DHELA THATCH - MY HIDEAWAY FOR THE DAY AFTER

 These are perilous times for homo sapiens, regardless of whether you believe in the predictions of Nostradamus or the epiphanies of Baba Venga. Thanks to a trio of psychopathic megalomaniacs, we are being pushed to the edge of extinction, one lie and tweet at a time. Drones and rockets are raining down in Russia and Ukraine like confetti on a Victory Day parade. West Asia is being showered with hypersonic missiles and ICBMs like the guests at an Ambani wedding with Rolex watches. Nearer home, there is no telling when the "sindoor" in our Vishwaguru's veins gets replaced with enriched uranium and we nuke Pakistan, to be nuked by China in turn as a return gift: the Chinese are nothing if not polite to a fault.

It's time for us to start looking for a safe hideaway to weather the nuclear winter that appears to be on its way, notwithstanding that current temperatures in North India do not presage a winter anytime soon. Donald Trump may have his underground shelters in the Blue Ridge mountains of Virginia, and Mr. Modi may have his cave in Kedarnath to tide over the Day After (with or without cameras), but here in Puranikoti there are neither bunkers nor caves, just houses designed by Delhi-based architects which would not withstand a Kangana Ranaut tantrum, let alone a nuclear blast. So I've been applying my rapidly atrophying brain to think of a safe place where I could repair with the family and the pooch, and I think I've found it!

Dhela Thatch. (A thatch is a meadow or glade surrounded by thick forests, a traditional camping site for shepherds, Gujjars and trekkers). Dhela thatch is located deep in the Great Himalayan National Park (GHNP) of Kullu district, 35 kms from the nearest roadhead at Neuli in the valley of the Sainj river, at an altitude of 12000 feet. It takes two days of strenuous trekking to get there, and once there you don't want to leave, believe me. I didn't: I've camped there on three occasions on my treks in the GHNP: it's the nearest I've come to Eden, and if Worsworth  had been there he would have immediately dashed off a few poems before you could say "My heart leaps up..." 

                                      [ Dhela thatch in the GHNP. Photo by author.]

Dhela is a gently sloping meadow, about two acres in size, perched just below the ridge line that divides the Sainj and Tirthan valleys in the Great Himalayan National Park in Kullu. Surrounded by thick stands of oak and deodar, with dense thickets of dwarf rhododendron and hill bamboo on one side, it is an ideal camping site: there is even a little brook which provides water. The camping site is surrounded by a vast thicket of juniper and dwarf rhododendron where the monal and rarely sighted western tragopan come to feed at sun-set. The Forest department has built a stout log hut at its upper edge for use in the winters (at 12000 feet Dhela can get a lot of snow)- for the rest of the year one can happily pitch tents anywhere on the dale. The height, mix of vegetation and undergrowth and the open spaces make it an ideal habitat for Himachal's two most prized pheasant species- the monal and the highly endangered Western Tragopan (Jujju Rana- the King of Birds, literally) and sightings of both are quite common. The crags below it are home to the "ghoral" (mountain goat) which can be easily spotted sunning themselves in the morning sun. The view of the GHNP landscape from here is stupendous, framed by the majestic 16000 high Khandedhar range to the north, the even higher Pin Parbat massif to the north-west, the Tirthan ridge to the south-east, and beyond that the bleak ranges on which is located the holy peak of Srikhand Mahadev. There is a small "jogni" or religious cairn at the top of the ridge, bedecked with colourful prayer flags which is ideal for meditation, bird watching or simply sunning oneself with a favourite book.

       [Trekking party approaching Dhela Thatch. Photo by Sanjeeva Pandey]

          

Dhela is not a place where you have to DO anything; it is God's, and nature's, ultimate creation which invites you to simply immerse yourself in the simplicity, beauty and unhurried rhythms of a life unsullied by technology, materialism and human ambitions. Listen to the birds singing joyfully at dawn and dusk-not for you, but for the sheer joy of greeting another day, observe with wonder the rising sun every morning and feel its spreading warmth bringing to life God's myriad creatures, dip your hands in the little spring and drink of its snow-melt waters, marvel at the sight of the ghoral grazing on 75 degree slopes, gaze above at the lammergeier hovering in ever enlarging circles in the emerald blue skies, keeping watch on the world on behalf of its creator, sit cosily by a blazing campfire at night wondering why the moths hurl themselves into the fire-do they love its glow or do they fear it? Dhela has the questions, it also has the answers.

                          

                           [The incomparable Western Tragopan pheasant]

This is indeed Omar Khayyam territory for me:                                  

" Here with a Loaf of Bread beneath the Bough,

 A Flask of Wine, a Book of Verse- and Thou

Beside me singing in the Wilderness-

And Wilderness is Paradise enow!"

THOUGHTS ON JIHADS, CIGARETTES AND THE PERFECT PLEASURE.

Baba Ramdev's recent video about starting a "sherbet jihad" against (presumably) the iconic Rooh Afza put me in mind of another jihad that has been raging for some time now but hasn't got the attention it deserves. I refer to the "cigarette jihad" against smokers, which is far more ubiquitous than the other jihads: the latter are limited in scope, applicable only to members of certain religions, but the cigarette jihad applies across the board to everyone who smokes, irrespective of his or her religion, and is a shocking display of secularism, in my view.

No one but a smoker understands fully the import of the saying: you can run but you can't hide; for a smoker today there's no place to hide (and have a quiet puff)- he is banished from restaurants, cinema halls, buses and metros, drawing rooms, planes and airports, and even in his own castle he has to take refuge in either a toilet or a balcony. His social status is lower than that of a Punjabi or Gujarati immigrant in Trump's America. Doctors talk down to him, Finance Ministers treat him like a milch cow, hotels consign him to non-smoking rooms without any room service, airport managers shove him into smoking cubicles resembling tandoors, socialites turn up their rump at him with a flounce, pretty girls refuse to share their mobile numbers with him. In Washington for a World Bank meeting, I had to go down thirty floors, out in the freezing cold, every time I wished to have a cigarette. Cadging a few million dollars from the Bank certainly wasn't worth the effort. But it wasn't always so for people of my generation.

I started smoking in my first year in college and have not looked back since, except to recollect, with a touch of nostalgia, the good days we have left behind. Those were the days of Clint Eastwood, Marlon Brando and Humphrey Bogart who always spoke through a cloud of smoke. One could smoke anywhere then- with a cup of coffee at Trinca's on Park Steet watching the non-pareil Usha Uthap belting out "Ramba ho", or in the AC coach of the the Vestibule train while travelling home to Kanpur from Calcutta, or while watching a movie in the Rivoli in Connaught Place. Till the early 1990s I distinctly remember being allowed to smoke even on international flights, occasionally even being gifted a couple of packs of Marlboros by an air hostess impressed with my diplomatic passport! (In those days wrestling federation chiefs didn't get these maroon passports!). Girls didn't exactly swoon over us (that was reserved for the leftists) but they did occasionally cuddle up for a second hand whiff and that was, as Omar Khayyam would have no doubt said, "Heaven enow." Why, one could even light up during job interviews: I remember being interviewed by the Director Personnel of SBI in the Parliament Street office in 1973 for the job of a Probationary Officer. I lit up while waiting for my turn in the ante-room; when I was called I walked in with my cigarette, waste not, want not being my creed. I didn't get the job, of course, but not because of the lighted fag: I suspect it had something to do with my answer to the Director's question: "Where do you see yourself five years from now in this Bank?" In hindsight, my answer was perhaps too cocky: "In your chair, sir." I have since learned that honesty is never the best policy at job interviews.

All pretty tragic, considering the benefits of smoking, both to the individual and to society. Non-smokers are not aware of what they are missing. Cigarettes are the food for broken souls. You can't buy happiness but anyone can buy cigarettes, and that comes pretty close. Oscar Wilde famously said that "a cigarette is the perfect type of a perfect pleasure. It is exquisite, and it leaves one unsatisfied. What more can one want?" Groucho Marx went a step further when he stated that, given the choice between a woman and a cigar, he would always choose the cigar. At the age of 74, I see the wisdom in what he said: it's easier now to light up a cigarette than a woman. There are other benefits too: smoking is the perfect way to commit suicide without actually dying, and therefore it obviates the need for having to save up for your old age!

One final thought before I part with you, dear reader. Cigarettes, or at least the buying of them, is a very accurate indicator of inflation and rising costs of living, certainly much better than the consumption "basket" govt. economists are talking about all the time. This basket, of course, is rigged like a casino and contains only what suits the govt. But a smoker never lies. Let me illustrate my point.

I started my smoking career in the early 70's with the humble "beedi" (which cost about 25 paise for a pack of ten) since my Dad gave me a pocket money of Rs.10/- per month only and was a more difficult negotiator than Donald Trump. In the fullness of time, as domestic income rose, one progressed up the carcinogenic scale  to Wills Flake, Wills  Navy Cut, Gold Flake and India Kings. The apotheosis was attained when, after the generosity of the Sixth Pay Commission, one touched the sublime heights of Classics and Marlboro. Sadly, that didn't last long though with the arrival of Ms Sitharaman, Hardeep Singh Puri and Mr. Gadkari. So, like an Everest summiteer, one descended back the way one had come- a brand notch lower with the filing of each successive ITR. I am back to Wills Flakes these days, and desperately trying to keep the "beedis" at bay.

This bit of history is prime raw material for economists, who rarely trust cooked-up govt. figures to determine inflation rates, and look for secondary indicators: household savings, number of cars bought, power consumption, real estate prices, and so on. They also rely on some rather odd if not weird indicators. Alan Greenspan, the then Federal Reserve Chairman, invented the Underwear Index to gauge consumer sentiments and economic cycles- his theory was that in a downturn people bought fewer underwears! A more recent one has been reported by the Wall Street Journal: the Home Lunch indicator. It says that when more people bring lunch from home instead of eating in the cafeteria or a restaurant, that indicates a tightening of the budget belt and increase in cost of living. Visits to brothels and night clubs is another indicator- in an economic downturn they decline significantly!

This is precisely where the cigarette comes in handy as an economic indicator : a shift in the brand one smokes is a faithful index of the cost of living. The government should include it in their inflation basket. As for me, I'm desperately trying to reduce my daily intake of the cancer sticks but it's a losing battle, methinks, especially with pensioners likely to be denied the benefits of the 8th Pay Commission. As the gay smoker, who was trying to quit, confided in his friend: I'm down to two butts a day.

WHO'S AFRAID OF THE NEW NORMAL ?

India, we are told, has now entered a "New Normal" after that little "menage a trois" with Pakistan and China in the first week of May in which we still don't know who came out on top, as it were.  And there is certainly plenty of evidence to back this claim, viz. that we have plumbed new depths of abnormalcy.                                                                                      Our prime -time TV news channels apparently missed out on the cease-fire bit because they continue to fight the war every evening three weeks after the cease-fire, and are all in favour of expanding it to Turkiye. The Prime Minister has just had another blood transfusion and has replaced the RBCs in his veins with "sindoor", which perhaps explains why he goes red in the face every time he talks about the four day war. Shashi Tharoor has decided that when dealing with terrorists or the Congress high command covert action is ineffective; so now he has gone overt (against his party, not the terrorists) and placed one foot squarely in the BJP camp; as the poet said: if one foot comes, can the other be far behind? Mr. Jaishankar has by now dropped so many bricks that he can now use them to construct a mausoleum of his rhetorical follies; the latest brick (boulder, actually) being his response to a Danish journalist's question as to where the USA was during the recent conflict with Pakistan; our Delphic EAM's nonpareil reply- "the USA was in the United States". At least he knows his geography. Not to be outdone by a mere bureaucrat, the Supreme Court broke new ground by appointing an SIT of three police officers to decipher and interpret the nuances of an English post by a professor. So, move over Shashi Tharoor and Chetan Bhagat and Jug Suraiya-your lexicographic skills have now been replaced by a bunch of cops whose vocabulary consists almost entirely of four letter words. We now eagerly await the scholarly interpretation of four of India's finest.

Other aspects of the New Normal are even more disturbing. I refer, for instance, to our new-found "Boycott Jihad", which involves boycotting tourism/visits to every country that does not see eye to eye with, or say aye to aye to, us. This dimension of our foreign policy is not guided by the Ministry of External Affairs, as you would expect, but by companies like Make My Trip or Ease My Trip, and anchors headed by the (dis)likes of Arnab Goswami, Gaurav Sawant and Navika Kumar. And so, we have by now boycotted Pakistan, Maldives, Bangladesh, Turkiye, Azerbaijan, Canada. On the TRP chopping block are: France (for not sharing the Rafale source-code), Colombia (for condoling the death of Pakistanis in our attack), South Africa (for daring to haul Israel before the International Criminal Court), Bhutan (for charging a tourism tax of Rs. 1200 from every Indian tourist), Russia (for signing a two billion dollar project deal with Pakistan), the United Kingdom (for not returning the Kohinoor diamond), Antigua (for not returning Mohil Choksi). We would have boycotted the USA also, but for the fact that the sons and daughters of most of our Ministers are green card holders there, which could then be converted to yellow or red cards before they could say MAGA! There is, of course, no mention of China in this list of the damned, in keeping with our revered Prime Minister's credo that China's name should never be taken in vain, not even in pain.

Very soon, then, there shall be no country left which Indians could visit, and this is what gives me sleepless nights. Denied their globe-trotting opportunities, these bhaktourists would descend on the mountains, and villages like my Puranikoti, like a herd of locusts and strip bare our little Edens, transforming them into something resembling Gaza. The onslaught has already commenced after the Pahalgam massacre. Maybe the Himachal government should do something to make them boycott Himachal too, like proposing Kangana Ranaut's name as the next Prime Minister..... 

I am even more alarmed by another aspect of this New Normal, viz. water sharing, and not just with Pakistan. Our Prime Minister, who possesses a good turn of phrase, has announced that "Water and blood cannot flow together" and has turned off the Indus tap. To which the Chinese Foreign Minister has riposted: "Do not do to others what you don't want done to you." Which is a pacifist version of the more militaristic Confucius: "Do unto others BEFORE they do unto you."

Confucius was a Chinese too, and one highly regarded in his home land even today. I'm worried that President Xi may take him at his word and start doing something unto us: work has already commenced on the biggest dam in the world, on the Brahmaputra (Yarlung Tsangpo) at Grand Turn Canyon in Tibet, which can have ominous consequences for us were the descendants of Confucius so inclined. And China has an even bigger Indus tap than we do- the river originates in Tibet and China, being the upper riparian state, can dam it any time it wants. Two can play at this game, is what the Chinese FM was trying to convey.

The consequences of this new normal-denial of Indus waters- can be devastating for our northern states. It would be so for Pakistan too, but we are a democracy, unlike Pakistan, and it would be difficult for our government to manage the public uproar. The rulers of Pakistan, on the other hand, will take the consequences in their stride- its Generals and Punjabi elite don't need the water, they have their Scotch and vermouth on the rocks, you see.

But what's sauce for the Pakistani goose is also sauce for the Indian gander, and Mr. Modi's new water doctrine-that the upper riparian state can do whatever the hell it wants with the waters-may just exacerbate our own water wars. We already have plenty of them: Tamil Nadu and Karanataka have been scrapping over the Cauvery waters for decades; Delhi accuses Haryana of impounding the former's share of the Yamuna waters (when it is not poisoning it, that is); Odisha and Chattisgarh are at loggerheads over the Mahanadi river shares; Punjab and Haryana do not see eye to eye on the Sutjej-Yamuna Link Canal. Our Chief Ministers, who are usually up on the slow-take on most matters, were quick to act on the New Normal on water sharing. Just days after the four day war, Punjab Ministers quickly occupied the BBMB premises at Nangal, locked up the General Manager and stopped the flow of water to Haryana- it had exercised its right as the upper riparian state under the Modi doctrine! Not to be outdone, the usually docile Himachal Pradesh ( the "baap" of all alpha male riparian states, as its outspoken MP Kangana Ranaut would have said if Mr. Nadda had not gagged her) declared that it would not let any water flow from its state if it was not given its rightful due in the BBMB projects. 

There are other, more alarming, aspects of this New Normal: how a couple of belligerent Prime Ministerial statements have lowered the nuclear threshold to a, literally, tripping point; how details of the war are revealed in Singapore to a foreign press but not to the citizens of this country; how dozens of MPs can be suspended here and then sent abroad to defend the same government; the puzzle of trying to figure out where patriotism ends and nationalism begins.

Be prepared for new exciting times ahead as all traditional wisdom, the art of diplomacy and norms of governance are turned on their heads. As the Walrus would have said in Alice in Wonderland, at the risk of being hauled up for sedition: "My desire to be well informed is currently at odds with my desire to remain sane."

FAREWELL PARTIES AND ASHOK KHEMKA'S MOVING EXPERIENCES

The redoubtable Ashok Khemka, an urban legend from the Jat-land of Haryana, retired from the IAS on the 30th of last month. He had had his brief hour of fame and glory (always a dangerous thing for an IAS officer, though Mr. Amitav Kant appears to have bucked this trend) about 12 years ago when he refused to register a land deal of Mr. Robert Vadra because he smelt a (Vad)rat: an act of bravery worthy of a medal if not a mention in dispatches, considering that the said Vadra was the nation's acknowledged son-in-law. As it turned out, however, Mr. Khemka got neither a medal nor a mention, he was transferred. Which brings me smoothly to the heart of my story.

Ashok Khemka served for about 34 years and was transferred 57 times, something one hopes the Guinness Book of Records will take note of. He had probably hoped that with the change of government in 2014 his fortunes too would change and that he would, like a good dog, be rewarded with a juicy bone in the matter of postings and that he would come in from the cold, as it were. Not so, because the new, non-Congress govt. transferred him yet again! For politicians, though fond of dogs as status symbols, prefer the poodle or lap-dog breed and not the hound or German Shepherd type. It doesn't matter which political party a Chief Minister graces- when it comes to dogs a pit-bull like Mr. Khemka is a strict no-no. And so, 12 years later Mr. Vadra continues to be the Opposition's official son-in-law and the cases against him have petered out like the mystical Saraswati river, while Mr. Khemka has now passed into the realm of archives, like all of us, and may shortly become a case study in Mussoorie.

Be that as it may, however, I am here on a different though related issue, viz. that with 57 transfers Mr. Khemka must have got 57 farewell parties- another record, by the way. And it is these farewell parties which I wish to dilate on today, having had some experience of them myself, though I bow before the sheer numerical superiority of Mr. Khemka.

Farewell parties are an integral part of a career in the IAS, but like everything in the bureaucracy, they serve a double purpose. The overt purpose is to extol the retiree's qualities and achievements, while glossing over his failures. The good is emphasized while the not-so-good is interred with the (tandoori chicken) bones, as Shakespeare would have put it if he had dined at a curry restaurant in Stratford. But it is the second, covert, purpose which really matters- to tell the retiring bloke that his innings is now over, and that by accepting the farewell he is now estopped from seeking any extension. But this does not work always, which is what makes the repast a bit like the Last Supper: the Chief Guest retiree usually rises again on the third day, like Christ, reemployed in some supernumerary post. Why, there is even a Judas lurking behind the scenes- the guy who has planned it all and hopes to succeed the retiring Chief Secretary or whatever, ready with a gift to seal the deal, as it were. 

At least, that's how things were during my days, but times have now changed and the old rules no longer apply, as events in one state last month demonstrated. IAS officers no longer accept retirement as a natural and inevitable denouement to a successful career; imbued by a nationalistic fervour, they wish to continue to serve the nation, at least till the next Pay Commission increases their salaries and resultant pensions. And so, apropos the event mentioned above, the Chief Secretary of the state was invited for his farewell dinner by the IAS Association on the eve of his retirement, at considerable cost to the members. The CS arrived graciously, and just before the consomme was served announced that he had been granted an extension of six months! Judas had to be given first aid on the spot.                                      Now, as regards the original Last Supper, Biblical records are not clear about who paid for the meal. It could have been the GAD (General Administration Deptt) where all such bills for victuals land up, or it could have been Judas (from out of the thirty pieces of silver he had received) or it could have been the Holy Ghost via PrayTM (as PayTM was then known). But in the case of the Chief Secretary mentioned above the Association members had shucked out hefty amounts from their own pockets, so, as expected, there were murmurs of protest at their having been sold a pig in a poke. To calm them down, it is reported that the said CS has promised that he will not expect a farewell again  when he does retire in the fulness of time. A knotty (or is it naughty?) issue, if ever there ever was one.

But it does appear to have set the cat among the pigeons: IAS Associations all across the country are now thinking of a new SOP for farewell parties, I learn. In future all retirees (especially Chief Secretaries) will be asked to furnish an affidavit before a farewell dinner is organised for them. They will be required to give an undertaking to the effect that (a) they have not sought an extension in service, and (b) in case they do get an extension they would refund to the Association the entire bill of the farewell dinner.

Mr. Khemka has eluded this fate by a whisker, fortunately, and has retired with the grace and dignity we expected from him. He has announced that he will now enter the legal profession, which is welcome news for a profession where crores are found in judges' houses and the bar looks like a mix of crony capitalists and the United Auto Workers Union. But I do have a suggestion for him to consider: given his vast experience in moving house and home every eight months for almost four decades: he could consider setting up a packers and movers company. I even have a name and tag-line for his new venture- KHEMKA MOVERS AND SHAKERS- WE PROMISE YOU A MOVING EXPERIENCE.

(I will, of course, understand if he turns down my well meaning suggestion.)

INTERVIEW WITH KARAN THAPAR

 Press Release & Video: India is becoming a nation of duffers and we’re evolving back to the neanderthal stage: Avay Shukla, Author ‘Holy Cows and Loose Cannons: The Duffer Zone Chronicles’ to Karan Thapar for The Wire.

 

In an interview to mark the publication of his recent collection of blogs called ‘Holy Cows and Loose Cannons: The Duffer Zone Chronicles’, Avay Shukla, who is arguably the country’s favourite blogger, says India could be becoming a nation of duffers and that we’re evolving back to the neanderthal stage. He says: “It is clear that the Indian side of the LAC is one big duffer zone all the way to Kanyakumari.” He also says: “Other countries evolve for the better, we have been consistently doing it for the worse, and are proud of it.”

 

This new collection comprises some fifty essays on a variety of different subjects but in each instance the Avay Shukla brand stands out. They are about our  peccadilloes, our idiosyncrasies, our prejudices, our vices, our foibles and our misdemeanours. Some of them are serious, many are satirical, several are simply great fun to read.

 

Let me give you a taste of some of the things that have attracted Avay Shukla’s attention and his versatile pen. He is infuriated by Indians who suddenly turn against our Muslim culture and heritage. Of them he writes: “They have suddenly discovered God and find that He can only be a Hindu. After growing up on Mughlai food, listening to ghazals and qawalis, conversing in a language that has as many Urdu words as Hindustani, swooning over Dilip Kumar, Madhubala and Waheeda Rehman, saying wah wah to the poems of Ghalib and Gulzar … they have now concluded that these are evil influences, they threaten our Hindu sanskars and girls and the whole lot must be banished.”

 

Avay Shukla is also eloquently opposed to Resident Welfare Associations who have started trying to determine how their members must live and think. Of them he says: “They are gradually becoming the self-appointed gatekeepers of morality, culture and political discourse … the time is not far off when these busy bodies may determine what their members eat, how they dress, to which Gods they pray … why they may even insist that all their members vote for a particular party.”

 

The Kashmir Files is a film that has, in particular, provoked Avay Shukla’s anger. He’s extremely eloquent in his criticism of it as well as his critique of the way both the Central government and several state governments sought to promote the film.

 

However, don’t let me convey a wrong impression of this collection of blogs. Many of them are tongue-in-cheek. For instance, Avay Shukla applauds the use of black money in elections. Watch the interview to find out precisely what he says. And, of course, Avay Shukla says of himself: “I’m a congenital dog lover”. But he readily forgives those who do not consider a dog to be man’s best friend.

 

As you will see, I have carefully given you details of the subjects that Avay Shukla talks about but I have equally carefully shied away from giving you details of what he said. This is because you must hear Avay Shukla in his own words. Like his blogs, he is a memorable speaker.

 

Here is the link to the interview: https://youtu.be/2JSFsEnhl_w?si=pbsjlOtFONfdcRYl

 

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India is Becoming a Nation of Duffers and We’re Evolving Back to the Neanderthal Stage: Avay Shukla

OUR SOLDIERS WON THE WAR FOR US - BUT POLITICS AND THE MEDIA HAVE UNDONE THEIR GOOD WORK

 Going beyond the nit picking about the number of "assets" lost by India and Pakistan, it is now clear that we have inflicted significant losses on the latter. In doing so our defence forces have also demonstrated the technological and air power to enforce the Prime Minister's stated resolve to extract a heavy price for any future terror attacks. Why then is there no chorus of global support for India in its battle against terrorism? Why did the wide-spread surge of sympathy post Pahalgam peter out so soon? Why did no country stand with us in those four crucial days, like China, Turkey and Azerbaijan did for Pakistan? Why was the IMF able to sanction another one billion dollars for Pakistan in the midst of its nuclear saber rattling? Why was Trump again able to hyphenate India and Pakistan and throw in the mediation spanner in the works, knowing fully well our historical opposition to it? Why did the international reporting of those four days favour the Pakistani version of events rather than ours? 

The answer, perhaps, lies in what Arun Shourie told Karan Thapar in an interview on the 13th of this month- that "the Indian media has destroyed our credibility." With, may I add, not a little help from the government and its right wing cohorts. This ensured that we lost the global perception war.

Media (particularly television) reporting since the Pahalgam incident has been (again in the words of Shourie) no less than "a crime against the country". Firstly, these four or five rogue channels with their deranged, hate-filled and venomous anchors consistently equated terrorists and Pakistan with Muslims in general, distorting the narrative and seeking to drive a thicker wedge between our two major communities. This is something they have been doing, without any check, for the last ten years, but in a time of war this can be particularly dangerous for the unity of the nation and the morale of the armed forces.

The language used by these anchors in their broadcasts can only belong to the gutters where they were perhaps born. Newslaundry has compiled a short clip of some of these instances and I would urge the reader to view it to grasp the utter depths of coarseness and vulgarity to which they have sunk: in one clip the anchor, who calls himself a retired Major (much to the shame of our army) describes the Foreign Minister of a strategically important (for us) Islamic nation as a "suar ka aulad" (son of a pig) and even writes it out on the screen in case you were hard of hearing! (This has since resulted in a diplomatic row but, as expected, no action has been taken against this anchor for creating enmity with a foreign power, a standard criminal action against journalists who do not enjoy the govt's patronage). This is not behaviour calculated to endear our country to Islamic nations: just a couple of days later Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE supported the IMF loan to Pakistan. It could have been a coincidence, but I doubt it. 

The misreporting of the conflict crossed all limits of fakery, dishonesty and war mongering, studios were converted to mendacious war-rooms where all manner of fiction was concocted: the destruction of Karachi port, the occupation of Islamabad, the imminent fall of Rawalpindi, even the bombing of Kirana Hills and Pakistan's nuclear installations and the release of radiation (denied by the Indian Air Force and the International Atomic Energy Agency, respectively). Every single hour these channels contradicted the official briefings in Delhi, causing confusion, panic and loss of our credibility internationally. And even now, one week after the cease fire came into effect, they continue with their war mongering instead of trying to bring down temperatures, instill calm and report only on facts.

The govt. too did its bit to damage our journalistic reputation by its usual ham-handed and selective targeting of the few reporters and commentators who had established a reputation for independent, fearless and critically objective reporting. It committed a perception hara-kiri by taking down channels like The Wire, 4 PM, Praveen Sawney, Punya Prasun Bajpai, and filing cases against Neha Singh Rathore and Medusa of Lucknow University. The only voices which could be trusted to be objective were silenced- the world drew the obvious lessons from this- that the Indian govt. was hiding something- and discounted everything as propaganda. 

The whole world knows that India does not have an independent media, and that our TV news channels and print media are defacto extensions of the govt's information apparatus. So, the loss of credibility of the media over the progress of the war resulted in a loss of trust and credibility of the official spokespersons also, be they the MEA or the defence briefings. To put it bluntly, no one believed our version of events and relied instead on Reuters, BBC, New York Times, Washington Post and spokespersons of other countries!

What has added to our discomfiture and isolation is the complete failure  of Indian diplomacy ever since Mr. Jaishankar has taken over the reins in the MEA. His pulpit thumping arrogance, his aggressive preaching and abrasive moralising to other countries whenever he grabs a mike, his talking down to countries far above us in the global pecking order, his refusal to recognize that our "vishwaguru" ambitions do not match our status in international matters, his inability to discern that most leading nations now consider India a flawed democracy which stands for no principles but sheer opportunism- all this has led the global community to suspect our politics and policies and to keep a reasonable distance from us. The war with Pakistan has shown that India has no allies left, not even in our immediate neighbourhood. Our soldiers fought alone.

The last nail in the coffin of our reputation and international standing was, as expected, hammered in by the right-wing cyber warriors and the infamous IT Cell. Misinformation apart, social media was flooded with posts spewing hate against Kashmiris and their community leading to Kashmiri students being driven out of hostels and colleges in some states, demands for ethnic cleansing of Muslims and the annihilation of Pakistan; one BJP Minister in Madhya Pradesh even labelled Col. Sofia Quereshi as a sister of the terrorists! The state took no action against him till the High Court intervened suo-moto and ordered the registration of a case against him- his party is yet to take any action against him. The ruthless trolling of the Foreign Secretary and his daughter by right wing sympathisers (for announcing a cease-fire) forced the officer to suspend his X account. The depths of perversion were reached when even Himanshi Narwal, the widow of a naval officer killed by the terrorists at Pahalgam, was not spared: right-wing bigots trolled her mercilessly, poured venom on her, wanted her to be shot, cast doubts on her character and morals. Why? Because she appealed for communal harmony and to stop the violence being inflicted on Muslims and Kashmiris. Did our soldiers fight for such perverts?

The world, and the international media, took notice of this and decided to distance itself from India; we allowed the fundamental cause of the conflict, where we were on strong grounds - terrorism- to be relegated to the back seat, and the center stage was instead occupied by the Hindu India vs Islamic Pakistan narrative. The plot was lost, along with any support we could have otherwise expected.

Diplomatically and perception-wise, we have frittered away our gains on the battlefield and in the skies, we may well have boxed ourselves into a corner with our gladiatorial and cocky rhetoric. And there are no seconds in our corner. For you cannot occupy the moral high ground when your feet are firmly planted in the swamp of mercenary opportunism, contempt for basic human rights, hate and religious nationalism. This is not what our soldiers fought for. They won, but as a country we have let them down. 

WHY THE WORLD NEEDS TO DECLARE ECOCIDE AN INTERNATIONAL CRIME

First, the context.

It's not working. The planet is headed for  armageddon in this century itself if we continue with our present unsustainable life styles. The Paris Accord red line of 1.5* C temperature increase has been breached, CO2 levels have gone up by 125% above pre-industrial levels and at 425 ppm are approaching the survival limit of 450 ppm, the last three years were the hottest in recorded history, parts of Pakistan and Africa are likely to see temperatures of 50* C this summer, Himalayan glaciers are expected to disappear by the end of the century, causing unimaginable water shortages for a quarter of the world's population, thousands of species are going extinct every year. The planet cannot live with this depredation for very much longer.

One of the main reasons for this impending calamity is the humongous scale of deforestation that continues unabated. Global Forest Watch has reported that 10 million hectares of forest are felled every year globally ; that is, 100,000 sq. kms or twice the area of Himachal Pradesh. Between 2001 and 2023 we have lost 408 million hectares of forests to development, farming and logging, losing also a CO2 sequestration capacity of 204 giga tonnes. And this cuts across countries, as governments look for short term economic gains and multi national corporations continue to plunder natural resources with impunity. The regular COP meetings are exercises in futility and convenient opportunities for sexual dalliances at govt/company expense. Nothing more. Just consider a few of the most recent rapacious examples of environmental blood letting. 

30% of the forests in the Amazon basin have already been lost to mining and logging. And yet, Ecquador has finalised plans to auction 3 million ha. of the Amazon forests for mining. The bombing of the Kakhovka dam in Eastern Ukraine in 2023 by Russia released 18 cubic kms of impounded water and devastated hundreds of sq. kms of the natural environment and habitats. Indonesia is in the process of implementing the largest deforestation project in the world- 30689 sq. kms of the third largest rain forest in the world is being cleared to grow sugarcane (for ethanol and food crops). this will completely shatter the biodiversity of the region. Hundreds of thousands of hectares of virgin forests have been deforested in Indonesia, Malaysia and Papua New Guinea for palm oil plantations. WWF has estimated that wild life populations, including marine life, has declined by 70% in the last few decades.

India, as befits a country at the bottom of the Environmental Performance Index, is one of the worst plunderers of forests. Notwithstanding the regular fudging of reports and statistics, the govt's own admissions in Parliament indicate that 173000 hectares of forests were diverted for non-forestry activities in just the last ten years, between 2014 and 2024. According to Global Forest Watch the country has lost 2.33 million ha of forests between 2000 and 2024; the State of the Forest Report for 2022 states that between 2015 and 2021, 3136700 ha of dense forests have degraded to open or scrub categories, and 9.40 million trees have been felled for road, mining, hydel and other projects. And this onslaught on ecosystems and biodiversity goes on relentlessly with approved projects such as the Great Nicobar terminal, the Kancha Gachibowli in Hyderabad, destruction of 9000 mangroves for a Mumbai Coastal Road project, the Char Dham National Highway, a special road to Rishikesh (at a cost of 33000 trees) for Yogi's Kanwariyas, the iron ore mining project in Sanders forest of Karnataka which will result in the removal of 99000 trees, a pumped storage project in the Shahabad forests of Rajasthan's Baran district which will fell more than 100,000 mature trees over 400 acres. It is a never-ending and heart-breaking list of environmental apocalypse.

This level of environmental massacre and extinction of biodiversity is, in a way, worse than genocide because it affects not just one or two communities but the entire planet: temperatures, CO2 levels and biodiversity loss do not recognize political, ethnic or national frontiers. And these effects persist, not for just a generation or two, but for thousands of years. It is now beginning to be recognized by scientists, naturalists, climate activists and even politicians that such actions amount to a crime against humanity, and a new word has been coined to describe them- ECOCIDE.

Ecocide is another variant of homicide or genocide because it too involves killing, but on a planetary scale. It can be defined as " unlawful or wanton acts committed with the knowledge that there would be a severe and widespread and long term damage to the environment caused by these acts." It can also be defined as the destruction of large areas of the natural environment as a consequence of human activity. At least three countries- Vanuatu, Fiji and Samoa - have, in September 2024, proposed that ecocide should be recognized as a crime by the ICC (International Criminal Court). They argue that it should be added as the fifth crime in the Rome Statute, along with the other four- genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and the crime of aggression. It is no coincidence that these three South Pacific nations would be the first to be submerged by rising sea levels as a result of climate change.

Many countries already have domestic laws against environmental destruction, but these are ineffective against  ecocide. The reason is that large scale ecocide is usually committed by the governments of countries themselves, (and not by individuals, as the examples above indicate) and therefore they have no accountability. And yet, the calamitous effects of their ecocidal decisions extend far beyond their borders. That is why an international law or covenant is needed to hold them to account or to dissuade them from such actions. The same logic applies to large multi-national corporates who are mostly immune from nation-specific laws because of their spread, size and influence.

Discussions, covenants, treaties, conferences to save the world from environmental apocalypse have not worked. The time has perhaps come to now punish those nations and leaders who continue to be irresponsible. We cannot allow political leaders and corporates, without any vision and driven by material lust, to, in the words of  Mahatma Gandhi, "strip the world bare like locusts."  As Ronald Regan famously said: If you can't make them see the light, let them feel the heat. Ecocide must be recognized as the worst crime against humanity, far graver than the four existing ones, because it puts at stake the very survival of the planet and of homo sapiens. The time to declare it a crime has arrived. 

THE MYSTERIES OF SRIKHAND MAHADEV

 

THE  MYSTERIES  OF  SRIKHAND  MAHADEV.

         

     
                                  [ SRIKHAND  MAHADEV  PEAK . Photo Sanjeeva Pandey.]

    At 18000 feet the peak at Srikhand Mahadev is imposing in its savage grandeur and timeless beauty, shrouded in constantly drifting clouds, surrounded by ice fields and buffeted by powerful winds all day long. The massif is located on the border of Kullu and Shimla districts and is approachable from three directions: Bathad in the Tirthan valley, Phancha in the Ghanvi Khad and Baghipul. I had undertaken this trek in 2004, going up via Bathad and returning by way of Baghipul.  It is perhaps one of the most difficult pilgrimages in the state but for those who venture to undertake to visit this abode of Shiva the rewards are plenty. And one of them is the rich mythology associated with this legend, rich even by the fecund standards of our Dev Bhoomi. I find three of them particularly fascinating and poignant.

   On the final day of the trek to the peak one has to ascend from Bhim Dwar (14000 feet), the camp site for the previous night. The first five kms or so is over alpine pastures, but then the terrain becomes rocky and covered with scree- not a blade of grass grows in this barren wasteland. But after another four kms or so one suddenly finds one self in the middle of a field of flowers- a profuse expanse of the mystical Brahm Kamals, hundreds of them sprouting in glee from between the rocks, their white and cream colours transforming the barren landscape into an arboratum of the gods. This place is known as Parvati Ka Bageecha (The Garden of Parvati).

 

                                                   [ PARVATI  KA  BAGEECHA. Photo by author ]                                        

The Brahm Kamal is the favourite flower of the goddess Parvati, and they are there for a reason. Legend has it that it was at this spot that Parvati waited for 18000 years to win the affection of the God Shiva, who was meditating on the peak at Srikhand, totally oblivious of her. Empathising with her loneliness and distress, the Brahm Kamals bloomed around her spontaneously to give her company and cheer her up. And they are certainly a cheering sight in this desolate terrain. giving one fresh encouragement for the remaining climb of 2000 feet that still remains.

   One continues ascending beyond Parvati Ka Bageecha and the terrain soon reverts to the harsh, glaciated landscape, all greenery vanished. A short distance on, at the foot of the final, two thousand feet steep climb to the peak, is a small, glacial lake, fed by the snow melt from the surrounding glaciers- and herein is embedded another poignant myth. This pristine lake is in the shape of an eye and is known as Nain Sarovar. Legend has it that Parvati, while waiting for Shivji, became so disheartened and disconsolate that she started weeping. One tear drop fell on the ground and formed a lake, shaped like an eye, which is what we see today, hence its name. Pilgrims and trekkers take a dip in these holy waters before proceeding further. The lake is gradually filling up with detritus and may one day disappear entirely, but it has imbued this stark landscape with an anthropomorphic emotion which adds richness to this dev bhoomi

                                                               [ NAIN SAROVAR. Photo by author ]

     From the lake it is a steep 2000 feet ascent to the peak over continuous rockfall, boulders and patches of ice and snow, but one baffling mysterious myth still remains. Halfway to the peak, scattered among the boulders, one comes across a dozen or so stone tablets of massive proportions, rectangular in shape, completely out of place among these rounded boulders. There are carvings on their faces, like some type of cuneiform or vanished script in regular lines. Take a look at the image below:

                                                                 [ BHIM KI BAHI. Photo by author. ]

      It would be difficult to convince any reasonable person that (a) the regular shapes of these tablets have not been CARVED by a humanoid hand or that they are the result of natural erosion, and (b) that the calligraphic type markings on them are the result of the action of winds and ice. Such explanations do not match with the surrounding rocks which do not show any similar effects of these natural forces. The carvings are too stylised and uniform to be natural . And the question: why only these dozen odd tablets ? The devout have a more interesting explanation: these mountain ranges were visited by the Pandavas during their exile ( there are legends of the fabled Pandavas in other regions of the state, and other natural features associated with them, such as Pandupul in the Parbati valley and Bhim ka Chulha at Hatu Peak), and they are supposed to have spent some time on Srikhand Mahadev. These tablets were carved by Bhim and the "writings" on them are the accounts of their travels recorded by him. They are known as "Bhim Ki Bahi" or Ledgers of Bhim. Pilgrims venerate these rocks, as the chandan (sandalwood) markings on the image bear testimony.

   I am reluctant to dismiss outright something which I cannot explain rationally. The remote, natural landscapes of Himachal are absolutely saturated with similar mythologies of the ages. We may not believe in them but we must respect them for they are part of the DNA of both man and nature in these forbidding regions. They bring together MAN, RELIGION and NATURE, a much more sustainable synthesis than today's concoction of Man, Religion and Politics. They have also played a significant role in preserving the natural environment and we must value them for this reason alone, if not for others.  

NOW LINK YOUR AADHAR WITH YOUR DOG.

 The jury may still be out on whether India is an elected dictatorship, but it should be unanimous on the fact that it is a bureaucratic diktat-orship. For the last few few years our Ministries and their pen-pushers, denuded of any role in any sane policy formulation, have been passing their time in issuing all kinds of diktats on a daily basis, like bullets coming out of a Kalashnikov, with equally damaging effects on us citizens. So we have to contend with new rules every second day, on KYC, motor vehicles, FastTags, PUCs, PAN, Aadhar/ bank/ phone/EPIC/ electricity meter linkages, demat accounts, tax revisions, fuel emission standards, nominations and anything else that catches their fancy. These rules  are made without any consultation with stakeholders and usually lack any sense or logic. A few will suffice to prove my point.

Take the latest diktat in the NCR region: all vehicles should affix a petrol/diesel/EV sticker on their windshields so that the cops can identify them  BVR (Beyond Visual Range) in the manner of fighter jets. Non-compliant vehicles will be denied PUCs and fuel and will be fined too, for good measure. To add to our misery and confusion, no one has a clue where these stickers are available! Even GROK cannot figure out why this is necessary. If the cops need to see everything at a glance, then soon we may be asked to stick everything on the windshield- driving licence, registration, insurance, PUC, Aadhar and the wife's photograph. In which case accident fatalities will double to 300,000 per annum, since the driver won't be able to see anything through the windshield!

NOIDA introduced a mandatory pets registration policy a couple of years back via an App. One has to feed in particulars (and a photo) of the pet, address, owner's name, vaccination proof. So far so good. But then it also demands the owner's photo and Aadhar details. Why, for God's sake? It is the dog which is being registered, not the owner, surely. And what happens if the the owner's photo doesn't match that on the Aadhar, or resembles that of the dog? I have a friend who looks uncannily like his pet, a pedigreed bulldog, and there's every chance of the two photos getting mixed up, in which case the App will probably insist that my friend take the anti-rabies and distemper shots too, as a matter of abundant caution! Why not keep the whole thing simple?

                                       

It would appear that NOIDA is exceptionally endowed with cerebral bureaucrats: sometime back another diktat was issued that required all buildings on arterial roads to illuminate 30% of their exterior facades at night, to present a beautiful night-scape. Another ill thought-out intervention, and completely unnecessary at a time when power consumption is going up by almost 10% per annum. It will add to the electricity bills of the residents, but even more important, it pushes up power consumption precisely at the time of day when the power load is at its highest! And it's all thermal power, because renewables are not available at night. Such a policy is in total contradiction to the national power policy which is trying to reduce dependence on coal based power, currently at 70% ot total power generated; it also bucks the global trend of reducing city lighting so as to lessen the heat island effect, cause less disturbance to nocturnal creatures, especially birds, and lower the stress that excessive lighting causes to  humans. Did the authorities even consider these factors, one wonders? Have they not heard of light pollution and the global trend to reduce it ?

There is now a wave among city administrations to ban the humble "tandoor", allegedly because they add to air pollution. Cities in M.P, Maharashtra and U.P have already issued orders to this effect. Tandoors are used primarily by bakeries and restaurants serving Mughlai food, and there would probably be a few hundred of them in every large city- as compared to millions of vehicles! I have not come across any report of any study carried out by any of these cities to establish that tandoors are a major source of pollution, compared to the major polluters- vehicles, construction, road dust, burning of garbage and waste. Nothing meaningful is ever done to tackle the major polluters, but the tandoors are easy target, as all low hanging fruits are. The ban endangers one of our traditional, popular and distinctive forms of cuisine, one copied across the world: could that be the real motive behind these bans, I sometimes wonder? And will they also ban cooking at home since PNG/CNG also releases significant quantities of nitrogen dioxide, according to studies by the Universities of Oxford and York? It is estimated that 40000 people die every year in the UK because of this. And cows too for good measure as their flatulence releases vast amounts of methane?

I guess the picture above says it all: neurons and protons don't stand a chance against morons.

HOLY COWS AND LOOSE CANNONS- THE DUFFER ZONE CHRONICLES.

 

I am delighted to convey that my latest book (seventh!) has been released this week by AUTHORS UPFRONT/ PARANJOY. It is a compendium of my writings over the last three years or so and, as the title suggests, the pieces take aim at some of our less than admirable personalities and practices.

                                 

I am of the firm view that life gives us two types of experiences- the serious and the funny. The secret of retaining one's sanity lies in looking at both with the same lens, but bifocal ones. We should look at the comical and ridiculous side of the serious experience, and at the serious side of the funny one. That way you balance out both the experiences and live life on an even keel, not veering off to either extreme (which is the mistake most of us make!). That is what the observations and commentaries in the pieces in this book seek to do, whether they deal with the pomposity of politicians, the mysteries of the judiciary, the inertia of bureaucracy, the prostrating of the media, the intolerance of society, the indifference of celebrities, or the self serving hypocrisy of self-appointed "influencers."

I could tell you more about the book, but will defer to Mr. Mani Shankar Aiyar- author, columnist, ex-Union Minister and self-confessed maverick - who has penned a superlative Foreword to the book and has done a much better job of introducing the book than I ever could. So, given below are some extracts from Mani's Foreword: 

Avay Shukla is to Indian writing what James Thurber and Art Buchwald combined were to American funny bone journalism. Another way of describing him might be to say "Bernard Levin meets Private Eye." But perhaps both comparisons are unfair. For Avay stands alone. Neither we nor the world has ever seen anyone like him. He brings wisdom wrapped in wit. Always a delight to read, once you stop laughing, it dawns on you that what he has said is not just hilarious, it is deeply perceptive and hits the issue right in the solar plexus......

He is the master of the putdown. Writing of one of the saffron brigade's "intellectuals", one S. Sanyal, a "historian and alleged economist", Avay Shukla advises Mr. Sanyal to "stick to history, where he cannot do much damage since it all happened long before him!" Of a book on our revered PM as a child, titled Bal Narendra, Avay says "you can find it on Amazon under the category Fairy Tales/Mythology. If you don't want to buy the hard copy, you can read it on Swindle." And referencing the Home Minister's assertion that frying pakodas on street corners is also 'employment', Shukla advises that "he is waiting for some political party to make the pakoda its party symbol." He doesn't spare himself either. After retirement from the IAS, says Shukla, while examining options for a comfortable sinecure, " a ticket to fight elections was also explored through some Shuklas out on bail in various cases. None of it worked for a good reason: why should any political party offer a ticket to a retired joker when there are so many serving ones lining up?"....

He wields the pen like a rapier, his satire is akin to a curved dagger, his parody a hidden claw. He tops off his thrusts with telling quotes from not only Abraham Lincoln, Mark Twain, George Bernard Shaw and others, but also limericks and pop songs to exclaim 'touche' as the point of his (s)word play finds its target. I loved his reciting these lines in a column that mentions Darwin:

"Said Mother Monkey to her little one

As she swung on her tail,

It's just a matter of time

Before you become a Professor at Yale!"

As a resident of Himachal Pradesh, his muse is the new MP and cine-star, Kangana Ranaut:

"My worry is that Ms Ranaut's oomph in such close proximity to the high mountains of Mandi, Manali and Lahoul- Spiti, with their glaciers and snowfields, might hasten their melting.".....

I would commend to the reader Avay's reflections on whether he should become a 'divorce consultant' on retirement although this seems unremunerative in an India where the divorce rate of one percent contrasts with the US divorce rate of 50%. He comforts himself with the thought that "as long as the institution of marriage exists, divorce will continue to flourish, for, as Groucho Marx said, 'The main cause of divorce is marriage!' " Avay's command over the subtleties of the English language and the treasure trove of its literature become tools of gut-wrenching, side-splitting laughter in the footsteps of P. G. Wodehouse. Two excellent examples are his 'Bed and Breakfast (Bail Complementary)' [2022] and, if you are not too prudish, his 2023 masterpiece, 'Of Testaments, Testicles and Telling Times.'

But , unlike Wodehouse whose only purpose as 'the performing flea of English literature' [Evelyn Waugh] was to bring the sunshine of Blandings castle into the lives of his millions of readers, Avay's is a crusade to remind us in the Modi Era of the liberal values we are fast losing, the secularism now abandoned as the PM becomes the 'fifth Shankaracharya', seamlessly "blending politics and religion in one supreme individual", the threats to the institutions of our democracy, the idiocy of economic policies like demonetization. He does this, not by thundering polemics, but by provoking a guffaw......

And occasionally, as when he writes of 'near-death experiences', and particularly when he addresses environmental issues, he can be very serious indeed. His reminiscences of trekking on Himachal's high Himalayan trails are an evocative encomium to beauty and Nature and the bliss of solitude.

For all those distressed by the current condition of our polity and the abandonment of 'the idea of India' that guided both our Freedom Movement and the first six and a half decades of nation building, with a Constitution that proscribed the state from having any religion and promoted instead compassion towards our minorities as the hallmark of a civilized nation, and the poor and the historically disadvantaged as the focus of national resurgence, Avay Shukla reminds us, as The Reader's Digest once used to do, that 'Laughter is the Best Medicine.' I commend to you this collection of columns that laughs away our problems while restoring to us our sense of common humanity.....

After this Foreword the book certainly needs no further introduction!

Finally, let me wrap this up with what the incomparable Arun Shourie has to say about it:

Avay Shukla is quite the best, by many-a-mile. He teaches us to look. He makes us laugh. One moment he makes us fume at rulers. The next he makes us furious at our own inertness. Commentaries that will be rivalled only by the next collection of Avay's writings.

HOLY COWS AND LOOSE CANNONS- THE DUFFER ZONE CHRONICLES

PUBLISHED BY AUTHORS UPFRONT- PARANJOY

229 PAGES

RS. 595 ( paperback)

PUBLISHED APRIL 2025

ALSO ON AMAZON  at   https://amzn.in/d/gb9sbrr 

TIME TO BOOK YOUR CONDO ON MARS ?

 Elon Musk has just declared that there will be one million humans living on Mars by 2045. Perfect timing, you will agree, because by then Trump would have digested Greenland, Panama, the Gaza Riviera, maybe even Canada, and would, like Alexander the Great, be shedding tears because by then there would  be no new real estate left for him to conquer on Earth. The resort on Mars would be called-what else?- Mars-a-Lago. One is not aware whether the Martians have been consulted on the little matter of forcible occupation of their planet, or whether they would be deported to Saturn, but we shall doubtless get to know shortly the next time Pete Eggshead, the Defence Secretary, leaks their classified chats on Telegram. But this inter stellar land grab raises other important questions.

                                     

 

How would this one million horde be selected ? It has been rumored that DOGE (aka DOUCHE) had considered setting up a Guantanamo Bay type of facility there for deporting illegal migrants. But someone pointed out that with 2.29 million potential Indian deportees, Mars could soon become a Khalistan or Hindu Rashtra, and so the idea was dropped. Instead, since Hamas refuses to play ball or catch-the-grenade in Gaza, the Jared Kushner idea of a new Riviera would be shifted to Mars and the world's billionaires invited to move to its unpolluted, land-mine free, unbombed environs, the fifty-second state of the USA.                        Considering the success of Trump's Gold Card offer (1000 were sold on the first day at one million dollars each, we learn) a similar model could be followed, with a ten million dollar price tag, perhaps. Since only SpaceX rockets would be used, Musk would get half of the revenues, with which he could shore up Tesla's plummeting share prices and pay the alimony to the additional half a dozen wives he would have acquired by then. Going by Space X's current record, about 40% of the space ships would blow up in space along with their occupants but there would be no refunds since space has neither any gravity nor any expiry date.

So, who would comprise this one million ? Not many Americans, I predict, because by then they would all have been reduced to penury under Trump's MABA ("Make America Broke Again") policy and would be unable to pay for the ticket. Putin and Netanyahu may want to go but could face arrest under the ICJ warrants when they land on Mars, so they are unlikely to apply. Many from the South Pacific- Tonga, Vanuatu, Fiji- would be interested since by then their islands would be drowning in the rising sea levels. Unfortunately, they wouldn't have enough sea-shells to pay for the tickets. But by far the biggest catchment area would be India, which by then would have a GDP of 35 trillion dollars, according to our Ministers, and about a thousand billionaires and a million Ultra-HNI's as a consequence of the Viksit Bharat programmes. Since roughly 40 % of our GDP is siphoned off to make these billionaires, and another 25% taken abroad by the thousands of millionaires who take foreign citizenship every year, there should be no shortage of applicants from India. Reason? There would be no ED, CBI, FCRA, Interpol or extradition rules on Mars, the only rule being "what you grab is what you get". There would also be no political parties or judges to "voluntarily" donate money to. I believe certain eminent absconders from Gujarat-where else?- have already sent feelers to Musk to check whether dhokla will be served on the flight. There should be a good chance of that, I should think, since the airport contract on Mars will probably be awarded to the Adani group once all Indian import duties are removed on Tesla in the national interest: Musk can make rockets but not dhokla, you see.

But one problem still has to be sorted out by the new Sheriff in town: who will Mars belong to? There exists an international treaty on the sharing of the Antarctic for research purposes, I learn, but none for Mars. So the USA will lay claim to it based on the oldest covenant of all: "Finder's Keepers." Plus, Trump is likely to demand the planet as compensation for America having been left out of the first wave of global colonisation in the 18th and 19th centuries when England, France, Portugal, Spain and Belgium had carved out the world amongst themselves like a Thanksgiving turkey. Well, that particular chicken has now come home to roost- on Mars. It's COLAnisation time again, folks!

Advance bookings for the condos, I believe, will begin on the day that Mr. Drumpf is sworn in as President for the third time, with Vice President Musketeer looking on. Looks like Gurgaon and DLF will finally get some competition.

BEYOND THE DIPLOMATESE - DARWIN WAS RIGHT , IT'S A JUNGLE OUT THERE.

 The generally received wisdom is that international affairs is so arcane a subject that it should be left to experts and diplomats to interpret. Which they usually do in language that no one understands. But even that is fine so long as we can make sense of the moves on the global chessboard. That is not, however, the case today, post-Trump, as we see the global order unravelling before our eyes, open licence being granted for slaughter of innocents, the legitimisation of a new era of colonisation and genocide. We would, therefore, be justified in feeling that the future of billions cannot be left to the mercy of diplomats, just as war cannot be left only to Generals for, as Shylock asked: "If you prick us, do we not bleed?" The world is bleeding now, and we, the common citizen, have every right to ask: What the hell is happening?

The world is now dominated, and dictated to, by three unscrupulous leaders; one has been convicted on 34 counts of felony and would have been in jail if only the American Democrats had played their cards better, the other two are alleged war criminals, accused of  crimes against humanity for whom arrest warrants have been issued by the ICC. They have now joined forces to carve out the world amongst themselves, in a macabre replay of the Yalta Conference of February 1945. But whereas Yalta marked the end of a period of violence and killing, this new meeting of minds marks the beginning of a period of renewed killings and oppression.

These three have completely upended the rules-based international order (RBO), which has more or less governed international relations since the UN came  into existence on 24th October, 1945. The use of the veto and military power has ensured that the RBO has been replaced by the law of the jungle- open annexation of sovereign territories, blatant genocide, forcible grabbing of mineral resources. Putin will be gifted Ukraine as the main course and can help himself to Eastern Europe and the Baltics as dessert, while Trump gets his Akhand America and Netanyahu swallows up most of the Middle-east. China will probably pocket Taiwan and all the islands within the nine dash line.

International cooperation, and the organisations meant to ensure this, are as good as dead. The United Nations has been put in moth-balls, for all the influence it has on the world now. It's just a debating club now, and not even in the same league as the Oxford Union Debating Society. It's impotence has been underlined by the fact that Israel- a member state- has banned the entry of the Secretary-General into the country, killed more than 200 of its staff, disallowed the functioning of its aid organisations like UNRWA in Gaza, attacked its schools, hospitals and refugee camps, and there's nothing that can be done about it. Working for UNRWA can now get one arrested and deported in the USA. The ICC arrest warrants and orders to end genocide in Gaza are not worth the paper they are written on- in fact, Netanyahu has now extended the genocide to the West Bank and the USA is issuing sanctions against the judges of the ICJ! The WTO is in a shambles with Trump imposing unilateral tariffs and other countries retaliating in similar fashion. The WHO is facing collapse with the USA backing out, ditto for any effective climate Accord as the world's largest polluter disassociates itself from climate change agreements and expands its fossil fuel extraction.. A huge sink hole has just opened up under the edifice of global cooperation.

Other portents are even more worrying for the future of mankind. We were all aware of a creeping right-wing, intolerant and authoritarian wave moving across nations, but now the Italian Prime Minister has proposed a confederation or alliance of right-wing rulers: Trump, Modi, the Argentinian President, Netanyahu and herself to begin with; no doubt the likes of Erdogan, Viktor Orban of Hungary, and other wanna-be strongmen will also be lining up to join this unholy gang. This can only spell more danger for a world where democracy has been in retreat since the late 1990's.

The world is in a more dangerous place today than it has ever been since 1948, with this powerful troika abandoning all principles of international law and the sovereignty of nations, crushing underfoot the hard fought-for values of human rights, negating agreements built over decades by  painstakingly achieved consensus, withdrawing from international organisations established to bring about cohesion and equal development, repudiating global covenants such as the Climate accords, intimidating other nations by the use of their military prowess. Even more alarming, their lawlessness and unpredictability  is forcing other countries like Japan, South Korea and Poland to consider acquiring nuclear capabilities to hedge their safety bets.

And where does India stand amidst all this chaos, I wonder? It appears to me that we stand for nothing- we are not what we are, we are what we are not. The traditional bedrocks of our foreign policy-the "Panchsheel" principles, support for the Palestinians, anti-colonialism, a nuanced neutrality, the values of liberal democracy- have all been jettisoned in favour of cronyism inspired GDP, the image of one man, and the desperate desire to sit at the high table of global politics. This is sought to be achieved by a supine surrender to the new Satan on the block, shameful abstentions in the United Nations, silence when our own citizens are shackled and humiliated, putting money over morals. This is all disguised as "neutrality" but is just strategic cowardice. And it's not working either: we have zero influence today over global affairs, we can no longer claim any leadership of the global South, we are isolated within BRICS, Trump doesn't give a tinker's curse for us, nobody knows what we stand for anymore notwithstanding a pulpit-thumping External Affairs Minister who sounds more and more like Mr. Micawber and Uriah Heep combined from the Dickens novels every day.

The "experts" will probably say that all this is very naive and simplistic, that what we are witnessing is unilateralism vs multilateralism, or a battle between liberal humanism and evolutionary humanism, or a tussle between Marxist socialism and neo-capitalism. But the truth is far more simple, as all great truths are. And the truth is that the blood thirsty phenomenon we are observing today is pure and simple Darwinism- the survival of the fittest. Which may have been acceptable 200,000 years ago when homo sapiens was still at the hunter-gatherer stage of our evolution, but not today after millenia of progress. Today it is evil, a threat to humanity itself which cannot be removed by armies or the law but only by the people themselves, the people who have birthed these mutants in the first place.

These are, as I said, dangerous times for all nations, but do we have the leadership that can navigate the country safely through these troubled waters? I don't know because right now it is busy in trashing a stand-up comic, demolishing houses, demonising live-in relationships, digging up mosques, figuring out more novel ways of winning elections, taking over Waqf boards and declaring more meat- free zones. World affairs can wait.