Our Mizoram Story

I am very filmy. I keep going back to that line from Om Shanti Om that means if you want something with all your heart, the entire kaynaat comes together to help you attain it.

We reached Aizawl yesterday and checked into a hotel room with pista green walls. We hadn’t had any food all day. So we had some food and stepped out to check out the city. It became dark by 4.30 and we headed back to the room and rested. We still did not have any news on the school. Later in the evening, our contact, Chris (many thanks to Lara Jesani for putting us in touch with him) called with news that we cannot visit the school he’d contacted for us as they now have their study camp and it would be unfair to disrupt the activities they have lined up to prepare for the exams.

I sat up and left messages to random Mizo people on Facebook introducing the project and asking them if they could put us in touch with their own school. I wrote to a gospel rock band called Magdalene asking if we could collaborate with them. No replies yet, which is alright. It would be a surprise if they replied.

So we looked ‘Things to do in Aizawl’ and jotted down a few places we had to visit. First on the list was KV Paradise.

Here’s how the Lonely Planet website describes the place:

“The KV Paradise site is 8km from Zarkawt, 1km off the Aizawl–Silchar road via an improbably narrow dirt lane. V is for Varte who died in a 2001 motor accident. K is for her husband Khawlhring who has since lavished his entire savings and energy creating a three-storey mausoleum to her memory. The marble fountain-patio has wonderful panoramic views. Inside and downstairs is Varte’s grave and upstairs an odd collection displays her wardrobe and shoe collection, including the clothes (neatly laundered) she died in.”

I wonder if this reminds you of a certain Pixar film about an old man and his dream to fulfill his wife’s promise?

A grand flight of stairs lead you to KV Paradise. The view of top would’ve been breathtaking if it wasn’t too foggy.

The ground floor is V’s grave with pictures of KV on their wedding day and a full size picture of V. The first floor has V’s wardrobe along with the clothes she had worn when she met with the fatal accident.

There is also a note to her from her students.

The second floor is a circular dome with a place to sit in the centre. The quiet there could lull you to sleep if you haven’t slept well the night before you visit.

All around this marble structure are carefully planted flower shrubs that invite butterflies. One could say K’s efforts to make the place paradise are working.

We met K and asked if we could talk to his students and plant with them. He said the kids have their exams and the season is just not right to plant. Which is true.

So we promised to stay in touch and left.

Meanwhile, Kaushik Bhattacharya (friend of a friend of Sandip Shetty) called up with good news. He said I could get in touch with the secretary of the education department with the reference of his predecessor.

So we ambled on to the education department but got to meet the Jt. Secretary instead. We were thinking he was doing his own work when he was actually writing this letter for us!

We took the letter to the school headmaster who wasn’t there. We went to meet the Principal but he wasn’t there either. So we went to the Vice Principal who told us tomorrow will be a holiday. Drat, it’s Saturday already?! But school didn’t shut till 3.15 and it was only 2 then.

For the first time on the trip, we did not have the laptop or the projector or the pen drive (with films in it) with us. All we had was the box with Changu and Mangu in it.

So I did an improv session! After telling them what we are doing and we are doing it, I asked them to write three environmental issues in Mizoram. Next, I asked them to write solutions to these problems.

The result is brilliant! It’s heartening to see that a lot of students as young as 16 years old understand the problems they face and the solutions they have. All they need now is a platform to make these things happen!

Details of the issues here is another big story.

So yes, the Aizawl leg of Project 35 Trees has gone off well. It is sorry that we couldn’t plant even one tree here but we move on, glad that we got more than fifty students in Class XI thinking about what’s wrong with their part of the country and what they could do about it.

Tomorrow, we make our way to Silchar in Assam, which is the only point that connects Aizawl to Agartala. I hear there’s a sizeable Bengali population there (read – I can’t wait to use my Bengali powers!)

Our Nagaland Story

We arrived in Dimapur early on the morning of 28^th November. How early? Well, it was 5 when we stepped out of Dimapur station and were hounded by cabbies who wanted to ferry us to Kohima right away. We had spoken to a member of the Rotaract Club of Dimapur but we were supposed to call another number at ten in the morning. What would we do for five hours? And what if we still didn’t have a host after that phone call?

We checked into Hotel Maple, something we had found the night before, online. They gave us a single room with a single bed, promising to upgrade as soon as there was more space. After an uncomfortable sleep (read Anthony’s wheezing and my snoring and a few million power cuts) we decided to step out of the depressing room and go out.

So in Nagaland, the sun wakes up early and by ten it feels like 2 pm in Mumbai, bright and sunny. We ambled slowly through the market area, looking at shops, reading signboards and trying not to stare at the very pretty Naga women (Statement: Naga women are very pretty!). I have been craving to have some south Indian breakfast for a long time now and my tongue fell on the ground when I saw a board that said Dosa Plaza. I almost dragged Anthony along to find this place when we accidentally saw Café 77.

It looked like a good breakfast place with a graffiti name plate and all. So I killed the dosa dream right there and walked into the café only to be welcomed by the smell of amazing coffee. A little part of the South Indian in me got satiated there.

As we order breakfast, we see a stand that props up a magazine called GreenCache. I pick it up. It’s good and it’s only their first volume! Crisp pictures, amazing sequential stories and illustrations. I learnt a lot from that one magazine than a lot of Biology lectures in college. I quickly wrote a mail to the magazine, introducing ourselves and telling them how we liked their magazine. Next, I called a number that was on the panel.

Sentinaro Alley, who picked up the phone patiently listened to everything I had to say. Then, she introduced herself as the publisher and promised to meet us at Café 77 in another hour.

What happened next is straight out of a dream. Sentinaro came, we spoke, she rang up a few numbers and three hours later, we were in a cab to Kohima with five pine saplings that she sponsored!

We are now in Kohima, where Richard Belho is hosting us in one the many bamboo houses he has. Richard is an architect. He’s also one of the many forces behind the Kohima Komets – a football team. His dream is to see Nagaland’s Under 19 football team kick the posterior of India’s national team. He believes this will make the authorities comprehend the immense potential in the youth in the state.

Richard, along with help from a lot of people like Bazo Kire and all of his colleagues, is now setting up a football academy which will serve as the home ground for the Kohima Komets. Project 35 Trees planted ten trees in Meriema Village, where the academy will soon come up. We wish the Kohima Komets and the forces behind them all the best! We can’t wait to see them in action!

Anthony loves the food here. Yesterday, he had one of those green piggies from Angry Birds. Today he devoured a distant relative of Donald Duck. As for me, I am glad I’ve started eating eggs and that my hosts generously make me an omlette for lunch and dinner.

We just heard news that there’s a bandh in Imphal. If that’s true, it means we will still be in Kohima when the Hornbill Festival begins!

Of prayers and blessings

21 November 2012

We are on our way to our 16^th location as I write this. We are aboard a very dirty and unkempt Puri – Guwahati Express. Our previous seat-holders have left their peanut-shells on the floor for us to admire. They have also clogged the washbasin with a certain brown coloured liquid. We hope it is nothing but pan spittle. There is an electric panel on top that does not have a lid. We have pictures to prove all of this if anyone is interested in suing the railways.

Apart from this, we have absolutely nothing to complain of. We left Mumbai on the tenth of last month and have since successfully planted – 

 a) Saplings in schools in 15 locations. 

 b)  Ideas in the minds of over 1510 students.

In fact, we’ve got the last two remaining seats on the train from Agra to Patna. We’ve found complete strangers helping us, giving us lifts, sharing their food with us. We have people being nice to us everywhere.

Maybe it is because of what we are doing. It could also be because people remember us in their prayers.

We know our friends in Pune do. Our parents do. The principal of the school we visited in Manali prayed for us in the school assembly, with attachments from over 250 of their students.

When young Nepalis meet their elders, they do a mini bow such that the top of their head is right in front of the elder. The elder then taps lightly on the head as a form of blessing. The entire sight is amusing to an outsider but most of them follow this tradition with respectful camaraderie.

We had just finished planting in the school in Gangtok. As is routine, I cleaned Matters (our digging tool) and was wrapping it when our hostess (who is also the English teacher in the school) Mrs. Pradhan quietly walked up to the two saplings and tapped them on their topmost branches, silently saying, “Grow well, grow well.”

I’m sure those kids will do well in class. 

Age No Bar

We had the good fortune of meeting a 65-year old young man recently.

Call him ‘retired’ and he’ll dunk you head down in one of his many vermicompost pits. Mukul Varma believes he’s making headway in his new career and he is, we saw. Having seen all of the corporate world’s rigmarole of structures and processes and having grown to Managing Director position, he has a dream.

He sensed lack of employment as a huge problem and wanted to fix it. His objective – to help a few villages find their economic feet and become self-sustainable.

Chachaji (as he is fondly known by everyone there in Mohammadpur – one of his villages fifty kilometres from Patna) has a family house there which had been long neglected. He nursed it back from its dilapidated condition to a lovely village house, retaining its true structure but adding amenities such as a modern bathroom and curtains on the windows and so on.

Simultaneously, Chachaji started developing the family property they had. With the help of a few locals, he began cultivating radish that wholeheartedly grows in the rich soil there. Along with that, he’s growing potatoes, brinjal, turmeric and coriander.

What he is really banking upon, though, is a polyhouse full of Gerbera flowers. He hopes to get business orders from the three major flower markets – Delhi, Kolkata and Benaras.

There is a dairy farm in the offing. He’s experimenting with more vegetables like bottle gourd. There is a successful vermicompost unit that not only makes enough organic manure for the entire farm but also sells it to nearby farms.

All these ventures provide labour to the people of the village. Students studying in nearby junior colleges and living in the village are being encouraged to take care of the Gerberas and other crops and taught how to manage the water-efficient drip irrigation system. Chachaji has roped in two girls who are studying Chemistry in college to take care of the chemical additives. He hopes it will help them gain confidence and inspire more girls to join these two. He has planted teak trees along his vegetable plantations.

Sometimes, Chachaji stays in his house in the village. Sometimes he only visits. With every visit, he watches his crops grow, he sees the leaves of the teaks grow bigger and bigger. He won’t admit it but he’s proud of what he has managed to accomplish in two years that included deciphering complex government schemes and working around babus who do not lift a finger to help.

Chachaji also understands that he is far from attaining his dream. While the villagers have only just started warming up to his efforts, the first crop of Gerbera flowers in the polyhouse are almost ready to bloom and there might be a purchase order around the corner. He hopes people will see value in this work once they see the financial benefits.

Chachaji is living every urban man’s dream – to have a house in the village and grow vegetables.

For me, I seem to have found another personal hero. If at the age of sixty five, this naughty man can pull off everything we saw in his village called Mohammadpur, imagine what I can get done!

Maybe I can’t wake up at six every morning like Chachaji but that is only a small war and I know I’ll win it and many more big ones.

______

This story is part of an epic journey across India called Project 35 Trees. Know more about it here - http://www.facebook.com/35trees

Catch them Young

School uniforms have always made for amazing pictures. I remember staring at hours at my dad’s yellowing class picture. Photographs from childhood wearing uniforms will always be cherished no matter how embarrassing or stupid they look.

This particular one will remain my favourite uniform picture. The picture of two sweatered hands patting tight the mud around a Texus sapling. The bark of this tree is found to be a rich source of Texol, a chemical used in cancer chemotherapy.

I will plant trees all my life. That has been decided. But I can only plant a certain number of trees in my entire life span. Let’s call it X. Now if I tell 200 people why it is important to plant trees, 150 will laugh it off but I’ll still have 50 who understand. If these 50 plants trees too, the number of trees becomes 50X! For this vision, I have only Anish K Menon to thank.

CATCH THEM YOUNG | Let them plant a tree near their school. Tell them that it is now their duty to take care of it, water it and to see that no harm comes anywhere near it. They will watch it grow and maybe (this is the BIG maybe we bank upon) they will want to plant more of them.

Project 35 Trees attempts to do exactly this. In the last one month, we met and planted trees with students from schools in Daman, Silvassa, Baroda, Indore, Jaipur, Delhi, Gurgaon, Amritsar, Jammu, Chandigarh and Manali. As I write this, I must be preparing for the session here in Dehradoon.

It will be difficult to measure the effectiveness of what Project 35 Trees has done. It is easy to assume that students will click pictures and send them to us but I would rather have them watering the saplings. 

Banking on a lot of hope

I’ve never done anything beyond normal in my life. No wonder my school life is such a blur. The only reason why some teachers remember me is probably because one of my first poems got published in the Indian Express when I was in class VIII in 1994.

I would go to school with my hair combed and wearing my neck tie. I would return home with my hair in place and my neck tie still there. For twelve years I did just that. I was a star in junior college, I was among the very few who could express themselves in English. In degree college, I liked what I did but I was still the one who experienced mild culture shock…Ambarnath to town wasn’t easy. I even tried to disown my name for a seemingly cooler ‘Harry’. My email id to this date is duke.ambarnath@gmail.com My fiancé once tried coaxing me to change it to something more professional but I would hear nothing of it. Well, I was young and naïve…

Wilson College was also where I met Prof. Sudhakar Solomonraj and the Nature Club. Little did I know that treks into the Sanjay Gandhi national park and Karnala Bird Sanctuary and sessions by this head of political science department (and the BMM department of course) would influence my life in such a manner. But here we are.

On a whim, I wanted to plant trees in every state and union territory of India. Hence the number 35. A friend – Anthony Karbhari travelled along with me, making mini films out of each trip. But travelling weekends alone would take up all our weekends for a long time and there wasn’t much awareness to talk about anyway.

Anthony Karbhari had a brainwave. Why couldn’t we do a proper India tour? He planted the seed in my head and pushed me till I got kicked about it and gave in. A 4-month trip…to go to every place in India! Who wouldn’t be excited about that?

My parents.

My office agreed. They’ve even promised to sponsor a part of the project.  But my mom categorically told me a lot of things I already know.

Hari, you know dad is retiring next year.

You know we live in a rented flat.

You know your sister has four more years of education left. What are you thinking?

What I am thinking is that this is my only chance to be 25 and see the world, okay…India. I might be a little foolish to take a break from my job and follow a dream (more dramatic this way) but I can only do this now.

So…Project 35 Trees is about to embark upon an epic journey along the length and breadth of India. I along with Anthony are off to live with strangers, shamelessly take them up on their offer to feed us, give us space to washup and dry our clothes. We hope schools and colleges open their gates for two haggard nomads to talk to their students about why planting trees will help not just them but their future generations. We hope every school and college we plan to visit have some place for trees where the students can take care of them.

So yes, basically I am banking on a lot of hope. In a way I have never done before. For the first time I am going to do something ‘normal’ people don’t do.

What will Project 35 Trees talk to students about?

Planting trees is fun. It is fun to dig holes in damp soil with a heavy instrument. It is nice to get hands dirty in a childish sort of way. It is an ice-breaker. It gets people to talk, smile, open-up and share.

While planting trees in urban areas is a necessity, it is various other issues that consume the attention of many wildlife conservationists in the country today. These must be gradually instilled among young students so that they do not repeat mistakes the earlier generations have done.

CATCH THEM YOUNG | They must be weaned away from the lavish use of plastic. It is not easy. But they must be told of its dangers.  Tell them while they are in school. Let them learn about this while they learn what’s in their schoolbooks.

You might tell them to save power; to switch off the lights and the fans when you don’t need them. They might not really care for it because they haven’t been told why to switch off the lights and fans…why it is important to save electricity…how precious this power is.  

But tell them about their favourite animal – the tiger, the fastest animal – the cheetah and beautiful national bird. Tell them about the homes of these gorgeous animals – the forests. Then tell them how these forests are being cut down to make coal mines. Where does all this coal go? This coal is used to generate the electricity that comes to all of our homes. The tiger, the cheetah, the peacock…they all sacrificed their homes, their lives for this electricity. Grim…but the young ones must understand this.

In Kashmir, rich kids probably have a Shahtoosh carpet at home or their mothers might have a family heirloom of a shawl of the finest quality of silk, the kind that exploited the Chiru (Tibetan Antelope) to extinction.  

Jeans? The denim dyeing industry is known to be a major polluter of the Ulhas river in Thane District.

Millions of families that flock to sea-shores and beaches for vacations return with painted sea-shells and decorative pieces of corals- souvenirs. Little do these innocent souls know that the creatures are collected from the sea and boiled alive. The dead remains are scraped out, the shells are washed in detergent, polished, painted and sold to you for twenty rupees. Is that the cost of a sea creature’s life? And how do you expect to hold out a tsunami when you have been breaking pieces of the boundary wall – the coral reefs?

Who will tell them all this?

I will.

Why?

Because this is the knowledge growing children must be equipped with in order to make clear choices while they grow up to be responsible citizens.

If there are a few changed minds, if students learn to turn off the lights before nodding off to sleep or return home from vacations with tribal art items instead, Project 35 Trees will consider its job done. 

Open Letter To Indra

Dear Indra,

Dude, what’s wrong, man?

You used to have a brilliant system going on there. You had Surya to heat the oceans... and people to carry all that steam upwards (and run that little super sauna for you!) Then you had those brilliant cloud-making artisans! What happened?  

Are you tired? Do you need a pay hike or something?  Or are your employees striking?

Or will you only make it rain if Gracy Singh and a tanned Aamir Khan beg for rain while doing a cinematic number?

You must really consider doing your rock star thing soon. Let the clouds break into a medlee of classic torrential rain and put us earthlings in a huge mosh pit of sorts. That might make some snobby South Bombay types shut themselves in and screw up their noses about how they hate getting wet but that's all. The rest of us will only be happy that we'll have water to wash our buttocks every morning in the coming year and that farmers will have enough water for their fields.

But that cloud burst thing...I am guessing that happens when you are really pissed at us? Sir, very scary. We don't want that also.

Remember Milan Subway, Kalina? Yeah.

Tell me, did you guys get a good laugh when we attempted cloud-seeding? See, if you don't let it loose in another fortnight, we'll want to try that again! Don’t you let us make fools of ourselves.

Also, how is it that when I am in Ambarnath, you give rain to Bombay and when I am in Bombay (chal na, Borivali is Bombay too!) I am not complaining, my trees there must love it! But dude, what about Tulsi and Vihar – the reservoirs inside the Sanjay Gandhi National park that the English made? Who’ll fill them up, your daddy?

Oh, I almost forgot this one thing. What is going on between you and this Murphy guy? How does it really work? Does he Whatsapp you every time he sees me leave home without an umbrella?    

So they are saying we cut too many trees because of which there’s less water in the oceans or whatever… and you are mighty annoyed about this and all… any truth there? See, I understand your problem. You can’t really take the water from Mithi river anymore… it’s so f…um…filthy and who wants dirty rainwater anyway?

Give my love to Airavata please? Tell him his earthly cousins are fine now that Veerappan is gone but every now and then a train that passes through their forests dashes down a few of them.

P.S: There was a little confusion as to who to address this letter to - you or Varuna. But I've always been clear that you take care of the rains; unlike popular belief in north India, because Varuna is in-charge of the oceans department, right?

Awesome Malayalam TVC - Kalyan Jewellers

Weeks ago, when the Mumbai Mirror published a picture of Amitabh Bachchan along with Malayalam actor Dileep, I expected a Malayalam feature film with a cameo of Big B.

I am however pleasantly surprised to see both of them in this lovely TVC for Kalyan Jewellers.

The film opens with Mr. Bachchan in a school teacher’s garb writing on the blackboard while his students copiously take it down in a rural school. It’s begun to rain. A few drops of water drip onto a student’s book. Next, we see all the students outside the school along with their worried-looking masterji staring the dilapidated building.

Masterji sets off to the city to meet one of his old students who is delighted to have him for lunch. Overjoyed by the prospects of meeting his student after such a long time, proud to see him successful and yet weighed down by his need of the hour, masterji decides not to broach the topic of the school and is shown to return with a heavy heart. To his surprise, when he reaches the school he finds that his illustrious student is already there, supervising the renovation of his own school.

The film ends with the tagline ‘Vishwaasam, adu alle ellaam?’ literally meaning ‘Trust. Isn’t that everything?’

It has no dialogues. Only beautifully shot scenes in a wonderful colour tone along with a neat background score.

This film comes like rain on Malayalam television parched by blatant product displays, exaggerations of product benefits and language dubs of TVCs originally made in Hindi.

Advertisements akin to regular programming on Malayalam GECs such as Asianet, Surya TV, Kailrali etc. are bereft of thought or advertising craft. Except for a few stray gimmicks, they have hardly evolved to offer anything new. If it is an ad for hair oil, the film features a film or TV actress oiling her hair and waving it around. If it is a lungi ad, it’s got to have Mohanlal, Mammootty or Jairam in it almost as if people would stop wearing what they’ve been wearing for ages if their favourite stars didn’t sport them as well.

If you are someone who grew up speaking Malayalam at home, you’ll undoubtedly enjoy the dubbed ads. The VOs, often done in studios in Worli and Mahalaxmi by non-Malayali voice artists perfectly destroy diction and speech constructions.

There is hardly any insight, minimal creative input and zilch creative strategy.

Kerala is obsessed with gold. I am not equipped with numbers but from pure audience perspective, it can be seen that gold jewellery ads rule TV and outdoor advertising space in Kerala.

In such a scenario, it is amazing to see a brand take its tagline to such extents. Aided with a hefty production budget, this 2:08 minute film hardly shows any gold and manages to break clutter and clearly delivers its message. That Kalyan Jewellers is a brand to be trusted.

Only one other ad in the recent past can boast of such thought and craft.

Unlike other hair oil brands, Dhatri Hair oil adds a social angle to its TVCs. It positioned the oil as something that strengthens women’s hair and gives them confidence to face difficult things. One in the series of these ads shows a woman oiling her hair and tightly pulling it into a bun on top of her head as she waits for her alcoholic husband to come home. She has decided that today she won’t let him hold her hair and beat her up but will take a stand and stand up to him. It works, as the drunken man walks up to the gate, senses the wife’s newfound confidence and slinks away.

Hearty congratulations to the team at PUSH, Bangalore for trying to rake the muck and bring out the jewels.  

#55WordStory: GOSSIP

Ria: How long?

Ansy: Thisss long.

Ria: And thick?

Ansy: The middle of a Cornetto cone.

Ria: Whoa, so did you…

Ansy: What do you think?

Ria: Chicken.

Anna: Shut up bitch, we did!

Ria: All the way?

Anna: Umm…

Ria: Strapon or battery?

Hardware Store Conversation

My affinity to craft and DIY projects often takes me to the hardware store.

I have learnt; in my progress from a craft novice in school to self acclaimed Paperwalla, that undertaking a transaction at a hardware store is an art.

Firstly, you need to know all the right words to say. If you need something to dig soil with, you'll need to know how to say koyta, favda & kudhal. If it is a screws that you seek, you need to know ek inchi, dedh inchi and Da Vinci. Showing him the size of your weenie with your thumb and index finger won’t suffice.

Second, you need to sound like the people who usually visit hardware stores viz. civil contractors, carpenters, plumbers, fitters and other skilled labourers. Make your voice sound grouchy and deeply uninterested. Assume that his store has whatever it is that you seek and order the shop assistant to fetch two of this and three of that. Retch, spit. Ask no questions and expect none back. Pay money. Scoot.

Failure to abide by these unwritten rules will invoke the hard look that the Hardware Industry Dictionary calls, “You don’t belong in our world. Go back to wherever it is you are from and stay there.”

I was at the hardware store today to buy some sand paper. The storekeeper- without taking his eyes off the book where he was writing a thesis report, ordered his assistant to fetch me sandpaper. I feel the paper. Hmm. It’s nice but I actually need it in black. I know black sandpaper exists. I ask him, “Isme black colour hai kya?”

Damn. Wrong question for a hardware store. What was I thinking? It didn’t strike me to retch and spit either.

The storekeeper sighed. He looked up from his NASA field magnification case study once again and asked, “Kya ghasneka hai tumko?” (WTF do you plan to scrub anyway?)

Dreaded question to which I had no answer. I wasn’t planning to scrub anything. And I did not want to tell him what I needed the paper for! I don’t think any creative person wants to. You think a carpenter asks his magician client why he needs that table exactly cut in the middle? No! Thou shall beget no secret. I don’t even tell my mom or my fiancé (Ooh, that feels nice!) what I am making purely because I like to see wonderment on their faces when I show them the finished product. And now this hardware storekeeper wants to know what I want to scrub with black sandpaper.

I tell him I want the sandy texture of the paper and feel the top of the sandpaper. He puts his pen down on the rubber coated counter, sits back in his chair and says, “Ah.” He looks at me but I know that he’s thinking he’s never met anyone who buys sandpaper for its texture. Hmmm. Interesting day for him at work. May be he’ll tell his wife about it tonight.