The Global India

In 2009, my wife and I were on a short holiday in Switzerland. The day after we arrived, we took a conducted sightseeing tour of Zurich. It was a cool, bright and sunny day. We got into a fancy looking bus with large glass windows. Apart from my wife and I, there were a newly married couple from Hyderabad - both IT professionals, a young couple from NOIDA with two sweet little kids, a group of charmingly jovial  Gujarati families and few other nationals, mostly Japanese.  It was a small bus and half the seats were taken by Indians.

Each seat had an earphone with a choice of buttons on a panel fixed on the back of the seat ahead. Each button showed a flag and a language.  One had the option of listening to the running commentary in the language of one’s choice. The driver introduced us to the function of the buttons. He was a friendly, middle aged guy. He must have noticed that most of his passengers that morning were Indians. After his short speech, he said with a chuckle, “Sorry guys, no ‘Indian’ button”.

The Japanese crowd enjoyed the statement; they would … there was a button for their language. Their leader, with two large cameras hanging from his delicate shoulder, gave us a broad smile. I smiled back and said “Another five years at the most, you will find an Indian button as well”. The young Indian crowd cheered.

My statement was prophetic! And, it did not take five years. Five days later, we were in Lucerne, a city with breath-taking surroundings. We took another conducted tour of the city.  The seats have similar earphones and buttons like the ones we saw in Zurich. Suddenly, my wife reacted with uncharacteristic exuberance,

 “Hey, look”.

“What?” I responded in surprise.

She pointed to a button in front us. Lo and behold, there was indeed a button with our tricolour engraved next to it.  Curious, we pressed the button. The effect was magical. Far away from our shores, in an alien land that had no significant historical ties with India, came a sonorous female voice through the earphone, “Namaskar, Lucerne shahar-me aapka swagat hai”.

Honestly, I was pleased but not surprised. Just a few days earlier, we were waiting for a train at the Interlaken rail station right in front of a snack bar. The menu on display had a wide range of snacks like sandwiches, croissants, cakes, cookies, chocolates, soft drinks, tea, coffee etc. Just above the menu board was a prominently displayed handwritten sign that read “Hot samosas available here”.

Indian professional are spreading far and wide led by the young IT professionals. IT professionals, in particular, are conquering the world like Alexander’s army.  Other professionals are not far behind. Earlier, the preferred destination was USA.  These days, young Indian professionals are working at different industries in Europe as well, in Research & Development and Design and Manufacturing. Two factors have made this possible; firstly, a fast growing aging population in Europe and secondly, the availability of appropriate human resources in India.  India’s bulging population thought to be a liability two decades ago turned out to be an asset. The current emergence of Indians everywhere in the world can under no circumstances be termed as the much feared “brain drain” of yore. On the contrary, it is a long term “brain investment”. The penchant of educated Indians settling abroad is on a decline these days. More Indians are returning home after a stint abroad, enriching the nation with foreign currency and more importantly, skill, expertise and technology. I met a young Indian IT professional last year in USA, successful and well settled with all the frills of an “American Dream”. His firm statement that he was planning to return home reflects the current mind set.

Middle East has been a favourite pasture of Indian professionals of all categories since the 50’s. In the early 80’s, when I was still new in this region, I was sent to Bahrain on a project on behalf of my company in Kuwait. I was young and had no friends in Bahrain.  I was in a hurry to get back. One evening, I told my hosts to leave me alone in the office. I wanted to finish the task in hand.  I assured them that I could get a taxi to return to my hotel.  I finished at 9 PM. It was a cold December night and I found one lone taxi at the stand. It was an elderly Arab at the driver’s seat. My Arabic was pathetic. I hesitantly approached the taxi. I made a lot of hand gestures and spattered a few Arabic words I had picked up to tell him that I would like to go to Hotel Diplomat.  The driver was smart, he understood and gestured that it would cost me a couple of dinars. I agreed. He opened the door. As he started the car he said, almost absent-mindedly, “aaj bahut thanda hai bhai sahab, hum heating chalu karta hain, thik hai?”

He spoke fluent Hindi!  In fact, Hindi movies run in packed houses in several Arab countries.

A foreign ministry official was once asked about the total numbers of Indians and people of Indian origin residing abroad. The figure given by him was thirty million, roughly. Obviously he did not have an exact figure.  In response, a journalist quipped, “Plus another half a million in different transit lounges all around the world”. Yes, the number of Indians travelling has also increased significantly. These days they travel with their laptops and blackberries. I once met an old associate at London’s Heathrow absorbed on the screen of his laptop early in the morning. On my query, he replied sheepishly that Bombay Stock Exchange had just opened with a hike and he just booked some profit.

The Ministry of Overseas Indians Affairs has some interesting statistics on its website. According to information available with the ministry, Non-Resident Indians (NRIs) and People of Indian Origin (PIO) are scattered over two hundred countries across the globe, including some obscure countries like Republic of Palau with 14 Indians and Niue with 3. There are 20 in Albania, 50 in Croatia and 10 in Dominican Republic. There are in fact 20 in Cuba and 16 in Nicaragua.  One might wonder what these people do for a living. Unfortunately, the ministry is silent on this aspect. I wonder where these people get their consular services from!

Philippines boasts of about fifty thousand citizens of Indian origin. Their ancestors mostly went from Sind and Punjab.  Sindhis are generally in business and had migrated well before the country was partitioned. Though their original habitat is not in India any more, they still proudly proclaim their Indian identity. When Sushmita Sen was declared Miss Universe in 1994 in Manila, they declared handsome discounts on all merchandise for a whole week!

There was an amazing scenario in April 2010, when prime minster Manmohan Sigh and president Obama met in Washington DC. Singh was being assisted by Jaideep Sarkar, a young dynamic officer of the Indian Foreign Service.  Incidentally, Obama’s principal aid was Anish Goel, supposedly a rising star in US administration. The presence of Indian-Americans in the current US administration is so strong, that Pakistan government has been expressing its apprehension about the “Indian lobby” influencing  US global policy!

There was a strong rumour sometimes back that Bobby Jindal, the governor of Louisiana might offer himself as a presidential or a vice presidential candidate in the future.  Jindal subsequently denied the story albeit a bit mildly. However, members of the Indian Diaspora heading governments far beyond the shores of the country are not a rare sight. S.R Nathan has been the president of Singapore since 1999. Anand Satyanand is the current governor general of New Zealand representing the Queen of England. Ms. Kamala Persad-Bissessar  was elected as the first woman prime minister of Trinidad & Tobago in May 2010. Mahatir Mohammad, the former prime minister of Malaysia is of Indian ancestry; his grandfather migrated from Kerala many years ago. Governments of Mauritius has been dominated by Ramgoolams and Jagnauts for a long time.  Nikki Haley (aka Nimrata Randhawa)  was the Republican nominee in the South Carolina gubernatorial election, 2010 at the time of writing. Ujjal Dev Singh Dosanjh was the prime minister of British Columbia earlier in the past decade.

I often wonder if the current quest for globalization that the country has adopted is at all necessary. Because, slowly and subtly, the rest of the world is getting Indianised. No wonder the most popular British food now is Chicken Tikka Masala and it is official.

Jai Hind.

Kuwait - 16 May 2010.

An Oilman's Story

Exploration for oil is a dirty business. The locations where people set up the rigs and equipment to explore deep down in the heart of mother earth would be an environmentalist’s nightmare. In spite of stringent standards imposed by the authorities around the globe, one would find stinky effluent pits, roar of half of dozen generators and dirty smelly chemicals being pumped in and out of the well bore.

I was in total shock when I started my career in the oil exploration business more than four decades ago. Most of the days, I returned home in dirty oily clothes raising suspicion in the mind of my family members regarding the type of job I did. They never expected a young man with an engineering degree to go to work in tattered khakis, heavy leather boots, helmets and return home with oil and grease stains all over. 

A few springs later, I fell in love with my job and I am still deeply in love. It was exciting to be in charge of a complex operation in a distant forest, away from the civilized world. Life in the camps was fascinating though one would occasionally crave for a break.  Time and career growth had since pushed me gradually away from the hot spot but I still love to get into my coveralls once in a while and spend some time at the oil rigs with the “boys”. 

One of the fringe benefits of the job has always been close interaction with people from all over the world. Even before I left the country in the early 80’s, I had the privilege of meeting people from USA, UK, France, Japan, Nigeria or even Egypt. Once I had lunch with a die-hard Texan in a camp in Arunachal Pradesh. It lasted for about forty minutes. We had a long chat and I did not understand a word he said. I responded by guessing his hand gestures. It was my first encounter with a Texan and his first trip out of USA. But he thanked me at the end of the lunch for a lively conversation. Thankfully, his assignment was complete and he boarded a helicopter on the way to the airport to get back home immediately thereafter. 

There was an interesting episode on board a drill ship off shore Orissa in 1981. It was the first offshore exploration venture of my company. I was representing the company on the drill ship. The ship belonged to an American organization. It had a multi-national crew. A German supply boat was also contracted by our company from Singapore to provide the necessary support we needed from the shore. However, the arrival of the German boat was delayed due to rough weather. In order to carry on with the operation, our company hired a  fishing trawler from the local market as an interim measure. The trawler was manned by a Tamil speaking crew who spoke no other languages. One fine afternoon, the captain of the drill ship, an incorrigible Englishman, frantically asked me to come over to his cabin. The fishing trawler had a problem and it was trying to communicate with the drill ship. The captain regretted his inability to understand the “Indian” spoken by the trawler crew. I tried a bit of Hindi, a little English but could not break the language barrier. The captain was dismayed to learn that I did not speak “Indian” either. It was an emergency situation and there was no time to explain the complexity of a multi-lingual India. I took the shortest recourse. I made an announcement on the public address system to find if anyone on board spoke Tamil. The outcome was a big surprise; a Malaysian of Chinese origin came to our rescue. He had worked in a rubber plantation in Malaysia some years ago as a supervisor and had Tamil labours working for him. He spoke Tamil fluently. Communication was established. 

The story took a twist a few days later, when a radio signal came in from the German supply boat. The boat was in the high sea and developed a mechanical trouble. The German captain and his engineer, first and second mates were all in the engine room trying to repair the fault. The radio room was being manned by a manual labour who did not speak English. The English captain on our drill ship was tearing his hair. He was convinced that this time we were in a total mess because the manual labour at the radio was from Bangladesh. This was my time to smile. “Hey wait a minute”, I said, “Let me take a shot”. “How?”, the captain was perplexed, “Do you speak Bangladeshi?”. I sure did. I blurted out in the microphone in a language I spoke all my life. There was a moment’s silence followed by an excited response from the other side. The guy on the German boat was thrilled to hear his mother tongue from a distant drill ship. He even asked me which “zillah” I belonged to. 

Many years later, I met the English captain at a pub in London and he was still trying to figure out why I had failed to communicate with a fellow Indian but had no problem with a foreigner. He was in high spirit when he raised the issue and I decided not to explain! 

I spent the last thirty years of my life in Kuwait. It has been fascinating. Switching to an oil company in the middle east, where the annual production figure was forty or fifty times more than that of my company back in India was an Alice-in-the-Wonderland like experience. Luckily, I was not alone; there was a sizable number of colleagues from India, who switched over with me in the 80’s. We blended well in the new environment. It was indeed a multi-national set up.  When we landed here, the oil exploration business was literally run by the Americans and the British at the professional level. Slowly, there was a turn around. Indians professionals started arriving in the early 80’s and earned a reputation which was unparallel. However, it continues to be a multi-national set up with a prominent presence of Indian nationals. In fact, Indians are the largest expatriate community in Kuwait today. 

By the way, I have a much better understanding of the Texan language these days! 

The most memorable and also the most devastating experience in Kuwait till date was the environmental disaster triggered by the retreating army of Saddam Hussain’s Iraq in 1991. They set fire to over seven hundred producing oil-wells. It was an inferno unprecedented in human history. The estimated loss was in the order of six million barrels of oil per day in addition to the hideous pollution it created all over the gulf region. 

All we could see in those traumatic days were belching flame and black smoke coming out of each well in sight, extending up to the distant horizon. The spiralling cloud of black smoke shrouded the mid-day sun creating an eerie feeling of “darkness at noon”. It has been eighteen years since the fiasco and the nightmarish memory is still fresh in my psyche. 

It took over a billion dollars and a global effort spreading over almost nine months to extinguish the fires. But that is another story for another day.

 

Kuwait - 1 October 2009 

What's In A Name?

What’s in a name?

Plenty…. Shakespeare and the rose notwithstanding!

A suave and sophisticated lady, a good friend, a dedicated Mumbaikar was in Kolkata recently to meet her relatives. The last time, she was in the city was over thirty years ago when she was a new bride. We, the die-hard Kolkatans kept our fingers crossed lest she finds our dear city abhorrent. After all, Mumbai was the glam-city, the commercial capital of the country!

The fear was uncalled for. She had a wonderful time in Kolkata. She did some shopping; bought kurtas from Sharbari Datta for her American son-in-law, a few baluchoris for herself and her daughter. No other city in the world would offer her this fanciful merchandise. And, she loved the food here. She tasted a bit of “Oh Calcutta”, “Flame Grill”, “Nola” and enjoyed a sumptuous dinner hosted by her cousin at the Kolkata Club. The last place sounded a bit unfamiliar!

“Kolkata Club?”

“Well,” she clarified, “it is a very old club for the city’s elite bang opposite Rabindra Sadan”.

She was surprised we never heard about it.

Well, not quite, we did hear about it. But the place was Calcutta Club.

“Really?”- She was a bit surprised now, “Hasn’t Calcutta been rechristened?”

“Yes, true but not the club!”

Interesting point indeed! The city did change its name, true. But, does every entity prefixed with Calcutta need to change as well?

 Can you have a restaurant called “Oh Kolkata”? Nahh.. It does not sound right!  

What about the other institutions of the city? What about the University of Calcutta, I wondered. The state authorities must have changed the name. But no, the university still retains its old name; at least that is the impression one gets at their website. It is a fairly user-friendly website I must say, decorated in light blue, very soothing to the eyes. It proudly proclaims “University of Calcutta”. There is no sign of Kolkata anywhere.

Calcutta Electric Supply Corporation or CESC, an organization we have all known for ages have stuck to their identity and did not convert to KESC. Calcutta Tramways Corporation or CTC could have changed itself over to KTC but they did not; in spite of being a state owned company. It would be a shame if it did; CTC has a very cute logo, - a “T” with two outstretched arms sheltering two cute little  “C”s that look so vulnerable. KTC would have destroyed the balance and symmetry of the logo.

However, Calcutta Police did change itself to Kolkata Police. All their vehicles are marked with the Bengali letters “kaw” and “pu” with a vertical arrow between the letters. The arrow, from a distance, looks like the phonetic “aa” sound rendering “kaw-pu” as “kaapu” which is interpreted by some cynics as an abbreviation of the word “kaapurush” or coward! This aberration was pointed out to me by a Deputy Commissioner of Kolkata Police, now retired.

There are several others, who have not changed their names.  Calcutta High Court, Calcutta Youth Choir, Calcutta Kennel Club, Royal Calcutta Golf Club have all retained their identity.

So did Calcutta Club.

Thank God for small mercies.

Kuwait - 5 January 2009

PRINCE ANWAR SHAH

Many years ago, when I was a school kid, I accompanied my father to an unfamiliar area beyond the Dhakuria railway crossing; the over bridge did not exist those days.  He was trying to locate a friend’s house. I noticed that a number of road and street names in the area are prefixed with the word “Prince”. The main thoroughfare that our taxi drove through was Prince Anwar Shah Road. There were several other branches as well with royal titles like Prince Ghulam Muhammad Shah Road, Prince Ghulam Hussain Shah Road, Prince Bakhtiar Shah Road, etc.

Who are all these princes? I wondered aloud.

They are the descendants of Tipu Sultan, said my father.

I did not have a clear idea who this Sultan was but I decided to keep quiet lest it exposed my abhorrence to history lessons.  Much later in life, I learnt a little about the Tiger of Mysore and the tragic end he met with while defending his kingdom, honour and independence. The British had a policy of sending the members of a vanquished royal family to exile beyond the realm of their erstwhile power base.  For some strange reason, Kolkata was the favourite dumping ground for the royals.  The last Nawab of Awadh, Wajid Ali Shah was also humiliated to an exiled life in Kolkata.

Tipu Sultan supposedly had sixteen sons and eight daughters. The fate of the daughters is rather unknown but certain websites on the internet including Wikipedia list the names of all the sixteen sons.  

Hussain Shah, a descendant of Tipu Sultan was recently interviewed by the Deccan Herald (27 July 2010) to reveal some of the mystery associated with the family. According to him, Prince Anwar Shah was a grandson of Tipu Sultan. After the death of the legendary hero, his sons and their families consisting of three hundred members were sent to Kolkata.  They were given official pensions as well as land to settle down. In course of time, the exiled family, still reasonably wealthy, acquired real estates in the prosperous and fast growing city of Kolkata. Hussain Shah leads a comfortable middle class life these days with an established business to run. His two sons are also well settled. However, other members of the family are not that fortunate.   The news report was silent about the princes whose names are linked to other streets and lanes in the neighbourhood.

However, Hussain Shah’s claim is contested by an internet source, which says that the road was named after His Highness Sir Ghulam Mohammad Anwar Shah, the fourteenth son of Tipu Sultan, who was eventually recognized by the British as the official head of the family and successor to his father. He was also knighted two years before he died in 1872. 

The subsequent official successors were as follows: -

1.    Prince Ahmad Halim-us-Zaman, fourth son of Sir Ghulam Muhammad Anwar Shah.

2.    Prince Muhammad Farrukh Shah, fourth son of Prince Ahmad Halim-us-Zaman.

3.    Prince Muhammad Bakhtiar Shah, grandnephew of Sir Ghulam Mohammad Anwar Shah.

4.    Prince Muhammad Ghulam Shah, son of Prince Muhammad Farrukh Shah

5.    Prince Ghulam Hussein Shah, son of Prince Muhammad Ghulam Shah

6.    Prince Hyder Ali, son of Prince Ghulam Hussein Shah.

7.    Prince Asif Ali, son of Prince Hyder Ali.

The last named is the current official head of the family.

Some years ago, Karnataka government wanted to trace out some of the descendants of Tipu Sultan and rehabilitate them in their ancestral land. However, most of the family members declined to leave their current home and hearth in spite of their impoverished life style. For generations, Kolkata has been their home and their ancestral land was completely alien to them.  However, according to media reports, Prince Asif Ali Shah, the official head of the family, agreed to be rehabilitated. Karnataka government provided him with a house, paid for his children’s education and conferred upon him a symbolic status of royalty.

 As mentioned before, the early ancestors of the family had acquired large chunk of real estate at the southern part of the city. It has been on record that the reputed golfing hunts of the city’s rich and elite, the Royal Calcutta Golf Club and Tolly Club are located on the exiled family’s property.  The multi-crore property, incidentally, is run by a trust. According to the trustee, his job was to maintain the mosques named after the Tiger of Mysore and not to dole out charity to the hapless family members. As a result, none of the descendants benefits from the enormous wealth left behind by their noble ancestors.  Today many of the descendants are rickshaw pullers and daily labours in Kolkata, totally ignored by a trust established to provide for their welfare.

Dean Nelson, the South Asian editor of The Telegraph (UK) reported on 31 July 2009 that real estates maintained by the trust are worth “hundreds of millions of pounds”.

Today, Prince Anwar Shah Road is a swanky stretch of thoroughfare proudly proclaiming the presence of the city’s most fashionable shopping mall and residential addresses.  However, the prince’s descendants continue to languish in abject poverty.

Kuwait - 28 October 2010

Manna Dey – The Last of the Legends

During my university days, the music loving crowd was divided mainly in three distinct camps - Mohammad Rafi, Kishore Kumar and Mukesh. Their passion was so intense that they despised the icons of the other camps. Verbal duals were a daily affair often leading to the verge of a spiteful fracas. Mercifully, good sense prevailed at the end and no unpleasant situations arose. Personally, I found this rivalry illogical and trivial. They were all great artistes and probably had an excellent rapport with each other. However, my neutrality was ridiculed and soon I became the target of all the three camps. In order to shield myself, I decided to open a fourth front. I declared one fine Sunday at the lunch table that my favourite was Manna Dey. To my utter surprise, I found nods of approval even from the hardliners of the camps and my musical taste was highly appreciated. Manna Dey had no rival.

Incidentally, Rafi, Kishore and Mukesh were patronized by the three leading heroes of the time; - Dilip Kumar, Dev Anand and Raj Kapoor respectively.  Their voices were supposedly compatible with those of the singers. Manna Dey, a name mentioned often along with the big three had a unique voice that did not quite match the voices of the romantic heroes. In spite of this, he had recorded over three thousand songs for Hindi movies. There was a story that once in the absence of Mukesh he was asked to record a song temporarily to facilitate the shooting of an important scene with Raj Kapoor. It was agreed that his voice will later be replaced with that of Mukesh. But Manna Dey’s rendition was so good that Mukesh declined to oblige. Raj Kapoor, who had a great ear for music, agreed.

During an interview on his 90^th birthday, Manna Dey was asked to identify the best singer of his time. Without any hesitation, he named Mohammad Rafi and added that there would never be another like him. Interestingly, many years earlier, Mohammad Rafi was asked whether he listened to any songs of his contemporaries and Rafi saab, with a shy smile that characterized his personality, named Manna Dey. Manna Dey treasured this statement more than the awards, which according to him were “inconsequential forms of recognition”. In fact, when he received his first ever Filmfare Award for the song “Ye bhai zara dekhe chalo …” from Mera Naam Joker, he expressed his frustration for being ignored for some of his earlier and more deserving numbers like “Puchho na kaise maine rayen bitai” or “Kaun aya mere manke dwar” or “Kasme wade payar wafa”.

Manna Dey had a strong classical background. He was the undisputed choice of any music director whenever a raga based song was conceived.

His love for his wife has been a fairy tale.  He married Sulochona Kumaran from Kerala in the fifties. He revealed during one of his recent interviews that he always phoned his wife before stepping on the stage for a live performance. I actually watched them on TV holding hands as he was responding to questions during an interview. The man was shattered when Sulochana died of cancer in January 2012.

Today, 24^th October 2013, he has been united once again with his loving wife. God bless them both.

Kolkata – 24 October 2014