Nepal: the Rising Sun in the Himalayas

Just back from Nepal. The Himalayan Kingdom turned the latest laboratory of pluralist democracy born out of a bloody movement.

Task was to train 32 journalists, seniors and freshers, to launch the first set of two business dailies in Nepal: Dainik Arthik Abhiyan in Nepali and Nepal Bizline in English.

Great learning, sharing, fun and serious work for ten hours a day for ten days, a whopping 100 hours session!

From whatever little I could manage to go around and see the city and meet the people, it is clear that the nation is a good case-study to understand the strength and fallacies of democracy, of economic dependence, of painful but luring westernization, et al.

Every major news channel and entertainment program of Indian media has some clone there, local version. There are some good shows too, though! India bashing is a favourite pastime with many, but the dependence at every level on the Big Brother next door cannot be just wished away.

The king once lived on the compensation of the Britishers for taking away a part of the Terai region. A section of the elite lives on the pension of the British army. Another section does loads of currency hawala business around.

The last government budget was of Nepalese Rs.650 billion (Indian Rs.100= Nepalese Rs.160), whereas there are more than 400 banks, savings funds, investment funds, non-banking companies, and insurance companies! Quite a disproportionate one!

A favourite pastime is politicking through the papers and in every corner of the streets! Argumentative Indian of Amartya Sen can now have a new avatar in the form of Politicking Nepali! Good in a sense....strong opinions and awareness leading to some action on the streets as well. But bad in a way as well.....loss of time, energy, nation-building compromised.

Three years are over, the nation still continues with the process of making the Constitution of the nascent republic by its Constituent Assembly!

The Maoists combatants are not there in the jungles, but they are there unarmed in barracks. It is a situation of being there and not there at the same time! Divisions are there in every major political force....

A group of strong entrepreneurs are rising, embarking upon courageous path of creating wealth and employment. An army of fly-by-night operators and quick-fix agents also emerging fast!

A large group of youth are romantically idealist and expect things to happen fast, specially after they have seen the monarchy bite the dust.....at least for now!

From Koirala of Congress, to Prachanda of Maoists, to Madhav Nepal of Communists: all got a chance in recent past....

But none has been able to become a Statesman, in a nation from which the world can learn about democractic movement that embraces the extremists and the centrists alike!

A nation of great possibilities.....

A nation of queer idiosyncracies....

A people of hard work and enterprise and deep faith in religion and culture.....

A people who collectively lack a unified vision and way to move ahead.....

The contradiction was so ably demonstrated by the duality of aarati and burning pyre together close to Pashupati mandir, the co-existence of milk and honey drenched Shiva and stench and filth of the Ganges next door!

While the richest and the most educated youth are leaving the nation for greener pastures, one may look forward to the middle class socially rooted but enterprising youth to come to lead the nation next....

Letter from Manaus (Amazon)

Glasses of Campri and Malibu. Bowls of fish soup followed by Amazonian fish fry. Dishes of Oriental boneless chicken. Sauce and ghee cooked fish, and fish in white sauce with prawns….

Well, well, that’s not the Menu of an Amazonian restaurant, but the list of items which we had the luck to eat over and over and over again in our three memorable days in Manaus, the capital city of Amazonas, and located at the heart of Amazonian region. And, kudos to the Karu Grill Restaurant of the Hotel Tropical Manaus, these items became examples of some unforgettable cuisine for us.

But, that’s not all. We did not go to Manaus just to eat exotic food. That was the bonus.

The real gain was the most enchanting trip of my life: a three hours (extended to five) upstream and three hours downstream journey through the heart of the 3940 miles long Amazon river with hardly the banks on either side being visible when you are in the centre of the river.

Well, no adventure, except going to Mt Everest or to the South Pole, can equal this one on the Amazon. Amazing Amazon mesmerized all of us on board.

The journey started at sharp 6 am on a bright sunny June morning and went on till 11 noon which should have been finished a couple of hours before that. We were shooting on the way and one of the two steamers we were traveling in developed a technical snag for which we waited at the centre of the river and to our glee, indeed.

If you can still see the vague line of huge trees in the forests on your right, the left bank is totally merged with the horizon and it is only the clear slow-paced mass of water on all sides that winks at you.

We went a few hundred metres into the forest, shot a few families therein for the purpose we were there, and visited a makeshift wooden products-and-art gallery made by the folks out there. It was so fascinating to note that even in such interiors far away from the mainstream society and media and culture, simple jungle-folks had their aesthetics right.

Standing amid millions of huge trees and next to a few bamboo and wood houses, our local Brazilian friend recounted the legend of Anaconda, a fictitious serpent character built around myths surrounding the Amazon river and the forest.

On return there was another round of fish, chicken, soup and Malibu waiting for us at the beautiful palace hotel by the beach. In our true Rajasthani style, this was Brazilian royal family’s abode turned into a luxury hotel of today with just two floors and a huge land around resplendent with flowers and greenery, and all leading to the august Amazon flowing by.

As we took the flight back to India via Sao Paolo and London, we met two interesting Brazilian gentlemen.

One is an agricultural scientist, an expert of bio-diesel and a strong votary of the merits of monacinto crops, who gave us an overview of Brazil’s strength of agriculture and water resources. Brazil has the single largest water reservoir of inland water in the world, and Brazil has an agricultural strength equaled by only two other nations, plus the bio-diesel experiment has taken deep-roots in the Brazilian life.

The second gentleman is a professor of History in a university in Brasilia who hates the American way of looking at things and says how different he found Mexico to be from what the American media, literature and images taught him all his life till we had gone to Mexico. This gentleman explained how a large part of Brazilian intelligentsia hates the ‘Yankees’ for their use of the Latin American land and people for ‘trade, sex, beer and natural resources’ exploiting the ‘American’ tag of the Latinos. The ‘Big American Dream’ has been hard-sold by them to the Latinos to make the best business of any and everything.

How I wish the star-struck Indians dreaming of the raining dollars in the God’s own country in the US of A could hear this erudite gentleman who leads the academia in social sciences of a Brazilian University!!

June 18, 2006

Letter from Fortuleza

Today was the Brazil versus Croatia match. A lot of expectations, hopes and excitement in the air all over Brazil today. There is a virtual riot of the yellow and green T-shirts all around. These are the colours of the national flag and the jersey of the national team of Brazil, and the colours which virtually symbolize the Brazilian national spirit. Even the young ladies in the Fortuleza beach are having sea-bath and tanning their skin with yellow and green bikinis.

We saw the match with another 500 young cheering Brazilians in Crocobeach, a beachside restaurant which has a great view of crocodiles coming out of a large lake close by and having ‘sun-bath’!

You have to just see the spirit to believe it. Cans of beer and fruit juice, fried and baked snacks, fish and chicken delicacies, peanuts and cashew-nuts: all flowed like water and sank like sand in these voraciously eating youth in just no time and all eyes glued to the large screens hungry for a goal.

When Brazil gave the first goal you have to see the rejoicing. Strangers hugged and kissed strangers, friends went into a fit of frenzy. And, me and my camera-man had our dose of innocent fun too!! Brazil played badly but won the game 1-0 and the nation had a huge collective relief.

Then, we had a visit the next day to the interiors of the province where we were given a warm welcome by a large group of rural Brazilians, as we were led by the WHO Goodwill Ambassador, Yohei Sasakawa, the Chairman of the Japan-based The Nippon Foundation.

The revelry and spirit of the common man in the villages are also something to admire and get infected with. The common folks, in common dresses had uncommon smiles on their faces and had a hug for every one. They danced, sang, and we shot them to our hearts content.

They forgot the fact the 10% of Brazilians control 90% of the wealth and production means of the nation. They forgot that their average monthly family income was just 400 Brazilian Rheas (1 Rheas equals Rs.22), while the Sonata car we booked for a day is costing us 350 Rheas!

I later heard that commercial sex work is quite common as many village girls go to the nearby beach-towns and earn 100-200 Rheas a night to supplement family income. It also seems that the culture of the nation is somewhat liberal. ‘Have it, so flaunt it’ seems to be the adage.

But then there is a tremendous zest for life, innocence among the children and the teenagers, and a class among the youth. I will never forget that smiling lady in a lovely pink and off white evening gown who could hardly speak English but communicated a lot with her little words, small pieces of information, caring observations and glowing smiles.

Beyond the urban and rural glaring schism which saddened me a lot, the other thing that ruined my time in Furtoleza was the abysmal situation in the airport and the TAM flights schedules rescheduled three times before I had to fly through Terasina and Brasilia to Manaus while we had a direct flight.

What I understood in the process is that since the nation has just 22 crores of people, and rich are very less though they are stinking rich, the flights in Brazil are very few and far in between, highly expensive and with services on the poorer side. There is indeed a large market for low-cost no-frills airlines with reasonable services.

Deccan Air, Spicejet, GoAir, Paramount Air…….. are you all hearing??
June 16, 2006

Letter from Brasilia

As the plane rapidly starts flying down and you get ready to disembark, you see a small part of the city with high-rise state-of-the-art buildings and modern monuments, and surrounding it a vast area of single storey tiles-roofed buildings all around.

You alight from Varig Airlines, Brazil’s national airlines of 79 years, at Brasilia, the current new created and extremely planned capital city, shifting the previous headquarters from the extreme southern city of Rio to keep the northern poorer part of Brazil happier.

As you drive past huge buildings and on wide, clean, spotless tarred roads of a ‘developing nation’ in its capital city, you all of a sudden realize that the city is created on Western and more particularly American model on one hand, and on the other, it is a city of some individuals here and there, but no ‘people’ as such to call it their own.

And, as you meet the Secretaries of Ministries, a few ministers, and visit the Senate and meet its Vice President too, the realization further dawns that Brasilia is a town-planner’s marvel, architect’s wonder with several thousands of powerful individuals, without any mass of people who can call it their own city with a distinct culture.

The aloofness, the pompousness, the ‘systematic approach’, the structured life and living ARE its culture today.

Ironically, the single illustrious architect and town-planner of Brazil who had built this city and its landmark buildings, Mr Oscar Niami, is a left-wing professional and had wanted to create a people-centric transparent city with large spaces, lots of greenery, usually glass-walls of buildings (including the huge Presidential office), avoiding any loss of constructed space in frills, etc.

On the positive side, the capital city and its ministerial buildings are extremely well-planned, as if a master-scheme of the town-planner has just literally risen above the ground straight from the drawing board.

The green and grey ministerial buildings look exactly the same, and unless you look at the metallic names of the ministries on their front walls, you will not be able to distinguish one from the other.

Then the most significant thing to see is the spotless cleanliness in each department of the government, the Senate and the Parliament, the paperless-ness of the offices, the evident e-governance practices, the lack of stringency in security and the aura of confidence and friendliness all around. And, all this when contrasted to our ministerial environs in our Delhi offices, the stark difference is all the more evident.

Move around seven to eight kilometers beyond the city centre, you come to a sea of poorer colonies of single storey buildings, and another twenty kilometers later, the entire area around is vacant land, water, some jungles, et al.

Brasilia, the capital of Brazil, the first of the BRICKS countries with a strong infrastructure and a promise of being Latin American economic giant, was created in a large vacant land out of nowhere, in the heart of the country, with a debt so huge (do not know the exact figure: different estimates are there) that till today the nation and the common man are smarting under a debt-trap.

A modern Tughlaqi creation? A master-plan of American business lobby to sell a dream and all steel and cement of the dream to the largest nation in South America and keep it permanently indebted to itself?

June 15, 2006

Letter from Rio

The biggest landmark of Rio de Janeiro is the huge hillock like statue of Jesus Christ, the Redeemer, atop Mata Atlantica, overlooking the entire Rio, with his hands spread into the air, in a gesture to embrace the mankind with his kindest love. And, the road that takes you to him, called Green Line, a steep electrical train railroute, going up for four kilometres amid natural vegetation and overlooking the city from within the trees at times. On the top, it is the greatest sight you may expect to see from such a height. And, with the falling sun, a roseatte sky, Jesus becomes all the more divine and the mankind below all the more distant. The city is like a great master-plan of a town-planner expressed through a live model. And, the day changes from bright daylight to the falling rays of dusk, and so does the look of the city. After seeing hundreds and thousands of men and women, all fair, yellow, tanned, and dark, with clothes next to nothing, and with an abundance of smiles, hugs, beer and kisses, it was a relief in a sense to go to meet Jesus up there. Rio is fun, just fun, a paradise for the tourists, a haven of drugs and drug-lords running a parallel administration in selected areas, a pilgrimage too, and Copacabana and Ipanema beaches providing the perfect holiday for the single ready to mingle, for the couple ready to double, and for the family wanting to pay homilies to one another.
I have come to know first time that across the Copacabana beach and even Ipanama beach, there are some 10-12 points, one point being of say 200-300 metres stretch. One point is for the gays only, one point for the lesbians, one for the intellectuals (artists, writers, media honchos, academics, etc), one for gender activists, one for the plain and simple company-seeking singlers, one for the couples, and what not.
This is the latest caste-system I am enlightened with after the infamous caste-based quota system and the battle against it in the only nation of the world where a section of the citizens feel proud and privileged to be called ´backward´ and take more pride in remaining so.
The economics of World Cup was evident when I had gone to buy a phone card. The usual 100 US dollar phone card was available with 20% extra time given with the request that I pray for Brazil´s repeated championship this time too, and if my prayers are answered favourably by the Almighty, I will get another 100 USD card FREE!! I just could not say to that pretty 20-something Brazilian lady with green and blue attire (in that whatever little she was wearing) that I shall NOT be in Brazil till the end of the games and would not be there to claim the additional 100 dollar benefit!
Merchandise is a big business with a hyped up event, and is proven no better by the sheer speed at which the Brazilian football uniform is being sold: green and yellow T-shirts. Yours sincerely included!Great time in Rio. See you soon, Brasilia, Furteleza, Manaus, Sao Paolo..... Work starts now, after my cameraman reaches in an hour, yesterday was just fun. Love to you all. June 14, 2006

Brazil: An Ongoing Dream

Brazil, an intense dream, a vivid ray
Of love and hope settles on the earth.
As in your beautiful sky, smiling and serene
The image of the Southern Cross shines.
A giant by nature, you are beautiful,
And your future will match this grandeur.
Strong, an intrepid colossus.

(Free translation from the Brazilian national anthem).

Brazil is the world’s fifth-largest country in terms of both size and population, with a size larger than continental USA and India, and a population of 22 crores. It has the biggest economy in Latin America, and the night largest in the world, putting it ahead of Russia, and with Italy. It is the world’s number one producer of sugar, oranges and coffee, and it is one of the top ten makers of automobiles and airplanes.

Brazil boasts of at least 25 million people of Italian heritage, 12 million of German descent, and more than 14 million of Lebanese origins. Brazil has more people of African origin than any country besides Nigeria! There are more ethnic Japanese in Sao Paulo than in any other city outside Japan. And, the whole nation speaks an indigenous version of Portuguese.

Brazil is the number one beef exporter of the world, and the planet’s most populous Roman Catholic country…….

And all of this abundance sits on a gorgeous and varied landscape of white beaches, emerald forests, and fertile plains. Brazil possesses a quarter of world’s arable land. The country is practically self-sufficient in oil and has yielded large quantities of gold.

However, disturbed politics and society and irresponsible economics of many a ruler of Brazil over the last 150 years show what Stefan Zweig rightly said, “Brazil is the land of the future, and it always will be.”

June 14, 2006

The Mystery Woman in Rio

Last night, while returning from a robust dinner, pure Brazilian type in a traditional restaurant, with chairs and sofas hanging in the air above our heads, and with wine, chevas regal, and local drink caipirinha, I had a great experience walking close to the beach. A young lady, should be in late 20s, approached for the obvious purpose. I said I am from India and I am not interested in paid sex with a stranger. Thankfully, she could speak in English a bit (people speak Portuguese here and a few Spanish). Hearing about India, she said that she was fascinated by the stories and images of Himalayas and the Ganges in her childhood and asked me to talk to her about them. I said that she would lose her working time of the evening. She said she does not mind, as she has been having good business these days due to tourist influx, and more importantly, she has not met with an Indian ever earlier.We sat on a piece of a stump of a tree close to the beach and we chatted for almost 90 minutes, on Himalayas, Ganges, Indian ethnic dresses and jewelry, music and history, changing face of India, corruption and communalism, and on Brazil in the last 150 years after the colonial Portuguese left, on drugs and drug-lords of Rio and their control over the flesh-trade, the football frenzy, and all that.Good chat.Felt a trifle sad while leaving her. She gave a soft hug and thanked me profusely as she said that she had spoken to a stranger purely like a friend, which she had hardly done earlier.She did not come close to the hotel lest I might be misunderstood by the hotel staff. Not that they care too much. But I was touched by her concern.

I left her on the other side of the road, my silent, unknown Brazilian friend, whose name and address I did not take, neither did she ask mine.There was an interaction between two nations of two different cultures without the individuals being present therein.I don´t know what you will call this.But it is ALL TRUE.With love from Rio.
June 12, 2006