Author Archives: Shashwat DC

Tale of the Farmer, Rats and a Cobra

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Long long ago, in a not so far-off land, there lived a farmer with his prosperous land. The piece of land was much fertile, in fact so much so that it could easily feed the farmer and his family, and even leave him a decent surplus. Sadly, wherever there is prosperity, follows the crisis. Not surprisingly, the farmer’s land was invaded by a bunch of fair-skinned rascals, who took over the land, made the farmer toil, and took away all the surplus. Suddenly, in the field which used to feed and leave a surplus, the farmer and his family were facing starvation. For what seemed like a long age seemingly stretching for two centuries, the farmer suffered, starved and toiled. The land was his but the produce was not. He strove hard against the new lords, and finally was able to evict them. And he heaved a big big sigh. His land was his again, the food was his again. He dreamed of a good future, quite unlike the time before the fair-skinned crooks had come.

With a renewed vigour and zeal, he started toiling, it was his time in the sun. And then one day while taking a stroll in his field, the farmer heard a squeak, and spotted a little mouse. Looking at the field that produced so much, the farmer thought how much could the poor famished rat eat. So he let it be. Time passed, and as the farmer toiled through the day and night, getting his rewards, he could hear the squeaks getting multiplied. But then he was too happy and glad, to bother about a few or more rats.

‘God has been kind, and its his wish’, he say to his family. This went on for a long time, and in the same time the mice turned into medium sized rats, and then into huge bandicoots. They thrived on the land and its surplus. And then came a time, when the pestilence grew so much that the farmer’s output was affected. First his surplus was steadily wiped off, and then his subsistence ration was. The farmer realised his folly, but alas it was too late. He tried killing a few with sticks, scaring them, but it would make no dent. The rats had reached a point, where a few dead was no issue. Newer ones were quickly added. Continue reading …

How to be Benarsi in 4 Easy Steps!

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Honestly, I do have these doubts at times that Shakespeare knew the city of Varanasi more intimately than we credit him for it. In fact, his oh so famous quip about the relevance of a name, or rather the irrelevance of it, was actually penned to encapsulate the radiant perseverance of the world’s oldest city. You see, a rose by any other name might smell as sweet, the name is hardly a factor there. But on the other hand, it is the city of Varanasi, or Benares, or Kashi that underscores the temperance and the James Prinsep_ varanasipermanence of things. Through the ages the motley township of a million temples closeted on either sides by two rivers Varuna and Assi, with the mighty Ganga flowing right through the heart of it, has been known by different names at different times, but it never really did matter, because no one name or a single title will ever be encapsulate the true essence of the city, the language that could do so, has not been invented as yet. Little wonder, through the very many ages the city of Kashi has been known by so many other names, Kasika, Avimukta, Anandavana, Rudravasa.

Subah-e-Banaras…

Step into the city at 4 am, you will be transported to another portal in a totally different dimension. A million temple clangs, a billion murmured hymns, the little rush of feet to the nearest ghat, the gentle wave of the serene ganga moving to its own cosmic hum, all this weave a magical blanket that rests over the city where time is of no consequence. Benares is regarded as the oldest living city in the world, it was a part of the original Mahajanapadas, the 16 republic states that dotted this land a thousand years before Christ was born, Athens, Troy or Sparta were mere tiny hamlets back then. Babylon was a thriving trade center, the Pyramidal pharaohs of Egypt were still very much in place, the roads to Rome had not yet been conceived, let alone being built and so on. With the legacy of the grand Harappa behind, the civilisation in the land was taking new shape. The city predates even Lord Mahavira. And not surprisingly a distraught prince confounded by the vagaries of life, death and the entangled cycle, found peace, solace, knowledge and nirvana sitting under a banyan tree in this very city. Kashi had the power to turn prince Siddhartha into Gautama Buddha.

The beauty of Kashi is that you don’t require an archaeologist to dig through the stratified mounds to uncover the passage of time. It is said that it is the favoured city of Lord Shiva, the destroyer, the ascetic, the all-pervading all powerful omniscient simpleton, Bholenath. Legend has it, that the city rests on one of the pointed tips of his trishul, thus protected by the very deity that destroys all. Not surprisingly, Kashi exists in a dimensional space, where time ceases to exist. The passage of time, hours, days, months, years, centuries, millenniums, is merely a statistic. Empires fall, empires created, new beliefs sprung up and old lose faith, the city has seen it all, gone through it all, without being affected or impacted. Kashi has always existed and will always, it has transcended the limitations imposed by of dimensions that we know, time, and space. Continue reading …

Open Letter to Arvind Kejriwal

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Dear Mr. Kejriwal,

Hope you are doing well. Inspired by the note that you wrote, I thought of dropping you a little one myself. I mean, the nation knows (apologies to Mr. Goswami) your views are pretty firm about how corrupt politics and crony capitalism has spoilt this “sone ki chidiya” nation of ours. You have taken on the very haughty and mighty, through your press conferences, revealing things that could not be revealed earlier, as there was no proof of them, before or now. While, going through your recent letter, I was impressed by your sheer concern about the nation, and its resources, and how it needs be saved at all costs. But then a sudden thought stuck me, a rather jarring one, and I thought I will ask you for an explanation, through your preferred route, an open letter.ArvindKejriwal2

The thing that concerns me is your silence on how bureaucracy (more so the corrupt one) has been one of the biggest bane of this nation. You have been unusually silent sir, on how cronyism and corruption is rampant in Indian bureaucracy. While there are but some 500 odd political leaders, and a few thousands MLAs. The bureaucracy is just around a  million strong and growing, and yes, in terms of corruption index they are no less above the board when compared to say a politician, or a business person. In fact, come to think of it, they are indeed more dangerous, I mean, you don’t have an idea of how much are these babus making, till one day there is an IT raid, and crores of cash, jewelery and property pop up. The corrupt bureaucracy is like a termite that is not on your face, but hollowing the insides. Ironically, Transparency International whose non-existent report you quoted, has apparently stated in one of its real reports that 62% of Indians have paid a bribe to get a job done at public office. There’s also some survey from 2009 that states that Indian bureaucracy is not only one of the least efficient but also one of the most corrupt among Asian nations. Continue reading …

Kachcha Coinage, Pukka History

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From 1750 to 1850, a unique set of coins proliferated in Central India, with little symbols and rough structure. Yet, the historical derivation goes much deep. Here is an attempt at time-travel.

The 18th Century was a very interesting time in the Indian history context, the Mughal empire after reaching the zenith in the previous century under Aurangzeb, had all but collapsed under a string of bickering successors. The Marathas. who had had just in a matter of decades gained ascendancy over a large tract of the subcontinent — from Peshawar (Pakistan) to Tamil Nadu, and from Bombay to Bengal on the east coast — lost the plot pretty swiftly too, especially after their rout by Ahmedshah Abdali in the Third Battle of Panipat in 1761. Close to the end of the century, the Marathas were a spent force, comprising of a loose confederacy of semi-autonomous states, like the Gaekwars, the Holkars and the Scindias. The Britishers, who had come in as traders in the garb of East India Company, were putting their plans in place from their base in the East to gain control in the new dynamics.  They were rubbing their hands in glee at the opportunity that lay in front of them.

Thus, in a manner of speaking, there was no real government in the subcontinent; rebellion, loot and anarchy, was a matter of everyday life. The populace had to suffer numerous excesses in terms of constant wars, and an uncertain future. Also, several famines wrought by climatic patterns and ill-management of resources, had added to the woe of the people at large. The prices of commodities were inflated. This was the time, when regional principalities proliferated. As uncertainty loomed, everything became temporal, even currency. And this is where we come across the 18th century indiaintriguing and interesting phenomenon of Kachcha Paisa that can be loosely translated from Hindi as “temporary money”. This set of Kachcha Paisa forms one of the most fascinating sets of coins in the Indian Numismatical (study of coins for the ignorant) context not only from a purely historical perspective but also as a study of the social dynamics that were in play at that day and time.

Essentially, the first mention of such a currency comes in 1823, by John Malcolm, who makes a mention of similar copper coins that are rudely cut pieces, show of stamp on one side, the established value of which was continually changed by local officers for the purpose of illicit profit. These coins were purportedly localised, “won’t pass 2 miles where it is coined, with a character that is so deteriorated, that the value changed every 2-3 months”.

But before we come to the temporal money, it is important to understand that over the very many centuries in India, right from 6th Century BC from the punch-marked series of the Mahajanapadas, coins were prevalent in India. With the Mauryas, Guptas, Cholas, Delhi Sultans and finally the Mughals, coins proliferated through the very lowest denominator. With the Delhi Sultans enforcing tax payments in coins, the barter system was largely pushed into the background, existing largely in a community setup. The traditional forms of exchange, namely, supari (betel-nut), bitter almonds, and cowries, existed but were gradually being replaced with “pukka” currency. Thus, while you could still find a potter in a 17th century village to sell you a cooking-pot in exchange of a half-a-sack of grain, he’d rather prefer that you paid him in Hali Sicca, the Ankushi rupee or even the Chandori rupee. Continue reading …

The Legacy of Sultan Manmohan Singh Tughlaq

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Time is a rather malleable entity, unpredictable and quite unfathomable. Linear it is, say many, like a fabric all meshed up, say few, heavy like gravity, like a quasar, multi-dimensional, ephemeral, unreal, say the rest. The passage of time, quantified by the circular rotation of two sinewy arms on our clocks, is meant to signify a sort of permanence, a moment that is lost or gone, ceases to exist. There’s nothing that one can do to bring it back, lost in the ever-infinite sea of eternity. Past is past, and present is present, and never the twain shall meet, is good a testament, that could have well been etched in stone on that tablets that were forged at Mount Sinai.

And yet for all its permanence, time sometimes also seems permeable, like a sponge or something. The little circles on one side forming a connection to another side. The connections are unmistakable, inescapable. And while the recorded history of our species only stretches a couple of thousand years, even in this short period we have seen events taking shape in different time, different climate, mirroring each other in a very strange ethereal manner. Separated by a vast ocean of time, yet, these events seem like some sort of cosmic clones of each other. History (which is a product of time) indeed has a very uncanny knack of repeating itself.

To give you an idea, lets flashback to 14th century India, much long before the very idea of India even firuzexisted. The precise time on the dial is set to sometime in the latter half of the century, somewhere say 1380s AD. The place is Firozabad, not very far from modern-day Delhi, and it’s the reign of Malik Feroze ibn Malik Rajab or more renowned as Sultan Feroze Shah Tughlaq. The Sultan is a septuagenarian man, lording over a dominion that is much weaker and lesser than what his pre-decessor had bequeathed to him. He is a sort of weakling, little in control of things around him. He had succeeded the strong-willed and maverick Sultan Muhammad bin Tughluq, who was most famous for his decree to shift the capital from Delhi to Daulatabad or his experiments with token currency that failed spectacularly. But unlike his predecessor, Feroze Shah Tughlaq was a softie, or a little more of fruitcake. When he took over in 1351, the empire was vast but in a mess. There was much confusion as Muhammad bin Tughluq had died without an heir, and in the ensuing unrest, Feroze was enthroned as the new sultan. Continue reading …

A billion reasons why India should be scared — really scared!

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Years back, when I had a stopover at the Heathrow Airport for a connecting flight to Mumbai, I had noticed something amusing. Over the 8 hours spent there, I spotted more browns than black or white. The whole airport complex was teeming with Indians. Left, right or wherever one could see there were Indians (possibly Pakistanis or Bangladeshis, as they are hardly discernible from us). I have been, ever since, joking about how we are extracting sweet revenge against the ‘Goras’ who colonized us for 200 years, by reverse-colonising them. And this time, there won’t be a battleground or bayonets, say like the Battle of Plassey. Instead, every fertile womb in India is a battleground, and every loaded prick is a bayonet. These ‘teen-gunaa lagaan’ British gentlemen will forever rue the fact as to why they ever came to India. It is now time to pay back ‘teen-gunaa’ (three times) for all those lagaans (taxes).

While India’s teeming story is fairly pervasive everywhere across the globe, from ‘Kaneda’ to Australia, thep-1 demographic boom is most visible in India itself, say in a city like Mumbai. Over the past three decades that I have been around this metropolis, I have seen the city been inundated with numbers far beyond the capacity. Earlier in the city, you had peak hours and non-peak hours for travel, based on the crowds and the absence of it. But now you have peak-hour and hyper-peak hour. There’s no escaping the crowds anywhere, anytime. For instance, I grew up spending very many evenings that turned into starry nights at the Juhu Beach, building castles of sand and digging pits. Nowadays, let alone building castles or forts, if you find yourself sufficient place to even stand, you would count yourself lucky. And no, this isn’t a phenomenon in Mumbai, as a handful of politicians who play migrant-politics would like us to believe. Mumbai is just a snapshot of the bigger illness.

Quite like Mumbai, India is bursting at the seams. There are just too many of us, at any given time. India accounts for a meagre 2.4% of the world surface area of 135.79 million sq km. Yet, it supports and sustains a whopping 17.5% of the world population. The fact of the matter is right there for anyone to see, the population of India is almost equal to the combined population of USA, Indonesia, Brazil, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Japan. Continue reading …

Half-Full or Full-Empty

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Typically, any lateral thinking workshop involves an exercise of a half-filled glass of water.

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“Is it full or empty?”, the gregarious moderator will ask. The exercise apparently highlights the power of hope, optimism and positive thinking. The moral being that even in the dourest situation, there’s always the hope of redemption. We aren’t over the cliff, till we are actually over it.

Were we to employ the same drill to the issue of water scarcity that plagues us, even an optimist will not be able to discern the glass as full, or rather half full. It is full-empty in an oxymoronic way. We seemed to have reached a stage that statistics, figures, projections, etc, don’t matter anymore. In fact, from no matter which angle you look at it, we are going to be in a big mess, if we aren’t in it already. It is an issue scarier than we can actually imagine.
Forget countries, even states within the same dominion are battling each other for every tiny water source. The current crisis in Andhra Pradesh over water is a vivid reminder of where we are headed. And when the whole world is going into a topsy-turvy, how can businesses continue as is? When the land is parched, the taps in the company premises will run dry as well. Just, last summer, in Aurangabad, Maharashtra, factories and breweries were shut for months simply because there was no water available. The cost of water is rising by the day, for instance, the average cost of water in Mumbai was `25 / m3 last year and shot up to `40/m3 this year. Businesses need now look at their water consumption from a purely economic purview. Continue reading …

Death of the Purple Canaries

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Mining can be a quite a hazardous vocation. Deep inside the burrows of the earth, miners dig for minerals, coal and other stuff to satisfy the ever-increasing appetite of our society, risking their very life and limbs in the process. In the wibbly-wobbly shafts, that can collapse at a moment’s notice shutting them forever from their loved ones, the miners look for reassurances in whatever manner they come, be it scientific or superstitious.  A little yellow canary in a cage is one of them,  renowned for its life-saving charms.

For ages, these little-cute-yellow-fluffy-birdies have been carried down the mine tunnel, often at the very front of the miner party as a good luck charm. These pale-coloured birds are very sensitive to dangerous gases like methane or carbon monoxide, and whenever they encounter it, they die rather swiftly and stoically. Their deaths are construed to be an alarm by the miners, to exit the tunnels immediately before the leaked deadly gases affect them.shutterstock_66032467

Do the miners love these canaries while they are alive, or possibly love them even more when they are dead, no one knows for sure. Yet, the death of these little canaries spells life for the many miners. Or one could say, that their deaths is a precursor of worsening times ahead, a warning of impending doom or destruction in case of status quo. It is a rather poetic or a prophetic end, depending on one’s objectivity. But one thing is for sure; no canary has been celebrated or knighted once dead. When they die, these birds are unknown and unwept. Their death is not a sacrifice, but merely an early sign. That’s how cruel life is.

Much like the canaries, though not an iota as cute, lives a species in our modern-day society. They are celebrated and feted, and fed and fattened. Yet, when they are sacrificed, not many tears are shed. This urban species is rather purple in its behaviour, and swiftly meets the end, when the economic conditions wary. They are most sensitive to forces of economics things like recession, depression or slowdown hit them hard. And their doom should be a warning for lot others, yet is often ignored.

Who are these little fluffies living out in our modern day cities, who aren’t so little anyways? Well, these purple canaries are also known by other synonyms like the fourth-estaters, the journalists, the presswallahs,  the jhollawallahs or whatever you call them. They live boxed in little cages, twittering nicely on a sunny day, when all goes well. Yet, when things go south, so do these chaps. In most cases, they will be the first ones to be retrenched, sacked or just booted out. A little visit to the local press-club will enlighten anyone on this rather ironical tale of a breed that gets to break bread with the high and mighty, yet, when the bread is at a premium, they are broken up easily instead. Thus, whenever there’s an economic descent or a slowdown, you will find more journos with their resumes on sites like Naukri.com and others. Continue reading …

India Gangraped

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In the aftermath of the heinous Delhi gang-rape case and the Mumbai gang-rape incident, numerous people were out on the roads holding candles, placards and what not. The media, as it is nature, went into frenzy; solemn anchors asked dire and direct questions. Panels were formed, experts were asked, politicians expressed outrage, protestors ranted loud. Newspapers and magazines too joined the  frenzy, with relentless coverage, sad statistics, and unending stream of visual infographics that drove home the point firm and hard: India is being raped and brutalised; left, right and centre.

Rape, yet again, was the hot potato, right from the panel studios to the living room. Rapes were being reported with amazing regularity from all over the country, foreigners, Indians, no one was spared. Numbers that came out only underscored the point. Here are a few statistics that will scare you:

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  • 24,206 rape cases were registered in India in 2011, according to NCRB.

  • A woman is raped every 18 hours or molested every 14 hours in the Capital

  • Cases of rape went up by 873% in the last decade. Shockingly, between 2007 and 2011, rape incidents increased by 9.7%, three times faster than all other crimes put together

  • Nearly 68,000 rape cases were registered across the country during 2009-11 but only 16,000 rapists were sentenced to prison

  • NCRB data shows there were 1,22,292 cases of molestation during 2009-11

The statistics don’t stop, like an endless stream of data they just keep going on. But what essentially can be summed up is that women in India are never safe, with one being raped every few minutes in some part or the other. The figure could be very high, as it is generally assumed that a majority of cases are never reported out of fear or shame.

The moot question is, how did the affairs come to this end so suddenly? Were we always like this, or have we become so in the past few years? Were the Indian males sleazy, opportunistic bastards all this while or have they become one suddenly? Continue reading …

Why Mumbai needs Meru? And, why there’s more to it than meets the eye?

by Shashwat DC | 27 Comments

On Feb 4th, major newspapers in Mumbai carried a fervent (and a rather long one as well) appeal from Meru Cabs, asking the lay public for support, something that went like, we served you now, support us. Saying it in short, the ad talked about how hoodlum practices had forced the company to stop its operation and how in spite of almost all the drivers wishing to return to work, they were not let to, by a “handful of people with ulterior motives”. At the end, there was a business plea, to let a corporation carry out its business unhindered by political machinations.

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For many of us in Mumbai, the current Meru fracas is certainly not a new one. Over the past year or two, it has become a regular affair. Over some trifle issue or the other, the olive-green taxis will be off the road, and after some reconciliation they will be back. Only for the same cycle to repeat all over again. In fact, the ad itself mentioned that the company has suffered such “strikes” 6 times in the past two years. None of the competitors, the Mega, the Easy or the Tabs, have faced such issues. So, what exactly is the company doing so wrong that it’s facing such backlash again and again?

Curiosity finally, got the better of me, and I started Googling on the subject and asking my friends in the industry to find out how and why things had come to such a pass. And here’s how the story unfolded. Starting off in this very city of Mumbai in 2007, Meru today is India’s largest radio taxi operator and world’s 3rd largest company, operating some 5500 cabs in metros like Delhi, Bangalore and Hyderabad, in addition to Mumbai. Statistically, Meru serves more than a million passengers a month; executing over 20,000 trips on a daily basis (it even holds a Limca Book of Records for the same).

Now, just as Redmond is synonymous with Microsoft or Atlanta with Coca-Cola, or even closer home how Bangalore is synonymous with Infosys, Mumbai and Meru have an intrinsic connection. In fact, it should be a matter of pride for all of us that in a short course of half-dozen years, a start-up from the city attained such success that it was even featured in WSJ or even as a Wharton case-study. Meru’s success is symbolic of Mumbai’s entrepreneurial acumen, where if you have a great idea and a determined will nothing can come in the way to success. Except possibly for politically-aligned trade unions.

Time for flashback. When Meru started operations back in 2007, we Mumbaikars were completely at the mercy of the city cabs (referred locally as kaali-peeli). Hyper-inflated bills, rowdy behaviour, rash driving, and others were all the calling cards of the kaali-peeli. Commuters were helpless in front of these cab-wallahs, who ran according to a writ of their own. In this mire, appears Meru, a professional run-taxi operator, that delivers a swanky sedan at your door, with a civil driver and a mechanism to ensure no over-charging. While over the years, Meru added a lot many features to their cabs, like web-booking, credit-card payment, etc., the earlier 3 were its only USP. Continue reading …

The Hypocrisy of Outrage

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A 17-year old girl comes out of a pub in downtown Guwahati and is suddenly beset by self-assisgned moral custodians, who set upon her like a pack of dogs, molesting and marauding her collectively. In a country where a woman is raped, molested or murdered every single minute of the day, this would not have been of much consequence. Except that this time round, there was a meadiawallah, right on the dot, armed with a camera to capture the gruesome act. In all it was just another crime against women in a nation, where such occur by the dime and dozen every single minute. But then destiny had something else in store.

A brief look at the chronology of how things enacted, more or less tells the story. The shameful incident took place on Monday night, the video aired on the next day by Newslive. The police as usual is the case, did not take notice of it at all and life would have gone on as usual. But sadly for the accused, the video went viral on Thursday and the nation suddenly woke up to the gruesome act. The collective outrage on Thursday, with even Amitabh Bachchan tweeting on it, set the balls of law into motion, with the police waking up and arresting 4 of them.

The whole incident raises many question, not the least the role of media in the entire heinous crime. What in the god’s name was the cameramen doing there, recording the whole outrage faithfully, as if it was some National Geographic video, that he’d let nature take its own course. Why did not the cameramen try to intervene, at least make an attempt to diffuse the situation? Why did molestors not react angrily at their video being taken, they almost seemed to be chummy-chummy with the reporter? Did he rush to the police immediately and offer the video as a documentary evidence or was he more interested to take it to his studio? Why did the channel not suo muto reach out to the police, before airing this video? Continue reading …

From Gol Maal to Bol Bachchan; the 100 crore fall of Hindi cinema

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1979 was a very weird year for Bollywood. In the sense, there was no real defining trend for movies succeeding those days. Thus you had extremely divergent genre of films like the ghoulish Jaani Dushman, romantic Sargam, picturesque Noorie, zesty Mr. Natwarlal, Lahu Ke Do Rang (my dad was a sound recordist in this one), were raking in the moolah at the BO. No one really knew what the ‘public’ wanted. There was no real formula for success.

Among all these films, a social-comedy that had an average-looking-nobody-sort Amol Palekar in the lead too was released. Directed by Hrushikesh Mukherjee, this film was the perfect amalgamation of talent, great script, punchy dialogues, amazing acting by the cast, right from Palekar to Utpal Dutt to even the small Kesto cameo. The film Gol Maal relied heavily on subtleness, it wasn’t Chaplinisque one bit, but like a literary adaptation. Nothing was absurd, loud or over the top in it. Take for instance, a scene in the movie in which Ramprasad makes fun of Bade Babu, who is constantly plucking hair from his nose, stating that how if only the lands of the country could be as fertile as his nose, cut the crop in the evening and a new one awaits in the morn. Babu laughs at the pun, before stopping and asking, “are you making fun of me?” This was the real essence of Gol Maal; it was making fun of a lot of people and archaic values, but in a manner in which wasn’t offensive to anyone.

Honestly, I don’t really know whether the film made even a crore at the BO in those days, or was a hit in those times. But what I do know is that time has indeed proven that when a film is made with good intentions and robust work, it lasts fairly long. Thus, even today, when the film runs on the myriad channels for the nth time, I still stop and enjoy the movie like I did many many years back.

Cut to 33 years later, a film loosely based on Gol Maal just released. And it stands for everything that the original stood for not. Thus, you have flashy sets, over the top acting, bawdiness, reigning superstars, exploding cars, and what not. Just the perfect masala to make a 100-crore film. In the next few days we will come to know that Bol Bachchan has indeed made a 100-crores (underlining yet again that there is no paucity of money-spending morons in India), the makers will throw a flashy party on the success, the actors will further increase the fees, some reviewers will pan it and some will praise it to the skies, and even a sequel to the same will be planned. In all this melee for success and BO records, the real essence of movie will be lost and colluded. Continue reading …