Bangalore Rising

The trials and tribulations of the migrant/guest workers impacted by the ongoing COVID crisis is just half the story. Yes, it is sad that they trudged hundred of kilometres to get back home, and it is disappointing that the PM did not show enough empathy towards them in his last speech. Yes, they are jobless, homeless, and probably penniless too.  Their lives are tough. One missing paycheck, one health issue, or one high-school graduating kid aspiring for college education, can put them squarely into the hands of loan sharks, never to get out of those clutches at least for one whole generation. It is tough for many of us to fathom how much on the edge they live. The real story however is not that they are in a tough spot today, but what made them get to the brink within weeks of a national shutdown. It is a story of them living precariously, month after month, exploited by state governments because it costs them nothing to keep them in the new state, exploited by contractors ...

When you think of it, this fight over India's GDP numbers - whether it is 5% or 3.5% is not really relevant to the common man. What the common man aspires for is three square meals, a roof over his head, education for his children, an opportunity to stay healthy, and should the need arise, easy access to affordable healthcare for day-to-day health issues at a minimum, and an opportunity to work so that all of these can be provided to his or her family. These are not tall aspirations. Many of our parents ventured out of their villages into the big cities out of compulsion, because the family back in the village was finding it increasingly difficult to make two ends meet with the meagre opportunities that village and agriculture life provided. Our fathers sought greener pastures in cities like Delhi, Mumbai, or Kolkata, skilled themselves for clerical jobs, found themselves a job for life, raised a family, and just about managed to provide all those things to the family I mentioned...

I know, I know…. I am not a political junkie, and some of my friends and acquaintances know a lot more about the geopolitics of South Asia than I can ever aspire to know, but let me just take a stab at this subject, to partially quench my intellectual curiosity. Of course blogs and social media are hardly the medium for such conversations; it has the tendency to provide a platform where animated discussions can quickly degenerate into a slugfest. But let me still take the plunge. The title is of course eyeball grabbing, quite unintentionally though. That is however the nub of my story, if at all you may call this a story. So let me get to the point right away. If Pakistan continues its current trajectory, it may not last - not a few decades, not a few years, but not even two years. Yes, Pakistan as we know I suspect will cease to exist as a nation, for not a day more than 75 years since its birth, if trends were to be believed. And its demise may have nothing to do with a nuclear...

Having a riverside room has its disadvantages. And when electricity is available only for three hours between 7.15pm and 11 pm every day, there is not much one can do at night except sleep or try being one with nature.  And there are fewer things more alluring to me than say, being in Dah at night. First of all, you experience pitch dark. Not the city-bred folks’ “pitch dark”. The darkness in the mountains is quite something unexplainable. Dark and silent... absence of noise made by men and their machines. And the hostile desert that is Ladakh does not have much trees, so no rustling either. Therefore fewer birds or insects. No crickets, no toads, no owls. It’s dead silence therefore.  Second is the sky - its like being in the heavens, feeling one with objects a billion miles away. And thirdly, the river... the sound of life. And if you are with just yourself, in the dark, looking up at the sky, or down at the river, you’ve known unbounded joy... and peace. The effect o...

The Phyang festival is interesting. The courtyard behind the temple is the venue for the costumed dancers to weave their magic on a crowd of about 150 gawking foreigners and Indians alike. We have our fill in about an hour and half, and so decide to head out to our next destination - the Aryan village of Dah, about 150 kms from Phyang, 100 of which is on the Leh-Kargil route. We cross and traverse along several small and mid-sized stre ams for about 20-30 kilometers before those streams hit the mighty, muddy Zanskar. For the next 100+ kilometers till we reach our destination, we are never more than a few yards to the left of, and sometimes several hundred feet above this river. The Zanskar is for a very long distance mellow, as it weaves it’s way through the mountain passes, steadily building on its might, as more small streams join this river. Suddenly the river narrows as it finds itself squeezed into a gorge, turning into an awesome rapid, showing its fury on the scarcely-both...

Ladakh Diaries - Out of Leh Ladakh brings out something else in me - I want to say spiritual, but not being one, it would sound hollow. But it does soothe me, and brings some kind of inner calm. Today was Phyang, a small agrarian village about 20 kilometers northwest of Leh. It’s claim to small town fame is the Phyang Monastery perched on top of a mountain, and its Renpoche who has been supporting innovative and sustainable practices. It’s more recent claim to other fame are  its ice stupas, invented by Sonam Wangchuk, the man who inspired the Rajkumar Hirani film “Three Idiots”.  We went looking for remnants of the ice stupas, and I believe I found it. Ice stupas were SW’s idea of using gravity and pipes to take glacial melt and eject it 20-30 meters up into a cold, minus 20 degree air sometime in November, and see it freeze as it hits the air. Each “ice stupa” holds about 120,000 liters of water in ice form till the beginning of spring when glaciers have not yet m...

The privilege of being an administrative service officer in the sub-continent are many. While the usual seniority-driven protocol exists for promotions and postings, they all come together when it comes to perks such as overseas jaunts, and membership to elite clubs.  I have a pretty dim view of some of these bureaucrats. I know a number of them in the service, but the administrative and foreign service breed are a tad different from officers who belong to the revenue, or railway services; the latter are what I would term technical specialists, with measurable, outcome-driven jobs. Some in the IAS too have such jobs, but a huge number of them seem to, at least to the public eye, very little accountability, and a lot of authority. And when I see them lounging around in clubs, ostensibly talking governance over a beer, or at the ninth hole during regular working hours, I wonder. I wonder whether our terrible dislike for the political class has been exacerbated by the under-perf...