The Corporation that Changed the World – How the East India Company Shaped the Modern Multinational by Nick Robins

I’ve noticed that historical books written about India during the seventeenth and the twentieth centuries fall, perforce, into one of two categories: either they are mind-bendingly dull text books or they are lyrical post-modern takes on how ‘cool’ the Companywallas really were. Promising as the title of The Corporation that Changed the World seemed, I looked at the crowded text, the maps and the graphs, and winced: dull text book, it was.

I couldn’t have been more wrong. Having begun the book, it turned into that rare thing in non-fiction: an Unputdownable. Nick Robins’s account of the East India Company’s business practices in India is a riveting blend of crisp, almost thriller-like writing with a great amount of intelligence and passion. While we all pretty much know the broad outlines of what happened, Robins looks at that time in history so closely, and with such a unique perspective, that you can’t help but be swept along on his fascinating journey.

Robins’s aim through this book is to examine the East India Company – which he calls the world’s first multi-national corporation – in the light of its business practices. He finds insider trading, exploitation and greed – pretty much the basic template for multinational corporations of our times. Though the Company operated nearly 400 years back, its methods are uncannily familiar. There was the same hunger for monopoly, the same irresponsibility, and shockingly, nearly the same amount of unaccountability.

And as Robins gently unfolds page after page of the Company’s history, you see his point. As it gained more monopoly over Indian trade, the Company became a policy-maker by default. Placing the fate of an entire people in the hands of a few businessmen who were driven by ‘persistent share holders’ led to the inevitable: famine and the destruction of a thriving textile industry. India, as he puts it trenchantly, was basically screwed over by the Company.

Robins slides the reader smoothly into the historical, always pegging his narration on individuals and not mere dates. To this end, he harnesses Victorian ‘corporate’ art, cartoons and poetry; Ghalib’s verse; local legends and stories of real people. There are some amazing accounts of people who history books rarely have time for. Like Rajah Nabakrishna, the Indian merchant, and his interaction with Hastings; the Armenian traders based in India who actually managed to take the Company to court in 1777; and the miserable conditions of lascars, Indian sailors who made up a quarter of the Company’s sailors, and were later abandoned on the streets of London in the 1700s.

Robins links the various forms of the Company’s cruelty to ‘geographical morality’, a frighteningly hypocritical belief system. It condoned everything from slavery to drug-trafficking and undemocratic practices so long as it happened in a different region, to people of a different religious persuasion or colour. Cornelius Walford, writing in 1877, observed that in the 120 years of British rule in India, there had been 34 famines, as opposed only 17 in the entire two millennia that went before. When famine struck, traditional rulers like the Mughals would punish hoarders and give away grain for free. This is contrasted with the Company’s response, which was to do some of the hoarding itself!

To learn from history, one must first acknowledge it. So Robins feels that the Company’s seamier practices (like that of growing opium in Bihar instead of food and smuggling it into China in exchange of tea) should be discussed fully. He is critical of exhibitions which present the Company’s history as a mutually beneficial and fascinating exchange of goods. He is also critical of fellow historians who romanticize individual Company executives like Warren Hastings and their cultural pursuits, while turning a blind eye to their corporate malpractices.

The book is a clear indictment of what can go wrong if corporations are given the right to determine policies. There are parallels between the Company and contemporary corporations like Union Carbide and Enron; with the American and British presence in Iraq; with Shell’s human rights violations in Nigeria; and with Wall Mart’s malpractices in China.

The Corporation… has honestly upped the bar for historians who want to write sound but eminently enjoyable, relevant and accessible history books. Robins’s success lies in the fact that in presenting history, he has created a spanking good read as well. More importantly, there are many evocative reminders for a world that is rapidly decreasing corporate accountability. Not always is the profit motive good; almost never does it seek the larger good of society.

Orient Longman

(Anita Vachharajani © DNA)

The Space Between Us by Thrity Umrigar’s

In Thrity Umrigar’s The Space Between Us, the narrative treads surely and engagingly between the lives of two women – Sera, an upper middle-class housewife, and Bhima, her spirited, affectionate maid. Years of shared joys and sorrows have made the two women friends, though their relationship is mapped by lines of class, prejudice and money. The novel moves back and forth in time, tracing the many shades of betrayal that have coloured the women’s lives. The small betrayals pile up, till finally, a larger, more dreadful breach of trust is revealed.

The book opens with Bhima’s anger at her granddaughter Maya’s pregnancy. Bhima’s hopes of her completing her college education and moving on to a better life are dashed. The combination of rage, shame and gut-stirring love that Bhima feels leaves both of them weary. It impacts Sera’s household too, and the family offers as much help as it can. Sera gives moral support and money, and her son-in-law recommends a good doctor. A date is set for the abortion and a ‘difficult’ Maya insists that Sera, whose daughter Dinaz is also pregnant, accompany her to the clinic.

Umrigar’s work pays tribute to Bombay with its many kinds of existence. She manages to examine the anatomy of despair closely, while celebrating life and living in this city. Her characters and situations are deftly drawn, with skilful, often humorous, touches. At times though, Umrigar tries to pack in too many elements, leaving her narrative a little frazzled. Though the book is not a classic, it is refreshing and leaves one grateful for its serious, enjoyable writing. Its small flaws (some overwritten bits, and an end which though realistic, might feel like a let-down) don’t detract much. Its real strength, though, lies in Umrigar’s willingness to plunge herself into the squalor, the joy and the thirst of being alive.

Harper Collins Publishers India

(Anita Vachharajani © Timeout)

Scarless Face and Other Stories… Edited by Griffin Ondaatje

In an age when words like ‘heritage’ and ‘culture’ are usually harnessed for violent reasons, it’s reassuring to find a book where the subcontinent’s common cultural heritage has been celebrated for the sake of peace. Scarless Face and Other Stories… is a collection of Buddhist, Hindu and Muslim fables that are all as relevant today as they were ages ago.

The suggestion to collect and retell these stories came up at a peace conference held in strife-torn Sri Lanka in the early ’90s. The stories were brought together by Griffin Ondaatje, with Canadian writers (of different ethnic backgrounds) retelling them. Since the writers are from a wide cultural canvas, there is a variety of perspectives and styles in the narration of the stories. As Ondaatje says in his introduction, the passing of stories back and forth was a little ‘like getting help in smuggling goods over a border.’ But it isn’t just the sentiment of peace or the beauty of the travelling tale that make this book attractive. Its greatness really lies in the fact that nearly all the stories are fantastic reads.

Particularly breath-taking is Shyam Selvadurai’s The Monkey King. Through the story of the old monkey’s generosity, Selvadurai manages to weave in politics, struggle and pathos. The result is like a dazzling bit of tapestry — all the elements are in perfect harmony and manage to tell a larger story than is immediately evident. Of the writers, Graeme MacQueen writes lyrically and evocatively — especially in Brighter Still and The Camel Who Cried in the Sun. The Camel… is an Islamic story, one that manages to combine the aspects of kindness and social responsibility in the Prophet’s teachings. The camel’s suffering, his owner’s indifference, and the Prophet’s sense of empathy, all merge convincingly. At no point is the story didactic, and reading it, one can sense a strange and solemn beauty. Judith Thompson’s Mouthful of Pearls is a contemporary version of a Buddhist nun’s story. It reminds us – rather grimly – that the human need for violence is unending; that women, whether ancient Buddhist nuns or contemporary single mothers, can be equally vulnerable. And that at the same time, they can be filled with an almost frightening inner strength.

Since some of the stories are from the Jatakas, Indian readers will find them familiar. The Bodhisattva is a being who — reincarnated as an animal or a human — pursues generosity, truth and courage through time. Finally, having garnered wisdom through its many births and deaths, the being is re-born as the Buddha and sets out to share its knowledge with the world. These stories, too, have a collective wisdom to share. Fate and Fortune, Scarless Face, Tell it to the Walls, The Resting Hill, and Garuda and the Snake all speak to the contemporary reader with disarming immediacy.

If there is a fault with the collection, then it might lie in the disappointing fact that few writers of sub-continental origin, apart from Selvadurai, make an impact with their stories. While Selvadurai’s writing is at once inventive, stark and poetic, almost all the other subcontinental writers tend to stick to the script of the original tales. There is something disturbing about the fact that few writers of Sri Lankan or Indian origin have managed to subvert their stories or carve something new out of them. Perhaps growing up with these myths makes the ‘original’ version so sacrosanct that its borders can’t be pushed ever. Most of the Western writers — possibly because they have never encountered these stories before — bring originality and a fresh perspective to their narratives.

An interesting interpretation can be found in a story called How the Gods and Demons Learned to Play Together by Ernest Macintyre. It manages to give the ‘demons’ their due and is an insightful, clever piece of writing that stays with you for a long time.

One of the other things this collection celebrates is the ‘Story’ itself. Stories live, breathe, travel, grow and change, much as their tellers do. As Graeme MacQueen observes in his foreword, ‘Stories, by their very nature, resist being captured and owned by any one culture, race, nation.’ While reading Scarless Face…, you can sense this universality, and get a feeling of the timelessness of folk wisdom. You realise that no matter how much times may have changed, stories remain interesting because they speak of the essentials: human folly, cruelty, virtue and love. Every re-telling, in fact, brings its own energy and excitement to the narrative. And honed by the endless crossing of cultures and borders, the stories in this collection glisten like dew drops on lustrous green leaves.

Harper Collins
(Anita Vachharajani © DNA)

Harum-scarum Saar and Other Stories by Bama

Translated from the original Tamil Kisumbukkaran by N. Ravi Shankar

I usually pick up translations with a great sense of nervousness. At worst, an awkward translation makes you feel terribly sorry for all the gold that might be buried in the dross. A good translation can, on the other hand, literally draw new vistas for you, using the brilliant and yet subtle brush strokes of an entirely new language. Translations from Indian languages to English tend to be awkward sometimes not just because of poor technique or lack of ability. When you’re translating from an Indian language to English, you’re not just switching between grammars, you’re also bridging the differing world-views that are encoded within them.

Bama’s stories – thanks in part to her translator N Ravi Shankar – survive the process delightfully, with her clear, incisive prose shining through. Her stories are at once subversive, rebellious, joyful and terribly sad. So while in Annachi you laugh with the labourer who shocks his landlord by referring to him as ‘brother’, you’re also chilled by the compensation offered to a dead labourer’s family by his hypocritical landlord in Rich Girl.

Bama is a perceptive, subtle writer, in full control of her craft. You never know where her narrative will take you and what issues it will discuss on its way. The points of view in the stories change kaleidoscopically, though the narrator is always there, a faceless, teasing observer. Women, men, children, and the aged tell their tales with determination and honesty.

As with all really talented regional writers, Bama employs an amazing economy of prose. Not a word is out of place, not a detail is insignificant. Gender, caste, individual dynamics – many issues come into play here. But the overarching tone is one of affectionate, earthy humour. The eponymous Harum-scarum Saar, relies on a pithy line of banter at the end to offer a biting comment on the power equation between employer and employee.

Ponnuthayi, about a sassy, forthright woman, says as much about gender equality as it does about an individual’s right to dignity and happiness. As the stories in the anthology progress, the writing just gets better, the translation tauter. At the zenith are two stories – Freedom and An Old Man and a Buffalo – which are fresh and almost lyrical. There is a paragraph in An Old Man… where the man addresses his buffalo so fondly that it is in fact the most poetic prose I’ve read in a long time.

Any quibbles? I wish the cover were better designed, with a little more attention to detail. And I know it’s old-fashioned, but I find myself wishing there was a glossary I could go to at the end so that I could get an even better sense of the language involved.

In an introduction to an anthology of Indian writing, Rushdie once wrote something to the effect that apart from Indian writing in English, there is very little writing happening in Indian literature that is truly modern. Bama’s stories – apart from those of many other regional writers – are a sign that modern Indian writing is robustly alive and strongly rooted in regional languages. Calm down, Salman, Indian literature is in capable hands.

Published by Women Unlimited

(Anita Vachharajani © Timeout)

Tilled Earth by Manjushree Thapa

It’s interesting that some of the clearest, most crystalline prose I’ve read this year has come from sub-continental writers who are not of Indian origin. Manjushree Thapa’s delightful Tilled Earth is definitely a case in point. Through her short stories, Thapa explores disparate lives in contemporary Nepal, and weaves them into compact, jewel-bright narratives.

Thapa peers at the wider world and its large issues through her characters’ everyday concerns. For instance, her stories about inter-racial couples – with their delicate, almost unnamable tensions – say more about the politics of development than lengthy articles could. Of these, Sounds that the Tongue Learns to Make is sharply poignant in its exploration of mixed coupledom.

In Friends, life is viewed through the eyes of a small shopkeeper, and the exchanges that she imagines between other people. Through Three Hundred Rupees and Ta’angzoum Among the Cows, Thapa explores rural landscapes and poverty robustly, with no self-consciousness or romanticizing. The big issues are all here, but they are organically and subtly woven into the stories.

The Buddha in the Earth-touching Posture is a stunning account of a retired Civil Servant’s sense of disquiet with himself, his religion, and the idea of ‘development’. The Girl of No Age is about urban angst and divorce, but also looks, through that cracked glass, at the reality of a child’s murder in a village.

Thapa’s characters are refreshingly real, and her writing is entertaining. There are no embarrassingly over-written descriptions or exhibitions of the exotic. The crispness of her tone and her gentle humour speak volumes for her self-assurance as a writer. Her people – old woodworkers, retired babus, lyricist-politicians, engineers, feminists, NGO employees, old Civil Servants and American Leftists – are all etched in precisely, with fondness and dignity.

Thapa also plays with form – The Hungry Statistician reads like an imagist poem in prose – and some stories are barely half a page long. These are the ones that while interesting, don’t always work. They leave you with the feeling that Thapa is aiming for a punch-line, which, honestly, her writing is almost too good for!

Penguin Books
(Anita Vachharajani © Timeout)

Four Steps from Paradise by Timeri Murari

The cover of Timeri Murari’s Four Steps from Paradise is tantalizing. Like the story, it has a deceptive charm: everything looks verdant and beautiful till you notice a hand creeping into the frame. Murari’s narrative has the same tranquil, sheet-glass quality, which is beset by slowly-creeping cracks that appear as the story progresses. The narrator, little Krishna, lives with his large, affectionate family in their ancestral home. Life is idyllic in a way it can only be for a small, well-loved child. Then their father, a widower and an anglophile, grows fascinated by a white woman and employs her as a governess. Eventually he marries her, ripping the children out of the tapestry of the family, and leading them into a harsher world.

For the first half of the book, things seem restful, and even a trifle dull. But as young Krishna grows, the book becomes darker. Murari goes on to break every cliché that he has carefully built. The cruel stepmother, for instance, remains calculating to the end, but you realize that the father – honest, upstanding and perhaps naïve – is not all that he appeared to be. Four Steps… is a quietly compelling book. It takes notions and dialectics of power, caste, race, sexuality and gender, and stands them on their heads.

Murari is a painterly writer, and is at his best while describing houses, and attributing them with personality. Like the social order in Murari’s book, the old houses too have crumbled, taking with them their singular ways of living and loving. The first half of the book is its weak link. Though well written, it could have been edited some. But Murari’s prose is really riveting because of the fragile balance it strikes between ‘good’ and ‘bad’; between love and covetousness. And perhaps because human nature never changes, this balance is a beautiful thing to behold.

Penguin India

(Anita Vachharajani © Timeout)

Brahma’s Dream by Shree Ghatage

Brahma’s Dream is a delightful book about a dying child. Horrifying as that sounds, it’s true, because Shree Ghatage manages to imbue her story with life and liveliness. Her well-etched characters carry forward the narrative in turns, passing gently through the sepia-tinted world of pre-independence India.

Mohini Oek, thirteen years old, has a congenital blood condition, and the initial prognosis is that she won’t live beyond three years of age. The family struggles to come to terms with the news, and does so finally with the assistance of their physician, Dr Chitnis, and a specialist. Between them, the doctors and the determined family help little Mohini survive much longer.

Ghatage’s triumph lies in her characters. They are imbued with dignity and humour. A rationalistic grandfather, a loving, pragmatic mother, and sundry other relatives make up Mohini’s world in Mumbai of the ’40s. Each character is well-etched, distinctive and faithfully drawn. Mohini’s mother, aunt, grandfather, and father reflect the gentle, progressive ethos of Marathi intellectuals of the time. As for Mohini, she is an endearing invention, with a mix of courage, humour and curiosity. Set against independence, the book offers a peek into a changing society – and a changing Shivaji Park.

There are many lyrical moments in the book. Love – as it flows between husband and wife, parents and children, doctor and patient, friends and relations – is described movingly. Ghatage’s treatment of the ending is a bit of disappointing, though, as one feels that Mohini’s death needed more emotional weight and strength. Having put so much into the book, the author seems to have little energy left for Mohini’s final scenes. One more crib: the cover design is disappointing (which is unusual for an IndiaInk book), and simply doesn’t do justice to the energy, joy or intelligence of the contents inside.

IndiaInk/Roli Books
(Anita Vachharajani © Timeout)

Neither night nor day by Edited by Rakhshanda Jalil

Short-story anthologies are exciting because they are often like a literary version of bhelpuri – there’s a new flavour and texture with every second bite, with every new story. Neither Night Nor Day, a collection of 13 short stories by Pakistani women writers, is truly a good, variegated read. It is funny, lyrical and, in parts, a bit choppy as well.

Almost like fluid photographs, the stories capture the everyday poetry of women’s lives. Narratives spring from different cities, ghettoes, villages, and from different strata of society. The styles are exciting and diverse as well, with everything from a fable to a lyrical piece on waiting for death, and a ghost story thrown in.

One of the indisputable gems of the collection is Zahida Hina’s She Who Went Looking for Butterflies. A woman activist sentenced to death faces her final moments with an air of such lyricism and dignity that you are left feeling both bereft and enchanted. Neither Night Nor Day by Sabyn Javeri-Jillani is another nugget, which looks at the fractured sense of identity felt by an urban, liberated Pakistani woman in England. She is trapped between the conservative forms of Islam that she sees around her and chafes at, and the longing she feels for things that remind her of home.

Kiran Bashir Ahmad’s Plans in Pink is interesting as it traces the lives of Karachi’s Catholics, and a mother and daughter’s furtive plans for escape. Muneeza Shamsie’s That Heathen Air is a carefully-wrought story about marriages where women’s opinions don’t count at all.

Accompanying the variety, however, is a certain choppiness as well. Some stories, though delightfully crafted (like The Job Application by Nayyara Rahman) seem abrupt and a bit forced in their resolutions. This is perhaps also true of stories like The Wedding of Sundri by Bina Shah and A Brief Acquaintance by Maniza Naqvi. Despite being beautifully written, they seem to hurtle towards a pre-determined, rather inorganic end.

Five Queen’s Street by Sorayya Khan and Sehba Sarwar’s A Sandstone Past engage with history, bringing in the bitterness, beauty and sorrow of an older Karachi. The Tongue by Nikhat Hassan and The Breast by Soniah Kamal, while being very different in style, carry with them a quietly angry note that laments suffering and injustice.

The stories in this collection succeed because they rise above the confines of space or gender. You don’t have to be Pakistani to feel anger at injustice, or, for that matter, be a woman to feel the small joys and pains described in the stories here.

Harper Collins
(Anita Vachharajani © Timeout)

New Life by Sharmistha Mohanty

There are books that one reads and enjoys for their plot and exposition. And then there are those that one reads for the sheer pleasure of the sparkling and sensuous prose that their authors create. Sharmistha Mohanty’s New Life is one of the latter. Mohanty’s language is pellucid, evocative, and almost crystalline in its beauty. Her prose maintains a cerebral distance from the story, while still managing to have an unusually visceral quality.

Anjali, brought up in Kolkatta, upsets the fragile tenor of her family by proclaiming her intention to marry a man of her choice – the large, gentle Riaz. She moves to America to be with him, forsaking home and family. Years later, she returns to write, travel and explore in an India that finally feels like it is hers. The book is Anjali’s story – a careful mapping of her life and her mind as she grows and changes. Though nothing dramatic happens in the book plot-wise, its serious, craftsmanlike writing makes for a mesmerizing and enjoyable read.

In parts, Mohanty shows a tremendous delicacy of touch. The descriptions of Anjali as a girl growing up with a mother who has a psychological condition are excellent. No attempts are made to sympathize with the mother or demonize her. There is just the reality – harsh, extreme and sorrowful – of having to grow up before one’s time. Brought up by her grandmother and her father, Anjali flowers into an intelligent, strong-minded young lady. Later, when she falls in love with Riaz, she realizes that their relationship has a timeless and sublime quality to it. Telling her father about it, Anjali is shocked to discover that her kindly, liberal parent opposes the match on religious grounds. Equally frightening is the strength of his dismissal, the resolute anger that he directs towards her.

The beauty of Mohanty’s book lies in the fact that each relationship is described lovingly and with a gentle touch. Whether it is a girl Anjali befriends briefly at University, or the lover she takes on later, each association is crafted painstakingly, so that you realize that life is, after all, a sum of the many relationships that pepper it.

The key to enjoying this book, however, lies in ignoring the few parts that seem painfully and self-consciously obscure. They are either immaterial to the enjoyment of the text, or will fall into place much after the book has been read. The first half – with its dexterous and delicate unfolding of the story – is moving, beautiful and triumphant. The second part, where much of Anjali’s life is played, has a quiet power too. But the final chapters, which are largely spiritual in tone, lack energy. You can’t help but feel a tinge of disquiet, a yearning for the inspired, rigorous power of the beginning.

IndiaInk / Roli Books
(Anita Vachharajani © DNA)

Can You Hear the Nightbird Call? by Anita Rau Badami

If there is a question we should agonize over as a country – and as a species, perhaps – it has to be about our willingness to hurt our own kind. This is of course a larger human problem, but somehow, closer home in India, the situation always seems more fraught and poignant. It must come from being something of a salad-bowl of a country – of being yoked together into nationhood despite acutely-perceived differences.

And if nothing else, Can You Hear the Nightbird Call? makes you uncomfortably aware of the hollowness of notions like nationhood or even revenge; of the devastating futility of violence. The story, with its cat’s cradle of interwoven lives, hangs between the historical pegs of Partition, Emergency and the riots in Delhi after Indira Gandhi’s assassination.

The lives of three women – Bibiji, Nimmo and Leela – meet and diverge; with the meetings and separations being determined by chance. The beautiful, winsome village girl Sharan, or Bibiji as she comes to be known, manages to bewitch her sister’s intended husband. Living in Canada with him, she is spared the trauma of partition and its attendant violence. Her sister disappears, leaving behind a daughter called Nimmo who is also lost to Sharan. Stewing in guilt, Sharan searches for and finally meets Nimmo through Leela, another immigrant Indian.

Sharan tries to assuage her pangs of childlessness by ‘borrowing’ Nimmo’s son, Jasbeer. Having taken him to Canada with her, she slowly realizes that uprooting a child is perhaps not the best way to ensure a bright future for him. The disaster and pain that strike India later resonate in all three lives. Again and again the futility of violence and the devastation it wreaks on women is hammered home.

While Badami’s writing is lyrical and precise, the book’s structure seems a bit uneven. The beginning, with its wonderful, almost poetic descriptions of Sharan’s and Leela’s early lives, fills too much of the book. Then, after Sharan meets Nimmo, the story suddenly hurtles into rapid flow. It is as if having used up much space establishing two of her characters, Badami has to rush through the rest of the narrative. There is no clear exploration of the process by which a key character, like Nimmo’s son Jasbeer, has a change of heart, for instance. You almost wish Badami had chosen a smaller landscape so that she could explore the story in a more measured fashion. When the narrative hurtles into a bloodbath, you feel just a wee bit cheated.

But this is a minor complaint about an otherwise enjoyable and eminently thought-provoking book. Badami’s many descriptions, full of trenchant humour and economy, are delightful. For instance, Leela’s feelings about the South being different from the North underline the fact that this is a country where differences of caste, creed, community and colour lie like fault-lines which can almost neither be healed nor ignored.

Finally, Can You Hear… is about the precious fragility of people’s lives, as opposed to the hollowness of constructs like nationhood and religion, and the violence that invariably follow in their wake. There seems no end, you sense, to the human urge to destroy; just as there seems no end to the hope which fills the days of a woman who has lost her entire family and sits in an empty room with her memories.

Penguin Viking

(Anita Vachharajani © DNA)

Chembur's chidiyas!

One morning, when we had just moved back to Chembur, the better half froze, staring out of the window, open-mouthed and wide-eyed. Grabbing my hand, he muttered, “A Golden oriole!” Yeah right, I replied, and turned to see the most obscenely-bright-yellow bird on the gulmohur outside. Now I’ve grown up here and never spotted anything like this before. Perhaps the little fellow was visiting? Or perhaps it was just me. Because Amit (a member of the World Wildlife Fund) seemed to spot a new bird almost every day. Red-Crested bulbuls, Coppersmiths, Magpie robins, Fan-tailed flycatchers – it was a veritable kaleidoscope of species!

Our family physician, Dr. Shrirang Bakhle, also a bird lover, has an explanation for why I hadn’t seen the birds before. “The eye doesn’t see what the mind doesn’t know, and that’s why it’s important to sensitize kids to nature.” And Dr Bakhle certainly does his bit. Not only does he watch birds and rescue those in distress, he also talks to children about nature.

He tells us about the beautiful barn owls he has rescued and about the parakeet that is currently recuperating with him. “We nurse injured birds and set them free in the appropriate environment…” His wife Varsha and their children Madhur and Mohini are enthusiastic bird-nurturers too. Obviously, he has some amazing stories. Showing us photos of a strangely-coloured egret, he explains, “When we found this baby egret, someone had applied orange food-colouring on it. So Dr Kehimkar of BNHS suggested that we call it a Tandoori Egret!” The Bakhles tended the bird and later set it free in Uran.

Dr Bakhle has shot a film called Our Birds and screens it for small groups. “Most of the birds in the film are from Chembur itself! People aren’t aware that Mumbai has so many different birds. We found that kids could identify foreign birds like canaries thanks to the Discovery Channel, but not local birds like Golden orioles.”

Chembur’s trees are a great bird-magnet, he feels. “Especially the Indian Coral... But because most land is paved, species like the Coppersmith and sparrows are declining. The best places for bird sightings in Chembur are BPCL colony and Chheda Nagar (for water-birds). We’ve spotted fairly rare birds like the Green Bee-eater (in Diamond Garden) and the Rosy Starling (in BPCL)!”

Dr Bakhle’s lifelong interest in birds has grown after he joined the BNHS. “I feel that birds will thrive if we just leave them some space… In fact, we’re lucky that despite so much development, nature in Mumbai is often just outside our windows, so kids can be made aware of it easily.”

Here’s to you and your fellow enthusiasts, Dr Bakhle… may your tribe increase!

(Dr Bakhle can be contacted at 9821312013 / 25282595)

This article appeared in The Mumbai Mirror, April 29, 2006

A Question of Waste

Much of what Mumbai throws as garbage every day – a staggering 7000 metric tonnes of refuse – eventually reaches the Deonar Dumping Grounds, further east from Chembur. The Dumping Ground was commissioned in 1926, on 330 acres of land. As Chembur grew, the dumping grounds receded.

It’s not hard to find the dumping grounds. Just follow the rumbling garbage trucks – and your nose – to the landfill of a 110 acres. The air smells of deodorizers, refuse and heat. And though the workers at the dumping ground are given safety equipment, they face enormous health risks. Small fires erupt often, thanks to the heat and the methane generated by the waste.

Apart from BMC staffers, the only people who brave it are firemen and women rag pickers. These intrepid but often invisible women are the ones who keep India’s recycling machinery going. Picking out dry waste from garbage, they ensure that anything recyclable isn’t destroyed. Thin plastic bags, which clog drains and release noxious fumes when burnt, are collected by them.

Curious to find out more, I walked into the Chembur branch of the Stree Mukti Sanghatana (the SMS for short). Apart from running a crèche and a family counseling centre, the organization focuses on waste segregation and on rag pickers. Jyoti Mhapsekar, President of the SMS and a resident of Chembur, says, “Even if rag pickers gather only 5 to 6% of the total waste generated in Mumbai, it reduces the strain on the city’s resources. That much more is being recycled even before the garbage reaches the dump. At the dump too, they manage to gather a lot of the recyclable stuff. But despite their contribution to society, rag pickers are an invisible group, with no bargaining power. We train rag pickers to collect dry waste and make vermicompost from the wet waste.”

Since 1998, the SMS has organized rag pickers into cooperatives called Parisar Bhagini Vikas Sangha. They are trained and empowered to manage their cooperatives. Mhapsekar adds, “When building societies approach us, we interface between them and rag-picker organizations. If waste were to be segregated at source – in our homes – it would help rag pickers to avoid rooting through garbage, exposing themselves to health risks. Rag pickers can then sell the dry waste, and use the wet waste for composting.”

The Executive Engineer at the Dumping Grounds agrees. “The only long-term solution for the garbage problem is segregation at source. For that, building societies must cooperate with us.” The BMC has plans to use wet waste to make compost and even generate electricity. “The answer really lies with the citizen,” says Mhapsekar. “Segregation has been successful in some parts of Chembur because the ALMs there have been supportive. In fact there are more stringent rules on segregation since March 1^st and hopefully citizens will be made aware of it soon.”

Meeting the people who work with waste, you realize that they are the ones with a real vision for Mumbai’s future. One in which the city doesn’t collapse under the weight of its own refuse!

Want your building to do its bit for Mumbai? Call Sunita Patil at 25297198 or visit www.streemuktisanghatana.org for more information.

This article appeared in The Mumbai Mirror, some time in 2006