Mangoes, Man-goes, and the Mango People

Aadya, Aarushi & Rishabh off to school

The clock has turned a full circle, and the monthly blog baton is back to me, Saurabh. We are now already more than half-way across this one-year trip, and WOW! what a ride this has been so far. We have travelled to all corners of this vast country, and up and across the beautiful, majestic Himalayas. We have met and spent quality time with close and distant relations (many for the first time), caught up with old friends, made new friends, and encountered interesting strangers. We have been blessed to see and hear some of India's best classical musicians and dancers, and even helped organise a classical music and dance concert right here in Haridwar! Shibani has quietly indulged in her long-suppressed passion for painting, and has made some beautiful pieces of art. Mum and Dad have thoroughly enjoyed playing hosts to a succession of guests and also travelled widely with us, going to places they always wanted to go but never could, like Kashmir. And the kids, Oh the kids - I can't tell you how proud I am of them. They have taken EVERYTHING in their stride - the noise, the weather, the chaos, the crowds, the long uncertain wait before they got to go to school, and then once they got there, the remarkable differences in schooling methods and standards from what they have been used to, both good and bad. They have made some friends at school as well as at the local park, though admittedly Dad had to step in - at first trying to brow-beat the kids at the park into letting Aarushi play with them, and when that didn't work, then resorting to good old fashioned bribery with chocolates... But in all this, not once have either Rishabh, Aadya or Aarushi said to us "We've had enough. Can we go home please?" Truly tremendous kids..

I have also found a pretty good groove vis-a-vis my two Melbourne-based business ventures, Health Enterprises and Imageryworks. If you recall from my first blog, my commitment was to work and be available at least half-time with the Health Enterprises business (my mornings, their afternoons each week day). I am happy to tell you that this has been easier than I imagined. And probably better too, as it has forced us to be much more disciplined with weekly meetings with and also across each of our teams. Most importantly, I have unearthed opportunity for our business here in India, and I am hoping to make something happen while I am still here. Imageryworks has also benefitted tremendously from my being here. As I have discussed with many of you, our next big bet in Imageryworks is an innovative smartphone App that meditation schools and programs anywhere in the world can give to their students as a valuable practise-aid, along with their own content and programs. We have been looking for a smart App development company with whom to partner on this venture, and lo and behold, my brother-in-law Sushim goes and joins exactly such an outfit in Pune! So now they are developing the App for us - how wonderfully synchronous!

Right then, let's get on to the account of this previous month.

Marvelling at the size
of the Malda

"mhuhaa hahaha"

Eating a Chausa as
you are meant to

Alphonso, Safeda, Dussheri, Kesari, Langda, Chausa, Sinduri, Malda ..  the different varieties of mangoes that we have eaten by the bucketful in the last 3 months! Indian summers are unbearably hot, but mangoes make them worth living through. And what a treat they've been! Dad has thoroughly indulged his mango-philia, ensuring that we have had mangoes every day with either lunch or dinner, and most often both! The kids have goaded him along, with Aarushi commandeering the “guthli” (the stone), and usually having at least two or three of them on her plate by the time she has finished. We made the mistake of having a skype session with Rashmi (my evil twin) in Canada during one of these mango-eating binges and we could see a slack-jawed Aryan (Rashmi’s 12 year old son) watching on awestruck.  Aryan ranks up there with Aarushi and Dad in his extreme fondness for mangoes. For the record, the Kesari from Ahmedabad, Gujarat was my favourite - a truly sublime creation.

Meanwhile Lychies also made a brief appearance, followed by Jamun (a purple berry), and then finally the monsoon! What a wonderful relief that was. Shibani and I had planned to get out and dance in the first rain. But we missed it as it came down in the night. 

Enjoying the first
monsoon soak

I got my share in the morning though, when I had to go up to the terrace to unclog the drains (there was ankle-deep water on the terrace that was merrily dripping into the rooms below. As Billu Mama quipped, “In India it doesn’t just rain outside the house”). But the rains then completely stopped, making the entire country panic. Agriculture is by far the largest industry of the Indian economy and Indian farmers are heavily dependent on the monsoon due to still fairly disorganized and antiquated agricultural practices. A good monsoon adds almost 2% to India’s annual economic growth!

You do what you can to keep the rain out

Quite magically, after a 2 week lull the monsoon finally came down in earnest and the first downpour caught Shibani and me out shopping in the large open-air fruit and vegetable market. We copped a thorough drenching but loved every drop of it! I hummed my favourite monsoon song and we merrily hopped and skipped around the puddles (or in Shibani’s case into the puddles.. quite deliberately.. sigh).

As if to teach us equanimity, the monsoon comes first as an almighty relief from the months of oppressive heat, but then brings along its own share of goodies – insects and in Haridwar, Kanvadiyas (not that I am equating the two). “What on earth is Kanvadiyas” I hear you ask. It’s the same question I asked when a friend mentioned it only recently.  The answer? About 20 million saffron-clad men and women who descend upon Haridwar each monsoon from all over the country, to collect water from the Ganga (the Ganges) and take back to their village temples (hence the "Man-goes" in the blog title- "ahh.. so that's what it was" I hear you say...).

Queue of Kanvadiyas walking along the Ganga

Ganga water is considered sacred and especially so from Haridwar as according to Hindu mythology, this was one of five spots where the elixir of immortality had been accidentally spilled by Lord Vishnu as he wrested it away from the demons (makes me all the more proud of the humanity that has managed to bring the Ganga itself to near-death by centuries of dumping raw sewage, industrial waste and human ashes into it). But back to the Kanvadiyas – what an exercise of endurance and piety it is! They usually walk bare-feet covering hundreds of kilometers, carrying heavy pot-loads of the precious Ganga water on their way back. But can you imagine the impact of 20 million people converging into a town of 500,000? Schools and offices have been shut, major road diversions are in place, large parts of the town are virtually inaccessible, and getting in and out of Haridwar is really only possible by train as the highways are given over to the walking Kanvadiyas!

I finally look my age :)

Blissfully unaware of the sheer magnitude of this Kanvadiya phenomenon, I organised a “surprise” 40^th birthday party for myself smack-bang in the middle of the two Kanvad weeks! (“surprise” only because no-one else seemed to be doing anything about it and I am after all the master of surprise birthday parties, so I thought I’d best get on to it myself). And to top it off, lots of unsuspecting family and friends from all parts of the country joyfully agreed to come here to help me celebrate. Only when everyone started having trouble with incoming and outgoing train bookings etc. did the penny drop about what we had gotten ourselves into. 

Fortunately they all got here although it took poor Yogesh ji nearly 10 hours on the bus from Delhi for what would otherwise have been a 5 hour ride (and then 12 hours back!). But the celebrations turned out to be truly an UNEXPECTED PARTY! With so many people in the house including my in-laws, Fufaji and Yogesh ji from Delhi, Mausi from Mumbai, my good friend Aman from Ludhiana, and my cousin-cum-local-travel-agent Anamika and her colleague Sarika from Moradabad, it felt like there was a wedding in the house. We sang, joked and laughed late into the night. I found out only the morning of the party, and that too from an accidental phone call from my friend Hemant, that the rest of the family had indeed been working hard behind the scenes to organise a genuine surprise for me. They had reached out to five of my Ballia high school friends (Navin, Hemant, Manish, Saumya & Shis), who had each booked to get here for the party. Unfortunately all of them had to cancel at the last minute due to work or family reasons.. but the effort was heartfelt and received with much gratitude! 

Dad singing, Pa & Ma dancing

The birthday party itself was grand, celebrated along with our guests as well as all our Haridwar friends and family including Rakesh, Abhiram and Madhavi. Even the elusive Rashmi joined on Skype from Ottawa, Canada, along with Amit, Aryan and Diya (it was Rashmi's 40th birthday too, being the evil twin and all that.. Happy Birthday again dear dear Rashmi). Every guest chipped in with a song or a joke or just a few words to mark the occasion, which was wonderfully touching. And it goes without saying that we finished the night with robust singing including Dad's "aye meri zohra-jabeen" (complete with Shibani's Dad dancing with his trademark white handkerchief, pictured), and my "chalat musafir". 

We've covered mangoes and "man-goes", so now on to the Mango People. Those of you who know Hindi already know what I am referring to of course, and Rishabh made mention of this in his blog - the word for Mango in Hindi is "Aam", which also happens to mean "common". So "Mango People" is an affectionate term for the proverbial "common" men and women of India. I have had the opportunity to interact with all kinds of people in these past months, and my sense is that there is something new afoot - there seems to be a once in a life-time opportunity to close the gap between "Bharat" (the Hindi name for India) and India. "What's the difference", you ask? Well, India is english-speaking, dynamic and globally oriented. You catch glimpses of it in the swanky offices and plush, affluent homes of Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, etc. Since the economy was first unshackled 25 years ago from 200 years of debilitating colonial rule followed by 40 years of misguided socialistic policies (inducing rampant corruption along the way), India has raced ahead. It has produced many global industrial icons including in Information technology. And let's not forget the Indian cricket team that has gone from perennial under performers to one of the best international teams over the last 14 years or so. And then there is Bharat, which you see around here in Haridwar - at the subzi mandi (open air fruit and vegetable market as mentioned earlier), at the crowded train station, and on the chaotic roads. It is distinctly poorer, non-english speaking, strongly family-oriented and with old fashioned values (both good and bad). And it is the vast majority of this country's citizens. Life is fairly good in India, but still quite wretched in Bharat.

But Bharat is palpably on the move, and seems determined to catch up with India. It is undeniably Bharat that voted in the current BJP government led by the charismatic Mr. Modi. I have no doubt that the Modi government will deliver much needed infrastructure (roads, rail, ports, electricity, drinking water, sanitation, waste management, irrigation), stabilise inflation, adopt sensible fiscal and monetary policy, turf out archaic labour laws that actually restrict employment, and generally stimulate economic growth. But I believe for the country to truly change radically and fast, each citizen (both Indian and  Bharatiya), will also have to do his/her bit. This realisation has led me to an interesting vox pop experiment. I have taken to asking all and sundry this simple question - "What is the one simple thing every man, woman and child can change in his/her own every-day behaviour to change this country for the better?"

I am particularly inspired by (a) the pedantic focus on eradicating small but unsocial behaviours such as public spitting amongst Singaporeans by the Lee Kwan Yu government in the 1960s that eventually lead to such a dramatic improvement in public hygiene, and (b) the recent success of the winning and hugely popular "ab ki baar Modi sarkar" slogan ("this time a Modi government") that won such a landslide victory for the BJP.  So popular was this slogan that it sparked off a massive trail of quite funny memes as you can see here. I feel that if the same PR team of Mr. Modi could come up with an equivalent campaign to drive change across just one key public issue, it could create immense grass-roots change.

And so my question again, "What is the one simple thing every man, woman and child can change in his/her own every-day behaviour to change this country for the better?" The answers have varied, and here are some of them -

1. Don't litter (from Shibani)

2. Don't drive on the wrong side of the road (I like this suggestion from Dad - simplest to do and easiest to spot!)

3. Respect women (comes from Mum)

4. Don't have more than 2 kids (suggested by Chiniya, our household help)

5. And my entry? Stop defecating in public. I think it is the #1 scourge. It is unpleasant, unnecessary and unhygienic. "Fortunately" some recent epidemiological studies are showing conclusively that Indian (Bharatiya...) kids are significantly more stunted physically as well as mentally compared to kids in much poorer countries. And the primary reason is diseases propagated from open defecation. So why am I terming this a "fortunate" development? Because there is no stronger impulse in this country than "betterment of my children". Parents will do almost anything to help their kids get ahead. And when they are told that their open defecation habits are damaging their own children, then, perhaps, they will change rather rapidly.

What is your #1 issue for a nation-wide public awareness campaign to change India for the better? Let us know by commenting below. We are contemplating sending the list to the now accessible and responsive Prime Minister's Office!

You will hear from Rishabh next month. Until then, be well, best wishes all round!