Mid-Monsoon Musings

          Daily downpours and the lack of sun have encouraged colourful mould and fungi to take over walls/windows/shelves/bags and footwear. In the bathroom towels and undergarments, in the kitchen pulses, onions and dried fish, also colonized.

          The road that divides the neighbourhood into plots is like God:  can’t be seen (submerged under water), but those in the know, tell us it’s there, has always been reliable. Outsiders have to rely on belief and faith when they are driving/walking on it.

          Trees known and strange have sprouted leaves. Creepers are adventurous. They climb up high teak trunks, wrap themselves around branches and twigs, hug other creepers along the way and knit canopies above canopies, fashioning dismal gloom below.

          One night, a guest gets her car-wheel stuck in a spot of soft mud. The revving sinks the wheel to bumper level. It’s nearing midnight. We phone the crane-service who, spotting opportunity, charges unreasonably. A neighbour sees what’s happening. There’s a puja going on in his house. “Cancel the crane,” he tells us. After the puja, we’ll help you.” We wait for an hour till the chanting is over, then, in minutes, young strong hands, legs, torsos, push it out safely.

          Villagers always help where Nature is habitually cruel. I’ve seen that in remote places in Rajasthan (blinding sand-storms), Uttar Pradesh (crazy creepy-crawlies and erratic electrical supply), Andhra Pradesh (drought), Tamil Nadu (more drought), and Kashmir...

          Kashmir.

Srinagar was my home for three years long ago. Right now in the news for sad reasons. In this season, in the rented house where my son toddled, the roses must be in bloom, pink and fragrant. I have no idea where the landlord’s (what a grand title; it means in this case the owner of a little house) family is, whether they’ve been since the 1980s. Whilst it rained in the rest of the country, in Kashmir, locals cut, strung on thin ropes and dried in the mellow sun, brinjals, white gourd and whatever else grew in their compounds.  Housewives must still be doing that today. The soil was/is so fertile, people said if you stood long enough in one place, your feet would sprout roots. Weaving carpets, carving on walnut wood, growing almonds and embroidering fabric were ‘industries’. Today, the headlines about Kashmir tell about spilt blood, of young men wielding guns, abandoning studies, professions, families. Some people I know are accusing the government for not having done enough, others are accusing the government for having done too much damage. I don’t know what the outcome of this mayhem will be. I watch/read about what’s happening in a detached way, distance blurring reality. My grandchildren will learn about it in their history textbooks. Quoting words said by Steve Jobs: ““You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards…” (I’ve taken just a part of the full quote.)

           In my Goan sanctuary, surrounded by croaking frogs, barking mongrels, birds eagerly chasing lizards, insects running for their lives to avoid being eaten, I’m more concerned about the old fallen wall that needs to be repaired. Or the pot-holes that are causing traffic-jams in Porvorim. Or that Karwari fisherfolk are selling fish on my turf. My levels of stress, the triggers, are different from those experienced by parents in Kerala, where the rains are even heavier, where teenagers have been missing, and television guesswork says they’re turning to radicalism.  On the map Kerala might be closer to home, but it’s another world, no? Such things don’t happen here. Goa’s my comfort zone; Goa’s different. Ignorance is bliss, no?

          Washed clothes just don’t dry in this humidity. I squeeze the fibres till they wear out; finally I decide organic/cotton stuff is impractical and unaffordable for me. I also switch over to plastic, glass, synthetic containers. Steel? That, too, is made in a polluting industry and is hard to dispose of, no?

I once believed that I and members of my species were destroying the planet. Watching the rain, I change my opinion. Because ‘dry and comfortable’ = synthetic raincoats/ gumboots plus air-conditioners/driers. I think, the planet will outlive steel, cement, aeroplanes, refrigerators, GMOs. What can I do to destroy something so big and powerful? How arrogant of me to believe anything I did would give Earth even an itch. I get philosophical when the water table rises and rises and I’m confined to looking out of the window with little else to do but watch and “listen to the rhythm  of the pouring rain telling me just what a fool I’ve bin”… (love that song, sung by The Cascades in 1962, especially in this weather). Primal surroundings turn my thoughts topsy-turvy.

I pluck alloo, tero and some other leaves that I cook immediately to be eaten with hot-hot bhakryo. I ooh and aah over century-old, unchanged traditions—it’s shravan and my neighbours chant some prayers before lunch. I switch on a wonderful Miya ki Malhar on the flute. Sounds so good. But I also enjoy a trip to the new mall and take a ride on its escalators. Technology rocks.

It’s afternoon as I type this. The pair of bulls with the sharp, straight horns is returning from the fields. When they go there in the morning, they are reluctant. On their way back, they skip (ok, that’s an exaggeration, but they do walk faster). The fields have been ploughed, the seeds scattered, fodder collected, waste composted and the rain-gods are being kind.

One rainy season in north India, the post-horrible-summer parched soil became mushy with the first few drops and I observed a strange phenomenon. It came alive. The mud began to jump and dance. I saw it under a magnifying glass (no mobile-phones nor cameras then to document it). A scientist told me: “This desert was once part of the sea. The ova of certain marine life stay inert until conditions are wet and conducive to them being ‘reborn’.”

Fascinating, the monsoons are.

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If the Big Bad Flood Had Happened in Goa

(30 Jun ’13)

            We’ve never been as unlucky as Orissa or Uttaranchal with cyclones and floods, to some extent because the west coast (exception: Gujarat) has never borne the brunt of Nature’s fury as much as the east. Another reason is that the Brits in Mumbai and the Portuguese in Goa did something called ‘planning’ for towns and villages, a concept our ancestors kind of understood, now alien to us. In spite of having ‘decent’ rains year after year, Goan housing colonies and hotels still buy tankers of water. But we’re not talking about our fiscal stupidity here.

            Suppose, just suppose, a calamity of Uttaranchal’s proportion happened here. Since we’re fighting for special status, first we’ll cry ourselves hoarse for the centre to help us. When the water has risen above our ankles, the auto-rick guys would charge Rs 500 from St Inez to Caculo Mall. Taxis and pilots would accordingly hike their fees. You can calculate the cost for other distances.

Milk, sugar, bread and fuel would suddenly go ‘black’. Fish wouldn’t be a problem. We eat anything that swims. In a flood, should the larvae of amphibian and insects grow beyond three inches, we’d be happy to catch, fry or chuck them into gravies.

            Gravies remind me of coconuts and the trees they grow on. If the water goes above a couple of metres high and thanks to the plastic clogged naalaas doesn’t flow into the sea, (that would happen soon enough), we’d have to get onto slimy, slippery, unsafe rooftops or up the safe and sturdy emblem of Goa, the coconut palm. Problem here: it’ll be too late to take tree-climbing lessons and it’s unlikely that the bhailley who we hire to do the job (“oh-so-sloppily” we complain) will agree to take us piggy-back for money or love or threat. Forget climbing the roofs and palms, so used to wheels are we that without our bikes, scooters and cars, we’ll have to depend on our limbs: that’s a disaster in itself. Except for trained sportspersons and the getting-extinct hands-on Goan farmer… only doctors know whether and where our thigh and calf muscles exist. We make up with the strength of our jaws, but in or under water, of what use with that be to us?

            Once the number of dead and affected rises beyond the combined fingers of the Legislative Assembly Members, the Government will call in the Defence Forces. It would be a shame to call in the very Navy that we didn’t want in our state. The uniformed guys won’t say “we’ll save only Karwar or Sindhudurg”, will they? They’re not like us, they do their jobs and they do them well. They’ve proved this time and again, whether they’re dealing with enemies, or children who’ve fallen into wells, earthquakes, naphtha leaks or floods. In fact, we’ll be dependent on the people we’ve always cribbed about: the cops, the fire-brigade, the municipality workers, the labourers from the NE, Bihar, UP, Andhra, Kerala, etc.

            Our village brethren will no doubt bury all hatchets and help save each others’ dukors and mhashee. After the floods recede, we will ask for our pound of flesh for sure. Our television media will hyperventilate about how we didn’t have enough ghee to cremate the Hindu dead (do the dead have a religion?) nor any blessed land to bury the Muslims/Christians/Jews. NRIs will weep over heritage lost. Only a few will start: 1. Taking classes for children so they don’t lose out on their learning years, 2. Prepare for prevention of epidemics by disposing of decaying corpses, 3. Building shelters of all kinds, 4. Collecting and distributing food, water, clothing. In spite of what the tv channels say and we moan about, it’s the government machinery alone that does most for rehabilitation. The others do fringe work. Some even believe that techniques of meditation and prayer-chants are more important than availability of drinking water, medical aid and dealing with sewage.

            I read on the Net someone’s comment. Not verbatim: “… a shrine was ‘disturbed’, hence this calamity happened.” When will we learn that our heritage lies in our thoughts and behaviour? Principles and skills must and do outlast buildings and statues. If we face a calamity of this proportion in Goa, what will we mourn most? Destruction of our temples/churches? Our value system? Language? What?

            Lots will happen after the floods. NGOs will spring up to take care of the welfare of mosses, rodents, oldies, babies, and now that our Freedom Fighters are on their way off the planet, will demand free railway passes and pensions for their ‘causes’.

            Dear fellow Goemkars, we have to learn from Uttranchal’s tragedy. Now.

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It’s Pouring.

(31 Oct10)

            One member of the family, who has had cancer for the past eleven years, has now been declared ‘terminal’. She’s in the USA, where they recommend ‘have a good time’ for the remaining duration on this planet. So, even whilst she’s on palliative chemotherapy and takes medicines to counter the side effects, she’s out enjoying herself on a luxury cruise. In India, there would be desperate attempts to try all kinds of herbs, to get blessings from various holy persons, or end up with a ‘poor me see how I am suffering’ attitude. Either ways, a time comes when acceptance is the only way out.

            Another member, within days of our return, was detected with the same disease and had to have an early surgery. Just the day she was admitted, a third member of the family got a bad attack of renal colic and had to be looked after by a frail 81 year old in Goa.

            Three siblings in medical trouble simultaneously. Maybe at a certain age these things can be expected. 

            No matter how many years I’ve worked in a hospital, when acute medical distress has to be confronted at home, it’s not easy. No matter how many patients one sees in pain, seeing a loved one in agony causes confusion in the mind. No wonder many doctors stay away from treating their own family and friends when hard decisions have to be taken. 

            In the course of my work, I’ve realized that there are three kinds of difficulties families or individuals face: medical, financial, social. Often, two are clubbed together and the money part is frequently the common factor. Part of it is because the earnings aren’t enough, part because of poor planning. Few keep money aside for hard times. People don’t mind spending on eating out or buying an expensive outfit for a single occasion or giving a costly gift, but will hedge and haw and to part with cash to pay a doctor’s fees or buy medicines. Few cater for emergencies.

Similarly, having a lavish wedding reception takes priority over buying items that make life easy. Or buying a television seems to be a priority over buying a washing machine. Whatever, coming back to the health, finance and social troubles, quite often, when the troubles happen, they happen together. What’s social trouble you might ask? People accusing you of doing something and not believing your point of view. Young persons not getting married. Disagreements with relatives, neighbours.

Holy men, usually good judges of character and human failings, make money out of helping people in trouble cope with the difficulties. Nine times out of ten, no one but no one can really help solve the problem. One knows it’s a bad phase, one knows all times good and bad must eventually end, yet one wants to hear it from a guru, swami, priest. Just before this bad phase happened in my family, at Mussoorie, I met one shop owner, unmarried, pretty young woman, who told me how certain people in that town were forcing her to sell her ancestral property, how much stress it had caused her and how Sri Ravi Shankar had helped. How, I wondered aloud. “Satsang” was her unexpected reply. Singing aloud with other toneless, tuneless women followers was helping her deal with threats? No, she told me benignly. But I know that all of this is transient. That life itself is transient. Why bother about things that happen during the journey. She needed to visit Mr Art of Living to hear that for the first time? A Muslim woman who frequently visits the hospital, who sells clothes on the road outside a busy Mumbai station, told me she used to pray to a “peer” to help her tide over her rough times. Now she’s stopped because the bad times didn’t. She’s left it all to Allah to do what he wanted. She’s fed up. When times are really bad, I guess one of two things happen: either one accepts and bashes on regardless, or one gets fed up and lives through it because there isn’t an alternative.

A third way of thinking is: don’t give up, try try try everything, search search search for a way out. Finally, to each their own. It’s interesting to watch, though, how each human being deals with what he or she is confronted with. And hospitals are great observational posts. Someday I will compile my experiences.  @@@@@

Whose Afraid of the Monsoon Monster.

(9 Aug ’09)

            In my childhood, knee-deep water in the monsoons meant you went home drenched to the skin, uniform heavy and dripping, gumboots squelching, skin wrinkled and pink with the wetness. Schools occasionally were shut because of the weather. Occasionally, without a fuss. There were colds, coughs, measles. But the pharma companies didn’t rule the roost. The media, limited though its reach was, didn’t get hysterical over any of this.

            Ever since Mumbai had a very bad spell 3 years ago, in which many Mumbaikars died, everyone’s behaving like the monsoons are a novel phenomenon to be wondered at and feared each time a cloud pours. This year, right from March, even before the sweltering summer set in, the first emails with warnings were forwarded: be careful of the tsunami. Of course some were backed by facts: on such and such date, between x and y hours, the tide will be high and if it rains, stay indoors, else you will drown. Others scoffed the weather-men. These guys, what do they know, they’re always wrong. Came the special dates and guess what, the tide really was high. Highest in a 100 years said the papers. It was true. From my perch in the office-building, I saw the froth reach upto three storeys high. The Arabian Sea was very angry, it lashed the shores chucking out tons of horrid garbage. The water was black, murky and dirty, filthy, menacing. Rocks, little boulders weighing upto 50 kgs were tossed casually onto parked vehicles, causing serious damage. One had to take those waves seriously.

            Once the tide receded, there were hills of plastic bags, dirt, rubble, decaying and decayed matter lining Mumbai’s shore. Now that was something missing from my childhood memories. The beach beside Hinduja Hospital and the lane alongside it were full of garbage. In fact, all the gullis at angles to the major artery Cadell Road (uh-oh, Veer Savarkar Marg now) were blocked with dirt. The Municipal cleaners worked ceaselessly, filling up truck after truck until, about three hours later, the place was clean again. We cheered them, appreciated them, but the media didn’t write about them. Or show them on tv. They never show any good work done by The Establishment. Positive strokes don’t get ads? Maybe. That part of commerce I don’t understand. All that garbage was thrown into the sea by…. who else… the undisciplined and dirty citizens with the I-don’t-care attitude. The media didn’t show them up for what they are. Never does.Wonder why? Truth hurts, that’s why. Media persons, common-folk reps, wouldn’t want to say that common-folk are dirty people. We all want our rights, sweep the responsibilities under the carpet. Easier to say the BMC didn’t do its job.

Am waiting for someone to start a campaign: 5 lakh common men aught to have parts of their anatomy cut off because they were peeing on neighbouring walls… naaa, no one has the guts, not a single channel will even begin to think about it… forget following up. 

Then, ignoring the ever-present malaria, dengue, hepatitis, typhoid (yawn, do people still die of them? Sadly, YES), we’ve gone gaga over the Swine Flu. 15 people died of it. And how many of TB? Add several zeros to that number. Yet, we aren’t hysterical about TB. What about Ulcerative Colitis? Renal Failure? Any guesses anyone? Don’t bother, it’s enough for you to know that it’s more per town, each, than an entire continent’s death toll by Swine Flu.

I’m waiting for the media to create hysteria over drinking water, to start a campaign that every society, each colony and neighbourhood must harvest monsoon water for its needs. Oh yes, and sort and deal with its garbage, too.

These days, I actually prefer Doordarshan over most of the private channels simply because it gives me some relevant facts about the country. It lets me know that because the monsoons weren’t monstrous this year, I may have to buy water in tankers through the coming year. Some channels give me a feeling that these showers give me a choice between floods and/or drought. Choose your end, they seem to imply. Lots of problems are pointed out, no learned debates follow to provide reasonable and compulsory solutions. Indeed, many people who have lived through decades of monsoons, have actually begun to fear/hate the life-giving rain-clouds.

Pity.

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