From the 6th Anniversary Issue of Impact , August 2010

-->

Goan Journal

The Monsoon Magnificence

You’ve got to be a hardy soul to come to Goa in the Monsoon. It rains incessantly and does drumbeats on the roof; the percussion is as good as anything Max Roach did, especially on his album, Money Jungle, with Duke Ellington and Charles Mingus. Still, as Credence Clearwater Revival sang, the rain keeps falling. And I don’t really wonder, amid the sophisticated Roach-style beat of the rain on my roof, who’ll stop the rain.

Goa in the rains is a sight for sore eyes and a balm for troubled minds. It has a calming effect: nothing really matters, except the drain of stress. We start from the chaotic airport. You can deal with it because in minutes you can get in the car and leave India behind. Goa is our foreign destination where people are civilized, traffic is orderly and everyone looks out for others. The skies open up with huge rainfall and all you want to do is stop the car, jump out and let yourself be drenched in the Monsoon rains.

We arrived in Goa on an afternoon in July and later that evening drove to Chicalim in the north to celebrate a friend’s birthday. His place is approximately in the middle of nowhere. I may be wrong but even the Portuguese didn’t venture there. And so we’re in our car, negotiating the twist and turns to get there. Once we reach his people-friendly house with its inviting “come, hang out” charm, we forget the world. The only bummer was Germany destroyed Argentina in South Africa; the South Americans were the team I picked to win the Cup.

Goa in the rains is a magical mystery tour. Green is the operative color; moss is your ground cover and the world stands still. Here, you add years to your life. Time is stretched out. Read a book, listen to music, and drench yourself in the rain: you can do stuff you wish you could do in the stressed out reality of India.

In the rain-lashed season, Goa can also be an adventure. There are few places open for lunch or dinner; all the beach shacks are closed; in fact, even the beaches are run over by the sea. You have to be resourceful and find spots that are open. You may have to travel a fair distance or experiment with all manner of local places. But the best thing is to eat at home and then find a rock on a beach, sit on it and watch the thunderous majesty of the sea in the rains.

We’ve had a place here since the turn of the century. More important, this is my sasural; my wife’s family is from Goa and our place is just 15 minutes away from her family home. Also, we have other family here in Chicalim and Aldona and good friends in Panjim, Anjuna and Colvale. For us, this emerald haven is not a vacation spot; it is our second home. We feel we belong here.

Plus Goa is full of random surprises. At dinner one evening at a local diner, a bunch of people showed up. There was this handsome guy sitting in a chair right next to me. He pulled out a bottle of scotch and offered to share it. We demurred but he was insistent. So we had a drink from his bottle. He said his name was Kumar Gaurav, son of the famous Bollywood tragedy king, Rajendra Kumar. He said he was married to Namrata Dutt, daughter of Sunil Dutt and Nargis. As such he is the brother-in-law of Priya Dutt, the Congress MP and Sanjay Dutt, the actor of Munnabhai fame.

We struck up a conversation in this diner called Starlight and he was insistent to take us to his house in Parra, a suburb of Mapuca. It turned out to be a gorgeous place, slick and breathing of wealth. He showed us around and when we left after 15 minutes, we drove away impressed. In the end, we marvelled that something like this could happen in such an impromptu fashion. But that’s Goa for you. You meet some guy in a restaurant or in a market or a grocery store and you become friends.

That’s the social part of Goa. And it’s wonderful. What is equally spectacular is the majesty of nature here, especially in the Monsoon. As I sit in my verandah, surrounded by a cathedral of coconut trees and watch and hear the rain falling, I am struck by the bounty of nature. As the rain stops, the garden is awash with fireflies everywhere, lighting up, for a brief moment, the darkness of the clouds.

My friend Aasif, an architect, who lives here, having come from 30-plus years in London, tells me that the glow in the fireflies is about sex. “It’s their penis that lights up with a view to attract to females,” he says. He also added that fireflies are rapidly becoming extinct with growing urbanization. Because of city lights, their glow doesn’t show and they cannot mate.

Aasif can identify bird calls, butterflies and constellations in the sky. He lived for 30 years a busy life in London but now he is a connoisseur of Nature. What a wonderful way to spend the rest of your life.

So you live and you learn. When all’s said and done, you can be alone in Goa in the rains and have the soothing and disturbing sounds of the falling water to keep you company. Soothing because it lulls; disturbing because in a 250-year-old house, you never know where water will drip. You simply feel at the mercy of nature. So we look at the bounteous aspect: green, blue and grey.

We all know from the news media that Goan politics is all about rent money; corruption is rampant and crime starts in the cabinet. And so it is everywhere else in India. In Goa, though, our local primary health care center has doctors, nurses, ambulances, medicines and diagnostic equipment. The schools have teachers; the roads are well paved and the traffic is orderly.

Sometimes, I think we should just move here and be done with the chaos of the rest of India.

Copyright Rajiv Desai 2010

American Life 5

Washington DC: A New Home

The five-day-long party that was DC began in New York City’s West Village on a Saturday afternoon. My daughter and I stood outside a café, waiting for our friends Gautam and Rita and their daughter Brinda and her husband Peter. Suddenly, amid the general noise of revelry that envelops this oh-so-cool segment of Manhattan, I heard someone call my name in the distance. I looked around because my name is not a common one in these parts. And there across the street, I saw Gautam waving at me.

We crossed the street to join them and to begin what turned out to be five rollicking and fulfilling days. Gautam has served as the senior most editor in The Times of India and is the founding editor of Bombay’s newest daily, DNA. Above all, he is a rock star whose rendition of Elvis Presley’s Hound Dog can get even a lead-footed person to do gyrations on the dance floor. In his days in India, he was a regular at our house; all our friends took to him and he became part of our family.

So there we were on the brink of a raucous evening in Manhattan. We went to a blues bar and ate dinner in a French bistro before traipsing home with a song let out of our heart. It was a memorable evening, even if we had too much wine. When good friends get together in a happening place like the West Village, you can be sure it will be a highlight (dare I be unsubtle and say: yes there were lights and yes we were high).

So after an evening in the Village, Sunday morning we hit I-95 en route to Washington DC. For all the 229 miles of the way, I luxuriated in the company of Gautam and Rita. I was excited to be going to DC after too many years. The plan was to arrive at their place in Chevy Chase in the early afternoon and then head out to the home of their friends for dinner and singsong with guitars. These are friends whom we’d met last summer at the wedding in Vermont where Brinda and Peter took their vows in a gorgeous farm in Vermont.

Can people talk to each other for five straight days and never once be bored? With Gautam and Rita, it’s not only easy but enjoyable. We talked about the whole world, about rock’n roll, The Beatles, Indo-US relations, and what have you. The most amazing thing about being with them is you can talk about foreign policy, international relations, and world economics but also about music, going back to the good old days of Hindi film music and classic rock.

A friend christened Rita “chopdi (book) aunty,” given her voluminous knowledge of just about everything under the sun, starting from education to Bollywood. You want to know about the latest issues on education? About the lives of Bollywood stars? About the story behind the Oscar awards? About the buzz in DC, New York, Boston, Bombay or Delhi? Rita’s got it all down pat. She is the source: wire service, book of quotations, thesaurus and encyclopedia, all rolled into one. What she doesn’t know is not worth knowing.

Coming into Washington after a long gap was an immensely interesting prospect for a public affairs junkie like me. This is the capital of the world, where leaders from all nations come to get things done. It’s also the first time I came to DC where Martin Luther King’s dream had come true in the election of Barack Obama to the presidency. Obama is from my hometown, Chicago.

As we drove around the city, I was struck by the small-town beauty of the place. There were flowers everywhere and people were dressed in their spring best: linens and cottons. To read the newspapers and to watch television, you’d expect a sense of doom and gloom. I saw none of it. The cafés were full; restaurants were abuzz and people were walking about with a spring in their step.

“There’s John Podesta,” said Gautam as we drove around the downtown area, close to the White House. He was crossing the street. Podesta, another Chicago boy, served as White House Chief of Staff for three years under Bill Clinton. As you drive around the stressful streets of Delhi, you are not likely to see any person of any consequence, surrounded as they are by security and minions. And walking? What a contrast!

There is an understated elegance about Washington. The city seems to know it is the center of the world. It doesn’t have to pretend. Economic upturns and dips have little impact on it. Everyone seems to be confident about their jobs and income. True, there are neighborhoods in the city where America’s recession-hit economy is playing havoc. But to walk the streets, you feel the sense of power and stability.

While it seems not to have the buzz of New York or the vitality of Chicago or the laid back sophistication of San Francisco or the in-your-face character of Los Angeles, Washington stands for stability. It reminded me Kipling’s poem If:

If you can keep your head when all about you

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you

But make allowance for their doubting too,

In the middle of the storm of terrorism, financial malfeasance and natural and other disasters, Washington is the focal point of stability-seeking billions in the world. Yes, there’s Iraq and Afghanistan, the oil spill and Katrina, bailouts and joblessness. But if we didn’t have Washington, we would have to invent it.

We need Washington. In this capital, a click of computer keys can change the fate of global business; can challenge ruthless dictators; can hold multinationals accountable; can take on terrorism; can boost the world economy. All the misbegotten activists, who blame Washington for all the ills in the world, should know there are institutions in this city that successfully fight against child labor, dowry deaths, communicable diseases, sweatshops, hunger and poverty.

I spent most of the week in Washington, meeting friends in government, lobbying firms and multilateral organizations. What struck me was that in the interim, I came away more informed about global issues and to understand that the power people in Washington are as skeptical of multinational firms as the activists, who make a fetish of being anti-American.

Another revelation was that India is not a hot button in the media or public debate. The only people who seem to care about our benighted country are the people in the White House, the State Department and the Defense Department; also people in the arts and culture, which is not a bad list. But in the general milieu, India may as well be the Central African Republic. India has to struggle to get noticed. Since George W Bush, it has been helped along by these various arms of the US government.

In the end, the nicest thing about my visit to the capital was to know that it is one more city I can call my home. There’s Chicago, of course; New York City, where my daughter holds sway; Boston, the home of my favorite nephew. But now there’s Washington, where Gautam, my soul mate, enjoys his life.



Copyright Rajiv Desai 2010

American Life 4

Chicago, My Kind of Town

On a bright beautiful spring morning, I landed in Chicago, where I have a family of friends. The airport, the city, the drive to River Forest is full of fond memories. This is the town that I’ve come back to, over and over again. It’s just gotten better and better. What more can I say: I love Chicago.

As I lug my bag across the street and wait in the vestibule for my friend Prakash to pick me up, I wonder about my past life in this city of broad shoulders. Usually, it was my wife and two excited kids, who would welcome me back from wherever. “Love ya, Dad,” my daughters would trill as I kissed my wife. What a warm comforting feeling it was!

In the event, Prakash pulls up to the sidewalk and gives me a hug. I am back home, I think to myself as I snap the seatbelt on, en route the familiar way to the Oak Park-River Forest area, where we lived. As we drive to Prakash’s house in River Forest, I look out the window and go into a reverie of my happy days in Chicago.

It’s my town, the toddlin’ town; I ask myself: why did you ever leave here? The existential question was in my mind as we drove through the familiar streets. What I looked forward to was a wonderful week with friends and the sheer joy of being there. This is the city where I got my first job, bought my first house; where my daughters were born. I lived here in the heady days, when my fellow columnist in the Chicago Tribune newspaper invented the word “yuppie.” It is the city of jazz and blues but also the Chicago Symphony, one of the finest orchestras in the world.

Chicago is where I grew up and learned the lesson of self sustenance. It wasn’t easy but the city permeated me with a sense of optimism: tomorrow will always be better than today. You can do anything, do what you want: that was the city’s ethic. And it has become better and better, leaving me breathless with wonder. This is a city that has transformed itself from the Rust Belt blues into a shining example of urban renewal. On hindsight, it seems to be obvious that Chicago would throw up a Barack Obama.

The reveries came to an end as Prakash pulled into his driveway. We got my bag out and I settled myself into the bedroom that his wife Alice reserves for me. Then I came down and waited over a beer for our fiends to show for the traditional pizza party when I arrive.

We had the pizzas and the beer and talked late into the night. My family of friends was keen to know about India and its ways. They wanted to talk to me about politics, the economy and every other aspect of India; they had many questions. For my part, I was just grateful to be there in the city that I love and the friends whom I miss fiercely.

Clearly though, there was no escaping the questions. I had to answer. But my message was clear: I’m here to escape from the loud ineptitude of India. Nevertheless, development issues like jobs, equity, education and health care are important to my friends. This goes back many decades to the 1970s when we had formed India Forum to discuss and debate the issues.

Among the members of India Forum in Chicago was Satu “Sam” Pitroda, in whose office we held our Sunday morning meetings. In the early 1980s, when Rajiv Gandhi appeared on the scene; many of us, including Sam, moved to India in the hope of changing things. What we did not reckon for was the strange ways of politicians and the slimy ways of bureaucracy. They opposed us tooth and nail. Our optimism was singed by the relentless cynicism of the bureaucracy and the political establishment.

In the end though, we succeeded beyond our wildest imagination. From being a basket case, India is now regarded as an engine of global growth. We have “development” in India now but it is subverted into mediocrity by the knot of ignorant politicians and venal bureaucrats. The Indian system is simply unable to deal with growth and the concomitant demands for fairness and transparency.

That evening in Chicago over pizza and beer, old friends met and talked about the issues. As the evening wore on and I was steeped in being there; it was almost as if I had never left. Dreamy as I was, I felt it was late and I had to go home. Our house was barely a mile away from where my friends live. It may have been the beer. I lost track and thought I had to go home to my wife and daughters.

It is so easy within hours of arriving in Chicago to believe I had never left. I know how to get around, driving myself. I know where to shop, where to eat, where to drink. I know the city like the back of my hand. It is a city I proudly call my home. It’s a place where the ordinary citizen can enjoy music, plays, festivals…all free; all in celebration of the citizen.

Back in Delhi, I find the city only works for VIPs. Ordinary citizens have to fend for themselves. Nevertheless, citizens do not cover themselves in glory either. They drive like lunatics, make general nuisances of themselves including urinating on the street and defecating in public view.

One of the issues that never came up for discussion that night was India’s quest for a permanent seat on the UN Security Council. But it weighed on my mind. If the various local and state governments and the federal government cannot stop people from peeing or defecating on the streets, never mind the Naxalites or a rational policy governing foreign investors, why would anyone back India for a seat as a permanent member?

A permanent member of the Security Council is expected to have a foreign policy that includes a broad commitment to international community that your policies will enhance the world’s security. For that you need a strategic vision, which is nowhere in evidence.

Which is why India will never have a city like Chicago: aesthetically pleasing, citizen friendly and forever innovative.



Copyright Rajiv Desai 2010

Bureaucratic Subversion

The Bane of New India

When the government steered the Right to Education bill through Parliament, those of us who had fought for it through two decades were pleased. The important thing, however, is how the act would be notified. The language of the bill leaves a lot of gray areas. And well it might because bureaucrats wrote it and they will fully exploit the obfuscation. For example, they will come down heavily on private schools that cater to the poor in urban slums and rural areas and impose impossible conditions that such enterprises simply cannot fulfill.

There are too many vested interests: the government school system; the high-end private schools that have bribed their way into existence and above all, the alternative NGO schools that survive on government subsidies. With such firepower arraigned against it, the RTE bill will go the way of every well-meaning initiative of the government such the NREGA or the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyaan. The net outcome will be zero. And so everything will come to naught.

If this sounds cynical, then you should listen to my story about a small community on the outskirts of Delhi. This is an upscale community of successful professionals that includes about 30 houses. It is an oasis in the chaos of Delhi, with trees and birdsong. It’s a wonderful community where neighbors meet frequently to have a drink or dinner and to discuss issues of India’s development. The people who live there are respected professionals whose interests span public health, wildlife conservation, media, law and what have you.

The community came into being in the early 1990s. Because it was part of rural Delhi, it was offered no municipal services like water, sanitation or roads, never mind street lighting. Like pioneers, residents made their own arrangements: people built septic tanks, drilled bore wells and got their own garbage collection. Power was an issue until distribution was privatized, when the resident association petitioned the distribution company. Realizing these were high-end customers, the company quickly ensured that power cuts and fluctuations were minimized.

On the roads issue, the resident association petitioned the Delhi government arguing from a taxpayer viewpoint; so the road was built: badly but still motorable. It took several years including the fact that the first allotment of several crores was swallowed by the pirates of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi. Now this community faces water a problem because the bore wells have dried up. This is precious real estate but more important it represents the single major investment for most of the residents. Without water, their homes are worth nothing.

The association applied to the Delhi government for permission to drill a community bore well. It seemed a logical and eco-friendly thing to do. But between the local water authority, the local police and several residents who had bribed their way into deepening their bore wells, the application has been kicked around from pillar to post.

So here you have this huge Indian-style standoff: members of the community paid bribes to the water authority and the police to deepen their wells. As a result, other residents found their bore wells running dry. When the association sought to build a community well, some residents and recipients of their bribes in the water authority and the local police struck a dissonant note.

Between corrupt citizens, bureaucrats, police officials and local politicians, this pleasant community is caught in a cleft. It needs the rule of law to be enforced but the local government: the municipality and the police, are locked in various corrupt projects. Residents of the community are not without influence but stand divided because several members, who own houses there, are compromised because the deals they did to buy their houses don’t stand up to scrutiny.

This is a small localized community problem, to be sure. But its implications have a larger footprint. Even though the union government has introduced various enlightened policies, local governance is caught in a medieval time warp. In the matter of schools as well: a sweeping and enlightened law stands to be subverted on the rocks of bad governance. In notifying the RTE act, many activists fear the education bureaucracy will not let private schools for the poor flourish.

Then there is the issue of the RTE-mandated 25 percent quota for poor children in private schools. The vast majority of private schools, however, cater to the poor. So how will the quota be enforced? Clearly, framers of the bill were thinking of the elite private schools with no acknowledgment of the private schools for the poor.

Whether it is the private schools for the poor or the community bore well for the upscale Delhi community, governance is still held hostage to the ideology of the bureaucracy. The bureaucracy lords it over the poor and is prejudiced against the affluent (not rich). In the event, private schools for the poor will be held hostage to the bureaucracy’s prejudice against education as commerce; likewise the South Delhi community must suffer because the bureaucrats of the water authority dismiss it as an “affluent colony” that deserves nothing from the government.

In the end, the admirable RTE bill stands to be subverted by bureaucrats, who oppose all change. Residents of the affluent community will have to fight for their water against the very forces in charge of governance.

An edited version of this article appeared in Education World, June 2010.

Copyright Rajiv Desai 2010