So going on a holiday had become a serious imperative. There were two weeks left for schools to reopen. If I didn’t take a break and take the family out somewhere I was in deep trouble. Especially since Bablu ki Ma, who had developed some strange airs after coming to Delhi, was also showing me the rolling pin.
To safeguard the peace and pocket I tentatively suggested: Surajkund? The little lady was terribly excited. But Bablu, the cheeky blighter, started to curl his upper lip. And his mother immediately backed down.
Gurcharan at the taxi stand came to our rescue. Said: why not go to the terai region − to Corbett National Park. I was a little skeptical. My own limited view of wildlife was through the barrel of a gun down by the marshlands along the Ganga at Farrukhabad. I remember, with nostalgia, the neel gai kebabs and the cheetal achar, the pickle. But I doubt the little lady, with her vegetarian ways, would approve the memory. Or, for that matter, Bablu who, in this fancy school of his, had started lecturing me about the concepts of panchvati and something complicated called ‘environmental conservation consciousness’.
I was delighted that Bablu was game. And I was intrigued. Was this the same unholy terror that used to pull the wings off flies and offer to drown the jungli kittens born behind the garage? I was even more surprised when he urged me to leave Chachi behind. ‘She belches something terrible, Papa,’ he said. ‘And even though you think you’ve reassembled her just right she is bound to make all sorts of rude noises just when we come across animals in the forest.’
Now, I was impressed by my son’s newfangled ideas, but these insults to Chachi were just too much. ‘She goes along or we stay behind,’ I thundered. Bablu’s mouth fell open. He’s only known me to be a pushover.
His mother’s eyes twinkled. ‘There’s life in the old man, after all,’ I heard her whisper to Chachi. And suddenly there was a new bounce in her step.
The weekend was upon us all too soon. I kept telling the little lady that food and drink would be available there but she still insisted on packing two dozen methi ka parathas, an assortment of achars and four flasks of bel pathar ka sherbet. To my eternal relief Chachi behaved herself. Even Bablu had to admit that when she belched it was apologetically. Certainly in contrast with the UP Roadways so-called buses, which take over the highways with what my journalist friend calls the ‘suicidal determination of kamikaze pilots’, Chachi was a virtual saint.
Finally, six hot and dusty hours later, we reached Kashipur. Gurbhachan’s sister’s brother-in-law’s father met us at the Government Circuit House. His natural warmth and his twinkling eyes charmed Dadu immediately. His packed lunch of mirch ka salan and lachcha parathas charmed the little lady and Mataji. And his spruced up Tata Sierra and choice of Baba Sehgal on tape charmed Bablu.
And, indeed, while the miles melted away even Chachi forgot to belch. As we entered the terai region in earnest the breeze got cooler and the teak plantations, laid out by the Forest Department, grew dense. As we passed Gargia, the last village before hitting the main Corbett gate, our host told us how a flash flood, the worst since 1924, had swooped down and washed away the main building of the jungle resort owned by Akbar ‘Dumpy’ Ahmed and his wife, the former ‘Miss India’, Naina Balsavar. (It seems, however, that the two have since landed on their feet and have rebuilt the facilities with even more imagination.)
‘But isn’t “Dumpy” a politician? What is he doing running a wildlife resort?’ I ventured. The twinkle in Harbhajan’s eyes increased as he quipped: ‘Isn’t politics the best training ground for opening up a wildlife resort?’
The next three days should have been sheer bliss. No turning down the meters. No abuse from irate passengers accusing us poor taxi drivers of over charging. Finally a chance for Chachi to get her tyres off the ground!
After escorting us to the gates of the famous Corbett National Park, (reservations courtesy a regular politician customer) Singh drove off into the sunset. We were on our own. And, despite the presence of her in-laws and teenaged son, I couldn’t help noticing that the little lady looked quite coy.
But not for long. Because, by the time the day was over, my old nagging wife was back in action. She couldn’t stop looking smug about the dismal canteen facilities. And every time I reached for the achar or sherbet she twisted the churi in even deeper. Meanwhile, from dawn to dust Bablu droned on about the sparse accommodation, the lack of running water, the terrible food and what he called the ‘Jurassic’ prints of wildlife movies shown each night. (What big words these fancy schools teach our children!)
Even Chachi was annoyed. Where was the rest I had promised her? What could I do? Would you believe a wildlife sanctuary open to tourists without any decent jeeps to take them around? So Chachi had to be pressed into service. She deliberately belched so loudly throughout our first safari that Bablu declared a boycott.
That night, as I stepped out on to the rickety veranda and spotted my aged father dozing lightly on a cane chair well past its prime, my mind went back 20 years. To similar outings with him and my achar-packing mother. I could hear the sounds of wild boar snuffling out the garbage and Ram Dulari, the tame elephant, let the digestive gases rumble. The equally rickety door opened gently and there stood Bablu, his hair mussed up and pyjama cord hanging down to his knees. As he approached I thought to myself: he’s just a little boy. My fast-mouthed, precocious, environmental conservationist child was just a little boy.
What was disturbing him? I asked. ‘You know, Papa,’ he said, ‘you really ought to tell your politician friend to do something about this place. Corbett is supposed to be the best of the Project Tiger parks. Look at the dismal state it is in. And not just Corbett, but all tiger sanctuaries.’ He proceeded to give me some statistics on the tiger that would make your hair stand on end. Even his mother, whose sleep we had disturbed, started to look a bit squeamish.
He had read in some firangi magazine called Time that India had an estimated 60 per cent of the world’s tigers – as many as 3,750. But that, over the past years, the tiger population of the country’s 21 forest reserves had, on an average, dropped 35 per cent. The greatest tiger disaster area had been the Ranthambhore National Park, near Sawai Madhopur in Rajasthan, which recorded 18 tiger deaths in the three-year span between 1989 and 1992!
‘Why harm the tiger?’ Bablu ki Ma asked. ‘How can people possibly profit from killing such a noble beast? A beast on which Goddess Durga rides.’
‘Profit? Oh, people profit very handsomely,’ Bablu said.
‘But what about all those newspaper stories about raids on tiger skin exporters? Were they all false propaganda by the police and the Ministry of Environment and Forests?’ I asked.
Bablu, the know-it-all, said even if we believed the raids to be genuine, they couldn’t begin to solve the problem. It seems that while the skin is valuable, it is perhaps not as valuable as many other parts of the animal anatomy. As Time told it, in Asia especially, there is strong belief that the tiger is a source of great healing power. The tiger bone portions are believed to cure rheumatism and enhance one’s life span. The whiskers apparently contain potent portions to provide strength. And pills made from the eye help calm convulsions. With a twinkle in his eye, Bablu lowered his voice and said: ‘Did you know that affluent Taiwanese are known to pay as much as $320 for a bowl of tiger penis soup in the belief that it will galvanize their sex drive?’ This was too much for his mother. ‘Tauba! Tauba’, she muttered. ‘Such badtameezi, what gall!’
The next day the little lady woke up like a bhalu with a sar dard; a bear with a headache. What was the matter? The tiger stories? ‘Now I know why they call this a wildlife sanctuary,’ she exclaimed. ‘If the bed bugs don’t hold you down the mosquitoes will certainly carry you away!!’
Our holiday was apparently over none too soon. We left on the wings of different emotions. Dadu seemed happy enough and my mother continued to smile her guileless, toothless smile. The little lady was happy to be getting back to her twin gas cylinders and Videoco
n refrigerator and colour television. I wasn’t exactly unhappy about reactivating Chachi’s meter. As for Bablu, he couldn’t make up his mind whether he was happy or sad that we hadn’t sighted a tiger. The contemplative boy of last night was gone. Back was my precocious, loud-mouthed son. The little harami!
He deliberately waited for the chief wildlife warden to be in hearing distance before he loudly proclaimed: ‘It’s an elaborate con. By making you run around so much for the reservation you get the impression you are getting a prize catch. But what you actually get is a view of a thousand backsides of a thousand deer, an elephant herd in the distance and a lot of fanciful stories about tiger sightings. How is it that the VIPs all invariably see a tiger and we aam janta don’t. Is there influence to be used even in this?’
What could I say?
8
MANGO PARTY POLITICS
I DID, HOWEVER, HAVE PLENTY TO SAY TO GURCHARAN when, barely a day after returning from that rather hectic trip, he insisted that I venture out again. ‘Arre bhai,’ I said to him, ‘Chachi can’t take this strain. Thanks to those car cannibals − your own wife’s brother-in-law’s “contacts” − she’s had to go through the humiliation of being stripped and put together again. Just give her a little time to get back her full form.’
‘Time is money and money is time,’ he retorted – echoing the motto emblazoned over the front door of our taxi stand office, now long since faded with age. ‘And, besides,’ he added, ‘it’s not as if I’m sending you with some boring NGO or educationist to some boring seminar where the savaris are all boring and earnest and look surprised when you expect a tip at the end of the journey. Not only are you on VVIP duty, the occasion itself is going to be fun − a mango party in the Muzzafarnagar area. It’s laal batti neta-giri all the way. And you’re not alone,’ he added; ‘our entire fleet has been requisitioned. Pinto, Reddy, Murli and I, too, will accompany.’
‘Who’s the VVIP?’ I asked.
‘Oh, nobody significant,’ he replied, ‘some minor politician chairman of someminor corporation. He has his own government issue vehicle. We’re just carrying the extra chamchas − a bunch of minor politicians out for a freebie.’
‘What’s a mango party got to do with neta-giri?’ our colleague Joseph Pinto asked. Pinto was yet unfamiliar with the unique tradition so proudly started by us UP wallahs. A new addition to modern political vocabulary − what we call ‘mango party politics’.
‘Why UP and not Maharashtra, which produces the famous Alphonso mango?’ he asked. My cynical son, Bablu, (still on holiday and perpetually hanging around) quipped that this was perhaps because Bombayites placed business above their politics and UP wallahs made politics their business.
The way it works is that, each northern monsoon season, minor politicians arrange these aam ka dawats (mango party) at the orchards of friends and relatives, to which they try to invite as many important Delhi politicians as possible. The party we were going to had already become something of an institution.
A cloak of grey covered the capital city the morning we set out. And it continued all the way past the Pragati Maidan and the Nizamuddin Bridge as we wound our way out of the city. One of my passengers looked very troubled. (I thought he was a ‘Madrasi’ till Pinto objected to the presumption that all South Indians were automatically from Madras.) ‘Where’s the sun,’ he asked, the caste mark on his forehead quivering while he frowned. ‘I cannot begin my day without the surya namaskar.’ I looked up at the sun desperately trying to crawl through the overcast sky above and silently asked the man above: ‘What happened? Did somebody die?’
On both sides of the pot-holed road concrete structures jostled with each other for a place in the struggling sun. Further left, off the main road, on the way to the NOIDA township, I caught a glimpse of the External Affairs Officers Apartments. In front of the apartment block a nullah meandered drunkenly. And into its messy lap, an enormous cement pipe spilled its guts – a frothy, foamy liquid that smelled something awful.
As I drove past I recalled a touching conversation with the wife of a former Indian Foreign Service officer when she travelled in Chachi between South Block and Bharti Nagar. This was the first, and last, time she had stepped into her husband’s workplace, she told me. She had only gone there that day to clear out personal mementoes in his office. He was to retire within the week. ‘At last we’ll we able to put down roots,’ she had declared. ‘No more gypsy life for us. We have our apartment and our friends. What more can a retired person want?’
What more could a person want? This? No trees, giant mosquitoes and a view of unadulterated pollution? Surely not?!
The depression continued as the road grew more pot-holed. By the time one approached the mandi town of Hapur the unending spill from unending factories had long killed the eucalyptus trees. Their skeletal remains swayed drunkenly in the morning mist (or was that chullah smoke?), ghostly reminders of someone’s vision of a better tomorrow. Moradabad, the brass capital of UP, looked almost pleasant at 7 a.m. Lotus blooms, in shades of yellow and pink, swayed gently in the breeze. And I almost believed we had wandered into someone’s waking dream – till two mammoth pigs staggered out of a patch of stagnant water, dripping some gooey green, unmentionable mess …
By this time my passengers were starting to get restless − though for different reasons. Krishna Iyerji’s caste mask had started to run down the sides of his face. Mishraji, from my neck of the woods of Etawah, had run out of No. 120 chewing tambacu. The heavily starched khadi pyjamas of Dhawanji, from South Delhi, had started to tighten up in some awkward places. And his close friend, Agarwalji, was having similar problems with his dhoti.
Even my own patience was running thin. I told them, at the very outset, that they had a choice between air-conditioning and paan chewing. They chose the latter, much to my delight because I was going to charge for air-conditioning anyway. But Chachi was most upset. Not an hour outside Delhi and her pristine white sides were streaked with gory red stains. This, for her, was worse than murder!
Finally we approached our destination. It seems the whole of the district had turned out to greet us. I almost forgot my place and stepped forward to be garlanded. Agarwalji and Dhawanji, who had disappeared behind the mango trees as soon as I brought Chachi to a halt, miraculously re-appeared on both sides of the VVIP just seconds before the press wallahs’ flash bulbs went off. Iyerji went in immediate search of fresh water to wash off the pollution from his hands and could not believe that the muddy water I offered came from a canal off the holy Ganga. Mishraji seemed happy. He and the local SHO, also a paan addict, had got down to the serious business of chewing and spitting.
As the morning and afternoon wore off, things seem to work out well for all concerned. The minor local politician who had issued the invitation was pleased because, at the cost of a few small crates of mangoes and some biryani and chicken korma, he was able to renew his contacts and make enough afresh to last for the next year. His brother-in-law, the orchard owner, (who had anyway footed the bill) was pleased because, in order to impress the VVIP, the local authorities had spruced up the roads − albeit temporarily. The local netas were pleased because they could throw their weight around in front of the bigwigs of the local administration, normally difficult to impress.
The neighbouring orchard owners were pleased because they got to ask for telephone and gas connections and other political favours. The villagers and farm labour were pleased because this was a paid holiday and they got to eat some good desi ghee-laced mithai. The local journalists were pleased to go home with an advertisement for their paper and a crate of mangoes for their wives.
As for the star guest − the so-called VVIP politician − well, he got his own brief hour of glory. After the impersonal anonymity of his position lower down in the capital’s political hierarchy, this was a great opportunity to restore one’s self-esteem.
On the whole, the affair was one great spectacle!
As the laal batti VVIP ca
rs revved their engines and the police contingent gave its last salute, Iyerji took a running jump into my taxi. He was ‘fed up and full filled,’ he declared. ‘What a lovely orchard. What a lovely occasion,’ he gushed. Kind words. Because Iyerji, I had noticed, hadn’t eaten a thing beyond one Chausa mango.
It didn’t take long for the reality of UP to catch up with us once again. Mishraji, his mouth continuously full of paan juice, matched the unending spill from unending factories along the route. The long dead eucalyptus trees swayed drunkenly in the fumes of a dozen factory furnaces. The bloated pigs wallowed in axle grease. And more than once, on that pot-holed return journey to the capital, I turned my eyes upward to silently ask: ‘What happened? Did somebody die?’
9
RAM TERI GANGA MAILI
AS OUR JOURNEY ENDED AND I SPOKE THE WORDS OUT LOUD again the corner of my eye caught a suspiciously moist glint in Pinto’s eye. ‘Kya hua, bhai saheb?’ I asked. ‘What is wrong?’
‘What to do, brother?’ he said. ‘What to do? What am I doing here − driving down dead end streets and taking dead end journeys to senseless elections and through senseless neta-giri? What am I doing driving down pot-holed roads and through long forgotten villages where dust is one’s constant companion and “water” is a bad word some woman called Deepa Mehta invented to pre-sell her film? What am I doing so far away from home?’
What could I say in return? And as dawn struggled to break through another pollution filled Delhi day and the nostalgia welled up in Pinto’s eyes I couldn’t help remember the experience we had shared – some years ago – which, indeed, made me wonder why I continue to live up here in the North.
Well, it all started because a momentous thing happened to shatter a presumption we UP wallahs have lived with most of our lives − that we alone can produce prime ministers. One South Indian prime minister got replaced by another South Indian. Suddenly many of my jath wallahs and other assorted North Indian netas were forced to consider that there actually may be life − and, most important, power – beyond the Vindhyas.
Travails with Chachi Page 5
