Essay

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THOUGHTS FROM TWO SURVEY STONES

Illustration: Shyam G Menon

Illustration: Shyam G Menon

It was a hot day.

Tired, we sat on two survey stones by the road, watching the relentless traffic. Ahead was the regular 20 km-long choke section of our weekend route, where traffic would be at its worst. Cars and massive trucks would barrel down on us. It depressed; made us think of the contemporary predicament in cycling.

My friend worked at a bank. He liked to cycle. One of his recent posts on Facebook was that wonderful news from Germany about the first section of a proposed 100 km-highway meant exclusively for bicycles, opened. According to a related news report, the fully commissioned highway is hoped to take 50,000 cars off the road every day. What adds significance is that Germany is both one of the world’s biggest manufacturers of automobiles and home to the legendary autobahns of motoring. Supporters of the cycling highway say: such projects can’t happen without the state’s backing. There is rising awareness in cities abroad that more cars can be unwieldy. Neither my banker friend nor I can imagine the same happening in India. Here, we value power as measure of having arrived in life. Two wheels aren’t powerful enough. Absence of engine worsens it. When you are out running or cycling and behold an automobile on the road, your greatest worry is how that sense of power and its display by driver will unfold. You on two legs or two human-propelled wheels and person steering engine-powered platform with four wheels or more – these are distinct class categories in the hierarchy of power. For us, two legs and two human-propelled wheels are bottom of the pyramid.

Between more cars on the road and more cycles on the road, the latter doesn’t impress because it isn’t as big an industry or employment multiplier as automobiles. Critics have pointed out that the social costs of the automobile industry are in the negative in some countries. Equally real is planet of seven billion people (1.2 billion in India) with accompanying need for jobs. In the closing part of the twentieth century and the early part of the twenty first, several developing countries eyed car manufacturing projects as means to create employment. As pollution and climate change take hold with consequences for the auto industry, I wonder what governments are thinking now.  Notwithstanding last year’s scandal of a major German automobile company cheating on emission norms, governments will likely persist with the old paradigm. Vehicle numbers in India will increase with corresponding rise in pollution and congestion. The convincing alternative is embracing certain ideals just for the sensible ideals they are. Having fresh air to breathe and less congestion around is not something to balance with our survival. It IS survival. But when did ideals and alternatives guarantee quick return on capital? As the rat race tightens and the cost of doing business goes up, all that matters is return on capital. “ We are obsessed with return on capital,” my friend said. The tried and tested, old wine in new bottle – such approaches flourish. Room for experiment shrinks. Everything surrendered to return on capital is meaningful change also slowed down alongside. A 100 km-cycling highway may be a bad financial investment. On the other hand, it represents a clean, interesting future.

Every February as the union budget approaches, my mind goes back to a budget some years ago which hiked tariff on imported bicycles. It was meant to stop cheap imports. But it hurt anyone eyeing the imported premium varieties for enjoyable cycling, in an Indian manufacturing scene that hadn’t stirred out of its comfort zone of making utilitarian models. Since then, to the credit of the local bicycle industry, it has grown a presence in the premium segment. The evolution is slow; there is no urgency. My friend and I wondered: have we seen any advertisement, any social campaign by the Indian bicycle industry on promoting cycling and a cycling friendly-environment? We weren’t talking of posters advertising cycle trips at a bicycle store or a few bicycle stands with commuter bikes in a few cities. We weren’t talking of celebrities endorsing cycling or sponsored cycling events and races. We weren’t talking of those from the bicycle industry regularly participating in Delhi’s Auto Expo, billed as Asia’s biggest automobile show. They typically showcase very expensive bicycles that serve as statements for brand building.

Illustration: Shyam G Menon

Illustration: Shyam G Menon

Cycling, like running and unlike motoring, is environment friendly and keeps you healthy. We were talking of a generic campaign for cycling that is comparable to how India promoted the consumption of milk and eggs. The automobile industry never tires of pushing its case. Even today, despite the social costs of motoring being unbearable in some places, the industry aggressively markets itself. Has the bicycle industry been as vocal as the auto industry when it comes to protecting and promoting the idea of cycling? Do they ask for bicycle lanes; do they ask for motorists to respect bicycle lanes and be aware of cyclists on the road? That is quite different from guarding domestic turf through import tariffs in the union budget. Did the bicycle industry promote cycling or highlight its virtues nationwide when the country was following the news about Delhi’s odd-even scheme, the first serious intervention in India against air pollution? Aside from the routine photo of a senior government official or celebrity on a cycle, we couldn’t remember seeing or hearing anything substantial. Times of auto industry questioned don’t seem opportunity enough for bicycle manufacturers to assert their case? It appeared so. Interestingly, some months ago, the CEO of a bicycle company said in the course of a conversation that the Indian cycling experience has to be improved for growing the bicycle market, particularly the premium segment. After all, we invest in a bicycle to enjoy the experience of being out with it.

Fifteen minutes went by at those two survey stones.

We drank water and had some snacks.

Then, we resumed cycling.

If you sample the list of the world’s top box office hits, you will be amazed by how many movies therein are the stuff of fantasy. We love escaping a reality beyond our control. At the start of the 20 km-long choke section, I indulged my pet fantasy: magically erase all that traffic with a special effects-wand and imagine one long stretch of road with just joggers and cyclists on it. Wannabe wizard traded fantasy for reality, the moment the first big truck rumbled dangerously close by.

(The author, Shyam G Menon, is a freelance journalist based in Mumbai.)       

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A TEACHER FROM LONG AGO

Illustration: Shyam G Menon

Illustration: Shyam G Menon

One day many years ago, when I was in school, a tall, bearded man became our teacher.

He taught us English.

In a stiff educational ambiance wedded to syllabus and academic performance, he sometimes came to class with the book he was reading. Small things like that, triggered curiosity. Compared to other teachers, he was young. Quite approachable and a bit of a misfit in those days of strict discipline at school, he was a hit with us. From the way he dressed, to his informal, relaxed style of talking while taking classes, the way he reminded us to be quiet, as opposed to commanding us – everything was different. Occasionally his reluctance to be assertive meant a slightly chaotic class but we were delighted to have a ` cool’ teacher. He didn’t work long at the school. His tenure was brief. He moved on.

Post college, I tried unsuccessfully to be a copywriter. In the desperate aftermath of losing that first job, I was accepted as student for a course in journalism. It was a case of grabbing what came my way to stay afloat. Months later, I found myself a journalist. I met my old English teacher just once after leaving school and that was several years ago. I was home in Thiruvananthapuram on holiday and his house then was a kilometre or less, away. In the years following that stint as teacher, he had become a prominent journalist. I called on him because I wanted to say hello to someone I respected in school and in whose chosen profession, I found myself in. He had worked at The Indian Express, Mathrubhumi, News Time, The Statesman, The Independent and India Today. He was also associated in between with BBC Radio. But what would make him a household name in Kerala was ` Kannadi’ (mirror), a popular programme he produced and presented for Asianet, a leading television channel in the state. He eventually became Editor-in-Chief of Asianet News. I met him in the early phase of ` Kannadi,’ as a student he had taught at school during his pre-journalist days. We didn’t meet again. In the years that followed I also disconnected my cable TV because the whole business of news and breaking news had become unbearable. Amid that, while travelling on work or at other people’s houses, once in a while, I caught snatches of ` Kannadi’ on TV. Early morning of January 30, 2016, I received a text message informing that T.N. Gopakumar was no more.

I remember T.N. Gopakumar as my old teacher. The deep, rough voice from ` Kannadi’ and that unmistakable style of sentence-delivery, was there even then but cast as my school teacher, it is a Gopakumar in a non-media setting I came to remember. Someone who was intellectually leagues ahead of his students, probably wondering what he was doing in our class and yet, amused by it. I was lucky to have a couple of teachers, whose impact exceeded syllabus. Gopakumar is one of them but with a difference. In his case, the impact is tough to articulate because it was both an impression and an impression over a short period of time. The closest I can articulate the impression would be – he made you want to grow up, have a head full of ideas and a book to read. News reports said he was called `TNG’ in media circles. For his students, he was ` T.N. Gopakumar sir’ or ` Gopakumar sir.’

He will be missed; not just by television viewers and the media fraternity but by his old students as well.

(The author Shyam G Menon is a freelance journalist based in Mumbai.)

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THE ORDINARY LIFE

Illustration: Shyam G Menon

Illustration: Shyam G Menon

This is an old story, from a time when Badami was yet to have climbing routes of grade eight.

I noticed Badami when my rock climb failed.

A high rock face to climb trad-style, but few minutes into it my mind panicked. It fled into the `can’t-do’ zone, from there to the `why-do?’ and eventually the `won’t-do’ zone. I lost my confidence, packed up my rucksack and walked away to nurse my shattered ego. I had been climbing for close to a decade and yet I cannot do this? Perhaps this vertical business with challenges every second is not for me. It rankled, for up there, you are alone and have to work things out yourself. Having tasted climbing before, defeat hit me hard; exiled me into the realm of ordinariness. Who likes that?

Badami is one of the best places I have climbed in. When the light is right, it’s beautiful sandstone glows. From a climber’s perspective, I found the rock suited for my style and grade of climbing, which was beyond beginner level but still intermediate. The rock sported a variety of holds ranging all the way from painful pinches to thank God-jug holds. Above all, the rock had a gentle, sandpaper feel to aid friction. You found climbs to encourage the beginner; engage the enthusiast and obsess the expert. In a world where 9a was the toughest climbing grade yet, Badami had plenty of routes in the sixes and sevens. I was witness to an attempt by French climbers to open something in eight. The hardest I could manage on lead was a low six. Probably when in fighting form in the head and body, I could nudge that up to a mid six.

What I loved about Badami were two things – first, if you got tired doing long climbs, there was always plenty you could dig out from rock, to boulder; and second, this wasn’t a place that imposed a climbing style on you, here the rock allowed you expression. You just had to look around to find a line somewhere to call your own. Problem with me had always been the mind. It had a tendency to magnify failure, pick up that train of thought and flush the rest of the brain down the drain double quick. No matter how much I climbed – and I did quite a bit for the average Indian of my age – my mind remained the same. Its inability to perceive my strengths eventually crushed me. I tried disciplining it with positive thought, didn’t work; I tried distracting it with motivational reading; didn’t work. There were flashes of relief, but soon thereafter the slide to gloom and self deprecation would take over. I gave the condition a name – the crab. That’s how the head felt when the lows grabbed you with its pincers. And right then after the failed climb, I could feel the crab groping around upstairs for a strand of grey matter to torment.

Badami was dry, dusty. Climbing agenda gone, I began to see the town. Well over a thousand years ago, Vatapi as it was known then, had been the capital of the powerful Chalukya kingdom. In the Badami of today, you hardly suspected such a grand past. The ruins and temples on its edge had design, the town had none. It was a collage of powdery soil, congestion and the regular motifs of clustered human habitation. A demolition drive was on against illegal structures, the bulldozer furiously stirring up dust. Like elsewhere in this country of harsh realities, old glory dies hard and the name of the Chalukya kingdom’s greatest ruler, Pulakesi, showed up on a board or two. In the world below the boards with Pulakesi’s name, children asked for a school pen; not getting which, they sought a chocolate and failing that, a one rupee coin. There is even a climbing route called `school pen’ – so ubiquitous is the request! I began my exile from climbing with a visit to Banashree Restaurant. Upendra Kumar served me a plate of idli-vada. He was typically a very reserved person whose demeanor betrayed disinterest in matters other than his own immediate work. For some reason that day he enquired where I had been. Probably sensing a day not gone well, he recommended that I visit Badami’s archaeological sights and rattled off details as in a guided tour. He spoke in English; I could imagine him holding forth in one of those rock-cut caves, a group of foreign tourists tuned in gravely. In fact, he had worked as a guide before he became a waiter. At snack’s end, I paid the bill and offered him a tip. He declined it, saying, “ service is my duty sir.’’ He smiled, wiped his hands on a small towel, returned the towel to his shoulder and left. Red-faced with embarrassment, I suddenly realized you don’t have to climb or build empires, to be extraordinary. You just have to do a good job with whatever you are engaged in.

Illustration: Shyam G Menon

Illustration: Shyam G Menon

The day before, Lakshman had carried his situation with similar dignity. Hailing from Belgaum, the post graduate in social work lectured at a college in Badami. He was once selected for a job at one of the companies of Godrej in Mumbai but caught typhoid and couldn’t make it. Not one to waste time over the setback, Lakshman had then registered to study law alongside his job as lecturer. He was wandering around the town’s sandstone rocks, text book in hand, when he saw the group of climbers attempting routes in a discreet gap between high rock walls known to crag hoppers as Badami Deluxe. “ So, this is a game for you?’’ he asked, attempting what many people strain to do – read logic into the act of man courting the vertical. Popular belief is that everything has to finally boil down to a set of comprehensible urges, like why you play football or cricket. You know that the target driving all the physical activity on the field is to score a goal, take a wicket or score runs. In sharp contrast, climbing typically loses its wealth of dimensions when forced into paradigms of competition, fixed time and forced result. The times climbing gripped me the most was when personal universe shrank to a dialogue between self and rock. These are moments of near emptiness in the head or acute focus on the immediate. It is actually hard trying to explain why people climb rock or for that matter, endure the hardships that come with ascending a mountain. As regular life remorselessly patronizes the rat race, such pursuits as chasing endorphin or courting emptiness in the head or feeling good through alternative perspectives of life – they gather momentum. Tragedy however is that we bring rat race to the alternatives too. We are our worst nightmare. In my experience, the first move in climbing is akin to taking a chance. Thereafter, what keeps you in the game is a combination of your wish to taste what you are aspiring for and the knowledge that your limits can be pushed. You fail many times. In right company, failure is positive fun (right company, as always, is hard to find). No amount of watching climbing will put you adequately in the zone to appreciate what’s going on up there on rock for the amount of experience climbing shares with the observer is very limited. This is a doer’s sport. When you convert it into an arena based-event, the ones in the audience connecting convincingly to the moves on stage are climbers.

It is easy for climbing to thus get dismissed as a pretty selfish pursuit something reinforced by its own eccentric rituals like callused skin, fascination for climbing moves and the use of chalk almost as metaphor for clarity. Crimping or the art of pulling on nearly non-existent rock features hurts the fingers due to the inordinate strain it imposes on delicate joints otherwise used to easy tasks. Climbers merely tape up the joints with plaster to enhance local support and continue chasing their obsession, the pain buried by the mind’s fixation on the route and the encouragement of others with tape on their fingers. That’s why on most occasions climbers make sense to only their community. It is a tribal bonding that management consultants and marketing types like to showcase (rather incorrectly) for team building. But none of that would ever get close to what you likely feel when you are one of the real climbers. An authentic climber, I suspect, may not even be aware of the tribe. He / she is aware of just the rock, blissfully exhausting a lifetime’s supply of mental focus and physical energy on investigating why person shouldn’t stick to challenging rock face like a lizard and move up. From the rock climber tackling a boulder to one on a high face to the alpinist attempting a several-day challenge on snow and ice, there is a certain self imposed isolation that characterizes climbing and climbers. Climbers give off this attitude that they don’t require the rest of the world for company. I see it as the experiential impact of the sport they pursue, which is marked by focused attention on what is at hand, rarely what is around. When I was into climbing, this bonding by climbing came naturally to me. In exile, I saw it differently. Exiled, I wasn’t what was immediately at hand; I was part of what lay around. Climbers relate through the act of climbing and the world of climbing so overwhelmingly that nothing else intrigues for stimulation. When you drop off that world, climbers have no value for you. It is like a blip seen no more on radar. Now, try explaining all this to an observer asking why you climb. So I just nodded and smiled at Lakshman’s query. If he was earnest in finding answers for his question, the next time I came to Badami, I would find him a climber. If he wasn’t earnest, well I saved climbing from one more potential critic.

Illustration: Shyam G Menon

Illustration: Shyam G Menon

However, what struck me about Lakshman was something else. I have always been agitated by my inabilities; especially, if others could and I couldn’t. I never got my climbing peace engineered the proper way. For all the monastic tranquility I confer on climbing it is a thin line that separates the act of climbing from degeneration into a mentally self destructive engagement. Because it is a difficult art, failure is frequent. Courtesy the simple truth that you are either climbing or falling, there is no place for the ego to hide when failure strikes. Your friends may say it is okay if you failed, even you may counsel yourself so. But the inner self weaned on climbing’s harsh lexicon, knows YOU failed. That’s what happened to me that day in Badami. I let the pressure crack me up. Then someone else of my grade climbed the route smoothly. It burnt the failure in. I had always had problems leading on rock and that incident crushed me. I felt I didn’t deserve repeated failure after years given to the sport. Why was I still struggling, when every molecule in me wanted to climb? My failures told me in an unadulterated way – I was doing something wrong. I wanted help. I got none. The failures stayed. Looking back, I feel, climbing was for me a lot like being infatuated with a completely indifferent woman on the strength of maybe one incisive observation about you she made long ago. That one comment stays in your head for an eternity because it was honest and accurate. It is riveting enough to burn her into your mind but it is also true that there is a limit to how much burn a man can take. I get fed up after a while. I admired climbing for its unflinching honesty. I got exhausted of failing to attract its fabled flow. I stopped climbing.

Jacques Perrier seemed just the opposite of my frustrated self. To start with, this climber from France was almost sixty years old when I met him through my climbing club. The only time I saw him agitated was when he was bundled into a thickly packed mini-van headed for Badami. I was seated on the engine box next to the driver. Perrier, I am not even sure if he boarded that vehicle or took the next one. I do remember seeing him shocked on the road, beholding the van built on a narrow wheelbase with people stuffed inside and piled on the roof, his hands up in the air as the highly expressive French do when agitated. He may have hated that van passionately but he was passionately in love with rock. And it showed in each and every move he made at Badami, it was smooth, elegant and the way he gripped rock, I could write poetry on that if I had the talent. It was an act of love without the slightest strain showing on face or fingers. In a world where every tennis player worth the brand he endorsed, grunted his way to glory on court, Perrier was a silent artist weaving spell after spell on rock. He was at peace, happy to be doing what he was doing. Lakshman was the Perrier of another world, he appeared at peace with the universe, uncomplaining about his position on the ground while half a dozen crazies sweated, fought and extracted achievement from rock. He was content to be sitting there, books by his side. Before he left, he enquired if we needed help carrying our equipment down the steep gully we had come up. He may not climb but he certainly was a helpful human being. What more should any person be?

As I sipped tea at Banashree, the jackhammer’s rat-a-tat was relentless atop Ganesh Prasad, the small cellar-hotel where I used to have breakfast. The food at Ganesh Prasad was often explosively spicy but it was cheap and for those wanting to save money like me, the extra spice muted hunger. Dust and debris littered its entrance as the jumpy machine pounded concrete. Hit by compressed air flowing down a connecting tube, the jackhammer’s pile driver bangs the drill bit down onto the concrete surface. No sooner does it do that, a valve reverses the air flow retracting the pile driver and allowing the drill bit to relax. Then, the pile driver goes down again. In one minute, the jackhammer repeats this cycle fifteen hundred times. That’s some signature of demolition in a town, whose ancient rulers are remembered by their long surviving temples. Everything in life has two sides; where there is construction, there is destruction. Where there is empire, there are ruins. Where there is furious climbing, there is exile. By night, Ganesh Prasad had gaping holes up front and the hotel had temporarily shut down. Illegal the building may have been, but the cheap eatery had greeted the morning with South Indian devotional songs, recreating an ambiance from my childhood in Kerala when dawn arrived with songs from the nearby temple. Anand, our fruit juice vendor, had lost the facade of his shop to the bulldozer. Next morning as I stepped over the rubble for some lemon juice, he bore no sign of remorse. His family was large, seven brothers and sisters. They had three juice stalls in Badami. He would rather think of the promise for business in today than rue the damage inflicted. Life carries on. “ Some fresh lime?’’ Anand asked. “ Yes please,’’ I said.

Illustration: Shyam G Menon

Illustration: Shyam G Menon

The ordinary was balm for my soul fried by failed climbs. And as it soothed, so the ordinary seemed as courageous and extraordinary as the spectacle of climber on rock. I was discovering a side of the universe I hadn’t noticed before. However I sincerely hope the extraordinary visited eleven year-old Salim who sat watching our last day of climbing at Badami, sullen-faced. He lived with his mother, younger sister and brother. Salim quit school after five years to work at a local hotel. He worked from 7 AM to 9 PM, earning twenty five rupees. His mother washed dishes at the same establishment. The father, given to drinking, worked in Goa and often left the family to fend for themselves. You could sense anger and disappointment in the little boy. Now with strict laws in place, he could not work as well. “ Employers fear trouble if a small boy works,’’ he said. Listening to him, I felt my disappointments in climbing were trivial. Salim needed a king’s blessing or at the very least a bulldozer, to set right his life. The only king around had become a name on the odd signboard, the only bulldozer in town was too ordinary for the miracle he sought.

All this was long ago. Badami has since got climbing routes in grade eight, including the high eights. Back in Mumbai, I slowly withdrew from climbing and climbing groups. I did climb in Badami after the episode mentioned in this article but never as involved in climbing as it was previously. For most matters concerned, my exile from climbing continues. I haven’t yet regained my affection for rock climbing.

(The author Shyam G Menon is a freelance journalist based in Mumbai. For more on Badami please visit this link: https://shyamgopan.wordpress.com/2014/02/21/beyond-ganesha-part-one/ and navigate on from there for further reading.)

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I CAN HEAR THE GHOST LAUGHING

Illustration: Shyam G Menon

Illustration: Shyam G Menon

Years ago, when I was in school, April-May was crucial.

In those months, depending on how efficient the government of the day was, tenth standard results got published in Kerala.

The top rank holders were prominently featured in the media. On the day of results, classmates were sieved to individuals. Marks asserted themselves as formidable sieve. The brilliant ones took science and math to be doctor or engineer, the near brilliant embraced commerce for eventual MBA or CA and the balance sought refuge in arts. It was a day or two of madness in which, academically brilliant teenagers were positioned as genius for eternity. They thanked their parents, grandparents and teachers – a neat little Oscar acceptance speech, which appeared in the media. The news reports were supposed to be ` inspiring.’ I was an average student. Tenth was for me, a pain. There was life before tenth and plenty of life after, yet the tenth-board exams were deemed decider of life. I was glad to get it over with, study arts and end up doing many things, among them – the occasional distance run. Unfortunately the long arm of our board exam-mindset, reaches out into running too. As we obsess with timing and performance for distinction, I sometimes wonder – how far should I run to escape the recurrent ghost of April-May? Then I realize it is my head that is the ghost’s home.

Here’s an edited abstract from Wikipedia on how the site describes running: Running is a method of terrestrial locomotion allowing humans and other animals to move rapidly on foot. Running is a type of gait characterized by an aerial phase in which all feet are above the ground (though there are exceptions). The term running can refer to any of a variety of speeds ranging from jogging to sprinting. It is assumed that the ancestors of mankind developed the ability to run for long distances about 2.6 million years ago, probably in order to hunt animals. Running has been described as the world’s most accessible sport. I chose Wikipedia because it was a mere click away. I am sure there are other sites and books that have explained it as well, perhaps better. They will all agree on a few things – most of us can run; running is very old in the history of our species. Over centuries of human evolution, it has also become a simple thing to do. Indeed the beauty of running is its simplicity. Even amid injury (as I am right now) and the realization that this seemingly simple activity has become a high impact sport thanks to contemporary lifestyle, one’s desire to get back to running is fueled by its perceived simplicity, not complexity. Running is widespread, simple, accessible and enjoyable. Unless that combination of our times – money, media and marketing – decides to keep it otherwise; a case of our own instincts and weaknesses packaged as industry, then returned to haunt the head.

Let’s not make a board exam of running.

Easier said than done?

I can hear the ghost laughing.

(The author Shyam G Menon is a freelance journalist based in Mumbai.)

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AN IMPRINT FOR NOVEMBER

Illustration: Shyam G Menon

Illustration: Shyam G Menon

Footprints are the stars of suspense and mystery.

Depending on context, a footprint can be much more than the trace of a foot or boot-sole on earth. A common contextual feeling among hikers for instance, is: I am not lost, I am not alone! Provided of course, whoever walked by is good company. Can you be sure of that? A footprint on earth is also imprint in restless brain. It is what it is and then, it is what you make of it. Or is it what it is because of what you make of it? Ha! – says Holmes, that solver of mysteries. Eyes closed; head thrown back, palms joined, a mocking smile on his lips, the triumph in needling Watson with his occasional barbed quips showing through.

One thing I know – I can’t be Holmes, for there is nothing as delightful as watching the character from far. Inhabit him and you trade that perspective for the hound’s nose glued to a trail. I’d rather be Watson capable of seeing Holmes or better still – the reader of a book or viewer of a TV serial showing them both, for Holmes with Watson alongside, is one of the finest character portrayals there is.

In my case, Holmes is an imprint in the brain.

Nobody means Sherlock Holmes more to me than the late Jeremy Brett.

I still remember my first meeting with Holmes. I was approaching middle school. Readers Digest was popular those days. Once in a while, the magazine sent out a list of the books it published, which readers could buy. There was a thick blue book with fiction abstracts and a red one. I ordered the red; my cousins procured the blue. The blue had chapters from Sherlock Holmes. Ours was a family appreciative of the creative arts. On weekends, the cousins gathered to indulge in some form of creativity. Initially it was painting; slowly that gave way to each one getting serious in some chosen passion – dance, music, reading, writing, painting, football, aero modelling, films etc. It continued till tenth standard, maybe some more. Then life, like water poured down a funnel, was recast in service of livelihood. It is like the story of mineral water; once was free, flowing water, now eminently saleable in bottle. By the time we finished college, we were just that – saleable.

Somewhere in the period partial to creativity, an evening at their house, Manju and Rajeev kept me spellbound by their narration of The Speckled Band. That was my first Sherlock Holmes story and it came from the blue book. Not exactly fond of snakes, the snake in the story left an impression, strong enough for me not to forget either the story or my cousins’ narration. For several years, Holmes stayed just that in the head – a story. I came across his collected adventures at other households in the extended family but the youngster in me wasn’t keen on a character set decades back in the past. My mother told me that Holmes was even a case of character brought back from the dead by popular demand. Such had been his impact. It failed to register for I wanted modern characters. Time passed by. The shape of Indian cars changed; the shape of household appliances changed – among them, the television. Colour TV arrived and with time, cable TV.

Among programmes telecast was the Granada TV series, ` The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes’ with Jeremy Brett as Holmes. It changed everything for me. I found myself keeping my appointment with the telecast that opened with unmistakable violin-notes. A simple, bare tune that resonated of an era gone by and told you clearly – get ready to be transported back in time. It was a fine series with good performances by not just the lead actors but also those making special appearances as important characters in each episode. In my opinion, the series was one of those productions in which the average quality across episodes stayed pretty high. Brett and his committed, intense portrayal of the detective grew on me. Above all, for someone sold on ` modern,’ I found myself enjoying the eccentricities of ` period.’ Everything, from conduct to language – it lingered distinct in the slower pace of the past, it cut a style. Holmes had style! When the series ended, I acquired a thick volume showcasing all the Sherlock Holmes adventures and set about reading it. There is still stuff I haven’t read, stuff I forget. I am glad it is so for it lets me get back.

Thanks to the Internet, I have sampled different actors as Holmes. None inhabited the character or created Holmes like Brett did. I don’t hold portrayals strictly accountable to what the author prescribed in every little detail. No, I don’t. That is probably why Brett impressed me so much. I was a blank slate for although I had read some of the detective’s adventures, characterization is picked up easier from an enacted piece than a written one. Brett provided a face to a figure, voice to a brain, life to a character and mannerisms, even arrogance, for recall; plus intensity. For all the logic Holmes attributes to his ability to deduce, Brett infused a crucial contrarian element to his Holmes – a touch of mystery. The sum total of what he offered as Holmes was a portrait of deduction as much enigmatic and enticing as a case delivered as question mark. It was the perfect package for imprint by image. The man was a genius; perhaps more accurately – it was acting genius unleashed by defining role. No Basil Rathbone or Peter Cushing for me and definitely no Robert Downey Jr or Benedict Cumberbatch; it has to be Jeremy Brett. Like imprint in mind authoring perception of footprint, Brett became Holmes for me. David Burke and Edward Hardwicke did an excellent job essaying Dr Watson in the series. I am partial to Burke. His Watson showed the spunk to stand up to Holmes, a sharp contrast to say, the rather bumbling Watson of Nigel Bruce.

I am not a researcher on Holmes or an academic knowing every detail of every story. I have also not been to London and Baker Street. I am sure learned discussions on Holmes and Brett may hold opinions different from mine. My journey with Holmes continues in occasional readings of the book, still enjoyed as return to character and language and every once in a while – recourse to YouTube where the old Granada series survives and Brett comes alive as Holmes to the fans he made.

Brett died in 1995.

He was born November 3, 1933, three years after Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes, passed away.

This is a November.

(The author, Shyam G Menon, is a freelance journalist based in Mumbai.)

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THE SMART LIFE

Illustration: Shyam G Menon

Illustration: Shyam G Menon

When I was young, the media engaged as access to wider world.

Now it sticks crowded world into everything. No quiet moments of solitude anymore. It is an epidemic of others in your head. My old phone has no Internet; I only text and answer calls. No apps, no Facebook, no anything else I don’t yet know of. Not having a smartphone, my friends assure me, condemns me to oblivion. The world’s business, they warn, is being swept into smartphones by a tsunami of money. Being one with the swarm is the smartest option in life reduced to beehive. It puzzles. `Smart’ owes much to apartness. By which yardstick, thinking independently should be smart. Perhaps there isn’t anything called independence in consumerist world. You go where business goes.

Every time I step into a Mumbai commuter train, I feel disappeared. Everyone has a smartphone. I used a cassette player when train commuters shifted to CD player; a CD player when they moved to MP3 player and now, a MP3 player as they do finger tip-magic on their all-in-one smartphone – it takes calls, types, plays music, screens movies, makes payments, plays games. What doesn’t it do? I hang on to my old phone for the relief of what it doesn’t do. “ What matters is the music and how well you listen to it. Smartphone, MP3, CD or cassette – that’s irrelevant,’’ I argued. My friend was unimpressed. “ How long will you be like this?’’ he asked. Working in a bank, he knows the tsunami has started. They are jamming whole banks into the smart phone. When he speaks so, I picture myself in deep space, waving good bye to planet Earth. You have seen that scene many times in movies – the actor reaches out to you like a drowning individual and then slowly recedes, becoming smaller and smaller (all the while reaching out) till he disappears into inky blackness. I am hurled towards Pluto. Cut! Actually, I should be grateful for having a friend who is concerned. What he told me was for my own good. I was thinking of all this when I boarded the train for my daily rendezvous with fading.

Early evening-trains usually bring a rush of college students. This was a Saturday. The youngsters were there but not many. I took my seat and pulled out my MP3 player from the bag. The young man next to me moved closer to the window; he kept his bag between us. Another of the tech-savvy, keeping distance from the obsolescent, I thought. Relax man, I don’t infect and even if I do it is just this harmless disease called hyposmartivity, entirely curable with a prick to the ego – I wanted to tell him. Then he returned his phone to the bag and pulled out a book. That was when I noticed his phone, very similar to mine. Unable to contain myself, I told him, “ you know I thought I am the only one still walking around with a phone like that.’’  He laughed. “ Yeah, I carry an old one,’’ he said tad sheepishly as nerds do when confronted with their lack of mainstream cool. As he spoke, he glanced around nervously at some of the other seats, where smartphone-totting youngsters sat, glued to their screens.

“ I don’t want a smartphone. I am happy with what I have. But they say I will have to upgrade because our money is going to be managed using smartphones,’’ I said. Despite my guard, my cynicism showed through. It always does, for I feel angry that life is increasingly about swimming with one tide or the other. Those who won’t, should seek exile – that’s the emergent logic. Makes me wonder – what happened to interesting people? You know the sort who felt life by exploring the universe alone. Stay positive, stay positive – I pinched myself. The college student smiled – a sorry you lost but don’t tell me you weren’t warned-smile. “ In my case, I know what smartphones can do. But if I carry one, I won’t study. It is a distraction. So I don’t keep one,’’ the youngster said. What? – I was stunned. For a second, I must have looked like Utpal Dutt’s Bhawani Shankar beholding Amol Palekar’s Ramprasad Dashrathprasad Sharma in Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s wonderful film, Gol Maal. I looked at the young man, eyes open wide in admiration. “ Appreciate that, your ability to know what you want and choose accordingly,’’ I said. It was as much encouragement to the other as it was discreet pat on the back for my own eccentricities. That evening on the train, I didn’t hide my MP3 player. I let myself be.

I think that young man will find his way abroad to a fine university. He seemed studious, hard working and committed enough to do that. Having dodged the smartphone to study well, go overseas and make his mark, what will he do next? Side with the swarm and sell me a smarter smartphone? To uncle with love – free ticket to Pluto. Who knows? A few days after this train journey, a good friend, concerned about my obsolescence, put her foot down and said I am getting her old smartphone as she is upgrading. God bless her. But the eccentric devil in me can’t help feeling amused – a device with so many functions to manage freelance writer’s paltry income? It is overkill. Still, I will go with it; be smart for a change.

(The author, Shyam G Menon, is a freelance journalist based in Mumbai.)

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FORGET, REMEMBER

Photo & imaging: Shyam G Menon

Photo & imaging: Shyam G Menon

The other day I woke up unable to recall the one song I have loved all these years.

It was a frantic moment; almost as if I had lost myself.

The first time I heard that song, I had immediately fallen in love with it for the journeying groove in which it couched its truth. Everything about it moved except for its core; what’s more, everything moved because its core recognized the futility of staying put.

So I thought. So I choose to continue believing for I don’t usually latch on to songs by their lyrics. I don’t read music. The times I memorized lyrics and sang, I felt surrendered to a purpose. Music, for me, has no purpose. It just, is; much like life. You can snuff out life just as you turn off the music. But when you are alive, can you question consciousness? It is what it is. Similarly, you like music. Don’t try explaining why your atoms and molecules rearranged to happiness, hearing the sounds. Don’t try explaining why you swayed to music. Let it be. And from that, some songs stay. Those that stay long, you may opt to work your way back from musical impression to the lyrics. It is a bit like finding a good friend. You know each other with time. You think you explained the other having unravelled the lyrics. Then, just when you thought you had it all explained, a whole new mystery starts! The cosmos is restless.

“ I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For’ – the line meant little to me when I first heard U2’s song, way back when their album ` The Joshua Tree’ was nominated for the Grammy Awards. The nominated songs and the award presentation used to be telecast as a half-hour capsule on national television those days in India. I fell for the song’s structure and progression right away. For me, its seminal line was merely a name to remember it by. What attracted was the whole thing.

Years passed. Now working away from home and my room with a music system, music transformed to small portable audio player and headphones. Eventually when I failed to keep pace with technology, it transformed to tunes in the head. I even liked returning from a month of self imposed ban on the media, to my music – hearing it with renewed freshness. My affection for the song was perhaps a sign of things to come, for my sense of life as adult has always been out-of-body, as though peering at passing sights from the confines of a self limiting-shape. Every time that procession of passing sights took hold, the song would fill my head. Indeed U2 was especially talented in creating such imagery through their music; many of their songs possess the feeling of travel. Wind in your hair, self on a comet streaking through the cosmos, the clarity in un-belonging. I could go on.  Larry Mullen Jr, Adam Clayton and The Edge – that’s a trio of talented rock musicians. They build the musical ambiance, the journeying spirit that bears forth the band’s lyrics and Bono’s vocals.

As the years passed, my affection for their music outgrew the one song I loved, to the many embodying that journeying spirit which the band captured in its work beautifully. But it was when one’s failures in life multiplied amid world inspired by media to worship perfection and success that I really understood (in my own way) why the words ` I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For,’ mattered. My daily life had become a clash of two trends – the comet-rider wanted to move on; earthly life, gripped by money, wanted to stagnate so that life’s explained ways can be milked for income.

What is life if it gets explained?

What if we found what we are looking for; what next?

Are we wired to find and settle down or are we wired for the journey?

I remember the first proper length of time I spent camped on a glacier surrounded by snow clad peaks. The remoteness of Zanskar, the whiteness of the peaks in the dark of the night – all stayed in mind. I am a very average climber. Rest assured, if I can do something, anybody can. I hiked, climbed rock, ran and cycled – in everything I did, I was very average. But I came off understanding why I liked doing those things or being in remote places away from people. Life is a quest; I still haven’t found what I’m looking for. Equally, if I found what I am looking for, what happens to the quest? It ends? Even the idea that there is no quest and only this life to endure as the wise love to tell you – how would you like it delivered; as a truism at start that denies the journey or as discovery in life lived as a quest?

A lot of people these days emphasize the importance of looking inward.

They have a point. It is augmented by the fact that the ancients advised so, which suggestion I am not a fan of for I like being alive to my times. I am not a yogi to feel rested and peaceful within the walls of my being, universe internalized.

Photo & imaging: Shyam G Menon

Photo & imaging: Shyam G Menon

I like my journey.

I felt alarmed when I couldn’t remember U2’s song.

My comet seemed stalled.

I spent the next couple of hours listening to U2’s songs and concerts; and in that, my old song.

I shed tears of joy.

Middle aged engine restarted.

I felt a gentle breeze kiss my face as journey recommenced.

So we traveled, till one day something else happened.

Out of the blue, a tune surfaced in my head and kept going on and on.

It wasn’t a song that latched on to my mind the first time I heard it years ago.

But the way it resurfaced, I could sense urgency.

As with U2, I got on to the Internet and spent much time listening to Sting, possibly the most gifted singer-musician out there. The song in question was ` If I Ever Lose My Faith in You’ from his 1993 album ` Ten Summoner’s Tales.’ The funny thing about suddenly having this song in my head is that it wasn’t as imprinted in my brain as some of Sting’s other compositions. But that day, the song about losing faith wouldn’t leave the head. It wasn’t totally surprising for I had been experiencing a sense of loss, something slowly vanishing. I don’t know exactly what I am losing faith in. Like I said before the precise cause for a song’s lyrics don’t engage me. Over analyzed and over articulated, world by technical mind has become boring. Often a song strikes a chord for no better reason than that it did. It is like finding curves in world made monotonous by grids and pixels. I know I am losing faith in something. Don’t ask me to describe it as if my saying so will help you fix it. How can the problem find the solution? In bits and pieces, the song offered imperfect words for the predicament. Above all, it swept me with its swaying music, hinting in its moments of wordless fluidity a refuge for the un-belonging I know is mine.

Un-belonging and universe are the same.

(The author, Shyam G Menon, is a freelance journalist based in Mumbai. This article is the expanded version of a piece that appeared in The Economic & Political Weekly.)

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NOTES FROM A JOURNEY / SHIMLA-SPITI-MANALI-LEH

Illustration: Shyam G Menon

Illustration: Shyam G Menon

“ For the bus to Spiti, you have to go to the new bus stand. You will get everything there, food and room to stay,’’ the helpful taxi driver said.

He delivered me to an impressive building with bus bay on first floor and a hotel, couple of floors up. I had just reached Shimla from Delhi; that bus dropping me on a road some five kilometres away and above the new bus depot. The bus to Spiti was at 6PM. Ticket booked, I took the elevator to the hotel and alighted onto a swanky lobby that contrasted the general affordability level of the transport bus-using population below, including me. The receptionist assessed me as I sought a room. The assessment was justified. It was peak tourist season. A room cost Rs 4000. I was shocked. Between airports, railway stations and bus stations, bus stations have traditionally been the most plebeian. Maybe this was a hotel meant for those hiring entire buses to travel and not a mere half or third of a seat? Or maybe the hotel catered to families – the standard unit of Indian existence – and I was too single for the economics to make sense. Or maybe I just missed the bus to riches, which everyone took in the last two decades. That’s quite possible. To live is to find one’s own time warp. I am in mine.

At the only other hotel in the neighbourhood, the sole available room was pegged at Rs 2000. I didn’t want my brief rest to cost that much. I made my way back uphill to the city’s crowd and congestion, where I had spotted a dharmshala. The dharmshala was fully occupied. It was now raining. “ Looking for a room?’’ a tout asked, extending his umbrella over my head. I followed him to a promised reasonably-priced room, down a steep, narrow path to a narrow, tall building. My request for the cheapest room yielded a space best described as the tapering end of a triangle with three walls built tightly around a cot. I wondered how they would take the cot out. Break down the walls? I settled for the second cheapest room, rested and then walked around a bit. The bus to Spiti was crowded. As we exited Shimla, I saw the city from various tiers. Hill towns have become thick with matchbox-buildings. Shimla amazed for the number of vehicles it packed in. All that steel – moving, parked and caught in traffic snarls – made it resemble a junkyard. Probably why I liked my time on the city’s Mall Road, closed to traffic. In 1972, Shimla had been the first hill station up north, I visited. I thought I saw the hotel we had stayed in then; from its balcony, on a cold, snowy morning with my parents savouring the heat from a tray of hot coals, I had seen Shimla’s railway station in the distance. I found an old hotel with an old shop selling coal nearby and if I erased some new buildings, a line of sight to the railway station. That’s why the junkyard look saddened me. It was like fungus to an old photo.

I reached Manali from Spiti via Kunzum La. At this pass, the mountains seem parked in your front yard. The small town of Reckong Peo, passed earlier on the approach to Kaza (in Spiti) from Shimla (you change buses at Reckong Peo), had hosted similar views. In the immediacy and dimension of their mountain scenery, both Kunzum La and Reckong Peo reminded me of another town from far away – Kumaon’s Munsyari. The deeply engaging parts of the Shimla-Kaza route are the portions before and after Reckong Peo. It is particularly so when done in the regular state transport bus; no frills, a seat in a metal box on wheels, jets of cold air shot in through gaps in the glass window, sleepy people sitting and standing, every pothole an orchestra of rattling vehicle parts, much ache in the butt. Ahead of Reckong Peo and just past the Kharcham Wangtoo hydro-electric project, the road, perched on steep hill sides, is stingy on space to manoeuvre and with segments eroded by the most recent spate of natural phenomena. Several u-turns couldn’t be negotiated at one go entailing manoeuvres on tricky slopes; all this at midnight and early morning (it was a night bus) with the passengers, mostly locals, utterly calm through it all.

Illustration: Shyam G Menon

Illustration: Shyam G Menon

I thought of our passage as a pair of headlights, high up on a mountain face enveloped in inky blackness. As if that wasn’t enough, periodically through the night, passengers got off at their stops and walked with a torch – sometimes none – to their houses, identifiable in the distance by a single electric light somebody had left on as GPS for the late night navigation on foot. Next morning the section past Reckong Peo, debuted as a muddy, bumpy road above the river Sutlej in its early stage past the Indo-Tibet border, easily one of the most furious flows I have seen. The river barrelled on churning up mud and crashing against rocks. Crumbs of earth from the road-edge occasionally rolled off into the turbulent waters below. By the time I reached Kaza, I had developed considerable respect for the driver and conductor of the state transport buses I took. It is one thing being responsible for just oneself on a bicycle or a motorcycle or a car, on these roads. It is another, ferrying people safely. I also remember Tabo. When the driver turned off the bus engine at this settlement, the afternoon silence was inviting. You felt away from everything.

Manali was bursting with tourists. I sipped coffee in the security of a first floor-restaurant, seated by the window, watching the crowds in the street below. If you seek the mountains to be away from people, this was its very antithesis. I wanted to run away. “ Two more days and the schools will reopen. Then you will see less people,’’ a hotel manager assured. I bought the last available seat on a bus and fled to Delhi the very next day. I had to be back in Manali, in a week’s time. On the return trip to Manali from Delhi, my unassertive self was quiet. Not so a foreigner lady who faced the same predicament as I did. Both of us had booked seats originally shown as on the penultimate row of the bus. The seats we got matched the numbers on our reservation slips, except we were in the last row. In the transition from diagram in cyber space to reality, the bus had shrunk! We got thrown around and as the journey progressed, the heat from the rear-engine cast us and everyone else on that row into a sauna of sorts. “ Incredible India,’’ one of them quipped. We reached a Manali that was less crowded. With schools reopened and tourists thereby less, the taxi cost from Manali to Leh had also corrected. That was a pleasant surprise.

Ongoing construction schemes took the sheen off walking in Leh’s main market. A hoarding announced it as a beautification scheme in progress. “ The work has been going on for a while and the state of the market road affects business. Fewer people drop by,’’ a shopkeeper in the main market said. Away from the town centre, despite rising tourism, Leh has managed to keep an architectural idiom in place – at least its hotels and guesthouses have subscribed to a minimum code. As yet, you see little of the garish steel and glass structures resembling giant sunglasses stuck in the ground, which is how buildings are in India’s cities and increasingly so, in its hill towns. Mark the expression – as yet. Who knows what the future will bring to the hills? Now four or five visits old, I must confess I have an emergent problem with Leh – noise. It and vehicle emissions are registered strongly in the town’s narrow roads set in the clean air of 10,000ft. Loud, thumping four strokes are music to two wheeler riders. It is noise to others; literally bullets shredding peace and conversation.

On July 21, the final phase of our journey commenced. The flight out from Leh to Delhi got cancelled. It was attributed to bad weather, except – our airline was the only one cancelling; others operated. Maybe bad weather loves this airline? Worse was the experience of cancellation. It was several announcements of continued delay leading to eventual cancellation, a junior officer assigned to face the passengers’ ire and her superior, the local airline manager, conveniently disappeared. The dumped passengers received tea and biscuits at the airport’s canteen. There was no assurance of an extra flight the next day to accommodate us. For several hours the cancellation did not register on the airline’s computer system. “ What cancellation? The flight left on schedule,’’ the airline’s call centre replied.

Illustration: Shyam G Menon

Illustration: Shyam G Menon

Getting seats on other airlines is better said than done amid Leh’s tourist season. Many years ago, in the days preceding Internet-based reservation at Indian Railways, as a journalist working in Delhi, I used to think that Kerala was the worst-treated in terms of access. Trains to Kerala were few, heavily booked and airline tickets to India’s southern tip were expensive. Leh is perhaps a quarter of the distance from Delhi as Kerala is. But in tourist season, airline tickets from Leh to Delhi can cost as much as Rs 20,000, sometimes more.  It is cheaper to fly overseas! The market lauds it as ` dynamic pricing’ (so fashionable is it that even the Indian Railways wants to try it). I asked my guest house owner in Leh whether he got any relief being a local. “ If we plan ahead, we manage to get tickets at lower price. Else we are in the same boat as you,’’ he said. On previous visits, I learnt, this was partly the handiwork of package-tourism blocking seats in bulk. At one point, the trade’s motive was so clear that a now defunct airline used to fly in just for Leh’s tourist season and stay off the cold desert for the rest of the year.

That night the airline computer system at last acknowledged flight cancellation and promised an extra flight. Next day, Leh was due for a taxi strike from 6AM. The air travellers of the day rented wheels to the airport early in the morning, landing up in front of a still shut airport at 4AM. At least one tourist tucked into a sleeping bag at the gate. We imagined a rock concert and the faithful camped for guaranteed entry. After the inevitable Indian mess that followed, we waited patiently post-security check, boarded the aircraft and clapped when the plane commenced taxiing.

An hour later, we were in Delhi, the self absorbed capital imagining Incredible India.

(The author, Shyam G Menon, is a freelance journalist based in Mumbai)

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A RAINY FRIDAY

Illustration: Shyam G Menon

Illustration: Shyam G Menon

Friday, June 19.

Heavy rain in Mumbai.

Trains services were hit.

Schools shut; my neighbour’s son was walking around in the rain.

He seemed happy for it.

Mumbai likes the rain. But when it rains hard, it sits up and takes note. There is that memory of a July 26 from ten years ago, which haunts. Last month was unbearably hot. May 2015 was reported as the hottest May in recent times. Over 2200 people died of the heat in India. Now the gathered grey pleases and worries Mumbai in equal measure. There is an emergent trend in the rain to suddenly gift intense spells and prolonged downpours as compared to the steadier, stretched out pattern of before.

Friday’s heavy rain began on Thursday night.

Thursday night is also when Friday dawns these days of Internet with the next morning’s news already available to peruse. Among prominent news therein was: Pope Francis had spoken up for the environment. He wanted the world to take note of climate change and mend its ways. I would have viewed it as just another bit of news had he not faulted businesses and companies as well. That struck a chord.

The thing is, you can’t tackle humanity’s problems with one foot in the market and one foot in situation craving change. Money seeks to guard against insecurity and in its effort to do so, is very conservative. It does not court potential loss. Its style of transition is to milk an existing cash cow, keep investing in the unsure new and when the new has become surer, wean off the old. This takes time. It’s probably why despite years since the world first reported the hole in the ozone layer, we merely drifted further and further down the road to global warming and climate change. The market doesn’t yet perceive the fight against climate change as urgent. Businesses rarely take u-turns. To shift course they seek critical mass, maybe the Pope and some more; perhaps lot more. Leave alone business, this tendency has pervaded human existence for containable, responsive small formats are giving way to lumbering mega formats. Relevant change is actually becoming more and more difficult. Problem is – what we are beset with exceeds concerns of profitability. You wish to see some evolved intelligence in the market-animal. That’s asking for too much. Even the existing buzz around employment is: enjoy the money; don’t think about the work.

Roughly a month short of ten years ago, on a day of rain and tide like this with however an intense spell of cloud burst in between, Mumbai was treated to how money behaves. On July 26, 2005, while the city flooded, the local stock exchange indices gained. Next day, thanks to many people staying back at brokerages, trading was again brisk. News of several dead in the rain had emerged. But on a low volume of trade, the indices gained again, the BSE Sensex breaching the 7600 mark for the first time. The market was just doing its job. It has no need to imagine differently. The market is the home of money, the cold glue in the human ant hill.

For some time now, the market – the sum total of business and companies – has been this strange mental repressor. It gives us money to enjoy but delays relevant shifts which must happen in our time and instead, prolongs the old. The trend won’t change unless money shifts from the repressive spot it is currently parked in, to more meaningful spots. But how will money shift if all that money cares for is its own secure multiplication? It is evident in how any change must first satisfy questions around business model. Freelance writer was also asked recently by employed ex-colleague, “ do you have a business model?’’ It felt like a heartless but inevitable epitaph. I can’t dispute the truth. Can I? In the resultant favouring of those changes with profitable business models, we have been sold as fantastic innovation, stuff that certainly mints money. But did they create real difference? – I wonder. Did your life dramatically alter because you could drive a monster of a car on the road; have 1000 songs in a device in your pocket, post your look every two minutes on the Internet or litter the world with cyber trails of whatever you do? In fact, the experiential aggregate of engaging in these ` changes’ would possibly be to internalize the culture of excess and make oneself inert to the real changes required. Married to contemporary scale many of these sponsored changes have the quality of waves sweeping us off our feet. Assessed for relevance, this isn’t much different from the impractical idealism of freelance journalism. My ex-colleague is perhaps the more sustainable of two cases of irrelevance then? Maybe. I suspect, if you wish to partner the really relevant new you will have to take a pay cut for no money will court the relevant new if risk is not lowered. Right now nobody wants a pay cut. Nothing new happens. Or more accurately, what is `new’ is a lot of trends that money loves. That’s viable business model.

For some reason, I ended Thursday listening to Neil Young sing `Old Man.’ Afterwards he spoke of the hole in the sky and the need for sustainable farming. Stuck in my office the night of July 26, 2005, I remember listening to Traffic’s ` Dear Mr Fantasy’. That night, many people in the city were at their office or someone else’s. Outside it rained. Late afternoon, Friday; it was still raining in Mumbai. The Internet had photos of flooded railway tracks, waterlogged roads, fallen trees and marooned vehicles. In chat rooms, Mumbai’s municipal corporation – veteran of weathering criticism every monsoon – was under attack. The state chief minister visited the corporation. Later he tweeted asking everyone to be safe. On Friday, Mumbai reportedly received ten day’s worth of its regular monsoon in one day. Two people died; search was on for a missing third. The stock market gained. It closed Friday at 27,316. The 7600 from ten years ago seemed unrecognizable.

Flooded city though was most recognizable.

(The author, Shyam G Menon, is a freelance journalist based in Mumbai)

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HEAT WAVE

Illustration: Shyam G. Menon

Illustration: Shyam G. Menon

This summer has been deadly.

So far, over 2200 people have died from the heat in India, most of them in central India and parts of north India and eastern India.

It has been a heat wave of several days.

While heat waves have been there before and people have died, this is the highest death toll in the past nearly four decades.

As June 2015 dawned, the monsoon was reportedly nearing the subcontinent.

This year’s monsoon is tad delayed.

The regular debate on how good the rains will be is on.

Once upon a time, the idea of good rain was the monsoon itself.

Now a super organism of 1.2 billion people with hunger and consumption to match, India’s worry around rain and agriculture is more.

As the economy took centre stage, ` how good’ as measured goodness, became annual fashion.

Spread of rainfall and intensity mattered; percentage replaced perception.

Simply put, good rain is sufficient rain, where it matters, when it matters.

Unfortunately it is becoming an all too familiar pattern: life on land wilts under scorching heat, everyone prays for rain and the monsoon’s passage is delayed, arrested or hijacked by unexpected developments.

There are delays in monsoon – delay before onset; delay after onset, even lulls in monsoon not different from lethargy to human brought on by heat wave.

Long after the monsoon’s birth and its arrival in our neighbourhood, there is the potential for cyclone, anticyclone and other such lures.

Freaks are many in contemporary weather.

The monsoon cavorts with these freaks.

From mere rain occurring annually, we are at last noticing the complex nature behind rain faithfully delivered.

Years ago when I was in school, El Nino was warming of the ocean off the coast of Chile in South America, which we studied in geography class.

Now it finds mention in the news every summer, for its occurrence and non occurrence affects India’s monsoon.

The interconnectedness of global weather; its vast underlying network of events – it is humbling insight.

Does it humble us?

Our egos are big.

We live as we please with our growing numbers unquestioned, our ways unchallenged, ourselves above nature and none above us.

Our survival is all that matters.

The perspective takes its toll.

What is sure from summers of the recent past and the summer of 2015 is that Indian summers are getting hotter.

News reports quoting studies say extreme weather will be a feature going forward.

Get ready for hot summers.

Mumbai bakes and steams.

My sister Yamuna, who took a few days off from work in Wardha to visit me in Mumbai, texted on her return to central India: “ 47 degrees.’’

She had found hot, humid Mumbai a relief.

When I complained, she said, “ at least, you are not getting hot wind in your face.’’

Even in Mumbai – the city that never sleeps – signs of afternoon listlessness abound.

Despite the high number of deaths from heat, the issue and its underlying message haven’t seeped into India’s imagination.

Occasionally in the wake of rising death toll, a few people comment on the importance of preserving forests and planting trees.

A lesser number wonders about urbanization, traffic and concrete jungles as amplifiers of heat.

India’s imagination is controlled by the supporters of unchanging India.

I leave it to you to think what unchanging India is.

To my mind, it exceeds the old, the traditional and the conservative and includes the burden of 1.2 billion people trying to survive earning money.

How will such a rat race and its priorities, notice the significance of climate change?

The gravity of climate change doesn’t register in unchanging India.

In some days from now, when the rain drops fall, the summer of 2015 and its death toll will become statistic; another reminder, forgotten.

(The author, Shyam G Menon, is a freelance journalist based in Mumbai)