The Ocean’s Blues

On June 12, 2014, I drove through Cadell Road flooded with sea water awash in garbage. I realized that people would soon be booking their orders for the larger sarvajanik Ganapatis, in time for the start of the festive season at the end of August. The picture in the papers on June 13, were evocative of a living creature that was spewing up an indigestible meal from the depths of its belly. I was moved to writing this piece, appealing to our people to think of the plight of the sea when booking their Ganapatis. After all, Mumbai is in the coastal zone and we live at the mercy of the sea - it behooves us to show consideration towards her

The ocean was feeling sick. It clutched its belly as it roiled and grumbled. Finally, with a huge heave, the ocean came up to the shore and vomited up the stuff that was making it feel so sick. What a relief! 

On the shore, pieces of half digested Ganesha murthis mixed with the crap that nearby slum dwellers had deposited that morning.  It shamed the ocean to see what it had been forced to do, but the discomfort in its belly had left it with no choice.  It just couldn’t have borne the pain any longer.

And as the ocean tried to digest what remained in its belly, it ruminated on what had brought it to this sorry state of tummy sickness ….

Once upon a time, it remembered the beach used to be a quiet place, where people came to enjoy the evening breeze and brought their children to play.  Sure, nearby slum dwellers used the rocky outcrops on the beach to do their morning business back then also.  But the ocean could handle that – after all, it believed in the maxim of “dust to dust”.  Organic matter did not give it a tummy ache – in fact, it fed some of the marine life it housed.  Hearing activists scream at people doing their morning business on the shore, and then having those same activists come and drop chunks of plaster of Paris in its tummy made the ocean snarl at the hypocrites.  How it wished it could speak in the human tongue and tell them so

As the ocean continued to spasm gently with the indigestible mass in its tummy, it wondered when this practice of dropping huge big chunks of plaster of Paris in it had started.  After much thought, it remembered.  It was somewhere around the time when people used to shout slogans against the British Rule.  It remembered hearing the name of Bal Gangadhar Tilak, who used something called Sarvajanik worship in the bylanes of Pune to break down ancient caste barriers and unite people to fight for independence from the British.  Clever Tilak – he had realized way back then that this was a work around the then prevalent British ban on public gatherings.  And so, the practice had caught the imagination of a nation (or at least, Maharashtra) and the annual event had taken on a life of its own

The ocean thought it didn’t mind at first.  After all, it understood the need for an “India for Indians” and was willing to do its bit for the cause.  But why was it continuing now?  As it understood it, it was now many years since the British had left the country.  Why then was this circus continuing – nay, growing?

The ocean forced its aching head to figure out this puzzle.  The sickness was making it irritable and unable to focus its thoughts, but it did want to get to the bottom of this mystery.  It shook its head to clear it and the people on the shore shouted to see the spray flying up from what they perceived as an extra huge wave.  And with the shout, it was like a light bulb went on in the mind of the ocean

But of course, it was still those ruthless political manipulators using the excuse of a religious extravaganza to mobilize people and funds.  Some of them were politicians in local or central governance, while others used these events to achieve positions of power in community forums.  And as the master psychologists they were, they offered pomp and show, a display of religious fervor along with the promise of free food as “Prasad” and the opportunity to enjoy shortened work days in the name of worship. 

The ocean knew it had hit the nail on its head.  Ouch!  It felt like there were multiple nails in its head.  As it held its head and groaned, out popped a sharp edged decoration that had been designed to look like the rays of the sun or a halo behind some murthi or the other

Happy at having figured out the puzzle, the ocean decided to rest a while.  It noticed a group of agitated people at one end of the beach and decided to offer them the calming influence of a surging and ebbing tide at their feet.  It gradually crept towards the group and noticed that they appeared to be cops in uniform.  It could not help but listen to their conversation as it tried to soothe their agitation

And what it heard was this – “Have you heard?  There are rumours that a terrorist group has entered the city and is planning to plant a series of bombs at various Ganesha mandals.  The ATS doesn’t know where all to plant their plainclothes men and detection squads – there are so many pandals in so many places.  What is worse, if an incident occurs someplace, the access roads are so chock a block with pandals, there is no way for any Emergency Response Team to make it to the place in a hurry.  Or for that matter, get any victims out of danger and to medical assistance”

And the next guy said – “Forget that.  I was on traffic duty yesterday and it was horrible.  Traffic was crawling along, and all because vehicles were slowing down on the flyover to have a peak at the Ganesha pandal visible from there.  There were any number of minor collisions, and of course the moment a vehicle was involved in a collision, both the drivers and passengers forgot all about Ganesha and started fighting about who was at fault.  I tell you, I could not for the life of me spot the divinity in man while I tried to resolve about 10 fights yesterday”

“Fighting is one aspect”, said the third guy.  “Our station head was grumbling about the diesel budget for the month.  Seems with all this slow moving traffic, we’re getting barely ½ the mileage we normally get on all our police vehicles.  If this is what we achieve with our flashing lights, driving on the wrong side of the road and / or pavement at times, I wonder what these civilians manage to get with their vehicles”

The first guy weighed in – “I bet that’s why they chose this time to raise petrol and diesel prices.  People’s travel increases to get from 1 pandal to another.  Plus their mileage decreases due to the traffic woes.  I’m sure all the petrol pumps are making a killing this month.  In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if they start running dry unless the distributors increase their refill service frequency”

“Yeah, and then the politicians can all talk about the cost of oil and the balance of payments.  Bah, what humbugs they all are”

“Don’t talk to me about politicians.  I had one visit the pandal where I was on duty yesterday.  And to make sure he drew enough crowds, he brought a shapely young Bollywood star with him.  You would not believe the kind of Z-class security that accompanied him and how much chaos it created in the pandal.  You were talking about the rumours of terrorist activity earlier?  I am telling you, those guys could easily have entered the pandal in the midst of all this chaos and done anything they wanted to do.  There is absolutely no way we can plug every possible avenue at times like this”

While its belly was more at ease now, the ocean was more upset than before.  It felt its shoulders droop and its head hang as it quietly withdrew from the shore.  And as it withdrew, the people on the shore cried out at the amount of debris that was revealed and how the tide had gone out further than ever before

Voluntouring in a School in Wanla, Ladakh

“Ma’am le, ma’am le, humko story padho na.  Ma’am le, ma’am le, humme English padhao na”[1] - I was surrounded by screaming kids, ranging from probably 5 to 12.  The older kids – the 9^th and 10^th standard kids - were more circumspect, but still probably preferred our little interludes over their regular lessons (as anyone would).  Where was this, you ask?  This was Voluntouring in Government High School, Wanla, Ladakh.  125 students with 25 teachers, and 3 of us voluntourists (sometimes 4).  We’d tied up with 17000ft.org (look them up) to work with school kids to improve their English, even as we got to see the Real Ladakh, doing homestays in the more remote parts of Ladakh, instead of traipsing around seeing only the touristy bits (which also we did)

The day we first met the Head Master and teachers, some of the teachers were eagerly welcoming, asking for our help with English grammar and other topics that they found difficult to explain.  Others were more guarded – don’t disrupt our classes, said one sternly.  Ten days later, as we gathered for our farewell cup of tea, I asked some of the teachers for a comparison of how they’d felt when they first met us and how they felt as we left.  The best response – Last Monday, we felt “yeh loge kyon aaye hain?”  Today, we feel “yeh loge kyon jaa rahe hain?”[2]

What brought about the shift?  We all really, really enjoyed what we did.  Sometimes, we took classes with the regular teacher sitting in and observing.  A novelty for us – none of us were trained teachers and none of us had ever taught school kids before.  But most of the time, we did impromptu lessons.  Like, when we discovered the kids had trouble with tenses, I started making up sentences they could relate to – “I sell rice.  Yesterday, I _____ rice”.  Now, fill in the blank.  And so simple past tenses of some key verbs were learnt through conversational English.

Sometimes, we’d get into debates.  I was reading a story to some kids of the 7^th grade, when we came across the word “wrestle”.  To explain it, I turned to 2 of the 3 boys in the class and described how they sometimes fought and rolled in the mud, which we girls (there were some 5-6 girls in the class) never do.  This bright eyed little boy tells me – hum tho baahar se shaitaan hain, lekin andar se shareef hain.  Yeh loge[3] ….. and he strategically trailed off with a far away look in his eyes.

Ladakh has an Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) scheme, a day care facility, which typically operates out of the local school premises.  This means, there are infants in prams and strollers right alongside the older kids in the school.  During assembly, the ICDS kids form the first row and gaze around silently absorbing the procedures until one fine day, a uniform is slapped on them and lo, they are in school now!  Assembly is conducted by the school monitors.  It includes prayers in English, Hindi, Ladakhi ….. news of the day, thought for the day, general knowledge or trivia …..everything that is there in any school.  Some kids will take turns to come and perform a song or a poem ….

The Wanla school was formed by merging smaller schools of 7 surrounding villages and was therefore a residential school.  The boys lived on the 1^st floor while the girls lived on the ground floor of the residence in some 3-4 dormitories.  Each dorm had kids of mixed ages, and the older kids helped look after the younger ones.  Sometimes, you’d find a younger kid go up and cling to the legs of an older hero worshipped idol between classes, or during lunch time.  Imagine heading to the river behind the hostel to brush your teeth, wash your face and wet comb your hair. 

The teachers had their own one room - kitchen-bath residences in the same complex.  Mid day meals were cooked by a cook.  Dinner was cooked by the students, who took it in turn to share kitchen duty.  Every week, one house was on duty and chores were shared amongst the kids through a nice graphic chore board.  Flower beds were irrigated by channeling the river water towards it and guiding it through makeshift little dams built with pebbles and mud

School hours were from 10 am – 4 pm, with an hour for lunch from 1-2 pm.  We’d head home to our home stay just opposite the school for a welcome break for tea and relaxation, before heading back to school at 6, for the 6-8 pm Activity Time.  That was when we had our greatest fun.  We started out with story reading, but then soon went on to make up word games.  We used Flash cards, and with the kids seated in a circle, we’d ask them to pick a card, any card, in turn and then make a sentence with the word on the card. The school romeo got the word “chick” – so of course, his sentence was “there are many chicks in this school”.  His next word was “charming” – so he goes – “I charm all the chicks in the school”.  Would you wonder at the howls and jeers that went up at each of his compositions?

Another game that we evolved over the days was with a word grid.  We formed the kids into teams of 4-5 each (as many as 7-8 teams).  Each team had to send 1 kid at a time in turn, to spot a word in the word grid.  The team gets as many points as the letters in the word.  Next, each team had to find the word in their dictionary.  The first team to do so, got 5 points.  Now, each team had to form a valid sentence with the word to win another 5 points.  The ____ is very beautiful, substituting the required word into the sentence, was the most popular sentence.  Which we found ourselves also doing all the time – the sunrise is very beautiful, the moon is very beautiful, the mountains are very beautiful – Ladakh is like that, can we blame the kids for making those sentences?  So with a lot of “ma’am le, sir le” to gain our attention, the games went on until we hardly knew where the 2 hours passed and we were done for the day

Wanla was literally a one street village, with 25 homes and the usual gompa on the mountain behind the village.  Before school and between 8 pm and dinner, there was nothing to do, but admire the view (which we could do and discuss endlessly) and go for walks.  Dinner was cooked by our hostess Mrs Sonam Dolma – a great chef, we waited in great anticipation for her meals.  Her husband, Mr Rinchen Dorje, was a master craftsman, employing about 5-6 people and turning out beautiful carved furniture.  We’d sit around low tables, mopping up dal with Tingmu or Ladakhi skeu or thukpa with great relish, as we learnt about the oracle of Wanla, the snow leopard of Hanupata, the farming practices of Ladakh, or that never failing fallback – the weather.  “Mumbai ka fashion aur Ladakh ka mausam – badalta rahta hai”[4], as the locals never failed to remind us.  We were never without our little backpacks with extra layers of warm clothing, muffler, woolen cap, wind cheater – and believe me, one day or another, each and every item was used

A week into our Wanla stint, one of the teachers invited us to her home village of Hanupata for an archery festival.  Funsuk, our 17000ft facilitator went for a walk and returned having fixed up our ride next morning.  And so, Wednesday morning, we excused ourselves from school duties and set off for Hanupata.  People had gathered from many surrounding areas and the festivities went thus – a round of chhang (local barley homebrew) or other drinks, followed by a round of live music, singing and dancing (high altitude dancing), followed by a round of archery.  And then the cycle begins all over again.  The dancing got more inspired as the drinks flowed.  Our host from Wanla was foremost in imbibing, distracting us from the festivities at hand, as we wondered about how we would get back home on the narrow winding Himlayan roads.  As it turned out, Funsuk just commandeered his vehicle and drove us all home, leaving our host to find himself a ride the next morning!

From Wanla, we visited the Dha’Hanu villages of Garkun and Darchik.  These are 2 of the Brokpa (or Drukpa) Aryan villages, considered to be founded by remnants of Alexander’s army and the last of the pure Aryans.  They consider themselves unique, though we felt that while they were distinctly different from the Ladakhis, their looks were not unlike many Punjabis, Saraswats, CKPs or even Iyengars.  At any rate, their head gear, featuring a bright orange flower that we were amazed to discover was not artificial despite its unlikely colouring, was certainly unique.  Their dialect, traditional attire, festivities, songs etc are considered to be distinct from the Ladakhis as well.  They do not typically inter marry with the Ladakhis, saying they find it difficult to adjust with them. 

From Garkun, it was back to Leh, and then some tourist highlights visiting Pangong and crossing Khardungla to have lunch at North Pullu.  And before I knew it, it was time for me to return to Mumbai and ground zero (literally and figuratively!).  But some things are for sure – I will be back (17000ft has 22 schools in Nubra Valley, so that’s where I’d like to head next time round); I will stay in touch with the Head Master, teachers and students of Wanla; and I have made 3 new friends – my 2 co-voluntourists Delnaz and Shubham (I was so very lucky to find like minded people on my team) and Sandeep Sahu, my “bad boy” school classmate co-founder of 17000ft

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[1] Ma’am, Ma’am, please read us a story; ma’am, please teach us English”

[2] Why have these people come?  Why are these people leaving?

[3] We are devils on the outside, inside we are gentlemen, whereas these people (the girls) …..

[4] Mumbai’s fashion, and Ladakh’s weather – they keep changing