the symbiotic relationship an indian has with ''jugaad'' ....it so warms my heart :)

this kind of putting things together, making do with some odds and ends, bits and pieces,  is called 'jugaad' in hindi .......and the common woman/man in india is the master of jugaad and so the common woman/man is my hero .........she/he is so poor and their wants so small ...... their joys so manifold ......it is inspiring to see the poor get by in india ...... more than the rich and the famous in india .....it is the poor common person on the street keeping their body and soul together ..... with all the ingenuity they have.... that should be the stuff inspiring stories..... should be made of and spread...

this of course is the personification of jugaad!!! may ye tribe increase and prosper ......as long as u r safe and so r the people on the street ....

Son of the soil ..ah who really is !!! but arent we all daughters and sons of this earth is my question ...an earth sans frontiers!!

loved this line ......''Life emerged from the water. In a way, we are all the descendants of immigrants'' ....
in indian we have a unique twist to this .....we are all indians ''BUT'' some of us are said to belong to different states as our parents were born and brought up there!!!! .... and it has has been exploited by politicians and led to murder and mayhem .... in the name of the 'son of the soil' .................but who truly is the son of the soil ?......one whose ancestors lived there or one who strives, toils, builds her/his home there, dreams and hopes there, spends there, sets down roots there, contributes to the betterment of the place and in the end dies there .....land belongs to one and at the same time belongs to none ....it is common property because we are just travelling in space and time here on earth ........and if only man realised this ... we could easily do away with boundaries drawn in our mind and be a global village ...... working and sharing with our inherent differences and growing because of our differences .......



i am born to parents who are from the south indian state of kerala. my dad came to pune in the 60s when he came to study and later took up a job there and finally settled down in this cultural oxford of the east. i am born and brought up in pune, and i grew up thinking i belong to maharashtra. my mind thinks like a maharashtrain..... and my heart beats for maharashtra...

there is something about maharashtra, i believe it to be the most progressive state as far as women empowerment or even freedom allowed to girls is concerned. this was pointed out to me by my teacher in school mrs.gena lemos...she said look at the dress of the maharashtrian woman ....though a nine yard sari, it is called a kashta and allowed them to horse ride astride in the olden days....as it is draped in a particular manner the closest one can come to wearing pants, with a sari. another thing i liked a lot about this state is how women treated eve teasers.... a stinging slap given with a kholapuri chappal .... meaning women have no qualms in giving eve teasers a taste of what it is to be humiliated in public. kholapur is a place famous for a special type of leather slippers worn by all in the earlier days, specially the working class.
growing up in pune i always thought i was a punekar ....and fought valiantly in the defense of pune, with cousins saying silly things about maharashtra when fighting.....this was a yearly ritual when i went for holidays to kerala every summer.
slowly as time went by it dawned on me that there is no way a maharashtrian would ever consider me to be anything other than a mallu(a colloquial way of addressing a keralite). this fact was brought home in school  specially when it was time to opt between continuing with marathi in senior school or taking up french. i opted for french as i was staying in an area where the national language,hindi was the preferred language of communication. my dad was working for the indian air force, and i can speak hindi very well but writing and reading  is still time consuming.
later in college too i could sense this when i shifted from one college to another, so i made friends with girls from pune itself as i believed by then knowing a language is strength. i used to communicate with my friends in marathi and soon was quite comfortable with the language. i used to also watch a lot of marathi programs on television to learn the nuances of the language.
everything said and done it is when i joined the work force i realised the difference in being from a different state and applying for a permanent job in education. i realsied for the first time what the maharashtrian must be going through in competing with a keralite for a job in maharashtra!!!!! specially because there might be just a handfull of maharashtrians working in kerala !!!!!
so the son of the soil issue was upfront and large ......something i saw from the perspective of the son of the soil for the first time....
then we are brought to the issue of who is a son of the soil in a country like india .....somehow we have lost our identity as an indian in our pursuit of belonging and keeping the culture of the state we belong to intact.most indians will always ask each other as to which state one belongs to when meeting another indian.

after marriage i went to live in the north eastern state of assam, when i applied to a college in this state i noticed the hostility of the principal while talking to my husband and me. the application was sent via the mail man from the estate i was living in, and it was sent one day before the due day was over. i was shocked to hear the mail man come back and tell me the principal did not even read the application.... but threw it on the floor. the mail man sounded almost sorry for what had happened. i was amazed at the principal's behaviour as a huge contingent of students move out of the north east and study in various parts of india, where the law and order situation is better than that in assam. i wondered if the principal of that particular college had thought for a moment of his kind of behaviour being meted out to the numerous people of assam working all over india!!!. his behaviour was all the more shocking because i am married to an assamese, but what he chose to focus on was the fact that i was a south indian!!! but he forgot to see the indian in me !!!
if one looks at the number of people working in different parts of india and then tries to find out as to how many actually are from that particular state, the statistics will be heartening. having said that i will also add that post the 90s this issue has been much maligned and used by politicians as a very popular tool to get votes. the son of the soil issue was always there and if one goes to the depth of the matter one should realise that in today's global village, where people keep travelling much more than they used to and where work permits are easy to come by, does the son of the soil issue really hold up?
after shifting to bahrain i got to see such a different aspect to this issue !!!! here there are so many many people from all over the world working on this tiny island and all were welcomed to work here. it is only of late that the protesting opposition has actually resorted to harming people from other regions specially asians. the instances of such happenings are rare and the governmental action taken to curb such action has been swift and reassuring.
looking at all the agitations happening globally too on this issue ....i feel it is sad for all parties concerned .....because with trade becoming free and movement of labour becoming easier ...... what economist samuelson had predicted about factor price equalisation is happening to a small extent but the trade cycles are ensuring that the son of the soil is one issue that is something governments and educational institutions and the media should educate people about. this is an issue that should not be used by politicians to gain votes by instigation mayhem in the name of  ''rights of the son of the soil''. politicians doing so should be severely punished, so as to be a deterrent to others.
if one really looks at this issue from a social and philosophical perspective ......then my question is    
Son of the soil ..ah who really is !!! but aren't we all daughters and sons of this earth ...an earth sans frontiers!! 

the pet tigress

this is a real life incident that happened on a tea estate in assam, where many a planter will be able to share many such real life episodes. this is true because even my husband had come across young tiger cubs in the forest surrounding the first estate he had joined in dhekiajulie. i too have sighted many a wild animal during my 6yr stay on various tea estates, in south india and the north east of india.
once a young tea planter found an abandoned tiger cub when he was on a round of the tea estate. the managers in charge of the field(tea estate) have to keep taking rounds of the estate to check on plucking of tea leaves, stray cattle, encroaching wild animals etc. though i always felt it is we humans who encroached on the natural habitat of the animals. life on an estate is never dull as there is something unusual happening all the time and of course in assam the insurgency added an element of fear too.
the young planter looked for the mother of the cub and took it home as he could find no trace of the mother, neither did he find any other siblings of the small cub. he did this as there are packs of wild dogs moving around and they are vicious. i once saw these dogs and they gave me an eerie feeling even though i was in a jeep.
the planter let the cub have free reign of his house and instructed the bungalow help to feed the cub at regular intervals. every evening when he came home, he would play a bit with the cub, and pet and kiss it's forehead.
this became a daily routine and with time the cub would wait at the upper floor window. many tea bungalows are built on stilts, so he would climb up the stairs and go pet the cub which was growing up fast. this unusual pet of this planter was the talk of many parties and gatherings, so people kept getting updates on the cute antics of the cub.
soon a day came when the cub became a mature tigress, the bungalow help were a little worried about the food and the tigress now. soon it started to go out into the jungle for days on end, but when ever the planter saw the tigress, he would never fail to pet it like he used to. once when he saw the tigress after a gap of a few days, he was happy to sight it and went and pet it like always, though he found it a bit strange to see it on the ground in the porch. he went up to the verandah upstairs.... and got the shock of his life..... there was a tigress sitting in its usual spot......and for the first time he was scared and i guess the animal too sensed his fear and strange withdrawal. that was the last time the tigress was sighted by the young planter.
it is difficult to distinguish at a quick glance if it is a tigress or a tiger ....specially if they are seated, and so the planter got confused as to whether he had petted his pet or had he pet a fully grown male tiger!!!!! the saving grace being animals never kill unless hungry and i always wondered at why the tigress never came back after that incident. did it know it was time to move on? or did it sense the fear in its human friend for the first time? ....questions that will never be answered,
i too used to go for walks on the estate in assam but it was irritating that i was never allowed to go alone for my walks, unless i did it without informing anyone. if i asked my husband permission he would insist i take the maid along. i loved to go for walks alone and did so sometimes as the estate we were staying on was so beautifull, the manager had planted wild flowers all along the estate near the tea bushes. some of the other executives kept telling me about sighting a tiger, but i used to think they were joking or pulling my leg as a lot of that too went on, specially because i was from the city and had never experienced rural life ever before. i stopped going for walks the day the manager sent a warning to all the people on the estate, of having sighted a tiger on the estate...... how i missed my walks from then on !!!!    

a big humble and heartfelt THANK YOU to all those who visit my blog and take the time and effort to read my words :) love to all of you!!!!!!!

i wish to thank all of you who come and read my blog, spl for the time you give my posts.

it is very encouraging indeed to see the number of hits i get for each article.


THANK YOU :) AND LOTS OF LOVE AND BEST WISHES TO EACH ONE OF YOU ...FOR ALL YOUR ENDEAVOURS :)

snake in the plantain's shadow .... how i nearly mistook a snake for a string of the plaintain stem

all the tea estate bungalows i lived in, had a huge kitchen garden. the ones in assam had a rich diversity in what one could get as trees growing in the kitchen garden. the last estate i lived on had a coconut palm, mulberry tree, litchi tree, a tree bearing oranges, plantain, mango tree, jack fruit tree, jambul tree, pineapple bushes and guava trees in the front yard bordering the flower beds next to the bamboo hedge. the hedges in assam were of bamboo grown in close proximity to each other and it made for a great hedge. the back yard also had a lot of sweet potatoes creepers i had asked the gardener to plant.
every once in a while... in season we would get to eat home grown fruit from the garden. i learnt new techniques of agriculture, such as having a light fire burnt under the fruit trees in the blossoming season.this was to ensure that smoking the tree would guard against worm infestation in the fruit blossoms. sometimes we would have a large crowd of chattering monkeys paying us a visit ....i would run indoors with my one year old as soon as i heard them if i was out in the garden and watch them from the safety of the grilled and netted verandah.    
litchis were my favourite fruit, and i gorged on them when in season, sometimes i had accidents in farming like once i planted spinach seeds and got poppy flowers, another time it turned out to be parsley. once in a while i also had a bumper crop of broccoli, beans and cabbage. agriculture is a very rewarding activity to engage in when living on the tea estates.it substituted very well for lack of and inability to have a professional career. the wonderfull green cover also helped me forget the mayhem we lived with in assam.
so as usual when i saw a bunch of bananas nearly ripe in the back yard. i told the gardener to cut the bunch and get it home.after he brought it inside the house i made him keep it in the dining room floor. after he left i decided to check on the bunch, as my baby was sleeping and i had some spare time. i nearly touched the bunch of bananas and i thought ...oh there is some string from the plantain plant caught in the bunch. i stooped to pull it out but some gut instinct made me stop short of touching it and i decided to call the gardener back into the house. i told him to cut the string up and pull it out .....but when i went to show him the string on the plantain bunch.......surprise surprise the thing had disappeared!!!!!!!
yikes.... my instincts told me it had to be a snake and now i was petrified......that the snake had crawled out into the house....!!!!!!!!! first thing i went and locked the bedroom door to ensure it did not crawl in there, next i told the gardener to sprinkle a disinfectant all around the house and outside .......but nothing.... no snake anywhere in the big house....so the gardener had a bright idea to check the plantain bunch with a long stick...he so casually carried the plantain bunch out to the lawn.......i was so petrified of what a big risk he was taking.........and i kept calling out to him to stop poking around .....from the verandah.....soon there was a small yell from the gardener.... and i saw a light brown snake with black spots or stripes on it as it sped away across the lawn into the flower plants next to the lawn ......i was so happy to see the snake go away from the house .....end of the search for the snake in the house ....
but i can never eat bananas without thinking of snakes....and how i would have got bitten by one.... if my instincts had not warned me ........     

The day the cow mooed, there was a thunderstorm and i thought my world was coming to an end.......

this is a snap of himboos partially hidden by a bush .....and baby himboos running around the lawn

Being city bred and used to buying milk in packets or bottles, the only time i had seen a cow up close was the Jersey ones my granny had in Kerala. I had no clue about the ways of farm animals least of all cows, nothing had prepared me for a life on the tea estate. Till i had a baby i used to either buy milk from a boy selling milk on the estate or mostly used milk powder as that was a safer option any day, people in India resort to all kinds of practices to increase the milk yield of cows......
When i was in Pune for the delivery of my first child ....my husband kept telling me he would buy a cow, as otherwise it would be difficult with a small baby and preparing nutritious food, which required milk as an ingredient. I kept pleading with him to not buy a cow as i could not imagine looking after one. A senior executive on the estate got posted to Mohokutie Tea Estate as the manager of that estate, and he gifted my husband a cow before he left for Mohokutie T.E....Just before coming to Pune to take baby and me to Assam, we too got posted to Mohokutie Tea.Estate from Digultarang T.E and my husband was to take up the post of factory in-charge at the Mohokutie factory.
I was petrified to think of owing a cow but a bit excited too .... my baby was 9months old and lisping words...he called cows himboos and so we named the cow Himboos ....she was very beautifull and a nut brown in colour and quite thin..... she gave around one liter of milk a day..... and i ensured the grass the gardeners fed her was of good quality. We were in the Digultarang TE for only a few days after reaching Assam, and i was busy packing up the large amount of breakable stuff we had accumulated in the 4 years we were living on tea estates. Once my husband was away in the factory at night as was the usual practice, and there was a thunderstorm looming and soon after the rain started, the cow started to moo and how !!!!!!
I was so scared because i thought that there was something seriously wrong with the cow mooing and thunderstorm happening at the same time. I had heard of how animals react to natural calamities, and was sure something terrible was about to happen ....so i called the watchman and told him to check on Himboos the cow. He had the most bored expression on his face for being made to go out in the rain and that upset me and i thought how callous this man is !!!!!
Assam is a state that has frequent earthquakes and so i was really worried about baby and me and my husband and the estate too ..... The watchman came back and said all is well with the cow, i was also scared of any snakes in the cowshed.....after hearing him, i was still worried and so took my baby in his pram and went and stood in the corner of the room as i was asked to do, in case of an earthquake. I felt a bit foolish after a bit, but stood there till my husband came home. He laughed the whole matter off and thankfully the cow stopped mooing.
This entire episode happened again in Mohokutie and i decided to go and talk to the mangers wife and ask her about a veterinary doctor too. There in the manger's bungalow i met the labour welfare officer's wife who was just leaving as i entered but waited to hear what i had to say...... and all three of us had a hearty laugh ... i, at myself and they both.... at my ignorance.
The cow was mooing because she was on heat and there was no danger of any earthquake or any such jazz, i had never ever dealt with some thing of this sort in the town i grew up in. The amount i laughed that day and from then on every time the cow mooed i would laugh..... but the fall out of keeping a cow is that i went off drinking milk and  when ever i drank milk........ i stuck to powder milk .... no emotions on seeing powder milk !!!!!!!!!!!  :)
22/4/13
Sadly this story does not have a happy ending, after a few months Himboos gave birth to a female calf and instead of using Himboos, as a cow for providing milk i made her our pet and let the calf drink the milk.Every night i ensured the gardeners did not tie the mother and child separately. Initially in Mohokutie i did let the gardener milk Himboos and we used the milk, but it is so painfull to see a cow being milked that i made them stop the practice all together. Baby Himboos as we named the calf was also a uniform nut brown and very beautifull, i made sure they had the best of grass to eat. Workers coming to the bungalow have to be handled with kid gloves or one could never tell when they would play hookey or just stop coming to work for no rhyme or reason..... so once both the gardeners decided to play hookey, on a day i had given the maids and cook a holiday ...... after a house party where all three had worked extra.

I still remember feeling so scared to go check on Himboos and her baby, i dread snakes and so slowly went to the cowshed and checked on them. I realised to my horror that the grass was over !!!!! oh dear what a tragedy .....i gave them some leftover rice and the peels of vegetables and some bananas.....but i was sure they were hungry and i was so upset as to how to feed the cows grass!!!!! Suddenly i had a Eureka moment .....i decided to tie both mother and daughter in the front lawn !!!!!!!! i knew my husband would burst a blood vessel when he came and saw this ...but i just did not want the cows to start mooing ......leading the cows one at a time from the cowshed to the front lawn was such a brave thing for me to do ....i was never so scared of a pet EVER!!!!! but i somehow managed to tie them to a solid post and let them graze on the lawn.... after my husband came home, he sent word to some workers to get grass and the cows were tied back in the backyard.  

In 2003 i realised Himboos needed to be mated and the practice on the estate was to send the cow to one of the staff's cow shed, because he owned a prize bull .....when i first heard of this method of doing things i was so taken aback!!! but i dared not laugh at the gardener telling me this, in a no nonsense manner as the most normal thing to get done....i realsied town folks have no clue about how life in the rural areas is sooooooooo different !!!! The icing on the cake being, one has to pay the staff a sum of Rs 200.... only.... if the cow gets pregnant !!!!! So i sent Himboos to the staff's cow shed for some time and then one fine day, the gardener told me that it was time for me to send Rs 200.... across to the said staff's house.

In January 2004 i left for Pune, for the delivery of my second child and i knew, i would never go back to Assam, as we had filed our papers to emigrate to Canada. I was tired of living with insurgency and wanted to move out of India itself, i was keen on going to New Zealand as i never wanted to set my eyes on another snake, but my husband wanted to go to Canada. I kept reminding the gardener to feed and take care of Himboos and baby Himboos, specially cleaning the cement floor of the cowshed lest she slip on the cow-dung etc. After my husband came for the delivery of my second child and before he went back to Assam, i drilled it into him, to return the pregnant Himboos and her calf to the Manager. He kept saying they would feel bad as Himboos was a gift from them to us, but i said it is better that she go to someone who will take care of her and had the means to do so. The Manager's bungalow had a huge cowshed and they kept quite a few cows, so 2 more would not have added to the burden.

He kept dilly dallying and in the meantime Himboos gave birth to another calf. Every Sunday when he would drive to town to call me in Pune, i would remind him of giving Himboos back, and sadly my worst fears came true..... the gardeners became slack as there was no one to keep a check on them..... and one stormy night my beautifull Himboos slipped on the slippery floor of her cowshed and broke her back ......how much pain the poor thing must have undergone .....how she must have bellowed and mooed in pain .....the vet came and put her to sleep the next day.....both her calves were finally sent to the Manager's bungalow ..... that is the sad ending to the story of my Himboos ......every time i think of her end...... i am moved to tears to think of the pain the poor thing must have endured in her last hours....... and i was not there for her .......  

The people who use scare tactics and bombs ....falsely believe they will rule the world ........

After reading about and seeing the media coverage of the Boston episode, i started to think about the different countries that face such situations. Some face it sporadically, some more often and some on a daily basis.The people who resort to such scare tactics to get across their point, whatever the issue are the biggest cowardly criminals.The issues they wish to highlight or the goals they want to achieve become soaked in the blood of innocents. This has a boomerang effect as people stop listening to murders who may or may not have a strong agenda. Nothing justifies the killing of innocent people who have nothing to do with the wrongs that have been done to group going around bombing places.
In insurgent activity that i saw first hand and those i read about in the news papers, the fact that amazes me most is that the people revolting .....resort to killing their own people .....people belonging to their own state and country!! and the question i have is who finally benefits from this..... and those who kill are human too and do they not mourn the death of a loved one ......
This is depicted so beautifully in the movie made on Kasab(the boy who was hung for the Mumbai Mayhem) ....specially the scene in which Kasab is asked by the inspector asking him to identify the bodies of his friends ....and the intense dialogue that follows, a dialogue that is applicable to all insurgents irrespective of the agenda and cause they are fighting for ....... when you kill innocents, do you think of the pain their loved ones go through ......it is the same as the pain you go through when your loved ones are killed.......... 
On the tea estates in Assam, every year the tea bushes were pruned in rotation, that is some area of the estate used to pruned.
Recently i saw a post that made me think of pruning on the tea estates and how it really happened on two levels.....the actual one on the plants and the second pruning happened at the worker level.....the insurgents used to brain wash the workers from using the free services being provided by the management of the tea companies. Some of the workers instead of sending their children to the school provided by the management would make their children work on the estates. Sometimes with girls one could understand that the parent was worried about the safety of the child left alone at home. The workers would not use the medical help provided most of the time, the only thing they really availed of was the rations being provided by the company and the fuel wood.
The point i want to make is the insurgents used the workers for their own gain and in doing so ''pruned them for life'', stunted their growth  and kept them at the level they wanted by brainwashing them and making them anti management. In the event of  workers turning against the management and murdering some of the managers in cold blood, here too the insurgents benefited because they got away scot-free....... the means justified the ends in their eyes.......but i believe some day the second generation of these insurgents will pay the price for the crimes of these insurgents...... and this is a universal truth .... when people of any community take to arms to get their point across........ it is the future generations that will pay a price ............ and wonder why they are so MYOPIC to not see this truth ..........    

FB and the 'Like Button'

I joined FB after i quit teaching in a private college i was working for, my students were always talking of posting messages i had for the absent ones on FB. I used to wonder as to what kind of a system it was, the kids i taught were always telling me to join but i had no time or inclination for such networking. One gets attached to students one teaches and i joined FB soon after i handed in my resignation in that pvt college. It is a wonderfull way to connect to people, find old long lost friends and sometimes just play games like my two sons do.
After joining i started to explore as to what, and how the system worked and that was the first time i saw the 'power of a like' to put it in a way. The Like button has so many hues to it ......it has a cultural context, social context, age based difference in usage, i also wonder if a country wise research has been done on the percentage of people using the like button, sometimes it can also be used sarcastically or can it ?????  

Finally I am an Indian !!!!!!!!!

I am so happy that i can finally introduce myself as an Indian!!! all the years i was growing up in Indian, i was of South Indian parentage so a Mallu (a colloquial way of addressing a Keralite!!). I grew up in Maharashtra ...and there not a month that goes by, without me thanking my lucky stars for having been born in Pune. Such a peace full city, where a girl is not mauled on the roads and i grew up taking peace and law and order for granted. Then i met my husband in college and it was a big change for my parents and me, because i was going to go and settle in Assam a north eastern state. Now there too i was a mallu and though i learnt the language and food and other cultural practices of the region, i was an outsider for all practical purposes.
I used to crave for an India where we did not have stupid divides on the basis on language and caste or region we grew up in .....alas that was never to be !!!!!!!!
Life changed so much when i shifted to Bahrain ....when i was meeting people from countries other than India ...i could finally introduce myself as an Indian!!!!!!!! I should admit that all the people from India and that is me included, are so conditioned to asking each other as to where one is from, it is such a conversation starter for Indians. We tend to judge people on the basis of the state we belong to, and use that as a starting point of our conversation and to form an opinion on what each of us thinks of the other. Sometimes this leads to a prejudiced opinion being formed in the minds of people.
Many a time I am asked if i belong to Goa based on the non accented English i speak. In Assam when i spoke non accented Hindi, i would get people giving me confused stares and it used to make me smile. The sad part was when it comes to working, the fact that i am born and brought up in Maharashtra did not matter. I was a south Indian and labelled as such, the fact that i can not read or write my mother tongue was of no consequence. No one even cared for or asked me as to which state in India I identified with? no one  ever thought that to be of any importance.
India is a very unique country with such vast language,customs and cultural differences....but we Indians fail to rise above petty things and see the whole picture at times. In the metros it is not so apparent, i have also seen this disregard for ones identity in very remote areas too. When i was working as a research assistant in Pune i used to travel to remote areas of Nashik, and when interacting people there, i did notice that people are very simple and straight forward in their dealings with us city folk. They never tired to find out if i belonged to their state or no, i was accepted on face value of the NGO i was associated with and accepted as  human being .....no questions asked or me being probed to find out my roots so to speak of......
I do have to admit it is only when dealing with people of other nationalities, does one really introduce oneself  as an Indian and no further questions asked Period!!! ....... Whew Finally !!!!!! and i like that a lot sometimes .....yes i do ......     

Arabian Nights and my association with them ....

My first impression of the middle east started with the awesome stories from the Arabian Nights .....what a beautifull memory and one every child should have.....
My second association with the Arab world was when i started my MPhil dissertation on the 'The Geo-politics of  oil pricing, the deeper i went into the topic, the greater my empathy for the people of this region. The trust and warmth they gave was used against them to loot them. The 1973 oil shock was unexpected but the 1980 oil shock according to my research and my guide was purely staged by the US of America. Therefore the hyper-pluralism of oil pricing...(an article by an economist)  and OPEC would get blamed. Actually economics and i too believe Cartels are not good for non altruistic reasons, but i personally believe OPEC is good ....gang up you guys against the exploitation you had to face for so long.... ohh i am so for the under-dog always.... even if it is not doing the greatest good for the greatest number....

In fact when the oppressed rise, sometimes the victim becomes the victimize r and that is the price the world pays in this case for the years of ....... any cut in output or slight hike in price and the world collectively sighs.  
My third association with the Arab land started post 26th April 2012 in the most progressive and beautifull land in all Arabland ....Beautifull Bahrain. So much natural beauty and such warm and wonderfull people, i fell in love with the awesomely beautifull blue still waters of the sea here. This country is such a personification of free trade, kindness, easy access to the ruling people etc....

Then i read an account of a Westerner being amazed at the progress and pomp and show of Dubai ...and he was still ridiculing the Arab. So i ask you oh westerner ....how many of u can live in such harsh conditions? I say harsh conditions because in summer when my children come home from school in the hot sun, they are so irritated and fight with each other all the time. They come home in winters at the same time they do in summers but the change in the way they interact with each other is to be seen to be believed. Hot climates do affect people and makes one short tempered and listless in the hot summers.

Despite that one can see tremendous improvement and change in the Arab world, specially here in Bahrain the respect women get is eye opening. I see women driving cabs and doing all that any western woman does as far as choice of profession, leisure activities or anything else is concerned and takes for granted.Life is good here in Bahrain, all kinds of people can live and prosper... be it the party goer, those interested in arts and painting or music and dance, or spirituality or entrepreneurship or volunteering or gourmet food or you name it and it is there.

People from various nationalities have settled here and each of them have their own groups, clubs, associations, schools, activities and each of these and all are thriving and very active.
to be contd.......

Milton Friedman's Permanent Income hypothesis .....

When i used to teach International Business Environment to undergraduate students, i used to always tell them to test the best fit of theories as a project in their holidays. Then when the assignment mode of testing became a reality i used to give them theories to test and see if it holds good. The students gave excellent reports on one such theory i gave them to test. It was so tough to mark them, keeping the CGPA system of marking in mind. The theory i gave them to test was the Porter Diamond Theory of National Advantage, for which i divided them into groups and gave each group a different sector to study.
I was happy to see the amazing way the project was handled by my students, and realised that every classroom is a place where i teach and also learn.
Milton Friedman's theory about the permanent income hypothesis is a theory very close to my heart because it was the topic of my first class presentation when i was doing my Mphil course work. I was the only one who summarised the original words of the author, as during the presentations after mine i realised the other students had used text books to interpret the theory in an easier manner. The presentation was also tougher for me as that day the Head of the economics department was busy and instead of 45 minutes i had to finish in 15 minutes.
This theory is different from the other consumption function theories and i like it the best though i do agree the Keynesian Consumption function and the Relative Income Hypothesis(considering that keeping up with the Jones is so very common in day to day life) are also very apt. . But given a choice and money i would like to do a best fit of the permanent income hypothesis in today's world of non permanency of jobs, opportunities, areas of work becoming so varied and choices galore that is the norm ... and a permanent government job which is pensionable a rarity ....not that it was the norm then either ....... but yes times have changed and so have people and perspectives and HOW .... :)    

Cost or value or price of life.....

Life is all about surviving and only the fittest survive ......law of the jungle, but when i read about wars being fought in various parts of the world and how in one instant so many die. Those news articles make me wonder as to what law took these innocent lives. As a student i had read a book 'Lord of Flies' and it brought home the fact that scratch the surface and you have nothing but animal tedencies in humans however young. Years later i saw a movie in malayalam 'Thaniavartanam' here too the story talks about an ordinary school teacher with a family history or a curse of madness. It shows how people of the small village he is from start seeing symptoms of apparent madness in this young teacher even in his most normal and simple actions and speech.

It ends with the person crying on his mother’s shoulders and telling her how he does not want to go on,  he did not to want to live. He had lost his job and normal life by then, it had the most tragic end as his mother kills him to end his misery. A harsh story and I wondered as to how many such mocking birds do get sacrificed for just being themselves. In recent times it would have to the heart rending story of a young mother of 20 who got burnt alive as people believed she was a witch.

When I watch movies and read news articles about the underworld it is chilling to see how very cheap a person’s life is, so easy it is to kill for frivolous reasons. Then there is the question of how valuable is a person’s life or what is the value of person’s life? Some times we humans are so barbaric in our dealings with each other and the love to gang up on each other or a single person. Sometimes we lose track of how inhuman we have become, when all it takes is a little compassion and empathy for each other.

What are the parameters that make a life valuable or cheap …..a highly subjective issue because even the poorest of poor do have a very important place in the lives of their kith and kin. Here in Bahrain as an expatriate I see so many who commit suicide and I always wonder what is it that makes them take their life. Are situations and people so bad that one should give up hope totally and completely? What demons drove these people to such extreme steps …. I see most of them are single or are living away from family or have problems communicating with the people around.

I feel in such cases it is all about that ‘Moment’ of ‘loss of faith’…if one can sit down and think things over or cry it out or talk to another or connect to another ….that one moment passes and one can see the hope and possibilities life has to offer. I am glad the Indian Embassy is doing its bit to help reduce the number of suicides …. a good measure that will go a long way in raising up the value of people’s lives.

The value of each and every life on earth however ordinary the individual, is priceless because of the potential the individual holds …..and the possibilities galore that are yet to be explored ……….

The cup that cheers and how bloody it is !!!!!!

The first thing that struck me as odd was the fact that there were no street lights on the high way in Assam, this makes the roads look eerie, the dense foliage of the place did not help matters either. There being no street lights were a novelty that made me see the huge number of fire flies in the dark, and much later when i got used to the place the fire flies made the nights spent alone ....waiting for the tea workers to stop their din ...seem magical...Assam is so beautifull but so abused by the government and its own people and is lost in a war for an ideal that the insurgents themselves have forgotten.........
That the situation was bad was brought home by the fact that the DGM moved around with a van full of body guards dressed as black cats armed with light machine guns. I used to find the guards a bit scary because the minute you saw them, it was an indication that an important person was around making the person needing protection more vulnerable to attack. Of course this is my point of view, but the tea companies knew they had to give enough protection to executives as many used to get kidnapped for ransom. Yes i do believe many of the wars being fought at the state level in India has come down to a case of mere extortion and the cause the rebellion was started in, has been forgotten.
I was allowed to go for a walk in the estate only if any of the other executives wives were going for a walk. The main reason being over and above insurgents there is a constant threat from wild animals roaming around freely. This was such a culture shock for a person going from Maharashtra, because the police force in that state were very good, and i grew up taking law and order and my safety for granted in my adopted state of Maharashtra.
 Every year all important national days such as Republic day and Independence day were days the wives would be worried for the lives of their husbands and their children. Invariably there would be some group coming to the estate asking for some money or it would be the order to buy petrol and diesel from a particular pump. Now Assam is a state with many rivers and a lot of coal mines, it has the distinction of being the place with the first oil refinery in the world but it has major energy supply problems. The estates spent a huge amount of money buying diesel and petrol for running the generators, trucks and tractors etc on the estate.
Quite a few top officials used to get kidnapped and huge sums of money used to change hands as the poor management of these tea companies had no other alternative. Then there were also stories about managers being killed by angry mobs. The workers could not understand that the managers were representatives of the owners and used to get very angry when for some reason the bonus they were to get during Diwali (an important festival of lights) time was reduced by any percentage.
Two stories will always remain with me one was of a dashing Punjabi manager who was very strict and efficient.This hardworking person met a horrendous end as he was practically mauled to death by an angry mob of workers who bore him grudges.
The second was even more spine chilling ....one year during bonus time when the amount being given out was reduced by a particular company, the workers of the estate went to the twin bungalow where the Manager and his assistant were staying and dragged them out of their respective houses locked their wives and children, made a pyre with the furniture from the bungalow and burnt both those innocent people to death right in front of their wives. Later someone said both the women developed mental disorders.
Tea is manufactured from 11pm at night till around 3am and the factory assistant's bungalow is always very near the factory, the worst such bungalow i lived in was in Mohokuti estate. The factory was very near the house and in the cold of the night the noise of the machines and the din of the workers used to make me think that there was a fight going on. One usually gets used to the noise and the fact that the keys of the company came to the house everyday in winters which was the off season. I somehow never could sleep well, with that noise on and most days i would spend time till the noise stopped, reading the newspaper or doing crosswords puzzles.
The newspaper became such a necessity for me and i used to read it so well that i taught myself editing in that process, of course there was no cable television nor the telephone or access to the internet, even as late as 2003 in the tea estates in Assam. The radio played Hindi Bollywood numbers for an hour in the mornings only, so the newspaper, became my ally and my window to the world. I also was hosting company guests and family at the bungalow all the time. There were very few days when i was not catering to guests.

One fine day i saw a Sten gun waved into my face and that day i decided that life in this state is no good but i also realised i have the instincts of a psychic :) ......we were going to Jorhat from Moran, the estate was located near Moran town. This was the place which helped me decide i do not want to raise my children up in Assam because this is a place where they would never learn what it is to be born free and to not have fear stalking you at every turn. Moran is the birthplace of the Assam insurgent movement!!!!!!!!!
On that day when we were driving down to Jorhat, in Moran town i to told my husband to buy me sweet pan. He parked the car on the curb and went to small shop selling cigarettes and pan leaving the keys in the car.
A second after that a black Scorpio van came hurtling down the road from the opposite direction and tried to go on to the foot path next to where our car was parked. Our car was barring their way and somehow that was agitating the driver, i also noticed a man standing on the side board of the Scorpio. I do not know why, but my first reaction after seeing that car was to take the keys out of the ignition in the most gentle of ways and the next thing i did was.... lay my baby boy down on my lap. Children are so quick to pick up the vibes of their parents, he too became quiet and still, in the mean time the man standing on the side board of the black Scorpio came to our vehicle, i need a nano second to see the Sten gun in his hand and put on my mask to avoid any expressions.
He told me in Hindi to move the car, he just needed a split second to gauge the fact that i was non Assamese and from the tea community because of the maid and a male domestic help sitting behind me. I told him in the most dead pan tones that my husband had the keys, at this he got even more agitated and barked out at the male domestic help to get the owner of the car. The poor guy went running at top speed, the man with the gun went beserk and reached inside the car and started blaring the horn and kept his hand on the horn without removing it. I so amazed myself with the nonchalance with which i sat through the entire drama he was putting up. In the mean time the driver of the Scorpio manged to get the car off the footpath they had got onto, reversed the car and thankfully the man with the gun went running to get into the car. A little later just before my husband came back i saw a police van go in full speed in the direction of the black Scorpio and it made me smile ...... 
In Sibsagar a town near Moran i remember seeing a huge three storey building belonging to one of the supremo's of one of the insurgent groups in Assam and i remember thinking .....is this the facade the leader of an insurgent group wants to portray to the youth of this state?????? is this how you lure young children away from the paths of industry, growth and the economy of your state????? is this how you leave young women widowed and mother's abandoned in their old age?????? Is this how you gang rape your state you misguided lost souls??? how can you hide your thieving ways in the name of rebellion for a cause of Free Assam and more opportunities for the Assamese!!!!!!!!!!
when one of your ways ....is killing your own people in the name of the Cause!!!!
I was used to hosting people who came to help with the maintenance of the tea factory machinery or help with other maintenance work. This is because there are no hotels in the area of the tea estate and it is the duty of each wife living on the estate to maintain the bungalow as a three star hotel, at least that is what my husband drilled into my head day in and day out!!!!!!!
One day we were hosting a young engineer who had been trained in Kirloskar Cummins a famous firm from Pune. Anyone who had any connection to Pune was always special and as we were having breakfast, i heard the gates being opened and a vehicle drive in. My immediate concern was how many more people to cater to, but these guests were different and so was the treatment they were getting from the bungalow servants. They trooped into the sitting room even before i could see them and i realised something was wrong when i saw the expression on the bearer's face as he came to the dinning room. Yes they were another tribe we had to get used to .....the surrendered insurgents!!!!!!!!!!

They had just come to give my husband the notification that they had bought the petrol pump near the estate.I admired these people for coming back to the main stream but i would notice many got killed in the fights between the insurgents and themselves (the surrendered insurgents).
The government of Assam used to give a sum of INR 2 lakhs and a gun to each insurgent who surrendered. Many of the surrendered youth used to open small restaurants and the people who visited these joints knew who the owners were. Sometimes innocent customers would get killed in the crossfire between these two warring factions viz the insurgents and the ones who had surrendered.
There was no way any one staying in Assam could know for a fact that when shootouts could happen or where. Once a driver told us a story about the wife of a factory assistant manager who was working in the same company as my husband. This particular lady had a habit of going to the tea planter's club in Moran for a swim sometimes and one day as usual she told the driver to go to the club while returning from somewhere, but last minute her child had some problem and they went back home.
It was her lucky day because she would have either lost her life or something worse would have happened to her, had she gone to the club.
There was a shoot out between the insurgents and the surrendered insurgents in the club that afternoon!!!!!
One of the first few things i was shown after reaching Assam was the bullet marks in the Borsola club where the insurgents had attacked, some of the people had got injured and an executive who was born and brought up in Mumbai later told us about how he ended up in hospital for so long due to an injury he got in the cross fire.
The worst scene i endured in my entire stay in Assam was in the winter of 2003 while we were staying on Mohokutie tea estate. I was around 5 months pregnant and my older child was 2 and a half years old and the company my husband was working decided to cut the bonus payment that year. This news put fear into my mind considering the already difficult time i was dealing with. The day of the bonus payment was an ominous one and the whole area of the factory was full of workers, and even though they were not shouting like they did at night, the din of their talk was scary. Once lunch was over and it was time for my husband to go to the factory, he told me that he is going to lock my son and me in the house, i was to not let any of the bungalow help inside nor was i to leave the bungalow even if someone bought news of his death. I so wished there was a phone in the house for me to talk to someone and share my fears. Nothing of that sort happened and so i sat in the verandah and did crossword puzzles. After some time the din started getting to me as there was a huge uproar in the factory, and i feared the worst. It was nearly dinner time when the noise level came down and i felt relieved that nothing untoward happened. It was a relief to see the manager's car leave for his bungalow and it was a sign that all is well.  
Even as recently as last month a tea estate owner and his wife were hacked to death by tea workers......
There is a threat to life in so many occupations and yet people do take up such jobs, but how many people world wide know as to what goes on in tea estates in many parts of the world.
I will now shift focus to some other parts of the world ..... i lived in Annamalais for 10months, one of the most virgin and therefore beautifull hill stations in South India. The minute one reaches the place after 41 hair pin bends you know you are in a very special place.
Here too life is not very secure, the tea estates are situated in a wild life sanctuary and the threat is from wild animals. I do not blame the Elephants and Bisons or Panthers or packs of Wild Dogs or the Snakes. It was their habitat and man took over the place and forgot to tell them about it ....or rather the means of communication between man and the animal kingdom have not been developed.
Every time we went for a party to Cinnamon Grove near Valparai town, we women used to hope and pray that we do not meet any elephants or bisons.
The tea estates in Darjeeling have to deal with labour unrest and some other problems. Tea estates in Sri Lanka too had their problems along with the problems the country was facing, similar is the case of estates in some parts of Africa.
Therefore i say that every time you drink tea do give a thought to the tea planter and his wife who brave such difficult conditions to give you your cup of cheer. Another fact being that the children can never be with their parents as most estates are in remote regions and hence planters children are mostly in boarding schools.
The tea planter's wife is an institution in her own right, many tea companies in India do pay the wife for her contribution in running the estate, as many companies have a policy where the planters wives help with welfare activities and running of the creche for worker's children. These women have to be good in interior designing, cooking, planning parties from the estate to the district level, have to be excellent hostesses, be an excellent man manager because most bungalows have a minimum of 10 domestic help, emergency aid giver, agriculturist because all bungalows come with a huge kitchen garden and lawn and flower beds etc and so much more.
I salute your tribe all ye Planters and hope your lot has better conditions in  the years to come. 

 

Love of the Common man ---Heroic i say

In this world i have noticed one thing ....and that is............ the people who are either beautifull or well heeled .....some are blessed with both these attributes ....money and looks .....these people do have an easy road as far as getting accepted in a particular organisation or platform is concerned ...... they do have an edge over people who are not good looking or rich .....this does not mean that all that a beautifull or rich person says is accepted as the ultimate truth or that their life is a bed of roses ......they do have their own crosses to bear ......but yes they do have an edge over the others............ BUT......... the poor always do have to fight to make their voice heard and accepted in most platforms
Today being Valentine's day there is another thing that i always think about, 14th feb is celebrated as a day of love in most parts of the world. If one reads any romantic novel the author's description of the people in love is usually that of a person who is beautifull, of course there are exceptions to this rule example the Hunchback of Notre Dame who was so very much in love.... There are other instances of the hero or heroine of a love story not being beautifull in their physical being ...but then the author would compensate for this so called ''lacking'' by building up the character of this not so beautifull hero/heroine by giving them the most pleasant of temperaments.
My question is ..... why is this so .....because when we look at the common man world over, we see so many instances of such intense love and companionship between people who do not fit into the normal definitions of beauty. Will there ever be pageants for the common man who is above such definitions, citations, awards, fame or any such recognitions ........... and that is why the common man and woman is a Hero in my eyes ......so ordinary are their lives, so hard their struggle to make ends meet, so ingenious their ways to go about keeping their body and soul together and just as intense as a romantic their feeling for family and friends .....   

Something that strikes me very deeply

Something that strikes me very deeply ....... many people work because they love their jobs ........ and not because of the pay packet or appreciation or non appreciation ...... it is all about a job well done and looking back and being happy that when you were working you were true to what you did ....... very rarely do we even thank certain people from certain professions ...... but i love to see people who are devoted to their work come rain or shine .....be it an ordinary but essential job as those of the service providers ..... milk man or watchman or plumber ....... and sometimes just sometimes they, in going about their daily routine become great like the Dabbawalas of Mumbai .....

Do we ever thank the journalists ....... they do have awards ...and sometimes readers do write in to praise a particular article, but does lack of appreciation ever come in the way of our newspaper not reaching us on a particular day.....never ....and that is best part of it for me :)

Intellectuals talk about doing work and not really thinking about the results or fruits of one's labour. Indians quote Lord Krishna's philosophical advice "na karm phale spraha'' meaning do your work and duty for duty's sake and do not worry about the fruits of your labour.
What strikes me as very ironical is the fact that intellectuals pontificate about these things and ruminate about such deep and thought provoking philosophical ideals, but it is the common labourer, be it a mason, plumber, tailor or even a sweeper who actually practises this doctrine ........
Every time i use the toilets in Seef Mall in Bahrain ......I feel humbled and touched to see the ladies who do their cleaning work and they have a smile and they always share a word with almost everybody. This also reminds me of a song 'if more people were for people than people everywhere....there wud be a lot less people to worry about and a lot more people to care''