Delhi and Lansdowne

On Thursday February 21 the Air India flight from Andal was delayed by four hours (mercifully they have become smart and considerate enough to notify us the evening before by sms) – my first experience here – so I arrived in Delhi only in the afternoon. I bought a smart card and negotiated the Airport Express and then the Yellow Line to arrive home all by myself: I had determined not to use a hired car. If Pupu stays in Delhi for some more time, I must learn to move around the city normally, meaning by auto and metro. The Delhi Metro is a delight anyway.

Pupu arrived from her campus in the evening, and the next two days were spent the way we like best, sleeping, eating savouries, watching all kinds of silly movies and videos, walking around and chatting away to glory about every subject under the sun…

At daybreak on Sunday we took the Dehradun Shatabdi Express (a pathetic misnomer, seeing that it takes more than six hours to travel 310 km) to Hardwar. My old friend Munna was waiting with his car. We paid a quick visit to Hrishikesh and Lakshmanjhula – Pupu had been there last in December 2008, and her memories had become hazy. We saw some white tourists picking up litter at the riverside: shame on us. Then after lunch we went off in the opposite direction. The road upto Najibabad was in rather poor condition, and there were jams on the way, so it was evening and pitch dark before we arrived at Lansdowne, at about 5500 feet above sea level. Pupu found the last part of the journey rather eerie, it being the first-ever drive in the dark through forested hills for her.

The hotel was plush, and they gave us a suite for three for what I felt was a very reasonable price – it being off season helped enormously. Dinner was delicious, and then off to sleep, with extra blankets piled on just in case: one silly weather channel had warned that the temperature might drop below zero (don’t trust advice from the Net too much. Google Maps has a tendency to find the shortest route to everywhere, and manages to push you into narrow bumpy alleys, sometimes blocked by ongoing construction work, even, just to shave off a couple of km of driving).

Late rising next morning, a steaming bath and breakfast, then we went sightseeing. Lansdowne, like Chakrata and Kasauli we’d seen earlier, is basically a little military cantonment town, and so very cleanly maintained, with lavish greenery all around, and multiple rows of rolling hills to feast your eyes upon. Lansdowne was originally called Kaludanda, which in the local dialect means Black Hill, before the sahibs found it, settled it and renamed it after the then viceroy. We did a lot of walking, sucking in great lungfuls of the crisp, clean air, which is the only way to enjoy the mountains, of which we can never have enough. We took in the army’s Durwan Singh Museum, named after the first Indian recipient of the Victoria Cross (during World War I) which taught us a lot of history about Garhwal (did you know that Kotdwar nearby is the place where King Bharata, after whom the country is named, supposedly spent his childhood at the ashram of the sage Kanva?) and the glorious Garhwal Rifles. Then there was Bhulla Tal, a tiny but pretty park, beside which there is a café which served us hot aloo paratha with achaar and dahi, and Tiffin Top – or Tip n Top – which offered panoramic views, and where they have built the new Tourist Lodge. Back via St. John’s Church early in the afternoon, after which we went for another walk, then bathed in the slowly fading sunshine on the hotel balcony, working up a good appetite for dinner. I could have been in heaven.

We left for the trip back a little after 11 next morning, and after a brief stopover at the Siddhabali temple at Kotdwar and Khera Punjabi dhaba for lunch, we arrived at Hardwar at around 3:45 p.m. With Munna waiting placidly, we went strolling along the riverside I know so well. Could hardly believe a whole year had flashed by since I was last there. It had been getting overcast, and Lord Shiva played a joke on us by whistling up a storm along with freezing rain, though it didn’t last long: we sheltered and snacked at the Chotiwala restaurant near Har ki Pauri, and we were at the railway station by 5. On the way back the train ran faster, and they fed us better. We were at New Delhi station by 10:50, and home by 11:30.

Half the next day was spent in bed, and the afternoon, walking around a couple of parks, including one at Mehrauli. Prithiviraj Chauhan was there once, followed by Muhammad Ghori. And so well kept, so well kept. More chatting, an early dinner, and we turned in at ten, because I had to get up at three. IGI T3 was swarming, but thanks to the recently installed self check-in kiosks (Air India has been tardy in doing this, but better late than never) and eight or ten gates functioning at the security check-in counter, the process was quick and hassle-free. The flight took off perfectly on schedule this time round, and arrived – through thick cloud cover and not a little turbulence – before time! I was home by 7:50, and it’s been raining off and on all day, so it is almost chilly. I decided to finish writing this post before the day is out. Tomorrow is the first of March, and it will be time to get ready for another admission rush.

This was not really a travel post. I keep pining for my daughter – five or six weeks and I have had enough – and every time we meet, we try to pack in a little trip. Delhi offers so many lovely places not too far away to pop off to. This time again, for both of us, the hills were calling,  and the trip was just right, short and sweet. Much of the time we had was spent on laughter and stories, and planning excitedly for the future. If Pupu stays on in Delhi, I might be travelling there so often that staff at the airports will begin to recognize me! And things could have been much worse: I can travel in comfort, and swiftly. Today I went from home to home in a little more than four hours – it takes me longer to go to my house in Kolkata. If in a couple of years’ time Pupu is actually working in Delhi, and we have daily, perhaps twice daily flights from Durgapur by then, I might work part time both there and here: that will really be fun! So the Lord be praised; I am looking forward to certain things again.

[for a few photos, click here]

Ranchi-Rajrappa-Hazaribag

For several years now the second half of February has been holiday time for me, seeing that all the schools have their year-ending and board examinations during this time. And I usually don’t fail to grab the opportunity to go travelling. This time round I made a four-day, 900 km trip to Ranchi and back, taking in Rajrappa and Hazaribag on the way. Ma went along, and we picked up Swarnava, who is reading physics at BIT Mesra, and who had been asking me to come over ever since he went there. The new car got its first long trip, and went like a dream. I drove it for more than five hours on the whole myself, and would have done much more, if only my leg and back hadn’t hurt, and people on the road hadn't made driving a nightmare with their recklessness.

We went via Purulia, and I am proud to say that most of the road was in excellent condition. Mamata Banerjee has certainly done more in this regard in seven years than the CPI(M) did in 35. The village folk also look far more well-fed and clothed than I saw in the 80s. It was cloudy and drizzling in Durgapur when we set out, then the day cleared up, but it drizzled again in Ranchi after sunset, so we had pleasant weather all through the day. On the way we stopped to see the Hundroo falls; no one had warned me of the thousand steps one had to climb up and down, and then the falls were a disappointment: I have seen many that were much more spectacular. Maybe it will be a tad more awe-inspiring at the height of the monsoons. Ranchi itself is rather an overgrown village, I was disappointed to see, with roads – some very bad ones, despite it being a state capital – clogged with swarming, lawless traffic, frequent power cuts, and all the disadvantages of a city without many of its advantages. The hotel was good though modest, and thankfully quiet, with a very helpful staff. The town does have several well-maintained parks, though, as I found out next day – I shall especially recommend the Rock Garden overlooking Kanke Lake. Swarnava showed us around the BIT campus: the huge sal forest there is a treasure. Then off we went to Rajrappa, origin of the Damodar, beside which stands the Chhinnamasta Temple, made famous by Satyajit Ray’s Feluda. The drive was lovely, going partly through low hills; the temple was ugly and crowded, as most Hindu holy places are; the riverfront was spoiled with carelessly dumped trash, but otherwise it could have been the Marble Rocks near Jabbalpur on a small scale. 

I had planned to visit Netarhat the next day, but the only decent hotel there was overbooked as I learnt via phone and net, and I didn’t want to make a twelve-hour round trip, so I dropped it for the sake of Hazaribag, which is less than three hours away. Nice, clean town, though there isn’t much in the way of sightseeing, except for a little private museum of tribal art which strongly stirred my interest because of the eccentric people who run it: I think I shall write separately about them later, and, God willing, visit them again for a longer stay. On the way back to Ranchi, we stopped at Tagore Hill, once home to Rabindranath’s elder brother Jyotirindranath, and now preserved as a museum. Made me wonder why we know so little about these other brothers of the great man after he became a super-celebrity…

A quiet drive home the next day, and on Thursday the 21st I flew over to Delhi. Now looking forward to the next part of my holiday, this time with Pupu and Shilpi for company.

[for photos click here]

Harking back to UBI

This is February, my lazy season, and today is Sunday and Shoroshshoti pujo to boot, so I have had the whole day off: not a very common thing.  I shall have to saunter off presently to show my face at the cultural soirée they have arranged in my neighbourhood park – they don’t love me, but they love my money, and since I contribute handsomely, they then feel very bad if I don’t show up at their feasts and do’s – but meanwhile, time to write in my diary.

I am glad that my recent post on the prospects of a universal basic income has drawn the thoughtful attention of a few of my readers. Rajdeep’s link to what the historian Rutger Bregman said at the World Economic Forum in Davos recently is so important that I am re-linking it here. Bregman points out, tellingly, that people should stop talking ‘stupidly’ (and, I’d add, with false piousness) of things like philanthropy and talk about ‘taxes, taxes, taxes…’ instead. Indeed, no less successful and dyed-in-the-wool a capitalist than Warren Buffett has gone on record saying that people like him, the über rich, are taxed too little, and too unfairly: men who actually work for wages (his driver and secretary and bodyguard, for instance) pay much higher tax rates than those who earn vast sums idly through interest, rent and profit! A far more equitable tax regime, one that really bites the stinking rich (who do not really ‘earn’ their fortunes, at least beyond the first few years of setting up new businesses), would go a long way to giving governments much more money for social  welfare services, including UBI, thereby making society far less cruel and unfair to the vast majority who are poor or badly off. What could be more urgent in a world where in almost every significant country a few hundred people control the bulk of the nation’s wealth, and only a few hundred thousand could be called even well off?

[As an aside, if I were planning to recast the income tax regime in our country, I would exempt all single income family folks with monthly earnings of up to Rs. 50,000 – 80,000 if they invested in important savings like life, medical and unemployment insurance – entirely, charge only 5% for incomes between 50K and 150K a month, 10% upto 300K, 20% upto 500K, 40% upto 1 crore; then the rates would really begin to bite, until, for those who made more than 10 crore a month, the marginal rate should be something like 80 or 90%, unless they gave it away to charity. And – the really crucial thing – income in all forms must be clubbed together, including perks that come with jobs, from five-star accommodation in hotels, luxury villas, fancy cars, first-class travel, astronomically-priced gifts,  company-paid dinners, as well as domestic, secretarial and security details. Hiding incomes, and accounting sleights of hand that put large parts of it in low-tax brackets must be made impossible. As no less a personage than the head of the Central Board of Direct Taxes has put it publicly, it is a national shame that in a country of 1.2 billion plus, with a growth rate of 7%+ a year, where luxury consumption is shooting through the roof, the number of people who have declared incomes above a crore a year is only about 150,000, and most of them are in the salaried category. Obviously the real fat cats, whether they are in business, politics, sports, movies or crime, where they make the really big money, get away under the present dispensation almost without paying any taxes at all… what a ‘socialistic democracy’ we have made indeed!]

In that same video linked above, I would like to draw everybody’s attention to what the director of Oxfam has said: don’t just talk about jobs, talk about jobs that give people some dignity as human beings. Such jobs are few anyway and vanishing at an alarming rate, and what provisions are we making for the hundreds of millions who are falling by the wayside?

But all this, while good in itself, does not address the main issue that I raised in my blogpost. Far too few have noticed, understood and thought about it. So please read the last two paragraphs of that post very closely again, and reflect. Even if we could create a society where most people are mostly unemployed yet comfortably off in material terms, can such a society avoid dissolving into anarchy for long? I think not, I am very fearful about the likely scenario, and find it most disquieting that far too few people have even begun to think about it.

Meanwhile, my daughter has written a post on her own blog about how she has begun to despise the moneyed class, especially as they exist in and pollute our own country, and I am as proud as I am glad that she has grown up to be not only possessed of a strong and clear mind of her own, not only far more articulate in expressing what goes on in that mind than 99% of people in the 18 to 50 age group, but very closely resonating with my own – very settled – outlook on life. My only prayer for her is that she never has to know harsh and humiliating want, and, that much assured, that she never becomes another member of the affluent trash. In this context, look up once again Chesterton’s wonderful essay titled The worship of the wealthy.

And – I cannot help bragging about this, though I have held myself back for months now – she has become the fourth member in our immediate family to have won a gold medal for a university first. If there are ten people in this world who truly love and respect me, I hope they would pray she has a good, happy, fruitful life hereafter. Do that if you really care for your own loved ones.

I have been reading voraciously and watching movies equally avidly of late … but about that, in the next post.