Simply Fly

by Capt G R Gopinath

  The farm had been established. Raju, the farm boy, had grown into an adult. I built a small hut for him, got him a motorcycle and a television set. He got married. The couple lived on the farm and they had a son. His family became as much a part of the farm as the trees we had planted. Raju was uneducated but he had an innate sense of management and managed the farm, including its finances. Every week he produced before me farm accounts with the right numbers. He had taught himself numbers but enlisted the assistance of someone who could read and write. As happens in the case of people deprived of one sense—their other senses become far more acute than normal, Raju’s lack of literacy made him keen and intuitive about numbers. From one end to the other, the farm was covered with coconuts, areca nuts, bananas, some fruit-bearing trees, mulberry, and was now fully established and yielding. Pallavi was in boarding school in Bengaluru. Krithika was waiting to go to school. I now considered the idea of moving to Bengaluru and dividing my time between Bengaluru and the farm which now needed less attention. The agriculture-consultancy business I had set up there three years ago was beginning to show promise and had main branches in Bengaluru and Hassan, and franchisees in other parts of Karnataka. I had one hundred people working in the two branches together. The HR included horticulturists, civil engineers, mechanics, and salesmen. They handled projects principally relating to agriculture, horticulture, landscaping, water management, and rain-water harvesting.

  I moved to Bengaluru. Once there, I discussed the distribution of responsibility with my business partner so that we could complement each other. I soon got busy dividing time between Bengaluru and Hassan. By 1993, my move to Bengaluru was complete. I found a small apartment close to Bishop Cotton Girls School where Pallavi studied. Krithika joined her sister in the same school. The apartment block was right next to Cubbon Park where I took walks in the morning and evening. I was also close to the Army Club and began playing squash again. The apartment was on Grant Road, now renamed Vittal Mallya Road. It was, and still remains, a very beautiful part of Bengaluru. It captured my heart because the area was full of rain trees. Some of them were perhaps the most magnificent trees in the world, some centuries old. There was a variety of flora including rain trees, gulmohars, neem, jacaranda, Cassia javanica, and Tabebuia spectabilis. In those years, not so long ago, if you took a helicopter ride over Bengaluru, you could still see swathes of lush green tree cover. The trees on Vittal Mallya Road created a canopy so wide you were wholly enveloped by the arching green glade.

  I used to walk the short stretch of Vittal Mallya Road, and amble along Lavelle Road, an equally shaded street that intersected the former. The avenues were dotted with old-style bungalows. These were parts of the old Bengaluru cantonment where the military officers and the cadres were provided quarters, both during British rule and after independence. The army centres included MEG (Madras Engineering Group), the Pioneer Corps, the ASC Centre, the Services Selection Board, and several army officers’ messes and the RSI club. These large campuses constituted the city’s lungs.

  Even in those days, however, during my frequent helicopter sorties over the city, I saw in the midst of large swathes of greenery early signs of denudation. I also saw the famed lakes of Bengaluru, had once been agriculture tanks. These great waterbodies could have kept the city cool and been used for rain-water harvesting and constitute as world-class recreation zones. The lakes were however choking with sewage and non-biodegradable waste. Tree cover was being eroded. In any part of the world, the Ulsoor, Hebbal, and Yediyur Lakes in Bengaluru, would have formed the magnificent backdrop for the best lake-front properties. They could have featured water parks that would have been the delight of urban architects and designers. Urban landscape is a delectable speciality in many schools of western architecture. Many students initiate graduate projects on the best ways of incorporating the lineament and ecology of inner-city waterbodies and old heritage buildings within urban housing or commercial developments. The lakes in Bengaluru were however clogged and dank from rotting weeds and sewage. The beauty of Bengaluru was already being destroyed at a frightening pace. Today, 95 per cent of the tree cover and grassland in downtown Bengaluru has vanished. All that remains is greenery preserved in the army-command areas and some government-owned properties. The old bungalows have vanished too. City expansion should be so planned that it preserves historical and cultural legacy.

  I also loved the other, older Bengaluru. I loved Basavanagudi, Shankarapuram, and Malleshwaram. I enjoyed visiting the markets there and Russell Market in Shivajinagar. There is a labyrinth of history among these landmarks of the city. Their legacy and the old-world charm is unique. The Gavipuram temple for instance, is nearly 2000 years old: it’s a temple within a cave. In comparison, a glitzy shopping mall is just the same be it in Paris, Singapore, or New York. If you are in any mall and looking at any Louis Vuitton or Armani outlet, they look the same, they all feel the same, and they sell the same types of goods. Nobody can therefore identify where you bought your goods from. The danger facing most growing cities across the world is the loss of character and culture. The challenge to urban planners is how to build clean modern cities to accommodate the new immigrants and how to house them without losing the heritage and tradition, and snapping the cultural moorings. I heard V. S. Naipaul say that India should not use Dubai or Singapore as models of emulation because a city is not just a conglomeration of glass-fronted buildings, shopping malls, and dry statistics of per capita income and GDP. A city becomes a great city when it is the repository of learning, art, theatre, and literature.

  At festival time, the market in Basavanagudi is decorated and sports its best colours. The aesthetics of colour, scent, and sound have evolved over generations. Covent Garden in London has been rebuilt to accommodate pubs and other watering holes; the Covent Garden of legend where traders and horsemen came to buy and sell horses has vanished. We have to learn from, and caution ourselves, against this form of inordinate urgency to destroy the old. There is another story that straddles the old and new. Some fifty-five years ago an Iyengar gentleman came to Bengaluru and set up a bakery in Vishveshvarapuram in Basavanagudi which became very famous. The owner named it V.B. Bakery. It specialized in savouries that are redolent with flavours of old Mysore. The repertoire included vegetable-stuffed buns and puffs, spiced buns, buns with coconut icing, sweetened milk bread, sponge-textured ordinary bread, and other snacks, hot and cold. The aroma of baking bread wafted over hundreds of metres from where the bakery stood in the famous Sajjan Rao Circle, the old quarters of Basavanagudi. It was a landmark for the hungry; for those unable to resist temptation. The bakery was and remains a landmark, even metaphorically. The Iyengar who came and set up the bakery was my brother-in-law’s father.

  The Iyengars, some of them relations from my father’s side, migrated to Bengaluru from nondescript rural nodes of Hassan district and set up what has become a brand name: the Iyengar Bakery. The migrations have taken place over a period spanning more than a hundred years. The migration continues. Just like Udupi hotels (read ‘restaurants’), the Iyengar Bakery is supposed to offer certain standards in terms of product quality and service. The Iyengar Bakery is operated by Brahmin bakers, and they are expected to observe cleanliness and hygiene of a high order and use the finest ingredients. They are also expected to be fastidious about taste and about the segregation of food types, to ensure that the more quickly perishable grade of food items are not brought into contact with those that have a longer shelf life. Above all, the Iyengar Bakery provides a nutritious snack at a reasonable price. They form a ubiquitous feature of the Bengaluru landscape, and there must be over a thousand bakeries in the city. It is still a mystery how the puritanical, orthodox Iyengar Brahmins, who had no vocation for business took to baking as a profession, a legacy of colonial India.

  A visit to Bengaluru is incomplete without a visit to the Lalbaug, the gardens laid out by Tipu Sultan in 1776, MTR, the legendary Udupi Hotel, and the Iyengar Bakeries. The bakeries ar
e to be found all over Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, and Tamil Nadu. Lalbaug has delights for scholars and lay people. MTR was in those days the mother of all Udupi hotels.

  My friend Prof. P.N. Thirunarayana of the Indian Institute of Management, Bengaluru, who later became a director in our company, and I were at one time frequent visitors to Lalbaug and MTR. I asked the professor to join me for a morning walk in the Lalbaug whenever I needed to pick his brains and discuss some pressing matters. We met at six at Lalbaug, walked and talked for an hour and half, and then sauntered across the street to MTR for a wholesome breakfast of idli and dosa. These little things gave me joy. Happiness is a mirage if you look at it as a destination to arrive at. If you take joy in the everyday things of life, you will never need to embark on a journey towards an elusive destination. If work is your joy, you never need to toil at all in life!

  My father told me about how one day Gandhi, while still a lawyer, decided to walk to work. He hoped the walk would give him time to think and to sort out problems, as well as some physical exercise. On most days, therefore, I too began walking to and from work.

  I learnt to live each moment intensely. These were moments with family, moments with friends, moments spent strolling, and moments exchanging banter at the vegetable market. Happiness is no pinnacle to be attained. It doesn’t exist as a destination and is meaningful only as a journey. What you want to be is a vision. It’s an ideal. If you have reached it, you may have reached a goal but a vision is something that drives you because it is almost impossible to achieve. It is something virtual. This was the case with me. I was vaguely conscious of seeking something more. Unknown to me, I was reaching out to a new beginning.

  My move to Bengaluru had two important consequences for my future career. I resumed socializing with old friends from the army at the RSI (the army club). The other thing was bumping into old buddy, Capt. K.J. Samuel—Capt. Sam—for all of us.This was a watershed moment for me. Capt. Sam was with me at the NDA and at the IMA. We were also bunker buddies and room-mates at the School of Artillery in Devlali. Sam is a wonderful guy with a heart of gold. He is unassuming and very lovable. We reunited amidst much rejoicing. We had a lot of catching up to do. Things had happened to our lives and we needed to share notes. Sam loved his rum and was a touch wild in his younger days. He could drink a bottle of rum and remain unaffected and sober. Now he was no longer the old tippler! He had given up drinking and become as sober as the Pope! I did not like either of the extremes because I enjoyed a drink with old buddies. I tried to preach to him that moderation is good as the ecclesiastics said but Sam was a disappointment. Just as the sun was setting and the need arose for some old style camaraderie, Sam would say he had a family to take care of and had to leave. Even then he retained an infectious zest for life, and remained my buddy of yore! We met frequently at the club to play squash and tennis. We talked about what each of us planned to do in the future. I told Sam about my return from the army, my decision to become a farmer, the move to Javagal, the coconuts and the mulberry, the sericulture and the success of the farming enterprise. I narrated my story as a businessman and my entrepreneurial essays: the motorcycle dealership, the restaurant, and the agriculture and water management consultancy. I told Sam the circumstances that had taken me to Javagal, to Hassan, and now brought me to Bengaluru. I updated him on my family. My first daughter Pallavi was a day scholar in the fourth standard and Krithika was in LKG. She was four years old. Bhargavi took care of the family. Sam told me his story. He had married earlier than I did. He had a daughter and two sons. The children were grown-up. Sam had resigned from the army and was working as a freelance helicopter pilot. He was looking for something gainful and steady.

  As a freelance pilot, companies hired him when there was need. His assignments took him all over, from the north-east flying for the Oil and Natural Gas Commission, to the west flying for some private business. He did not know where the next assignment would be. He did not know if there would be a next assignment. Things were fluid; were unsettling. Work he had to, for a living. He wanted to be in Bengaluru after twenty years of service in the army. He was energetic and fit. He had a great sense of humour. He was young in civil parlance. In army slang, for me, it was always ‘Hi Sam, Old Man!’

  Post-NDA one becomes a commissioned officer at the age of nineteen or twenty. After twenty years of service, an army officer is relatively young. Jawans who did not get promotions used to retire at thirty-five and are younger than officers at retirement. It is a great tragedy that after giving the best years of their lives to the country, they are left to fend for themselves. A retired jawan received a measly Rs 300 or Rs 400 as monthly pension. The only jobs they get after retirement are that of security guard’s. They are however excellent human resource given their meticulous training. They are hard-working and highly disciplined. It is a huge challenge for the country to ensure that this wonderful resource does not go waste.

  Sam, was in his early 40s when he left the army because he wanted to settle in Bengaluru and find himself a steady job. He had lost interest in army life and did not wish to continue.

  Visit to China

  It was around this time that I had the opportunity to visit China. The government sent me to China on an exchange visit. The purpose was to study silk-rearing practices there. I was a kind of silk farmer celebrity and that must have weighed on the government’s decision to select me. I have always liked visiting other farmers, be they my neighbours in Javagal or farmers in the US or in China. It was a month-long visit and included both Thailand and China in its itinerary. As I look back, I can see the truth of Somerset Maugham’s words when he wrote, ‘Often life is influenced by and steered by chance events.’ Life is driven by chance events. The direction it takes is often determined by simple decisions like taking one road or one turn at a corner rather than another. Sometimes a casual decision to watch a play and not go to the shopping mall might make a big difference. Chance events have the power to dictate our lives. If you call these events, fate or destiny, so be it. Maugham tells the story of a man whose life took a dramatic turn because of a chance meeting with someone who he would not have met had he taken a different road. That is an extraordinary story, tellingly narrated. The moral of the tale applies to me too. It is significant that I met Sam on that particular day, fateful by hindsight, and not on any other, before or after. It was equally an event of chance that I was sent to China. Together these two events took me on a course that would not have otherwise been taken.

  Almost every other day, in the first six months to a year after we met, I asked Sam if he had got a job. I was curious about the life of freelance pilots and was concerned about him. A freelancer tends to be a drifter and it is difficult for him or her to settle down to a reasonably predictable routine and lifestyle. It becomes a greater concern when there is a family to support. I once asked Sam point blank, ‘Sam Old Man! How come you are not getting a job?’ He had been to several interviews for the position of a helicopter pilot. He was not selected. I could sense that he was bothered by a vague sense of unease. Sam was positive and not depressed but I discerned a dark line of worry beneath his poker face. He had a family to support. He was young and that made a lot of difference. Most of us will fall apart if we don’t have work to do, which is an anchor, necessary for happiness. Human beings need to work, but individuals need to reason and discover for themselves the unique secret of the kind of work that suits them, is productive, and makes them happy in the long-term. More people these days are unhappy at work than ever before. Most of our waking hours are spent at work. The majority looks at only one consequence of that work as the most worthwhile: money. Money is one or more steps removed from happiness. Only for the miser, who counts his money before going to bed or looks at the interest accruing to his savings bank account, can money be an end in itself. For the rest, it is what money can bring and buy that matters. There is a direct relationship between the consumerism of the world today and the work that people do. Peo
ple seem to be happy and enjoying life when on a buying or shopping spree at the mall, but for many if work does not offer challenges, it is not worthwhile.

  As time passed, with Sam and I continuing our morning game sessions without a break, the line of worry on Sam’s brow began to deepen. Restlessness had begun to border on dejection. Sam’s face began to wear a shadow. He was predictably taken to the edge, and it is at the edge of one’s existence that one is most creative. Danger stimulates the adrenal glands. Sam’s acute concern about the future made the creative juices flow. He had begun to think and look beyond the narrow confines of a job which had boxed him in. One day I got a flavour of his idea. ‘Gopi,’ began Sam. ‘Why can’t we do something with the helicopter?’ There was a pause and a deep breath. Rather, there was one conflated pause and two audibly deep breaths. ‘What do you mean, Sam?’ I quipped. It was that inchoate moment, before a new line of thinking opened up. Sam did not apprehend the idea he had just authored. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Let’s just do something with the helicopter. I mean let us do things on our own.’

  He knew I was in business. He said, ‘We could set up a business for crop spraying using helicopters.’ As a businessman, the idea appealed to me. As a farmer, it was abhorrent. I had just won the Rolex Award for Ecological Farming. I retorted, ‘Oh! No, Sam. I don’t want to spray pesticides.’ I said, ‘Look, Sam, this is dirty work. The world is going green.’ I knew the commercial aspect of pesticides as I had now been engaged in farming for fifteen years. I was aware of what kind of pesticide applications there were and that perhaps only tea and rubber plantations could afford aerial spraying. In coffee plantations however their tree canopy makes aerial spraying an impracticable idea. Tea plantations could also afford it, but tea prices had collapsed. Rubber plantations could afford it, but the terrain was dangerous for flying. Overall the prospect of pesticide spraying seemed to me dirty and erratic flying. It would also not make for a steady source of income. I refused, but the idea remained with me.