LET THE LESSER CHILDREN OF DEVELOPMENT GODS ALSO BLOOM

>( The heart-warming story of an innovative educational effort worth
> lending a helping hand)


--Reports Tushar Bhatt from Bhekhadia triban village in Gujarat


> It perhaps is the irony of our modern development,not only in the
> developing countries,but even in the developed countries throughout
> the length and breadth of the world,some remote pockets of human
> settlement remain deprived of the rudimentary fruits of growth. The
> instruments of normally adequate for most regions are not enough to
> break the stranglehold of backwardness.
> There is no exception, and despite million claims of
> vibrancy,Gujarat too, now turning 50 years of its separate, is not
> free from this syndrome. Remote areas in the State continue to lag
> behind,so far on the hazy horizon that they are hardly noticed from
> the dizzying heights of Gandhinagar. They lack in every aspect of
> infrastrcture—literacy,health care,power,water or road,name any
> catalyst of growth,it is not there in the remote regions. Their
> feeble voice becomes so weak that the ruling deities of democracy in
> the State Capital,so busy loudly congratulating itself on its own
> vibrancy, cannot catch it.
> It is a stark reality that even Gujarat has large pockets of
> penury.There are small settlements,largish villages and bigger remote
> areas of which the babudom guiding political novices does not know of.
> This is not a new phenomenon.It has been known since the days of the
> British Raj that large mountainous tracts of land on the banks of the
> Narmada still lived in another time,ages away from rest of Gujarat.One
> of the numerous names of the Narmada is Rewa and the British called it
> Rewa banks and set up a Rewa Banks Agency.
> It is not just ironical; it tantamount to the down right arrogance to
> put off consideration of seemingly impossible looking situation on the
> back burner for the future generations to handle. In the process,the
> plight of the hapless population in these areas worsen at will.They
> are the children of lesser development Gods.
> It still registers as a shock and surprise to outsiders when they
> learn that as many as a\ lakh acres of land will get irrigation from
> the Narmada.The people of the far-flung Kutch too will have some
> drinking water supply.All this beckons for what the rulers
> euphemistically hail as Swarnim Gujarat. But the neglected children of
> Rewa Kantha will remain deprived of all education.
> IT IS TRAGIC,BUT TRUE.
> Included among these areas of darkness are two tribal talukas, Naswadi
> and Kwant in otherwise industry hub,Vadodara district. It is
> tokenism,but the government itself had certified Kwant as thee most
> backward area economically and the media reported the taluka had been
> named an adopted area for development.But,tokenism still dominate in
> practice. A survey was made to size up educational facilities . A
> scheme launched in the wake of the survey by the Government of India
> had provision for model schools for far-off places. Of six approved
> schools,three each were allotted to the two talukas, Naswadi and
> Kwant.Those in Kwant area were at Mogra,Chaparia and Redi Vasan.Some
> schools were formally inaugrated even.
> But, soon,inexplicably the shifting of the six schools in 2 talukas
> was announced. The two taluka panchayat’s elected representative
> , political and social workers and others,forgetting their internal
> differences and joined hands to fight out the proposal for
> shifting.They went up to the tribal welfare minister to lodge a
> protest. But the complaint fell on deaf ears.The tribal belt lost the
> six schools to Naswasi and Kwant townships and their number came down
> to two schools from the earlier six.
> In short, the hapless villages were back to s square one,having been
> generously sanctioned the schools which then were taken back to the
> taluka town.Urban children benefited at the cost of village
> children.Bureaucratic pen has always been mightier than political
> will.
> Against the backdrop of all this, Shramik Vikas Sansthan, a
> non-government organisation,run under the leadership of Octogenarian
> social worker,Mr.Sanat Mehta, a former MP and a former finance
> minister in Gujarat, set up a centre in the remote Bhekhadia village
> in Kwant taluka,came into being some seven years ago in an endeavour
> to bridge the gap between remote areas and educational facilities.The
> cente,named after Late Mrs Thavliben Rathwa, a tribal worker,was
> locally spearheaded by a tribal leader, Ratan Bhagat.A living
> accommodation to house 40 village children was opened and the children
> were enrolled in the Bhekhadia primary school run by the State
> Government.The Rathwa Samaj,the tribals’agrred to foot the schooling
> and boarding and lodging expenses of the hostelites.The Samaj banked
> on support by member individuals.
> The idea caught on like a wild fire among the tribals and more and
> more guardians were eager to leave their children at the hostel.Indu,
> a tribal young woman, accepted to be their guardian God
> mother.However, the temporary arrangement fell short of
> requirements,especially school rooms. Mr Mehta’s organisation offered
> to bear the cost of two additional school roomswere the Rathwa Samaj
> ready to pick up food bill for a hundred pupils.
> Around this time, manging director of the Gujarat Narmada Valley
> Fertilisers Co(GNFC),Mrs Sudha Achaliya, a senior IAS officer in the
> State,came to Bhekhadia.She got interested in this micro-experiment.
> Not only was a top official a mother’s tender heart throbbed in her.
> She offered that if the Shramik Vikas Sansthan shelled out 25 per cent
> cost for building two halls accommodating a hundred resiential pupils,
> the GNFC would provide the remainder. On June 13,2008, the foundation
> for the halls was laid.The construction was supervised by a young
> tribal worker, Mr Madhu Rathwa.On completion, the halls were
> inaugurated on February 10,2010, by the chairperson of the Khadi and
> Village Industries Commission, Ms Kumudben Joshi.
> One hall with 50 girls and the other with as many boys were opened,but
> soon the accommodation ran short.The number of admission seekers
> touched 150.Said Mr Sanat Mehta:” It was difficult to say No because
> in a radius of as many as 45 km there were no other schools.Of these
> 25 students each had come from only two villages on the Narmada
> banks,Harkhod and Kuda,some 36 km away.From Sanoli,45 km away,six
> pupils had come.
> Currently, 153 students live in the hostels- 46 girls and 107
> boys.Mr.Mehta said the Rathwa clan organisation collected grains as
> donation to provide food.More pupils wish to come,but we just can
> accommodate them. It is a regret that nags me at the age of 86, as
> only a few other things in life did.” His clear voice became heavy
> with sorrow.
> He continued,outlining the dimensions of the problem:” We admit
> children from four talukas.As many as 82 came from Kwant taluka’s 24
> villages.There are 62 coming from villages in Naswadi taluka. Mostly,
> Rathwa tribal clan donated foodgrains,although there are children from
> among Bhil, Dungari Bhil and Nayak clans. Nearly 100 children were in
> 5th,6th , 7th and 8th standards.
> Parents of most children are compelled by poverty and joblessness
> locally to go to distant places in search of manual work. Their low
> wages and perpetual need for extra income result in heavy drop-outs of
> children without completing primary education. Their option is not to
> set foot in a school and go with the parents wherever they go.
> Of the 43 villages in the area,only five km away from a school; the
> rest are between 15 and 43 km away.
> All these logistics mean that two more rooms are need to take the
> number of hostelites from 150 to 200. The programme does not get any
> subsidy or even loan from either the Gujarat or the Union Governments.
> In a sense, tribals themselves bear the economic burden of the
> project. Some well-to-do tribals give personal money,others get
> donations. As he said this the sorrow in his voice lifted and Mr
> Sanat Mehta’s face acquired a glow of pride.
> He said: “ Imagine in the far-flung,remote povery-ridden tribal
> villages , most government schemes had failed despite spending lot of
> money and deplying government machinery. In such a milliue , this
> effort at self-reliance by tribals themselved had borne fruits. As
> many as 150 tribal children will lead a better life.”
> In an open letter to the citizens, Mr Sanat Mehta declared: “ All my life, I have never sought
> anything.But, I feel honoured to put out my hand to seek your mite. I
> am seeking just Rs.10 lakhs from all of you. Please give whatever you
> can,so that at least 200 souls can enlighten their being,so that they
> may have a better chance in tomorrow’s world. I ask you NOT to send
> more than Rs.10,000 per donor so that others too can join us in this
> noble endeavour. I have no doubt you all will respond. At 86 years of
> my life already covered I know I do not have time or energy. Before it
> is sunset for me,I wish to see a smile on happiness on the most
> deprived face of our tomorrow.”
> Education is not the sole programme at Bhekhadia.Tribal women here
> sale masalas worth Rs.20,000 per month.Another 100 women work on
> eight-spindke ambar charkha perfected at Udyog Bharati in
> Gondal,earning more than those who workon a government scheme for 100
> days a year guarantees.Tribal young men are undergoing
> diamond-polishing.
> The Bhekhadia project has been named Aaj ,an abbreviationof Adivasi
> Jan Utthan Samaj. Aaj is a significant name. It serves notice on all
> of us that tribal youth is no longer ready to wait indefinitely for
> the civil society and its government to act.Whatever is needed should
> be doe AAJ (Today), now.The tribals pack their masalas as Aaj masala
> and are prearing to launch a soap, Aaj sabun.
>(ENDS)

Rohit Mehta; A forgotten Gujarati philosopher of high calibre

By Tushar Bhatt
Rohit Mehta,who died at the age of 86 at Varanasi on March 20,1995,is remembered differently by different people.Some recall his cogently thought and delivered lectures on philosophy.Some talk of him as a man with legendary memory who could quote flawlessly from Sri Aurobindo,Upanishad,Gita as also Marx, a teacher with a vast repertoire and a subtle sense of humour and a prolific writer,and a man of unfailing kindliness.Still some other others think of him as a charismatic personality,donned most of the time in spotlessly white dhoti and yellowish khadi-silk kurta,slightly stocky in build,and wearing a black-framed pair of spectaclesover deep penetrating eyes.He was brilliant,but never flamboyant,solid but never seeking recognition,an original thinker who could easily and without showing any burden mix with the most ordinary.An unusual man who was extra-ordinary in many respects,and yet strove to conceal all this under modesty and non-chalance
Remembered late Prof.P G Mavalankar, former M.P. and a well-read man himself: “Rohitbhai was a five-in-one personality - a thinker,philosopher,interpreter, writer and speaker,clear in thought and precise in language and eloquent in delivery.All these took him to the top.” He was all this,and much more.A many spleandoured man,Rohitbhai as he was universally known was not just a run-of-the-mill freedom-fighter,a socialist-turned-spiritualist.He was in the world class,a thing about which he never had to seek certificates nor to boast.Yet, he was so self-effacing that one would have to hunt for a photograph of his.
How tall was he could be measured from the fact that he was one of the pioneers of the Social-ist Forum within the Congress in the early thirties.He went to prison repeatedly,starting from student days and would have gone far had he stuck to politics.It was Rohitbhai who introduced a then young Morarji Desai to the youths during the freedom struggle.He quit it in 1935,and was never to regret it.
He penned more than 25 books on philosophy,delivered thousands of lectures all over the world and sought to interpret the coming world far ahead of his time to his contemporaries.He was an able interpreter of his friend and philosopher,J.Krishnamurti,of Gita,of Upnishads and Yoga.
Yet,he was no parochial a preaccher.His vision could embrace technology and spell out its im-pact on society and mankind far ahead of his fellow human beings.
What he diagnosed in 1950 in one of his early volumes,The Intuitive Philophy,rings so prophetic after 45 years today,as if it has been foreseen in minute detail by him.He said: “Ever since the industrial revolution of the early 19th century, there have appeared such factors in our society as have led to rapid and revolutionary changes in the socio-economic structure of the world.This tendency towards rapid changes has been considerably intensified by the scientific advance in the course of the last 100 years and more. Large-scale economic production and the breaking down of the barriers of space have been the two most outstanding features of the social and economic revolution which began in the 19th century and which still continues its ownard march.”
“The new means of transport and communications, moving at terrifically increasing speeds,have eliminated distances between countries and have thus brought the peoples of all nations suddenly together.Along with this advance there has been an enormous increase in the scientific and mechanical skill as applied to economic production. This scientific technique is becoming more and more perfect so that there is today production of economic goods on a colossal scale.These goods must be sold and one country is too small an economic unit for the absorption of commodities produced on a mass basis.This factor of large-scale economic production,coupled with the elimination of distances,has tended to break down national barriers. Economic life has become international, for economic trends during the last years have moved in the direction of world unity.”
He perceptively observed: “But this economic currents have been obstructed in their progress by political forces. While the world is becoming one on the economic plane,it is kept divided on the political level.The idea of complete national sovereignty does not leave its hold on the minds of the people.”
He said:” One of the major contradictions of our age is this: the trend towards unity in the eco-nomic sphere and the maintenance of national sovereignty on the political plane. ... This is one of the paradoxes of our civilisation that while we desire,we work for war !”
“Man’s psychological inability or refusal to adjust himself to the requirements of technological revolution has created an immense problem for our human civilisation...We cannot stop the ad-vance of science producing continual changes in the material conditions of life, nor can we stop the activity of the mind which makes every change in the objective conditions too dangerous for the very existence of human civilisation.It may sound strange to say our generation is mentally tired while it has reached new heights of mental development through scientific advance.”
He thought specialisation and over-specialisation was the craze of the modern age,which had enabled us to create a wall between the real problem of life and ourselves,the real problem be-ing the increasing mental tension in the life of the individual.The problem of the individ-ual,according to Rohitbhai, was to discover the fundamental value of life.Today the subjective life of man has been rendered extremely poor while the objective conditions are changing at a terrific pace.Man is trying to cover up his inner poverty by erecting huge mansions for social, political and economic activities.But these activities, instead of providing relief, gradually create greater and greater pyshological tension in the life of the individual.Probably at no time in hu-man history was the gulf between the subjective and objective factors so great as it is to-day.Unless harmony is established anew between these two factors,the human crisis is likely to move towards a deepening horror,the result of which will be complete destruction of our civilisa-tion.We must discover a philosophical approach that would enrich the subjective life of man.” Prophetic words,coming from a man then in his early forties,and that was ages before Alvin Toffler had dreamt of his Future Shock.
Rohitbhai was born on August 3,1908 at Surat in the family of Hasmanram,who used to be a professor in physics at the Elphinstone college,Bombay.The bright child was destine to do un-usual things from the early age. At the age of 18,he led a student strike in the Gujarat college in Ahmedabad against the dictatorial behaviour of its principal F.Shiraz.His two other associates were Jayanti Dalal, writer and Nirubhai Desai,who later became a famous journalist and au-thor.Shiraz had ordered that no student shall participate in any political activity.The strike con-tinued for three months at the end of which the young Rohitbhai was rusticated from the college and the Bombay university, according to Dr Bhaskar Vyas of Baroda. Bteween 1926 and 1934,the young man was sent to jail five times for his activities in the freedom struggle,making him a blue-eyed boy of Mahatma Gandhi. He had already been an avid socialist by then,a core member of the group believing in socialism within the Congress in those days.During the floods in 1927-28,Rohitbhai did a lot of work for the poor.He went to jail during the salt satyagraha too and in 1934,Rohitbhai was handed a two-year term of hard labour,and sent to Ahmednagar.The heat and hard work in breaking stones there led to a terrible illness.He suffered a sun-stroke and then was partly paralysed.The alarmed authorities rushed him to the KEM Hospital in Bombay under the care of Dr Jivraj Mehta, who was to later become the first chief minister of Gujarat.Rohitbhai had refused even to go on parole but the Mahatma intervened. According to Prof Bababhai Patel, a Congress worker,Jamnadas Dwarkadas took J.Krishnamurti to see the ailing Rohitbhai. Krishnamurti kept his hand on the parts of the sick man’s body wherever it was paining.The therapeutic touch is said to have cured Rohitbhai completely.He walked next day, and was discharged from the hospital soon.
Rohitbhai who was in the freedom struggle along with Jaya Prakash Narayan ,was a sort of maverick.He invited Subhaschandra Bose to Gujarat,ignoring Vallabhbhai Patel’s orders.
But the spiritual bent of his mind had already started asserting over his rebelllious political mind. He had begun to realise the “soullessness” of politics and plunged into studying the works of theosophy and Krishnamurti.Leaving “the dunghill of politics”,he took to spiritualism and phi-losophy for life.He explained in 1937 his transformation in a volume called, A new world of the-osophical socialsim,predicting the eventual downfall of the Soviet Union.
In 1941,Rohitbhai went to Adyar in Tamil Nadu to act as recording secretary of the theosophical society,and soon became the international secretary.He explored the ideas propounded by many and yet did not subscribe to any one idea completely.This however was not out of an in-tellectual arrogance but out of modesty.He was to be later given a doctorate in philosophy by the Swiss University at Lugeno.Among the books he wrote were many notable ones such as Yoga-the Art of Integration, The Nameless Experience, From Mind to Super-Mind,The Call of the Upanishads,the Intuitive Philosophy,the Play of the Infinite, the Dialogue with Death,the Be-ing and the becoming, the Eternal Light,the Creative silence,Seek Out the Way,the Search for Freedom,the New World of Socialism, the Science of Meditation,and the Journey with Death.
in 1936,Rohitbhai was married to Shrideviben,a decade younger to him.She used to sing very melodiously.At his lectures,recalls Prof P.G.Mavalankar, Shrideviben would sing bhajans and hymns appropriate to the theme of his talk.”People would appreciate these after listening to Ro-hitbhai since the talk would make them understand the bhajans and hymns and their meaning all the better”, Mavalankar says. Prof.Mavalankar and his wife used to know the Mehta couple well and fondly remember Rohitbhai’s request at his talks (he would call them talks,rather than lectures): “You cannot leave while Shridevi is singing the bhajan. However,you can leave when I am talking.” Hardly anybody would go.
He used to live in Varanasi,when not travelling or lecturing around the world and the country.But he used to come to Ahmedabad for a series of lectures,which would start at 6.30 p m in the lawns of the late Rambhai Amin’s house in Gulbai Tekra,on the Labh Pancham day every year.Prof.Mavalankar remembers having seen around 2,000 people listening to Rohitbhai in rapt attention.When his health started giving in, he used to come every alternate year.
Remembered Mavalankar:” Rohitbhai had good diction,and he would speak neither fast nor slow,quoting with ease from a variety of works.His sense of humour would peep through in sub-tle manner every now and then.He was an optimist and knew the future lay in re-discovering In-dia.This could be done by reviving its great culture which has been showing strands of deca-dence.”
Rohitbhai was a widely travelled man,having lectured at various places in Europe,the U.S.,Africa and Asia.He could talk fluently in English,Hindi and Gujarati.”
Dr Bhaskar Vyas of Baroda, who knew him for more than two decades remembers of an at-tempt by himself and Dr D V Nene at doing a biography of Rohitbhai. He read some chapters Vyas had written and recommended: “Tear them up”. Apparently,to Rohitbhai ideas were more important and lasting than the man who thought them,even if it was Rohit Mehta.
Despite his tall stature in the world of philosophy,Rohitbhai always preferred to remain the shadows,shunning the limelight. In 1993,a greeting card he sent to his friends said:”The mind that is constantly renewing itself never grows old.It is constantly on a voyage of discovery.It never arrives.It moves on towards an endless journey.And the secret of life is found not by one who has arrived,but by one whose journey never ends.”
In January,1994,he had come for the last time to Ahmedabad.Shrivediben’s younger brother,Devendra Oza, a veteran journalist and humour writer,Vanmali Vanko in Guajrati of yesteryear,had lined up an interview for this reporter.Hours before the meeting,Rohitbhai devel-oped fever and the meeting was put off to a future date.That date would now never come.He has moved on to an endless journey of no return.

Rajnikumar Pandya: A Trail-Blazing Author who shows the story instead of telling

Tushar Bhatt
More than a quarter-century ago, a banker-turned writer,Rajnikumar Pandya, hit upon an innovation in Gujarati literature—showing the story rather than telling it. Not being either a student or a pundit of literature, the 73-year-old Rajnikumar is diffident—and full of deference too-- while talking about it even today..
This is despite the fact that he has come out with more than 50 books, numerous monographs, biographies,tv serials, books on Hindi filmdom. He commands a huge fan-following and ironically,there is no major award in Gujarati that has not been bagged by the author.The literati may dislike his physical presence but the power of words could not be overlooked.The honours included the award for best rural reporting in all langauges in India,given annually by The Kolkata daily, The Statesman.
All this is sought to be played down by labelling him as a commercial writer because he earns his bread-and-butter by accepting writing assignments.
It is the same story as in the case of advertisement copy writers. Partly, this is owing to an inability among the literati to do what professional writers are doing. Most readers, attracted to a well-done advertisement, are impressed by its pithy,bright and brief copy plus visualisation. This is not everybody’s cup of tea. Jealousy comes in. The successful professionals are sought to be cut to size by calling them commercial. Rajnikumar is a trail-blazer in this area; he is highly organised,able to abide by the brief, can work smoothly with cameramen,singers,composers and even the rich who want to show to the world.Yet, he carefully keeps distinct the two original writing and assignments
To the literati everywhere, a typical man of letters means someone with unkempt hair,unshaven face,eyes red, mind full of ideas but wallet empty. Injustice is the common tag. Those writers who did not photo-fit this image are somehow viewed as intruders in the paradise.
By vocation a man who dealt with numbers at work as a bankman, Rajnikumar does not fit the shoddy image. He belives in meticulously remain a presentable personality.He was convinced in his heart that he was a man of letters, a natural story spinner, no matter what others thought.Launching himself as a columnist in an Ahmedabad daily,hearted penning what journalism called human interest stories.He thought he had arrived.
Around that time, the writing world in the West was also in a turmoil. Novels were being discarded and tv watching was eating into reading time. Newspapers and magazines too were feeling the heat of tv news channels because many marginal readers stopped buying news journals , depending on tv news. New Journalism came into vogue with journalists applying techniques of fiction writing to non-fiction. These included reconstruction of the story not in chronological order but by highlighting the most dramatic scenes by what the film makers call jump-cutting . It involves shifting from one scene to another.In doing this, dialogue of the main players was brought in. How was this done? Simple. By lnterviewing people.
Unaware of this, Rajnikumar began experimenting and the resulting stories ran under the logo,Zabkar,caught the attention of readers from all strata of society. Now, the literary establishment in many Indian languages, including Gujarati,is populated by professors,teachers,linguistic experts ,grammarians and assorted educators whose last contact with ordinary life was when they were jobless.
The establishment was bewildered. It has yet to come to terms with reality because it knew the reality via notions of literature which it passes off as principles.The literati could not credit it that the new comers were being read by a large number of people.
Oscar Wilde it was who put it tersely: Newspapers are not worth reading,but are read by a large body of people. In Gujarati,Rajnikumar showed that newspapers too can have literary writing.
But, the establishment continues to feel bad. Many writers who are popular among people are unpopular in the literati.
Rajnikumar knows he is persona non-grata in the establishment but cannot make out why. The Gujarati literati also does not know because being self-reliant not many read modern world literature. A few innocents seem to assume that the world outside Gujarat was a permissive space to be avoided. Some are so busy writing they have no time to read.
Yet, authors like Rajnikumar , Ashwinee Bhatt, Madhu Rye,Labhshankar Thacker and Chinu Modi themselves keep low profile.The basic Gujarati mentality to avoid a clash as far as possible plays a major role in this attitude.
When you find Rajnikumar walking,his gait seems to be so deliberate that you would think he is measuring the land. Actually, he is watching his tread to ensure he does not step on a literati’s toes.Generally, he behaves placatorily, verging on public relations. The Gurus think his diffidence underlines a sense of inferiority, proving he is an intruder. At the best, he may be a journalist who has used literary devices to pep-up his reports.
This tug-of-war goes on, taking an invisible tall. Crows feet are laying a siege around his eyes, his hairs are fighting to retain their black colour, face and the body betray a plumpness. His mind is full of anguish, making him think something is yet to be done.
Not many will detect a veil of somnolence wrapping the author’s persona. He commands a huge fan following but has been dreaming about something else.Only the closest of his friends know that Rajnikumar yearns to be a music-maker, wants to sing, and direct movies. These are his childhood dreams.
Late Vasudev Mehta, a veteran journalist, was the first to notice the graphic quality of Rajnikumar’s writing. He noted that among the contemporary writers, he was perhaps the lone one whose writing can be visualised and picturised.
His widely-acclaimed novel, Kunti,was a highly popular tv serial on national scale. Some years ago, he wrote a novel on an Non-Resident-Indian family,based on a true story,Pushpadaah. It was the first major Indo-US literary work in Gujarati. Rajnikumar is a meticulous writer. To know the local ambience,colours,society he travels to far-off places,to acquire realism he listens to dialogue; he not only reports,he tries to enter the mind of his character,pile up details. He always ends up with more material than he needs.But,this gives him scope to prune so that a controlled flow of the story emerges.

Rajnikumar’s innate sense of insecurity rivals with film artists like Amitabh Bachchan or cricketers like Sachin Tendulkar; all three know that to survive and win the rat race,they cannot rest on their laurels.They have to excel by being restless.
The author’s quest led him to put together a rare venture in literature; an album on Meghdut, the mammoth lyrical classic of 11th century by Kalidas. An unabashed celebration of life, the Sanskrit volume is a proof of India’s vibrant richness. Kalidas has outdone himself in compositionof verses,called samshloki ( verses written in such a way that they can rhyme and be recited musically,creating an ambience).
Meghdut followed an earlier digital documentation of the pioneering Gujarati popular journal,Visami Sadi,and its fearless secular-minded editor
In 1913,an ardent fan of Meghdut, Kilabhai Ghashyam Bhatt, himself a scholar translated the verses into Gujarati, in a manner that they too could be recited musically. Till todate, numerous translations of Meghdut were done but few could rival with Kilabhai’s work.
Then, in 1940-41,in Palitana, a pupil named Navnitlal Shah got interested in learning Sanskrit and heard Meghdut. Later,he moved to Mumbai and spotted Kilabhai’s translaton,priced at Rs.5 or 6.Now a wealthy old man,Shah still has the copy.He did not need to refer to it since he knew the entire volume,verse by verse,by heart.
Navnitlal is a lover of literature and had earlier joined hands with Rajnikumar to bring out a volume commemorating poet Ruswa Mazlumi who wrote ghazals.Other documentation followed.Eventually, he told the author to attempt something to take Meghdut and Kalidas into Gujarati homes with Kilabhai’s easy translation as the centre-piece.
The volume was accompanied by musical recital of the verse in two CDs by noted folk singer,Prafull Dave.The music direction was done by Asit Desai, another household name.
Rajnikumar said he knew precious little about Meghdut beyond the words Ashadhasya Pratham Divase. He set about learning more and everything he found he put into the book.So the album has articles on related matters by pundits.Its richness has been augmented by sketches and paintings of scenes and people in the epic done by renowned artists like Late Kumar Mangalsinhji, late Vasudeo Smart,late Kanu Desai and a host of others,all rare.
The album has been offered to public at cost price of Rs.595,and of Rs.295 for the book only.
For the restless author, a new quest begins.
(The End)

Chronicles of extra-ordinary tales of the ordinary

Tushar Bhatt

Usha Shukla, a young school teacher in Ahmedabad, stood stunned. In her 30s, she was already a principal, a position that pupils regard as next only to the Almighty.
Less than an hour earlier,she had slapped an 8th Standard girl soundly on the face for not doing home work in the mathematics in a proper notebook. Mota Ben, as lady principals are respectfully called in Gujarat , are often stricter than the male of the species.
The teacher had felt pleased with herself in punishing the erring student who had not uttered a single word in self-defence. Usha was petrified. There was something missing and she felt inadequate to pinpoint it.It made her task all the more tough.
The frail pupil was clad in simple clothes,probably bought from a second-hand clothes vendor on a city foothpath . Middle class young teachers like Usha often realise it belatedly that keeping quiet in such situations did not mean that the student had nothing to say. It could mean more often that the pupil was helpless.
Usha finished the class and made her way to principal’s office,feeling euphoric and believing she has instilled fear of God in pupils Yet,an explicable uneasiness underlined the experience.
As she settled in her swivel chair, the school throne of power, the erring girl asked from the door way meekly :”May I have a word with you, Motaben?”
Curtly,the teahcer replied: “ Yes, what is it ? What the tiny girl had to stay left Usha contrite with remorse.
God has forgotten to give many things to teachers, but He has supplied them in abundance with the ability to empathise with the pupil .
The girl began softly, meekly and yet with a dignity the Almight gave the down-trodden to survive in the cruel world. However bad tempered they are, eventually teachers are also children of the Muse of Knowledge. The dictator in the teacher gave way to Saraswati as words rolled out of the distraught pupil.
“Ben, I have not prepared notebook for home work in not only the mathematics but no subject at all. I got second-hand books from a friend,but I cannot get notebooks. My parents are labourers who go out in the morning for work. The kitchen has nothing to cook so we come to study without food.There will be no food in the night too if the parents did not get any work.”Till I get a scholarship, there is no way to obtain notebooks.I know this is bad.”
She said in even tone that exploded on Usha like at atomic device. ” You can beat me every day, in every period and I will neither cry in the class nor stop coming to school.”
Despite brave words,tear rolled down her emaciated cheeks.
Usha Shukla was devastated by the impact. “Oh, my God. How could I be such an idiot? What kind of a taecher am I ? Am I a teacher? What a shame that I did not know about her plight? “
Instead of slapping the young student,she should have slapped herself, Usha thought furiouslylf. Who would think of her as anything but a snob?
As she remonstrated with herself, the pricipalalmost choked on her tears.Then,she decided to act.
She later told a jury of eminent citizens,led by retired chief justice of Gujarat High Court, B J Diwan who adjudged her best suited for an excellence award by the Eklavya Foundation: ” I decided to educate myself.I was nothing but a romantic dreamer.My colleagues said that there were a number of children in our school itself in similar predicament.”
Usha told them:” Come what may, we will make a beginning. “ The girl who was a victim of Usha’s wrath, was provided with not only notebooks, but everything a pupil needed. Usha and her colleagues got extra lunch boxes from their homes which will be left in a room so that the needy could quietly go and eat,without anyone knowing and hurting their self-esteem.
For the middle class teachers this was not an easy effort. In the days of steady income and spiralling prices, it requires a Herculean effort to meet both the end meet.
If God had created everthing , He should also be accountable for everything. The Brave Motherly Hearts decided never to donate money hereafter to temples, mosques, gurudwaras,churches..every placewhere a cash box for His acolytes ‘ sustenace is found. Not happy with the way He performed his job, the teachers replaced Him with school children.In the entire existence there was nothing holier that children.
Sceptics may argue that despite such kodiyan(earthen lamps) burning themselves out the darkness in our education system continued.It was as if there was darkness at noon.But,there are some Good Samaritans contnue to furrow their lone plough, and support innovative Gurus. Every year since 1997, Eklavya gives several awards for excellence in education.For more two decades, teachers from Ahmedabad and Gandhinagar districts in Gujarat have been given these awards. Usha got it in 1998.
Said Sunil Handa,chairman of the trust,”we are trying to identify the finest,most hard-working and steadfast teachers who have made a significant diference in the lives of their pupils.” It was the jury’s job to find such teachers.
The battle-hardened jury was deeply moved by the extra- ordinariness of the ordinary, when Usha narrated the simple tale.She and her colleagues were without power ot means to bring about a massive change in India.However,they were honest teachers. Everything they attempted did not mean necessarily a success. They had not been able to prevent young girls dropping out when they reached marriageable age.The parents would not want their daughter to have a lot of education so that there would be out-qualidied their spouses.For years now, girls have been forging ahead while the boys fared poorly in ssc and other competitive exqminations.
Handa was aware that piecemeal efforts were not enough. " We need a large number of grassroot level teachers who make a difference. “
Since 1997, 13 annual awards have been given on September 5, Teachers Day. Every year award winning Gurus narrate their life story and experiences.Then,in 2009, a journalist,Neerja Choudhary, was the chief guest at the award ceremony. She heard a veteran teacher,Perin Lalkaka describe her life . The story-teller in the scribe sprang into action. In her speech, Neerja,suggested experiences of the award winners should be brought out in an anthology.
Handa and his colleagues took to the suggestion and a bilingual book, in Gujarati and English, Aviram Athak ( Joyful Path,Tireless Walk) comprising of life stories in 36 walks down the memory lane is the end-result. The 168-page volume ,priced at Rs.100 a copy. was released in 2010.Its charm lies in togetherness of daily-life experiences, tunring into an extra-ordinary boquet of tributes to the mission of teaching. Alone or together, they would not bag a Nobel prize for literature.
It will ,however, bring home what ordinary citizens can do if they are are committed to a cause.A concerned and impressed parent neatly summed up: “No literary masterpiece has changed the world. But education has and will do so forever. Needed are committed teachers and a sensitive society.” We need good primary and secondary teachers. A Nobel prize can wait. A Gujarati idom says it all neatly:” Tipe Tipe Sarovar Bharay.” What is a lake of water but joining together of a vast number of drops of water?

A Maha Pundit of Letters: Harivallabh Bhayani

By Tushar Bhatt
It was a little after 3.30 p m,with the May sun mercilessly beating down on the red and white houses.As the mercury hovered around 44 degrees C.,even the society watchmen had hidden himself in a shade.The man who opened the door at 25/2,Vimanagar in Ahmedabad,however,seemed oblivious to the heat haze all around.
With a large forehead,marked by waves of wrinkles made perhaps by too much of thinking,sporting a mole on the left side,the receding hairline,the prominent nose and ears and a lined face with sunken eyes that have crow's feet all around,all told a story of how Dr Harivallabh Chunilal Bhayani,has been marching with time- and is oblivous of it too.
Born on May 26,1917, he was standing on that day in the doorway on the eve of his birthday; " it is a bonus time for me",he said,reflecting on how time had fled. A foremost exponent of Prakrit ,the ancient language,Sanskrit,and old Gujarati as also the modern one,Bhayanisaheb,as is he generally known,had,however,not allowed the sands of time to run away from the hour-glass of life so far without extracting,what he had set out to do some half-a-century ago.
Harivallabhbhai today is one of the handful people who can boast -- and ,he does not -- of being an authority in linguistics,not just a man of letters,of whom there are many in Gujarat and India,but a pundit of letters.
For all his contributions in research in the ancient works in Sanskrit,Priakrit,and in enriching the Gujarati language through original work on words and their roots,Dr.Bhayani has remained in the penumbra of popular accolade.Most have heard of him,but few have known of his pioneering work in linguistics.
Yet,Dr Bhayani had no regrets that he made Ahmedabad his home.A low-profile man,with an equable nature,intellectually, he is so towering a personality that he appears to be rather non-chalant about the contemporary disinterest in him and his work by his fellow human beings.The mere cataloguing of what he has done over the past 50 years is daunting enough to tell one about how tall are his achievements.The list of his published works number 69,topped only a few days ago by the publication of a short volume on etymology of the Gujarati language.
His works encompass texts edited from the original manuscripts along with notations from Sanskrit,Prakirt,Apabrahmsa,old Gujarati and old Hindi-- titles such as Lilavati-Sara,Taragana,Rasalila,Pamdavala,Bhasha Vyakaran.Those contianing papers on linguistic,literary and cultural studies of classical litrature include four books; those on renderings or translations from the ancient languages include seven books,on grammatical and liguistic sides include more than a dozen and those of collections of critical essays number a three-fourth of a dozen,folk-literary studies and collections of folk-songs numbering six,and five volumes of miscellaneous work.These are in addition to nearly a hundred research papers published on a variety of Indological subjects.Prakrit and Apbhramsa are the languages in which the old Jain literature had been written and in the beginning of this century,it looked if these languages would be lost forever.Thanks to the scholars like Muni Jin Vijay and Dr Bhayani,many texts from these have been rescued.
What sets him apart from other researchers in the ancient literature and languages is that he thinks that neither that literature or those languages are without any relevance today. " You have to blame the professors of Sanskrit for making people view that language as something of a dead language,and its literature supposed bereft of interest today. It is not so.Through ages,languages and the literary works have an important role in shaping the life;they are full of meaning for even the modern-day life." For instance, the old literature shows us how variagated and rich our social life was,how imaginative the people were,how artistic we were.It is a rich heritage of culture,which has a definite continuity in our modern existence too.
He was born in Mahuva,in Bhavnagar district of Saurashtra,into a family where his grand-mother had a stellar role to play,in the formative years of his life. He recalled:" My grand-mother had become a widow at a very young age and had brought up my father almost single-handed.Then,when I was about a year or so,my father died.Then the mother died,and so the grand-mother had to bring me up.I had a sister,but she too died young.I grew up listening to stories and bhajans,folk-tales and songs,in a Vaishnavite household." He went to M.N.High School in Mahuva,getting through the S.S.C. with flying colours in 1934.The small scholarship enabled him to go to Shamaldas College in Bhavnagar.The lonely child seemed to have a special love for books from the very beginning.He would spend hours in company of books in the college library. In 1939, Harivallabhbhai took his B.A.with Sanskrit as special subject,again with flying colours,bagging another scholarship to go to the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan in Bombay for further studies in Sanskrit.He passed his M A with six papers in Sanskrit and two in Ardhmagdhi,in first class,winning Bhagwandas Purushottamdas Sanskrit prize.In 1951,he completed his Ph.D. in Prakrit.He got interested in comparative philology even while in college.He was greatly influenced by a Jain acharya,Muni Jin Vijayji,who was a distinguished researcher in ancient literature,as also by the work done by Sir Ralph Turner, a renowned Indologist and expert in linguistics,who had done pioneering work in India and Nepal.From 1945 to 1965,Dr Bhayani lived in Bombay ,undertaking teaching at post-graduate level and research in Apbhramsa literature.at the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan.His output has been great eversince,underlined by qualities of meticulous research,notations and explanations of ancient works,many of which would have been lost in the mist of time. "Even today,there are hundreds of manuscripts in Prakrit and Apbhramsa,lying at a number of place in Gujarat,waiting for scholars to rescue them,and bring to the notice of the people."
He considered his job as that of a link, a bridge between our ancient literature and modern one; "It is an important assignment to my mind because it helps enrich our present-day literature and language,establishes our link with the past.The past does not remain a dead burden but gets merged into the modern era through such efforts." His only regret is that there are not enough people interested in serving as these essential links with our past. " It is difficult even to get people who can do the correct proof-reading of such literature."
In 1965,Dr Bhayani shifted to Ahmedabad as professor of linguistics at Gujarat University,devoting a decade to the job.Between 1975 and 1985,he was an honorary professor of Prakrit at the L D Institute of Indology in the city.
During this professional career,his real contribution was in guiding innumerable students for their doctoral work,and in applying scientific methods to the study of the Gujarati language. In 1993,he was given the honorary fellowship of the School of Oriental and African Studies of the University of London. Prof. J C Wright has noted a " strong correlation" between the careers of Dr.Bhayani and Sir Ralph Turner,who was the first scholar to apply then then modern "neogrammarian" methodology to the study of Gujarati.Dr Bhayani, who had first seen a work by Turner,even while in college in Bhavnagar,has just brought a volume on the Gujarati language on the pattern of what Turner had done some three decades ago.Among the innumerable awards that have come to him are Ranjitram medal for contribution to Gujarati literature in 1965,the President's award of certificate of honour as an outstanding scholar of Sanskrit in 1985,and a Sahitya Akademi award for the best Gujarati book of 1980-81.
Despite his life-long study of ancient literature, Dr Bhayani is a modern critic.He regretted that there is a trend in modern literature that took it away from the real life. " I am not saying that literature should preach or propagate,but how can it remain aloof from the contemporary society and its ways? How can it behave as if literature has nothing to do with society.Our literature should also not aim at becoming the literature of the Bhadralok only.He regretted that while literacy had spread,literary development was lacking.
He perceived that a habit to turn away from the real life in literature not only made it ireelevant but also led to a dead-end.It was a pity that some people thought that literature had something to with form and language,and had little to do with contentt.If the concept of content -- or matter -- was taken out from literature,it would lost meaning. A reader could then well ask: Why should I read such literature ?
As a critic,Dr Bhayani has been forthright,but never venomous. He hates getting into a slanging match just to prove that he was right. His detractors say that he too much of a soft-hearted man to get into controversies.
Long past the prime of life,Dr Bhayani loves to listen to music,meet friends for discussions and go for walks whenever possible.He has an even temperament.Said his wife: " I have never known him to lose his temper." The only son of the Bhayanis live in Bombay while the old couple leads a life contented,but as busy as that of a bee in Ahmedabad.He has formally retired from work;but he is neither tired,nor has he called it a day in his research work.

Fatima Meer: A Gandhian Gujarati Dadima from South Africa

Tushar Bhatt For South Africa,where Gandhiji perfected his weapon of Satyagraha in the early years of this century,a marathon revolution against the apartheid is over with the advent of the Nelson Rolihalahla Mandela government in power.For Gujarat,Gandhiji was not the only connection it has had with that country which suffered untold miseries for nearly half a century under the racist regime.Gujaratis had settled in Africa long long ago;there were immigrant labourers and traders from the State in South Africa,as also in other countries in the African continent. Gujaratis are still prominent at many places in South Africa,although along with the black people they too were treated as children of a lesser God by the white rulers.The dramatic victory of the African National Congress (ANC) against the unjust racialist regime itself has taken long. "When the African National Congress set out its vision for a non-racial society on January 8,1912", says the ANC's election manifesto, " we did not know how long it would take to achieve." Nelson Mandela,now 75,was not even born when the struggle against the white ruler began. Gujaratis too participated in this struggle.Memroies of one such fighter flood back in the mind as South Africa embarks on a more difficult task of national reconciliation and reconstruction. It was in December, 1991,when clad in a deep green saree,Mrs.Fatima Meer who looked like a typical matronly Gujarati housewife-- which she is -- walked into the offices of The Times of India in Ahmedabad.The appearance was deceptive in her case: the grand-motherly deportment,the toothy smile,the soft-spoken greetings in Gujarati --Kem Chho ? --pronounced with the sweet lilt as is done by the people of South Gujarat,all hid a veteran leader of Indian origin in South AFrica's embattled African National Con-gress,with a record of life-long fight against aprtheid. The struggle began when she was in school,and barely 17.Today,at nearly 65,she has not called it a day. "I have been in-volved in protesting against the racial policies eversince my school days.They tried to kill me once, bombed our house twice,and for my activities,I was sent to prison for five months without any trial.To cap iot all, the government banned me from public activities for 12 years,forcing me to live within a neighbourhood of about two square kilometres. She went on talking in a quiet,matter-of-fact tone.There was no trace of bitterness or resentment,as if,like the other great Indian,the Mahatma,she had anticipated the racist regime to behave no dif-frently. Unlike Gandhiji,however,Mrs Fatima Meer never thought to re-turnning to India her ancestral country. " My grandfather migrated to South Africa from Surat when he was 16. My father was born in Surat,and I have been to Surat to visit Rajawadi,our old home." For all her years away from home,she spoke fairly fluently in Gujarati. But that was about all as far as her active Indian connection is concerned. In fact, she described herself as a South African,born on August 12,1928, at Durban, the daughter of a journalist.Her father, Mr.Moosa Ismail Meer, was the editor of a journal,The Indian Views,for six decades from 1910 onwards. Mrs Meer was the founder and the first president of the Federa-tion of Black Women in South Africa, an organisation which too was banned in 1976. A socilogist by training,she was director of the Institute of Black Research at the University of Natal, as also an honorary research fellow.Of late, she has been the editor of Madiba publishers,a subsidiary of the Institute for Black Research. A prolific writer,her books include an official biography of the ANC supremo, Mandela, a book that has been published in nine languages,and another on Black Women Workers.Her works,of course, also include a volume on Gandhiji -- Apprenticeship of a Mahatma. To an Indian ear,Gandhiji's name,his ideology and how we should draw inspiration from his life and work -- all sound like too familiar a rhetoric,for the Mahatma has been converted into a propaganda material by self-seekers and other image builders in the post-Independence years. But what Mrs Fatima Meer had to say about the Mahatma, even in the closing weeks of 1991, did not sound like a blast of bombastic cliches. "Gandhi is relevant today also. The most important thing to learn from him is to how to get in otuch with one's own soul." Mrs Meer could foresee even when nobody knew in 1991 how long will it take to end apartheid :"In my country too, we have a stupendous task in rebuilding our society on the lines of equality between human beings,disregarding the colour of the skin." It was this quest to define the relationship of new man and woman in re-building South Africa in the post-apartheid era that had brought her to Ahmedabad three years ago on a flying visit. She had gone round looking at the work being done by the Self-Employed Women's Association (SEWA) among the women of the poor." I am not surprised,butt am impressed as also inspired by by the Gandhian methods used for the uplift of the opressed women in this city.I would love to start something similar in my country",she had said. Although she is not associated with AFESEWU,Mrs Meer's fond hopes seem to find an echo in what has been started in Durban by Ms.Horn and her colleagues. In some ways,the task of helping the women of the poor in South Africa is even more daunting than in India.As a country,South Af-rica is not exactly poor;its per capita income roughly matches that of Argentina.But its tragedy is the stark poverty of the black peo-ple.Behind the national average,black people have incomes one-tenth those of whites and nearly half have no formal jobs. This re-porter had asked Mrs Fatima Meer as to what were the conditions of the women in such a miliue ? She replied: "When we consider women's freedom, we are not just considering it in the context of an aprtheidal society,but in the context of a male dominated society, a domnation that occurs across race and class.White women were favoured to the extent that they were part of the white people and so their status was higher than that of black men." She was blunt: "As in practially all human societies,in South Af-rica too,women constitute a majority of the population,but have an insgnificanct influence on the legislature of the country or on any kind of corporate decision-making ,whether on the level of man-agement or labour.South Africa's nearly 16 million women suffer from oppression as a result of male domination."Again, African women constitute more than 70 per cent of the women in her coun-try,and their status is most depressed of all.Untrained in any sphere ,under-educated and largely confined to rural areas, a vast majority of them remain excluded from tje job market.Those employed find the lowest paid jobs; 57 per cent of African women in gainful employment are employed as domestic servants or farm labourers,and as such remain outside unionisation.There are prob-lems in agricultural sector where a majority of the women live. "Our task in helping the women of the poor will be tougher than that faced by organisations like SEWA." Is SEWA model applicable to South Africa ? "It is not that our domen do not have any skills.They,for instance, skilled in bead-making.There is a beautiful tribe called Ndebele,whose women do lovely mural paint-ing.But,these have to be revived ,enriched.And this is not to be viewed in isolation.Nearly half of the black youths need work,and so we have to evolve a system in which machines and handicrafts exist together.We have to develop a strategy for this." The mid-80s saw a decline in the economic well-being of South Africa as a whole because of the economic sanctions and boycott by many countries.Now that it has set on a new road to equality,the recovery will be there.But it still is an uphill assignment,even more so for organisations like AFESEWU.

Then & Now : 100 minutes of history,eternity of indifference

By Tushar Bhatt Time: 11.40 a m on March 18, 1922. Place: A ground floor room at the Circuit House in Shahibaug in Ahmedabad. Scene: Barely 20 minutes before the trial, often compared with that of Socrates, of Mahatma Gandhi on charges of sedition.The court room was filled to the capacity. The charges were that the three articles published in Young In-dia of September 29 and December 15,1921, and February 23, 1922,titled Tampering with Loyalty, A Puzzle and Its Solution and Shaking of the Manes. After the arguments by the Advocate-General, Sir Thomas Strangman,the court asked Gandhi if he would like to make a statement. The Mahatma,then 53, stood up,erect and unafraid.The court room was all ears,as if the entire the world were intently listening to what this man who described himself as a farmer and weaver had to say. "...I have no desire whatsoever to conceal from this court the fact to preach disaffection towards the existing system of government has become almost a passion with me....Non-violence is the first article of my faith. It is also the last article of my creed.But I had to make a choice. I had either to submit to a system which I considered had done an irreparable harm to my country, or incur the risk of the mad fury of my people bursting forth, when they understood the truth from my lips....I am, therefore, here to submit not to a light penalty but to the highest penalty. I do not ask for mercy. I do not plead any extenuating act." Gandhiji then read out the statement in a measured tone,tracing the events of Chauri Chora,the Punjab and other places in the country,which made him become an "uncompromising disaffection-ist and non-co-operator" from a " staunch loyalist". " I discovered that as a man and an Indian, I had no right. More correctly I discovered that I had no rights as a man, because I was an Indian....The administration of law is prostituted consciously or consciously for the benefit of the exploiter." Gandhiji said: " Affection cannot be manufactured or regulated by law. If one has no affection for a person or system one should be free to give the fullest expression to his disaffection so long as he does not contemplate, promote or incite to violence." " I hold it to be a virtue to be disaffected towards a government which in totality has done more harm to India than any previous system. India is less manly under the British Rule than she ever was before. Holding such a belief, I consider it to be a sin to have affection for the system and it has been a precious privilege for me to be able to write what I have in the various articles tendered in evidence against me." He told the judge: "The only course open to you is either to resign your post and thus dissociate yourself from evil, if you feel that the law you are called upon to administer is an evil and that in real-ity I am innocent; or to inflict on me the severest penalty...." The statement that sounded like the testament of India's freedom struggle had taken just 15 minutes to read. There was a hush in the court room. The air was heavy with apprehension. The sessions judge,Mr C.Broomsfield,began slowly : "....The law is no respecter of per-sons.Nevertheless it will be impossible to ignore the fact that you are in a different category from any person I have ever tried or am likely to try. It would be impossible to ignore the fact that in the eyes of millions of your countrymen are a great patriot and a great leader. Even those who differ from you in politics look upon you as a man of high ideals and of noble and of even saintly life.I have to deal with you in one character only." The judge handed the Mahatma an imprisonment of six years adding that " if the course of events in India should make it possible for the government to reduce the period and release you, no one will be better pleased than I." As the judge left the room, followers crowded around Gandhi. Some fell at his feet,others were sobbing.Gandhi was smiling and cool.The Great Trial of Gandhi had taken 100 minutes. TIME MARCHES ON And, an eternity of casualness follows.Here is a scene frozen in memory. Time: Around 3.45 in the afternoon on a humid July day in 1997,barely four weeks before the 50th anniversary of India's Independence. Scene: Circuit House in Shahibaug. Despite being state guest house frequented by VIPs,the lawn gives an impression of poor maintenance,an impression that would strengthen inside the historic room.The place is quiet, with only a handful of bearers and other minions on government payroll,are bustling around,wearing the patented bureaucratic look of being purposeful without being meaningfully so.In short, not doing much. Nobody has time to answer queries related to the past, pre-occupied with the mundane matters of the present. " The manager saheb has gone out for work" comes the pat reply from a bored clerk,manning the telephone-cum-reception desk. A limousine slides into the portico and he does not have time even for a bored non-reply. A chhota-make-believe VIP, i.e. a political hanger-on of a leader,has arrived. All along the four wall,stacked are smaller chairs,numbering more than 35. Some one dozen more chairs, of moulded plastics are piled up at one place. The general idea appears to be that no one, but no one should, run short of a chair, at least in this room,if not in the state and the country at large. Everyone appears blissfully unaware of the real significance of the room,where Gandhiji was tried.It faces the dining hall on the ground floor and is used now as a lounge for visitors and as a place where occasionally politicians of all hues hold press conferences. "You see, the place is really inexpensive as compared to a hotel", says a worker, explaining why politicians choose the lounge to tell the media on-record untruths, right under the mournful glance of the Bapu,whose life-size oil painting adorns the far-side wall.Mercifully, the politicians generally sit with their back turned on the historic Gandhi trial documents. The floor tiles wear a dirty look,as if it has only been sparingly and grudgingly swept all these days. Three-piece sofa sets,each one complete with side and front tables are in front of all the four walls.There are several doors but only one is open; two neon tube-lights throw pools of eerie fluorescent light.Three fans are turning in true government-fashion,going round and round without cooling the room. On another wall is a large painting ,depicting the scene of Gan-dhi's trial but hardly anyone seems interested.Next to it is another oil-painting,with Gandhi sitting in his famous posture.The next wall has the honour of having a bust each of the Mahatma and Sardar Patel.So much for the effort to render the place beautiful.It has the signature of PWD all over. The actual documents-- or,truthfully,photostat copies of these -- are housed in display panels,numbering nine and mounted on steel tubings,pushed into the room corners in clusters of threes and twos.The first panel,mounted on a black paper says boldly, The Judgement,but the first page of the judgement that should be under it is missing. The second page (see the photograph) has been eaten into by moths.The tube lights on each panel are resolutely switched off,lest someone reads the historic documents. Outside the room are two plaques,one in Hindi and the other in English,telling visitors of the historic importance of the room. An employee is half-dozing on a chair,presumably doing his duty to-wards the government and the state it rules,thanks to the Ma-hatma. It all looks like an ill-kept,unkempt place honouring the apostle of cleaninless in personal and public life, a stark reminder of how far we have come to his ideal of Swaraj after half-a-century.If it is a determined effort designed to make one forget about Gandhi, it succeeds eminently. The eternity of indifference persists, with minor modifications visualised by the Babudum. MAHATMA GANDHI AMAR RAHO.

The Mahatma's Resurrection

By Vinod Bhatt

(originally written in Gujarati
         and
translated into English)

By Tushar Bhatt





I could not trust my ears and stared with a dumb expression at my friend. He was emphatic: “You just try and find out if I am telling you the truth.”



He held up a small bottle containing sparking liquid. “Put only three drops of this magic potion on any inanimate thing and it will spring to life.”



Disbelief would just not disappear from my face, although like Gandhiji my friend also had taken a vow never to tell a lie. Maybe, he was making a mistake.



As if reading my thoughts, the friend drove home the point further. “I will tell you what you could do. Just go to any statue standing in a public place, put three drops of the potion into the statue’s left ear and see what happens.”



He was so insistent I thought I had no option but to try. There being any number statues of any manner of people all over the country, it was easy enough. The question now was of choosing a proper candidate in an appropriate place.



It occurred to me why not try the potion on the Mahatma’s statue, standing at the Income Tax Circle on Ahmedabad’s Ashram Road? On his return from South Africa, Gandhiji had made home in Ahmedabad and founded the Ashram, the first HQ of India’s non-violent freedom struggle.



Modelled on a famous woodcut of Nandlal Bose, the statue is beautifully done. With a walking staff in hand, the Mahatma seemed to be in a sombre mood and striding away from the Sabarmati Ashram.



Nevertheless I paused for a jiffy to ponder. Was it proper to carry out this seemingly innocuous experiment on the statue?



No one had objected when some people had bathed the statue of the Apostle of Non-violence with milk to purify it. Later, some other had even applied a blood tilak on its forehead, invoking the Mahatma’s blessings in whatever the cause they were fighting for.



Perhaps, he also would not mind my putting in mere three drops of the potion in the statue’s ear. After all, unlike others I was only verifying the truth of my friend’s claim, a harmless experiment with truth, with no personal or group axe to grind.



I cautiously put the drops into the statue’s left ear. As soon as the drops went in, Bapu came alive.



There was some cramp in his sprightly demeanour, a result of standing in the same rigid position for years. He stretched and yawned. The walking staff in his hand dropped to the ground. Dutifully, I bent down and picked up the staff to hand it back to Gandhiji.



Bapu sanpped: “Not walking staff any more. It would not do. Fetch me a gun. Quick.”


(Though they share a common surname,the Two Bhatts are not related.They are good friends)

A painter of rare vintage: Vasudev Smart

Tushar Bhatt

    Surat:
    Cars screamed past and two-wheelers zoomed ahead,mindless of others on the road.Traffic on the road near the modest house called Rupayan in Jay Somnath Society was so mad that one would think it wanted to reach the moon instantly, far ahead of the speed of light.In the midst of this gigantic madding crowd called Surat lived a physically old but mentally young man,Vasudeo Smart,who appeared to be working as furiously to take the traditional Indian painting-in tact,nevertheless-into the future .He had been prolific all his life, documenting ,improving upon and innovating newer symbols in the classical Indian style of painting.Over the past half a century,Vasudeo had done thousands of paintings,frescoes,scrolls,line drawing,panoramic colour pieces,mammoth compositions such as Ram Vivah,Independence,that are truly speaking inclusive of hundreds of works which can easily stand independently as works of art and together bring home an impact of magnificence, authentic,artistic and vibrant in every detail.
    Born on July 17,1925 in Surat in the household of father Balwantram and mother Gulabgauri,Vasudeo was among the tallest Gujarati artists.In the twilight years of his life,he was back in his hometown Surat, adding a lustre to the cultural life of the diamond city.
    Though his home State,Gujarat,appears to have taken Smart for granted,Vasudeo carried on with his brush,his colours and his pursuit of painting regardless.
    It was shortly after 2 p m when many of his age would be in bed ,enjoying a siesta.In the autumn of life Vasudeo seemed to be a man of different genre.He was not only up and about,but alert as well.
    As the footfalls approach the door of Rupayan,across the small foreyard which has a karan tree with branches hung with painted pots, a voice called out.In a jiffy,Vasudeo ,with a toothy bespectacled face,sporting short,white hair and equally grey bush moustache,right hand in a sling,appeared in the door frame.Even before a query was made,he perceived the question and said: "I slipped in the drawing room some two months ago and got a hairline crack in my shoulder.My hand is itching to work and I am hoping to be back at doing what I have always done,painting,in a day or two."
    A lifelong art teacher who spent more than a quarter century as reader in Indian painting at the Banaras Hindu University (BHU),he was completely at ease with young and old alike.If total informality,modesty and friendliness were his individual traits,the master could still turn out nattily-dressed for public occasions--complete with a Gandhi cap tiltingly set on his head, as neat and dapper a man as his paintings were.
    Vasudeo Smart was a titan among painters in Indian classical style,living away from the limelight of public attention for some years now;yet, he had not sunk into inactivity.His friends say he appeared to be busier than ever,bursting with ideas,seeing opportunities to do paintings. Where ordinary mortals will perceive chaos,noise,milling crowds and drabness, Vasudeo found patterns,beauty,texture and colours.A deep and throbbing sense of romance and wonderment at the day-to-day life and an ability to bring it all on into minutely detailed paintings,strong in lines,marvellous in composition and superb in colour selection,were his hallmarks.
    He was strongly rooted in Indian traditions of art,thanks to his upbringing and teachings of giants like Jagannath Ahivasi,his mentor.His fields of specialisation are as vast as his repertoire in Sanskrit literature. Innumerable frescoes,murals and line drawings done by him were in collections of various societies and individuals in the country and abroad.A restless man,he  also authored several books on arts and paintings.Notable among these is Roop Samhita, a collection of 2,000 Indian designs and a book in Gujarati,Bharatna Bhint Chitro.
    Critics have hailed his works as very sensitive,true to life in the smallest detail,with a very strong line drawing,unity of colour and sense of proportions.Said Natu Parikh:"Many of his paintings are an assembly of a hundred of even two hundred works of art.In each detail,he has gone into its aesthetics painstakingly.He was not a man in hurry, rather he was a perfectionist who insisted of getting every little thing right."
    His works also display a rare ability to afford a panoramic view,without having to use too much of perspective to tell a viewer what is the central or focal point in the mural.There is a breath-taking scale in his work and still there is a rhythm,as also movement that help a viewer easily grasp what is being shown.In a way, it is a very effective story-telling too.
    Parikh noted another characteristic of Vasudeo,citing it as a proof of ever-growing process of his art.Vasudeo never tires of bringing out new symbols.He could draw clouds in a variety of ways,trees in so many different styles that one marvels at the grand mind of the man. All this was not work of his fertile imagination; he had really absorbed minute points of subtle difference in each species of tree,or each span of an overcast sky to underline the identity of each cloud,lending it not only elements of art,but an identity of its own.
    Not just this,he took his observations very seriously and could,years later, recall the nuances of subtle difference between the clouds or trees or even a water mass he had done in different paintings.A good teacher,Vasudeo Smart had never ceased to learn more to expand his artistic depth and horizon.
    Vasudeo's father was a Sanskrit pundit who eked out a living as a Brahmin performing puja and other religious ceremonies.Recalling those years,Vasudeo's voice cracks "My mother was a deeply religious person who used to sing melodiously.I still remember those days of childhood when I and she would be sitting on a swing as the dusk feel.There were no lights,just earthen oil lamps and mother would sing.I loved to listen to her as also the the Sanskrit strotras and shlokas.I used to remember many strotras by heart."
    The love for Sanskrit language had been a lifelong passion."There was some element of art as well in our Vaishnav home inasmuch as the various rites of worship of Krishna called for decoration.The Vaishnav temples were also having rich traditions in arts,be it in music,literature,or painting.A neighbour,Zinukaka,was a good portrait artist.And so was an inspirationa cousin,Late Bhanu Smart."
    Said Smart:" The atmosphere in Surat too made an impact on me. It was then a great city of culture.During the Diwali days,women would compete with each other in doing colourful saathia (rangoli) in front of their homes.Cuitizens would go round the city in the night,looking at the magnificent array of rangolis and appreciating the works of art.
    The child Vasudeo,by the time he went to school,had thought of what he wanted to become in life-a painter.He had passed inter exam in drawing while in school only and opted to go to Bombay in 1943 after passing his matriculation to study art,rather than going in for a degree like B.A.The family was monetarily in dire straits.Vasudeo's voice cracks as he remembers those days.: "There was no money.With difficulty my father could send me Rs.ten or so a month. I used to do tuition and some other work in Bombay to make both ends meet.Once my father even wrote to me suggesting I might think of doing a B.A. instead. I wrote back a Sanskrit strotra to the effect that I was determined to do what I thought was best for me." Tears welled up in Smart's eyes,his voice went hoarse and turned into a whisper; " When my father died ,this chit of mine was found in his pocket."
    While in Bombay,he had also imbimbed some of the spirit of the Indpendence movement.That probably explains why his chosen dress is that of a nationalist of the freedom struggle days.In 1948,he took a diploma in painting,standing third in order of merit.For two years after 1949,he was a fellow in Sir J.J.School of Arts,after having worked for a year as an art teacher at Sarvajanik Education Society in Surat. In 1951,he came back to work for seven years at Jeevan Bharati in Surat.Between 1958 and 1960,he went to the B.H.U as a scholar sposnored by the Government of India to study in the fine arts section under Mr Ahivasi.Then,he spent a year in Ahmedabad,teaching at the CN college of fine arts.In 1962,he went back to Banaras  as lecturer in painting and remained there upto 1985,rising to become a Reader in Painting.
    Thanks to Ahivasi,his art mind got focussed on Indian painting and Vasudeo made a study in depth of fresco paintings of different styles and techniques,preparing the identical size paintings of murals found in Ajanata and Bagh caves among other things. In 1954,he copied frescoes at Badsami caves for the Lalit Kala Academy,New Delhi,and went on for documenting in a similar manner murals at Orchha and Datia in Uttar Pradesh.He  travelled to many parts of India studying the traditional Indian painting and imbibing the best of it. He had been given innumerable awards and prizes and  held many one-man exhibitions in different cities in the country.
    Mr Ahivasi laid foundation for the later greater flights in paintings of Vasudeo."He was so meticulous.He would call a pundit on Mondays in the month of Shravan (the most rainy month) to read Meghdoot of Kalidas,just to bring home to us boys what it was all about.He would ask us to try capture in painting what the poet was saying in words."
    The habit  stayed with Vasudeo all his life. "For doing a painting on Ram Vivah,I read Ramayana several times. For doing documentation of the magnificent Jain paintings in south Guajrat in recent years, I read up everything that was there about Mahavir."
    Those were the days of nationalism in the newly independent India."We had paintings being done under western influence,method.We had great exponents in western as well as Bengal wash methods.We did portraits,life,landscape,but it was Ahivasiji who impressed me most in looking for carrying forward the Indian style of painting. I learnt a lot by going round the country.More than everything else, I learnt to imbibe what was aesthetically superb in various styles practised in the north, in the south,everywhere."
    He said:"I have nearly 2,000 paintings of different Indian styles. I am toying with an idea to bring out a volume on it, A Study of Indian Paintings.It is such a rich tradition,you see. I feel a small book can be brought out on the use of circles, squares and triangles alone in our traditions.And,the richness of colours.The Vaishnav padas will tell you a lot about colours and their vividness. There are three main seasons and their colours,and then there are the conjunction periods of these seasons and their colours,the evenings have their own colours,and so do the dawns." The voice became animated a great deal as Vasudeo went on narrating the potential of doing things about Indian style of paintings.
    He fondly recalled his association while in Banaras with another Gujarati,and a long time resident of Surat, Pundit Omkarnath Thakur."Punditji would snarl at you,when you talk of trying to render the innumerable ragas and raginis into painting.I would join issue with him and tell him,these paintings were doine mostly on the basis of description available in shlokas.You want to paint something about Bhairav raga,then you take the time of morning when it is rendered,show a temple of Mahadev etc. For really bringing on to canvas the true nature of ragas and raginis,one has to be able to transform the rendering itself into painting. I would ask Omkarnathji,the singers should themsleves pick up the brush and attempt it."
    The sense of wonder and romance have been becoming sharper with the passage of time.Age did not seem to affect Vasudeo's sense of visual pleasure and his ability to convert that personal experience of joy into a painting. Some years ago,he was impressed by the vast variety of kites in the Rander bazar,then in the Barhanpuri bazar in Surat."There were hundreds of kites, each one with a different design.We knew a few names of kites such as Ladvedar,Kagdi,Matki, although the younger generation is beginning to forget about it all.But the richness of design struck me.So I settled down to do a painting in which I included 350 kites, all of different colour combinations and design.If you really want to study design and its impact on one's sense of art,you should look at the kites more carefully." The moot point that he made,and yet did not spell out in so many words,was that there is so much vibrant and colourful in life around us only that one can derive ideas from it,if only one cared to observe it, think about it and explore possibilities,with all one's mind,heart and hand.
    His own creative process,however,hinged more on his ability to feel,and capture, a central or focal point in doing any painting.Years ago,he was in Nagaur,Rajasthan,when someone told him of a panghat where village women,dressed in colourful attire,came to fetch water.The man added that once upon a time,when women did not go out so often,every time a daughter-in-law came to the panghat to bring water,her mother-in-law would make her wear the best she had.That clicked in Vasudeo's mind and led to a lovely painting,with traditional Rajasthani milieu.Again,when he went to the Himalaya,Vasudeo had taken a copy of Kumar Sambhav,just to see if what the poet wrote about different types of clouds was a figment of imagination or what. It turned out to be not fiction,but based on minute observations.
    Vasudeo had done a large number of paintings based on Indian classical themses,often derived from Sanskrit classics,and striving to translate into the lines,and colours of what the writer was describing in words.He had a deep knowledge of Sanskrit and thought that had he not become a painter,he would have become a scholar in Sanskrit.His friends assert that he is a pundit in Sanskrit,nevertheless.
    Vasudeo had just finished documenting the priceless paintings in the jain temples in south Gujarat.Till recently,he used to go every alternate day to Broach and Ankleshwar for this.
    He was a rare combination of an erudite scholar,a master painter and an eternal student.Vasudeo Smart was on an endless quest that,with each passing day,appeared to be sharpening his senses of visual presentation.The ability was backed by his childlike innocence,and nurtured by the care his nephew ,Jagdeep,showered on him after the passing away of Vasudeo's wife,Pramila.The only visible gap in the grand master's life is the death of his wife in December,1987,which he tries to cover by working harder.In homage to her memory,Vasudeo brought out an album of  paintings, Rasikpriya.Death had separated Rasik and his Priya,but memory was a powerful potion for him.It kept Vasudeo Smart going,and going great. Then in mid-90s he made a quiet exit from the world. In 2009, his nephew Jagdeep who adored him as a blood relation and Guru,too died at the age  of 53.

A Crisis of Culture Among Gujaratis in the USA

Tushar Bhatt ,travelling in the U S





You will realise the real worth of a family only when you go away from it, alone in the maddening crowds of the world.. The identity crisis that is evident among the Non-Resident Indians in general and Gujarati NRIs in particular is nothing but a manifestation of the feelings of being cut-off from the comforting shelter of the vatvruksh.Society is a mere expansion of the family





From this seed springs forth uneasiness, a doubt about true appreciation of the gravity of a non-resident's real identity, what is he/she- an Indian or an American? This is not the only trouble. The crisis haunts in lesser intensity highly qualified Information Technologists like Tilak Mysore, or management people like Rutu Dave, social scientist like Prof Pravin Sheth, Dr C Mohan,a top scientist with IBM,all in the Silicon Valley's hub San Jose.



In older out-posts like Bakersfield where Gujarati Motels have been there for ages, the cultural crisis is the same. More intensely-hit are people like Harendra Rawat, a self-made marketing man who came to the USA some 30 years ago,or Bina Bhatt who came here a decade ago to make a life in computer. Rawat is so much in India mentally that he refuses to touch anything made in Pakistan. His friend and Bina's husband computer specialist Raj Patel,spent harldly eight months after being born in Gujarat speaks no Hindi and a smattering of Gujarati. Yet he has Gujarati taste buds and loves hot chili in his food.All of them have India pulsating in their heart and mind. They stand erect, eyes moist,when the Tri-colour flutters in the sky, their leaps essaying Jan Gan Man.



The Gujarati Motelians rub shoulders with the higher income groups of IT crowd and doctors in jointly watering their Indian roots.The get together at the temple which houses several gods under the same dome. There are 2 pujaris, a Tirupati Brahmin who came here for hotter weather from Cleveland in Ohio,and the other a Gujarati who shifted his communications line from less prosperous Fiji.



The devotees have equally diverse vocations. While Sujata and her husband , Kirit Desai are reputed doctors, Pradeep Patel and Nayna are specialists in home-delivered grocery of Indian specialities.Pradeep is a singer of note who is good demand. But,he is not the one to sit back and enjoy.” I have my son and daughter studying to become doctors and must earn more.” He and his wife,Nayna operate from Taft, reaching goods to far-off places such as San Jose and even Las Vegas.



They all have gone away from India physically,but would not allow India to leave their heart.



In brief exchange of views with NRIs, this reporter found a deeper alienation haunting them. Like Vishwamitra, they had thought they would be in a new paradise but suspect they have become Trishanku, neither here nor there.What is worse that the first generation NRIs who came to the USA and the second generation born in the USA fight different identity crises.





The first generation NRIs are aware of their origins and believe whole-heartedly that they are Indians first . They are adjusting to American way but are more comfortable with dal,rice and curry than with pitza and pasta.They will resonate with devotion when Vibha and Rasbihari Desai launch into the superb Avinash Vyas copmposition, Maadi Tarun Kanku Kharyun ne Suraj Ugyo.They will weep copiously when Pankaj Udhas sings chiththi Ayee hai, vatan se....They will march proudly and hum patriotic songs with moist eyes, applaud wildly when Sachin Tendulkar sends a Pakistani bowler's delivery soaring into the sky for a massive sixer and cry when they watch terrorist mow down innocent people in Mumbai or Gandhinagar. The first generation has its heart beating for India.



Not so in the case of the second and third generations of these very people. The youngsters find themselves adrift, not fully integrated with the society in their land of birth, the US. These children of lesser culture are not accepted by American society. They face a double whammy of identity crisis. There is no better illustration of this then in marrying. Boys have in mind a role model impossible to find in America. They want their brides to be modern like the American girls and they want their brides to be as obedient as their India-born mothers. They forget that their India born mothers are less modern and more obedient.



NRI girls on the other hand, want grooms who are as prosperous as their fathers and as modern as Americans are. This can rarely happen. As a result, outsiders like me find a great confusion in the NRI society, The first generation NRIs come to India out of love for their motherland; and for finding spouses for their second generation sons, a pure Deshi girl who will be modern as well as obedient girl, a difficult proposition. As for their America born daughters, they hope to find a smart groom who will be ready to be a virtual ghar jamai, a proposition even more difficult. And, yet most teenagers are ten times more obedient than other peer group Americans. They would shy away from talking about dating.



It is a pity that most people tend to regard this dilemma as something springing from personal choice about which society at large can do but little. It is the foundation of a fundamental change coming in the relations between Garvi and Ghardi Gujarat and its foreign children.



If more attention is not paid, the Gujaratis in diaspora will be adrift, going away from the homeland. History is replete with such happenings in the past. Many West Indies islands residents bear Indian sounding names but they are lost NRIs. The same is the case in Fiji, Mauritius, South Africa, Zimbabwe and other countries.





A classic example is of Sinhali residents of Sri Lanka. They are descendants of people who went with Sanghamitra, Buddha's disciple from Orissa and Bihar. They are at war with people of Tamilian origins.



In an essay in way back 1946, George Orwell who wrote prophetic novels like 1984 and Animal Farm, said that the first outpost of a culture is language. When alien influences strike, even before the final surrender of a culture comes the debasement of its language.



Many a time underground and hardly discernible currents are already sending SOS signals which we as a people are not bothered to pick up. Note the fact that Gujarati as a child of one of the most developed languages of all times, Sanskrit is rich but we find use of English words admixed with Gujarati to create some gibberish called Gujlish. Second and third generations of Gujaratis in the US are not bothered about learning their ancestor's language because Gujarati has no wider commercial use in America



But there is a small silver lining to the dark clouds, according to some, but it may be an illusion. The children of Gurjari are uncomfortable that Americans at large as true Americans do not accept them and they themselves do not want to be regarded like their parents, as children of a lesser civilization, nick named Motelian culture. This is claimed to be a healthy sign but actually it is a flavourless Gujarati Undhiyoo without chilies and other spices.



NRIs are desperately trying to keep best of both the worlds. They have a chicken party for birthday on a Saturday and Satya Narayan Katha on Sunday to double celebrate a birthday. The tragedy is that this amounts to seeking a personalised amalgamation of cultures. They put off wedding and cremation to a fixed muhurat on a Sunday or a Holiday only so that ethnic needs do not clash with market requirement.







It has given a steady rise to Godmen and self appointed sentries of ethnic values, celebrating as many holidays as their deep-lined pockets will permit to authenticate their utilitarian compromise. They join hands with other Indians to sing garba, dance during Durga Puja, Onam, do puja during Shivratri and lighting of Holi fire.



In the long run it is a groping in a cultural dark . It is a grave cultural crisis.

Counting The Asiatic Lions In Their Last Abode

Tushar Bhatt   

Sasan-Gir:

    The dawn itself had given notice of a sultry day ahead. As hun-dreds of workers and forest officials sat patiently in their hide-outs next to some 650 watering places all over the Gir forest for the tenth census of the last of the Asiatic lions, there was no other way for them but to bear it with a grin. The first estimation of their popu-lation, of course, was made as early as in 1880, but data collected before 1936 were only guess-estimates.
Only a small number of citizens have first hand experience of what happens during a typical census of lions where non-foresters are generally not allowed. This made it all the more enchanting for me.  
Over three to six days, mostly in May,every few years,three-member teams of these enumerators would sweat it out physically verifying the number of lions in the 1,412 square kilometre-Gir sanctuary and national park, as part of a week-long-operation to count the wildlife, especially the big cats and their prey.

   

  
Enumerators in the census of human beings go from doorstep to doorstep,but the lion enumerators had to be content with spotting them at one place a beast would unfailingly come in a cycle of 24 hours -the watering station.
  
Afterwards, what stuck most vividly in the memory of many was the unusually hot season. They had known the mercury to shoot up to around 41 degrees C,buton these days it seemed to have climbed to near 43 degrees C,making the deciduous forest somnolent. The customary fragrance of the forest-- different in the summer, the winter and the monsoon-- was conspicuous by its absence, as if it too had gone on a casual leave, fearing a sun-stroke.
  
Said Bhadresh Upadhyay, photographer from Rajkot, who was there to "shoot" the census operations: "I have been to the Gir in-numerable times, but I have never known such a hostile weather. It was so hot that at many places where baits had been kept to lure the more languid of the lions to come out from their bushy hiding for a kill,did not even bother to turn up."
  
Explained Mr Rameshchandra Java,Gujarat's former principal chief conservator of forests;" The census had three ways of cross-checking the counting.The first one was by visual count, done by the teams sitting next to watering stations. These teams had actu-ally been at place since a few days when there was a dress re-hearsal of the drill on that day. A typical team would sit on a machan, a platform-like hide-out mostly built up a tree, and ob-serve the animals arriving for drinking water at the watering hole. This time at as many as 150 watering places, the forest department had to build these hide-outon grounds only since no tree cover was available near enough..The Gir is a dry forest and in this season most trees are bereft of leaves, save the khakhra tree."
  
The visual count, said the official, would be noted down with exact timing, the direction from which the animal came and the direction in which it left and when. "Lions usually roam over a defined terri-tory only, each pride of the beast having some specific area marked out for itself. The timing would help eliminate the possibility of duplication if the beast was sighted within a few minutes at an-other machan in a given direction."
  
Then, during the daylight hours, the teams would check out the ob-servations with pug marks of the lions; each beast has a separate pug mark, and experienced foresters, called shikaris(hunters, though hunting is something they never do), can identify different animals as also different lions from pugmarks.
  
Yet another way of matching the results with the first observation was to tie  a bait in the vicinity of the machan as the bait would lure out those rare ones which did not come to the watering place or a beast that had escaped being counted at the watering place.
  
The census, said Mr Java," is fairly accurate" and provides interest-ing and important insights into the demographic profile of the Asi-atic lions and whether or not their prey-base enough as also whether or not the development policy aimed at enhancing their numbers and preserving them better was working or not.
  
In the count of lions in 1990, it was found that there were as many as 284 animals; this time, officials are confident, the figure will go at least upto 310.They are also hoping to find a corresponding rise in the other animals which serve as prey to lions.Many expert think that 300 lions are well-above the saturation figure. The population pressure is causing the majestic beast to roam out of the Gir for-est,causing concern among the villages in Amreli,Junagadh and  Porbandar districts.
  
Today, the Gir is synonymous with the Asiatic lions, the Panthera leopersica. The species came to India some 6,000 years ago from Persia and were to be found in the areas of today's Punjab, Hary-ana, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, western Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and other parts of Gujarat as well. "Somehow, lions never crossed the Narmada", said Mr Java. Nobody knows why.
  
The last Asiatic lion, outside its Saurashtra home, was killed in 1884.This was a result of the destruction of its habitat as also a mad hunting-spree for trophy. Said Mr Java: "One factor I can think of for the elimination of the Asiatic lions from so many countries and other areas in India too is that it is a royal animal. It is not cun-ning like a tiger and would face aggression bravely, getting killed in the process."
  
Even in Saurashtra, its area of habitat has gradually shrunk. The old Gir area extended over as much as 5,000 sq. km and included in the early part of this century areas as far as Mitiyala, Barda,Alech hills, Chorwad and the Alech hills in addition to the Girnar mountain.There were semi-wooded forests and corridors of grasslands, sparsely populated zone to enable the beast to move about freely. Pressure of human population and farming ate into this area. In the latter half of the 19th century, the lions deserted the hills in Barda and Alech, and Mitiyala in 1955.
  
The Gir was officially made a sanctuary in 1965 and its area of 1412 sq. km is surrounded by a buffer zone of another 489 sq.km.About the steps taken since, Mr H.S.Singh, the then conser-vator of forests(wildlife circle)at Junagadh, said that 'the most im-portant aspect of the Gir today is that it has become a very stable, tremendous regenerating, self-supporting and sustaining ecosys-tem owing to its rich and diverse flora and fauna. The Gir is a unique eco-system, harbouring more than 400 plants species, some 32 species of mammals,24 species of reptiles,310 species of birds and more than 2,000 species of insects, in addition to many micro flora and fauna."
  
This, said Mr N V Kataria, former divisional forest officer at Sa-san,was a direct result of efforts made at conservation and preser-vation of the wildlife and flora and fauna. A study by Dr Paul Joslin had revealed in 1972 that the Gir displayed an overwhelming evi-dence of accelerated degradation of the ecosystem. It warned that if nothing was done to arrest the rate of decline in the number of surviving Asiatic lions, the species might be extinct in two decades.
  
The warning was heeded to.  In 1972 itself, the government ma-chinery swung into, with a Rs.58 lakh project. The forest officials have been able to tackle serious problems facing the sanctuary such as grazing, poaching, lopping, and cutting of grass and began programmes for soil and moisture conservation, habitat improve-ment and fresh plantation. "Degradation of the system has been ar-rested and reversed and we are determined to continue our ef-forts," said Mr Indravijaysinh Jadeja, a former minister for forests in the Keshubhai Patel ministry of the Bharatiya Janata party.
  
Actually, the Gir has almost always been in the centre of public at-tention. There has been a regular outcry against anything that might endanger its rare distinction of being the lone habitat of the Asiatic lion. There have been numerous complaint of quarrying on the periphery of the forest, protests against allowing religious places to go in for bigger construction and even at suggestions to relocate some of the lions elsewhere. "There is a tremendous pub-lic pride for the Gir and even well-intentioned suggestions such as relocation of a few beasts have been met with resistance", said Mr Yogesh Joshi,a banker in Talala. An ordinary, but regular visitor to the forest, he symbolised an average citizen's anxiety that nothing should be done to undermine the uniqueness of the Gir.
  
It was one such popular outcry, reflected in a letter to a newspaper at the beginning of this century that led to the imposition of a ban on shooting the lions in the Gir. Lord Curzon,the viceroy then,had accepted an invitation from the Nawab of Junagadh, in whose do-main much of the Gir came, for a lion shoot. Mr. Java said: "I do not remember the name correctly, but I think it was some one called, Mr Vaishnav, who wrote an anonymous letter commenting on the inappropriateness of shooting an animal that was on the verge of extinction.The viceroy gave up the idea and instead urged the Nawab to ban lion shooting which the Nawab did."
  
The Nawab retained the right of allowing a few privileged guests to shoot a lion initially, but after a report in 1913 that the number of li-ons in the forest had dwindled to a mere twenty, banned it alto-gether.
  
In 1880, Major Watson noted that there only 12 lions. At one point of time early in 20th century, their number was put at as low as five animals. In 1920 Sir P.R. Cadell estimated the lion population at 50.
  
The first organised census of the Gir lions was done in April,1936, which showed there were 287 beasts in all, inclusive of 143 males,91 females and 53 cubs.It was based on counting and measuring the pug marks at watering places, assuming that a lion must drink at least once and seldom more than once in 24 hours. Some 700 workers were engaged in the enumeration.
  
The next counting was done by Mr Wynter Byth in April,1950,on the pattern of the 1936 census, save that the pug marks counting and measurements were taken not at the watering stations but on roads, paths and train tracks. Their number was put at between 219 and 227, of which between 179 and 187 were grown up beasts. There have been censuses during the intervening years too.
  
In 1968,the census was carried out through direct visual count to minimise margin of error, and showed the lion population at 177 li-ons, including 60males, 66 females and 51 cubs. The next count-ing, done in May, 1974, included the census of herbivores and other animals so far not counted. In this counting, lions and other animals were counted on live baits and at watering stations. A dye was used to mark the animals from a distance and measurements of the right forepaw were taken to avoid duplication. The census put the population at 180 lions, including 40 males, 52 females as adults, 13 males and 25 females as sub-adults and 50 cubs. In 1979, the results put the figure of lion population at 205 and in 1984,their population stood at 239.The last counting in 1990 showed there were 284 lions, including 99 males, 122 females and 63 cubs.
  
Mr H S Singh, formerly conservator of forests (wildlife circle), Juna-gadh, said that the carrying capacity of the Gir also would show up in the census of other animals, which serve as prey for the lions. He felt that food was not a limiting factor in the Gir as the popula-tion of major ungulates, which lions take as prey, had risen at the rate of 14.2 per cent a year over the last two decades. "If this trend continues with positive changes in the habitat, the Gir can support more lions that the existing population.".
  
He pointed out that lions had disappeared from the neighbouring forests in the middle of this century. Habitat improvement in the Gir led to a growth in their population and lions had started visiting neighbouring forests again. Till 1990, lions were casual visitors to the Girnar,Mitiyala and coastal forests. Now they have started cap-turing their lost territories once more. "Now there are at least four satellite populations of lions and second generation of migrated li-ons has made the Girnar and the coastal forests their home.The dispersal path of the lion is almost the same as the path of their ex-tinction from those areas. In the Girnar area, there may be a dozen lions by now."
  
Officials felt that the 182 sq. km forest area of Barda in the nearby zone could be an area where excess lions population could be set-tled. This area was chosen for their settlement in 1979.Now,whether man wants it or not, lions might just go there.
  
There also was need for a better management of the Girnar, Barda, Mitiyala and coastal forests as also some neighbouring patches in an integrated manner. The time may have come for evolving a Greater Gir eco-system management. This and a host of related issues will be in a sharper focus when an analysis of the1995 lion and wildlife census in the Gir are available. The au-thorities, especially the politicians, may face an unenviable task of choosing between the pressures of vocal human population and the lion population

Enumerators in the census of human beings go from doorstep to doorstep,but the lion enumerators had to be content with spotting them at one place a beast would unfailingly come in a cycle of 24 hours -the watering station.
  
Afterwards, what stuck most vividly in the memory of many was the unusually hot season. They had known the mercury to shoot up to around 41 degrees C,buton these days it seemed to have climbed to near 43 degrees C,making the deciduous forest somnolent. The customary fragrance of the forest-- different in the summer, the winter and the monsoon-- was conspicuous by its absence, as if it too had gone on a casual leave, fearing a sun-stroke.
  
Said Bhadresh Upadhyay, photographer from Rajkot, who was there to "shoot" the census operations: "I have been to the Gir in-numerable times, but I have never known such a hostile weather. It was so hot that at many places where baits had been kept to lure the more languid of the lions to come out from their bushy hiding for a kill,did not even bother to turn up."
  
Explained Mr Rameshchandra Java,Gujarat's former principal chief conservator of forests;" The census had three ways of cross-checking the counting.The first one was by visual count, done by the teams sitting next to watering stations. These teams had actu-ally been at place since a few days when there was a dress re-hearsal of the drill on that day. A typical team would sit on a machan, a platform-like hide-out mostly built up a tree, and ob-serve the animals arriving for drinking water at the watering hole. This time at as many as 150 watering places, the forest department had to build these hide-outon grounds only since no tree cover was available near enough..The Gir is a dry forest and in this season most trees are bereft of leaves, save the khakhra tree."
  
The visual count, said the official, would be noted down with exact timing, the direction from which the animal came and the direction in which it left and when. "Lions usually roam over a defined terri-tory only, each pride of the beast having some specific area marked out for itself. The timing would help eliminate the possibility of duplication if the beast was sighted within a few minutes at an-other machan in a given direction."
  
Then, during the daylight hours, the teams would check out the ob-servations with pug marks of the lions; each beast has a separate pug mark, and experienced foresters, called shikaris(hunters, though hunting is something they never do), can identify different animals as also different lions from pugmarks.
  
Yet another way of matching the results with the first observation was to tie  a bait in the vicinity of the machan as the bait would lure out those rare ones which did not come to the watering place or a beast that had escaped being counted at the watering place.
  
The census, said Mr Java," is fairly accurate" and provides interest-ing and important insights into the demographic profile of the Asi-atic lions and whether or not their prey-base enough as also whether or not the development policy aimed at enhancing their numbers and preserving them better was working or not.
  
In the count of lions in 1990, it was found that there were as many as 284 animals; this time, officials are confident, the figure will go at least upto 310.They are also hoping to find a corresponding rise in the other animals which serve as prey to lions.Many expert think that 300 lions are well-above the saturation figure. The population pressure is causing the majestic beast to roam out of the Gir for-est,causing concern among the villages in Amreli,Junagadh and  Porbandar districts.
  
Today, the Gir is synonymous with the Asiatic lions, the Panthera leopersica. The species came to India some 6,000 years ago from Persia and were to be found in the areas of today's Punjab, Hary-ana, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, western Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and other parts of Gujarat as well. "Somehow, lions never crossed the Narmada", said Mr Java. Nobody knows why.
  
The last Asiatic lion, outside its Saurashtra home, was killed in 1884.This was a result of the destruction of its habitat as also a mad hunting-spree for trophy. Said Mr Java: "One factor I can think of for the elimination of the Asiatic lions from so many countries and other areas in India too is that it is a royal animal. It is not cun-ning like a tiger and would face aggression bravely, getting killed in the process."
  
Even in Saurashtra, its area of habitat has gradually shrunk. The old Gir area extended over as much as 5,000 sq. km and included in the early part of this century areas as far as Mitiyala, Barda,Alech hills, Chorwad and the Alech hills in addition to the Girnar mountain.There were semi-wooded forests and corridors of grasslands, sparsely populated zone to enable the beast to move about freely. Pressure of human population and farming ate into this area. In the latter half of the 19th century, the lions deserted the hills in Barda and Alech, and Mitiyala in 1955.
  
The Gir was officially made a sanctuary in 1965 and its area of 1412 sq. km is surrounded by a buffer zone of another 489 sq.km.About the steps taken since, Mr H.S.Singh, the then conser-vator of forests(wildlife circle)at Junagadh, said that 'the most im-portant aspect of the Gir today is that it has become a very stable, tremendous regenerating, self-supporting and sustaining ecosys-tem owing to its rich and diverse flora and fauna. The Gir is a unique eco-system, harbouring more than 400 plants species, some 32 species of mammals,24 species of reptiles,310 species of birds and more than 2,000 species of insects, in addition to many micro flora and fauna."
  
This, said Mr N V Kataria, former divisional forest officer at Sa-san,was a direct result of efforts made at conservation and preser-vation of the wildlife and flora and fauna. A study by Dr Paul Joslin had revealed in 1972 that the Gir displayed an overwhelming evi-dence of accelerated degradation of the ecosystem. It warned that if nothing was done to arrest the rate of decline in the number of surviving Asiatic lions, the species might be extinct in two decades.
  
The warning was heeded to.  In 1972 itself, the government ma-chinery swung into, with a Rs.58 lakh project. The forest officials have been able to tackle serious problems facing the sanctuary such as grazing, poaching, lopping, and cutting of grass and began programmes for soil and moisture conservation, habitat improve-ment and fresh plantation. "Degradation of the system has been ar-rested and reversed and we are determined to continue our ef-forts," said Mr Indravijaysinh Jadeja, a former minister for forests in the Keshubhai Patel ministry of the Bharatiya Janata party.
  
Actually, the Gir has almost always been in the centre of public at-tention. There has been a regular outcry against anything that might endanger its rare distinction of being the lone habitat of the Asiatic lion. There have been numerous complaint of quarrying on the periphery of the forest, protests against allowing religious places to go in for bigger construction and even at suggestions to relocate some of the lions elsewhere. "There is a tremendous pub-lic pride for the Gir and even well-intentioned suggestions such as relocation of a few beasts have been met with resistance", said Mr Yogesh Joshi,a banker in Talala. An ordinary, but regular visitor to the forest, he symbolised an average citizen's anxiety that nothing should be done to undermine the uniqueness of the Gir.
  
It was one such popular outcry, reflected in a letter to a newspaper at the beginning of this century that led to the imposition of a ban on shooting the lions in the Gir. Lord Curzon,the viceroy then,had accepted an invitation from the Nawab of Junagadh, in whose do-main much of the Gir came, for a lion shoot. Mr. Java said: "I do not remember the name correctly, but I think it was some one called, Mr Vaishnav, who wrote an anonymous letter commenting on the inappropriateness of shooting an animal that was on the verge of extinction.The viceroy gave up the idea and instead urged the Nawab to ban lion shooting which the Nawab did."
  
The Nawab retained the right of allowing a few privileged guests to shoot a lion initially, but after a report in 1913 that the number of li-ons in the forest had dwindled to a mere twenty, banned it alto-gether.
  
In 1880, Major Watson noted that there only 12 lions. At one point of time early in 20th century, their number was put at as low as five animals. In 1920 Sir P.R. Cadell estimated the lion population at 50.
  
The first organised census of the Gir lions was done in April,1936, which showed there were 287 beasts in all, inclusive of 143 males,91 females and 53 cubs.It was based on counting and measuring the pug marks at watering places, assuming that a lion must drink at least once and seldom more than once in 24 hours. Some 700 workers were engaged in the enumeration.
  
The next counting was done by Mr Wynter Byth in April,1950,on the pattern of the 1936 census, save that the pug marks counting and measurements were taken not at the watering stations but on roads, paths and train tracks. Their number was put at between 219 and 227, of which between 179 and 187 were grown up beasts. There have been censuses during the intervening years too.
  
In 1968,the census was carried out through direct visual count to minimise margin of error, and showed the lion population at 177 li-ons, including 60males, 66 females and 51 cubs. The next count-ing, done in May, 1974, included the census of herbivores and other animals so far not counted. In this counting, lions and other animals were counted on live baits and at watering stations. A dye was used to mark the animals from a distance and measurements of the right forepaw were taken to avoid duplication. The census put the population at 180 lions, including 40 males, 52 females as adults, 13 males and 25 females as sub-adults and 50 cubs. In 1979, the results put the figure of lion population at 205 and in 1984,their population stood at 239.The last counting in 1990 showed there were 284 lions, including 99 males, 122 females and 63 cubs.

  
Mr H S Singh, formerly conservator of forests (wildlife circle), Juna-gadh, said that the carrying capacity of the Gir also would show up in the census of other animals, which serve as prey for the lions. He felt that food was not a limiting factor in the Gir as the popula-tion of major ungulates, which lions take as prey, had risen at the rate of 14.2 per cent a year over the last two decades. "If this trend continues with positive changes in the habitat, the Gir can support more lions that the existing population.".
  
He pointed out that lions had disappeared from the neighbouring forests in the middle of this century. Habitat improvement in the Gir led to a growth in their population and lions had started visiting neighbouring forests again. Till 1990, lions were casual visitors to the Girnar,Mitiyala and coastal forests. Now they have started cap-turing their lost territories once more. "Now there are at least four satellite populations of lions and second generation of migrated li-ons has made the Girnar and the coastal forests their home.The dispersal path of the lion is almost the same as the path of their ex-tinction from those areas. In the Girnar area, there may be a dozen lions by now."
  
Officials felt that the 182 sq. km forest area of Barda in the nearby zone could be an area where excess lions population could be set-tled. This area was chosen for their settlement in 1979.Now,whether man wants it or not, lions might just go there.
  
There also was need for a better management of the Girnar, Barda, Mitiyala and coastal forests as also some neighbouring patches in an integrated manner. The time may have come for evolving a Greater Gir eco-system management. This and a host of related issues will be in a sharper focus when an analysis of the1995 lion and wildlife census in the Gir are available. The au-thorities, especially the politicians, may face an unenviable task of choosing between the pressures of vocal human population and the lion population