IT'S TIME TO BE OUTRAGED , MY LORDS.

   The Supreme Court has disappointed again. While not interfering with the bail granted to the three student activists- Natasha, Kalita and Asif- in the Delhi riots and " conspiracy " case, it has, vide its order of 18th June 2021, effectively stayed the Delhi High Court order on UAPA (Unlawful Activities Prevention Act). To my mind, the court had no option but to confirm the bail for to do otherwise would have been to legitimise the lawlessness of the state and to throw all legal principles to the winds. But it has undone this good work by once again adopting a balancing act  (becoming all too familiar now) to keep the executive in good humour, by decreeing that the Delhi High court decision of 15th June 2021 cannot be quoted as a precedent for other UAPA cases. This is as perplexing as it is unfortunate.

  The court has given no reason for the virtual stay, other than to express " surprise" that the bail order is of one hundred pages, and that it has " pan- India" implications. The surprise we can live with ( nothing surprises us any more) but the pan- India part is more difficult to swallow. And this is the reason: UAPA is a pan- India legislation so obviously any judgment on it will have pan-India implications too. Which is a very good thing: for far too long have our courts avoided questioning the draconian and unconstitutional provisions of this law. If one High Court has finally done so, its judicial impact SHOULD be felt all over the country. Why is the apex court so uncomfortable with this ?

The Supreme Court's order is also self contradictory. By confirming bail to the three accused it implicitly accepted the rational and reasoning of the Delhi High court order which resulted in the decision to grant them bail. But by " staying" the order and deciding to " examine" its correctness it seems to be suggesting that it is not sure of its legality! This is a legally untenable position, shows a certain waffling on the part of the Hon'ble judges, and perhaps a desire to accommodate the sudden panic in the Home Ministry and Delhi police.

  Legal luminaries can argue about all this till Mr. Adityanath's cows come home; I am no luminary, not even a 9 watt LCD bulb. But I do know a few adages, one of them being: War is too important to be left to generals. Similarly, I would venture to postulate that Justice is too important to be left to lawyers and judges. For these worthies are the bone crunchers, endlessly chewing on lifeless words, phrases, rulings, ratio decindi and what not. In the process they forget about the flesh and blood of human reality, of the lives being tortured by their unending, academic and arcane arguments. They forget that at the end of the day law and justice is nothing but common sense, and that it is high time they extricated themselves from the thicket of legalese they have lost themselves in, back to the straight, wide path of common law and common sense. As the eminent British jurist and writer John Mortimer said: " No brilliance is needed in the law, nothing but common sense and relatively clean finger nails."

  And it is nothing but common sense which the Delhi High Court has displayed in its order, clothed in unassailable legal principles. It is common sense to demand prima facie evidence of wrong doing before locking up someone for years without trial. It is common sense to distinguish between a common crime and terrorism. It is common sense to insist that dissent is not sedition. It is common sense to rule that if an accused cannot be granted a speedy trial then he is entitled to bail, as Justice ( Retd) Deepak Gupta pointed out in an interview the other day. It is common sense to declare that the Advisory Board of UAPA cannot be the final word or arbiter of a person's guilt and that the courts are entitled - nay, duty bound- to look into its decisions. It is common sense to pronounce that inferences and speculation cannot take the place of hard evidence and proof. What is there to " examine" in these self-evident truths, as the Supreme Court proposes to do?

  No matter how you look at the Delhi High Court order- from a layman's or a legal eagle's perspective- it fully meets the requirements of both the law and of common sense. The principles and law enunciated by it require no further " examination ", which is why the Supreme Court's freezing of it boggles the mind. It is high time time our judges took their noses out of their legal tomes and felt the pulse of the people. They should not have an exaggerated sense of their infallibility, should not confuse real justice with their love for didactics , should understand the unending trauma of the public. The judiciary would do well to remember that all great legal and social reforms have been driven by the people, not by the courts or governments- the suffragette movement for voting rights for women, the anti- slavery campaign, the right to abortion, the acceptance of gay rights, the abolition of apartheid, the right to privacy. Law and justice follow in the wake of what is right, not the other way around.                                                                                                         And every time our apex court has been insensitive to such deep feelings of the populace it has had to eat its own words and revise its orders very soon. Just in the recent past it has had to quash the infamous ADM Jabalpur order; it had initially set aside the brilliant Delhi High court decision of 2013 on decriminalisation of gay sex but had to revise its position in 2018; in 1962 it had ruled that privacy is not a fundamental right but has since upheld it in a number of judgments; in 1985 it had held that adultery was a crime but just last year it held otherwise. I have no doubt at all that in this case also, the Supreme Court will have to ultimately lift the stay: as they say, history doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes.

  A sensitive and responsive judiciary should anticipate, and be one step ahead of,  social and legal changes and reforms; it should not be merely reactive; it should not live in awe of the executive. This is especially true of the India of today where judges need to step out of their book- lined studies and sterile chambers and smell the stench of repression in the streets, see the accumulating debris of a collapsing criminal justice system., the 45 million pending cases, the indiscriminate use of UAPA and sedition laws, the 2% conviction rate in UAPA, the 500,000 incarcerated prisoners of whom 70% are undertrials, the increasing number of people acquitted after years in jail without bail ( Ilyas and Irfan in Maharashtra have just been found not guilty after spending nine years in jail under terrorism charge, 115 persons have been granted bail in Karnataka, Akhil Gogoi , an MLA in Assam has been acquitted just this week in one of the two UAPA cases lodged against him ). The increasing number of acquittals/ bails in UAPA demonstrate vociferously the illegal manner in which such cases are fabricated simply to incarcerate those activists whom the government finds inconvenient. The Delhi High court order goes a long way to stem this rot, and by staying it the apex court has undermined not only the sanctity of the High Court but also the expectations of the citizens. All without citing any cogent reason for doing so.

  I sometimes wonder: what will it take for our superior courts to grasp the fact that, in their obsession with technicalities and legalese, they are smothering the real spirit and essence of justice- common sense and compassion ? Is it that they feel that they themselves are immune from the state sponsored savagery being inflicted on the common public outside their sanitised ivory towers ? Was Benjamin Franklin right, after all, when he said: " Justice will not be served until those who are unaffected are as outraged as those who are ?"

  It's time to be outraged, my lords.

    

BABA RAMDEV vs THE INDIAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION : A SHAMBOLIC WAR

  

   Baba Ramdev is nobody's fool, as the IMA ( Indian Medical Association ) seems to think. Anyone who started life by churning his stomach like a washing machine and ended up with a multi billion dollar empire has to be a smart cookie. And just marvel at his latest coup: the acquisition of the Rs. 40000 crore Ruchi Soya in insolvency proceedings. The company owed Rs. 12146 crore to the banks, and the Baba took it over by paying just Rs. 4350 crore, the beauty of the "package" being that he put up only Rs. 1000 crore of his own money, the remaining Rs. 3350 crore coming as loans from the same banks who had taken a "haircut" of Rs. 8000 crore on earlier loans to the same company! Post the take- over, the company is now valued at Rs. 35360 crores. How's that on an investment of just Rs. 1000 crore ? It takes years of Kapal Bharti and Alom Vilom to rise to such strategic brilliance.

  One is also bemused at the manner in which the Baba has suddenly become the mascot, champion and spokesman of Ayurveda, a traditional school of Indian medicine, courtesy the IMA's fulminations. For the fact is that he is as much of an Ayurvedic doctor as Kangana Ranaut, even less so, because she at least can improve your testosterone levels. To qualify as a doctor in this discipline one has to have passed BAMS ( Bachelor of Ayurvedic Medicine and Surgery) which Ramdev has not done. Why then is IMA engaging with him so seriously? By doing so it is conferring on him a legitimacy he cannot claim or deserves.

  Which is why I find his ongoing spat with the IMA so amusing, like a Spy vs Spy episode in those comics we read as kids. Ok, let us admit upfront that the Baba's comments about doctors- that, since they could not even save themselves from Corona, how would they save others, that they are responsible for thousands of deaths - were not only distasteful but also showed no respect or gratitude for the hundreds of doctors who had died in the line of duty over the past fifteen months. But to demand that he be arrested for sedition or to escalate it into an Ayurveda vs Allopathy battle does no credit to either Patanjali or the IMA. In fact, the escalation has reached ridiculous levels- according to a complaint in a Delhi court the IMA President, by advocating Allopathy, is trying to convert Hindus into the Christian faith ! And in a tit-for-tat an FIR has just been filed against the Baba in Chattisgarh by the local chapter of the IMA !

  Because the simple fact is that neither has emerged from the pandemic smelling of roses. Both these hoary disciplines- Ayurveda and Allopathy- have created confusion, doubts and misgivings in the public mind and have sought to monetize the crisis for their own respective benefit. In the process the casualty has been the scientific temper, the faith of the people in medicine- and perhaps many lives.

  Ramdev's version of Ayurveda as an antidote to Covid is clearly counterfeit and has no basis in science. He began by extolling the virtues of cow dung and urine; he then claimed that Pranayam exercises would counter respiratory failures and replace ventilators. He finally produced his magnum opus- Coronil- obtaining for it an ill-advised endorsement from the Union Health Minister; his attempt to claim approval from WHO was promptly shot down by that organisation itself. But not before the placebo had garnered hundreds of crores in revenue from gullible and desperate buyers. Till date there is not a shred of evidence to indicate that Coronil was subjected to any trials or that any of its claims have been scientifically verified. By conflating Yoga with Ayurveda and Ayurveda with crass commercialism, the Baba has brought this established school into disrepute and created huge confusion in the minds of millions of people.

  But here's my point- Allopathy has not done much better either. Led by the WHO, Dr. Fauci, the US CDC and our own ICMR, its constantly changing stand on crucial issues, unrepentant volte faces on advisories, and bickering among themselves, have done a lot to promote vaccine hesitancy and scepticism. And, like the Baba, earned untold billions for pharma companies, hospitals and vaccine makers. Pfizer will reportedly make a record profit of US$ 29 billion in 2020 ! Here is an illustrative list of points on which "modern medicine"( as opposed to "traditional" Ayurveda ) has failed to provide a consistent or definitive answer:

* It was initially said that the virus is spread by heavy droplets, but later some doctors claimed it was spread by lighter aerosols, increasing the distance it could travel and infect.

* So now no one knows whether the "safe" distance is six feet or six meters.

*  Fauci earlier advised that wearing masks is not required, but now insists on it.

* Just last year drugs like  Hydroxychloroquine and Remdesivir were being touted as miracle cures but now they have been struck off the list by WHO as being of no use. In India, people have been paying ten to twenty times the actual price for the drugs in the black market.

* No two doctors can agree on the use of steroids in severe cases. Some say it's a life saver, others are of the view that it leads to cardiac failures and cytokine storms.

* There is still no clarity on the ideal gap between two doses of the vaccine ; recommendations extend from four weeks to twelve weeks, depending on whether you are Boris Johnson or Narendra Modi.

* No medical authority or regulator has satisfactorily explained as yet why persons who have received both doses of the vaccine still get infected, and some of them die. Of what use is a 95% or 97% efficacy rate in such cases?

* Similarly, the gods of Allopathy have been just as clueless about the emerging new complications- the various types of fungus, gangrene and blood clotting AFTER vaccination. How is it that the three phase trials of various vaccines failed to alert the manufactures and regulators to this likely effect of vaccines?

* Everybody ( experts as well as governments) are now hiding behind the broad spectrum excuse of  "variants" and "mutants", and busy finding names for them.

* Nobody knows by when this virus will be defeated, if ever. There is already talk of possible annual booster doses.

* The latest debate , equally confusing as the others, is whether the Third Wave will be specially lethal for children below the age of twelve. There are as many authoritative views on this as there are doctors.

What the illustrative list above indicates is that there is as much confusion in the Allopathic camp about Covid as there is in the Ayurveda camp. Which perhaps is not unexpected since this is a novel virus and research takes time to deliver results. Medicine is not an exact science and not all answers are instantly available. This is especially true of zoonotic diseases, which are only now beginning to emerge as we intrude deeper into the natural environment. But then, neither of the two have the right to occupy the moral high ground and preach to the other. Or to us, who have been ripped off of thousands of crores in medical and hospital charges and usually handed back the dead bodies of our loved ones in return. Enormous profits have been made by both the adversaries and they should now end their vaudeville act and get back to answering some of the issues listed above.

  IMA, in particular, should stop patronising and demeaning Ayurveda and tone down its hostility to it. Ayurveda is as much of a science or non-science as Allopathy, and of far older vintage. It should not treat Baba Ramdev as a representative of Ayurveda, and should see him for what he actually is: a savvy businessman who has married medicine with FMCG with stupendous success. Ayurveda is far bigger and of greater consequence than he is. The real proponents and practitioners of authentic Ayurveda should, on the other hand, recognise the enormous damage that the Baba is doing to their science. They should break their silence and come out openly in its defence and denounce the Baba before he hijacks their discipline and takes it to the global stage, as he has done for Yoga. In short, if the IMA must do battle, it should do so against Ramdev and not Ayurveda. And Ramdev should stick to Pranayam, biscuits and soya and leave medicine to those who are qualified and trained for it.

   But lets end this on a lighter note. A cousin of mine ( from Kanpur, naturally) has a very pertinent question for Baba Ramdev and Dr. J A Jayalal of the IMA, probably in connection with an impending marriage in the family : if a girl vaccinated with Covishield marries a boy with a Covaxin shot, will their children be immune to all variants? And my cousin, who is a bit of a persistent Kanpuria, also wants to know whether Patanjali will get to manufacture the Sputnik vaccine in India, and if so, then will it be known as Putinjali ? Valid questions for IMA and the Baba, don't you think ?

Over to you, gentlemen.  

DEBUNKING THE " TINA" MYTH

   Mythology forms a large part of the BJP-RSS combine's world view ( such as it is), and the TINA  (There Is No Alternative ) myth is an important part of it. TINA is, predictably, the last refuge of the government's supporters who have now run out of money, oxygen, jobs, Remdesiver, vaccines, doctored statistics and hollow excuses to shore up their claim to continuing in power. This is, however, as much of a fairy tale as the claims of Baba Ramdev and the sermons of Saint Jaggi of encroached tribal lands fame. Incidentally, here's something most of us are probably not aware of: TINA was not coined as a political acronym but as an economic one. It is famously ascribed to the supporters of Margaret Thatcher's market capitalism, when she started dismantling the socialist structure of the UK economy: There is no alternative to market reforms, they said, hence TINA. The pandemic, of course, has revealed how wrong the Thatcherites and Reaganites were, just as it is now exposing how wrong the BJP acolytes are in repeating it ad-nauseam, albeit in a political context. 

  The first, and obvious response to the TINA argument is: any alternative is better than the present dispensation. Because, in these seven years, the entire edifice of the country has been dismantled and the gains of the last seventy years frittered away. In just about every internationally accepted parameter of good governance and economics the decline has been precipitous; here are some of the most recent global rankings of India:

HDI                             131/ 189  

HUNGER                     94/ 107

PEACE                         139/163

HAPPINESS                 144/153

HEALTHCARE            145/195

GENDER GAP              140/156

ENVIRONMENT          168/180

INTERNET QUALITY  79/85

WATER QUALITY        120/122

PRESS FREEDOM        142/180

PER CAPITA GDP         142/189 

 Every single indicator has declined since 2014. And it would not be correct to blame the pandemic alone for this consistent decline, for the slide had started in 2016 itself. Add to all this the shrinking of the economy by 7.3% in 2020, the highest unemployment rate in 45 years, the 200 million people pushed below the poverty line, the 32 million who have exited the middle class. I am not even going to speak about the social unrest, the gutted institutions, the collapse of federalism, the handling of the pandemic, our relegation to a " partly free democracy " by respected international monitors, for these are well known. We cannot do any worse, no matter which alternative regime comes to power at the center. As a democracy, at least.

  Secondly, democracies are not suited for self- anointed "strong men" who take pride in being obstinate, contemptuous of science and learning, feel they are omnipotent and omniscient, do not tolerate dissent or criticism, and are insensitive to public opinion. Their macho image does initially appeal to the electorate, and they perpetuate it by creating a constant churn, keeping the populace unsettled, stoking all kinds of fears and imagined threats. An apprehensive populace then looks for a "strong" leader to protect them, an instinct handed down to us from our monkey ancestors. We look for the "alpha male" to protect the clan, and who better than the Superman or Homo Deus we mistakenly elected ?                        It is this basic humanoid trait that autocrats exploit to rule, but its downsides soon become apparent and the disillusionment sets in. Of the world's four larger-than-life leaders in democratic countries - all in this alpha male mode- two have been consigned to history- Trump and Netanyahu-, one ( Bolsanaro of Brazil ) has reached the end game of his rule , only Mr. Modi is still ensconced in power. In those three countries also the TINA factor was trotted out by supporters, to be proved wrong in the face of disastrous governance. It's not certain that India will buck this global trend in 2024.

  The next specious argument advanced by the TINA supporters is the " After me, the deluge" chestnut, viz. that Mr. Modi is indispensable, that without him there would be complete chaos, a balkanisation of the country, a threat to our borders. The opposite, in fact, is true. This government has already handed over thousands of sq. kms of territory in Ladakh to the Chinese with barely a whimper. We are at loggerheads with all our immediate neighbours, and now even Nepal has raised a border dispute with us! The federal structure of the country today is under unprecedented strain, with the Center refusing to accept that under the Constitution we are a union of states, in which the latter are equal partners. The latest confrontation over the Chief Secretary of Bengal has opened another dangerous chapter in the usurpation of powers of the states- the brazen attempt to convert the very character and charter of the All India Services ( the IAS, IPS and Indian Forest Service). These services are unique, they are the only civil services in the world that have been given a constitutional status , with dual and pari-passu control by the Center and the states. Sardar Patel's vision was that they would act as a bridge between the Union and State governments, as a unifying force between the states. And this vision has worked very well for the last 70 years. Even at times of political differences between Delhi and the states, the respective bureaucracies have ensured that coordination between the two was maintained and the system has worked. No more, however :  increasingly, Mr. Modi's over arching and autocratic government is trying to establish exclusive and over-riding control over these services. This can only be a recipe for balkanisation and the last nail in the coffin of the federal character of the country.

  India does not need a " strong" central government on a constant overdose of steroids, it needs one which cooperates with the states and is sensitive to their concerns, one which provides leadership through consultations and mutual respect for the Opposition, not through midnight diktats based on pique and vindictiveness. In fact, what suits our country best is a coalition government at the Center, not a single party one with a brute majority which can be misused. The country's governance has suffered both times a single party has come to power with its own over-whelming majority - Rajiv Gandhi in 1984 and Mr. Modi in 2016/2019. The most productive and successful regimes in the last thirty years have all been coalition governments- those of Narsimha Rao, Atal Behari Vajpayee and Manmohan Singh in UPA-1. All three governments did well by the country in every important sphere- economy, welfare, environment, center-state relations, human rights of the people, social integration, even external relations. By contrast, Mr. Modi's majority government has been an unmitigated disaster; even worse, it has undone a lot of the good work of the previous dispensations and set the country back by decades.

   It cannot be denied that no single political party can provide a national alternative to the BJP. The only one which could have done so - the Congress - is in self-destruct mode and will take a long time, if ever, to come in from the cold. The answer to TINA is a coalition of strong regional parties. Only a coalition can work in a country with 29 states, 22 languages ( as per the Eighth schedule of the Constitution), 19500 other languages, 6 major religions ( not counting the faiths professed by 6 million tribals). In one respect at least India is a unique global miracle- as Ramchandra Guha has pointed out in INDIA AFTER GANDHI, all other countries are based on, and defined on the basis of, their ethnicity, religion or language. India is the only major nation which is defined by multi-ethnic, multi-lingual and multi-religious values. This diversity in one nation is indeed nothing less than a miracle. And that is why only a multi-party government- a COALITION government- can do justice to this diversity. No one political formation can capture, and serve, the splendour of this diverse civilisation. A coalition of parties also provides the checks and balances, the regional voices, the representation to diverse interests without which a democracy cannot function. It provides strength, not weakness.

  It can work ( it has in the past) if only these regional satraps can recognise the common enemy and subjugate their individual egos and agendas for a larger national good. If the voter can free himself from the web of lies, false promises, majoritarian paranoia and the mirage of religio- cultural domination. The choice exists and it is for us to grab it with both hands. If we still refuse to see the writing on the wall then one will have to agree with Ernest Hemingway:

" And in the end the age was handed

The sort of shit that it demanded."

 

THE HIGHWAY DHABA - A TRIP DOWN MEMORY LANE.

   I am essentially a " dhaba " man. (A dhaba is a traditional, north Indian, road side eatery without any frills or pretences). Give me a choice between a good, clean dhaba on a highway and a fancy restaurant and I shall plump for the former every time, even if you are paying the bill! This is not a reverse snobbishness, or my inability to decipher "Potatoes Dauphinoise" or "Coq Au Vin", but a conviction that there is no better return on culinary investment than what a genuine dhaba can provide.

  I think I've acquired this trait from my dad, a rugged travelling sales executive, who had bookmarked a dozen dhabas between Hazaribagh and Kanpur  when we would drive all the way in his Landmaster on our annual winter vacations. The family would stop only at these places for breakfast and lunch, sometimes sprawling out on string charpois laid out by mine host to beat the afternoon heat. Though I must state that neither UP nor Bihar have developed the dhaba culture to the level of Punjab and Haryana.

  The role of the dhaba in my life was further reinforced during the three years I spent in Timarpur, just outside Delhi university, while studying what our Prime Minister would no doubt call " Entire English Literature." Even back then it was not easy to get lodgings in Jubilee Hall, Gwyer Hall or Hindu college hostel and after six months of being booted out of their terraces and verandas at the midnight hour by vigilant wardens I, along with a handful of friends, took refuge in the "barsatis" and servant quarters of Timarpur, at rents which the beggars outside Khan Market would spurn today even as a dole. One continued to stay on there after passing out of the university, even after we had all become Lecturers at the unbelievable salary of Rs. 700 per month.

  Most of us were preparing for the UPSC exams- Pullock Chatterji, Anil Pradhan, Sandip Maiti, Nikhilesh Bannerjee (he wasn't interested in the IAS or IPS, he preferred his guitar), Vinay Shukla, Rupen Guha Mazumdar, Gautam Bannerji. There were other disreputable characters too, but I can't remember their names now. During the day we would all attend our classes, and study in the evenings and late into the night. But one thing was immutable- for dinner we would all collect at a dhaba behind BD Estate market, come rain, shine , or someone's girlfriend. ( I never rated a girlfriend but that's a story for another day, when Neerja departs on one of her trips to Kailash Mansarovar).

  Our dinner dhaba was run by this giant of a man, six feet tall and a genuine 56 inch chest. His name was Pahalwan ( I have since discovered that every second dhaba owner is called Pahalwan: it helps to ensure that customers pay their bills). He claimed to have been a cook with Pratap Singh Kairon, one of Punjab's legendary Chief Ministers, and was missing a thumb as proof of it.  Pahalwan's wife, equally well endowed, helped him with the cooking. Our fare was simple- it had to be, on the allowances our dads gave us- and maybe once a week we indulged in a mutton or egg curry. Our host kept our plates filled, while we exchanged notes on our preparations for the exams. But here's the clincher- Pahalwan NEVER asked us for money, he just kept a note and told us we could pay him whenever we were able to, if necessary, after we got a job. His explanation was (in Haryanvi Hindi, of course): "You boys have all left your homes far away and are all studying to become something in life. Don't worry about money. What kind of a man would I be if I could not feed a few students?"  In modern banking parlance we were all NPAs but, unlike the captains of industry today, not one of us defaulted on our dues to him. We all owe him a lot- cramming is so much better on a full stomach. I have not been to Timarpur again, but I hope Pahalwan has built himself a big, fancy place in Khan Market or Saket and no longer has to give credit to impecunious students.

  Other dhabas stick in my mind even after many years. As an officer under training in 1976 at the Himachal Institute of Public Administration near Dhalli, a suburb of Shimla,  I used to spurn dinner in the mess, and would walk a kilometer every night in pitch darkness to a dhaba in Dhalli, nodding politely to the occasional leopard or jackal one came across. This dhaba was run by a sardarji who had an auto mechanic garage on the road level and a dhaba in the basement. I am convinced he used the same oil for the car engines and the cooking. But he made the most awesome egg bhurji in mutton curry ( no meat pieces), served with tandoori roti; I had nothing else for three months and never tired of it.

 As a probationer in Mandi, I once had to go to Shimla and boarded an HRTC bus. In the front seat was the local MP (Member of Parliament);  I think his name was Ganga Singh. Those were more honest days when even MPs travelled by public transport, not in lumpenised convoys of doubtfully acquired SUVs. We knew each other and got chatting. By lunch time we had reached Bhararighat, which was ( and still is) a concatenation of about twenty dhabas and sweet shops. ( The public toilet was constructed only in the eighties as an after-thought). Ganga Singh took me to a medium sized establishment and ordered that most iconic of Himachali dishes- " kadhi chawal", Rs. 2.50 for a plate. And what a dish it was! Ever since then ( it's been 45 years) whenever I pass through Bhararighat I just have to stop and do an encore. It was a bit awkward when I was DC of the district some years later, but I used to cover up by parking my official car near the public toilet ( even DCs have bladders) and casually walking over to the dhaba incognito  for my plate of kadhi chawal.

      Sharmaji's dhaba at Carignaino. [ Photo by Sidharth Shukla ]

  And then, nearer in time and space, there is the wonderful dhaba of Anantram Sharma at Carignaino in Mashobra. Situated in an idyllic glen five kms from my home, I discovered it only recently but it more than makes up for the absence of  Food Panda, Swiggy and Zomato in these regions. The house speciality is poori- chhole, poori-aloo matar and atta halwa, all well worth a leisurely drive. Sharmaji, I'm told, is a school teacher and if he teaches half as well as he cooks his students have a bright future !

  The real valhalla for dhabas, however, is the GT road, the Delhi- Chandigarh highway which I have been travelling now for almost 50 years. There's a dhaba every hundred meters, with coloured flags outside and a bloke waving you in with a flourish, not unlike Suvendhu Adhikari being welcomed into the BJP. But here's a tip which one of my HRTC drivers gave me a long time ago- don't get taken in by fancy furnishings and hoardings, go to the dhaba which has the maximum number of trucks ( not cars or buses) parked outside it. Truck drivers spend most of their life on the road, and the one thing high on their list is good food, so where there are trucks there will be good fare ( and a surreptitious bottle of hooch, if you are so inclined). Most of these joints serve vegetarian fare, or " Vaishno" food, as they like to announce in bold letters.

  I always stop at only one joint- JHILMIL DHABA just after Karnal. It's more like a desi food court with four dhabas and a number of factory outlets selling everything from shoes, gift items, pickles to home appliances. One can sit outside under a huge awning or in air-conditioned rooms inside. It has spotlessly clean washrooms. Being a creature of habit, and adventurous only when it comes to writing about the BJP, I always order the same cuisine- stuffed tandoori parathas and sweet lassi: two of the former and one of the latter see me through all the way to Puranikoti, still six hours away.

           The JHILMIL dhaba at Karnal [ Photo by author]

  But the traditional dhaba is now facing stiff competition from more fancy variants: glitzy buildings with huge car parks of the Mehfil and Haveli variety, and branded chains like MacDonalds, Sagar Ratna, Haldiram and Bikanerwala. The GT-Karnal road (the earlier NH 1, now NH 44)  is a gold mine for restauranteurs, with 150,000 PCUs ( Passenger Car Units) of daily traffic volume or about 600,000 folks looking to eat and powder their noses. But I personally can't see any sense in eating the same kind of urbanised, branded stuff we eat in our cities twelve months every year- the uttapam or burger on GT road tastes no different from what it does in Defence Colony or Saket. When on the highway, why not try the highway stuff and keep alive this distinctive cuisine?

  But I have a sneaking feeling that Mr Gadkari and NHAI are of a different bent of mind. Because the new fangled toll roads, expressways and super highways are killing the traditional dhaba. With these roads being made for the prime purpose of extorting as much money as possible from the hapless motorist, access to them is tightly controlled and it is no longer possible for dhabas to spring up along them. At the most, space is ear-marked for one or two "plazas" every hundred kms or so, but these are auctioned to the highest bidder, which can only be chains with deep pockets. They serve the same stereotyped bilge they dish out in the cities but at even higher prices since now they have a literally captive clientele. So, regardless of which end of the alimentary canal is crying out for your attention, you have no option but to stop at these joints and get ripped off. On the Yamuna Expressway there are only two such plazas between Delhi and Agra, on the Eastern Peripheral there is not a single one between Rai and the Ghaziabad/ Ghazipur exit. Ditto for the Western Peripheral.

  These toll roads are featureless conveyor belts intended to transport us from one end to the other in the quickest possible time like motorised sausages. Their specs have no place for the romance of travel, for the typical  highway cuisine, for the choice between a tandoori paratha and a genuine " tadka dal. " The dhaba may, in another decade or so, go the way of A.H.Wheeler in our railway stations. But of course we'll be shaving an hour off the travelling time and that's what matters, doesn't it?