Never Mind the Floods

“Whatta month,” exclaimed Bai Goanna on the last day of August. “Floods, rain, more rain. And then the government does away with Article 370, BJP’s stalwarts dying, a Major General dismissed for sexual harassment, fish still being injected with formalin, taxi-mafia being tamed by the CM, so many things happening.” “Do you,” said Shri Husband, “have any idea what Article 370 is about?” To my, and definitely to Shri Husband’s, surprise, Bai Goanna could tell us the pluses, minuses and in-betweens of whatever has happened in Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh, what is likely to happen and the pros and cons of the Parliament’s most controversial recent decision regarding that region/ State/Union Territory. Before we could react, she explained that she’d been watching a lot of television lately and hence her knowledge of current events. Ah, technology, keeps everybody informed, stupid or intelligent, illiterate or schooled… What would we do without television crews sitting in Army boats? Does it occur to anyone that the Press guys might actually be hampering work? I remember, during the tsunami rescue operations in Tamil Nadu, reporters had to be given shelter, food, whatnot by the public servants (cops, municipality workers): they were coming the way of the real rescue teams. Also, spiritual-messengers from modern ashrams teaching the distraught to de-stress when what the ‘victims’ needed was drinking water, food, dry clothes, preventive (allopathic) medicines and sanitary napkins. …Bai Goanna was quoting leaders, writers, politicians, historians… pat! Shri Husband and I almost simultaneously vocally agreed on one thing: “We have to thank the electricity department of Goa and Saligao-Porvorim in particular, for keeping the facility going come storm or blocked drain-water.” Shri Husband took the first breath and asked me: “What does blocked-drain-water mean?” He’s the only one in India who’d ask such a question. And my grammar-Miss in school. Then, having successfully irritated me, he said: “I’m joking, re. Really, the light-men and the water-men did a fantastic job, hanh. So, also, the fire-men and the poder.” Truly, our village, marooned by the Guirim flood and the Porvorim traffic, was not much inconvenienced thanks to the utility men. Except for the one day when the government of Goa declared a holiday, come hell or high water, our teachers and students made their way to school for exams, sometimes wet, but always smiling. The scowls were more on the faces of habitual cribbers, more to do with in-house politics, less with Nature’s fury. In cities, the municipality workers who are the world’s greatest shirkers, according to some, rose to the occasion to clean up whatever mess they could. A question of too little too late, perhaps, but they did it. In our village, the postman and the gas-delivery chaps did their work with a sense of duty-is-duty. Valor, guys. No vegetables bothered my wado as, a rarity in Goa, it’s a vegetarian wado. Please note, I do not use the juvenile word, veggie; always the full forms, vegetables and vegetarian. The nustekar, too, unfailingly made his rounds to supply ‘fish-food’, as English-speaking Goans say, to us ‘fishies’ (like ‘veggies’). Formalin-laced or not, it’s a treat to eat tisrya-ek-shipi with hot rice and bhindi-solan kodi when it’s pouring. Available only in people’s homes. The fungus, the cobwebs, the damp clothes, the sunless days, we smile through them all, we Indians. Now, with Facebook connecting us, we smile into our mobile phones and then share the pics with the world, for those who know us even vaguely, to say ‘awesome’. I often wonder how many of those from non-affected areas contribute to the rehabilitation of losers of limb, life or property. Even those who claim they support the Indian Armed Forces and are proud of them, seldom give jobs or pay for the tuitions of the dependents of the soldiers/airmen/sailors in times of need. We’re still into the mode ‘government must do it’. I dislike this question that reporters ask: ‘what has the government done for you?’ We citizens love cutting down trees, using tons of plastic, refusing to segregate our waste, showing off our bullying talents, and we expect our elected representatives to be responsible. Ha. Strangely, whilst our national media was crying itself hoarse defending or attacking the government’s way of dealing with the removal of Article 370, an important national event, our school teachers were worried about seating arrangements, supervision, answer-sheet collections and marking. Truly, the lives of the migrant junta and we who deal with the daily living of their children, our students, is far removed from what’s happening in Parliament, Delhi. When the new Education Policy comes to us, we’ll wake up. Until then, it’s chalta-hai. By the time this goes into print, Ganapati would have visited and gone. The rains, too. A large number of us, unfazed by natural calamities and other such silly words, would have bought and discarded un-dissolvable statues of the beloved Lord. The traffic snarls and cars that need unnecessary trips to workshops are mere nuisances in times of heavy rains and floods. We in Goa take those in our stride. Tillari and other faraway places are, well, too far for us to worry about. Ditto with forests. We urban folk are happily detached from reality. I wasn’t surprised when a modern, well-informed mother told me there are no Dalits in Goa; her daughter had heard about the floods, saw them on television, also, but her world begins in Porvorim and ends in Panaji, so watching them on screen was no different from watching a movie in Inox. They faced the problem of not being able to celebrate a birthday properly because favourite restaurants weren’t getting the correct ingredients for the items on the menu. In my school, in contrast, the parents are worried about their next meal. The women who make the midday meal made do with green grams for a couple of days; but they did their duty well, cooking it in different ways, making sure it was freshly cooked and served hot. Teachers managed with leaking ceilings and sniffles. Never mind the floods, was the attitude, we’re there to make the school run, we’ll do it. Floods? said an acquaintance, it’s a temporary thing. Life goes on, true. Without safe drinking water, with destroyed homes, dead pets, it takes time, but life goes on. Right? What worries some is the fact that the auto-industry has a slowdown happening.

Along the Curve of the Jhelum

          The news of the floods in Kashmir reminded me of this: In another century, (just a few years ago, actually), Sri Husband and I lived in a little stone house on the banks of the river that troubled Kashmir last week.

Ram-Munshi-Bagh was the name of the locality and the house incongruously called ‘Venus Villa’. To reach there from Goa, we boarded a steamer (24 hrs) or bus (12 hrs) to Mumbai, thence a no-pantry train to Jammu via Delhi (another 30 odd hours). We couldn’t afford airfare and KRC was decades away. From Jammu, a day-long journey by bus over the only pass (Banihal) through the mountains took us to Srinagar. Often, depending on the weather, we had to spend a night at Udhampur. Since plastic bags weren’t common then, and anti-motion-sickness pills not always effective/available, when a passenger felt like vomiting a window was opened and s/he let out the demons of travel-sickness.

Our lives depended on Banihal. From soggy, fungus-lined onions and the newly-available milk-powder for babies everything came via Banihal.

Through the summer, we walked along the ‘bundhs’ that contained the gentle Jhelum waters. Born of a Verinag spring, the Jhelum merged (still does!) with the Chenab, the Sutlej and lastly the Indus. Beyond the banks, we could see the snow-covered peaks of the pretty Pir-Panjal range lacing the distant western horizon.

I said to Shri Husband: “Their loveliness belies their formidability. Only the toughest can cross them or live in them through all weather conditions.”

Shri Husband’s retort: “Our soldiers do.”

The soil by the Jhelum was so fertile that if you stood long enough in one place, your feet would sprout roots. Ok, I’m exaggerating, but it’s true that plants, especially seasonal, flowering ones, grew very, very fast. The rose creeper that veiled the wall and roof of ‘Venus Villa’ budded and bloomed within a week of ‘Holi’ getting over and stayed beautiful till September. We have pictures… but how does one preserve to ‘show’ the memory of a heady fragrance?

My landlady (Shri Husband argues, ‘house-owner’ is a more appropriate word) taught me to make garlands of slices of egg-plant (‘shuddha shivraaks’ please note, the egg-plant is not related to the hen, it’s another word for ‘vaingem’), tomato, ‘doodhee’ and other vegetables. These were hung outside our windows and dried (like we dry fish here) to be hydrated and consumed in the lean and wretched winter months, when pipes burst because the water inside them expanded on freezing. We had to keep taps dripping just a little, 24x7 to prevent mishaps.

Winter memories include dragging a big lump of coal over a ‘kuchha’ road and breaking it (by candlelight since electricity was so erratic and nearly ‘powerless’) with a hammer into small pieces to feed the ‘bukhari’ and ‘kangdi’ that warmed us through Diwali, Christmas, New Year and the final exams of friends’ school-going children.

The turmoil of the past many years and improved transport and communications have changed Kashmir. Though unconnected, the Jhelum seems to have shown her displeasure rather severely in recent months. Hand in glove with heavy rains, she has wreaked havoc through fields and valley, homes and hospitals, sparing neither neonates nor nonagenarians. Politicians, never at a loss for words and ever at a loss to act, have yapped at each other and at Delhi on television.

“The only ones,” Shri Husband quipped, staring at the I-box news, “to silently, efficiently save life and limb without asking for praise or raise are the Indian Armed Forces.”

“God wears a uniform,” I said, loftily.

Shri Husband gave me a weird look.

I hastily added: “Not my words. Someone in Uttarakhand said that. I remember.”

Weird look turned to normal scowl. We were on our regular wavelength once more.

He: “It’s remarkable how we Indians from different parts of a vast sub-continent, who barely comprehend each other’s language or food-habits, work as a seamless team in the Services.”

Me: “By the time this column is read, landslides would have been cleared, by human…”

He: “…mostly military…” (the customary interruption!)

Me: “…hands and simple implements when big mechanized equipment can’t reach sites. Updated statistics will reveal number of lives saved and the loss of crores of rupees.”

He: “How many jawans were injured in the rescue operations will not be ‘advertised’. How many jawans missed going home to get married, be with their children through board exams or be by a dying loved one’s side will never be known. This is one Indian institution that bashes on regardless to do its duty, more than duty, come what may.”

Silence. A rare, comfortable one.

Then Shri Husband, in a thoughtful and sombre tone, watching (on-screen) the MLAs of that same troubled state involved in fisticuffs: “In spite of the jokers in the Vidhaan Sabhas, this country is doing well thanks to the workers of the Railways, the Postal Services, the Telecom chaps, the truck-drivers, loaders, the high-tech private sector and…”

I butted in: “…the poders who give us our daily bread?”

And together we laughed at a long-forgotten memory: in ‘Venus Villa’ near a bend of the Jhelum, too, early in the morning and in the evening, on a cycle came a bread-boy delivering the hot, fresh, local ‘roti’, quite like our chap here.