Malicious Gossip Page 9

  Himachal

  “In a hundred ages of the gods I could not tell you of the glories of Himachal,” lamented a Sanskrit poet. In my three score years and six I have seen some of that glory fade under my rheumy eyes. Admittedly, I know only a small portion of Himachal: Simla that I loved but love no more; and Kasauli with which I have made my terms because this is where I intend to spend the remaining years of my life. But I am sure that what I have seen with my eyes is also happening elsewhere in my home state. There was a time when given the choice between Kashmir and Simla, without the slightest hesitation, I would have opted for Simla, because it was to Simla that I belonged. Everything about it was bathed in romance. I rejoiced to see the rays of the rising sun kiss the tops of Jakhoo and Shali peaks; the crying of barbets and the cheeping of cicadas through the warm summer days was heady music to my ears; the plaintive songs of hill women as they cut grass on the hillside touched emotions too deep for tears. I watched many a sun go down behind the deckle-edged snow peaks and sighed for the day that had passed. The nights were equally bewitching—the silence of the moon-bathed valleys broken by the tinkle of mule bells, the haunting notes of the muleteer’s flute, nightjars calling to each other and the distant murmur of innumerable streams. When the rains came, they came in ceaseless torrents which lasted several weeks when heavy mists blotted out everything as if to heighten the desire to see what they had hidden from view. Suddenly, unseen hands would lift the gossamer curtain to unfold magic visions of freshly washed forests of pine, fir and wild rhodondendron, emerald green paddy fields through which ran swollen torrents sparkling in the sun.

  The Himachal I loved was the Himachal of Rudyard Kipling:

  So long as ’neath the Kalka hills

  The tonga-horn shall ring,

  So long as down the Solan dip

  The hard-held ponies swing,

  So long as Tara Devi sees

  The lights of Simla town,

  So long as pleasure calls us up

  Or duty drives us down,

  If you love me as I love you

  What pair so happy as we two?

  By all that lights our daily life

  Or works our lifelong woe,

  From Boileaugunge to Simla Downs

  And those grim, glades below,

  Where, heedless of the flying hoof

  And clamour overhead,

  Sleep, with the grey langur for guard,

  Our very scornful Dead,

  If you love me as I love you,

  All Earth is servant to us two!

  Most of my Himachal is gone for ever. Mule caravans have been replaced by diesel-farting trucks; the flute and the pahari song by Hindi filmi music blaring out from loudspeakers. Every year more and more of the mountains and their evergreen forests are being eaten up by human beings. As roads are driven further into the mountains, more woods are chopped down, more habitations spring up with their cinemas, dhabas, loudspeakers and liquor shops. If this is progress, to hell with progress! Give me back the Himachal of my younger days.

  However, like most other states, Himachal claims to be on the march. No sooner you pass the barrier at Kalka and read the sign welcoming you to Himachal, you can see fresh imprints of the footsteps of progress at Parvanoo. It used to be a tiny hamlet with a tiny temple, a country liquor shop which also sold meat pickles. Today it has a three-tiered hotel promising airconditioned comfort, two new roadside cafes, ”English wine and beer” shops, a vast industrial complex producing refined petroleum, motor spare parts, watches, plywood, plastic chappals and much else. As you go up the Simla road, you see more factories, canning plants, hotels and restaurants. You also see hillsides once thick with sal, pine and fir now denuded with cadavers of trees strewn about: you hear sounds of the woodcutters’ axe. Nature fights a losing battle against the ravenous hunger of man. Man’s writ runs everywhere; he can breed with reckless abandon; not the paradise fly-catcher.

  It is the same with Kasauli. Once it was a quiet little cantonment town visited by people dying of tuberculosis or bitten by mad dogs. It had its Everest in its Monkey Point (or Tapp’s nose) and its hallowed spot in its Lady’s Grave surrounded by a grove of myrtle and poplars. Here I saw mouse deer, monal, pheasants, wild cats, panthers, and python-sized rat snakes. On sheer cliffs nested lammergeyer vultures and kestrels. Today, Gilbert Hill has a huge microwave transmitter. Lady’s Grave has been swallowed up by an ugly air force township and Monkey Point looks like a wart on a Himalayan nose. When I was there last weekend, the redoubtable Kumud Joshi, Deputy Minister for Information and Broadcasting, was leading an army of Himachali ministers, officials and policemen looking for some unconquered Kasauli peak on which she could plant her new television transmitter. So Himachal marches on from beauty to prosperity and ugliness.

  In Karnataka

  I went to Belgaum to see some action: a Maratha invasion of northern Karnataka. I was disappointed. The mini-incursion of the kind mounted recently by “Chhatrapati” Sharad Pawar, “Peshawas” Datta Samant, Joshi and Suresh Kalmadi, had as usual been beaten back, leaving some debris of destroyed public property and a few corpses. By the time I landed in the disputed town, not a trace of defensive measures taken to check these periodic incursions remained: no police checkposts, no barbed wires, no tension between Marathi- and Kannada-speaking people. Kannadigas no longer get very excited over these forays by their neighbour because they know the guns aimed at Belgaum are in fact meant to hit fellow Marathas occupying the Mumbai gaddi.

  From rainless Delhi to sunless Maharashtra and Karnataka. No sooner did we begin our descent than it began to pour and continued to pelt down for the next three days. It was chilly. Satish Tagarpur, PRO of the Karnataka University, and Professor Venugopal, who came to receive me, wore sweaters; ladies had shawls thrown about their shoulders. All I had were garlands of sandalwood shavings put round my neck to keep me warm. Without prior warning, they conveyed the chilling information that besides the one lecture for which I had been invited, I was expected to deliver another four. A couple of hours later, I was facing students and the citizenry of Belgaum on problems of the Punjab.

  I did the best I could, explaining the situation and the unhappy decline in the prestige of the Sikh community due to the short-sighted, self-seeking policies of a handful of Akalis. With all the eloquence at my command, I condemned the demand for Khalistan as anti-Sikh, anti-Punjabi and anti-Indian. I assured them that but for a few lunatics, no Sikh wanted Khalistan. Thunderous applause. Any questions? A middle-aged gentleman clad in a dhoti, black coat and black cap walked slowly up to the rostrum. He cleared his throat and asked in grave, forensic tones: “Why do Sheekhas want Khalistan?” It was like someone listening to a recital of the Ramayana asking, “Who was Rama?” Fortunately for me, the audience burst into laughter.

  On to Dharwad. A chill water-sodden wind blew across green paddy fields. White mists and black clouds swept over the surrounding hills. Shower followed shower. Poor visibility. All I could see was a rain-soaked land with muddy ponds and swollen rivulets. I had my first good look at my guides: the muscular, jocular, young but balding Satish Tagarpur and the shy, self-negating Venugopal, Reader of English. The former an extrovert, outgoing man of endless questions who knew everyone and was known to everyone; the latter, withdrawn and diffident like a lady in purdah. To break the ice, I asked them about the great sons and daughters of Dharwad. Both found their tongues. “Girish Karnad, Kumar Gandharva, Bhimsen Joshi, Mallikarjun Mansur, Bendre, Gangubai Hangal.” “No film stars? No athletes?” I asked. “Leena Chandavarkar.” Full stop. “Any celebrated criminals of the Raman Raghav calibre? Any notorious smugglers?” Venugopal replied: “We Kannadigas are a peace-loving people. Only a few mini Haji Mastans.” Then wistfully, “They are all in important positions.”

  We passed a large herd of buffaloes: scraggy looking beasties producing more piss than milk but with the longest and the most lethal-looking horns I have ever seen on the head of any animal. When I expressed
astonishment, Venugopal replied: “Bendre used to say, throw a pebble in Belgaum and it is bound to hit either a buffalo or a poet or a lunatic. We have lots of all three.” The ice was broken.

  I ask them whence this enthusiasm for everything being in Kannada? The reply came in an instance of an attempt to translate “Second class ladies waiting room”. The Kannada version reads: “Room to wait for second class ladies”.

  Dharwad is a modest-sized university town built over seven hills. On the highest point rests the guest house giving a panoramic view of the campus and the surrounding countryside. They left me little time to do any sight-seeing. Vice-Chancellor Desai took good care to see his money was well spent. They have a saying about the people of Dharwad—they extract the most out of a bargain. They have another saying about two things that are unpredictable—the girls of Belgaum and the rains in Dharwad. I had no experience of Belgaum girls but there was no unpredictability about the rain in Dharwad: it poured without a break. All I saw of the town and Hubli was through a wall of rain. By the time I got there, it was dark. We drove through gaily lit bazars before I was led to a platform to face a 2000-strong audience of Hublians impatiently waiting for me to spout. I said my piece, collected my applause, my sandalwood garlands and hurried to the home of my host, Sunil Kothari, and his handsome lady glittering with gold jewellery and goodwill. A fabulous vegetarian feast washed down with non-vegetarian Scotch of premium brand. What more can one ask for from life?

  Next morning I began my homeward journey. Halfway between Dharwad and Belgaum we stopped at Kittur to see the ruins of a fortress from where Rani Chanamma had defeated a British force in 1824. She was later betrayed by her supporters and taken captive. She spent over seven years in prison where she died. Rani Chanamma is to Karnataka what the Rani of Jhansi is to the rest of India. Those who don’t know of Rani Chanamma don’t know the stuff that the people of Karnataka are made of.

  Delhi-Bombay-Delhi

  One day in Bombay seemed like one day too many. Crowded as ever and smellier than before. Arthur Koestler described his arrival at Santa Cruz airport as having a baby’s diaper flung in the face. He only smelt the faeces, not the stink of dead fish which envelops the metropolis in the months preceding and following the monsoons. But Bombay has many compensations. It has a new airport which has reduced the congestion at Santa Cruz. Ali Yavar Jung Marg, which sweeps in from the airport to Bandra, has new birds and flowers painted on the “lollipops” that flank the dual highway. Corals and bougainvillea have grown in stature; African tulips and pink cassias are in full bloom. And all said and done, Bombay’s quota of pretty girls continues to be higher than that of Delhi.

  However, I was happy to be on my way back to Delhi. And to find myself amongst an airbus load of celebrities: Maya and Siddhartha Shankar Ray, Nani Palkhivala, Jamshed Bhabha, Nirmaljeet Singh (retired ambassador from Muscat returning from Zimbabwe) and film star Sanjay Khan. My only fear was that if the airbus met with a mishap, these VIPs would muscle me out of the headlines of the next morning’s papers. Nothing of the sort happened and we touched down at Palam, as they say, on the dot. It was a good ten degrees warmer than Bombay but much nicer. Nothing fishy or shitty about the smell here: it is the fragrance of siris (Albizzia odorata) that pervades New Delhi. And although the capital may not be as rich as Bombay in its quota of fetching lasses, it more than makes up for the shortcoming by having all the people in whose hands lie the destinies of the country. As a member of the Rajya Sabha I can claim to be at least in the suburbia of the centres of power. I hurry to Parliament House, to acquaint myself with what is preoccupying the minds of the chosen representatives of the people. How disenchanting! They spend forty minutes discussing Limca and Campa Cola! What is the country coming to?

  AROUND THE WORLD

  “I am a muftkhora—a free liver. I have been round the globe dozens of times and visited almost every country in the world but rarely, if ever, paid for my travel or hospitality. But with the years I have also become an araamkhor—luxury loving. And that is not always available to me. Every time I set out of my home for the Indira Gandhi International Airport, I ask myself: ‘Is this journey necessary?’ I resolve never to accept a foreign invitation again. At my age, I share Samuel Johnson’s sentiment: ‘Worth seeing? Yes, but not going to see

  “I have seen all that is worth seeing: cathedrals, temples, pagodas, mosques, palaces and picture galleries, deserted cities, pyramids, the Sphinx, sea-sized lakes, lofty mountain ranges, waterfalls, subterranean grottos lit by myriads of glow-worms, ballets, theatres, music halls, strip-tease joints. Nothing worthwhile in the world remains unseen. As Thoreau said, ‘It is not worth the while to go round the world to count the cats in Zanzibar.’

  “They say travel broadens the mind. Mine has been broadened enough ever since I took my first boat voyage from Bombay to Genoa and train to London. However broader I make my mind, it has no room to take in anything more exotic. I am now like George Moore who said, ‘a man travels the world over in search of what he needs and returns home to find it’. No sooner I land in a foreign country, instead of looking forward to exploring its charms, I count the days when I will return to my own country. They say I must be getting old. I tell them I am already old and cannot get much older.

  “However, sometimes there are surprises in store for the most bored and blase of travellers. There was this much-travelled American who came to the Pyramids for the first time. He went round them on camelback over and over again, marvelling at the enormous edifices standing in the wastes of the desert. He made copious notes about their dimensions and plagued the camel driver about names of Pharaohs. To complete his record he asked the camel driver, ‘Have you given your camel a name?’ ‘Yes,’ replied the camel driver, ‘She is Greta Garbo.’”

  With Persis to Bahrain

  When it comes to complicating simple things, no nation can do better than us. Foreign travel is already a tiresome exercise, requiring the filling of innumerable forms in innumerable places scattered over long distances from each other to acquire a passport, visa, health certificate, tax-clearance certificate, Reserve Bank permits before you can get your ticket. In addition to this, you are now required to carry the exact sum of Rs 100 to pay the airport tax (any extra rupees are liable to confiscation) as well as undertake a visit to yet another office located in Shastri Bhavan to get yet another stamp from something known as Emigrants’ Protection. This office used to be located at Palam airport, but that was found to be too convenient for passengers. So now after your flight has been called, you may be suddenly told to dash back twenty-five kilometres to Shastri Bhavan and back. If you, as a law-abiding citizen, don’t have any more than Rs 100 to pay your airport tax, it is just too bad. You simply miss your flight and start the entire exercise all over again. The fact that you hold a return ticket with the return journey “okayed”, or that you have a job to come back to, or are a member of a legislature, is not good enough proof that you may not be intending to emigrate. The khaki uniform upholders of the law at Palam have had the bones of their skulls calcified by this bombardment of rules.

  After an hour of hassling with the inspector who insisted that he was doing his duty (however senseless), we were airborne. To soothe my nerves, Air-India had laid on Persis Khambatta in Startrek. I was not in the mood for childish science fiction and Persis, who has been my paradigm of a Parsi beauty, looked singularly unappetizing in the Yul Brenner style of shaven head. I still treasure a set of her pictures in the nude published by a foreign magazine: brown curling locks about her shoulders and a figure none of our famous celluloid heroines can match. When she heard I was going to publish them, she threatened to sue me. When her threat didn’t work, she pleaded with me. That did the trick. In Startrek, she exposes nothing else of her nubile loveliness. And the poor creature is as short of histrionic talent as she is of hair. I slept through most of the Startrek to Bahrain.

  Emperor Shahjahan developed a belly-ache. I recalled, so had the Mughal Empero
r and his sons when they set about fighting each other. Captain Basu was full of apologies and exhorted us to make ourselves comfortable at the Holiday Inn. In this tiny oil-producing island, everything is owned by Arabs but run by Indians, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis. Pakistanis, being Muslims, are more trusted and have better jobs. The airport police are Pakistanis. For some obscure reason, Bangladeshis, who are usually more devout than Punjabis, are not accorded the same confidence. They and the Indians serve as waiters or labourers or have small shops (suqs). They live in a world of their own. The waiter who served dinner is De Silva, a young Goan trained at the Centaur Hotel at Bombay airport. He saves upwards of Rs 5,000 per month. The man he envies is a fellow Goan who collects Rs 20,000 in tips. Everyone in the dining room talked about money. Everyone, except a Bangladeshi head waiter who was spending his evening off, dining in his own hotel. He had obviously had more than his quota of whisky and felt reincarnated as a man of culture. Bangladeshi waiters provided him with an appreciative audience as he recited Bengali kobita to them. An Egyptian usherette joined the Kobi Shammelan. “Have you read Omar Khayyam?” demanded the head waiter. She did not catch the name as pronounced in Bengali. “Poet from your kantry,” he said, oblivious of the difference between Farsi and Arabic. “Great Ihover of the whine and the wheemen. Also greet feelosofer.” He proceeded to chant rubaiyat to the notes of Raga Bheem Palasi.

  A book of bharse beneath the buff.

  Jugs of whine till I say enuff, enuff.