar’ which introduces the reader to the naxal movement in Central India. Amidst the heated debate on intolerance in India, the book by Pandita on the plight of Kashimiri Pandits bears great significance. We all have read that lakhs of Pandits were persecuted and hounded out of their own homeland of centuries-Kashmir-by the majority Muslim population. This is perhaps the only case in the recent past where a large number of people have become internal refugees in their own country. The book by Rahul Pandita opens bare the trauma and the angst of a helpless people who have been largely shunned by the ‘secular’ politicians and media. It is only by their sheer grit, hard work and perseverance that many Pandits have found a new life and freedom in various climes across the world. But several thousand still live the life of a refugee in Delhi.

If I say that the on the night of January 19, 1990, Muslims in the Valley went into a mob frenzy and through hundreds of mosques across the State, threatened the ‘kafir’ Pandits to leave Kashmir or convert to Islam, with blood-curdling slogans like “We will turn Kashmir into Pakistan along with Kashmiri Pandit women, but without their men”, will I be called a right-winger? On the other hand, if I say that the lynching of a hapless Muslim man in Dadri for what he alleged to have eaten, must be condemned unequivocally, does that qualify me as a leftist? And whom do we call a centrist? A person who walks the tightrope to keep both sides happy, may be!?

In this melee of the left versus right, we seem to have forgotten that what is right is always right, whether left or right. Today I read a statement of P Chidambaram who conceded that banning of Satanic Verses was wrong. We understand the timing, don’t we? In the twilight of his career, one knows that he is not going to lose much by accepting the truth. When credibility was the measuring jar for politics anyway? I am also waiting for the day when some  secular leaders accept that the amendment to our constitution to deny justice to Ms Shah Bano was also wrong. Denying justice to fifty percent of the Muslim community still continues in the form of triple talaq and polygamy but if there is a murmur of protest, why it is brushed aside as ‘right-wing propaganda’? Many Muslim countries have banned these two tenets of Muslim Personal Law followed so religiously in India. But in the garb of upholding secularism, a section of the polity in India mollycoddles and cultivates the religious far right among the Muslims. Ironically, the Muslim religious leaders have no qualms in accepting criminalization of triple talaq and polygamy in Western Countries and the US. But here in India, when 70,000 Muslim women give a representation to the Prime Minister demanding equal rights as their men, mullahs and some politicians question the credentials of the petitioners. They smell a right-wing conspiracy, again.

Take the case of alleged sexual harassment in Madrasas as revealed by a female journalist and a male film maker in Kerala. I am sure you have noticed that Arnab is not shouting, ‘the nation wants to know’, Barkha Dutt is not conducting any panel discussion on the issue. But one statement from a right-wing political leader will send these media people into a frenzy.

If someone criticizes the demolition of Babri Masjid as a criminal act which led to the death of thousands of innocents in its aftermath, permanently driving a wedge between two communities, do we have to call that person an apologist for the left? Similarly, will the persons who are demanding an overhaul of the Madrasa system of education with a thorough investigation into sexual harassment angle be hauled over the coals as communal?

Being secular is essential for the growth of a healthy democracy but we cannot be selective in this. It is time we realized that what is right will always remain so, whether we paint it with hues of saffron or green.

PS: Curious to know the origin of these two words, I went to Wikipedia and here is what I found. Even though we understand the concepts broadly, the clear definitions below give a proper perspective.

Right-wing politics are political positions or activities that view some forms of social stratification or social inequality as either inevitable, natural, normal, or desirable, typically defending this position on the basis of natural law, economics or tradition. Hierarchy and inequality may be viewed as natural results of traditional social differences and/or from competition in market economies.

Left-wing politics are political positions or activities that accept or support social equality, often in opposition to social hierarchy and social inequality. They typically involve concern for those in society who are perceived as disadvantaged relative to others and a belief that there are unjustified inequalities that need to be reduced or abolished.

(It is also interesting to note that many leftists these days prefer to criticize capitalism in the cosy confines of a Ritz or a Taj or a Park Hyatt a la Arundhati Roy).