The fundamental problem with using NPV in project evaluation

While most MBA graduates are indoctrinated with a dogmatic faith in the supremacy of NPV as a tool for evaluating investment opportunities, the reluctance of managers to use NPV in their evaluations is often surprising. What is even more suprising is that they swear by a technique which is fundamentally similar though widely derided as inferior in academic circles, the Internal Rate of Return (IRR). In this passage, I seek to indentify a few key reasons why I feel managers prefer using IRR over NPV.

1. Flawed comprehension - it is perhaps an indictment of the rigour in most MBA programs offered by universities that many managers long into their careers are ignorant of what exactly NPV is supposed to measure. NPV is a measure of the incremental value that a project adds to what can be achieved by investment in existing avenues. Put in another way, most managers think that a negative NPV implies a project that is 'not profitable', which is patently false - a negative NPV means a project is 'not profitable enough'.
The difference between the two is subtle but significant. A project may have uniformly positive cash flows all through its life yet show a negative NPV because the
rate of return on equity demanded by investors may be too high, and that brings us to the
next point;

2. Dubious assumptions - A project evaluation begins with a forecast of the cash flows that can be expected from a project. While that is often a difficult task riddled with
ultimately discretionary assumptions, at least with the IRR, that's where the modeler's
judgement ends. With the NPV however, there is a further estimation that needs to be made, which is hardly straightforward nor definite. And that is the return on equity from
similar projects or equivalently the equity Beta. This is difficult enough for projects
similar to those being undertaken in stable sectors, imagine the level of ambiguity in
undertaking this estimation for a project that is different from any undertaken so far.
There is a fundamental rule in measurement theory that more the number of variables to be measured / estimated, more the error in the final answer. While with IRR the effect is
confined to assumptions for estimating cash flows, for NPV calculations it is further
compounded by errors in taking the equity beta.
Another analytical manipulation that leaves managers scratching their
heads (if at all they are aware of it) is the complicated requirement of keeping the D/E
constant during the life of the project and the attendant problems of estimating project
betas for projects whose financing is different from the firm's. This requires a tedious
re-calculation of betas based on the new D/E ratios, which by itself are difficult to
estimate.

3. (F)Utility of NPV - an NPV calculation fundamentally measures the returns given to
investors who have sufficient liquidity to transfer funds between firms in equal risk
classes. For most part, investors have no clue about similar risk profile sectors and
projects, hence for managers, the metrics of measurement are only those of adding to the
worth of investors in an absolute sense without worrying about returns available in
equally risky alternatives. While a negative NPV may destroy value in the sense that
monopoly pricing leads to a net social loss of value, it may be sufficient to keep
managers, CEOs and investors happy with the absolute returns they get. In such a system,
the IRR which simply measures the absolute returns that accrue from a project is a simple
and ultimately more meaningful metric for evaluating a project. Most managers find the
concept of hurdle rate for more intuitive and useful for identifying projects that are
worth undertaking - they just compare the IRR with this bare minimum benchmark and if the IRR is higher, then the project may be proceeded with otherwise the proposal goes to the business plan graveyard.
Most of the textbook problems that are used to demonstrate the inferiority of the IRR method occur rarely in the careers of most managers and given the above stated problems with the NPV technique, it is no wonder that most managers prefer the simplicity of the IRR rule.

Why I am a Hindu - and not a Christian, Muslim or Buddhist

Well I resume my blogging after a long gap and at the very outset I would want to warn my readers (if there are any still left) that the contents of this post are likely to discomfit some, though at no point will they be shrill.
It all started with me picking up a copy of Richard Dawkins' latest book - "The
God Delusion". The book comes straight from Dawkins' heart and touches upon a topic with which he has ruffled a fair number of feathers - the rejection of the idea of God and the attendant fundamentalism that he attributes to the almost innate human need to attribute their trials and tribulations to the supervision and plan of an overarching Grand Creator/Controller. I won't go into a detailed review of the book, but Dawkins is at his vitriolic 'best', spewing venom, contempt and ridicule at the Semitic conception of God - an anthropomorphic, omniscient, omnipotent being, intervening constantly in human affairs. That's the good part. He proceeds to describe Yahweh - the Semitic God of the Jews and by extension the Christians, and his Islamic alter ego - Allah - as tyrannical, homophobic, violent and bigoted. His derives this view from the Stalinesque personality cult that this particular 'God' has built up. He demands subservience, he brooks no dissent and is extremely jealous. There is no Right way apart from His. He is not particularly merciful and is in fact quite capricious - in the words of Marge Simpson - 'He is always smiting this and destroying that and turning people into pillars of salt' - hardly the benign influence on human existence that the clergy make Him out to be. Therein lies the crux of the book, it is a no holds-barred spectacle of Dawkins vs. God - the Father, the Son, the Holy Ghost, and all his foot soldiers of the Church Militant (an ironic nomenclature which would at least prove that the Cosmic Lawgiver - if He exists, has a dry sense of humour). Dawkins spares no holy cows in demolishing firstly the earthly representatives of Yahweh and then takes on the Big Man (woops) Himself. He invokes science and scientists to firstly show how ridiculous the concept of a personal God is and how evolved intelligences have invariably discovered that God the Accountant does not exist. It is a particularly brutal display of reductio ad absurdo. He ridicules the late Pope John Paul mercilessly. After surviving an assassination attempt at the hands of a Turkish anarchist, His Holiness credited our Lady of Fatima for having guided the bullet away from his more vulnerable parts of his body. Dawkins with what I assume would have been a poker face and a mischievous glint in his eyes proceeds to ask why the Good Lady did not feel sufficiently benignly inclined towards the Supreme Earthly Representative of Her Cosmic Overlord to guide the bullet away from him altogether. He also wonders if a few words of thanks to the team of surgeons who operated on him for hours and hours straight did not at least merit an honourable mention alongside the more divine agents that made his survival possible.
All in all, the book till this point resembles a theological Jerry Springer show with accusations and rebuttals flying all around (or to be more fair to Him, only in one direction, He is being denied air time so far). However, the weakest point of this book is the fact that Dawkins himself adopts a fundamentalist posture, coming across as an intellectual anti-theistic terrorist, with a shrill you are either with us or against us rhetoric all through his relentless tirade. He describes theism narrowly - an unquestioning belief in God the Accountant, a God who keeps score of sins and virtues, rewards good deeds and punishes wickedness, demands unflinching loyalty, interferes with human existence, by at times coming down to the realm
of the mortals, or sending his Child/Prophets amongst us, bends laws of the natural world at his
convenience, performs miracles such as guiding bullets away from the bodies of the virtuous. He
reserves his most acerbic barbs for the American Conservative Bible thumping Right Wing with their crude theory of Biblical creation and its more refined though equally facetious cousin -
intelligent design.
Dawkins is pretty impressive all the while he tries to argue for the non-existence of God through his aggressive dismissal of standard theological arguments for the existence of God (how ironic that He has to depend on humans to affirm His existence - how the Mighty have fallen - one wonders why He just doesn't send across a thunderbolt to destroy Dawkins and settle the argument finally - wait, that's because He loves all His children - but then again,
there are devout dying in the Holy Land while Dawkins seems to be doing quite well - but wait He only inflicts suffering on those He truly loves - that's what makes Him truly Glorious, doesn't
it?). However, Dawkins comes across as decidedly absurd when trying to prove the non-existence of God. He refuses to espouses the humility that greater scientific intelligences have demonstrated in trying to judge the existence of a Higher Power. Einstein doesn't help, he did believe in the Deistic conception of a Higher Force responsible for creating the Universe and everything that it encompasses though even he was clear that God the Accountant is highhly improbable. Dawkins riles against all scientists who are more cautious than he is in discounting and ultimately discrediting God. What he fails to appreciate is that science cannot do so precisely because of the principles it espouses, namely, that of proof. Even if the existence of God - in whatever form - is improbable, science cannot categorize it as impossible while remaining internally consistent. Science is not a revealed Truth, it is just a coda of human thoughts about causal relations that explain a majority of human observations and all through its history, it has had to be modified. How can you judge with a set of axioms that are not themselves fixed? Science had long since realized its own limitations and conceded a dignified space to religion to conduct itself.
For it is true that no religion has had to face as much ridicule from its
own adherents as Christianity. The Church in Europe is an emasculated force, surviving as a vassal of rationality and modern thought and that is why it is quick to adopt defensive postures whenever accused of over-reaching itself. No clergyman in Europe will come out into the mainstream to oppose evolution or support the existence of possession by evil spirits. It is no fun to kick an opponent who has acknowledged defeat. It is obvious that the true target of Dawkins' ire is the loony right of America which supports creationism and the Supremacy of God in the worldview of mortals. Dawkins is moved to do this for he views this intransigent blind faith the source of much conflict in the world today, whether it be George Bush's Joan of Arc type visions from God telling him to wage war in Iraq to squads of misguided and not very intelligent young men killing innocent Jewish civilians in the hope of entering paradise to cavort with celestial virgins.
In this manner, Dawkins hopes to lead a counter re-awakening to help people
escape from the clutches of religion. However, his mission is incomplete for it only seeks to take
people away from their current beliefs and not towards a different creed. For him, the opponents are also defined narrowly, the proponents of Yahweh. He respectfully declines an all out war on religion and beliefs, in particular he refuses to draw Buddhism into the debate for he considers it a philosophical system, not a religion. Thus it is evident that his view of religion is limited only to the extent that it seeks to make people subservient to a higher Being and impose rules of behaviour that are to be obeyed unquestioningly. All those who don't subscribe to this 'brain-washing' in his view are 'atheists'.
Which is where I have my objections to Dawkins. Belief, in particular religious
belief can come in varying shades. In my view, it is primarily driven by humility of the human
condition to realize that it does not have all the answers and often not as much control over
itself as it would like. I believe that the origin of religion lies in the desire of humans to feel
reassured that there is some Grand plan that governs there existence and they are not completely responsible for everything that happens to them. Complete freedom is a terrifying prospect to face, which is why mankind is so receptive to governance structures, be they theological or secular (governments and legislatures, kings, overlords).
My own spiritual journey began with exposure to Vedantic
thinking in my 4th year at IIT. It continued in IIMA and then in past year or so with my growing interest in Buddhist thought. Thus I admit that I now do not believe in God the Accountant, I do not believe in divinely distributed material rewards for faith and virtue, no punishment and suffering for evil behaviour and no faith in targeted prayers. I still go to temples but now I never ask the presiding deity there for any thing. I just go there to ask Whosoever holds any kind of reins of the Cosmos to try and give me inner strength and wisdom to tackle problems that arise in my life. I do not ask God to remove my problems, got I realize that is something I have to do myself. God has better things to do with His time.
One of the main reasons I reject Christianity and Islam is their
insistence on intercessionary powers vesting in certain humans - past and present - for stoking
favour with an Omnipotent God. I do not believe that Christ and Mohammed were anything more than wise and enlightened teachers who gave wise counsel to people around them, worked to alleviate the suffering of those around them and gave them hope. I do not believe that either of them were of Divine origin, they were ordinary human beings. I do not believe that Jesus was the son of God nor that he was born through Immaculate Conception, he was born just as all the rest of us are born, of a man and a woman. I refuse to believe that Jesus was the Son of God. Similarly, I refuse to believe that Mohammed was visited by the angel Gabriel (or Jibreel) who made him recite the message of God. I refuse to believe that the Meraj actually happened, Mohammed did not magically fly on Buraq through the skies to reach Jerusalem and then ascend the skies to participate in a gathering of prophets past and present. Most importantly, I refuse to believe that either Islam or Christianity are the 'One true faith'. That pretty much rules me out of ever being a Muslim or a Christian. I admire many of the moral codes that these two great teachers laid down but that's about it, I do not agree with any thing they said or implied about the origin and the functioning of the universe.
I think I made the final break with Christianity when I read about the first
crusade when Pope Urban proclaimed that all rapists, murderers and thieves in Europe would be forgiven their sins if they fought to reclaim the Holy Land for Christ. It made God sound like a petty warlord, unethical enough to break with His own principles for gaining control over earthly land, that too from other human beings who He supposedly created Himself. God as Charles Taylor?
As regards Islam, it is too regimented and regulated a religion and it does not
allow me the dissenting space that I need to think for myself and challenge conventional wisdom. It must have its positives but for me, Islam is simply incompatible with my beliefs. I believe in a
God who exists everywhere, I do not need to bend myself in one particular direction 5 times a day to seek Him.
All that then brought me back to Hinduism and while it does have many of the same
features that I described above, there are some important differences. For one, Hinduism as it is supposed to be practiced, thrives on continuing enquiry and doubt. There is no authority that can prescribe one particular belief or affiliation that needs to be made in order to be a Hindu.
Secondly, the philosophical depth of Hinduism is immense and the concept of Brahman, the all
encompassing yet indescribable consciousness that envelops everything that is and isn't is
identical to my conception of God and I suspect to the Einsteinian one as well. We all arose of it
and perhaps we shall never know what it arose of. The question itself is illogical if we think
about it. How or when does the beginning begin? When I read the hymn of creation, an epiphany happened, I had a moment of blinding clarity, one which reconciled all science and theology for me. It goes something like - "how did the world arise, how did being and non-being come
together..................... only the all knowing knows, or maybe he doesn't". In that one last
line is contained all the wisdom that subsequent centuries of human thought has been unable to
improve. I once had a conversation with a manager of mine, who is very religious about the utility of going to temples. He told me that he feels closer to God when he goes there. I said, I have never felt the presence of God ever but I go to temples to experience and celebrate the noble human sentiment that is represented by the act of going to a temple, the sentiment of humility, self realization and of carrying forward a way of life that has sustained itself and countless others for millennia.
The Hinduism that we associate with everyday life, the one
which has rituals and intercessionary invocations to God is more a collection of diverse cultural
practices, that have enriched the lives of people of this country and are important to celebrate
a remarkable way of life that has survived longer than any other. Yet if one were to read the
Vedas, one would realize that these Gods are far from omnipotent, they are just a few steps of
enlightenment removed from human beings. Lord Rama for all his virtues, was a mortal, he could not fly, walk on water, turn water to wine, had a wife and family and was tormented of his treatment of Sita and spent his final days in remorse over how he treated the woman he loved immensely. If you argue that Rama was an incarnation of a more Supreme God in the mortal realm, the multitude of stories associated with Lord Shiva prove that he had moments of human weakness, his relationship with Parvati was tumultuous, filled with love, estrangement, regret and numerous reconciliations.
All these ultimate Gods were superseded by the reality of the Brahman that not even they
comprehended, they just lived in the reality, manipulating/controlling it to the extent that they
could, just as the humans that worshipped them did to a lesser extent.
So that leaves the question of why I am not a Buddhist. Well no easy
answers to that, true Buddhist thought is quite similar to Advaitic Hindu philosophy. However,
Buddhism as it is practiced widely today is hardly the pristine wisdom that the Buddha himself
propagated. I spent 2 months in Sri Lanka and traveled to numerous Buddhist shrines. The Buddha has been elevated to the status of a God, something that he vehemently argued throughout his life that he was not. He just sought to empower people to eliminate their sufferings through their own actions. However, the people who follow his philosophy decline to do that, they would much rather raise him on a divine pedestal and seek favours from him, something which he conceded he ccould never do. Thus, Buddhism as it is practiced today is merely ritualistic Hinduism with a different deity. As such, I don't think there are many true Buddhists in the world today.
In conclusion, it would seem that more than any religious
text, the innate desire for human beings to seek God and prophets was captured perfectly by the writers of Monty Python and the Life of Brian. Brian finds himself reluctantly accorded the status Messiah by a populace hungry for symbols to believe in. Exasperated, he tells them (much like the Buddha) that he is no Messiah and that they should all think for themselves. The crowd roars in agreement and parrots faithfully - "Yes, we must all think for ourselves. What exactly should we think of Messiah?". At his wits' end Brian tells everyone to 'fuck off' (quite unlike anything the Buddha ever said). The crowd once again agrees rapturously - "Yes let us all fuck off!".
And as for science, I respect science and the scientific method,
but every time some one speaks of the irrationality of religion and the perfect rationalism of
science, I just remember a discussion I had with a professor in IIM Ahmedabad. He was trying to provoke the class into a discussion by saying how arbitrary religion is and why can't anyone show him or prove to him the existence of God. For all my 'atheism', I hate to see God not being able to defend himself. So I said - "Sir, is the concept of infinity scientific"? He answered yes. I asked him "Can you explain to me what infinity is using a real world observable example? If science is so systematic, can you tell me why a-a = 0 for all a but infinity - infinity = infinity?" To his credit he conceded the point I was trying to make and we proceeded to have a very interesting discussion. And that to me is the true purpose of religion, to teach humility. That is all.

Macaulay's Revenge

Macaulay's Revenge
(After the 4 Kerala blogs, am coming back to some more serious issues, am also trying to keep my posts short, primarily to allow me to post more often these days when I am pressed for time and not at all pressed for excuses to avoid writing)
This post is designed to be a brilliant and scholarly treatise on the declining standards of education and student morality in India, it's symptoms and causes. In case any of the logic and arguments used are found to be specious, incoherent and outrageous, it's only to be expected because I too am a product of this flawed and contemptible system. Heads I win, Tails you lose.
I read an article in the Times of India yesterday which made for some pretty disturbing reading and only served to confirm the vitriolic anti-lower caste prejudices that are alive in our so called "institutes of excellence", namely the IITs and AIIMS. Nothing about the IITs would ever shock me because they are India's premier den of filth and perversion, breeding a haughty and arrogant tribe of intelligent mammon-worshippers who have abandoned all sense of duty to society and to their country and exist solely to claim privileges they believe the country owes them because of their superior intellectual abilities as certified by clearing the JEE and whose sole avenue for leisure and creativity is in conceiving different ways in which to sexually assault their female batchmates, however to read that doctors in India's premier medical institute, AIIMS were giving close competition to IITians in terms of being petty, made for sad reading for they are far removed from the images of agents of mercy and healing that we, or at least I, have about them.
I can't reproduce the article here but it listed some shocking incidents in hostels and campuses of general category students crudely misbehaving with 'quota' students and humiliating them. It told of how these students are taunted for having the temerity to come in through the 'easy' route as against the scores of 'deserving' students, meticulously tutored by armies of personal coaches and training institutes, are denied in the name of social justice. The stories are the kind that would make all decent people hang their heads with shame at the kind of moral degradation that is taking place among students, touted to be the harbingers of a modern and progressive society. From the ubiquitous 'shaddu' term of adress for reserved category students, to stories of how they are humiliated in school canteens, taunted publicly by hostel officials about their fees being lower than those of other students and how they are systematically ostracized from hostel life by the mainstream. It referred to two incidents in the AIIMS campus, where hostel floors have been occupied along caste lines; one in which a quota student who had moved into a general category floor was promptly greeted with a sign on the noticeboard saying "All residents of this floor, except room number XX (guess who?), are invited to play football this evening) and the other in which a fresher from the reserved category was made to sit on the floor and say "I am from a lower caste" to a Brahmin fresher who was seated on a chair. In the 4 years that I spent at IIT Delhi, I don't think there was ever any incident of this severity (then again, I was not a hostel resident and it may be that such incidents were not discussed publicly but might have occured with individuals), but there was always a perceptible anti-SC bent of mind among the students and they were very unapologetic about it. From dismissing the abilities of 'Shaddas'as far as engineering courses were concerned (and I can tell you for a fact that 95% of all general category students use their remarkable intellectual abilities solely for discovering new avenues of academc dishonesty, fraud and embezzling money from student funds, most IIT students were so clueless about the fundamentals of technical subjects well into their fourth year that they would find it hard to be employed as laboratory technicians, who by the way are another breed looked upon with contempt by students despite the fact that without their help, most students wouldn't be able to turn on a switch without electrocuting themselves).
It would be interesting to read about the reactions of that fraudulent society, Students for Equality, about these incidents. I find them and their mission a farce because they invoke lofty ideals like 'equality' and 'freedom from caste' as if it is solely measures like reservations that are responsible for caste hostility between students, a nonsensical argument if ever I heard one. I have never known any student organization argue the case of reserve category students on any campus and campaign for an end to caste taunts. I have never heard any of them take up cudgels on behalf of the marginalized and the weak and worst of all, have never even heard them make an effort to help those less fortunate (though here I would be guilty of perpetuating my own prejudices in case I didn't mention efforts of student organizations like Prayaas in IIMA and Pragyaa in IITD which started evening schools for slum children, however, most of the students who joined these organizations did so to add CV points in their resumes). In short, the fraudulent students for equality are actually students who want to maintain the unequal terms that have seen them at an advantage in life. Till such time as I see them take tangible steps to eliminate mistreatment of SC/ST candidates in campuses, I will continue to find their goals and their mission fake and hollow. Let them bring out a charter saying that all 'students for equality' will demonstrate their commitment to a casteless society by starting initiatives to visit villages and campaign against mistreatment of Dalits, let them make a pledge to donate money from their hard-earned salaries to uplift the rural destitute, let all doctors and engineers pleadge to spend one year in a village (for doctors I believe the government is making it mandatory, the same needs to be extended to engineers, I believe serving in a village will enrich them far more than fraudulent summer internships, if only by making them appreciate the problems of the other India, from which they are actively trying to secede), then I will support them (if they care for my support that is). Till then, I would much rather have the pro-reservation lobby have its way.
The other shocking incident that is a pointer to the depths to which campus life in India has degenerated is the unfortunate lynching of a professor in Ujjain by students. The apologists claim that those that instigated and executed the violence could not have been students, however I beg to differ, I think they were no more violent than the average students of today. This was amply demonstrated by media coverage of other student disturbances, including incidents of rampage and destruction by girl students, who at least proved that the weaker sex can more than be a match for men in terms of rowdyism and crassness. Women everywhere please raise your heads with pride.
Lynching of professors may not be a universal phenomenon in India for the moment at least, however what is widespread is the lack of respect for teachers and professors. Once again I can substantiate this with illustrations from my time in IIT, where the choicest epithets were used for professors by a student body that was so enamoured by its own ideas about its intellectual prowess that I guess the ignominy of being subject to evaluation by others was too much to take. However, this is not something in which IITians are alone, the rot starts in school itself with students treating teachers with ill disguised contempt and hatred.
In light of the above incidents a number of theories have been propounded about why student respect for teachers seems to be diminishing and why student teacher interactions these days are characterized mostly by confrontations. Prominent reasons proposed are flawed parenting styles in todays fast paced world, a generation that is more aware of its rights etc. I think the problem is something else altogether. It lies in the commercialization of education, the coaching centre syndrome if one might call it. The present generation is one that does not value anything if it is not expressed in monetary terms. Post liberalization, it has seen money buy all the luxuries of life and in a vicious cycle, sees education as nothing more than the means to earn money. After Class 10th, a typical students life reveloves around coaching centres and parallel education systems, to get into an engineering college, to do chartered accountancy, to clear CAT, to join the IAS etc. In all this, school and college education is nothing more than an unwelcome inconvenience, with professors as the manifestations with their boring and useless lectures, their meaningless internal examinations and their strict attendance requirements. The average IITian sleepwalks 4 years in college just so that he can sit in placements and be hired as a software monkey, that is what he paid money for and slogged for 2/3 years in a coaching institute, hence it is only natural that he should have antipathy towards his misguided professors who try to teach him engineering, a subject he is not even remotely interested in. He basically paid money to his local IIT coaching centre to sit for placements 6 years later, that is the end of his interest in IIT, professors and studies be damned. Similarly, in all other colleges today, education is not valued because it cannot land people a job, hence how can we expect those who impart education to be respected. And did we mention that this generation is a generation in hurry, it wants results and benefits now ,not for it the abstract benefits of character building that come out of India's hallowed centuries old 'guru'shishya parampara'.
I think both the above symptoms can thus be explained by the instrumentality of education that we Indians have come to believe in. The upper castes want to preserve their hold on education, all in the name of merit, simply because there is a threat to their economic prospects. And the rapid commercialization of education has produced a debauched generation of students that is only seeking to get educated so that they can get a job somewhere, not for bulding character or values and refuse to do things like respect teachers as there are no economic benefits to doing so.
Thomas Babington Macaulay, when laying down the principles that would govern education in India, stressed that education must be used as a tool to produce clerks. More than 150 years after his infamous minute, it seems that he succeeded beyond his expectation, for education in India is still pursued soleley so that we can all become clerks, of different kinds perhaps, but clerks nonetheless.

(ok that wasn't short, but I couldn't help it)

Kerala Chronicles - 4

As I write the concluding part of the memoirs of out trip to Kerala, I'll eschew the humourous and at times flippant tone for a while and put down my thoughts and feelings as they were at the conclusion of that trip and as of now, after more than 6 months from the time that we returned. Having stayed in the state for only 7 days, I can't say that I have become a sociological expert about the state, but still I can put down a few thoughts, in the vein of an amateur travelogue writer, about the impressions that the state and its society left on me. For what it's worth, I think I may have a few interesting observations to offer from the perspective of an outsider, a North Indian, a student and whatever other tags of identity I carry with me.
Every few months, some newspaper or the other invariably comes up with a story about a 'happiness index' study conducted by researchers from some obscure university that even more invariably places countries like Bhutan and Surinam on top and places the US at somewhere around 150. I don't know how much credibility should be reposed in such studies but frankly there might be some truth to the conclusion that material progress does not imply a good quality of life or happiness. I surmise that if such a study were to be conducted within India, Kerala would come out on top in terms of gross national happiness. Appearances can be deceptive but I did get a feeling that most Malayalis were pretty content with their lives and content with living quiet, sedate lives in their beautiful state. Of course one might counter by saying that what 'attachment' is one talking of, considering that the state has probably the largest expatriate community of among all Indians, with people leaving Kerala in droves not just for the Gulf but also to other states. And the state that has the one of the highest rates of suicides in the country can hardly be one whose people are content with their lives. The staggeringly impressive social and health indicators are sought to be nullified by the below average performance of the state in economic development. Still, there is a conspicuous absence of feudal conflcits, the bane of societies all across the rest of India. In the cow belt, disputes over land and property masquerade as caste feuds (which foreign correspondents gleefully report as a relgious anomaly of Hinduism, rather than a pure class conflict), in the south too, states like Andhra and Tamil Nadu have seen a number of feudal conflicts between various communities, all of which goes to make India's countryside (where the vast majority of our people live), a perpetually bubbling cauldron of violence. However, such violent community altercations are rare in Kerala and that is something from which the rest of the country can draw a lesson. The education levels are high, however the sad part is that the brightest rarely choose to live in Kerala. In days gone past, they would go to the civil services and be posted outside the state or become engineers, doctors and nurses in the Gulf. Today too, the majority of educated Malayalis would never seriously consider having a career in their home state. There are no thriving industries or IT company hubs (at least not for the moment and it will take some time for Thiruvananthapuram or Cochin to rival Bangalore and Hyderabad as a viable location for the software industry). In short, the state has been surviving through 'pro-bono' measures, much of their income is dependent on sources not at all in their control, whether it is the remittances from the Gulf and other areas or tourism, and hence is always at risk. Kerala is known as God's own country, but God seems to have exhibited a rather dry sense of humour in creating a territroy which is a paradise to live in, but where it is impossible to make a living.
Despite a rather bleak economic past, Kerala seems to have defiantly chosen its own path towards progress, many a time cocking a snook at other states. It reminds one of those movies about two friends or brothers, where one is a hippy and lives hand to mouth and the other is a successful businessman with all the money in the world yet it is the former who is truly happy with his life. Indeed if one were to put Gujarat alongside Kerala for comparison, the analogy might seem to take a life of its own. Gujarat, another state I absolutely love, having spent two phenomenal years there, is India's shining economic success story, with one of the highest per capita incomes of the nation and with corporates and foreigners stumbling over each other to set up industries there. Yet the state has seen a wretched past few years, earthquakes, riots, floods and its almost as if it attracts all the bad luck in the world. I guess if you put all the diamonds polished in Surat together, their value would exceed kerala's GDP, yet still it is Kerala which has been able to give its people a much better quality of life and addressed inequalities in income and prosperity (the cynics would say they have done that by ensuring there is no prosperity anywhere). I am no bleeding heart Luddite but I can't help but admire the way Kerala has avoided the social problems that are attendant with economic development, there is no large scale exploitation of environment, indeed the cities have more vegetation than most of the forests up north, violent crime is low and there are no class exploitations. Today whenever I hear of resource rich states like Jharkhand and Chhatisgarh struggling with problems of Naxalism, income inequalities, destruction of natural habitats and chronic under-development, I wonder if it would make sense for them to follow the Kerala model of rooting out social ills before undertaking development, rather than hoping that trickle-down effects of wealth will reform society. Today Kerala may be a gigantic honeymoon suite/retirement home but it preserves the bonds between the lives of its people and their surroundings much better than many other states manage too. I hope Kerala progresses materially, however I hope it is not at the cost of preserving its natural splendour and the quality and security of life (if not livelihood) that offers its residents.

Day 5
After the revels of the previous night in Kollam, we woke up early the next morning to take the 8 hour backwaters ferry from the city to Alappuzha, in central Kerala. It is said about the Taj that the world comprises two kinds of people (or in Amitabhspeak, "yeh jo wuldd hai na, ismein do kism ke log hain"), those who have seen the Taj and those who are going to see it. Similarly, I can say at the very outset, that every Indian must take a cruise through the backwaters of Kerala at least once in their lifetime. It is a remarkable testimony to how such a vast stretch of unspoilt scenic beauty can exist among human habitation (or is it the other way round?). It makes you want to believe in the existence of a merciful and benevolent God (as opposed to so much else in this accursed world). To this day I do not know of any other place which allows one to truly get away from it all into a different world, a different way of life altogether, not just in the tourist brochure of this much abused marketing slogan, which serves the sole purpose of allowing tour operators to fleece customers. The city of Venice has become a worldwide toursit hotspot because of the intricate system of canals that function as its streets and I see no reason why Kerala's own backwaters cannot compete with them for the attention of tourists.
Well Cita, Pubii and I arrived at the Kollam jetty to pick up our tickets, priced at 300Rs each, the 8 hour package is an absolute bargain. Having secured our passage, we again had some breakfast at a nearby eatery, picked up some provisions at a store which was just opening (and who's proprietor, like so many we had encountered in the state, spoke Hindi) and made our way to the ferry that was supposed to start its journey at 10am. The ferry had two deck, the top one having a number of chairs lined up for tourists to sit on. Taking a look at our co-passengers, we realized that we were a minority in the small area represented by the upper deck. There were Brits, Americans, Chinese and all sorts of assorted nationalities settling in comfortably to take in the sights. I think there was a lone Indian honey-moon couple otherwise the ferry might well have seceded from the Indian republic. Before the journey started we were again accosted by vendors hawking all sorts of motley souveniers. One of them sold greeting cards which consisted of patterns and pictures fashioned out of dried sticks and leaves. Pubii and I found them sufficiently interesting to purchase one each. As the hour approached ,the pwoerful motor started with a couple of mighty sputters and we were on our way. The waters around the town were teeming with activity, minly giant cantilevered fishing nets being lowered and raised. These nets, originally used by the Chinese, emply a very ingenious principle of scooping up a large quantity of fish in a giant net with minimum of human effort invloved. Apart from that there were a number of small fishing boats being propelled by oarsmen and at times there was a mini-traffic jam on the water. Again, wherever we passed, people on the banks or in the small boats always made it a point to wave, smile or wish us a happy journey. Whoever said Indians are inhospitable to outsiders need only take one of these trips and their perceptions will change. As we carried on along our journeys (and what a thrill it is to be in constant motion, no traffic lights or congestion to contend with), we saw how residents of that part of Kerala have adapted to life in proximity to the water. The most fascinating was a school by the banks, imagine how much fun that would be, a far cry from schools in Delhi which mostly open out into a busy road. All through, there were small homes right next to the water and almost picture perfect green surroundings, with giant palm trees lining the waterways, with their fronds right over the water,so it seems like an entrance to a royal durbar. The whole effect is so therapeutic to be almost surreal. However just as I was settling into this mood, I was brought back down to the earth by the sound of some slogan shouting. Looking ahead, we saw some union members raising slogans against the paper-mill located on the other bank. I guess that's part of the complete Kerala package, can't escape from militant unions or the omnipresent coconut trees. Around noon-time we alighted at a waterside restaurant to have some lunch, which was a welcome break from the cold-drinks and chips we had been consuming all through the morning. The food was simple and quite good, which is just as well otherwise we would have felt drowsy and missed the remainder of the trip.
As the ferry motored onwards, it was more of the same for a while, more scenes of palm lined roads on the banks, of groups of ducks and other birds waddling in the waters and scurrying as soon as our mini water juggernaut came hurtling along to disturb the tranquility of the water. Towards the end of the trip, one of the best sights was that of the sun setting in the distant horizon, a sight not blurred by any industrial haze or concrete buildings that are the bane of the degenerate cities we live in. Within a few minutes, we had come to the end of our journey and alighted at Alappuzha jetty, having had a great trip, one that we would remember for the rest of our lives. The next task was to take an inter-city bus to Ernakulam town, where we were to stay with Cita's school friend who was posted in that city. The bus depot was quite nearby and we made our way there and were about to search for a bus that would take us there when we decided to buy a cup of coffee each. As we finished that transaction, we noticed a bus about to leave for our destination and hurriedly made our way there. In the ensuing, melee to get into the bus, my cup fell from my hands and spilled on the shirt of someone standing next to me. He then grabbed my shirt for a while and started angrily remonstrating with me and no amount of apologies on my part seemed to soothe him. He gestured me to come with him and I went, more out of curiosity to see what he could do about what was clearly an accident. He made his way to a room which had a board on top saying "XYZ Workers union". It seemed that I was about to get a first hand view of militant unionism. For all my left-liberal leanings and support to the cause of exploited workers th eworld over against the exploitative forces of capitalism, I felt that a bit of action on the lines of the Haryana police against the Honda workers would be rather welcome. Anyway, just as I was trying to remember some of the techniques of collective bargaining that Prof Varkkey used to discuss in the first term HR, course, the other people in the bus station, like the coffee vendor and passers by asked me what the matter was and on hearing of it told me to just walk away rather than deal with an apoplectic madman. Anyway, I decided the safest course would be to stand next to the police post in the bus station and I did just that. In the meanwhile, my accuser had rounded up a policeman and was bringing him towards me. I can only imagine his other worker comrades told him not to make an ass of himself and refused to come out in droves to surround me, I mean it's one thing to lay down your life protesting oppressive working conditions and quite another to make a fuss over a stained shirt. Anyway, as the policeman came towards me, he had the look on his face of a man exasperated with the madmen he meets on the job. He made one effort to try and initiate proceedings by asking me if I speak Malayalam, in which case he would have probably carried on a conversation. After I responded most earnestly that to my eternal misfortune, I had frittered away my youth with out learning to appreciate the finer points of the language of the south Malabar regions, he pretty much gave up, convinced the effort was not worth it and told me to carry on. Finally cleared of the charges, the three of us made our way to the bus and I sat in the last row trying to make myself unconspicuous. Unfortunately from the window I could see the man I had inadvertently assaulted standing and looking aggrieved at the injustice of it all. I feared he might have some kind of nasty surprise up his sleeve and my mind raced back to newspaper reports over the years of miscreants waylaying buses just outside the city limits and proceeding to burn them, only this time there would be one human casualty inside. Hence, it was a very tense 2 hour ride for me, everytime the bus braked or came to a halt my heart would skip a beat. It was only once we were outside city limits that I felt relaxed. By the time we were at the outskirts of Erankulam city I was pretty well confident of taking on any union acitvists alone with my bare hands.
Ernakulam and Kochi are twin cities, Ernakulam being on the mainland and Kochi on an island just off the coast, linked by a system of bridges. Ernakulam was the first true big city in Kerala we were visting on this trip, Thiruvananthapurma being more of a government enclave. The roads were bright, neon hoardings and big shops lined the streets. If not for the money, in terms of appearances, the city was a lot like Ahmedabad, with a dominant and vibrant commercial district. As we rode through the place, we could not help but feel a bit more at home. Once we had reached the home of Cita's friend, we were glad to have a settled place to stay for the next couple of days and the nomadic life, though fun had started to take its toll on us. We left soon to explore the city and have some dinner and almost unanimously we made our way to a swanky Punjabi restaurant where we ate dal makhani and butter chicken to our heart's content after a week of coconut concoctions (no offense to Kerala cuisine or the mighty coconut, but 5 days had taken their toll).

Days 6 and 7
The last two days passed off at a more relazed pace, primarily because we were not covering distances of 300 km anymore. When we woke upto our first morning in Ernakulam, we decided to make our way to the Jewish settlement and Dutch museum of Kochi. We took an auto and crossed over the bridge that links the two cities and entered the settlement of Kochi. As we alighted from the auto, the driver demanded a fare of Rs 100 for covering 6 kms, saying that it is customary to charge two-way fare between the two cities. Having been sufficiently emboldened by the experiences of confrontation with the working classes, we marched straight off to the nearest police station, refusing to sit in the auto and walking on foot while the embarassed driver followed us. We reached Mattanchery polcie station and narrated our problems to the group of police officers on duty, who had the same exasperated expression on their faces as their comrade in Alappuzha mentioned earlier. Having no idea of how to deal with such a matter, there ensued some hectic discussions between them in Malayalam, of which we caught words like "city limits" and "meter reading". Eventually, they went inside their records room and extricated a xerox copy of some governemnt of Kerala rules which defined the rules of charging fare within the municipal limits of Ernakulam and Kochi. At the end of it all, during which most of the policemen were laughing and were generally amused, the senior police officer asked us to pay Rs 60 for the meter reading of 40. At this, Pubiii added another complication by saying that he suspected the meter was rigged. The top brass had enough at this point and asked us to give any amount that we felt right and go away and not take an auto on the way back. We decided to be generous and gave the driver Rs 50. To be fair to the guy, he took it and went away without saying a harsh word, if something like this had happened in Delhi or UP, we would have been told in no uncertain terms how characterless out mothers and sisters were.
After this dramatic interlude, we went to see the sights of the town. As we made our way to the Jewish synagogue, we passed by a number of Jewish cemeteries. Considering the low profile that the community keeps and its rapidly dwindling numbers, it comes as a surprise to many Indians that there are any Jews at all in India. However it is a fact that India has for centuries been a port of refuge and commerce for Jews escaping persecution in their homeland. In fact, there is a tribe in Manipur that has been certified by Israel as being one of the Ten lost tribes of Judaism and they are encouraged to migrate to their homeland. Personally being a pro-Israel sympathizer, the Jews are a community for whom I have a lot of respect and admiration. A lot of that goes back to my exchange student days in America where a number of my closest friends were Jews. Reading about their history and the persecution they have suffered has made me admire their society and its values. They value education very highly and apart from commercial pursuits also follow intellectual careers in great numbers. A number of the greatest scientists and professionals of the world are Jews and they have made probably the greatest positive contribution to human society among all races. Israel is unfairly blamed today for much of the wars and strife of the world, particularly in the Middle East, which is most unfair considering that not a single Arab-Israeli conflict has ever been started by them. However, unfairness is something the Jews are used to encountering and I guess they do not expect the present to be any different from the past.
Anyway, as we made our way to Jewtown, we were surprised to find streets empty, many shops closed and no tourists around. We soon found out that the reason for that was that Friday is a holiday in those parts. Apparently, Sabbath is one day early here. We took a few pics of the synagouge from the outside and made our way to the Dutch museum. That too unfortunately was closed and the day seemed to be hurtling towards being a complete washout. However the church of St.Francis was open and we made our way towards it. Located close to the beach, we walked towards it refreshed by a cool breeze (plus the fact that we were sure we had been blacklisted by all the autodrivers of Mattanchery). The church is pretty big and impressive and was built by the Dutch some 300 odd years ago and it functioned as a place of worship as well as a cemetery for those Dutch soldiers who having undertaken a long journey to India had to undertake an even longer journey somewhere else. There was an interesting collection of artifacts of Dutch heritage and some tombstones bearing inscriptions located inside the premises, which for some reason were completely deserted when we went in. Coming out of the church, we then loitered around the beach for a while, looking at abandoned dredgers, more cantilevered fishing nets and fish hawkers displaying their wares. Having spent sufficiently long there, we then decided to return to mainland India by taking a ferry to Ernakulam, which functions as a giant community taxi in these parts. In the evening, we decided to take a boat cruise around the Cochin port, which allowed us to look at the huge naval and commercial ships lining the harbour. We were in a decent sized boat ourselves, however, we were practically dwarfed by the huge vessels that we saw. The tankers carrying oil and other merchandize in the containers were huge as were the impressive ships of the Indian navy. Landing ashore, we spent some time walking further around the city sampling some coconut water, which inexplicably cost as much as it would in Delhi pr Ahmedabad, which was surprising considering everywhere we looked there was a coconut mountain to greet our eyes. To while away more time, we decided to go in for a first day show of Neal and Nikki at Shreedhar theatre. Suffice to say, it was a decision we have regretted ever since. The movie was an absolute disaster and we would have been better off with our initial plan to watch a Malayalam movie instead. The theatre was somewhat different from the ones I've seen in other cities, primarily in the fact that just adjacent to the screen were two giant pillars carved with the images of a couple engaged in some erotic poses. That ties up so well with the observations I made previously about the extent of sexual permissiveness in Malayalam society. Anyway, what that movie proved was that we are now witnessing the rise of a new pan-Indian phenomenon, one called Abhishek Bachchan, his cameo appearance in this damp squib was the only time the audience clapped and roared its approval. Other than that, the only time this movie made the audience happy was when it got over. Truly, the day had been one of wasted opportunities and the movie only exemplified that.
The next day was the last of this amazing trip and as it often happens, there were a few pangs of separation from the place which in just a week had become a mini-home for us, which we had traversed so extensively in such a small period of time and which had treated us to such amazing sights, experiences and hospitality. By this time, all of us were thoroughly exhausted of the tourist routine and so decided to minimize our movements. Hence we decided to take in lunch at a nearby dosa joint and go in for another movie, albeit this time in a different theatre so that we could truthfully claim that we had seen a new part of the state this time. We first sauntered into have a bruch at a South Indian restaurant and this time around I had a sense of achievement as far as my Malayalam was concerned. At one point, Cita told the waiter attending us for "two bottles of Coca Cola", a phrase which the poor chap obviously struggled with, so Cita repeated it two or three more times but the two of them were no closer to reaching a common ground when I stepped in and confidently announced "rand Coca Cola", at which the waiter's eyes brightened as though he had recieved heavenely enlightenment and within a few moments he had materialized with two - no more, no less- bottles of the pseudo-pesticide. With this gesture I had buried the trauma of the past. However, we didn't dwell too much longer on this success and sauntered into a hall called Mymoon to watch the afternoon show of "Ek Ajnabee". Well the movie was marginally better than the one we had seen last night and once again, the pan-Indian popularity of Abhishek Bachchan was proved when the audience once again went into raptures with his guest appearance in this movie too. Having whiled away the afternoon, there was very little left for us to do except pack up and say goodbye to this beautiful state and go back to Ahmedabad. The past 7 days had seen us crisscross the entire state, landing up on beaches,in forests, in hills and in police stations, we had encountered genial shopkeepers, sympathetic locals, helpful policemen and firebrand union workers, in short, the entire spectrum of Malayalam society and it had been an enriching experience for us, it was a mixture of adventure and relaxation and the impressions that were left on our minds I'm sure will last for a long time. I hardly guess that there is a moral to any travelogue, but the one thing that I definitely learnt from my 7 days was that we spend most of our lives in such a stifling insular world these days that everything is peripheral to us. Our country is broad, not just in physical expanse but also in cultures, in lifestyles and at the same time has numerous threads of unity running through it to not make one feel like an outsider. The stereotypes that we build up about each other, in most cases just as a joke and benign, should not become accepted truths. I think we would all be richer for that.


PS Kerala Police rocks!!

Kerala Chronicles - Part 3

Some time ago, I read about an old movie called "If it's Tuesday, it must be Belgium", about a group of tourists who criss-cross continental Europe at breakneck speed. Leaving Thiruvananthapuram, our Kerala odyssey too had reached a similar state, leaving us to cover humdreds of kilometres all over the state using all possible modes of transport on land and water. In the heady itinerary that followed, we kept track of our location solely on the basis of what day of the week it was.

Day 3:
Well, I finally had it, the gastric scourge without which one can't claim to be a tourist in India. but while your average dyspeptic white foreigner can claim unfamiliarity with hot spices and chillies in the stomach lining wars as the cause of his downfall, I was done in by the humble and innocuous coconut. Ok, I like coconuts as much as the next non-Mallu guy but coconut paste in chicken? Give me a break. The potency of the concoction I had for dinner hit me later that night, when I had to make a couple of urgent trips to the bathroom. As we checked out of the nice little lodge in the wee hours of the morning and made our way to the bus station located closeby, my thoughts were geared up as to how I would last the formidable distance of 280 kilometres to be covered in 8 hours on a KSRTC (Kerala State Road Transport Corporation) bus.
Waiting at the stop for a bus to Kumily, close to the Periyar Wildlife Reserve, I was able to make some observations about Kerala society and some of its most unique features. Kerala's most recognizable cultural export after Kathakali is Shakeela Khan. Notwithstanding the proliferation in the 80s of buxom bombshells in neighbouring Tamil Nadu, no state has pushed the envelope of sexual permissiveness more than Kerala with Shakeela being the standard bearer of that movement. Looking at the book stalls within the bus stop complex, it became pretty clear that her prominence is no aberration. Shops proudly displayed books and periodicals that had graphic pictures of buxom beauties in varying states of undress titillating the eyes of all those who cared to glance at them. Far be it from me to claim that up North where I come from is a bastion of virtue and abstinence, but still, the transactions in this line are carried out in a unique surreptitious manner, with a well developed set of codes and pass words. You walk into a nice book or magazine shop, filled for all intents and purposes with educational/informative reading material and walk up to the nice middle aged proprieter at the counter and say "kuchh achhi kitabein nahin hain?" whereupon he proceeds to reach under his desk and takes out a stack of material that is even more educational and informative than that displayed on the shelves. And that is the way of all flesh up in the north. Shorn of this clandestine element, I'm sure half the thrill of alternative entertainment in Kerala is lost there itself.
Anyway, I was far too preoccupied with my own gastric predicament to do any navel gazing at comely Mallu women adorning magazine covers and as we boarded the 99 Rs per person Thiruvananthapuram - Kumily bus, I determined that the best way to last the 8 hour journey without incident would be to sit and my seat and sleep through. As the bus wound its way through the streets of Kerala's capital, I managed to sleep off for a couple of hours but couldn't manage any more so I thought that I would grit my teeth through my troubles and gaze at the scenery outside. I'm glad I did so because Kerala is beautiful not only around its coasts but also in its interiors, with verdant forests and beautiful fields all around, the view is therapuetic, though its efficacy as a laxative is something I can't comment upon. Anyway something had to give and as the bus reached Kottayam around 11, I threw in the towel and utilized the 15 minute pit stop to pay a visit to one of the most revolutionary initiatives in Indian public life, the Sulabh. Indians as a race are notorious for hygiene and a visit to the interiors of this public toilet did prove that in general, it is a good idea to avoid these places, the maxim of eating light while travelling probably has its origins in this sad truth. However, one thing that Indian toilets seem to have in common with their counterparts elsewhere is graffiti. I guess it's part of a continuous chain of mankind's urge for expression that started when our ancestors made elaborate drawings in caves. And I guess the urge is pretty strong to compel people to scribble when they are sitting in a psoture least conducive to creative thought. However, I suppose one can't help but admire the dexterity involved in using the door as a slate.
Much as I look back at this interlude with a shudder and a sense of how could I have done something like that, I have to admit that my condition took a turn for the better at the end (no pun intended). In fact I emerged out with a whistle and a smile on my face, which was quickly cut short by the realization that the bus would be leaving any moment now and even though Cita and Pubiii were still on the bus, there was always the formidable language barrier. By the time they would probably succeed in explaining that one of their companions was left behind, the bus might well be six towns away. So I made my way back to the waiting vehicle and was relieved (again no pun intended) to see it was still there. And now I was in a much better position to observe and reflect. Well as we made our way across the various towns of central Kerala, one finds out that there are three symbols that are omnipresent in this region. One is the hammer and sickle of the communist party, second, in each town there is a typical Church tower with a glass encasing a statue of Mary with child (and in a symbol of how worship is indigenized, the statues are usually decorated with a garland of flowers) and lastly, advertisements of the House of Alukkas, who I am informed are a Christian famiy that owns a franchise of jewelry shops all across the state and specialize in ornaments for Hindu weddings. Jewelry seems to be a favourite business of Kerelites, there is a Thattil jewellers even in Ahmedabad. Anyway, most of the journey was uneventful and we enlivened it from time to time by resorting to our venda-vendor games with unsuspecting hawkers.
One thing that struck me as unique about Kerala and what set it apart from other states in the South, particularly its eastern one, was the widespread prevalance of Hindi. Unlike Tamil Nadu where it's rare to find a Hindi speaker in the most cosmopolitan areas of Chennai, Hindi is spoken readily by people even in the smallest of towns in Kerala. We had a stopover in a small (and I mean small) town called Mundakkayam and as we readied ourselves with our " rand packet chips, moon bottle coca - cola" routines with accompanying hand gestures, we realized that it wouldn't be required. The shop keeper took one look at us and asked in chaste Hindi "aap kaun is bhaasha boltey hain", which spared us the need of making fools of ourselves once again. It was a phenomenon that was repeated time after time in place after place and it would be interesting to see why Hindi has been so successful in permeating into a region that has traditionally been considered hostile to it. Cita's take was that it makes good business sense because of the number of tourists but I think there's more to it. For one, I was told that Hindi is a compulsory third language in schools here and moreover, classical Malayalam has a strong Sanskrit base. Even though the script resembles Tamil a lot and even has a lot of similar words, there is a far greater Sanskrit influence in it. Most Indians live in an insular world, knowing little about their own country and its people, indeed for an average North Indian, Indians are of the following types - those who speak Hindi or something resembling Hindi, Bengalis, Sardars and Madrasis (a generic term for everyone south of Jabalpur). It's instructive however to take a lesson in the liguistic similarities and differences that prevail and see how the whole nation is joined like a thread, with a gradual change in dialect and script that hide the common essence. From what I'm told, the most Sanskritized South Indian language is Telugu, which has a proliferation of 'tatsam' words. The Telugu script is in turn very similar to Kannada and I suppose it too would have Sanskrit influences in comparable measure. Similarly, Malayalam has a script similar to Tamil but it has more Sanskrit words in it than the latter. If only we could find out the mechanism by which Sanskirt disseminated into the Southern states, it would perhaps help us in popularizing the language among the demographic that has so far been most resistant to it - the typical private school Delhi student, the kinds seen loitering in CP, Bengali Market, South Ex.
Anyway, as our mini-juggernaut (that's what it was, especially on the narrow country roads) rolled on, the terrain started changing, and we made the transition from plains to hills. On the way, we saw an accident whereby a small lorry crashed into a Maruti. Immediately the two parties came out and started berating each other. It reminded me of a great insight that RaviC once related in class. I think somebody had said that company X should do something to retaliate against company Y and he said that business is not a vendetta where you take revenge on people unless you're a Tam or a Mallu, and proceeded to relate the difference between the business minded rationality of Gujaratis and the emotion led volatility of South Indians (btw, he's a Tam Brahm). He said that if there is an accident between two cars in Ahmedabad, the occupants will come out, shout at each other for a while, exchange some money and go away, while in TN or Kerala, the two protagonists will swear revenge on each other, each other's children, each other's children's children, their extended clan affiliations, friends, well-wishers, wife's relatives, their business associates etc., call the police, get embroiled in a legal case that will drag on well after they are dead into their third or fourth generation. Seeing the apoplectic and animated gestures of the two sides in this case, something told me that he was spot on. As he usually is.
However, as we went further up, these unpleasant memories were left far behind. When God made Kerala, he really went all out in endowing it with beauty. If the backwaters and the beaches were scenic, the mountains are simply breathtaking. The Kumily region is part of cardamom and spice country, with acres and acres covered under beautiful plantations. The weather is cool and pleasant, making a welcome change from the humidity of the plains. I think the entire system of hills is part of the Cardamom mountains and AnaiMudi, the highest peak in South India is part of these ranges.
Having arrived in Kumily, a small hill station, it transpired that we needed to make our way to Thekkadi, an even smaller town/settlement that housed the Periyar wildlife sanctuary. After a short auto ride, we found ourselves inside the sylvan forest reserve, with some rather odd and scary sculptures of tigers and elephants bearing convival messages like Danger, tiger zone. Once inside, we checked into the Periyar House, a KTDC run guest house inside the reserve. The congenial concierge allowed the three of us to check into one room and save on money. The deal was pretty good, 1000 bucks for 3 people, a night's stay and dinner and breakfast included. We were led upto our room by an attendant who gravely warned us of a sever 'mengis' problem. It took us some time realize that 'mengis' translates to 'monkeys' and the attendant wanted us to close the windows before leaving the room, just in case any simian who had stolen a march on his compatriots by evolving into a higher being, namely a pickpocet, decided to give us a closer view of wildlife than we had paid for.
Anyway, after barely pausing to overcome the bus lag which had afflicted us, we decided to take in a view of more waterbodies and trees than we had already. We went to the lake where there were ferries to show tourists around. We were told that the lake was a manmade one, fed by the waters of the Mullaperiyar dam, which supplied 60% of Kerala's electricity. We then got onto the boat and had a pleasant one-hour cruise, seeing a number of bison, deer and other assorted fauna, but no sight of the two big attractions of the place, elephants or tigers. Things got promising when one of the guides said that he spotted an elephant at one point but the skipper said it was getting late and we had to go back. Pubiii was on the verge of showing his own wild side and taking contention with the captain, but to the skip's good fortune we talked him out of it.
The Periyar reserve has a policy of no raoming outside after 6 pm and one look at the jungle at night proved to us that this measure was instituted by wiser heads than ours, the three of us were scared of going 10 feet outside the main entrance of the guest house after dinner, the air was so spooky and eerie. Needless to say, plans of an after dinner stroll were quickly put into cold storage. Hence we spent the rest of the evening watching TV in our rooms, where we discovered the wonders of Pogo and Takeshi's castle and stumbled upon a program called Savariya on Asianet, which had a cute and bubbly host, who sure excited my pheromones. Before the (mating) call of the wild tempted me, Pubiii and Cita decided that it was time to turn off the TV and turn in. Can't say for sure, but they seemed relieved when I volunteered to spend the night on the extra bedding on the floor.

Day 4:
We woke up early in the morning in order to continue our tryst with the wild by taking a guided trek of the reserve. In fact we were so early, that it was not yet breakfast time and it transpired that by the time we got back, breakfast might not be served. So we made a special request to the staff to keep keep it open for an extra fifteen minutes, by which time we would be back. The staff, in keeping with our near universal experience in Kerala, agreed to do so without any dragging of feet. Which only served to reinforce my belief that Malayalis are probably the second most congenial people in India, after the Rajasthanis. So with that matter settled, we went along to the ticket counter and booked a group tour for 1000 bucks. We had a stroke of luck as we met a couple of Belgian girls who agreed to join the three of us to reach the group limit of 5, which brought down our overheads. Considering the justifiable hesitation female foreign tourists have in fraternizing with strangers in India, I have to claim that there must have been something in our bearing that radiated sincerity and character, I mean most females do look at me as a brother..wait a minute, did I actually say that with a hint of pride? What a loser.
Anyway, off we went on our way but before we could progress into the wild, we were advised to put on the mandatory protective leg wear, to prevent leech bites. After we got into gear, we were off on our way. The first step was to cross the lake at one point using a raft made of wooden poles. It was done in a most interesting way, our guide, Aruvi, a tribal, got into the raft first and it had no oars, instead, one had to pull oneself to the opposite bank using a rope that connected the two banks. After we got on the otherside, he told us, in pretty good English, that he could not guarantee that we would see any animals. We started walking on a small jungle trail and amde our way, occasionally evading the thorny bush that came in our way. The first sign of the wild was a molted snake skin that our guide spotted and displayed to us. Pubiii insisted on keeping it, intending to give it as a gift. Unless the intended recipient was a mongoose, I don't see him or her being thrilled by the choice of present. I guess Pubiii sincerely believes that it's the thought that counts.
As we walked along, we saw a family of wild boras frolicking in the grass and then it happened. The razor sharp ears of our guide heard a small rustle and the instincts in him were aroused. He waited for a while and then went towards the dense jungle a few metres away and then cautiously called us. Hidden in the dense trees was an elephant. We went one by one to peer through the leaves and when it was my turn, I saw only the trunk, swaying back and forth vigorously. Even at a distance of about 50 metres, I was scared and suddenly the friendly elephants of Haath Mere Saathi were forgotten and I could feel the nervous sweat trickling down the back of my neck. Here, innature's lair, I was the powerless one, the insignificant mass in front of a might mastodon. If it charged, there was no hope. It's times like these one realizes just where one sits in the animal kingdom.
Anyway, after a few moments, we made our way forward, like the proverbial three blind men, who had observed different parts of the elephant. The rest of the walk was pretty uneventful, except when I stumbled while crossing a log over a small puddle and had a small splash. As we headed back, we saw the erstwhile elephant in the thick foliage come out into the open and saunter around barely 20 feet from us. We just stood there transfixed, staring at the majestic mammoth take in the sun, its splendor being showcased in its natural element. Our guide Aruvi states that it is rare for a guided tour party to come across an elephant so far out from the main forest. Considering the justifiable hesitation Indian elephants have in fraternizing with strangers in India, I have to claim that there must have been something in our bearing that radiated sincerity and character that brought this one out of.....forget it, what a loser.
Well after bidding bye to the two Francophone Belgian ladies, we proceeded to de-leech ourselves and considering the numbers that tumbled out of our shoes, it's a good thing we had those protective stockings on, or else we would have been bled dry. We'll leave that to the Finance Minister.
Anyway, after partaking the breakfast that had been very kindly arranged for us, it was time to move on to the next junction of our Kerala trip, onwards to Kollam. For that it was necessary to take another bone rattling 6 hour bus ride, however, we were told that there is a paucity of direct buses on the Kumily to Kollam route, so Shashu had advised us to take a bus to Kottayam and hop on to the Wayanad express, to which we said "Whynaat?" (sorry, bad one, I know). However, that plan was skewered by the atendant in charge of the Help Desk at the Kumily bus station woh had advised us to take a bus from Kumily to Changanasherry and take a bus from there. By this time, we pretty much felt omnipotent, plus one city in Kerala felt as good as the other so we were open to both suggestions. Hence we left our room leisurely, hailed an auto, whose garrulous driver stopped very considerately to allow us a glimpse of an orange squirrel running up a tree and gave us a crash course on the Mullaperiyar dam, the pride of Idukky district, which as everyone knows, generates 60% of Kerala's electricity. As we ambled to the bus stop in Kumily, our driver spotted a Kumily-Kollam direct bus that was just about to leave. Greatful for his keen eye, Pubiii gave him 40 bucks instead of 30 that we had promied and we were glad to cut down an extra leg of the journey, though personally, there was a tinge of regret for me that we would miss out on touching base in a new city. Then I remembered the 8 hour trip a day ago...I rushed inside, knocking down everyone who stood between me and the bus.
Well, the bus journey was quite ok, we made the mistake of sitting down in the front, an area usually reserved for women. Unlike up north where we would have been unceremoniously ejected, the conductor very politely told us that if there were any women standing, we might have to get up and promied us a seat when the bus stopped in between (and all this in Hindi!). True to his word, he got the three of us a seat in the unreserved area soon enough and we made our merry way, down the hills and to the plains once again.
A few weeks later, when we were back in Ahmedabad, Cita sent us a news clipping about on accidnt involving the Kumily-Changanasherry bus that left 11 people dead. Though it had happened many days after our trip, I still couldn't help but shudder at the prospect of what could have happened to us, especially considering the accident on our way to Kumily. I was sitting right in the front of the bus at that time, and there was no protective railing between me and the bus windshield. In case of an accident, I would have been hurled forward right out of the bus. "Unsafe at any speed", the title of Ralph Nader's seminal book on auto safety came to mind.
Well, we finally landed in Kollam (or Quilon as it used to be), hometown of my dormie QC, sometime in the evening and made our way to the nice little hotel that Shashu had found for us. We booked into a room and then made our way out to eat something, an event I refer to Cita's great dosa quest. For an average non-South Indian, the entire landmass south of Goa has a single uniform culture, specifically, everyone in those latitudes eats dosas. Here in one of the more solidly Mallu cities of the state, we were awakened from this terrible misconception. The first place we went to was deserted at the time, we looked at our watch , it was 7:30 and the waiters were genuinely shocked to see customers so early. They quickly stumbled over each other and procured a menu from somewhere, which boldly stated that dosas were not served after 5 pm. We figured there would be enough eating joints all around, so we walked up and made our way elsewhere. The problem with living in a city like Ahmedabad where there is enough disposable income to inspire anyone with a frying pan and a few teaspoons of oil to set up a restaurant, is that it makes you believe that every other place would be just like that. Here was another awakening awaiting us. After trying two more places, which had everything ranging from appams to brain curry, we finally walked into an Udipi-esque joint, where the three of us had a filling meal of idlis, vadas, dosas and ginger beer for the princely sum of Rs. 42 (I'm not kidding). As we emerged from our meal, we discovered that the city closed its shutters at 8:30 and after a few desultory steps here and there to see the city, we headed back to our hotel, picking up some provisions on the way and deciding to rest for we had an 8 hour boat-ride through the back waters the next day. We spent the night watching our favourite channel Asianet and another episode of Saavariya, which for some unknown reasons was playing Tamil songs. We happened to hear the song "Dating" from the movie Boys, and more importantly, saw Genelia D'Souza playing water polo in mini-skirts, both of which had a lasting influence on us. If anyone ever writes the history of D-10 in IIMA, they'll record a bizarre spell of Tamil music blaring 24/7 from non-Tam occupied rooms on both floors of the dorm, playing "Dating" over and over again. Well, ladies and gentlemen, you have just read how history is made.

Kerala Chronicles - Part 2

A long long time ago,i.e. before Khushwant Singh had learnt about the birds and the bees, it was believed that all waves needed a medium in which to propagate, hence the concept of ether as the universal medium facilitating the transmission of waves was put forth. Ether was supposed to be all permeating and the theory was unchallenged for a few centuries. However, in the early part of the twentieth century, the theory was debunked by sophisticated scientific experiments.
If the proponents of an all permeating ether theory had ever visited Kerala, their views would have had a much sounder grounding and the course of modern science would have arguably been different. Of course, instead of calling it ether, Keralites call this substance coconut oil. If you go there, you can pretty much smell it in the air, which is not too surprising considering its ubiquitous presence, from the food you eat to the hair of women walking the streets, the whole State is one big coconut (ok slight exaggeration, but try subsisting on a coconut diet for a week and you'll see). To paraphrase a saying about GM in the 50s, "you can eat anything in Kerala as long as it's a coconut".
If you think that being ambushed by oceans of coconuts has oriented me unfavourably towards God's Own Country, well then all I can say is that you have a coconut for a brain. In IIMA parlance, Kerala is certainly in my Top 5 federal administrative sub-units of the Indian republic, and the 7 odd days I spent there were at times so heavenly, it was scarcely believable. So what I'm gonna do is give a day by day account of our coconuts...I mean our adventures in the land of Parshuram

Day 1
So its 3:45 am and we disembark from the Gandhidham-Nagercoil express and find ourselves at Thiruvananthapuram station. A number of porters approach but armed with the power of "venda" we succeed in repelling their unsolicited attention. Shashu takes us to a nearby lodge, where the innkeeper is shocked to be woken at 4 am and asked for a room...I could swear he's thinking that it could only be North Indians. Anyway, the four of us make our way through a dimly lit passage reminiscent of the Green Mile and we find ourselves in a room which is quite decent, give or take the odd swarm of mosquitoes. Anyway, we're settling into the Three men in a Boat frame of mind, so we're not overly concerned. I'm about to settle in for a nice long snooze when Shashu tells us that we'll leave at 7 for a darshan at the Shripadmanabhaswamy temple. I am thrilled at the prospect till he clarifies that he means 7 am. 7 am? I have no memories of what that time of day looks like, having sacrificed discipline for convenience a long time ago. Anyway, Pubiii and Cita agree readily, and not wanting to be left out, I agree as well.
So when the clock strikes 6:30, I am rudely yanked off my bed and told to dress up. After uttering some impious imprecations, I sleepwalk with the others and we decide to sip some coffee at a wierdly shaped restaurant called India Coffee house, a vertical tower where people are seated around a spiral staricase. Recharged with energy, we make our way to the "demble", located nearby. It's a magnificent sight, built in the classical South Indian style, a massive "gopuram" the entrance to the main temple inside. Admission rules are much stricter in the south too, no one can enter wearing a shirt and jeans, one has to wear a "mundu", akin to a dhoti and nothing on top. The latter came as a bolt from the blue for us, the most that happens in temples in the North is that you're not allowed to wear shoes or slippers inside. With ill conceived discomfort we discard our outer shells and are soon at one with nature. But one can't deny the aura of the place and one can almost feel the divine inside. coming back, I feel that the day has got off to a good start and after we get our clothes and our dignity back, we pose for pictures outside the temple gate with our mundus still on. As we came out, we went to another smaller temple where people were smashing coconuts against a granite wall as an offering to the Gods. Swept away by my emotions, I too flung a specimen with exceptional power, watching it disintegrate against the wall.Little was I to know that the coconuts would have thier revenge very soon. But more of that later.
From there on we make our way through to Thiruvananthapuram's museum of natural history...which as we later find out, houses both nature and history in the same complex, having a zoo, a reptile house and a history museum within the premises. The history museum is very impressive, with a number of atrifacts, some as old as 5000 years. After ambling around in all of these for a while, we take lunch in a restaurant called Kadalivanam, which is a 'health joint'. However, what I, and I'm sure the other patrons present at the time, will remember would be my misadventures with payasam. The invention of payasam poses the single biggest challenge to the theory of evolutionary biology, for the life of me I cannot see how one can eat the thing with hands. I mean the human hand is a thing of wonder, opposable thumb and what not, but one thing it was surely not meant to do is scoop up fluids from a flat banana leaf. After a few initial attempts, I was pretty much down to leaning into my banana leaf and licking the stuff, for no matter how adroitly I tried to do it, the journey from leaf to mouth was too much and there was more dripping down my forearm than my oesophagus and matters were not helped by the fact that Cita and Pubiii were served theirs in a glass. My Lord, why have you foraken me?
After having nearly drowned in payasam, I decide I might as well tempt fate and go to Kovalam beach. So we get a car and make the hour long journey to the place, the highlight of the trip being a road which descends almost vertically. Not having got any bathing trunks, we decide to plunge into the raging Arabian Sea with all our clothes. The irony isn't lost on anyone, we were wearing more on a trip to a beahc than we were inside a temple. However, a dip in the waters was the perfect antidote to the fits of perspiration caused by the heat of the Kerala winter (another irony?).
After the trip to Kovalam, we go to another beach to do some boating before watching the sunset. The highlight of this particular journey is a giant statue of a nude sprawling in the lawns by the roadside, accompanied by a plaque stating proudly that it was commissioned by the government....By this time I'm pretty much feeling as though I've stepped into the twilight zone. I try and distract myself by chanting 'un..rand..moon...naal..anj..aar...edh..ett..umbada..patta..' - Malayalam for 1,2,3...10, the next step in our immersion in the local culture.
In the boatclub, we enter with a bang, quite literally, when Cita kicks a coconut that smashes a flowerpot lining the gravel path. We walk away nonchalantly, likre true Delhi-ites and hire a row-boat. The four of us take turns in manning the oars and in between hitting pylons of overhead bridges, going around in circles and almost knocking the other guys' eye out with the oar, we do manange to have a relaxing time. Shashu came close to dropping the oar into the water a couple of times and my wise-crack about us in danger of being 'up the creek without a paddle' wasn't appreciated wholeheartedly. I wonder why.
Anyway, after this we hire a couple of paddle boats that turn out to have a mind of their own as we find ourselves helplessly drifting out into the sea, before we are helped back by the wake of a passing motorboat. Pity, remarks Cita, we could have seen Sri Lanka as well. This time it's my turn to give the dirty looks.
Anyway, we decide that that's about enough adventure for a day and quietly sit down on the sand to see the sunset. And it was an enchanting sight, to see the sun disappear gradually over the horizon, as though swallowed up by the vast blue explanse in front of us. As we make iur way back to our lodge around 8pm, we make plans to check out the nightlife in the town, maybe even take in a lat night Malayalam movie at the mearby theatre. At 8:30 we're all sound asleep in our beds.

Day 2
We decide that we haven't gone south enough and decide to pursue the equator to the maximum extent possible on the Indian mainland...in other words, we decide to visit Kanyakumari which is a couple of hours away. So we once again set off, this time to the mystical edge of India, the land of confluence of three great waterbodies, the place where Swami Vivekananda spent three days meditating on the nature of the world and life. Before we landed there, we made a detour to a place called Sucheendram to visit a temple there and the visit was a real eye opener to me, chaning my view of the world completely. A Tamil caretaker of the temple spoke in Hindi to me...read that sentence again...and he did it of his own accord, before I had even said a word...that one incident forced me to revaluate my belief that Hindi ceased to be a language in Tamil Nadu outside the signboards in Kamaraj airport, Meenambakkam, Chennai. All those awful memories of summers in chennai, of heated arguments with auto drivers who ripped you off and spoke Tamil at an intimidating pace to put you off, were now forgotten. In a sense, I had finally found peace for the turbulence that had been raging inside. Forgive and move on.
After that life latering experience, we proceeded to Kanyakumari with some truly amazing scenery on view. One thing in which I have to admit Uttar Pradesh lags behind...ok one of the many things in which UP lags behind, is in scenery. Go down below the Terai and you've pretty much exhausted all the scenic beauty of the state, not counting Priyanka Chopra that is. Of hills we have none and the moment the land starts showing signs of elevation, ou realize you're in the Chambal ravines and the only scenic beauty there are hirsute dacoits, more moustache than body. The south on the other hand seems to be seeped in gorgeous landscapes, and this road trip too had its fair share of lush,green fields (ok I'm obsessed with those adjectives) and hills.
After a refreshing journey, we found ourself running out of land and that's when we realized we were in Kanyakumari. It's a quaint little town with a remarkable tourist economy centred around the fact that it's at the edge of the country. All the businesses and hotels are concentrated around the sea, one almost gets the feeling that the city is a giant human being leaning into the water. The two main attractions of the place are the temple, which we declined to enter because of the 'shirts off please' clause and the Vivekananda Rock, a giant rock a few hundred metres into the Indian ocean ,where Swami Vivekananda meditated. Another thing about Kanyakumari is that it's the most cosmopolitan town in Tamil Nadu, where the next person is as likely to be a Bengali or a Punjabi as he is to be a Tam.
We took a ferry to the rock and reaching there we made our way to the vivekananda memorial, which is a place of amazing tranquility amidst the raging ocean. I spent around five minutes in the meditation chamber and the peace and silence there are indescribable. Even as I write, I am trying desperately yo recreate those moments in my mind but I am unable to do so, there's something magical about the place.
The rock also houses a temple dedicated to Goddess Parvati, it's main attraction being a projection in the ground shaped like a woman's foot. Legend has that this is an imprint of the Goddess' foot, when she prayed here to be married to Lord Shiva (hence the name of the town- Kanya Kumari).
While on the rock, the sky got overcast and we decided to make our way back before it started raining too heavily. By the time we got back, there was nothing much left to do, except roam the marketplace and see the remarkable varieties of bananas and coconuts on sale. In the evening we went back to India Coffee House for dinner and for whatever unfolded subsequently, I hold Shashu squarely respnosible. Had he not told me that I bore an uncanny resemblance to superstar Dileep, the flavour of Malayalam cinema in recent times and a worthy inheritor of the proud cinematic legacy of Mohanlal and Mammooty, I would have never harboured any illusions of my knowledge of Malayalam being sufficient to carry out the routine task of ordering food in a restaurant. Feeling quite smug about my extensive knowledge of Malayalam numbers from 1 to 10, I took it upon myself to place the order in chaste Mallu. I even asked cita to record the conversation with his digi cam. It went something like this:

Superstar Dileep: Un (1) vada, moon (3) maala dosa, un mineral water bottle, un coffee, rand (2) cutlet, un ulliuttapam

Waiter with deadpan expression: sdfsdsdgdfuaiiajnrshd annagierhj ulli uttapam skdfsfsmfss fdfdfg dgdgdgfhfgh (exec summary: something in Malayalam)

Superstar Dileep: Huh!!

Well I was pretty much stymied, and yet as I carried the hopes and dreams of Malayalam cinema squarely on my shoulders, I could hardly bring myself to admit I knew as much Malayalam as I knew open heart surgery

So I end up staring at Cita who by this time is rollicking in his seat. Anyway, by astutely analyzing the situation, I estimate that the waiter's trying to tell me that ulli (onion) uttapam isn't available. So I order un of something else on the menu and the waiter goes away and I sit back satisfied that I had redeemed myself.

5 minutes later:

The three of us are staring at the table, on which are kept, 3 bottles of mineral water, 3 vada sambhars, 3 masala dosas and 0 coffees. I call the waiter back and explain to him firstly in Malayalam, then in English, then in sign language that I wanted 1 bottle of mineral water, 1 vada sambhar and 1 coffee for us...he apologises for misunderstanding and takes away the excess and makes up the deficits. However, I can't look at him in the eye after that. Not out of any embarassment but in order to avoid him as he is now convinced that I speak Mallu and of the three of us directs all his conversation to me, much to the entertainment of Pubiii and Cita. At one point of time he seems to be making an impassioned plea for us to do something, at the end of it I'm exasperated and ask Pubiii and Cita to move to the next table. Turns out that was indeed what he wanted us to do and he goes back, more convinced than ever about my mastery over the tongue while I am left behind to contemplate a pyrrhich victory. Before he comes back to engage me in a debate about the role of gerunds in Malayalam, I quickly gulp down the food and beat a hasty exit. I did leave a large tip for him though, for having given my linguistic skills the respect they clearly did not deserve. And after all, how would it look if superstar Dileep, hero of the masses, skimps on tips?

Kerala Chronicles - Part 1

You know, every once in a while, every human being becomes acutely aware of a void inside him and life suddenly loses all charm. The nomad within oneself, suppressed by millenia of civilization suddenly seeks to assert himself and the desire to wander off to lands hitherto unexplored overwhelms all reason and logic. Add to this the perfectly understandable and widely prevalent desire to be surrounded by coconuts, coconut oil, coconut coir and...more coconut oil, and one finds oneself irresistibly drawn towards...yes you guezzed it gorrectly...to Kerala, God's own Gundry. Fed up with the coconut deprived environs of our otherwise satisfactory lives in Ahmedabad, Pubiii, Cita and I decided to leg it down south and add a bit of communist red colour to our lives.
I don't know how, where and why the idea germinated but one day Cita called me up to ask me if I would be interested in a trip to Kerala during the break. It set me off on a long train of thought, almost as long as the 40 hour journey from Ahmedabad to Thiruvananthapurma itself. I reflected over my childhood, there was a curious lack of Mallu influence in it. I remembered all the long train journeys that I had taken and Kerala didn't figure in it. I had no relatives there and so Kerala as a destination was ruled out. But that didn't suffice, after all I have no relaties in Andhra, Bihar, West Bengal, Madhya Pradesh either but I had passed through these states at least in transit by rail. Why was Kerala strangely missing from my set of 28 states and 7 Union Territories (and please, Delhi is a Union Territory, it is not a state, its something I have killed people over)? Then the answer struck. There's only water beyond Kerala hence one can't transit through it to anything. Having made peace with the trauma of my childhood, I jauntily said yes to the idea.
And so it happened, that the 2nd of December 2005 saw three young men stand at Platform No.6 of Ahmedabad junction waiting to board the Nagercoil Express that would take them on their southern adventure. Shashu was going to be our trip planner and he was to join us later at the station. At 11:58, with two minutes left for departure and no sign of him, the enormity of what we had gotten ourselves into hit us. What if he doesn't come and we land up in Thiruvananthapuram by ourselves, what if those around us son't speak our language, dislike outsiders and are hostile to us? In other words, what if they are like Tams? (just kidding, no really, Tams are very nice and hospitable and all Tam women are chaste till marriage and Khushboo and Suhasini have outraged the honour and pride of Tamil womanhood with their shameless remarks..happy Mr. Ramdoss? Please don't kill me).
Anyway, while we were still grappling with the dilemma of chucking the whole idea and spending 15 days patronizing the Rann of Kutch instead, Shashu did turn up and we took it be a good 'Oomen' (zenze of humour very nice no? and very political too, just like the state itself). Well the prospect of a 40 hour train journey in sleeper class isn't the most appetizing and to ensure that I wouldn't be awake thorugh most of it, I had put in a night out the previous night, having gone out to dinner with X and Speedo and then completing our Insight report and watching House of Wax (and after watching it, there was no way I was gonna sleep). And now, at 3pm, after we had exhausted our patience and that of others around us playing flash and monopoly, I decided to sleep for an hour. I woke up next day at 8 in the morning, having slept straight through for 17 hours. That's no mean achievement, just to put it into perspective, I slept through the entire length of Maharashtra state, and that's a pretty decent sized federal administrative unit of the Indian republic, not a compact one like Punjab or Haryana. So in geographic terms, I had slept through a third of Gujarat, the whole of Maharashtra and two thirds of Goa. I'm not sure, but it sounds like some kind of Guiness record.
Anyway, after having regained consciousness, I was left with the prospect of looking out of the window and staring at some nice scenery along the Konkan route and boy, was I not disappointed. The lush green landscapes of Goa quickly gave way to the....well, lush, green landscapes of Karnataka (and as I was to later find out, they gave way to the lush green landscapes of Kerala, so the entire stretch of land south of Ratnagiri is one lush, green landscape). It was at one of the stations in Karnataka that I realized that I was perhaps the only person in the whole of South India wearing a jacket at 1 in the afternoon. Somehow, I got the feeling that the locals were laughing...typical North Indian paranoia south of the Vindhyas I guess. Anyway, we made an interesting discovery about the Kannada script, all there letters seem to be shaped like the Greek 'omega'. A line here, a couple of wierd circles there and lo, you have an entire alphabet (a word which itself is derived from two Greek words, alpha and beta). I got excited, here was further proof of the Greek influence on Indian languages, something I had alluded to in my letter to flames of heaven. If only I had known this earlier, the premises made in that cheery epistle would have had better grounding, though it might not have solved her basic telecom troubles.
Well, we sneaked in stealthily from Karnataka to Kerala and had we not stood at the door of our coach, we might have not even realized we were inside Kerala till ages later. We first became suspicious when the script on buildings and walls outside changed from omegas to 'jalebis' (as Pubiii put it). And then slowly, other clues started emerging. The communist flag at each lamp post for instance. And the scenery outside was simply breathtaking. Cita and I had initially intended to stand at the door for a few minutes, but we were so taken in by the backwaters, the seaside and the ...lush, green landscapes that we just stood there looking out for the better part of three hours. Its like looking at a live painting and at that moment, I would have given anything for the train to break down for a couple of hours and to have the chance to go outside and sit in those fields. Evident too were the unique bulwarks of Kerala's economy, the remittances from the gulf, in the form of stylish and obviously expensive houses in the middle of farms and middle of nowhere villages.
However, we knew we had truly arrived in sage Parshuram's kingsdom once we got down at Kozhikode station. The staff notice board at the railway station was full of notices exhorting staff groups to strike, agitate, gherao and do whatever it takes to disrupt work, for whatever reason. The union of General category railway workers was calling for a strike protesting reservations. The SC/ST workers union was calling for a strike protesting the strike protesting reservations. The union of railway drivers was calling a strike to negotiate better pay scales. The signalmen's union was calling a strike because it didn't want to be left out. Kerala might be roughly 50% Hindu, 25% Christian and 25% Muslim, but the presiding deity of the state remains Marx. It was our first experience of the famed agitate culture of Kerala and was thoroughly satisfying. A couple of slogans and a few Molotov cocktails thrown at the bourgeoise oppressors sitting on their cosy cushions enjoying their ill-gotten gains from exploiting workers who toiled ceaselessly for no rewards would have been welcome but I suppose you can't have everything. Workers of the Kerala unite, you have nothing to lose, not even your jobs.
Anyway, as we closed in on out destination, Thiruvananthapuram, we decided to imbibe a bit of the culture of the place. Shashu began by giving us an introduction to the language that is the world's longest palindromic word and we learnt that 'water' in Malayalam is 'vellum', to want something is 'venum' and to not want something is 'venda'. Armed with this knowledge Pubiii, Cita and I embarked on the longest and most capricious spree of three grown men declining sundry vendors that North and Central Kerala have ever known. Anything that was offered to us by hawkers in the train was met with a resolute 'venda'. Even when we were dying of thirst, we could not stop ourselves from saying 'venda' to the vellum vendor. It got to such ridiculous extremes that at Shornur station we got off at the platform and wantonly called hawkers who weren't even looking at us only to tell them 'venda'. May God forgive us our sins.
Well in this flurry of broken Malayalam being bandied around by three guys who would have trouble reading their own mother tongue, we slowly encroached deeper and deeper into the state. At 3 am in the morning, we finally alighted at Thiruvananthapuram station and I felt deep satisfaction that I was one step closer to my childhood dream of visiting all the states of India. Now there was only Orissa left..along with Assam, Meghalaya,Manipur,Mizoram,Nagaland,Arunachal,Tripura...and Sikkim...and what of the newly formed states of Chattisgarh,
Jharkhand and Uttaranchal..and what of the Kashmir valley, would a trip to Jammu entitle me to claim that I had visited J&K? Technicalities, technicalities..and what if Telengana becomes a state...aargh, I give up.
Anyway, there we stood, the three of us, brave souls on the threshold of wild and exciting adventures for the next week. More on our actual time in Kerala later.