Save the trees, save the tribals
Review by Ashu Pasricha

Tribal Development & Environment by Gautam Vohra. Har-Anand, New Delhi. Pages 220. Rs 295.

FROM a molten mass of fire we became living beings, from living beings to animals, from animals to human beings, but man is not the crown jewel of evolution. Man has to be surpassed. He has to preserve himself. The future is in our hands — so extinction is not inevitable.

There is no such thing as historical determinism or mechanical necessity. The past tells us that there is hope for mankind if it is able to use the freedom, the responsibility in the right way. The future of man appears not merely as a succession of probable futures, but an array of possible futures and a conflict over preferable futures. But he has to put in efforts to convert the possibles into the probables in pursuit of the preferables.

An amazing mastery over environment has been achieved as a product of modern science and its cumulative evolution during the past centuries. Technology —that is, science-based knowledge — has a liberating power if wisely chosen, freeing man from drudgery.y.

In fact, the very success of science and technology has caused a backlash. There is a great debate among environmentalists, technologists and economists about the danger of an unlimited application of science and technology for accelerating industrialisation, causing the exploitation of natural resources and bringing out the anti-life impact of technology itself.

The technomaniacs fail to see that the human life span is the unchanging yardstick, and it is not man who must adapt to the storms generated by science, but science and technology must adapt to man and this adaption means more than a simple limitation of scientific activity. There is a growing feeling among many that we are going too far and the vastly increased power which technology has placed in the hands of man has not been matched by his ability to use it with discrimination.

Earth, the only planet we inhabit, is a single living, pulsating entity and, the human race its interlocked extended family. The land, water, forest and atmosphere which constitute its environment, get support from some 0.36 million species of plants and more than a million species of plants and more than a million species of animals. The unprecedented human interference in environment has upset the delicate ecological balance of our planet.

Ruthless exploitation of non-renewable natural resources has played a havoc and if it is allowed to continue, can result in a series of major ecological disasters which can disrupt life on the planet.

An opportunity to ponder over this problem is provided by the book under review, "Tribal Development and Environment" by noted environmentalist Gautam Vohra. The Ministry of Environment and Forests has provided funds for a study fearing that the environment of the adivasis and the adivasi way of life are under threat, or rather have been inspite of the development programmes which have been initiated for their benefit. Indeed, some claim that the tribals are in trouble because of the development programmes of the government.

The Development Research and Action Group (DRAG) launched this study to determine the extent to which tribal customs, traditions and practices had been destroyed or preserved. For, everyone agrees that there is much that we can learn from them, much that modern society could benefit by. That is why Jawaharlal Nehru and Verrier Ellwin made such a fuss about the need to ensure that steps were taken to preserve tribal culture and the unique identity of the tribals.

DRAG had put up a proposal to bring out a manual on the contribution of NGOs to tribal welfare, especially with regard to restoring the tribal habitat. The objective was to document what they had achieved and the obstacles encountered while working among the adivasis in different parts of the country. Such documentation could, it was felt, serve as a guide to action for grassroots groups.

In the event, the investigations led to uncovering the nature of the changes that were taking place or had taken place in adivasi lifestyle as a consequence of the development strategy followed since independence. This has become a major part of the study as without an appreciation of the impact of the policies of the government, the damage caused to the way of life of the adivasis cannot be comprehended.

The British initiated the process which marginalised the tribals, and the process has gathered pace since they left. This has involved, in the main, the destruction of the tribal habitat; once the forests began to disappear, the impact on the adivasis was dramatic. Any effort to help them — as a range of programmes designed ostensibly for their benefit seek to do — cannot but be palliatives in the absence of an environment within which they had survived for millennia.a.

The study has been divided into two sections. The first section deals with those areas that are almost entirely tribal either because the laws of the state have enabled them to remain that way or because of geophysical reasons. In Arunachal Pradesh and Nagaland where laws prohibit the settling of people from outside those states, the impact has not been that visible, that obvious. In Ladakh, cut off from the rest of the country by its harsh geographical structure, the tribals have not felt the winds of change in all their ferocity. But with regard to the adivasis living in other states the impact has been all too evident.

The second part deals with the tribals of Bihar, Orissa, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and other states. They no longer possess a distinct identity. Their environment has been destroyed (the forests in which they lived have largely disappeared) in the development process and they have thus lost whatever was unique to them. The tragedy is that the development process has not benefited them either; rather in many cases they have been its victims (the large hydroelectric projects, for instance, have uprooted essentially tribals from their homes). To use a crude metaphor, the adivasis are like a washerman’s dog which belongs neither to the home nor the riverbank: dhobi ka kutta, na ghar ka, na ghat ka.

The author wonders if the adivasis adapt themselves to some government steps, is it in their hands to decide whether they want to preserve their own culture; else will they become indistinguishable members of a society which has given in to western consumer ethos, an ethos that has invaded the rest of India?

How was this to be achieved? Perhaps by seeing to it that there was no interference in the pockets where they live. But would this be in the adivasis’ interest? For, while the areas they inhabited could well turn into islands of "backwardness", the tribals would be no more than museum pieces, anachronisms of a bygone age while the rest of India forged ahead.

Whether the tribals wanted to be treated in this manner is a question that has not been addressed in this study if only because the development process, imposed from the top, has seen to it that the tribals would not be bypassed.

All is, however, not lost as demonstrated by the work done by NGOs in restoring tribal environment in Orissa, Bihar, Maharashtra and other states: forest protection, afforestation and conscientisation exercises have enabled the adivasis not to remain passive victims of the Centre’s development policies.

This comprehensive and searching book argues that we can only make sense of environmental issues if we consider them as part of a more encompassing process of social transformation. The book provides a thorough discussion of the central themes in the emerging discipline of environmental sociology and will be required reading for students of environmental social sciences.

After three tumbles, Atwood gets the nod
Review by Deepika Gurdev

The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood. Bloomsbury. Pages 521. Singapore $ 38.500.

MARGARET Atwood finally emerged winner of the Booker Prize, Britain’s top fiction award, for "The Blind Assassin," published by Bloomsbury. The Canadian author had been tipped to win since the shortlist was announced on October 5, 2000. "The Blind Assassin"is Atwood’s 10th book and was her fourth nomination for the prestigious prize.

She has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize on three previous occasions — with "The Handmaids Tale" (1986), "Cat’s Eye" (1989) and "Alias Grace" (1996).

In awarding the prize, chairman of the panel of Booker judges, journalist Simon Jenkins commented: "The Blind Assassin"is a complex book that works on many different levels. Far-reaching, dramatic and structurally superb, it demonstrates Atwood’s immense emotional range, as well as her poet’s eye for both telling detail and psychological truth.... Three times she has been the bridesmaid and now she is the bride."

After receiving the award, Atwood told the literati-studded gathering at the award ceremony at London’s Guildhall: "It is a very great honour and deeply gratifying."

She added: "I think the good thing about prizes is that they help lots of readers read books they otherwise wouldn’t know about or read. That’s the positive function prizes like this perform. A short-listing for this prize automatically brings the short-listed writer into public view."

Surprisingly, she spoke of children’s author Beatrix Potter as being a major influence on her writing.

Margaret Atwood was born in Ottawa, Ontario, on November 18. 1939. She is the author of more than 25 books, including fiction, poetry and essays. Among her most recent works are the bestselling novels "Alias Grace", "Cat’s Eye" and "The Robber Bride", and collections "Wilderness Tips" and "Bluebeard’s Egg". Among the many honours she has are the Canadian Governor-General’s Award, The Sunday Times Award for Literary Excellence in the UK, and Le Chevalier dans l’Ordre de Arts et Les Lettres in France. She lives in Toronto with the novelist Graeme Gibson.

For the past 25 years, Margaret Atwood has written works of striking originality and imagination. In "The Blind Assassin", she stretches the limits of her accomplishments as never before. Atwood takes the art of story telling to new heights with a novel that unfolds layer by astonishing layer and concludes in a brilliant and wonderfully satisfying finish. The result is a novel that is entertaining and at the same time profoundly serious.

Atwood’s female characters here are as complex and intriguing as they are in "Cat’s Eye". Her descriptions are so specific that every aspect of the setting comes vibrantly to life, and it is easy to imagine every detail.

"The Blind Assassin" is a tale of two sisters, one of whom dies under ambiguous circumstances in the opening pages. The plot is deceptively simple. The survivor, Iris Chase Griffen, sold into a loveless marriage at 18 to a politically prominent industrialist, is now 82 and poor, living in Port Ticonderoga, a town dominated by her once prosperous family. While bewailing her unreliable body and deriding those who try to help her, Iris reflects on her far from exemplary life and, more importantly, on the events surrounding her sister Laura’s mysterious and tragic death. The novel opens with these simple, resonant words: "Ten years after the war ended, my sister Laura drove a car off a bridge."

Iris initially seems a little cold-blooded about this death in the family. But as Margaret Atwood’s most ambitious work unfolds, with several nested narratives and even an entire novel-within-a-novel, we are reminded of just how complicated the familial game of hide-and-seek can be: "What had she been thinking of as the car sailed off the bridge, then hung suspended in the afternoon sunlight, glinting like a dragonfly, for that one instant of held breath before the plummet? Of Alex, of Richard, of bad faith, of our father and his wreckage; of God, perhaps, and her fatal, triangular bargain."

Meanwhile, Atwood launches into an excerpt from Laura Chase’s novel "The Blind Assassin", posthumously published in 1947. In this double-decker concoction, a wealthy woman dabbles in blue-collar passion, even as her lover regales her with a series of science-fiction parables. Complicated? You bet. Mercifully, the novel reads far more smoothly than its convoluted method of delivery would suggest.

The author puts all this variegation to good use, taking an expert measure of the reader’s capacity for self-delusion and complicity, not to mention desolation. Almost everybody in her sprawling narrative manages to — or prefers to — overlook what is clearly in plain sight. And memory is not much of a salve either, as Iris points out: "Nothing is more difficult than to understand the dead, I’ve found; but nothing is more dangerous than to ignore them."

Yet Atwood never succumbs to post-modern cynicism. On the contrary, she is capable of great tenderness and as the readers immerse themselves in Iris’s spliced-in memoir, it is clear that this buttoned-up socialite has been anything but blind to the chaos surrounding her.

Told in a style that captures the colloquialisms of the 1930s and the 1940s, the novel has many threads and a series of events that follow one another at a breathtaking pace. As everything comes together, readers discover that the story Atwood is telling is not only what is seems to be, but is much, much more.

The praise of her talents on the back of the jacket are certainly not over-indulgent and "The Blind Assassin" truly lives up to all the hype that now surrounds it. It moves smoothly from start to finish, and all of the stories, articles, and reflections pull you deep into the lives of the Chase sisters, and all are essential for the novel’s unexpected conclusion. Iris’s musings and Laura’s novel never feel gimmicky or false. It is positively engrossing and I realise yet again that Atwood is certainly a great writer.

P.S.: My tryst with Atwood began in 1990 after my visit to Canada, when one of the families I stayed with gifted me the entire Atwood collection (works till 1990). Since then it has been a silent prayer to see the author win the Booker. Its finally happened and now the waiting for the next novel begins.

The Booker Prize for Fiction, worth £ 21.000 ($ 29,980) to the winner, is now in its 32nd year. The winning book this year was chosen from a shortlist of six books from 120 entries in all. Each of the short-listed authors receives £ 1,000 along with a designer bound edition of his or her book.

The Booker is Britain’s most prestigious literary award, sponsored by food company Booker. Open to entries from Britain and the Commonwealth, the shortlist is, invariably, a lightning rod for criticism. This year’s shortlist too had brought the usual clamour for a literary warfare. Booker judges also reportedly bemoaned "not all of them produced their best novels this year".

Traditionally, the prize means a windfall for the author in terms of soaring book sales. Last year’s winner, J.M. Coetzee’s "Disgrace" sold over 100,000 copies in hardback and remained on the bestseller list for three months following the announcement of the prize.

Belief (A Novel) by Nikhil Kansnabish. Pages 154. Rs 150.
Miri Jiyori (A Love Story) by Rajnikanta Bordoloi and translated by P. Kotoky. Rs 195.

Both books published by Spectrum, Guwahati

IN the past five years or so Spectrum Publications, Guwahati, has brought out outstanding fiction and poetry from North-East India for the readers of literature in this part of India. Spectrum has been doing yeoman service to Assamese literature by getting the classics translated into English. They have also published some writers who actually write in English.

The novel "Belief" is written originally in English and the other love story, "Miri Jiyori" by the famous Assemese writer of the late 19th century Rajnikanta Bordoloi, is a translation by P. Kotoky, a retired professor of English from Guwahati University.

"Belief" by Nikhil Kansnabish, according to the blurb on the dust jacket, is "a promising adult novel with contemporary socio-political tones and it borders on the theme of patience and justice. The book is the second novel of the writer and it revolves round the theme of the makings of a novelist. In strong autobiographical undertones the writer talks of the trials and tribulations of a budding novelist and a frustrated one at that. Only the "belief" and faith of his beloved coupled with some friends’ concern for his literary ambitions, sees him through the publication of his "master piece" which is hailed by one and all.

Overnight the protagonist-novelist gets a celebrity status, so much so that some hooligans attack him in the market place for what he has written against them in his novel.

What is astonishing is that he goes to an advocate for advice. The advice is "The attack was a blessing in disguise. The attack certainly publicised you and your novel. I advise you to use the attack as the subject of your next novel...."

The writer seems to get all the drive and inspiration from a close reading of Shobha De’s various novels and De like, tries to capture the imagination of the reader by giving regular dollops of the so-called erotica and also a bit of romance and foreplay leading to the obvious final act.

"I heartily welcome you to my life. Flood the desert of my life with your love". Like in films, the book "The Splinters of the Sun" becomes so popular that some film makers approach the novelist-hero Dhritibrata Datta for movie rights of the novel. Everything in the novel happens in a span of 150 pages.

In the book the hero might have written a tremendously popular novel, but the present book carries all the weaknesses of a first or a second book — a thin story line, lack of insight into the psyche of various characters and, of all things, why he wants to become a novelist just because he is a man with literary ambitions? The present reviewer did enjoy reading the one-liners which the novelist has injected into the format of the book.

"No difference lies between love and politics. Both are games." or,

"By arguments you can’t get your ideas across to your listeners if they’re unable to understand you." or,

"The beautiful women woo the millionaires thinking that money makes matrimony magnificent and life lustrous."

* * *

From a novel which is set in the late 90’s of the 20th century we come to a translated novel of the late 19th century. The novel is "Miri Jiyori" and it has been translated into English after more than a hundred years of its first publication in Assamese. The novel tells a simple story of love, which flourishes on the banks of the river Sovansiri and ends in tragedy around the same river.

It is about the love of Panei and Jonki which does not find sanction from the family of the girl Panei, the girl rebels and runs away from home. The couple does find some moments of bliss and happiness in a far off village but that was not to be. They are found out and are hacked to death.

The story is reminiscent of the famous Heer Ranjha, Romeo and Juliet, Laila Majnu, Sassi Pannu and others. The story is simply told in the first person and the writer’s sympathy for the star-crossed lovers is all too apparent. The translator appears to be too faithful to the Assamese text and has not been able to say the story in its nuances of English.

The novel runs into all but 60 pages and a good number of pages have been devoted to the translation of various popular songs of those times. At best, the novel presents the history of the Miri tribe of Assam, now known as Mishings, their social background, traditions, customes and superstitions and also the natural beauty of the land and the people of North-East India. The novel in its original Assamese has endured as a classic of true love, but the translated version, I fear, does not have that sweep or style to sustain it as a "classic". The novel ends on a moralistic note.

"The love of Panei and Jonki led to terrible consequences. Old Tamed learnt a good lesson as to where the greed of gold leads. Here we finish the tragic tale.... Let’s hope that henceforth it well be all will with the Miri families."

ALMANACS make useful reference material because you find in them facts or some background information that you need in a hurry, without having to scurry off to the library. Also in them you will find light stuff that you can browse through in leisure over a cup of coffee. Compiled in this neat volume you have brief information about nations of the world, economy, travel, health, personalities and a wide range of issues that the general index with a fine print running into 29 pages indicates.

The focus and worldview, however, is definitely America-centred, as my survey of the previous year’s chronology of events showed. I looked for the US view of the Kargil war in the summer of 1999, an event which put Kashmir on centre-stage and contrasted Pakistan’s brashness as a nuclear weapon state with India’s responsible restraint. President Clinton even cancelled his schedule on the fourth of July — US Independence Day — to meet Pakistan’s Nawaz Sharif and hammer some sense into him.

No entry on Kargil but a full-page on the conflict in Kosovo. To know about Kargil you must search the chronology and get to know about what happened in two bits like this. "India Attacks Islamic Forces in Kashmir — New fighting flared on May 26 in Kashmir, which was claimed by both India and Pakistan. Some 500 armed Islamic militants had occupied positions on the Indian side of the ceasefire line. India said that Pakistan was backing the militants. From early May, clashes between the militants and the Indian army had left 300 people dead. On May 26, India began attacking the militants from the air. On May 27, Pakistan shot down two Indian jets that, India said, had crossed into Pakistan air space unintentionally.

"Islamic Militants Reportedly Leave Kashmir — The latest conflict between India and Pakistan showed signs of quietening down with the reported departure of Islamic militants who had occupied the disputed region of Kashmir. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif of Pakistan promised President Clinton in Washington, July 4, to restore the ceasefire line in Kashmir, which the militants had crossed. His ability to impose this commitment on his own military remained uncertain, and on July 7 leaders of the militants vowed to continue fighting to establish an autonomous Islamic state in Kashmir. As a border meeting on July 11, military commanders agreed to a settlement, with a full withdrawal of the militants set for July 16. Clashes continued however. Muslims killed 20 Hindus on July 20 in three attacks in Kashmir, 16 were reported dead in the battles on July 21. Indian military officials said on July 26 that the militants had been pushed out of Kashmir, ending the crisis at least for the time being."

That is Kargil for you — from the US eyes. The death in a plane crash of John F Kennedy Jr along with his wife Carolyn Baassette and sister-in-law on July 16 consumes more space. You can’t grudge this. JFK Jr was a celebrity in his own right, and Americans like to know and talk more about famous people — just what the international media picked up during those fateful days in July when we all sat glued to the TV.

* * *

The ten top news stories of 1999 listed in the almanac should give you an idea of the media priorities across the Atlantic.

• Bill Clinton’s impeachment and subsequent acquittal.

• Kosovo conflict and the air strikes against Yugoslavia to force a Serbian pullback.

• Twelve students and a teacher fatally shot by two teenagers who later killed themselves. This incident fuelled a national debate in the USAover gun control and the harmful influence of violence in the media.

• Death of King Hussein of Jordan.

• Turkish earthquake in which 16,000 perished.

• JFK Jr’s plane crash.

• East Timor’s vote for independence from Indonesia and the ensuing massacre in Dili.

• Severe drought and high temperatures in the eastern USA.

• Launching of the campaign for the 2000 presidential election.

• Dawn of the new century and millennium (officially the 20th century does not end until Dec 31, 2000).

* * *

Did you know that President Bill Clinton receives an annual salary of $ 200,000 (taxable), and an annual expence allowance of $ 50,000 (nontaxable) for costs resulting from official duties. In addition, up to $ 100,000 a year may be spent on travel expences and $ 19,000 on official entertainment (both nontaxable), available for allocation within the executive office of the President

A bill passed by Congress will entitle future US Presidents to a salary of $ 400,000 beginning in 2001. That is a 100 per cent hike, but warranted because the President’s pay has not been increased since 1969.

Now there is some added incentive for "Bore" or "Gush", and their fate should have been decided by the time you read this.

* * *

Some notable quotes in 1999.

"As I stepped out, I felt like putting a jacket over my head — so embarrassed." — King Abdullah II, the new king of Jordan, on having to take a six car motorcade, instead of a taxi, to see a movie during a visit to Washington DC.

"This is a terrible mistake because I used up all my English ... Grazie all’Italia. Grazie all’America."

— Italian actor/director Roberto Benigini, after winning his second Academy Award for his movie "Life is Beautiful".

"Mommy made a big mistake."

— Former White House intern Monica Lewinsky when asked what she would tell her future children about her relationship with President Bill Clinton.

"Now that the Senate has fulfilled its constitutional responsibility, bringing this process to a conclusion, I want to say again to the American people how profoundly sorry I am for what I said and did to trigger these events and the great burden they have imposed on Congress and on the American people."

— President Bill Clinton, following his acquittal in his impeachment trial.

"And you had the audacity to go on national television, show the world what you did, and dare the legal system to stop you. Well, sir, consider yourself stopped."

— Circuit Court Judge Jessica Cooper to Dr Jack Kevorkian before she sentenced him to prison for his videotaped mercy-killing of a patient suffering from Lou Gehrig’s disease.

* * *

More than 40 million people in the USAhave some form of arthritis — about 23 million are women and 285,000 are children. While the cause for most types of arthritis is unknown, scientists are studying the roles played by genetics, lifestyle and environment.

Alternative medicine is picking up in America. Although alternative treatment is not usually reimbursed by health insurance companies, and estimated one in three Americans uses some form of alternative medicine.

There are 1,600 licensed homoeopaths and 2,000 lay homoeopathic practioners in the USA, generating a revenue of $ 560 million. In naturopathy 2,000 licensed practioners and a like number of lay persons work to generate $ 460 million. Chiropractic (releiving pain by joint manipulation) has 60,000 licensed practioners with a listed revenue of $ 14,500 million, while massage therapy has 30,000 licensed and 130,000 other practioners generating $ 6,850 million. Ayurveda, described as India’s tradional system of natural medicine, hasn’t probably taken off fully to merit a listing of its practioners.

Mad dogs and an English Woman by Crystal Rogers Penguin Books, New Delhi. Pages 186. Rs 250.

THE lady who hated the leash" — that is the epithet that crosses one’s mind when one reads about the tenacious white woman called Crystal Rogers who made India her home for more than four decades and strove till her last days to care for fellow beings in misery, whether people or animals, more so the latter, because they cannot spell out their misery. She opened a series of shelters. The Animal’s Friend founded in Delhi in 1959, which she ran for 20 years before moving on to Jaipur where she set up a charitable trust called Help in Suffering. This time, she also opened her doors for people who had nowhere to go.

Finally, moving to Bangalore in 1990, she founded Compassion Unlimited Plus Action, another animal welfare organisation.

Her autobiography, however, refuses to fit in the usual interstices of writing about the self. Crystal, in fact, effaces the self and writes in the first person as a third person. We get very little insight into her family, except a peep into the characters who might have helped her in her formative years.

The reader has to wrench open her personal files which barely reveal what really made her the person she was. She talks of her father as a dear friend and guide and his lessons on caring and she eventually tried to internalise his love of nature. Her mother too held the view that nature is the best teacher, but Crystal’s fascination for her father and his beliefs was lifelong and stretched to the rest of her life. Her mother shares the margins of her story with her three elder brothers.

Instead of being merely a run-of-the-mill list of achievements, the story is a sharing of experience, a gentle guide for the uninitiated into the sufferings which comes by virtue of sharing other people’s pain. Her style is anecdotal and even then it is pared down to the essentials. A team of people, which include the publishers, have restructured and filled out accounts of persons, places, things and, of course, animals, for the book to read like a story, a combination of the best of the odic and the picaresque traditions.

A sketchy account of her childhood leaves the reader amused in more than one way. Quaint spellings, "Jellundar" and "Amritsa" accounts of quirky pet names — a white guinea pig called Mr Macdonald and the case of the pet baby duckling which had been hatched by an old hen — are only some of the characters which trooped in and out of her childhood.

For some psychologists who believe that children are like wet clay till the age of five, there is some cheer. For Crystal, it was her father, Colonel G.W. Rogers, who moulded her into a compassionate soul and stroked her love for animals. Although he had retired from the Indian Army, he always wanted to return to India. Perhaps Crystal inherited the yearning.

A fairytale childhood spent partly in Switzerland, where she remembers boating with her father, picking berries and listening to the sheep bells down the mountainside, her first flicker of interest was kindled... "racing barefoot down a slope after a bunch of colourful, fluttering butterflies. Not to catch them. Not to break their wings. Not to preserve them in a jar to show off to friends... (but) to share their freedom." But her compassion comes out in her dislike for a little playmate who killed butterflies because "she said they ate clothes!"

Her first memorable tryst with animals was at the age of five with an Irish terier called Paddy. Later came a series of nets, some regular and some offbeat. The pony, Blacky, and a dog, Bob, which saved their tent from being burgled. By this time, the family had also travelled to India. Later came the parrot, the guinea pig and the duckling. During this period, however, her father died. She missed her boating expeditions and the walks when he would talk to her about the trees and animals and about the value of caring and sharing. Her mother too had wanted her to grow up as a "nature’s child".

Her earlier adulthood is chronicled as a series of drifts till she started serving as an ambulance driver during World War II in 1941. It was when she was serving at a mobile canteen and library that she came across a man whose death, more than his life, changed her destiny. Partners in solitude, Crystal and Jim, an RAF officer, came together because of their love of nature, music, animals and travel. Mutual admiration took on shades of love in spite of her doubts over the difference in their age. Perhaps this was the anchor that she had been looking for after her father’s death.

Hopes of a blissful future together ended with Jim’s death in an air crash. For years she sought comfort in spirituality and mediums. Her ship slowly steered towards its purpose when at the age of 50 she reached India. The apathy of Indians to the plight of diseased and dying animals as well as destitutes horrified her. Possibly, the prophecy of a medium who had predicted that "animals in need of help will always be bought to you" was going to come true.

Even though she came to India "prepared for change and prepared to change", she had to contend with frustrating bureaucratic hassles and red tapism. From her first animal shelter on the deserted outskirts of Delhi, her journey towards saving animals from men and men from others of their own kind began. From contending with religious fanatics, who thought she was desecrating sacred grounds, to dealing with ghosts, the police and hostile neighbours, she pacified one and all. Snakes, scorpions, epidemics like distemper and friction among the staff also took their toll on her energy and finances. Money, of course, was a perennial problem. Aspersions cast on the work by every passing Tom, Dick and Harry angered her all the more. Help was few and far between.

What angered her even more were the deliberate tortures animals were subjected to. The methods of torture were different in the East and the West. While special farms and slaughter houses in the West bred animals solely for the purpose of feeding their populace and their vast cosmetic and fur industry wrecked havoc in the lives of mute creatures which could in no way protect themselves, in the East they were exploited more for earning a living as in the case of the snake charmer or the madari or the bhaluvallah or the poor farmer who used his skeletal pair of oxen to plough the unyielding earth.

Crystal pleads the case for not using animals for testing cosmetics, drugs, foods and various items of daily use. She cites the case, familiar to most of us, of thalidomide, which was declared safe for pregnant women after animal trials and led to thousands of children being born with horrifying deformities.

Age crept upon earlier than she thought. But neither that nor any amount of squabbling within her own organisations could stop her. She died forever ready to serve the cause so dear to her heart. Apart from an error in the book where the blurb claims her to have been born in India, while the first line of the Prologue says that she was born in Bedford (I presume there is no place by that name in India), the book is put together well.

Sri Lanka, LTTE, India all in a tangled web
Review by Subhash Verma

By P.A Ghosh APH Publishing Corporation, New Delhi. Pages xxviii + 215. Rs 500.

ETHNICITY, regionalism and communalism, along with poverty and unemployment are some of the problems faced by the Third World countries. These problems have generated separatist movements and posed serious challenges to these states. However, the type and degree of intensity of these movements vary from country to country.

It is not true that before independence ethnic tensions were alien to these societies. The only difference was that due to national independence movements and the presence of a common enemy in the form of the colonial rulers, these tensions did not surface in the politics of these countries.

Recently, however, these tensions have acquired a dimension of violence and extremism. It is important to mention that the cause of ethnic tension is not exactly the same everywhere. In general, however, it is the socio-political deprivation as perceived by an ethnic community, which leads to a conflict between contending communities and between these communities and the state.

In the post-independence period many of these states adopted discriminatory policies against certain communities by denying them legitimate civil and political rights. The political and economic structures inherited from colonial rule were used without making any changes. Moreover, the absence of necessary improvements in governance to suit geographical conditions and linguistic and religious requirements of the minority communities further aggravated the situation.

These communities felt that they were denied their share in national wealth, education and employment. On the one hand, this weakened their faith in the state system and, on the other hand, they started viewing other communities as their enemies. This ultimately led to the emergence of secessionist movements, which not only adversely affected the process of nation-building but also resulted in the division and disintegration of some of these states.

Ethnic diversity has been almost universal and has existed throughout history. Sri Lanka is no exception in this regard. But here, its nature has been changing from time to time. Therefore, the present conflict cannot be seen merely as a continuation of the traditional conflict. The author has presented a detailed and comprehensive account of the genesis and various dimensions of Sri Lankan ethnic crisis.

The book is divided into six chapters which include the introduction. The first three chapters deal with the origin of the ethnic conflict and the causes of the emergence of the Tamil Eelam movement. The last three chapters examine the geo-strategic importance of Sri Lanka and India’s security concerns, and the impact of the Lankan crisis on India’s domestic life and the security environment in South Asia.

India’s response to these challenges, the changing motives of the IPKF operations and the cost, cause of the failure and the lessons learnt are also explained. In order to achieve the above aims and objectives, the author has adopted a historical, geographical, descriptive and analytical approach.

Sri Lanka is a multi-racial and multi-religious state. Different segments of the population are along ethnic, religious and linguistic lines. The Sinhalese are in majority and are concentrated in the western and southern parts of the Island. They are mainly Buddhist. The Tamils, on the other hand, are the largest minority group. They are of Dravidian origin and are predominantly Hindus.

The racial antagonism in Sri Lanka goes back to the evolution of the Sinhalese and Tamil communities. The historical perception of these two communities with each other has coloured their perceptions of the present problem. According to Buddhist mythology, the Sinhalese are early migrants from north India, whereas the Tamil chronicles claim that some Sri Lankan Tamils were the first to inhabit Sri Lanka and the Sinhalese came much later.

Therefore both communities have been putting forward rival claims in establishing their racial and cultural superiority and administrative hegemony over each other. The Sinhalese, instead of treating the Tamils as a minority, view them as a dominant community by virtue of the fact that they are backed by those from South India. Both groups have been suspicious of each other. The Tamils feel that they may be swamped by the Sinhalese. The fact, however, is that the Tamils of South India and SriLanka together grossly outnumber the Sinhalese. This is seen by the Sinhalese as a potential threat to their existence. This was the beginning of the Sinhalese animosity to the Indian Tamils who were seen as undesirable elements in Sri Lanka.

Apart from historical and cultural factors, some other factors also played a prominent role in the discord between the two communities. First, there were the discriminatory Citizenship Act of 1948 and 1949. These Acts were basically designed to deny citizenship and voting rights to the Indian Tamil settlers in order to divide the Tamils in the island.

The second important issue which gave rise to the ethnic crisis was the Sri Lankan government’s policy of colonisation in the Tamil-dominated areas. The Sinhalese called it simply a policy of land distribution and settlement from the densely populated areas of southwest to the northern and eastern provinces. In fact, it was planned to reduce the Tamils to a minority community in their traditional homeland. The Tamils saw it as a direct threat to the survival of their community.

Discrimination against the Tamils in education, in services and in economic activities was another factor which played a crucial role. Various educational and employment policies, initiated by different governments in the post-independence period were anti-Tamil in nature.

Under the new policy of standardisation students from the underdeveloped areas were given preference over those from the advanced areas like Jaffna and Colombo. Not only this. A new policy of district quota and area weightage was also introduced in 1972. This policy was called Special Marking System subject-wise and medium-wise.

Although these policies were applicable to all the communities, the Tamil suffered the most because of their heavy stakes in education. Consequently, the number of Tamil students in higher education and subsequently in government jobs came down drastically.

Besides this, the Tamil-dominated areas were also neglected while establishing new industries and initiating other economic activities. For instance, the Sinhalese were given preference while issuing export-import licences. This caused frustration and resentment in the Tamil population.

Another reason for the cultural discord between the two communities was the Official Language Act of 1956 which declared that the Sinhalese would be the only official language of Sri Lanka.This was considered by the Tamils as ethnic discrimination in their homeland. The new Constitution inaugurated in 1972 not only reiterated that the Sinhalese would be the sole official language but also conferred special privileges on Buddhism.

The intense anger and resentment due to continuous discrimination and deprivation of the Tamils in every sphere of life ultimately convinced them that their collective salvation lies only in the creation of a separate state and that they must attain it, even through violent revolutionary means if necessary.

Initially, India did not pay much attention to the ethnic problem in Sri Lanka and considered it as an internal one. The nature of Indian involvement in and its policies towards the Sri Lankan ethnic crisis has never been static. In the beginning, it was labelled as covert involvement, which later on became a mediatory role. Finally, it took the shape of direct intervention.

At one stage, the idea of involvement was just to diffuse the pressure exerted by the people of Tamil Nadu in the form of statewide bandhs, strikes and attempts at self-immolation, etc. to support or to save the fellow Tamils in Sri Lanka. This was clear in 1980 to 1987 when Tamil guerrillas were provided all help in establishing their offices and training camps in Chennai.

A factor that determined the nature of Indian involvement was the apprehension of threats to the security environment in the south of the country by the continuing tension in Sri Lanka. It was feared that it could lead to a possible covert or overt intervention of extra-regional powers in Sri Lanka. In this context, the US stakes in Sri Lanka were quite understandable in view of its desire for exclusive harbour facilities in the Indian Ocean. On the other hand, it is possible to believe that India supported the Tamil groups in order to put pressure on the pro-western Jayewardene government.

There was a perception in Indian governmental circles that Jayewardene’s approach to various countries, such as the USA, Pakistan and China, for military and political support was inimical to India’s security interests in the region.

Second, the Indian government’s approach to the conflict in Sri Lanka was also moulded by the impact this conflict had on the politics in Tamil Nadu. The people of Tamil Nadu have close ethnic, cultural and religious links with the Tamils in Sri Lanka. Therefore they felt that they could not remain silent spectators to atrocities committed on fellow Tamils in Sri Lanka.

Under the pressure of this public sympathy, political parties in Tamil Nadu also extended support to the Tamil movement in Sri Lanka. Obviously, they did this to safeguard their own political interests. This attitude of the political parties, in turn, had its impact on the political parties at the national level.

All these factors forced the Indian government to intervene in the situation. Yet, India was not interested in an independent state of the Sri Lankan Tamils. It only wanted to solve the crisis by playing a mediatory role. The Indian intention was to make it clear to the Sri Lankan government that India could not tolerate the mediation of other regional or extra-regional powers because such an intervention would directly affect India’s regional security concerns. This attitude became clearly visible when Indira Gandhi repeatedly told Jayewardane that developments in Sri Lanka affected India and thus India could not be regarded just as any other country.

In 1987 the Sri Lankan government launched Operation Liberation against the Tamil guerrilla forces. This gave a new turn to ethnic crisis in Sri Lanka. An important development that resulted from this was that the phase of India’s covert and mediatory role changed into direct intervention.

Accordingly, on June 4, 1987, India took a drastic step when it allowed the Indian aircraft to enter Sri Lankan air space and drop 25 tonnes of relief supplies at Jaffna under the operation code-named "Eagle". Not only this, Rajiv Gandhi, then Prime Minister of India, warned Jayewardene to desist from military occupation of Jaffna. These developments culminated in the signing of a peace agreement between India and Sri Lanka on July 29, 1987.

The initial objective of the agreement was to ensure the protection and promotion of socio-political and economic interests of the Tamil people in a united Sri Lanka, and suspension of all military action against the Tamils by the Sri Lankan armed forces. In return, Tamil militants were to give up the idea of a separate Tamil Eelam. The understanding was that political and diplomatic negotiations are the best possible methods to deal with the ethnic problem.

In the beginning, the LTTE’s reaction was positive and it reluctantly accepted the agreement. But after some time it dissociated from it by saying that it was an unfair agreement which India was trying to impose on it. Consequently, in October, 1987, the LTTE resumed its violent activities. Following these events, on October 9, 1987, India decided to forcibly disarm the LTTE. This is how the role of the IPKF was transformed from peacekeepers to peace-makers.

Sri Lankan Tamils who initially cheered and welcomed the IPKF, turned hostile towards it and the whole mission failed to achieve the desired result. Whatever may be the role played by the adverse climatic conditions and other geographical hurdles, the major causes of the failure of the mission was the great ambivalence in India’s political and military strategy. Second, the Indian government did not have a well-planned and consistent policy on the crisis.

India failed to conceive a situation where its armed forces, intended for peace-keeping, would be drawn into a protracted armed conflict with the LTTE. Not only this, it was also observed that the IPKF had neither a perception nor a mandate during its operations in Sri Lanka. Moreover, warring factions were not party to the agreement of 1987.

In addition to this, for a successful operation the IPKF, on the one hand, should have sought local public support and, on the other hand, it should have mastered the environmental and geographical conditions. The IPKF failed because it was sent with a confused motive. At the very least, it was proved a hasty decision.

However, it is significant to note that whatever may be the cause of failure, the deployment of the IPKF decidedly saved the, island republic from territorial disintegration. It also helped in bringing normalcy to public life and reviving the administration in Jaffna. Furthermore, it made possible to hold three consecutive elections — namely, of the Provincial Council in 1988, the presidential election in 1988 and the parliamentary election in 1989.

In overall terms, it can be concluded that Tamil nationalism is deeply linked to the rise of Sinhalese nationalism. The LTTE’s demand for a separate state is primarily because of the continued Sinhalese control over successive governments and the discriminatory policies adopted by these governments, which ultimately resulted in the growing gap between the socio-political and economic conditions of the Tamil community and those of the Sinhalese community.

Jai, AIDS Devi!
Review by Stephen David in Mensikethanahalli (Karnataka)

THIRTY km out of Mysore on the Mysore-Mandya highway, a milestone reads: "AIDSamma Temple. 2 km." There are Bhagwatiamma and Kamakshiamma, two powerful female deities, enshrined with the power to destroy evil and grant wishes to the faithful. There are other ammas who draw strength from Hinduism’s vast and varied pantheon.

But AIDSamma?

Curious? Then take the detour, and chances are, even before you reach the shrine at the heart of Mensikethanahalli in Bannur taluk, the villagers would have educated you about how this is no ordinary temple, but a symbolic propitiation to what they believe is the goddess or "amma" of AIDS, the four letters that spell death.

There is eagerness — and pride — as the villagers speak. A pride that comes from being self-taught. As recently as two years ago, they knew nothing of Acquired Immuno Deficiency Syndrome, the result of HIV infection. The conservative, poor farming village of 1,300 had never heard of the killer. But today they not only know about the scourge, they also want to spread that awareness to as many people as they can.

This strange mix of science and religion is a compulsion that was born out of loss. In May, 1997, Kalegowda, a 37-year-old farmer, succumbed to AIDS. Ten months later his wife Marisidamma followed. Their cruel deaths — two healthy people wasting away in front of their eyes — shocked the villagers, more so since they could not fathom the cause. Village elder Ramegowda recalls how perplexed they had been at Kalegowda’s cremation when they were not allowed to go near the body. "Our brother was treated like a pariah on his last journey", he says sadly.

But two men from Mysore — Surya Kumar and Ningegowda Girish — changed all that. Teachers at the local government high school, the two of them would commute to Mensikethanahalli from Mysore by bus everyday. On the way, they would discuss the way in which the villagers had been affected by the death of the couple. And about how they could not afford to remain ignorant about AIDS.

Kumar, Girish and the school headmaster, Ilyas Ahmed, soon hit upon an idea. They began writing simple slogans in Kannada about the malaise on the walls of the school building. The response was overwhelming. In no time, the villagers were motivated enough to learn more about the killer disease. They began asking questions on their own and arming themselves with information. They even went from house to house to share what they knew.

As the self-education campaign gained momentum, the idea of a shrine was floated by the schoolteachers. A contractor who was building a library block for the gram panchayat, or village council, readily offered to provide material for the AIDS temple. Within weeks, the villagers, under the leadership of Madegowda, an influential elder, pooled about Rs 4,000 — even school children contributed — and the shrine, a concrete slab on a foundation, was constructed.

Propitiating the gods to fight physical ailments such as plague and small pox is an old practice in Karnataka, much like the rest of the country. It is believed that prayer serves as an effective deterrent and hence many such temples have come up. Though many of these do have deities, the AIDSamma shrine has a painting of a boy and a girl with a red "virus" marked on it. Each morning, the locals come here, light incense sticks or camphor and offer puja. They also make sure they are up to date with the information in Kannada inscribed on the temple pillars: everything from what AIDS is, to how it is caused and how it can be prevented.

K.S. Nanjunda Dixit, a temple priest, feels the Karnataka Government should take the initiative and build temples to AIDSamma in all districts to help spread awareness. He points to how even school-going children in Mensikethanahalli are now aware of the disease, thanks to this medium of education. "We have to be careful in our interaction with people," offers K.C. Vanitha, a 15-year-old schoolgirl. "One wrong move and we are finished."

* * *

Defying gravity
by N.K. Singh in Nimar (MP)

IT defies all the established laws of gravity but try telling that to the tribals of Nimar region in western Madhya Pradesh who, using ancient skills handed down over the ages, irrigate their fields by forcing water uphill — without the use of pumps or other similar devices.

With the help of a generations-old technique the Bhilala and Bhil tribesmen here break the flow of streams and divert the water, sometimes up to heights of over 50 ft. "It’s amazing," marvels Anupam Mishra, a Gandhian environmentalist and author of a book on ancient water bodies.

"It’s very simple actually," says Jaimal Singh, a Bhilala tribal and anti-gravity irrigation expert. Once the stream is dammed, he explains, its flow is diverted through small channels towards the tops of small hills where the fields are located.

Circuitous routes and intricate bends are used to avoid steep gradients in sending the water uphill, and advantage is taken of the natural siphoning process and the sheer force of an impounded stream.

Only the tribals possess the requisite skills for this, according to Thakur Shivcharan Singh, a local landlord who employed tribal workmen to introduce the technique in his fields. "Ask any plains-man to use this technique," says the impressed Thakur, "and I am sure he will fail."

The technique is in great demand, and so are the technicians. Two famous practitioners of the art are two Bhilala brothers from the Devnalaya village in Khandwa district. The younger brother, Jam Singh, is in a neighbouring village setting up an irrigation system for which he was paid Rs 1,450. The elder, Gul Singh, is helping a relative build a similar system. Says Jaimal, his son, with pride: "Not everyone knows the art."

Thirty years ago, Gul settled in Devnalaya, buying a barren hillock for a song. Today the tribals use the technique to irrigate more than 40 acres of land spread along the 30 ft high hill, growing cash crops such as cotton and peanuts.

In a landscape devoid of greenery, and with government funded irrigation facilities almost non-existent, the enterprising tribals have become objects of envy. The systems they have developed in the area are impressive. In one case, a Bhil tribal took water first up and over one hill and then, using a siphon made of bamboo, took it up another hill to where his fields were located. Says Jaimal: "Every bend in the canal means we can lift the water up one foot."

To create such a system, an "expert" first surveys the area and blocks the stream, then creates a furrow around the hillock with a ploughshare for the water to flow. If the water refuses to follow a particular route, a different one is taken.

The entire operation takes no more than a fortnight.

The system, as Jaimal points out, has various advantages. It costs almost nothing to build, nor is it dependent on a power source. Further, the time taken to build the system is relatively short and the maintenance cost negligible.

The only breakdown can be caused by vagaries of nature. If rainfall in the area is scanty and the stream dries up, nothing can be done. And for a majority of farmers, one bad crop is a serious setback to survival. For example, Shivpratap Singh, who had used the technique for almost six years to irrigate a large part of his 100-acre farm, recently abandoned it in favour of the conventional tubewell.

Others may soon follow, replacing the ancient art with modern methods of irrigation. Much of this also has to do with the social impact of modernity even in remote rural areas, with joint families splitting up, land disputes rising — inheritance often breaks up a large holding into many tiny ones — and land itself becoming scarce.

Consequently, very few tribals are willing to utilise the large amount of land needed for the system, often translating into almost a quarter of the total cultivable land. For the system to work effectively, a kilometre-long canal is needed to take water up a distance of a few hundred metres. It looks as if this art, like many other ancient and arcane ones, could dry up in the years ahead.

* * *

THERE’S a certain sadness to the scene as Alimuddin Haider climbs the steps of the Bara Imambara in old Lucknow and stops before the bhul bhulaiyan, the famous maze that still confuses and enthralls visitors to this city that the nawabs of Avadh, or Oudh as it was known in colonial times, made famous.

He might have looked regal in his sherwani and smart aviator glasses, but one is frayed, the other anachronistic. There’s a sigh, a wistfulness, as he surveys the maze before him. "Ah, it’s here that our past glory is trapped", he whispers. Before he is overwhelmed by memories of his princely antecedents, Haider rouses himself and resumes his duties as the meagerly paid Daroga-e-Asfaud, the keeper of the mosque at Daula Imambara.

Haider belongs to the royal family of Avadh that built the mosque. But the fabled lifestyle is for him just that: a fable. He has to make do with his monthly salary of Rs 500 from a trust that runs the Imambara. Few care about his lineage so it is of some comfort to Haider that a handful people still call him Jio Nawab. And that is why Haider holds on so desperately to that one remnant of his family’s opulent past: the wasiqua.

The wasiqua, a fixed share in the interest earned by the loans given by the rulers of Avadh to the East India Company, is the one reminder that Haider was once an aristocrat. It hardly matters that the sum he gets is a measly Rs 32.50 a month.For wasiqua-holders the value of the endowment is much more than the money it brings. "The glorious past is our sole possession," declares Nawab Mehdi Mirza, 55, who supplements his Rs 500 a month typist’s job in the Wasiqua Office with a Rs 23.20 wasiqua.

Sustained more by pride than by substance, the 1,200 descendants of the Avadh rulers, of whom about 20 currently live in Lucknow—the former capital of the sprawling kingdom as well as the present Uttar Pradesh state—queue up every month at the Wasiqua Office to receive their money, ranging from Rs 5 to Rs 800. There is a proud flourish as they sign the receipts for amounts that go about as far as inflation and an archaic sense of pride takes it in modern India — not very far. "We know we cannot feed even a parrot with the money," says Nawab Ali Mirza, 56, a wasiqua-holder. "But if we don’t claim it, our link with the past is snapped."

According to records, Ghazi-ud-Din Haider, ruler of Avadh in the early 19th century, was so wealthy that he gave loans to the East India Company on several occasions. The British borrowed Rs 10 million at 6 per cent a year interest in 1814 and a similar amount two years later and in 1825. The East India Company had undertaken to distribute the interest on the perpetual loan to the ruler’s descendants.

After the British government took over Avadh in 1886, legislation formalised the payment of interest money. A trust headed by the divisional commissioner of Lucknow and including Shia members of the royal families was created to manage the funds. This responsibility was passed on to the Indian Government after independence in 1947.

However, what is a blessing can also be a bane — pride extracts its price. Ali Mirza echoes the sentiments of many when he says, "Being descendants of kings, we cannot beg, We are silently facing starvation." Nawab Jafar Mir Abdullah, now an antique dealer, admits that the wasiqua is a curse. Agar yeh wasiqua na hota to shayad unke andar kuchh karne ki justujoo hoti (if not for the wasiqua, they might have learnt to do something)," he says in elegant Urdu of the families who live in penury but refuse to work.

Syed Kalbe Hussan, or Kabban Nawab as he is more popularly known, says that the nawabs, themselves highly educated, did not prepare their children for the drastic change in India’s history.

This is a big psychological burden. The wasiqua-holders are sentimental and become upset at things they consider insults: being ignored at public events, not being invited to independence day and Republic Day functions and, worst of all, being called paupers.

But there’s little they try to do about it, except perhaps look at history’s maze and wonder if there is a way out.

* * *

AN overcrowded metropolis of 10 million people with 125-year-old drainage and water supply systems which routinely overflow, burst and malfunction. Large parts of the city look derelict. A city which was famously described as "dying" by a former Prime Minister of India — leading to much self-righteous protest from its citizens — and is better known in India and the world as a template of poverty, sloth and urban ruin.

Calcutta, is a place many love to hate. For Parameswaran Thankappan Nair, it is just the opposite. A three decade-old-affair with Calcutta shows no signs of souring. He has translated his infatuation into more than 10 years of painstaking research and 27 authoritative books on the city.

For last decade he has been doing the dirty work which no Bengali wanted to do: compiling information and publishing books on the city’s streets, its fourth estate, life between the 17th and 19th century — the period of genesis and growth — its hotels and bars, nomenclature and the municipality. Nair’s current opus is a multi-volume work on the 200 year-old Asiatic Society. Sifting through hundreds of pages of dog-eared archival material through the day and typing and editing the text through the night, he expects to complete the first volume in just six months.

This is his most ambitious exercise since he completed "A History of Calcutta Streets", an exhaustive 1,000-page work on the etymology and the history of at least a thousand of the 3,000-odd streets of the city. For nearly two decades, Nair, now over 60, actually trudged through all these streets on foot, talking to residents and unearthing the streets’ histories.

For this unobtrusive chronicler of Calcutta, it all began in the early fifties when he had to jettison plans for higher studies after his father’s grocery store started running up losses. He travelled without a ticket on a train to Calcutta from Manjapra village in Kerala. Lessons in typewriting helped him eke out a living as a stenographer in half-a-dozen firms in Calcutta. His princely earnings jumped from Rs 125 a month to Rs 300 in 1957 when he joined the Archaeological Survey of India and was posted to Shillong.

He returned to Calcutta in 1965 as a "rehash journalist, rewriting stuff" for a little-known journal called Engineering Times. He quit this job in 1981 because he wanted to concentrate on his first love. "Calcutta was then beckoning me like never before," recalls Nair. "She had given me shelter and sustenance. I had to return the favour."

The stodgy Calcutta establishment has steadfastly refused to acknowledge his efforts. Armchair intellectuals and academics have derided him as little more than a rag-picker. While critics and academics deliberate endlessly — often pointlessly — on whether Nair should be described as an historian or a chronicler, the man himself has no lofty pretensions. "I have just plugged some gaps that existed in Calcutta’s history," he says. The effort hasn’t gone entirely unnoticed, although it is still grudging. Dr Nitish Ranjan Roy, director of the Calcutta-based Institute of Historical Studies, says Nair’s major contribution has been his "bringing together all available archival material on Calcutta written in various languages".