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

An Indian-cum-Euoropean Technocrat:Prof. Jaroslav Fric

Tushar Bhatt

    The almond-shaped face,lined with furrows the plough of time has made,is sporting a friendly smile. The eyes,peering from behind the metal-rimmed spectacles,also show a bit of age,with bags and crow-feet.He would easily pass off as an elderly,portly,slightly prosperous-looking foreign tourist,with an obligatory camera on the shoulder.

    A foreigner he is,but the 69-year-old Prof.Jaroslav Fric (pronounced freech) is more at home India than his appearance and English ,spoken with a central European accent, would betray.

    For one thing,he does not wear on his face the perpetual,mandatory scowl that elderly,slightly-prosperous looking foreign tourists carry as a standard baggage--"beggers,flies,filth and awful living conditions".

    For another,he loves India and has been trying to understand the psyche of this ancient land for projecting an image of India.Fric has been visiting and working in India producing hi-tech audio-visual presentations right from 1971-72.

    It was Fric who helped produce an audio-visual show,The Indian People  put up in the central pavilion at Asia-72.It was again he who was called upon to visualise and install Crystal River commemorating the memory of the late Mrs Indira Gandhi at the spot she was killed at her Safdarjung house.

    After three years of work last year,he put together a hi-tech multi-media show,using the latest laser technology , at the Akshardahm complex of the Bochasanwasi Aksharpurushottam Sanstha of the Swaminarayan sect, a fusion of technology and ancient Indian philosophy,of the physical and meta-physical ideas.He has just got a bronze at the 9th International Audio-visual and Multi-Media Festival,held in Munich ,West Germany.There were as many as 135 entries at the festival,and the judges were experts from Germany,France,Spain,England and the U.S., which means it was not easy to impress them with a show that tries to explain intricacies of the Indian concept of Sat-chit-anand.

    Artistic and technological aspects apart,the very production of the audio-visual presentation ,involving spiritual and similar abstract ideas would present a formidable challenge even to an Indian producer because the aim of the show would be to hold the interest of viewers,familiar or unfamiliar with the notions,educated or unlettered,Indians or foreigners.For a person like Fric,born and brought up in Czchoslovakia,it would mean a complete re-orientation of the mind without any guarantee of being able to communicate it all to others. Say Sadhu Atmaswarup Swami and Sadhu Brahmprakash Swami of the sect: "That the show was not only hailed by thousands of Indian visitors to the complex in Gandhinagar,but also attracted the attention of an international specialist gathering indicated that Fric had been able to establish this communication link; he showed what the sect wanted to show,showed in such a beautiful manner,and managed to make an impact as well." Born on June 9,1924,Fric comes from a family that had traditionally been linked with the arts. But it was by no means a family of ascetics for whom transformation from one spiritual track to another may not be an insurmountable problem. Fric has been a down-to-earth man,not mentioning the fact that he lived in the then eastern bloc where man and the party were everything and there was nothing beyond.

    His education too ,therefore,did not equip him to take on the meta-physical.The first steps of his studies took him into the world of technology; Fric studied during the Second World War,when the regular universities had closed,at the vocational school of electronics in Brno,and later ,in the wake of liberation, at the electro-technical faculty of the Czech Technical University.The broad knowledge in electronics led him into research work and at first he worked at the Czechosolvak Research Institute of Nuclear Physics.This would mean he was equipped to be neck-deep in nuclear physics.

    The artistic gene in Fric appears to have made all the difference.To him physics was not a mere abstract science.With a rare sensitivity,he seemed to find "an abundance of interesting visual phenomena - photoelastic effects,tale-telling records of traces of a synthesis of nuclear elements." He was intrigued by the process of visualisation itself,the taking hold of the apparently "invisible" in the physical processes, in tranforming those processes into visible processes and which for outside viewers remained concealed.

    A chance- he calls it "luck" - made him participate in the setting up ofan exhibition called "Aoms for Peace" in 1953,providing him with an opportunity to get acquainted with the different means of audio-visual presentation.He pondered about the multiplication of space,processes of scene-creation,techniques and tricks of stage and exhibition architecture.

    All of which made him give up his research to join at the national enterprise for exhibition design in Prague,and helped create the lighting techniques at the Czech pavilion at the Brussels Export-58.A string of other assignments followed,culminating in his founding in 1969, a creative team named SCARS (Science-Art-Sense) at the Czech centre of fine arts.The teams operates from there even today.

    The grounding in physics and experience in the production of presentations led to a happy synthesis of his scientific outlook,which helped produce solutions to technological and logistical problemss, and his artistic talent,scaling new heights in audio-visual production. He also learnt how to organise talent for diverse jobs needed in such a production,managed to bring together a team of 40 people,and honed skilled in communications so that he could not only understand what his world clients wanted but also give them what they wanted,sometimes writing scrips himself.The first major work of his to attract notice in India was at the 1972 Asian fair,an extensive multi-vision fresco,including severtal freely linked independent parts. It was composed of three parts on the subjects of Indian people, the message and India.

    Fric and his team had by now become an internationally-known professional group,bagging prestigeous assignments for audio-visual presentations.Among the major ones were a show on the Birth of Europe for the European Community pavilion at Osaka Expo,Heritage of Ages on Iran,Victory of the people about his home land,50 years of Pahalvi dynasy again in Iran,The People of Czechoslovakia,the World of Fairy Tales for a Japanese gallery, a UNESCO show on prehistoric life,the Testament of Nehru for Asia-82 In the Constellation of Equals for the then Soviet Union.He has also co-authored a number of books and articles with other writers.

    But the Gandhinagar project was different from all others he had done thus far.It presented a challenge that seemed well-nigh impossible to meet.The monks of the sect had after roaming all over the world,scouting for suitable group of people to produce their audio-visual programme for a permament exhibition-cum-museum complex in Gujarat's capital.They heard of Fric,were impressed by his accomplishments and sounded him on the proposal for Gandhinagar.At first,although an adventurous professional,Fric was sceptical.He looked at the monks,dressed in orange and presenting an outward appearance of being simple,if not simpletons.His brief was to come from the head of the sect, Pramukh Swami,who did not speak English.Indian philosophy was even more mystifying to Fric than Greek and Latin.That was more than three years ago.

    Now, with the multi-media show running regularly week-in-and-week-out for a year,Fric is a man with a totally different perception.

    Fric had just risen from an afternoon catnap,snatching forty winks on a blue bed,rolled out under the open,azure sky in the spacious compound of the Shahibaug temple."You see,the basic problem was for me to grasp abstract ideas of the Indian philosophy such as Atma (soul). The concept of Atma being forever pure and eternal is very different from that of the soul in the west.I did not know even if after grasping it ,I would be able to make an audio-visual show from it."

    In the early 1970s,when he had first arrived in India,he had put up a five-star hotel in Bombay, to find from the window scenes of stark poverty. "Shanty colonies,emaciated people,begging children.I cried all night on the first day,despairing at the thought of how to project a positive image of India out of the immediate impressions that outsiders got like these scenes gave." Fric says,"the image of India abroad is of a poverty-ridden place,full of squalor,backwardness." But he persisted and was able to see the strengths of India, a vast ocean of talent,manpower and untapped wealth.

    He says the problem the Gandhinagar show presented was even more vexing.For so far in his career,he had worked on a physical plane,showing landmarks of either physical progress,technology or history of a people.One had to understand the history of a place,imbibe its spirit,but it was not impossible. "But to translate philosophy into a multi-media was a different cup of tea",he says, even now unable to articulate as to how exactly he did it.A group of seven monks helped him and occasionally he would see the head of the sect.All his life,admits Fric,he had worked for money -- " with a profit motive". The monks or their organisation were in no way capable of matching,say what the Sony of Japan might pay for a multi-media show.Yet,he was inspired to take up the assignment,travelled all over the country,logging more than 30,000 kms.,went to temples, read up history,philosophy,and anything that might help him.

    The resulting Sat-chit-anand show presents the message of philosophy easily ; man's futile pursuits of temporary happiness and the path of eternal bliss, sat-chit-anand by realising Atma and Paramatma as propounded by the Vedas and Upnishads.The show is presented with the aid of six dieo and 8 slide projectors,integrating artistic,optical light and sound effects on 14 screens.It is a computerised production, using a laser disc,leading to an exciting display.Since it was opened in November last year, a large number of people have seen it.

    Fric was in Ahmedabad for an inspection of the equipment. "I was fearful of the toll that the dust,continuous running of the show,the weather fluctuations might take on the presentation.But, I am amazed at the way care has been taken for it; so well-cared the equipment has been that it looks as if it is new." He has spoken to Czech president Victor Havel about the show and when he comes to India in February next on a visit,Havel is expected to come to Gandhinagar to see it.

    So Indianised Fric has become that he has become a great admirer and to some extent follower of the eastern philosophy. He has given up somking and drinking alcohol,does not think that wordly goods can give happiness as his western brethern believe.

    He had purused the profit motive all his career.What profit did he make from the Gandhinagar experience ? With a smile dancing in his eyes,the Czech says: "I have derived a great deal of mental peace for this project.I have done my work as best I could do even when money was decidedly not much.I did not even think of the fame it might get me." It got him that too.

   

   

   

   

A Century old,clicking and active,Pranlal Patel,Wizard of Camera

Tushar Bhatt

It all began in an innocuous way.
It was a hot day in May in 1940.The world was, for several months, at war for the second time in the 20th century. The Quit India movement was a good two years away in the future and the independence of the country as yet a dream.
Thirty years old then Pranlal Patel, a Rolie-flex camera slung on the shoulder, set out for Kashmir, long hailed as paradise on the earth, with a return ticket from Ahmedabad to Sri-nagar via Rawalpindi. Inclusive of the bus-fare from Rawalpindi to Srinagar, the cost per head was a meagre Rs.42.5. But the young man was not from among the rich in search of pleasure.
He was setting out to take photographs, in an era when a camera was a rare thing to pos-sess, more a hobby of the wealthy or the crazy. A Kodak 120 reel cost 14 annas. Like the anna coins, the 120 film too is extinct now.
Every thing clicked in the life of today’ camera wizard Pranlal Patel, internationally reputed pictorialist. His speciality has been his mastery over Black & White photography. So much so that the photographs taken during that trip continue to fascinate even today, not only because of their excellence but as a collection of historic value. It effectively brings out how much more enchanting was Kashmir just 70 years ago and what damage man has done to it. In the process the photographs become an irrefutable witness to an era for posterity, far more trustworthy than words.

Even among the true photo-artists, Pranlal Patel, an Ahmedabad (Gujarat)-based lens man is the rarest of the rare. Active in photography for nearly 70 years, Pranlal in 2010 was in the 101st year of life, and still kicking and CLICKING. He still wields a camera, walks up-right, though slowly, and has most of his slightly yellowish teeth intact and in service.
The 99-year-old Patel is still in photography. He took it up as a hobby in 1932. In no time it became a supplementary profession and then got transformed into a life-long passion.
A representative collection of his vintage photographs at Jaipur (Rajsthan), in March, 2009, has been described by Pranlal as fulfillment of a long standing desire. “I have no desire left unfulfilled. Now, I am waiting for one way travel on God’s train.” He brushed aside protests from listeners. “I have had everything in life.”
He has dozens of albums and has held numerous exhibitions. His work was not just superb photography but also a social, visual history. Most of them though exhibited are yet to be published.
He is curious like a child, and again like an innocent small boy, gets easily absorbed into the present moment, here and now. Behind his spectacles, eyes sparkle with abundant in-terest in life. He is equally comfortable with the children, youngsters.
He is a simple person, though certainly not a simpleton, frugal with words but fluent in thought. What keeps him fit and full of zest for living? “I don’t know. I do nothing special. I eat normal Gujarati vegetarian meal, do padmasan, and eat five pieces of dates with ghee (clarified butter) every morning and drink milk. I regard myself as an eternal student, keen to learn newer things. I have many Gurus; even my grandson Piyush is my Guru because he taught me a lot about harnessing computer as a tool for photography. Among my clos-est friends are two noted young photographers, awards-winner Vivek Desai and Ketan Modi, who runs a highly-acclaimed photography training institution. Vivek is also my dear-est disciple. I am proud of today’s young generation”.
Pranlal is very popular among young professionals and helps them a lot by patiently pass-ing on insights obtained through decades of photography. His photography has been mostly based on box cameras of the old genre and in black and white, without using the flash. He firmly believes that “the real art of photography does not reside in gadgets, whether a flash light or the modern-day digital cameras. It does not rely solely on composi-tion, light and shade, but on the eyes and fingers. There must be a perfect co-ordination between the eyes and the fingers. In turn the eyes and fingers must harmonise with the camera in such a way that they know simultaneously what unusual feature is there in the subject, compose in a way that highlights that feature and decide in unison when to press the shutter. They must become one with each other and the subject being clicked.”
Alas, there is no device in the market that can achieve this feat for the lesser mortals! Those who have learnt the secret are photo-artists, the Masters. The rest are slaves of technology.
Of course, people like Pranlal can throw some hints. “You should think before you pick up the camera to shoot. Most of us do not contemplate in advance. Before going in for shoot-ing, you should think of some unusual angle, slant, and symbolism, colours, light and shadow in the composition. Almost every thing has been previously photographed. You have to bring out something that is different.”
He says “It doe not mean that you should ignore day-to-day life. It means you must learn to concentrate in the present assignment, not just take a fleeting interest in the subject of the assignment but view it as the most important thing in your life, here and now. Your mind should neither wander hither and thither nor waver. You must see what is in front of you at the present moment. Nothing else matters. This cannot be accomplished overnight. You have to practise endlessly. Like a music maker you must never stop doing the riyaz all your life.”
Pranlal quotes an example. Ages ago, he was on an assignment to create a photo portfolio of the new building of a local company. Says he, “I could have done it in two or three weeks. But I took nearly six months. I would go to the building, sit in different places outside and study the light and shade and the time. I wanted to find out the timing and season when there would be best sunlight. I did not even open my camera bag till I had decided that in the forenoon of May there would be ideal light. The portfolio was much appreciated.”
Pranlal’s photographs are not only technically perfect, underlining the superb sense of composition, and skilful management of light and shade but also are so evocative that they seem to have an enduring life of their own, vibrant, vivacious and memorable.
Another trait that separates Pranlal in the rare category is the habit of preserving and main-taining his thousands of negative, repository of images of over 70 years. Together they are a massive documentation of India’s march of progress and social change.
These images also seem to re-assert the prime position black and white pictures occupied in the art of photography, notwithstanding the rapid advancement of colour photography. There is a stream of defeatism about black and white photography these days and in many cities there are no studios that will wash, develop and print black and white pictures.
Pranlal Patel’s pictures celebrate the glory of black and white, re-inforcing what W.D. Wright, a British professor of Applied Optics at the Imperial College of Science & Technol-ogy, observed years ago. He contended that the black and white photographs may appear to the viewers more real than the colour pictures. Over the years, viewers have learned to supply their own colour information to a black and white photograph.” You may get closer to reality with colour but the closer you get the more obvious it becomes that it is a picture, (and) not the real thing.”
Pranlal is reluctant to take to colour photography. He thinks that the black and white photo-graphs have an immense capacity for subtlety, rich sensitivity of detail and graphic urgency. To him it also is a stimulating mental challenge to transform every colour around us into two shades of black and white only and bring a still photograph to life.
Pranlal has, over the past seven decades of photography, earned a reputation as a pictori-alist, extending far beyond the shores of India, bagging awards and prizes. His work has been published in international media for decades. Pranlal has an innate sense of history. For example, take his photographs of the Sabarmati River in Ahmedabad over the past half a century. They instantly tell you a visual story of the degradation of the ecology. Or take the images of a typical wedding in the Patel farming community over past half century. They highlight subtle changes in customs and attire, attitudes and behaviour over time.
At his age most people would be bed-ridden, if alive. Countless others would have hung up their professional equipment and sunk into senility. Pranlal continues to explore life with the same sense of wonder and romance that first made him give up his job as a teacher in a municipal primary school in Ahmedabad.
Born on January 1, 1910, Pranlal has come up the hard way in life, but the harshness has left no trace on his personality. A man with a largish nose, twinkling eyes hidden behind a 25 per cent darkness goggles glasses, he is quick to smile and enthuse. Hailing originally from Jamnagar district, he traces his family home now to Kolki in Upleta taluka of Saurash-tra. He grew up at his maternal uncle’s place, working in Ahmedabad in petty jobs to help family. “I have sold peanuts, soda and lemon soft drinks near Victor cinema hall in Fuvara in olden days, delivered at home newspapers of Ahmedabad, which included at one time Gandhiji’s Navjivan. Remembering his childhood, Pranlal says: “I was, however, a bright boy from the very beginning, who was made to jump several years from Standard I in pri-mary school. I passed my vernacular final (which was not the final year of secondary stage in education but of the primary stage, but in those days, something of a qualification).I be-came a primary school teacher, with an initial salary of Rs.15 supplemented with one or two tuitions”
But, recalls Pranlal, he had an urge to do something different, something so well that peo-ple will remember him by.” This yearning brought me in contact with photography in 1932 when I acquired a box camera. In the early years, I learnt a lot from Col.Balwant Bhatt, an ace photographer himself.” He does not make any claims, but Pranlal must have had a gift from birth to identify visuals, compose them automatically and then capture them exactly as he saw them with his mind’s eye. He began to work as a free-lance photographer even while continuing as a primary teacher. A meticulous diary-keeper, Pranlal noted in 1937 that he had made an income Rs.710 in that year from photography. In 1938, the figure jumped to Rs.1, 241. Not much by today’s standards, but as Pranlal notes humorously: “The rupee was not so cheap in those days.”
Remembers Pranlal: “I was debating with myself if I should continue as a teacher or do something else that will make me stand out. I had been going to Ravishankar Raval’s school of fine arts,dabbling in painting to see if that was going to be my way of life. I think it was around 1938-39 that I got an opportunity to see an exhibition of photographs of Kash-mir, taken by a famous photographer, Abid Saiyed of Palanpur. My mind was, as if, under a spell. I too wanted to capture in the photo frame the beautiful landscapes, natural scenes, snow-capped mountains, the serene life style and lovely Kashmiri people.”
Abid was a sympathetic listener to the young man and not only gave him all the dope, but also a promise to speak to Kodak people to give him film at the dealers’ rate. Three friends from Mumbai and Ahmedabad agreed to join Pranlal on the safari to Kashmir. Before they undertook the trip, something happened that landed Pranlal full-time into photography.
Recalls Pranlal: “One day I was taking class III in Madalpur municipal school, teaching Gu-jarati to the pupils, A camera, as usual hung on the back of my chair. An Inspector arrived from the municipal administrative office for his annual inspection, saw my Super Iconta, and asked: ‘What is this?’ I told him politely it was a camera, to which the inspector retorted loudly,’ If you are so fond of photography and the camera, then open a studio on Gandhi Road. Such things are no good for an ideal teacher.’ I was stunned.”
Pranlal could not sleep that night. The next morning, he went to his principal to tell him he was quitting. “I was rattled by the rude remark. I had the confidence that I would be able to eke out a living from photography, my obsession. Already I was making Rs.200 a month as side income from photography at social and official functions. It was a good enough amount to live on.”
The young man who went to Srinagar in May, 1940, via Rawalpindi, spent a month in the valley. “Among other things, at Srinagar we stayed in a shikara for three days, paying a princely sum Rs.2.50 a day, and then moved on.” The days would be spent photographing the heart-stopping beauty of the Kashmiri landscape and people.
They went to Pahelgam and to remote villages, mountainsides, water-falls and everywhere in the beautiful valley. “One could buy a hundred apricots for six annas. Oh, it was like liv-ing in paradise for a month.”
Says Pranlal :”What all we saw can never be described in words or even in pictures. It was an era of black and white photography, and of mechanical cameras, with no modern tech-nology available to aid a lens man. I took pictures of Kashmir with these limitations, expos-ing fifty rolls of XX film. These rolls were washed locally in Srinagar.On return to Ahmeda-bad, we started enlarging them into prints. Friends and others who saw them exclaimed words like Oh! Wow! Fantastic! Wonderful! Exra-ordinary! Balwant Bhatt helped and guided me into sending these pictures to national and international magazines, earning me a name as a pictorialist.That was a golden period, those days 30 days in Kashmir. I yearn to go Kashmir once more, and capture as it looks today.”
The lucky break into photography via Kashmir made the life for Pranlal. Scores of journals in and outside the country carried his pictures every now and then. He never looked back, becoming more and more famous as a pictorialist with rare sensitivity and dedication, trav-elling widely in the country, capturing events like the wedding in the Mysore Royal family in the fifties and that in the Royal family of Rajkot. He has a huge collection of rare pictures of cities, famines, landscapes and people.
Among the prized possessions are huge albums of photographs of the Iron Man of India, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel whose every visit to Ahmedabad whose mayor he earlier had been captured on his camera. His presence was so routine that when Junagadh princely State was liberated from the Nawab’s rule and merged in the Union, Pranlal was present in the city when Sardar arrived. He hailed Pranlal, saying,” if I come, you too should. Do you keep tracking me? Is it not so?” Pranlal did a lot of photography during the Quit India movement. His pictures were lapped up by photo-hungry newspapers and magazine. His earnings shot up and he filed his Income Tax returns in 1947, to the great surprise of offi-cials. It was hard to imagine so much income from free-lance photography only in those days. Nearly 90 per cent of the surplus was used in buying newer equipment.
Along with still photography, he also undertook movie photography. He filmed extensively and in 1947 and 1957, recorded some 16,000 feet of movie of a religious head’s pilgrimage of Vrajbhoomi; it was so massive that the divine personality got tired by merely watching it. But the photographer was indefatigable.
His wife Damayanti, their son, Anand, their two daughters and grand-children all have taken to photography. Damayanti was a self-made darkroom wizard who could rescue very fuzzy photographs by dexterously doing washing, developing and printing. She was a sort of record-keeper too.
Some 40 years ago when Queen Elizabeth came to Ahmedabad, the state government wanted a hundred copies of an old photograph of the Somnath temple. Pranlal was not at home when Manubhai Trivedi, an information official, came to their studio-cum-residence. Damayanti requested the officer to wait for five minutes during which she spotted the me-ticulously preserved negative. Within ten more minutes she came out of the darkroom with a perfect print of the old picture. The government got a hundred copies before morning. She passed away a few years ago, leaving a big void in Pranlal’s life. His grandson looks after the library work now
Today,Pranlal looks back with great satisfaction that he will leave behind foot-prints in the form of photographic prints to remember him by. But he has by no means called it a day. Tell him of a topic and his eyes shine. A routine day, till recently, began at 5.30 in the morn-ing when he would wake up. After breakfast at 9 a m he would set out on foot from his home for his studio, a distance of two kilometres. If the son and others were not using the studio, he would get into the darkroom, working up to 1 in the afternoon.
He helps youngsters willingly in learning photography, emphasing the importance of com-position, painstaking care for capturing details, judging light correctly and developing and printing the photographs meticulously.
He advocates working not only with body and mind, but also heart. His own involvement in the work is such that he does not remember time or gets tired or hungry when engrossed in photography. Some years ago the Kankaria lake in Ahmedabad had a huge fish population dying out suddenly and the stench of the dead fish floating in the water was awful. But Pranlal took out a boat, taking his own time in capturing just one memorable picture of the dead fish panned by empty boats on either side of the frame. He never noticed the stink, as he clicked away till he had captured the right composition.
He says “photography is something done with the eye, the mind and the heart. The equip-ment, though important, is secondary. With the best equipment in the world, you could turn up with lousy pictures. With primitive equipment but alert mind, you could transform ordi-nary things into photographs of extra-ordinary charm and beauty.”
He generally does not use a flash and none of his memorable pictures has had the use of artificial lights. He believes that the real fruits of good photography cannot be reaped unless one takes an equal amount of care in washing, developing and printing. His one-liner to aspiring photographers is “Do not compromise, either in quality, costs or time de-voted in getting a good picture. Quality always remains in the vogue, whatever the era, whatever the state of technological development. It was so yesterday, it is so today, and will be so tomorrow and the day after too.”
It is all pure Zen of photography.

An Engineering Don & Gentleman Farmer: Vithu Patel

Tushar Bhatt

His eyes twinkled with mischief as his right hands shot up in greetings.The walking gait betrayed a bit of a problem in the leg but the man,clad in kurta and pyjama,moved forward to receive visitors,genuine pleasure writ large on the pock-marked ,bespectacled face.The enthusiasm, the warmth and the lively interest all effectively concealed the real age of the farmer, Vithal J.Patel,who has done pioneering experiments in agro-forestry for nearly two decades now in this corner of Saurashtra.
As he showed around the plantation ,he stopped at a straight-going tree,some 15-foot high."Look at this,it is a real gold mine.It is a red sandal wood tree,around two years and eight months old.In its life span,it will earn me around Rs.six lakhs.Remember,it has come up in an area where last monsoon we got hardly 14 inches of rainfall."The tree was not a solitary example;time and again,Vithalbhai would stop at a tree,pointing out its height,reeling off details about when it was planted,what it was given and how it has grown.The refrain was common;with an innovative outlook in agro-forestry,one could turn even a small field into a veritable money-spinner.The emphasis was so much on what even a small farm-holder could achieve and not so much on what corporate entities could grow.
Vithubhai, as he was commonly known, was a different kind of a gentleman farmer, who was fond of experimenting scientifically; his methods were so unconventional that they aroused ire in equal proportions among the forestry officials and environmentalists, although for different reasons. He had taken to agro-forestry in an aggressive manner, making his farm work like a factory, exercising strict on the various factors.
But,his most unconventional method was to plant saplings rather closely,making them struggle for survival. "We all know of the Darwinian theory of the survival of the fittest.We also know that struggle tends to make one sturdy and stronger.Vithubhai was for years away from farms and was known as Dr.V.J.Patel in his earlier avtar as a teacher. Formerly a professor in civil engineering,he was a noted expert on dam designs and earthquakes who took to farm forestry after leaving his teaching assignment some twenty years ago.
A man with scientific training and a scientific temper,he thought a lot about the survival of the fittest theory to come to a conclusion that for a healthy growth trees -- or, saplings must be made to struggle, and yet they should not be starved of nutrients so that they do not die out for want of enough food for all. He resorted to growing trees in closer proximity than what the forest officials would dream of, add generous doze of fertilisers and other nutrients and provide adequate water to make them bloom. Not only do they bloom,they go tall faster than the widely-spaced trees because each closely panted tree was racing upwards to receive as much sunshine as possible.
Foresters generally follow the precept that trees,if widely spaced when planted, develop better. In the experiments of close proximity plantation carried out at Surendrabag it was found that such trees grew faster than the ones grown along conventional lines; and the number of trees is also higher in closely planted places-- some three to five times more in numbers.
Said Vithubhai: " I am a farmer,earning my bread working on my farm. Many of us farmers live below the poverty line and struggle to survive ; one could not hope to make us invest money and time in the development of degraded land." That led to another poser: If the people living near these degraded land pieces were not ready for development who else would go and help in afforestation ? "The central question to which we need to address ourselves is this-- who will develop the degraded land which has poor fertility.We can rephrase the query-- can we interest the people to undertake afforestation on a degraded land?"
He himself came out with the obvious reply: " It is possible if it can be shown that high income could be generated from the development of wasteland.The productivity level of wasteland should be increased by using simple agro or silvi-cultural practices"
He set out in search of the answers to these and many related questions which form a part of the nation's search as well for a viable farm strategy that combines tree cultivation too.The search ,in the case of Vithubhai,took him on a dusty road that always kicked up some controversy or the other. In the late 1970s and early 80s,he ran foul of the environmentalists because of his experiments with eucalyptus. Instead of planting them widely spaced, he packed in as many as 10,000 saplings in an acre(or,25,000 trees a hectare),showing the small farmers how to reap bumper profits.But since eucalyptus was decried as devouring water resources, Vithubhai switched to other trees,and with equal success.
Apart from evolving viable practices for close proximity plantation,Vithubhai had also succeeded in shorterning the cutting period from five to three years so that the trees started paying off earlier than on a conventional plantation.
The 70 plus-year-old Vithubhai was no crank to be brushed aside lightly. A leftist in his younger days,farming ran in his blood.His father,Jivrajbhai Patel, was awarded Udyan Pundit title by the union government,for his best ber (Zyiphus mauritiana Lamk); he was asked how did he manage to do so well,and answered with a characteristic wry humour that agriculture department of the government had still not discovered him to educate.
Vithubhai took to engineering studies,getting his doctorate in West Germany in 1957,and then teaching at a number of institutions such as Birla College,Pilani,the IIT,Kanpur and the government engineering college,Jabalpur.More than 70 papers of his on engineering subjects got published,many of them abroad.More than 40 of these were included in the Engineering Index, a digest on engineering research published in the U.S.
Vithubhai made several innovations in the cultivation of ber, applying newer methods of insect control and hormone regulation which led to a fruit free from insects of uniform size.
He ridiculed the idea of mere conservation of forest cover for the sake of green cover.His thrust is to arrive at a strategy that leads to man controlling the cycle of tree felling in such a way that while there is tree cover,he also gets enough timber and other wood.Vithubhai felt that newer methods,such as his high density cultivation strategy,helped by addition of nutrients and fertilisers in enough dosage and with just enough watering through drip irrigation c0uld help a farmer achieve wonders in tree cultivation even on his degraded or wasteland.He was not advocating a switch-away from all food crops to tree cultivation only,but to a judicious mix of the agriculture,horticulture and tree cultivation to help restore the lost ecological balance.The Surendrabad plantation had successfully grown trees such as teak (Tectonia grandis), Bakain neem (Melia azedarch), Indian cork tree(Millingtonia hortensis),Savan(Gmelina arborea), sandalwood and Red sanders at Jivdiv Agro-fofrestry Centre.
He said that in tree cultivation,there has been a shortcoming in strategy. "All our experiences in the past are based on the rain-fed forests where trees got water only during the monsoon,no fertiliser was given to them and thus they were starved of nutrients and water for a longer period of the year." What he did at Surendrabag was to bring about a situation where the growth of the life system of trees was in an environment which met adequately its needs for nutrients and water,preferably on a daily basis. Essentially,providing enough water and nutrients were two important lessons of the green revolution which had been applied to farm-forestry." Just as the irrigated wheat gives more output as compared to the rainfed crop,irrigated tree plantations should give five to ten times more growth.To this, if we add increased bio-mass in early stages due to increased population of trees, one will start realising that the earnings go up steeply", said Vithubhai.
The high density plantation that he tried out has several advantages over the conventional farm forestry,he said.These included: plant population that is three to ten times more ,growth in vertical direction of the trees because of close spacing,the sun rays do not fall on the ground because of this and the evaporation losses are cut down,leading to a better utilisation of irrigation through a drip,growth of weeds is reduced because of the absence of the sun at the ground level,the waiting period for the first cutting or thinning can be reduced from six years to three or four years.A farmer can plant ten to 15 rows of 1.2 metres by 0.6 metre or even less spacing along the border of his field,thus utilising borders that generally remain unused.A farmer,said Vithubhai, could go for mixed cropping in the fields completely given to tree cultivation in the initial years and grow horticultural crops such as ginger,termaric,amorphopholous,or yam and bananas.
He quoted figures of income over a period of two decades for a farmer from an acre of timber plantation of savan or teak.He was rated as a maverick by many,although they too grudgingly granted that he was a highly successful one in whatever he was doing. Some others pointed to his butterfly type interest; years ago,he was advoocating the eucalyptus and now he was talking teak,neem and other species.Vithubhai was unfazed by this criticism.He would simply shrug it off,saying nobody was being compelled to follow suit.Yet,hundreds of farmers were doing just that,with the Surendrabag plantation serving as a demonstration project.
The farm-forestry experiments which the gentleman farmer was been pursuing led to steady stream of nearly 10,000 visitors,mostly farmers from Gujarat and elsewhere in the country,makiing their way to his place,16 km from Bhavnagar.But what he was doing had nothing to do with the latest craze for corporate investment in agro-forestry.What he got as visitors were not investors in shares,but farmers who were pining to better their lot.

Temperamentally, he was a man in hurry. Hurry it was when a car he was driving from Bhavnagar to Jamnagar collided with a truck,cutting short a vibrant life when he was in his late 70s.

Painter Somalal Shah's Magnificent Obsession

Tushar Bhatt

Some people become a landmark in the cultural life around them in such a way that their presence is always felt and valued,and their disappearance enhances the worth of their presence.Somalal C.Shah ,avant garde painter and art teacher par excellence,who died at the ripe age of 89,was in this category.
For such people the late poet,Gani Dahinwala,had said poign-antly: Zindagino ej sachesach padgho chhe,Gani; Hoyna vyakti,ne enu nam bolaya kare. ( That ,Gani, is the real echo of a life truely lived,when a man may be no more but his name keeps cropping up.)
For more than 60 years,Somalal not only gave India superb wa-ter-colours, sketches and disciples in such an abundance that no artist or art teacher could have dreamt of leading a more meaning-fully productive life than was his.With his death,last of the major practitioners of the "wash method" in colour paintings is gone.But,he has left behind a rich line of disciples who include Khodidas Parmar,Pradyumna Dave,Natu Parikh,Urmi Parikh..The list seems endless.
The son of a lower-middle class shopkeeper in Kapadvanj in central Gujarat,Somalal's tallest contribution was the innumerable paintings and sketches he has done depicting the day-to-day life in Saurashtra.In an era before Independence when art was still re-garded as an exclusive preserve of the elite,he brought the com-mon man into his work with such an authenticity that his paintings have already become a documents of history to learn how people lived in not too distant a past.His work has often been compared with what Zaverchand Meghani did in words for the folk arts;he did it in paintings. Poet Prahlad Parekh called his works poetry in painting.
For three decades,he made Bhavnagar his home and brought on to paper in vivid water colours not only the colourful people but also the birds and animals of Kathiawad.His birds of Saurash-tra,done painstakingly and in bright colours, still remain un-matched, and are as well-known as the book of that name by Prince Dharmendrasinhji which they illustrated.
A contemporary of such artists as Rasiklal Parikh,Kanu Desai,Yagneshwar Shukla and Chhaganlal Jadav,Somalal was the last in the line that had been encouraged by Ravishankar Ra-val,often hailed as Gujarat's kalaguru.
A traditional painter,Somalal,however,was no conservative;while no despising anything ,whether modern or abstract,he would only want to stick to his own particular style,a mixture of Bengal's wash method ,further enriched by bright colours and an individuality of the artist that made it not only inimitable but also patently his own.
The tallness of the artist-and the man -in Somalal was that he was totally unassuming and without either the ego or the arrogance of his stature as an artist.Neither was he a show-man.
Ms.Urmi Parikh, a disciple of his,remembered him as a kindly uncle,dressed in white khadi zabbha and dhoti,topped with a khadi cap,a dark complexioned,wiry man.An older student ,Pradyumna Dave,retired professor of fine arts at the M.S.University in Baroda,said Somabhai was always like this. He remembered the days in Bhavnagar when his students would learn more from his talking-while-walking in the evening than from anywhere else.
Said Natu Parikh,another student,retired professor of the fine arts college in Ahmedabad: "One could not dream of having a bet-ter teacher in art than Somakaka.He had an innate kindliness and would never run down anyone,whether an abstract painter or a novice doing badly in his class." Somabhai's eldest son, Suresh Shah, an engineer by profession,remembers this trait of his father from early childhood.Innumerable number of noted and not-so-noted artists of today ,trained by Somabhai,say in unison that had it not been for the grand old man,they would never have become what they did.
Honours came to Somabhai early in life,along with recognition but these never left any burden on him.He would be till the last breath the same restless individualist,whose only regret in the past few months had been that because of bad eyesight he could not paint any longer.He was given the Rs.one lakh Ravishankar Raval state award for arts by the Gujarat government in 1990 on his 85th birthday.The Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation gave him a civic reception in 1988,and he got an award from the Gujarat Lalit Kala Akadami.Much before that,in 1949, he was given the Ranjitram gold medal.
He was born on February 14,1905, in the family of Chunilal Shah,who had a grocery store (income Rs.120 a year in those days,according to Somabhai's son Suresh).There was no tradition of arts in the family where there always was a shortage of every-thing.Mother Jekorben had to bring up her son and three daughters in a household that could not buy more than 125 grammes of milk a day. Quoting his father,Suresh says:" They had to make do with-out even vegetables on many occasions;rotla and pickle being the staple."
The young boy,Somalal,was fond of drawing a lotus in his exer-cise book from his earliest days.Nobody could say where he got his inspiration or who guided him. "It seemed a sort of inborn talent to paint in him", says Madhav Ramanuj,poet and a professor of finer arts in Ahmedabad.Though without much guidance,the young man was a determined soul; he would merrily go on doing drawings even while evening duty at his father's store,unmindful of the pos-sibility that some buyer may cheat him by not paying the full amount for provisions purchased.
After passing the matriculation,he came to Ahmedabad to join a college for a degree in arts (not art),but hid heart was not in the books; it was in the water colours and palette.A sympathiser,Harilal M.Desai,sent the shy,hard-working youth of few words to the school of arts in Bombay.By that time,he had met Ravishankar Ra-val and had impressed him with his paintings,especially because these had been done without any formal training. The first recogni-tion of his talent had come a little before that in the early 1910s when a silver medal was given to a work of his at a students arts exhibition in Umreth.His output impressed the authorities in the Bombay school so much that he was admitted to the second year directly.
By this time, he was fixed on following Bengal's wash method of painting.After a year in Bombay, Somalal shifted to Kala Bhavan in Baroda,in 1927,where a noted painter, Pramod Kumar Chatterjee really initiated him in the work of his life-time.To further hone his skills,Soomalal later went to Calcutta to study for eight months at Oriental Art Society,set up by Avanindranath Tagore,living in a godown;he would sleep with his shoes on so that the rats infesting the godown would not bite him.He learnt a lot about the wash method,and eventually earned high praise from Avanindranath for his painting,Bride.The painting today is in the collection of the Bhavnagar maharaja.After seeing the work,Tagore told Somabhai:" You need not go to any institution to learn any more.Learn from Nature and life because while life is an ocean,an institution is only comparable to a pot." It was in 1929.Nanabhai Bhatt was on the look-out for an ideal art teacher for his innovating educational insti-tution,Dakshina Moorti Vidyarthi Bhavan in Bhavnagar. He stayed on in the princely town for thirty long years, later teaching the princes ,and then joining Alfred High School.He was an ideal teacher,recalls Khodidas Parmar,pursuing nothing but paintings in all his waking hours. He had a keen and observant eye,registering minutiae of the daily life around him in Gohilwad and Saurash-tra.The colours of their attire as also also of the landscape made a deep impression on Somabhai,further refining his wash method,adding bright colours,giving a symmetrical proportion to his compositions,teaching him a great deal about the importance of a camera-like registering of details of anatomy. Said Natu Parikh,"He would carefully study and imbibe the details,the colours and the proportions of everything around him before doing anything."
Said Khodidas;" He began putting on paper what he considered to be thelife-force in the things,people,animals, birds and even landscape around him." The result was masterpieces like Chhaiyo, Govalan, Mindhalbandho, Saarika, Vanjara,among others of his hundreds of works over the years. Ms Urmi Parikh,quoted Somab-hai himself about how these came about."He would say, 'In the evening,I would be on the terrace,with the sun about to set.The rays of a dying strobe would be trying to ward off the oncoming dusk,as cows came home,kicking up clouds of dust.This would in-terest me immensely. Then, in the mornings and evenings, my mind would go on photographing sub-consciously the Bharwad and Mer women,walking in a musical gait,with shining brass pitchers balanced on the head,their colourful odhni flying in the wake.All these colours and compositions would later get into my paintings."
His students agreed that his eyes would see the beauty of soul even in most commonplace of subjects and objects.This ,they felt, was not just the result of innate intuition; it also was a mental disci-pline that could empty his mind of all other things to enable it to be filled forever with indelible pictures of a grazing goat,or a running buffalo.He also had the ability to retrieve these images and bring-ing them on to the paper,put in appropriate colours so that one will feel the life-force in the painting even if one had never felt in the original scene.
Pradyumna Dave said that Sombhai pursued his profession like a yogi,detached but fully immersed in it. He would sometimes take as much as two months over a painting if it did not satisfy his own critical judgement.Natu Parikh has seen him washing off colours even if others had found the work to be fine."He was never outward oriented,or do anything to make a buyer happy or complete a work in a deadline," added Dave.
Said Urmi Parikh:"Somakaka had an uncanny ability to bring to life ordinary scenes and characters,be they birds,animals,human beings or even a balcony of an old house.He would also do a lot of paintings on historical and mythological characters such as Karna and Kunti. Nothing was alien to him." His son,Suresh ,recalled the old man had done superb ink drawing to illustrate history text books for children.
He liked soft contrast in his paintings,even though he was a master of bright colours.Till the colours and tone meshed, he would go on working. He would say:"I believe the picture frame should stand out on a wall, and the picture should stand out in a frame.In the paintings,in the same manner,the characters should stand out from the rest of the background.Then only can it become an out-standing work." Most of his were.
He insisted on making a painting that would be pleasing to look at not only from a distance,but also from close proximity.A stickler for perfection,he also knew where and how to leave things unfin-ished at places in a picture so that the painting would have a cer-tain raw and fresh quality about it.His sense of colour was so sharp that he,according to Suresh Sheth,art critic and professor of fine arts,could perceive difference in tone in the different hues of even white.
His studio on the first of his house at Diwakar society in Paldi area of Ahmedabad had a deserted look after his death.There were a couple of wooden beds,and nothing else,although in the storing space under the beds were caches of his works-- paint-ing,sketches,some finished,many unfinished. He had the facility to work on several projects simultaneously and could switch from one painting to another.In later years,Somabhai had taken to start working around 2 p m after a cup of teach; he would sit on the floor in a lotus position and on a low stool in front would be the board with a paper on it. Around him would be cakes of water col-our,tubes,a big palette,a flower pot full of brushes of different sizes and two bowls of water to wash out the used brushes.He would get lost in work.Sometimes he would start working in the morning too.That was at the age past 85. His eyesight had failed him,leaving him with a lasting regret, said Dr. Dinesh Parikh, a medical scientist who knew him well, that he could not paint as much as he wished to.
Quite early in his life, painting had ceased to be work, a chore; it had become a hobby,then a profession and then an obsession. The magnificent obsession survives in the form of hundreds of paintings, sketches, illustrations, and will keep his memory green for a long time now that he is gone.

A musical togetherness

Tushar Bhatt

    Is Mrs Vibha Desai there,he whispers up the telephone wire in a sonorous voice,glancing at his watch which shows nearly 5.30 in the evening."This is Mr Vibha Desai this side," he says equally af-fably to the inevitable query at the other end.

    That is quintessential Rasbihari Desai,renowned Gujarati singer, composer and music-maker,whose contribution to popularisation of sugam sangit,people’s own music, is unmatched.

Evening shadows have already begun to lengthen outside his third floor ,modest flat as Rasbihari turns to the amused visitors."You see, it is her work-place, the Income Tax office and obviously she is better known there.So what is the harm in identifying myself by her name.Do not wives identify themselves by the name of their husbands? It is the same thing." This was a routine scene till Vib-haben retired sometime ago.
    Actually,no such explanation has ever been necessary in the case of the Desai couple,musical people both, whose marital life of more than three decades began on a musical note and has been forever an ever deepening creative relationship.
    Minutes later,Vibhaben,clad in China silk sari,and sporting an apologetic smile for being late by a few minutes,enters the drawing room.She and Rasbihari,dressed in khadi pyjama and a kurta,exchange mere glances, before settling down on the sofa.There is a harmonium too.Although she knows the visitors are there to talk to her about her husband's musical journey through life,the first thing both of them do is not to talk,weaving flights of fancy words,or faked emotions, or counterfeit mod-esty.Instinctively,he starts playing the harmonium,its notes filling the evening air of the semi-darkened room,escaping through the open windows and doors to reverberate and vanish into the open sky.She knows intuitively what is about to be sung and as if by a commonly operated switch,Rasbihari and Vibha launch into a de-voitonal piece,"Maadi Taro Divado Jale...".
    The brief performance was not to please the visitors,nor to im-press anyone.It was more of a tribute to their own musical togeth-erness.Vibha Vaishnav was 19 when she first came into the life of physics professor at the Bhavan's College,Rasbihari.Already a man who had decided on his way of life,Rasbihari at first tried to ward her off but they were as if made for each other.If after three dec-ades a couple can spontaneously display the sweetness they seem to exude every moment of their togetherness,it does not need a thought-diviner to tell that the sweetness has become a hallmark of their existence.
    What has been the sweetest memory of their life ? A smiling Rasbihari keeps quiet for a long moment,but his sweeter half even-tually bursts out with a reply that would in in print come across like a reply written by a public relations officer for public consumption." I cannot recall any specific moment for all moments of our togeth-erness have been equally sweet." Discerning incredulousness on the face of her guests,she adds"our philosophy of life is to take every moment as it comes.My thinking about the world has been chiefly moulded by him and both of us have learnt to find a centre within ourselves as a validation point,rather than to rely on the out-side reference points."
    But,is it not too much of self-effacement of her own personality ? "Where is the self-effacement? He is a staunch believe in khadi and wears nothing but khadi.But he has never imposed ,or even sought to suggest,I should emulate him. I merrily go on with what-ever I like ,man-made fibres, China silk,cotton,whatever."
    A former assistant commissioner of Income Tax,Vibha is an indi-vidual in her own right,a singer of top quality."She has more self-confidence and consistency in her singing",says her hus-band,unabashed,and rather proudly.On her part,she says"I am only a singer.I need direction.I depend on him to show the direction, even to identify a sur,correct it.I can sing,but that is all.He is much more than a singer. He is a composer too. He creates, I only fol-low."
    In their musical passage through life ,what are the moments of performance they cherish the most ? Rasbihari quickly recalls two occasions, once in India and and the other abroad,years apart when Vibha's rendering of a spiritual piece brought tears to the eyes of the audience.Now that is self-effacement.He does not re-member any of his own, though his admirers can tick off any num-ber of occasions when they remember Rasbihari having excelled. But, he does not. It is a typical modesty,and it is totally genuine.As for Vibha,she just cannot place her fingers on any such memory of a single occasion.
    This again is no false modesty;it is a reflection of her husband's attitude towards life and self.Rasbihari comes across as a man de-tached even from his own self,often referring to himself as Rasbi-hai, as if he were talking to a third person.The gaze from behind the clack-framed glasses is so piercing that for a moment or two one feels,the man is not looking at,but through his visitor.Actually,it may not even be that.He is there,in body and mind,but spiritually he may not be there even as chats animatedly with his guests.This is no hypocritical mask Rasbihari is wearing;strangers,long time friends and his family,all sense this,and respect it.
    Both have rich voices,and yet have resisted all temptations to turn professionals.As amateurs too,they have not been artists of the mass variety.They have,many feel,been rather niggardly in giv-ing out the music they possess.Personally,in the form of cas-settes,that is. Both have a legendary following of people who have trained in singing with them in the Shruti organisation over the years. They have been generous with the new com-ers,understanding to a fault and helpful a lot.Both are neither of the show-biz world nor in it.Rasbihari has a first rate voice, a superb kharaj,and Vibha has a deeply melodious one,and both sing with their heart and being.To them,music is neither a career nor a hobby."It is a spiritual activity,sadhna.Says Rasbhihari:"To me,music is not something that comes from your vocal chords,or hands or any instrument that you play. It comes from the heart,is channelised through the body ,kept in the trim through arduous "ri-yaz".Both of us treat ourselves as students of music forever."
    His spiritual bend of mind came from his aunt, Mrs Nirmalaben V.Desai who not only set him on path of spiritualism but also incul-cated in him a love for literature,language,and the much-noticed self-effacement of his own self.
    Says Rasbihari: "We -- that is Rasbhai and Vibha -- believe that it not I - the ego of I in the capital letter form -- but some un-known,divine element that sings through us.It is such a deep-rooted belief that every public performance of his always begins with a prayer to that element in a being.The initial seeds of spiritu-alism planted by Nirmalaben were given a further help by Rasbi-hari's acquaintance with Madhusudan Maharaj, a yogi in the early sixties.
    He was initially reluctant to have his 60th birth day celebra-tions,but was literally pestered into it by his fans.The result is that it being celebrated as completion of 60 years.Yet, he would not go for pomp and public adulation.Instead,he and Vibha and a few other friends like Kshemoo Divetia,Gaurang Vyas,and Ashit and Hema Desai,have gone in for making two cassettes of songs and bhajans,serving as landmarks in Rasbihari's musical pro-gress.Since,it can never be a solo effort for him,it is is inevitably with Vibha and ,not stopping at that roping in others too.The out-come is a pair of audio-cassettes,Sayujya I and II; sayuyja means togetherness.For 28 years,the couple have helped train hundreds of enthusiasts in what is called Gujarati sugam sangeet,light mu-sic.Though light,it is not a musical pursuit of light-heartedness. It is damn serious in its rigourous training, rendering,and even re-cording,and it is with a purpose. So,here in Sayujya is a bhajan Rasbihari had heard in his childhood,wayback in 1941,"Chyam ra-hiye guru vana,finding a place in the collection. There also is the first composition that brought him into sugam sangeet in 1952-54-- "Madhav tun betho deva",composed by late Suryakant Dave of Visnagar.So is in it, the song sung by Vibha,"Najarunna kanatani bhool",that was eventually to bring him and her togther.There is a rustic bhajan,"Ramranankar vage",composed by Rasbihari's grand-mother Mrs Mahalaxmi Desai,herself an unlttered person but highly musical.There also are modern compositions of poets ranging form Narsinh Mehta to late Sundaram,late Harindra Dave,late Avinash Vyas , Anil Joshi, Suresh Dalal, Mariz, Vinod Joshi,Adil Man-suri,Rajendra Shah,Manoj Khandheria,Amar Palanpuri to Bhag-watikumar Sharma,spanning the period between 1941 and 1995.
    The fete is not intended to get money for the Desais."We will love to divert everything to organising music camps every year in order to nurture and give philip to the new talent in different cities in Gujarat."
    Rasbihari recently underwent a heart bypass surgery in the US,but has lost none of his verve and vigour.His voice is as firm,deep and sonorous as ever.Money-making had not been among the goals he set for life.One could say he has achieved it;he has not made much money.He does not seem to seek any-thing,and accepts whatever life brings him.His wife too shares his values .They are a value-based couple,above prices and pricing.
   
 

A Barber spells out what haunts the Indian Nation

-Tushar Bhatt


His prematurely old face showed no signs of hostility. It did not betray any emotions at all. His voice also disclosed   nothing. He spoke as if he was reading news on the Door Darshan.

The village barber had diffidently asked the visitor if he could take two minutes. He needed no permission because he and the visiting journalist sat on the same bench for three years in the village primary school before the barber dropped out.

But, the income divide creates a wide chasm in society and many people deny friends marooned on the have-not side. The journalist could not but acknowledge the friendship for more than one reason.

The barber’s father was horse-carriage man of a buggy owned by his doctor father. The barber’s mother was the Dai (a class of women who assist pregnant women at the time of delivery and then for days to come look after the infant) who was present at the visitor’s birth.


The village barber, wearing a shirt with a torn collar and pyjama displaying loose endings of his customers cut hair, began his quizzing in a matter-of-fact tone.

Was it true that the visitor had done well in his life? The visitor mumbled non-commitally: “Cannot complain.”

The villager riposted rather quickly: ” Well, at least better than me.” The scribe essayed an affirmative, puzzled about the drift of the chat.

There came a query like a good length ball that often makes a batsman lose his wicked.

Was it because the barber had dropped out of the school and the visitor had gone ahead?  The newsman again nodded yes.

Now a googly came. Was it not because the barber’s father was poor and needed his son to add to the family earnings quickly while the visitor had no such compulsions as his father was a middle class man?  The scribe could not but say: “Yes.”

The barber:” Why were the poor parents blamed when poverty was responsible for school drop outs?” 

He followed up smartly: “ Do the middle and upper class babus and politicians really know poverty? How can one formulate policies to combat poverty if one didn’t know what it means to be a poor?”

Reading the journalist’s mind, the barber said:” you are wondering about my questions.”  Even though he had only a smattering of education, poverty made him think, he said.  Better education would have helped him think and understand better.

The poverty in the barber’s house had been a hereditary reality, an empty virasat. The veranda of the mud house had now for three generations served as hair-cutting shop, sometimes half-mockingly called a saloon or still worse men’s beauty parlour. There was a single chair for hair-cut. One of its four legs was broken and had been kept in place by wrapping round pieces of a thin rope. In front of the wobbly chair, the mud wall was adorned with a mirror cracked in several spots. When a customer looked at himself in the mirror, he would see multiple images of his face. The razor and a pair of scissors dating back to the barber’s grandfather were still on active duty.

The razor was used to shave both men and buffaloes.


The journalist  felt  uneasy now, but his barber friend went ahead mercilessly. He could not renovate his shop, buy new razors and scissors, acquire new furniture, and install new mirrors because that needed money. His grandfather, father and he himself had been unable to borrow from any source.

Everybody asked for money, something called margin money. Some banks were said to be giving the full amount but you needed touts to get and touts demanded a cut. In fact, everyone in the world was asking for money.

He asked the scribe if there was a way out. Nobody gave money to poor to make them earn more. Again, in the past decade another threat for the poor had come up. Everybody said the government was getting out of education and health, allowing private money to make more money through hefty fees.

The village barber said now it appeared impossible for his grandchildren to make good in life because their parents would not be able to find money. The same situation prevailed in medicine. Even for traveling on some roads one has to pay toll.

Then came a rocket. How and where would the poor find money for all these facilities? His own reading was that the life of the poor had already become more difficult with the recent years’ so-called pro-poor policies.

The barber did not know but he  was echoing a question raised many a moon ago by the economist and at one time finance minister of West Bengal, Dr Ashoke Mitra who  said that market economy was fine but what about those poor who were  not in the market ?

A missile attack followed. If all the politicians proclaimed from rooftops that they are for the poor, how come the prices of foodgrains, pulses, vegetables and other day-to-day things were not going down and the authorities keep saying: mahengai kam ho rahi hay?

The barber now fired the mother of all the questions. Are the political parties saying something and doing something else?
Or, to put differently, are they using the poor as election winning pawns and after getting into power misusing their mandate to further worsen their plight? Sometimes he wondered if men and women in positions of power were working to eradicate poverty or to eliminate the poor.

The visiting scribe began to feel the burden of guilt and started perspiring.

Then came a nuclear-head charge. The village barber quietly put in:” Are you, the better-off people, in a majority or are we,the poor, larger in numbers? “  The hapless newsman murmured: “The poor are more in number. “

Now it was the turn of the barber to be bewildered. His voice trembling, he croaked. So far the haves were reaping the fruits of Independence.  If the have-nots are more in numbers, why do they allow this topsy-turvy governance of our Republic?

Why, why, why?

What is the remedy?

The visitor was speechless.

Instead of going on with the chat, he did the only thing he knew to escape from the reality.

He ran away.

[ The village barber’s conundrum was passed on to many specialists and generalists, politicians and their followers. No
Sanjivani type cure has been prescribed  by anyone so far.]