Detached Cogitation -- cogito ergo dementis

Right to Information and the Mountain Children of Uttarakhand

2010-07-18T12:34:00.000-07:00

An educated, empowered, and aware child today is a responsible, socially-conscious, voting adult tomorrow.

India's Right to Information Act, 2005 is one of the more ambitious and powerful freedom of information laws in the world, providing accountability and transparency through public scrutiny. It provides an unprecedented power to the public to ask questions of their government at every level. Provisions for a monetary penal clause on public authorities for non-cooperation facilitates the implementation of the Act.

As Gopalkrishna Gandhi once said, the problem with the hard questions of social justice, accountability, and equality is not so much that they are unanswerable, as they are unasked. In a similar vein, knowing what to ask, and even knowing that one can ask, has turned out to be the primary hurdle towards effective implementation of RTIA.

It is widely accepted that typically, with any idea, the earliest adapters are children. Children are also a powerful force in spreading information and awareness in their local community. Given that notion, Asha Silicon Valley (Asha SV) in conjunction with Mountain Children's Foundation (MCF) proposed that young persons in villages can be trained to use RTIA and also teach their parents and other adults in the village, and use RTIA to improve their communities, to discourage waste and corruption, and do it in a way that furthers interaction and cooperation between the government and the community.

MCF works with 30 partner NGOs in Uttarakhand, reaching out to over 13000 children in the mountains and nearly 700 village level groups. MCF connects children between partners and organizations, and helps represent their concerns to the government and other development forums. The children use this forum and work together at the grassroots to improve their communities and advocate their rights. MCF has historically been working on child rights and advocacy, education, gender equity, health and sanitation, and natural resource management in Uttarakhand.

MCF and Asha SV jointly started the Right to Information project in Uttarakhand. Asha SV had been engaged with MCF since 2005 and after a year long discussion on how to include the newly passed RTI Act (2005), we came up with a proposal in 2007 to train children on the law, and have them use RTI as an effective tool in all their endeavors. Another aspect of working with children (which we did not anticipate when we started out) was that children were not bogged down by either fear or greed, and brought their unbridled enthusiasm to bear down on an unyielding govt. machinery. For eg., among all the NGOs MCF worked with, no adult had ever filed an RTI on any community issue. All RTIs filed by adults (such as they were) were on personal issues -- where is my passport, where is my application now, why have I not received my land title holding, etc. Children however, filed RTI applications about anything and everything they saw in the community -- how many teachers have been appointed to my school, why is this road only half-tarred, why are these pipes lying around next to the ditch,why is there no electricity, etc.

Also, the children we worked with were mostly teenagers, and anywhere between 2 to 5 years from becoming voting adults. This is a great way to create an educated, empowered, responsible, and confident electorate for the future (in keeping with the original reasoning behind the directive principle in our constitution on why free and compulsory education was necessary to have a meaningful universal adult franchise).

With these motivations, the program was launched. A state-level workshop kicked off the proceedings with the Chief Information Commissioner of Uttarakhand, R.S.Tolia, attending the meetings. Subsequently many capacity building workshops were held, and village-level workshops trained the children, a lot of awareness materials were generated and RTIs were filed. During the discussions that led to the program, Asha SV decided to not restrict the children in the scope of their RTIs (to education related ones etc.) and let the children be free to file on anything they think is important. At the start of the program a base-line survey was conducted in all villages. This was tallied against the end-line survey for the same questions, with dramatic results.

The program was an incredible success in ways beyond what had been imagined when we started it. By numbers, 21 partner NGOs were involved in 104 villages with nearly 4000 children filing nearly 500 RTI applications. The state Information Commission which was skeptical to start with, was impressed enough to fund and organize one more state-wide workshop. A very large number of success stories came by -- electricity restored to villages,roads and bridges built, school constructions completed, computers delivered to schools,teachers showing up in schools, registration of birth certificate for a child with unknown parentage, water issue resolved in a village, and so on. NDTV ran an interview with the children during their final workshop with children confidently explaining what they did and what success they'd had. Much other press coverage was also received.

Of course, all was not easy and straightforward. There were many hurdles faced along the way. Children were intimidated, information was not provided in the format requested, money was demanded in exchange for giving the information, children were sent to different departments to apply for information, in some cases it was not clear who the Public Information Officer (PIO) was, government officers did not know about RTI or how it was implemented, to name a few. MCF and its partner organizations worked patiently through all issues, always supporting the children throughout, and trying to work with the government Information Commission and not coming across as anti-government. Of all the RTIs filed, about 15% were education related. Others were spread over a wide range of issues like playgrounds, electricity, water, roads, health, UBR, ration cards, sanitation, panchayat, BPL cards, pensions, forest, gender issues, irrigation, anganwadi, and child rights.

The success of the program inspired other organizations to try and replicate it locally. MCF has been involved with training folks on what they did, while stressing on how key it is to carefully customize the program to the geo-political-economic-social context of where it is being implemented. World Vision also funded MCF for an extra workshop. Going forward, the program is being extended to include more children and build on what was achieved in the past year and a half. One of the unquantified gains of the program was how confident the children were after seeing the kind of effect their actions were causing. If we can create such confident, aware, and socially sensitive children in our schools, the goal of education is met in its true sense.

One of the unique features of this project (as opposed to other RTI awareness projects) was the unexpected nature of the applicants. In the words of Asha Fellow Mahesh Pandey (he attended the final workshop, and visited the project in Uttarakhand)

उत्तराखंड में पबम के बच्चों ने आर० टी० आई० का इस्तेमाल करके अपने गाँवो की जो तस्वीर बदलने की मुहीम छेड़ी है वो वाकई कबीले तारीफ और प्रेरणादाई है. बच्चों ने इस कानून का इस्तेमाल करके पूरे देश के लिए एक सन्देश दिया है कि बच्चे भी इस देश कि जर्जर हो चुकी ब्यवस्था को बदलनें में एक अहम् भूमिका निभा सकते है. मुझे पबम के इस दो दिवसीय कार्यशाला में जाकर सीखने को मिला कि अगर बच्चे इस कानून का इस्तेमाल करने लगे तो इस देश को सही अर्थो में आजाद होने के लिए ज्यादा वक्त नहीं लगेगा.

[Translation]

In Uttarakhand, the way the children of “PABAM” (the Mountain Children’s Forum) have used RTI to change the face of their villages is truly worthy of praise and is an inspiration. Using this law, the children have sent the entire country a message that children, too, have an important role in changing this country’s rusted systems. I learned from attending [MCF’s 2 day RTI workshop] that if children begin to use this law then it won’t take very long before this country becomes free in the truest sense.

A short [and incomplete] history of Kashmir

2009-01-26T17:56:00.000-08:00

[This is an attempt to quickly summarize the history of Kashmir without personal opinions or judgment.]

Provincial map of Kashmir

Disputed Area map of Kashmir

Pre 1947

Kashmir was one of the largest princely states in British India, with a spread out thin population.
It primarily composed of five regions -- (a) the Hindu dominated Jammu in the south, bordering Punjab with large arable land; (b) Valley of Kashmir, to the north of Jammu, largely Muslim in demographics; (c) Ladakh, to the east of the Valley, bordering Tibet, largely Buddhist; (d) Gilgit and (e) Baltistan, both west and north of the Valley, mostly Muslim but Shia and Ismaili rather than the Sunni dominated Valley.
Many historical texts credit the Mauryan king Ashoka as the founder of the city of Srinagar. Kashmir was definitely under the Mauryan rule in 3^rd century B.C. and later the Kushanas.
The Gonandiyas ruled Kashmir for many centuries, with a break in the 5^th century A.D. when Kashmir was ruled by the invading Huns (Toramana and Mihirakula).
After the Gonandiyas, there were the Karkota, Utpala, Kutumbi, Divira, and Lohara, ‎[14] until Muslim rule came into Kashmir in 1349.
Then followed 4 centuries of Muslim rule under Durrani (from Afghanistan), the Mughals, and the Afghans.
All these Kashmir territories were brought under one kingdom (state) in the mid 1800s by the Dogra Rajputs.
Following the two Anglo-Sikh wars ‎[18] and the subsequent cash payment deals with the East India Company, part of Kashmir remains with the Sikhs and part is ceded to the East India Company.

1947-1948

The importance of Kashmir in the whole story of independence of India and Pakistan is primarily because of its geographically strategic location.
Sharing borders with Afghanistan, China, Tibet, separated by a small piece of land from USSR, and of course wedged between India and Pakistan, Kashmir was of everyone's interest.

The story of Kashmir is the story of Sheikh Mohammed Abdullah ‎[10].
Lowly born Abdullah received his Master of Science degree from Aligarh Muslim University, and led the revolt against Raja Hari Singh's rule in Kashmir.
He founded the National Conference (earlier known as All Jammu Kashmir Muslim Conference) which included Hindus and Sikhs, and fought against the princedom asking for a representative government based on universal suffrage.
National Conference closely aligned with Indian National Congress, following close friendship between Abdullah and Nehru

In 1946, Hari Singh imprisons Abdullah and plans on keeping Kashmir independent from India and Pakistan
1947, Lord Mountbatten visits Kashmir and tries to convince Hari Singh to accede to one or the other nation, but fails
Gandhi visits Kashmir after that, but only meets workers and students who want Abdullah released
Come Aug 15, 1947, Kashmir offers a "standstill agreement" to allow free movement of people and trade through the state; Pakistan signs it, India still waiting and watching.
Prime Minister Nehru (himself an ethnic Kashmiri) wants Kashmir to accede to India; Home Minister Patel although initially inclined to let Kashmir accede to Pakistan, changes his mind in Sep 1947 when Jinnah accepts the accession of Hindu-majority Junagadh. That instrument of accession was violated, and finally Junagadh reversed its decision. More details on Junagadh in an article by A.G. Noorani at this link ‎[19].
End of Sep 1947, Abdullah is released, and he immediately demands a government of the people in Kashmir, in his words, "A popular government, not of any one community; a joint government of the Muslims, the Hindus, and the Sikhs. That is what I am fighting for."
Pakistan expects a Muslim-majority Kashmir to naturally join them, while India with its religion-is-irrelevant-secular ideals expects Kashmir to join India due to the closeness between Indian National Congress and the non-sectarian National Conference.
In Oct 1947, Hari Singh still wants an independent Kashmir, and the deputy PM of Kashmir is quoted to say "The only thing that will change our mind is if one side or the other decides to use force against us".

In two weeks, end of Oct 1947, Pathans from the North Western Province (now part of Pakistan) invade Kashmir from the North.
Even today, there is no clear answer to why-they-came, or who-supported-them.
Its just called the "tribal invasion of Kashmir" and no historians or anthropologists are able to answer this question.
However, at the time, India believed Pakistan had supported this invasion. Pakistan disclaimed all responsibility and said this might be a spontaneous support of the Pathans for fellow Muslims being persecuted in a Hari Singh led Hindu kingdom.
In two days the invasion had pushed its way through to the Valley.
In Baramula they lost sight of the larger goal, and decided to loot and rape [and lost their standing claim for fighting a holy war]
Even strategically that cost the invaders since it delayed their access to Srinagar [capital of maharaja Hari Singh]
Hari Singh, in 2 days, asked the Indian government for military assistance.
Sheikh Abdullah also urged that the Indian government send troops immediately to push back the invaders.
Lord Mountbatten suggested that India should get Kashmir's accession before committing any forces to its defense.
This was acted upon and the Instrument of Accession was signed ‎[15].
Indian troops [and Air Force] managed to push back the invaders. A more detailed version with step-by-step map of force movements is well documented in a Wikipedia article ‎[17].

1948-1951

Upon Nehru and Gandhi's endorsement and insistence, Hari Singh appoints Sheikh Abdullah the Prime Minister of Kashmir.
For both Nehru and Gandhi, Abdullah is the face and symbol of secularism and interfaith harmony; not so much for Pakistan and Liaqat Ali Khan who openly denounce Abdullah as a pawn of the Indian government.
In 1948 Nehru takes the Kashmir issue to the United Nations.
Sir Zafrullah Khan presents a great case for Pakistan and Kashmir is cast as unfinished business of the Partition now
The Security Council alters the "Jammu-Kashmir Question" agenda to "India-Pakistan Question" -- a symbolic defeat for India
Pakistan demands withdrawal of all armed forces and a plebiscite
India agrees to that under National Conference's agenda; only after withdrawal of all armed forces from all parties and the resolution is signed ‎[16].
Abdullah's government formalizes the accession to India in 1951.
No plebiscite for the people to decide formally if they want to join India, Pakistan, or be independent
In all fairness, full withdrawal of armed forces has not occurred either

Ramachandra Guha in "India After Gandhi" ‎[1] says this about Abdullah --

Whether or not Abdullah was India's man, he certainly was not Pakistan's. In April 1948 he described that country as 'an unscrupulous and savage enemy.' He dismissed Pakistan as a theocratic state and the Muslim League as 'pro-prince' rather than 'pro-people.' In his view, 'Indian and not Pakistani leaders. . . had all along stood for the rights of the States' people.' When a diplomat in Delhi asked Abdullah what he thought of the option of independence, he answered that it would never work, as Kashmir was too small and too poor. (91-92)

Although Abdullah accepted the accession to India, he always thought of Kashmir as a Nation. The full text of his speech to the J&K Constituent Assembly ‎[12] (always read Nation as Kashmir here) after his election in 1951 makes a very interesting read and gives an insight into Abdullah's ideas for the Nation of Kashmir.
He continues to call for the plebiscite even after 1951.
Later in life, when asked what he thought of the option of Independence, Abdullah answered that it would never work, as Kashmir was too small and too poor. Besides, said Abdullah, "Pakistan would swallow us up. They have tried it once. They would do it again." [in Y.D. Gundevia, The testament of Sheikh Abdullah ‎[13]]

Abdullah deliberated enough, and even worked with the ambassador from United States on whether the US would support an independent Kashmir.
By then, the US had allied itself with Pakistan, given its critical geographical proximity to the USSR, and any openly anti-Pakistan move would not be supported by them.
Finally, Abdullah rejected the option of independence as impractical.
The option of joining Pakistan as immoral (he called it a "landlord ridden feudal theocracy").
But, Kashmir would join India on its own terms -- including retaining its state flag, and the designation of its head as Prime Minister.

1952-1963

April 10^th 1952, Abdullah in a public speech says his party would accept the Indian constitution "in its entirety once we are satisfied that the grave of communalism has been finally dug. Of that we are not sure yet." He also says that the Kashmiris "fear what will happen to them and their position if, for instance, something happens to Pandit Nehru."
The Praja Parishad Party [consisting largely of Hindus from Jammu] opposes the two-flags, two-constitutions, and two-prime-ministers system and vociferously protest.
Abdullah saw the Praja Parishad movement as way to force a solution of the entire Kashmir issue on communal lines.
Dr. Shyama Prasad Mookerjee leads the Praja Parishad and campaigns heavily for Kashmir to be wholly part of India.
In a subsequent arrest, Mookerjee falls ill, and later dies of a heart attack while in jail.
This triggers a much larger protest and the Jan Sangh in India heavily oppose the Nehru government's support to Sheikh Abdullah.
It is purported that Sheikh Abdullah is seeking independence for Kashmir (not clear which part of Kashmir since Jammu was clearly controlled by the Praja Parishad, and the Northern Areas were already part of Pakistan) and in a move supported by the Indian government, the head of state Karan Singh (son of Maharaja Hari Singh) dismisses Sheikh Abdullah from his Prime Minister's position.
He is also arrested within two hours of that, and jailed, while his deputy Bakshi Ghulam Mohammed moves into power. Later biographers explain this as a way by which Abdullah was kept "quiet and safe" in prison, because as a free man he would easily mobilize popular sentiment in his favor. Bakshi Ghulam Mohammed starts his role of Prime Minister in a populist style, holding darbars to hear the grievances of the public. Among things he did, he raised the procurement price of paddy; made school education free; approved new state sponsored engineering and medical colleges; and abolished customs barriers between J&K and rest of India.
More development in the works, as Rajendra Prasad (then president of India) visits Srinagar to inaugurate a hydroelectric project on the Jhelum river.
The State's own Constitution comes into force on January 26, 1957 under which the elections to the State Legislative Assembly are held for the first time on the basis of adult franchise the same year. This Constitution further reiterates the ratification of the State's accession to Union of India.
The Sheikh is suddenly released in January 1958, after no charges were brought against him since his arrest in August 1953.

He makes his way back to the Kashmir Valley, where he is met with a stunning reception.
Within 3 months, in April 1958, he is arrested once more; and this time on the charge of plotting with Pakistan to break up India, create communal ill-feeling and disharmony, and receive secret aid from Pakistan in the form of money and bombs.
Although the Sheikh may have contemplated independence for Kashmir, it is clear to all that the charges are easily exaggerated.
In his trial, the Sheikh says that he stands for a single objective: the right of self-determination for the people of J&K. Also repeats his commitment to secularism, admiration to Gandhi, and once strong friendship with Nehru, who even now "would not deny the right of the people as the final arbiters of their fate".
While the Sheikh is in prison, Nehru personally (financially) takes care of educating the Sheikh's son Farooq Abdullah in Jaipur.

1964

Post China war, Nehru's position in the political sphere of India is heavily undermined. Many signs that the man is failing in health as well.
In April 1964 Nehru decides to put an end to the matter of the Sheikh, and after obtaining the consent of the Chief Minister of J&K orders the release of Sheikh Abdullah from a decade in the prisons.
Sheikh Abdullah in his first speech on the day after his release, says the two pressing problems of communal strife and Kashmir should be solved during Prime Minister Nehru's lifetime; and that after him a solution of these problems would become difficult.
Abdullah travels through out the Kashmir valley and is cheered heavily; before traveling to New Delhi to meet with Nehru.
The Congress party as well as the Left party (and of course the Jan Sangh) are very concerned about the prospects of talks between Nehru and Abdullah, as they all see Abdullah as one with a design to detach Kashmir from India.
Nehru receives support from two unexpected sources – the radical socialist and Sarvodaya movement leader Jayaprakash Narayan; and Nehru's former political opponent and one-time close associate C. Rajagopalachari.
Rajaji openly says that the freeing of Abdullah should act as a prelude to allowing the people of Kashmir to exercise their human right to rule themselves as well as they can.
Meanwhile in Kashmir, the open corruption of the Bakshi Ghulam Mohammed's government had turned popular sentiments against India.
April 29, 1964, Abdullah meets with Nehru for a week and discusses many details of a solution for Kashmir with Nehru and his deputy (officially he was a minister in the Cabinet without any portfolio) Lal Bahadur Shastri (also a fellow Kashmiri).
Rajaji writes to Shastri urging that Kashmir be given some kind of autonomous status. Rajaji described the self-determinatino of Kashmir seems to be a lesser issue than reducing Indo-Pak jealousy.
Abdullah visits Rajaji on May 5^th and after a long meeting and are purported to have come up with an ideal solution for the Kashmir issue. The Hindustan Times carries the headline: "Abdulla, CR, evolve Kashmir formula: Proposal to be discussed with PM".
May 6^th, Abdullah returns to Delhi and has long discussions with Nehru. It is not clear what exactly this plan was, although there were hints at a possible condominium over Kashmir by both India and Pakistan (along the lines of autonomous Andorra, whose security was guaranteed by both France and Spain).
Abdullah openly says he wants to visit Pakistan with more than one alternative.
Rajaji in an article writes that asking Field Marshal Ayub Khan to cede Azad Kashmir will scuttle the entire plan; and probably the Sheikh should focus all his attention on Kashmir valley, leaving Jammu as a counterpoise to Azad Kashmir, to be presumed to be integrated to India without question.
On May 11, Abdullah openly asserts that despite his weakness (in health), Nehru is the symbol of India, and that after Nehru he did not see anyone else tackling these problems with the same breadth of vision.
May 16^th, Nehru talks about these alternatives, and says that unless we succeed, India will carry the burden of conflict with Pakistan with all that this [these alternatives] implies.
May 22^nd, Nehru declines to disclose the details of all the alternatives saying he does not want to prejudice the Sheikh's mission to Pakistan. Just says that his government is prepared to have an agreement with Pakistan on the basis of their holding on to that part of Kashmir occupied by them.
May 25^th, Sheikh Abdullah meets with Ayub Khan in Rawalpindi for over 3 hours and end of it says he found in Rawalpindi, the same encouraging response as in Delhi; and that there is an equal keenness on both sides to come to a real understanding.
May 26^th, another long meeting between the Sheikh and Ayub Khan, and the Sheikh is seen coming out beaming. He informs the crowd, that on the basis of these talks, the Pakistani president has agreed to a meeting with the Prime Minister Nehru in the mid-June.
Dawn, Pakistan's written forum for its intelligentsia, complains that Abdullah had taken up a role of an apostle of peace and friendship between Pakistan and India, rather than that of the leader of Kashmir, whose prime objective should have been to seek their freedom from India.
May 27^th, Nehru dies, and with him, these campaigns for peace.
Hindustan Times quotes a Pakistani newspaper as, "The death of Nehru meant the end of a negotiated settlement of the Kashmir issue. Whoever succeeded Nehru would not have the stature, courage and political support necessary to go against the highly emotional tide of public opinion in India favouring a status quo in Kashmir."

1964 – 1982

After Nehru's death, the Sheikh is interned from 1965 to 1968 and exiled from Kashmir in 1971 for 18 months. The Plebiscite Front is also banned. This was allegedly done to prevent him and the Plebiscite Front which was supported by him from taking part in Elections in Kashmir.
1965, the Indo-Pak war ends in a stalemate, and following a UN-negotiated ceasefire, the Line of Control is still maintained.
1971, another Indo-Pak war, this time for the freedom of East Pakistan – Bangladesh is formed.
Sheikh Abdullah watching the alarming turn of events in the subcontinent realizes that "for the survival of this region there was an urgent need to stop pursuing confrontational politics and promoting solution of issues by a process of reconciliation and dialogue rather than confrontation".
Abdullah starts a dialogue with the Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, being keenly aware of [as he put it] imminent danger of the breakup and balkanisation of both India and Pakistan with disastrous consequences.
In 1974, the Sheikh-Indira accord ‎[20] is signed, whereby the Sheikh gives up the demand for a plebiscite in lieu of the people being given the right to self rule by a democratically elected Government rather than the puppet government which till then ruled the State. Following this Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah becomes the Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir.
Congress Party withdraws its support and mid-term elections are called again in J&K.
Abdullah's National Conference again wins with overwhelming majority, and Sheikh Abdullah becomes the Chief Minister again, and remains the CM until his death in 1982.

Post 1982

Dr. Farooq Abdullah, son of the Sheikh, is elected CM after his father's death, and remained CM until 1984.
Ghulam Mohammad Shah succeeds Farooq Abdullah as the CM between 1984 and in less than a year, President's rule imposed on J&K.
Farooq Abdullah returns as CM in 1986 and remains CM until 1990, when another term of President's rule is imposed, this time for 6 years.
Again between 1996 and 2002, Farooq Abdullah returns as CM, after President's rule is lifted for 6 more years.
Following the instability after the Kargil conflict of 1999, President's rule returns to Kashmir in 2002, and continues to be in place even as of today.
During this post-82 period, much infiltration by jihadis and a lot of atrocities by the army of the Indian Union are documented all over the valley and along the Line of Control.

An extended reading list: [that this document heavily draws upon]

[1] Ramachandra Guha. India after Gandhi – The history of the world's largest democracy. [http://www.amazon.com/India-After-Gandhi-History-Democracy/dp/0060198818]

[2] Romila Thapar, A history of India. [http://www.amazon.com/History-India-Penguin/dp/0140138358]

[3] Romila Thapar, Harbans Mukhia, Bipin Chandra. Communalism and the Writing of Indian History.

[4] A. L. Basham. A cultural history of India.[http://www.amazon.com/Cultural-History-India-L-Basham/dp/0195639219]

[5] Wikipedia article on Kashmir. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kashmir]

[6] BBC News In-Depth – The future of Kashmir. [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/south_asia/03/kashmir_future/html/default.stm]

[7] Kashmir Information Network. [http://www.kashmir-information.com/]

[8] Maps of Kashmir. [http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/kashmir.html]

[9] Conflict in Kashmir – selected Internet resources. UC Berkeley Libraries. [http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/SSEAL/SouthAsia/kashmir.html]

[10] Wikipedia article on Sheikh Abdullah. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheikh_Abdullah]

[11] A comprehensive note on Jammu & Kashmir – the Indian government's stance. From the web pages of the Indian Embassy in Washington D.C. [http://www.indianembassy.org/policy/Kashmir/Kashmir_MEA/introduction.html]

[12] Full text of Sheikh Abdullah's speech to the J&K Constituent Assembly, 1952. [http://www.kashmir-information.com/LegalDocs/122.html]

[13] Y. D. Gundevia. The testament of Sheikh Abdullah. [http://www.amazon.com/Testament-Sheikh-Abdullah-Y-D-Gundevia/dp/8170174686/]

[14] Kalhana. Rajatarangini – Early history of Kashmir. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rajatarangini]

[15] Instrument of Accession executed by Maharajah Hari Singh on October 26, 1947. [http://www.jammu-kashmir.com/documents/instrument_of_accession.html]

[16] Resolution adopted by the United Nations Commission for India and Pakistan on 13 August 1948.
(Doc No.1100, Para. 75, dated 9th Nov, 1948). [http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/uncom1.htm]

[17] Wikipedia article on the First Kashmir war. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Kashmir_War]

[18] Wikipedia article on the Anglo-Sikh wars. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Sikh_wars]

[19] A.G.Noorani. Of Jinnah and Junagadh. In the Quaid-e-Azam Papers, Volume 5. [Chronicled in two parts in the Frontline reviews. Part1: http://www.hinduonnet.com/fline/fl1820/18200780.htm; Part2: http://www.hinduonnet.com/fline/fl1821/18210760.htm]

[20] Wikipedia stub on Sheikh-Indira accord. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1974_Indira-Sheikh_accord]

Links from Austin's Thursday Open Mike discussion list:

[21] Arundhati Roy. Land and Freedom. [http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/18528]

[22] Yogi Sikand. Rethinking Kashmir politics. In The South Asian. [http://www.thesouthasian.org/archives/2008/rethinking_kashmir_politics.html]

[23] BBC News In-Depth – Kashmir Flashpoint. [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/south_asia/2002/kashmir_flashpoint/default.stm]

[24] Yogi Sikand. Dangerous portents in Jammu & Kashmir: A view from Doda. In The South Asian. [http://www.thesouthasian.org/archives/2008/dangerous_portents_in_jammu_an.html]

[25] Yogi Sikand. Dreams of Harmony once dreamt. In The South Asian. [http://www.thesouthasian.org/archives/2008/dreams_of_harmony_once_dreamt.html]

United and democratic after 61 years! How?

2008-08-15T18:25:00.000-07:00

No one gave us a chance. No one thought we will preserve democracy all these 61 years, barring a 2-year aberration during the emergency years. Statistically, India's democracy is a major outlier. Given its low levels of income and literacy, and its high levels of social conflict, India was "predicted as [a] dictatorship during the entire period" of a study conducted recently on analyzing the relationship between democracy and development in 135 countries. Statistically countries go through dictatorship and authoritarian regimes through their poverty eras, before becoming democratic, and it was found that "the odds against democracy in India were extremely high". The forces that divide India are many, caste, religion, language, class, to name a few -- with gender a uniform discriminative axis across each divisive force. Enough has been written about these divisive elements. What are the forces that keep India together? What are these elements that have helped us transcend or contain the cleaving forces of caste and culture?

In the general elections of 2004, 400 million voters exercised their right. Back in 1952, in the first general elections 46% of India turned out to vote in what was world-wide termed as the "biggest gamble in history". Over the years this has increased and since the late 1960s, three in five eligible Indians have voted come election day. The corresponding percentages in local assembly elections have been even higher. India is probably the only democracy where the voter turn out of the marginalized classes are higher than that of the privileged groups. So, is the right to choose, freely and fairly, a uniting factor for all Indians? You only have to take a gentle look behind this process, and the picture is less than rosy. Most political parties are family firms. Most politicians are corrupt, and many come from a criminal background. Many institutions central to the functioning of a democracy, including a justiciable code of laws and their fair enforcement, have declined precipitously since their days of inception. The percentage of truly independent minded civil-servants has declined, as has the percentage of completely fair-minded judges.

Typically most nationalist movements (in the western world and otherwise) have been glued by a common language or a common religion. By contrast, the Indian nation does not privilege a single language or faith. There are sufficient examples to see the success of minorities in India through the system. It may not be far fetched to say that the unity of the Indian nation and pluralism of language and religion are inseparable. Yet, once again, the contradictions are not hard to see. From the original Jan Sangh slogans of "Hindi, Hindu, Hindustani", to Delhi in 1984, to Godhra and Gujarat of 2002, the minorities have suffered grievous loss of life and property. And in further keeping with the contradictions, for the most part, the minorities appear to retain faith in the democratic and secular ideals of the Indian constitution.

Was the fact that English survived as a language in India a uniting factor? It is easily arguable that large parts of India dont speak or understand English. Yet, it was English that was chosen as the language of governance at various levels, and is easily the language of the pan-Indian elite. The percentage of folks bound by English is not trivial, and as the historian Sarvepalli Gopal writes, "the knowledge of English is the passport for employment at higher levels in all fields". Javed Akhtar, a noted Hindi and Urdu poet once remarked with great insight -- "Apart from all the geographical states, there is one more state in this country, and that is Hindi cinema". Bollywood has undoubtedly been an enormous contributer to the national unity as well.

The question then to ask is, is India a proper or a sham democracy? Can electoral rights, pluralism of language and religion, a foreign language (English), and Bollywood keep India together? Building democracy in a poor society was always going to be hard. Nurturing and rearing secularism in a just-divided country was even harder. And in these 61 years we have come a long way in fulfilling these dreams. There are many holes that need to be plugged. Holes so large, that they threaten to flood the boat. And yet, India stands afloat today, mostly proud.

Today, outside of the political and economic sphere of India, there are many discussing the true meaning of individual freedoms. Many who are pointing out the chinks in our armour. For a liberal democracy, India treats individual freedoms of its citizens with great disdain. But a new generation of young India is discussing this. In small groups, in small pockets, and making little changes.

For those who wish to see it, the pattern is obvious. A hundred years ago, the idea of political freedom in India was a matter of debate in the parlors of the educated elite. In small groups, in small pockets, and making little changes.

Happy 61!

Statistics and Rural India

2008-07-24T16:52:00.000-07:00

Statistics are to be interpreted with the right eyes to make some meaningful sense. We earlier saw the story of two India's -- the India shining and the tottering India; the India of credit cards and the India of farmer suicides; the thriving business India and the collapsing agrarian India. To really understand the problems of India from a statistical viewpoint, particularly of rural India, one needs to look beyond narrow definitions, and look at holistic pictures.

Human Development is measured by the eponymous index Human Development Index (HDI) and is annually reported by UNDP's Human Development Report. HDI goes beyond GDP and calculates human development as a measure of three chief charactersitics (the last of which is the GDP per capita).

living a long and healthy life (measured by life expectancy),
being educated (measured by adult literacy and enrollment at the primary, secondary and tertiary level), and
having a decent standard of living (measured by purchasing power parity, PPP, income).

According to the UNDP website,

The index is not in any sense a comprehensive measure of human development. It does not, for example, include important indicators such as gender or income inequality and more difficult to measure indicators like respect for human rights and political freedoms. What it does provide is a broadened prism for viewing human progress and the complex relationship between income and well-being.

Under this (slightly more) comprehensive measurement (than just GDP), where does India rank?

India ranks 128 (out of 177) countries in overall HDI, just below Morocco and Equatorial Guinea. Sierra Leone is bottom at 177.
Life expectancy at birth: India ranks 125, just below Pakistan and Comoros.
Adult literacy rate (ages 15+): India ranks 114, just below Rwanda and Malawi.
Combined primary/secondary/tertiary education enrollment: India ranks 122, just below Namibia and Vietnam.
GDP per capita (PPP US$): India ranks 114, just below Syria and Nicaragua.

In all these categories, India seems to be ranked well below sub-Saharan Africa. (This is not to generalize a stereotype of sub-Saharan Africa. India deserves to be ranked at what she has been. And, many sub-Saharan African countries have really been improving over the years. However, due to governmental policies, and gains for the elite of powerful countries, India, in all forms of press, is portrayed as an emerging super-power, whereas, the other countries ranked around us are treated with much disdain on their development curves in the same media.) The much talked about 9% growth rate of GDP is just that, a growth rate, indicating the growth of the elite in India. By absolute numbers per capita, even by GDP count India ranks in the bottom third of all countries in the world, even below war ravaged Nicaragua. None of these countries that are around our rank are "potential super powers", or "software power houses", or "next-gen nuclear power". So who in India is benefited by this 9% growth?

India is 4th in the list of most US$ billionaires in the country (behind US, Germany, Russia).
50 countries on either side (together) of us on the HDI rating put together have lesser US$ billionaires than us.
According to Times of India, in a period of 3 months between July and Oct in 2007, the collective wealth of the top 10 billionaires of India increased by 27% -- which translates to collectively Rs.2 crores per minute.

Now, think about rural india and the farmer. The farmer has not had a Rs 20 increase in wage in that whole period, forget about per minute.

That portrays a rather grim and bleak picture of rural India. Where then is the hope? At this crucial juncture in our political history when every elected people's representative is wondering about what will happen to the Indo-US Nuclear deal, Asha for Education and Work an Hour 2008 have chosen to run a campaign focusing on rural India and are showcasing 15 such hopes. These projects are all over India, and each in their own way are addressing the problems leading to the appalling statistics we just recounted. Do read about them, donate, and discuss means and methods to mitigate these problems here on this post and in the comments section.

P.Sainath said it right after this March's Union Budget:

"As Dr. Muhammad Yunus, the Nobel laureate, said, 'Faster growth rate is essential for faster reduction in poverty. There is no other trick to it'." So said P. Chidambaram in his budget speech. Drawing on his words must have seemed a politically correct thing to do. Mr. Chidambaram might want to add another quote to his cupboard. This one from the late Edward Abbey, environmental activist and writer. "Growth for growth's sake is the ideology of the cancer cell."

Few things grow as relentlessly as a cancer cell. Its up to us to demand for change; to demand for justice, equality and fraternity, promised by the preamble of the constitution; and to demand that we stop marginalizing our rural brethren and to stop making self-indulgent and thoroughly meaningless attempts grown out of a guilty conscience to ameliorate the lot of the under-privileged, and instead build an egalitarian future where dignity of the individual is honored above his/her net economic worth.

"I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed." -- MLK.

References:
[1] UNDP's HDR report on Human Development Index, India Fact Sheet. http://hdrstats.undp.org/countries/country_fact_sheets/cty_fs_IND.html
[2] Sainath's article in India Together after P.Chidambaram's Union Budget of March 2008. "Growth Idealogy of the Cancer Cell". http://www.indiatogether.org/2007/mar/psa-cancer.htm
[3] Sainath's article based on the HDI fact sheet for India. "India 2007: High growth, low development". http://www.indiatogether.org/2007/dec/psa-i2007.htm
[4] UNDP's Human Development Report's Statistics page. http://hdr.undp.org/en/statistics/
[5] Asha for Education
[6] Work an Hour 2008

Non-hierarchical? or a mai-baap sarkar?

2008-06-20T01:31:00.001-07:00

Guillermo Nugent, a professor of Sociology in Peru says this of Latin America:
In Latin America we “sense” the ruler to be a father figure, and the ruler “senses” his power as if the country he rules were his own hacienda. The army and church hierarchy are powerful models of untouchable power and customs have more weight than laws. We aren’t democracies. Why is this? What can help us explain it?

How do organizations structure themselves? In what professor Nugent explains above in the case governments is a lack of democracy due to a mai-baap sarkar (a father figure). However, we in India, have a "democracy" and a "mai-baap sarkar". More closer than that, we are all part of organizations, at a professional level, at a personal level in working for development in marginalized India. So how do organization structures work? Everyone understands the professional structure with a top-down CEO to worker structure. Then there are the more esoteric, idealistic, egalitarian all-are-equal organization sans all hierarchies.

A tree-structured organization is one in which every member except one has a unique superior. The exception is "at the top" and has no superior. A non-hierarchically-structured organization is one in which the superior-subordinate relationship does not exist at all.

What are the problems with a tree-structured organization? At first glance:

information is not equally available to everyone in the organization
people not involved in the daily working of the organization make bulk of the decisions
superior-subordinate relationship leads to unequal distribution of power/status
compartmentalizes the members of the organization

Decentralizing decision making which leads to increasing workers' commitment to the organization's goals is a way to mitigate the above problems. Solutions in this line eliminate the tree structure and replace it with a group of equal members. These are "collectives" or "participatory democracies", in which the formal structure of the organization is no longer defined by a set of roles, but by a set of procedures that allow the group to function efficiently in an egalitarian way, such as rules for job rotation and group decision-making. Inequalities in influence and specialization of skill or knowledge are regarded as harmful, and are specifically avoided.

For such non-hierarchical organizations to work, some or all of the following conditions should hold:

The organization is small
The environment is unpredictable, the task complicated, and calls for innovative solutions
The members are motivated by principles and goals and values of the organization and not by money or power
All members have the same and equal knowledge of the workings of the organization
The members understand and have a personal commitment to non-hierarchical structures.

In traditional organizations, inequality is used as an incentive, and therefore an egalitarian structure may be less motivating for some individuals.

[Notice the parallel with competition here. Some might argue that inequality among competitors can be an incentive to improve in the skill being competed for. Whereas, in an egalitarian structure, there is no such inequality. Therefore, without a personal commitment to a non-competitive ideology, promoting it in an adhoc fashion is most likely to fail.]

According to [Mansbridge, 1973] and [Kanter, 1972], a common problem for non-hierarchical groups is that small disagreements tend to expand and involve the whole membership. Group meetings become tediously long, debating matters that are relevant only to a few people. To avoid this observation, the organization needs a barrier to catch the smaller problems before they spread to waste time and cause division.

The primary point in the non-hierarchical model is that there is no unity of command. In a classical system, with only one superior, no member has conflicting instructions. But in the non-hierarchical systems, a member might be asked to follow decisions of several other members, which may be mutually inconsistent. Even though this violates the principle of unity of command, the organization will be able to function very efficiently by mutual discussion.

Members will be able to make voluntary adjustments given they have sufficient communication with each other. To achieve an egalitarian organization we will need to require that every member communicate directly with the exact same number of others. [A simple version of this would be to have one common list and every member communicates with every one else. The rationale behind all this communication requirement is that the requirement of an egalitarian organization is an equal knowledge shared amongst all members.]

Any thoughts? Please write back to vinod.2v@gmail.com

Murder by the government: slow and meticulous

2008-03-24T15:01:00.000-07:00

Where then the clean water, air, and earth;
That the government promised to stand for.
Where then the liberty, the equality, the justice;
That the constitution promised to stand for.

What price, the words of a leader,
In today's Nano-Nuclear market!
What price, the lives of a people,
In today's Poor-Toxic Bhopal!

Cry, My Beloved Country!
http://bhopal.net

Moment of Silence -- Emmanuel Ortiz Part 2

2008-01-09T14:20:00.000-08:00

A beautiful poem. Again, sans comments....

The wikipedia entry has the following to say...

Moment of Silence is a controversial poem by Emmanuel Ortiz published on September 11, 2002, the first anniversary of the September 11th, 2001 attacks. The poem links the history of colonialism, neocolonialism, imperialism, the War on Terror, environmental racism, and structural violence to the attacks.

The poem goes on to critique the notion of a moment of silence, perhaps best summed up by the lines: "From somewhere within the pillars of power, you open your mouth to invoke a moment of our silence and we are all left speechless" and "This is a poem about what causes poems like this to be written." The majority of the poem serves as a list of historical crimes by the West against indigenous peoples or the Third World and how the structures which perpetuate those crimes slip through the cracks whenever people take a "moment of silence". Essentially, Ortiz believes a moment of silence "cut[s] in line" by failing to acknowledge previous and ongoing forms of structural violence.

A MOMENT OF SILENCE, BEFORE I START THIS POEM

Before I start this poem, I'd like to ask you to join me
In a moment of silence
In honor of those who died in the World Trade Center and the
Pentagon last September 11th.
I would also like to ask you
To offer up a moment of silence
For all of those who have been harassed, imprisoned,
disappeared, tortured, raped, or killed in retaliation for those strikes,
For the victims in both Afghanistan and the U.S.

And if I could just add one more thing...
A full day of silence
For the tens of thousands of Palestinians who have died at the
hands of U.S.-backed Israeli
forces over decades of occupation.
Six months of silence for the million and-a-half Iraqi people,
mostly children, who have died of
malnourishment or starvation as a result of an 11-year U.S.
embargo against the country.

Before I begin this poem,
Two months of silence for the Blacks under Apartheid in South Africa,
Where homeland security made them aliens in their own country.
Nine months of silence for the dead in Hiroshima and Nagasaki,
Where death rained down and peeled back every layer of
concrete, steel, earth and skin
And the survivors went on as if alive.
A year of silence for the millions of dead in Vietnam - a people,
not a war - for those who
know a thing or two about the scent of burning fuel, their
relatives' bones buried in it, their babies born of it.
A year of silence for the dead in Cambodia and Laos, victims of
a secret war ... ssssshhhhh....
Say nothing ... we don't want them to learn that they are dead.
Two months of silence for the decades of dead in Colombia,
Whose names, like the corpses they once represented, have
piled up and slipped off our tongues.

Before I begin this poem.
An hour of silence for El Salvador ...
An afternoon of silence for Nicaragua ...
Two days of silence for the Guatemaltecos ...
None of whom ever knew a moment of peace in their living years.
45 seconds of silence for the 45 dead at Acteal, Chiapas
25 years of silence for the hundred million Africans who found
their graves far deeper in the ocean than any building could
poke into the sky.
There will be no DNA testing or dental records to identify their remains.
And for those who were strung and swung from the heights of
sycamore trees in the south, the north, the east, and the west...

100 years of silence...
For the hundreds of millions of indigenous peoples from this half
of right here,
Whose land and lives were stolen,
In postcard-perfect plots like Pine Ridge, Wounded Knee, Sand
Creek,
Fallen Timbers, or the Trail of Tears.
Names now reduced to innocuous magnetic poetry on the
refrigerator of our consciousness ...

So you want a moment of silence?
And we are all left speechless
Our tongues snatched from our mouths
Our eyes stapled shut
A moment of silence
And the poets have all been laid to rest
The drums disintegrating into dust.

Before I begin this poem,
You want a moment of silence
You mourn now as if the world will never be the same
And the rest of us hope to hell it won't be. Not like it always has
been.

Because this is not a 9/11 poem.
This is a 9/10 poem,
It is a 9/9 poem,
A 9/8 poem,
A 9/7 poem
This is a 1492 poem.

This is a poem about what causes poems like this to be written.
And if this is a 9/11 poem, then:
This is a September 11th poem for Chile, 1971.
This is a September 12th poem for Steven Biko in South Africa,
1977.
This is a September 13th poem for the brothers at Attica Prison,
New York, 1971.
This is a September 14th poem for Somalia, 1992.
This is a poem for every date that falls to the ground in ashes
This is a poem for the 110 stories that were never told
The 110 stories that history chose not to write in textbooks
The 110 stories that CNN, BBC, The New York Times, and
Newsweek ignored.
This is a poem for interrupting this program.

And still you want a moment of silence for your dead?
We could give you lifetimes of empty:
The unmarked graves
The lost languages
The uprooted trees and histories
The dead stares on the faces of nameless children
Before I start this poem we could be silent forever
Or just long enough to hunger,
For the dust to bury us
And you would still ask us
For more of our silence.

If you want a moment of silence
Then stop the oil pumps
Turn off the engines and the televisions
Sink the cruise ships
Crash the stock markets
Unplug the marquee lights,
Delete the instant messages,
Derail the trains, the light rail transit.

If you want a moment of silence, put a brick through the window
of Taco Bell,
And pay the workers for wages lost.
Tear down the liquor stores,
The townhouses, the White Houses, the jailhouses, the
Penthouses and the Playboys.

If you want a moment of silence,
Then take it
On Super Bowl Sunday,
The Fourth of July
During Dayton's 13 hour sale
Or the next time your white guilt fills the room where my beautiful
people have gathered.

You want a moment of silence
Then take it NOW,
Before this poem begins.
Here, in the echo of my voice,
In the pause between goosesteps of the second hand,
In the space between bodies in embrace,
Here is your silence.
Take it.
But take it all...Don't cut in line.
Let your silence begin at the beginning of crime. But we,
Tonight we will keep right on singing...For our dead.

EMMANUEL ORTIZ, 11 Sep 2002.

Here's a link to an mp3 rendering of this poem!

I Wanted to Write an Anti-war Poem -- Emmanuel Ortiz Part 1

2008-01-09T12:21:00.000-08:00

Emmanuel Ortiz is a Chicano (native born Mexican), a Puerto Rican, an Irish American.. but foremost an activist and a spoken-word poet. He works with the Minnesota Alliance for the indigenous Zapatistas. I've been reading his poems lately and I'm putting up two of his poems here, sans comments. They are to be read in entirety and given subsequent introspection.

I Wanted to Write an Anti-war Poem, But...

Ever since the war started,
One year ago today,
I have wanted to write an anti-war poem.
For each of the last 365 days
I have been trying to write
To voice my opinion
In opposition to this war.

But nothing has come out.

After five days of watching
And not watching
Bombs fall on Iraq
I thought I had it
When some white boy
During a soccer game
Told me to "go back to Baghdad"
And as my fists found his temples
In retaliation for the bombs that were obliterating theirs
I remember thinking to myself
Amidst the slow-motion home-movie haze
"This will make a great poem"
A poem about
How he mistook
Mesoamerica for Mesopotamia
Borinken for Babylon.
And why Baghdad
Instead of Brasilia, Beijing, Beirut, Bogotá, Bombay,
Even Bi-racialville U.S.A.

I swear I was gonna write a poem about that white boy
About how his words were acts of errorism
Misguided missiles
Missing their marks
Leaving brown bodies burning
Turning soccer fields into battlefields
Turning mosques and marketplaces into burial grounds
I wanted to write that poem
Testimony to our bodies
How they have always been battlefields
And burial grounds.

I wanted to tell that white boy off
In a poem
That said
Go back to Nazi Germany
Go back to Imperialist Britain
Go back to Hollywood
Go back to the Oval Office
Go back across the Mason-Dixie line
Go back to Oklahoma City
Go back to Jasper, Texas
Go back to the suburbs
Go back into every red-white and blue-blooded American home
Crawl back inside the weapon of mass distraction
That is the centerpiece of your living room
Back into the studios of CNN
You can go anywhere you want to, Mr. All-American White Boy
As long as you go
Back
Because where else do you go
When you've reached the top of the world?

Damn, I wanted to write that poem.

But I never did.

Instead
I traveled
Crisscrossing the country
Wrote and read other poems.
I think I wrote a poem for my brother
Who has never seen the island that gave birth to our grandmother
Wrote one for a lover
Who I lost to another
But no poems against war.
I played soccer
And video games
Watched the Super Bowl
Skipped the halftime show
But wrote no poems against the war

But I swear to you
I wanted to
Been meaning to
Write that anti-war poem
Even had deadlines
But then Haiti made headlines
And that war hit close to my ancestral home again
My heart was a hurricane
And I felt a need to start over again
Searching for the right words to say
As a grandchild of Borinken
To the people of neighboring Ayiti
To the heirs of Caonabo and Anacaona
Children of Toussaint L'Overture.

Wanted to write that poem
But there were rallies and meetings to attend
And I needed a new job
One where I wasn't plagued by white liberals
Asking where I come from
And trying to speak Spanish

Wanted to write my anti-war poem
Standing on firm ground
But I'm looking for a place to live
Can't tell you where I will call 'home' in a month
Been questioning where I call home even now

I wanted to write a poem
That meant something
That made a difference
That could stop bullets
Topple empires
A poem that would rebuild marketplaces
Breathe life back into burnt brown bodies
A poem that could cross rivers
With two names
Rio Grande y Bravo
Tigris and Dijla
Euphrates and Furat,
Traversing Mesoamerica, Mesopotamia

I swear
If these wars ever end
The one that rages always over there somewhere
And the one right here in my heart
If these wars ever end
If my brother ever makes it to Puerto Rico
If my lost lover ever comes back to me
If I ever find home
Work with meaning If the war that just wants peace and love
If that war over there
This war right here
If these wars
Ever end
If I can ever find a moment's quiet
Peace of mind
Then maybe
Just maybe
I'll write that poem.

Age of Tranquil Mistrust -- Wodehouse Nugget 2

2008-01-08T16:32:00.000-08:00

From Something Fresh (aka, Something New [American edition]) --

Among the compensations of advancing age is a wholesome pessimism, which, though it takes the fine edge off of whatever triumphs may come to us, has the admirable effect of preventing Fate from working off on us any of those gold bricks, coins with strings attached, and unhatched chickens, at which ardent youth snatches with such enthusiasm, to its subsequent disappointment. As we emerge from the twenties we grow into a habit of mind that looks askance at Fate bearing gifts. We miss, perhaps, the occasional prize, but we also avoid leaping light-heartedly into traps.

It must be your fault -- Wodehouse Nugget 1

2008-01-08T16:02:00.000-08:00

As a huge fan of P.G.Wodehouse's writing, I figured might as well start a series of quoting interesting Wodehouse-ian nuggets. This one is from Sam the Sudden.

It is a curious fact, and one frequently noted by philosophers, that every woman in this world cherishes within herself a deep-rooted belief, from which nothing can shake her, that the particular man to whom she has plighted her love is to be held personally blameworthy for practically all of the untoward happenings of life. The vapid and unreflective would call these things accidents, but she knows better. If she arrives at a station at five minutes past nine to catch a train that has already left at nine minutes past five, she knows that it is her Henry who is responsible, just as he was responsible the day before for a shower of rain coming on when she was wearing her new hat.

Omar Khayyam, the Rubaiyat and other stories

2008-01-08T14:48:00.000-08:00

His name means tent maker. His most renowned book as a mathematician is "Treatise on Demonstration of the Problems of Algebra". He is supposed to have calculated the length of a year as 365.24219858156 days. He was made famous by Edward Fitzgerald in 1859 in a different field.

That was Omar Khayyam, the Persian mathematician, poet, astronomer, and philosopher, of course. Outside of Iran, thanks to Edward Fitzgerald, he's mostly famous for his Rubaiyat. Rubaiyat derives from Rubaiyaas, which derives from the Arabic word for the number 4, meaning a verse with four lines, or a quatrain. The Rubaiyat is a collection of Khayyam's quatrains -- he wrote 1000s of them. One of the more famous ones (Edward Fitzgerald's translation) --

The Moving Finger writes: and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.

Even though Winston Churchill and Martin Luther King, Jr. have quoted the above quatrain in their speeches (MLK, in his speech Why I oppose the war in Vietnam says, "It is time for all people of conscience to call upon America to come back home. Come home America. Omar Khayyám is right 'The moving finger writes and having writ, moves on.'"), probably Omar Khayyam's biggest contributions are in the fields of mathematics and astronomy. He wrote the Treatise on Demonstration of Problems of Algebra. Importantly he generalized the algorithm for solving cubic equations (and some higher power equations). In his book, Omar Khayyam has this to say --

From the Indians one has methods for obtaining square and cube roots, methods which are based on knowledge of individual cases, namely the knowledge of the squares of the nine digits 1², 2², 3² (etc.) and their respective products, i.e. 2 × 3 etc. We have written a treatise on the proof of the validity of those methods and that they satisfy the conditions. In addition we have increased their types, namely in the form of the determination of the fourth, fifth, sixth roots up to any desired degree. No one preceded us in this and those proofs are purely arithmetic, founded on the arithmetic of The Elements (of Euclid).

On the lighter side, an extremely hilarious and interesting take on the theatrical managers of 1920s in Broadway by Wodehouse (from Little Warrior urf Jill the Reckless).

Mr.Goble is a theatrical Manager on Broadway and is putting on a musical comedy written and financed by Mr. Pilkington from England. Wally is an established writer and composer. Mr.Goble has just come to the sets during practice and has cut out a line about a watermelon from the hero's script.

The gentleman who was playing the part of Lord Finchley, an English character actor who specialized in London "nuts," raised his eyebrows, annoyed. Like Mr Pilkington, he had never before come into contact with Mr Goble as stage-director, and, accustomed to the suaver methods of his native land, he was finding the experience trying. He had not yet recovered from the agony of having that water-melon line cut out of his part. It was the only good line, he considered, that he had. Any line that is cut out of an actor's part is always the only good line he has.

"The speech about Omar Khayyam?" he enquired with suppressed irritation.

"I thought that was the way you said it. All wrong! It's Omar of Khayyam."

"I think you will find that Omar Khayyam is the--ah--generally accepted version of the poet's name," said the portrayer of Lord Finchley, adding beneath his breath. "You silly ass!"

"You say Omar of Khayyam," bellowed Mr Goble. "Who's running this show, anyway?"

"Just as you please."

Mr Goble turned to Wally.

"These actors . . ." he began, when Mr Pilkington appeared again at his elbow.

"Mr Goble! Mr Goble!"

"What is it now?"

"Omar Khayyam was a Persian poet. His name was Khayyam."

"That wasn't the way I heard it," said Mr Goble doggedly. "Did you?" he enquired of Wally. "I thought he was born at Khayyam."

"You're probably quite right," said Wally, "but, if so, everybody else has been wrong for a good many years. It's usually supposed that the gentleman's name was Omar Khayyam. Khayyam, Omar J. Born 1050 A.D., educated privately and at Bagdad University. Represented Persia in the Olympic Games of 1072, winning the sitting high-jump and the egg-and-spoon race. The Khayyams were quite a well-known family in Bagdad, and there was a lot of talk when Omar, who was Mrs Khayyam's pet son, took to drink and started writing poetry. They had had it all fixed for him to go into his father's date business."

Mr Goble was impressed. He had a respect for Wally's opinion, for Wally had written "Follow the Girl" and look what a knock-out that had been. He stopped the rehearsal again.

"Go back to that Khayyam speech!" he said, interrupting Lord Finchley in mid-sentence.

The actor whispered a hearty English oath beneath his breath. He had been up late last night, and, in spite of the fair weather, he was feeling a trifle on edge.

"'In the words of Omar of Khayyam' . . ."

Mr Goble clapped his hands.

"Cut that 'of,'" he said. "The show's too long, anyway."

And, having handled a delicate matter in masterly fashion, he leaned back in his chair and chewed the end off another cigar.

Kubla Khan

2008-01-08T11:39:00.000-08:00

Kubla Khan is one of my favorite poems. It is the sheer genius of a subconscious mind pushed to an elevated state by natural drugs. Kubla Khan is a magic that is never dissected, one is always content in the ecstasy of the flow of words, the sublime prosody. An extremely detailed analysis of this poem is available in John Spencer Hill's Coleridge Companion available online at an archived version of a UOttawa webpage. For some reason the University of Ottawa does not host this page anymore.

If you dont want to read the entire analysis, some interesting extracts follow:

... Kubla Khan is a fascinating and exasperating poem. Almost everyone has read it, almost everyone has been charmed by its magic, almost everyone thinks he knows what it is about -- and almost everyone, it seems, has felt impelled to write about it. It must surely be true that no poem of comparable length in English or any other language has been the subject of so much critical commentary. Its fifty-four lines have spawned thousands of pages of discussion and analysis. Kubla Khan is the sole or a major subject in five book-length studies; close to 150 articles and book-chapters (doubtless I have missed some others) have been devoted exclusively to it; and brief notes and incidental comments on it are without number. Despite this deluge, however, there is no critical unanimity and very little agreement on a number of important issues connected with the poem: its date of composition, its "meaning", its sources in Coleridge's reading and observation of nature, its structural integrity (i.e. fragment versus complete poem), and its relationship to the Preface by which Coleridge introduced it on its first publication in 1816...

... In a moment of rash optimism a notable scholar once began an essay by declaring that "We now know almost everything about Coleridge's Kubla Khan except what the poem is about". The truth of the matter, however, is that we know almost nothing conclusive about Kubla Khan, including what it is about.This flower plucked in Paradise (or on Parnassus) and handed down to us by Coleridge is, indeed, a miracle of rare device; but like all miracles it is largely elusive...

... By far the most intriguing question about this most intriguing of poems is "What does it mean?" -- if, indeed, it has or was ever intended to have any particular meaning. For the overwhelming majority of Coleridge's contemporaries, Kubla Khan seemed (as Lamb foresaw) to be no better than nonsense, and they dismissed it contemptuously. "The poem itself is below criticism", declared the anonymous reviewer in the Monthly Review (Jan 1817); and Thomas Moore, writing in the EdinburghReview (Sep 1816), tartly asserted that "the thing now before us, is utterly destitute of value" and he defied "any man to point out a passage of poetical merit" in it...

... While derisive asperity of this sort is the common fare of most of the early reviews, there are, nevertheless, contemporary readers whose response is both sympathetic and positive -- even though they value the poem for its rich and bewitching suggestiveness rather than for any discernible "meaning" that it might possess. Charles Lamb, for example, speaks fondly of hearing Coleridge recite Kubla Khan "so enchantingly that it irradiates & brings heaven & Elysian bowers into my parlour while he sings or says it"; and Leigh Hunt turns hopefully to analogies in music and painting in an effort to describe the poem's haunting but indefinable effect: "Kubla Khan is a voice and a vision, an everlasting tune in our mouths, a dream fit for Cambuscan and all his poets, a dance of pictures such as Giotto or Cimabue, revived and re-inspired, would have made for a Storie of Old Tartarie, a piece of the invisible world made visible by a sun at midnight and sliding before our eyes."...

... Throughout the nineteenth century and during the first quarter of the twentieth century Kubla Khan was considered, almost universally, to be a poem in which sound overwhelms sense. With a few exceptions (such as Lamb and Leigh Hunt), Romantic critics -- accustomed to poetry of statement and antipathetic to any notion of ars gratia artis -- summarily dismissed Kubla Khan as a meaningless farrago of sonorous phrases beneath the notice of serious criticism. It only demonstrated, according to William Hazlitt, that "Mr Coleridge can write better nonsense verses than any man in England" -- and then he added, proleptically, "It is not a poem, but a musical composition"...

... For Victorian and Early Modern readers, on the other hand, Kubla Khan was a poem not below but beyond the reach of criticism, and they adopted (without the irony) Hazlitt's perception that it must properly be appreciated as verbalised music. "When it has been said", wrote Swinburne of Kubla Khan, "that such melodies were never heard, such dreams never dreamed, such speech never spoken, the chief thing remains unsaid, and unspeakable. There is a charm upon [this poem] which can only be felt in silent submission of wonder". Even John Livingston Lowes -- culpable, if ever anyone has been, of murdering to dissect -- insisted on the elusive magic of Coleridge's dream vision: "For Kubla Khan is as near enchantment, I suppose, as we are like to come in this dull world." While one may track or attempt to track individual images to their sources, Kubla Khan as a whole remains utterly inexplicable -- a "dissolving phantasmagoria" of highly charged images whose streaming pageant is, in the final analysis, "as aimless as it is magnificent". The earth has bubbles as the water has, and this is of them...

... Generally speaking, however, the most popular view by far is that Kubla Khan is concerned with the poetic process itself. "What is Kubla Khan about? This is, or ought to be, an established fact of criticism: Kubla Khan is a poem about poetry"...

... The dream of Xanadu itself is an inspired vision... the artist's purpose is to capture such visions in words, but in attempting to do so he encounters two serious difficulties: first, language is an inadequate medium that permits only an approximation of the visions it is used to record, and, second, the visions themselves, by the time the poet comes to set them down, have faded into the light of common day and must be reconstructed from memory. Between the conception and the execution falls the shadow.... the vision of Kubla's Xanadu is replaced by that of a damsel singing of Mount Abora -- an experience more auditory than visual and therefore less susceptible of description by mere words...

With that, will hide behind the opium induced genius of Coleridge.

Kubla Khan

(or, a Vision in a Dream, a Fragment)

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round:
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon lover!
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced:
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail:
And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:
And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!

The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves;
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure dome with caves of ice!

A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight 'twould win me,
That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.

-- Samuel Taylor Coleridge

published in 1816, with the following Author's Preface:

"In the summer of the year 1797, the author, then in ill health, had retired to a lonely farmhouse between Porlock and Linton, on the Exmoor confines of Somerset and Devonshire. In consequence of a slight indisposition, an anodyne [opium, most likely] had been prescribed, from the effects of which he fell asleep in his chair at the moment that he was reading the following sentence, or words of the same substance, in Purcha's Pilgrimage: 'Here the Khan Kubla commanded a palace to be built, and a stately garden thereunto. And thus ten miles of fertile ground were inclosed with a wall.' The author continued for about three hours in a profound sleep, at least of the external sense, during which time he has the most vivid confidence that he could not have composed less than from two to three hundred lines; if that indeed can be called composition in which all the images rose up before him as things with a parallel production of the correspondent expressions, without any sensation or consciousness of effort. On awakening he appeared to himself to have a distinct recollection of the whole, and taking his pen, ink, and paper, instantly and eagerly wrote down the lines that are here preserved. At this moment he was unfortunately called out by a person on business from Porlock and detained by him above an hour, and on his return to his room found, to his no small surprise and mortification, that though he still retained some vague and dim recollection of the general purpot of the vision, yet, with the exception of some eight or ten scattered lines and images, all the rest had passed away like the images on the surface of a stream into which a stone has been cast, but, alas! without the after restoration of the latter!"

Your half is bigger than mine...... NOT! -- On fair division

2007-12-23T18:20:00.000-08:00

The problem of fair division can be traced back a full 3000 years in history. Stated in simple terms, the problem is:

How do you divide a cake between n people such that each person gets a fair share of the cake? An additional clause is that if someone thinks they got lesser than someone else, then it should be such that, that person alone is to bear the blame.

Lets first consider the case of n=2. If there are two people involved, say Alice and Bob, the solution is simple -- "Alice cuts, Bob chooses". So the best solution for Alice in this scenario is to cut such that she feels both shares are equal halves, so that no matter which piece Bob chooses, she's happy with the other one. Best solution for Bob is that he chooses the piece he thinks is bigger. Now, if Alice didnt cut it into equal halves, and Bob chooses the bigger one, she has only herself to blame for being left with the smaller piece.

If you now extend this to n=3, the problem becomes extemely complicated. You can imagine how the above solution can be extended. Say Tom, Dick, and Harry are trying to divide the cake equally between themselves. You can imagine a solution where Tom cuts the cake into what he thinks are 1/3rd and 2/3rds. Then Dick cuts the 2/3rd piece into two halves. Harry picks one of the three pieces. Tom picks next, and the left over piece goes to Dick.

Some elementary analysis will reveal that this is fair to Tom and Harry, and not fair to Dick. Now, clearly, Harry is satisfied. There are three pieces and he picks the biggest of the three. Tom comes next. If Harry picked one of the pieces that Dick cut, then Tom can take the piece that he cut (as 1/3rd) and be satisfied. If Harry picks the 1/3rd piece that Tom cut, then Tom can take whichever of the other two he thinks is bigger -- at this stage it is a two-person problem betwen Tom and Dick, since he thinks the 2/3rd really was a 2/3rds.

The story for Dick though is very different. If Dick initially thought Tom's cut was fair, then he has no issues, and the solution works for all. However, if Dick thinks Tom's cut was unfair and the 2/3rd was smaller than actual 2/3rd, then no matter what, he will end up with an unfair deal.

The way to fix the solution is to not let Dick think Tom's cut was unfair. This is achieved by allowing Dick to "trim" Tom's 1/3rd version and adding that into the 2/3rd share before making the second cut. Now if Harry thought Tom's cut was fair, then he will pick from Dick's cut since he thinks that is bigger. Tom will also pick from Dick's cut. And Dick can take the "trimmed" 1/3rd since he thought that was a fair 1/3rd. The deal with this solution is it will take 3 cuts (one by Tom, one "trim" by Dick, and another by Dick). If you generalize this to the n player version, then this algorithm will take n*(n-1)/2 cuts.

This problem has been addressed by a lot of mathematicians in history. The first (erroneous) solution for the 3 person problem was provided by Robertson and Webb. The corrected n*(n-1)/2 cuts solution was provided in 1944 by Hugo Steinhaus. Since then advanced concepts in mathematics have chosen this problem to purvey their theories. We'll see a non-envy version of this problem later in this post. Fair division is a very practical problem in the real world. Be it geek-ish like bandwidth sharing, or esoteric like dividing Jerusalem and West Bank. As a twist, the problem gets very intricate and interesting when different parties believe different parts of the cake are better than other parts.

We extend the original problem to fair division without envy. In the earlier case, everyone got a fair deal, but we potentially still had people imagining that others got more than them. In fact, that was the case in all solutions except the 2 person scenario. The two person "I cut, you choose" scenario is guaranteed to be envy-free.

Lets define a cake-division as envy-free if no one thinks that someone else got a larger piece than they did. An envy-free division is always guaranteed to be fair. However a fair division need not be envy-free at all.

Lets look at a solution for the 3-person case envy-free fair division -- same drill: Tom, Dick, and Harry want to divide a cake fairly between them in an envy-free fashion -

First, Tom divides the cake into three parts which he thinks are equal 1/3rds.
Next, (a) if Dick thinks the two largest pieces are equal, he does nothing, otherwise (b) Dick trims one piece to achieve two equal largest pieces.
Now, Harry, Dick, and Tom in that order pick. If Dick trimmed a piece earlier, then he has to pick the trimmed piece unless Harry has already picked it.

At this stage, you have an envy-free fair division of three pieces. What is leftover is the problem of dividing the "trimming".

Now, if Dick didnt trim, then there is nothing to do. If he did trim, then either Dick or Harry took the trimmed piece. We'll assume Dick took the trimmed piece. (Substitute Harry for Dick in the rest of the solution if Harry took the trimmed piece.) Dick now divides the "trimming" into three equal parts.
Harry, Tom, and Dick in that order now pick. Harry picks first, so he's not envious at all. Tom picks next, but he's absolutely not envious since this trimming is already a bonus for him -- he thought his first three way cut was already equal 1/3rds. Dick picks the last one, but he isnt envious either since he divided the "trimmings" 3-ways.

When you extend this to a n-person scenario, the problem becomes extremely complicated. Found a wikipedia link on Fair Division. Wikipedia talks about many versions of the problem and how after a century of solutions Steven Brams and Alan Taylor finally solved it in 1995. That was the solution for the general n-person envy-free fair division. That came 30 years after the first 3-person envy-free fair division solution. The first I came across this problem was when I heard Alan Taylor give a rather animated talk on this at Yale back in 1998.

A Psalm of Life

2007-12-22T14:47:00.000-08:00

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, was easily one of the most popular and prolific American poets of the 19th century. As always the Wikipedia has a detailed page on the life and times of Longfellow.

The Encyclopaedia Britannica has this to say of Longfellow --

During his lifetime Longfellow was loved and admired both at home and abroad. In 1884 he was honoured by the placing of a memorial bust in Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey in London, the first American to be so recognized. Sweetness, gentleness, simplicity, and a romantic vision shaded by melancholy are the characteristic features of Longfellow's poetry. He possessed great metrical skill, but he failed to capture the American spirit like his great contemporary Walt Whitman, and his work generally lacks emotional depth and imaginative power. Some years after Longfellow's death a violent reaction set in against his verse as critics dismissed his conventional high-minded sentiments and the gentle strain of Romanticism that he had made so popular. This harsh critical assessment, which tried to reduce him to the status of a mere hearthside rhymer, was perhaps as unbalanced as the adulation he had received during his lifetime. Some of Longfellow's sonnets and other lyrics are still among the finest in American poetry, and Hiawatha, "The Wreck of the Hesperus," Evangeline, and "Paul Revere's Ride" have become inseparable parts of the American heritage. Longfellow's immense popularity helped raise the status of poetry in his country, and he played an important part in bringing European cultural traditions to American audiences.

Today's poem titled A Psalm of Life was interestingly also titled (by Longfellow himself) A Psalm of Death, before Longfellow decidedly changed the title to meet the optimistic sentiment he gushes forth in the poem.

A Psalm of Life

What the heart of the young man said to the psalmist

Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream! --
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.

Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each to-morrow
Find us farther than to-day.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.

In the world's broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
Be a hero in the strife!

Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant!
Let the dead Past bury its dead!
Act, -- act in the living Present!
Heart within, and God o'erhead!

Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time;

Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o'er life's solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.

-- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

In one of the early stanzas Longfellow urges the reader to "Be not like dumb driven cattle, Be a hero in the strife". I think, and history stands in evidence and judgement, that any mass or gathering of people collectively does not think. Only individuals think. Masses have strength and can execute extraordinary tasks. But thinking stays the prerogative of the individual. Situation not withstanding. One can conceive extreme examples in Hitler or Advani as the individual and the Gestapo or Kar-Sevaks and other following as the masses; to a handful of researchers as the individual, and a large company as the mass, which can execute and build real products like computers, space ships, etc. I think Longfellow understood this and therefore exhorts his fellowmen to be thinking individuals, to be heroes in strife and not be like dumb driven cattle.

Of course, some memorable phrases like Footprints on the sands of Time and entire stanzas on Trust no future, Dead past bury its dead, Heart for any strife, Learn to labor and to wait -- the simple elegance with which Longfellow puts forth fairly well thought out concepts with astonishing ease, make this a much loved poem.

On First Looking into Chapman's Homer

2007-12-21T13:49:00.000-08:00

John Keats was exemplar of the turn of the 18th century romantic poets who had far reaching influence on poets to come long after his short 25 year lifespan. The ever-reliable Wikipedia has a well documented page on Keats. We'll, here, instead focus on today's poem, On First Looking into Chapman's Homer.

Keats was so moved by the power and aliveness of Chapman's (George Chapman, 1559 - 1634) translation of Homer that he wrote this sonnet--after spending all night reading Homer with a friend. The poem expresses the intensity of Keats' experience; it also reveals how passionately he cared about poetry. To communicate how profoundly the revelation of Homer's genius affected him, Keats uses imagery of exploration and discovery. In a sense, the reading experience itself becomes a Homeric voyage, both for the poet and the reader.

First, the poem itself, before we start analyzing the sonnet:

On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer

Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round many western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
That deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne;
Yet never did I breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold.
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez, when with eagle eyes
He star'd at the Pacific - and all his men
Look'd at each other with a wild surmise -
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

-- John Keats

As any Petrarchan sonnet, "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer" falls into two parts--an octet (eight lines) and a sestet (six lines). The octet describes Keats' reading experience before reading Chapman's translation and the sestet contrasts his experience of reading it. Keats builds up the scenario in the octet, with phrases like "Much have I travell'd" -- indicating the vastness of his reading, before talking about the triumphant entry Chapman's Homer makes in his literary universe in the sestet. Quite aptly, Keats chooses the metaphors of discovery in vast spaces, like a planet in the universe, or discovering the vast Pacific.

One, much-oft criticized point in the sonnet is that in reality it was Balboa the sailor who discovered the Pacific and not Cortez. An interesting theory proposed to reason this is that just as it was Homer who described the voyages of Odysseus and it was Chapman whose subsequent translation was what had caught Keats' heart and soul; the metaphor links to Cortez who repeated Balboa's original feat of viewing and describing the vastness of the Pacific.

I'll just end with what an anonymous writer has to say of Keats --

... more than any other writer before or since Shakespeare, he (Keats) had the ability to distil in its purest form that quality called 'poetry' in his verse. He doesn't use ornate or flowery language; his rhymes and rhythms are often less than perfect; his themes can be ordinary. And yet his words are just magical - pure music.

Ithaka

2007-12-19T14:43:00.000-08:00

"The means are everything, the end matters not, ever." My grandfather never tired of telling me that when we were growing up. I would come back from school and tell him all that we learnt that day. He would nod indulgently, and unfailingly ask, "So you learnt all that today, what did you understand?". In keeping with what he preached, Constantine Cavafy's Ithaka was one of his favorite poems.

Cavafy's Ithaka is exactly just that. Ithaka is your goal, and the road to Ithaka is the fulfillment of that goal. Once you reach Ithaka, Ithaka has nothing left to give you any more.

Ithaka

As you set out for Ithaka
hope the journey is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
Laistrygonians and Cyclops,
angry Poseidon - don't be afraid of them:
you'll never find things like that on your way
as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,
as long as a rare excitement
stirs your spirit and your body.
Laistrygonians and Cyclops,
wild Poseidon - you won't encounter them
unless you bring them along inside your soul,
unless your soul sets them up in front of you.

Hope the voyage is a long one.
may there be many a summer morning when,
with what pleasure, what joy,
you come into harbours seen for the first time;
may you stop at Phoenician trading stations
to buy fine things,
mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
sensual perfume of every kind -
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
and may you visit many Egyptian cities
to gather stores of knowledge from their scholars.

Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you are destined for.
But do not hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so you are old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you have gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.

Ithaka gave you the marvellous journey.
without her you would not have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.

And if you find her poor, Ithaka won't have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
you will have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.

-- Constantine Cavafy

One Rose by Crazy Joe on his Cactus throne -- On running the Cactus Rose 100M race

2007-11-13T16:03:00.000-08:00

It was a weekend fraught with challenges. It was a weekend lit up in camaraderie and bon homie. It was a weekend when we didnt sleep. It was a weekend when emotions ran amok. It was a weekend of running up hills and through thorny Sotol bushes. It was a weekend when a crew of one score and a few more picnicked in the cold of a Central Texas November. It was a weekend when the campfire crackled, the wine sparkled, the guitar strummed, even as rumps were on fire and folks walked as though they had been horse-riding for 3 days. It was the weekend we ran the Cactus Rose 100miler, in Bandera, Texas. (Believe it or not, that previous link to Bandera on Wikipedia, lists Joe Prusaitis as race director for the annual Bandera 100K -- one of the toughest Ultramarathons!)

This is supposed to be a tough race. I'll just quote Joe from his website --

A nasty rugged self-supported trail run: No Whiners, Wimps, or Wusses We give Bonus Points for Blood, Cuts, Scrapes, & Puke. I have made an attempt to create an event that required the least amount of volunteers as possible. A sort of Self-Serve setup of aid stations and support systems. Drop bags, this is what this one is all about... your skill in providing for yourself, in your own drop bags at each station. You bring it, you clean it up, you take it home. Its all yours. But on Sunday at 5pm, I'll tear down the stations and close the race, so if you leave anything behind, its gone.

This race was a breeze. Simply because of our crew. They worked hard for over 2 weeks, figured out the logistics of pacing and feeding the runners, feeding themselves and the pacers -- all we had to do was provide occasional inputs, and prepare our drop bags. The crew was 25 strong. They did everything. We had a tent at one point in the race that we were to go by 8 times (it was sort of the center of 25-mile loop shaped like an 8). We had a veritable restaurant set up over there. Let me just say that the menu included -- dal-chaval, puliyogare, bisibelebath, pulav, dahi, cheese-sandwich, date-rolls, watermelons, orange juice among a few other items; you can imagine the rest.

The four runners, Ganesh, Gaurav, Santhosh and myself, along with Santhosh's parents and Roopa went over on Friday afternoon. We met Joe, picked up our packets, listened to the briefing and the confusion at the Crossroads/Equestrian aidstation (there were four ways to enter and four ways to exit, and depending on the loop and the direction you were entering, you had to pick the correct way to exit) and packed our drop bags. Then we drove around and dropped off all our bags. Pitched the tent at Equestrian that was to be used by the crew the following day. We also met a lot of other runners. A good number of them were Hill Country Trail Runners and we chatted around a bit. By the time we got back to our ranch, we were ready to drop off. Hogged on the food prepared by Santhosh's mom and promptly did drop off.

The next day started in some confusion with Ganesh first having gone missing, and then subsequently discovered being down. Sorting out all confusions and ablutions, we got to the race line couple of minutes late. Picked up a chip tied to an ankle strap and there werent too many folks milling around. Joe was chatting with us, and I asked him when was the race starting. Joe promptly pointed to the clock (it was at 6 minutes) and said everyone else started a little while ago, and we probably should get going ourselves. In retrospect, the late start helped us go a little slow on the first loop. Everyone else had sped off.

The three of us, Gaurav, Santhosh and myself, ran together. Start to finish. Another reason for why it was not too hard mentally. We were trying really hard to go slow. Couple of days ago, I had talked to the legendary Ann Trason, and asked her for advice, and she said, the first 25 miles go as slow as you can ever go, and then further slow down. We tried. We failed. Mile 25 came around in 6hr:15min. That was at 25hr speed! Joe laughed at us. Then he said, we'll probably naturally slow down, since the sun was starting to beat hard by then.

The second loop had its direction reversed. The sun was scorching by now. We had water refill and drop bags every 5miles. Besides that I was carrying two handhelds. Between miles 30 and 35 (the toughest section of the course, with Sky Island Hill and the Three Sisters, damn loose rocks and Sotol fields), a section that we took nearly 2 hours to negotiate, I ran out of water (2 bottles) in an hour and a half, and was desperately thirsty when I got into Equestrian. Life moved at a fairly quick clip from 35 to 45 on the Nachos loop, and soon we were back at the Lodge, clocking mile 50. The second loop had taken 7hr:15min. The clock was at 13hr:30min.

The third loop was fairly long. The first 5 miles we ran a bit and got to the Equestrian. We were in good enough shape and so we refused pacers at mile 55, and decided we'll do the Nachos loop and be back at mile 65 and pick up pacers. At mile 60 at Nachos, both Gaurav and Santhosh were having trouble. Santhosh had achilles issues and Gaurav's right ankle was hurting. We walked a good way back through Ice Cream Hill and got into Equestrian and picked up Naresh and Arun, our pacers until mile 75. Those 10miles went slow, in the night. I was feeling quite good and was trying to power the hills. Soon a gorgeous yellow crescent moon rose above the Bandera hills (on Cairns Climb) promptly bringing into mind Keats' description of Chapman's Homer.

On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer

Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round many western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
That deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne;
Yet never did I breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold.
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez, when with eagle eyes
He star'd at the Pacific - and all his men
Look'd at each other with a wild surmise -
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

-- John Keats

Silent, upon a peak in Bandera. It really was a special moon, although it might have been made dearer by 70miles of dust on our bodies and brain. Unfortunately no one took a picture of that moon. Although, Gaurav did stop on top of Cairns Climb and entertained Melissa with his thoughts on the moon (Melissa was returning on her 4th loop -- about 3miles and an aidstation break ahead of us, she eventually finished 2nd among the girls). We had taken a good 10hours plus to run loop 3. The clock screamed 23hr:37min. We were still a good 2 and 1/2 hour ahead of the 75mile cutoff, so that was not an issue.

Here, I did my goof-up for the race. Used the restroom, and also used wet wipes. Apparently (and I honestly had no idea), wet wipes are wet because they are soaked in some form of alcohol! My freshly chafed derrière was like dry oil-soaked twigs to a sacrificial fire. Promptly, even before I could finish swearing the long phrases that involuntarily came out of my mouth (cant repeat them here on a family forum), the rump was ablaze. I got back to the Lodge drop bags area, and found that the other two boys were handling different problems of their own. They were both fast asleep. I think they were hurting too. Joyce, the ever-minstering-angel, came and gave them black coffee and some form of Ibuprofen. That woke them up, and we trudged out of the aid station into the night, beginning the last loop.

Here, we swapped Arun for Bharath, and the never-tiring Naresh continued to pace us. These next 10miles seemed like they would never end. With a new and literal meaning to ass-on-fire, I was barely hobbling along. My legs and muscles were fine, but swear 'pon-my-ass, I would be damned if I could run. We met Joe at Boyles, and I told him we were not gonna make it in 25hours. He laughed and said keep the spirits up and I'll meet yall at the finish. We trudged along, even as Naresh went back and forth between us. The sun had risen and it was a beautiful foggy day. We couldnt see the sun, but the effect of the light was sufficient to wake us all up. We got into Equestrian and mile 85 and I promptly caught Janice.

Janice and Gabe had adopted the Equestrian station and were there helping everyone. I asked Janice if she had the Desitin still, and she brought it out. Applied it liberally, changed shorts, and had some food, and within 5minutes, the fire had been doused. I could actually walk. This Desitin is a cream used on diaper-rashes for babies. Pretty potent stuff, wonder how the babies feel.

The next 15miles went pretty easy. We had new pacers. Murali and Mihir from 85 to 90; Salil, Chirag and Priyavadan from 90 to 95; Salil, Priyavadan, Chirag, Vijay, and Santhosh's dad from 95 to 100; and of course the never-tiring Naresh through all that. Naresh ran 35 miles with us, through the deathly miles of the night and on the morning after. Sang a goodish bit with Salil and made my way slowly back to the Lodge. Got almost to the finish line, waited a bit for the other boys to get there, we had walked the mat together for 100miles, so we had to finish together. Then we ran in together and saw all our crew. Ganesh joined us and ran in. The bloo team was done. The clock screamed 34hr:03min. We had managed another over 10hours loop.

Finally, our loop breakdown looked like this --

Loop1-- mile25 06hr:15min
Loop2-- mile50 13hr:30min
Loop3-- mile75 23hr:37min
Loop4-- mile100 34hr:03min

Ganesh had a rather heroic story of his own. He had run alone the first 55 miles, and had developed bad blisters. Spent the next 25miles bursting them and running, even as they worsened. He had missed the mile75 cutoff, and had stopped at mile80. It was an incredible effort in face of those blisters. He couldnt walk for many days after that. Both Gaurav and Santhosh were hobbling too, but didnt have any major injuries. I was feeling fine, a little drained and sleepy, but no injuries, no limps. All through the run I was waiting for those low points everyone had talked about, and they never came.

I know this race went easy and well for me for just one reason. Our crew and the food they provided -- satiating our nutrition needs both physical and mental. After the first 55miles, we continuously fed off the energy of our crew, and the race was a breeze. I've said this before, but I'll repeat myself. Blessed are we to be running these hills and terrain and these distances, but to be cheered and crewed by multitudes of Asha crowd is very heaven. This race has to be dedicated to the best crew in the world!

Photo links:

We picked up our buckles, chatted around with other finishers. It had been a tough race. 50 runners started and 20 finished. Full results can be found here.

All through the race, we kept bumping into other runners -- the best part of having a loop race with directions reversed every alternate loop. For the better part of three loops we were close to Diana. There were times when we moved with her. Then there were times when we reached aid stations right after she did. Then it became times when we reached aid stations just as she was leaving. By end of loop 3 we saw her half a mile into her 4th loop, while we still had half a mile to get to the Lodge. Then we never saw her again until the finish. Apart from Diana, we regularly bumped into all the usual suspects, Henry, Robert, Allen, Melissa, and Roger and Fagan while they were still in the race. Joe had a special award for the four of us for doing what he's called the Indian Slam!

BigHorn 50M (I did the Devil's Backbone 50M) in June
Pikes Peak Double (Ascent on Saturday; Marathon on Sunday) in August
Grand Canyon Rim-to-Rim-to-Rim (about 47miles) in September
Cactus Rose 100M in November

Oh, I have to explain the title of this post. Following Joe's label of the Indian Slam, I had adapted the story of the rings poem from Lord of the Rings, to be used as our Team Poem. Without any ado, here it is:

Three races for the running four under their belts,
Settled and the results set in their halls of stone,
Not for wimps and whiners doomed to die,
One Rose by crazy Joe on his Cactus throne
In the Land of Bandera where the Shadows lie.
One race to rule them all, One race to find them,
One race to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
In the Land of Bandera where the Shadows lie.

We all picked up our awards, as Joe talked about Asha, and some others talked about the team spirit and the sheer number of the turnout. As some runner phrased it, we had brought our own village at the Equestrian. It was a weekend worthy of the trail-running community's and Asha camaraderie and team-spirit.

The World was Young, the Mountains Green -- or Why the Dwarves Chose to Live in Darksome Holes

2007-11-13T15:39:00.000-08:00

These days, the writing of heroic fantasy has become a mass-production industry; scarcely a week goes by without an author inventing a brave new world and subsequently being acclaimed as "the true inheritor of Tolkien's mantle", or some such. Unfortunately, fantastic settings alone do not an epic make, and 90% of new fantasy writing is crap - the same generic swords and sorcery, thud and blunder, repeated ad nauseam.

Tolkien is different. His imaginary homelands are not just names on the (by now obligatory) frontispiece map, they're countries, with rich histories and vibrant cultures; his invented tongues are not meaningless agglomerations of random syllables, they're carefully designed showcases of the linguist's art, with comprehensive lexica and detailed etymologies; his many invented beings are not cardboard cutout monsters, they're creatures who live and breathe and walk the pages of his books as convincingly as do his human heroes and heroines. The suspension of disbelief in Tolkien is total.

And then there's his verse. Tolkien's verse has genuine poetic merit, and it's not in the least bit self-conscious; when his characters break into song (which, mind you, occurs fairly often in his books), it always seems the perfectly natural thing to do. Today's poem is an excellent example: in "The Fellowship of the Ring" (the first volume of "The Lord of the Rings"), the eponymous fellowship are forced to detour through the dark and deserted Dwarven mines of Moria. One of the party asks why the Dwarves chose to live in such darksome holes; in reply, Gimli, the lone representative of that race in the Fellowship, half sings, half chants a poem describing the glory of the Dwarven kingdom in the Elder Days... at the end of the recital, the reader is left with the realization that the story of Moria couldn't have been told any other way: mere prose is simply too dry to communicate the wonder and the beauty that was Khazad-dum.

As always with Tolkien, the form reinforces the content to marvellous effect: the language is intentionally archaic, the alliteration pronounced (but never obtrusive), the sense of nostalgia and loss almost palpable. Notice how Gimli never explicitly states just what it was that caused Moria's abandonment: his reticence seems to imply that the events being recounted occurred at a great remove from the here and now; this in turn enhances the mystery, the vague undercurrent of dread that runs through the poem (and especially through the last stanza). This lack of particularity might be annoying in what is ostensibly a historical tale, but this is definitely one of those cases where less is more: a straightforward cataloguing of facts could never hope to capture the audience's attention the way Gimli's hypnotically beautiful couplets do.

And beautiful they certainly are: Tolkien's feel for the English language, for the music of words and the perfection of images, is flawless. It's a pity that his poetic output was (by and large) limited to within the confines of his invented universe (wide though they were); he could easily have been this century's successor to Kipling and Tennyson, so perfect is his verse, so effortless his prosody...

The World was Young, the Mountains Green

The world was young, the mountains green,
No stain yet on the Moon was seen,
No words were laid on stream or stone,
When Durin woke and walked alone.
He named the nameless hills and dells;
He drank from yet untasted wells;
He stooped and looked in Mirrormere,
And saw a crown of stars appear,
As gems upon a silver thread,
Above the shadow of his head.

The world was fair, the mountains tall,
In Elder Days before the fall
Of mighty kings in Nargothrond
And Gondolin, who now beyond
The Western Seas have passed away:
The world was fair in Durin's Day.

A king he was on carven throne
In many-pillared halls of stone
With golden roof and silver floor,
And runes of power upon the door.
The light of sun and star and moon
In shining lamps of crystal hewn
Undimmed by cloud or shade of night
There shone for ever fair and bright.

There hammer on the anvil smote,
There chisel clove, and graver wrote;
There forged was blade, and bound was hilt;
The delver mined, the mason built.
There beryl, pearl, and opal pale,
And metal wrought like fishes' mail,
Buckler and corslet, axe and sword,
And shining spears were laid in hoard.

Unwearied then were Durin's folk;
Beneath the mountains music woke:
The harpers harped, the minstrels sang,
And at the gates the trumpets rang.

The world is grey, the mountains old,
The forge's fire is ashen-cold;
No harp is wrung, no hammer falls:
The darkness dwells in Durin's halls;
The shadow lies upon his tomb
In Moria, in Khazad-dum.
But still the sunken stars appear
In dark and windless Mirrormere;
There lies his crown in water deep,
Till Durin wakes again from sleep.

-- J. R. R. Tolkien

P.S.: Some stuff in the initial funda isnt mine, thanks to Amit, a friend of mine.

Education culminating in Employment -- an analysis by Dr. Vinod Raina

2007-11-13T10:40:00.001-08:00

An extremely well-researched analysis on the National Curriculum Framework proposition to integrating work and education, by Dr. Vinod Raina. Dr. Raina runs the Bharatiya Gyan Vigyan Samiti and is very involved in the national CABE committee as well as in efforts to bring about changes in legislation to ensure Right to Education. This article analyzes the history of liberal and vocational education with a critical eye. Read the whole thing, its well worth many a dekko.

As an after read, check out this essay by Amartya Sen on Tagore, titled Tagore and his India, contrasting and bringing out the philosophical differences in Tagore's and Gandhi's thinking.

Integrating Work and Education

Interest in linking and integrating work with education appears to have been rekindled by the National Curriculum Framework 2005 since it not only contains a whole section devoted to it, but also had a focus group that prepared a separate report on the subject (called FGR hereafter).

One says rekindled because active interest in this area has dwindled over the years, but for stray references to Gandhi’s views on the subject and his nai talim. There could be various reasons for that, but the major one seems to be the misplaced but growing fascination of curriculum framers in the past decade or two to address the question of ‘knowledge explosion’, demanding an increasing addition of fairly meaningless and disjointed facts from ‘thrust areas’ in the curriculum, mostly tested through memory-based examination systems. Though never clearly stated, such mindless approach to curriculum framing has operated with an inherent bias as to what constitutes legitimate knowledge. What is ignored in curriculum frameworks and resulting syllabi must therefore not be worth teaching, would be the obvious conclusion of persons who finally get down to writing textbooks. Work related knowledge of the majority of Indian population has therefore been continuously delegitimised, notwithstanding Gandhian exhortations to the contrary.

Though the attempt of the NCF2005 to regenerate interest in this critical area needs to be welcomed, it would appear that the subject has not been analysed in the kind of depth and range that would be necessary if the objective was to ensure implementation, rather than one more academic essay for future researchers to comment upon. The FGR and its summary in the main part of NCF2005 rightly attempts to distinguish between vocational education and work-centered education but in my opinion, one needs to examine the issue in a much more multi-dimensional manner in order to arrive at strategies that may facilitate implementation. These other dimensions would include, in addition to the pedagogic issue, the historical debate between liberal and work based education, links between labour and education, locating within dominant political ideologies, and the human and institutional requirements to implement a work-based mass education system.

Liberal and Vocational education

The familiar conflict between liberal and vocational education stems from the concept of streaming, whereby liberal education is seen as a vehicle for mobility into ‘high culture’ and prestige, and vocational education as a means that assigns working class, dalit and minority youth to a narrowly “practical school experience, limiting their educational access to mobility, and stigmatizing them as incapable of learning anything worthwhile, ‘academic’ subjects and skills”[1]. Many educationists and philosophers have, in recent times, however questioned the apparent dichotomy between liberal and vocational education[2]. Richard Pring, for example has argued for a broadening and reformulating of the liberal ideal so as to embrace the idea of vocational relevance, along with practical intelligence, personal development and social and community relevance[3]. Similarly, Christopher Winch has developed a detailed and rich conception of vocational education, embracing concerns about ‘moral and spiritual well-being’ alongside notions of economic and political goods[4].

Pring’s approach could be called more pedagogic since he disbelieves the perceived diametrical opposition between liberal and vocational education. In particular, he questions that:

“the vocational, properly taught, cannot itself be liberating –a way into those forms of knowledge through which a person is freed from ignorance, and opened to new imaginings, new possibilities: the craftsman who finds aesthetic delight in the objects of his craft, the technician who sees the science behind the artifact, the reflective teacher making theoretical sense of practice”. (Pring, 1995)

The concern to reconcile vocation with education is however old, and runs across various ideological streams, though for differing reasons, as we shall presently discuss. Going with Proudhon that “the work a man did was something to be proud of, it was what gave interest, value and dignity to his life’, Smith extended the idea thus:

“An education that was divorced from the world of work, that is, an education that was bookish and grammar-schoolish in conception, was valueless from the point of view of ordinary working class children. Of course, an education that went too far in the other direction, which brought up children merely to be the fodder for factories, was equally unacceptable. What was required was an education which could equip a child for the work-place but would also give him a degree of independence in the labour market.”[5]

It is customary, and rightly so, to invoke Gandhi when vocation and work are prefixed to education in India. Henry Fagg [6] in his slim volume has tried to locate Gandhi’s ideas of nai talim within the politics and issues that prevailed in 1937 when Gandhi, at the ripe age of 67, made his radical proposals for mass education that he thought were appropriate for India. It has remained a matter of debate whether Gandhi advocated work-based education as a means of self-support in order to circumvent his disappointment regarding the inability of the state to fund universal education, or as a pedagogic necessity, or both. His plea for adequate finances for universal education was met with a response that if at all, the way out was to utilize revenues from liquor sales. That meant he had to either give up his stand on prohibition, or his plea for universal education with state support, which he expressed quite plainly: “the cruellest irony of the new reforms lies in the fact that we are left with nothing but liquor revenue to fall back upon, in order to give our children education”[7].This seems to have led Gandhi to propose a national system of education that would be self-sufficient, rather than solely dependent on state funding thus:

“but as a nation we are so backward in education that we cannot hope to fulfill our obligations to the nation in this respect in a given time during this generation, if the programme is to depend on money. I have therefore made bold, even at the risk of losing all reputation for constructive ability, to suggest that education should be self-supporting …. I would therefore begin the child’s education by teaching it a useful handicraft and enabling it to produce from the moment it begins training. Thus every school can be made self-supporting, the condition being that the State take over the manufacture of these schools”[8].

His enthusiasm for self-support was expressed more forcefully after Narhari Parikh, a teacher at the Harijan Ashram at Sabarmati provided figures in defense of self-supported education from his school. This led Gandhi to assert that:

“Public schools must be frauds and teachers idiots, if they cannot become self-supporting” and, “corporate labour should be, say after the first year of the course, worth one anna per hour. Thus for twenty-six working days of four hours per day, each child will have earned Rs. 6-8 per month….We should be intellectual bankrupts, if we cannot direct the energy of our children so as to get from them, after a year’s training, one anna worth of marketable labour per hour”.

That he clearly saw links between education and vocation in terms of alleviating unemployment is clear from his answer to a questioner: “you impart education and simultaneously cut at the roots of unemployment”[9].

The self-sufficiency argument of Gandhi strongly suggests that he was professing an income generating vocational education. It is well known that one of his dissenters to this approach was none other than Rabindranath Tagore. Tagore considered the emphasis on vocation and training in Gandhi’s formulations deeply reductionist, asserting that the purpose of education was liberative rather than merely vocational. He in particular took exception to Gandhi’s emphasis on weaving education around the Charkha. The two engaged in a fascinating public debate on these issues.[10]

Gandhi of course did stress on the pedagogic importance of linking work to education, pleading for a system that considered work as a starting point to delve into history, geography, technology and science, exemplified by his famous passage about the use of takli to learn not only about spinning, but the history and geography of cotton, history and technology of the spinning wheel and so on, thus anticipating the ideas of Pring, Winch etc. many years earlier. He also stressed on the nurturing of the ‘cooperative’ and ‘peaceful’ values in children, when work was the basis of learning, rather than mindless rote learning. Above all, he pleaded for an education that would integrate the head, heart and the hand.

In an article written in May 1937 entitled ‘Intellectual Development or Dissipation?’, Gandhi developed the central premise that ‘Man is neither mere intellect nor the gross animal body, nor the heart and soul alone. A proper and harmonious combination of all the three is required for the making of the whole man and constitutes the true economics of education’. He then gave the outline of his vision of an alternative pedagogy:

“As against this, take the case of a child in whom the education of the heart is attended from the very beginning. Supposing he is set to some useful occupation like spinning, carpentry, agriculture etc., for his education and in that connection is given a thorough and comprehensive knowledge relating to the theory of the various operations that he is to perform and the use and construction of tools that he would be wielding. He would not only develop a fine, healthy body but also a sound, vigorous intellect that is not merely academic but is firmly rooted in and is tested from day to day by experience. His intellectual education would include knowledge of mathematics and the various sciences that are useful for an intelligent and efficient exercise of his avocation. If to this is added literature by way of recreation, it would give him a perfect well-balanced, all round education in which the intellect, the body and the spirit have all full play and develop together into a natural, harmonious whole”[11].

It would appear that Gandhi was trying to do many things through his radical suggestions linking work with education. Along with deeply philosophical perceptions regarding the purpose of education, he seems to have been trying to solve practical problems like funding for education and unemployment. It does become somewhat difficult to separate the philosophical and the instrumentalist in his formulations. The Tagore-Gandhi exchange aptly highlights the contested nature of the subject (missing in the NCF2005 and the FGR), since it provides insights to the resistance to the concept of work-based education even at the time of an emotionally charged atmosphere, conducive to do something new, during India’s independence. The intellectual and practical resistance to his views must have been considerable that in spite of his unquestionable stature, nai talim did not find favour for incorporation into mainstream education and was experimented as a non-state alternative. Identifying such resistances would seem to be vitally important in forging an implementational strategy sixty years later, in an India that is radically less conducive to Gandhi’s thinking. It is important to point out that the repeated reference in the FGR to the ‘Brahamanical mindset’ as the single most dominant resistance to Gandhian ideas may in fact be quite wrong. Because it would imply as if the dalits and low-castes saw merit in Gandhian ideas, and were opposed by the ruling high-castes. The situation in fact is quite the opposite.

Ideology and work-based education

Where as pedagogical considerations constitute issues internal to the educational discourse, mass education never is independent of external factors; political ideology being the most prominent. The NCF2005 states up front that it has deliberately side-stepped such issues in order not to indulge in ‘blame game’. Where as the merit of such a stance has been debated in relation to the history textbooks controversy, the absence of such an engagement in relation to work and education is very surprising, since work and labour are deeply political categories, and an absence of such engagement can lead to fairly erroneous conclusions.

There seems to be an implicit assumption in the FGR that the deprived, marginalized, dalit and toiling masses have a common enemy that is resisting vocationalised education, namely the Brahaminical elites. This evades the issue that one of the strongest opposition to vocational/ised education has in fact come from the dalits. This has to do with the very notion of the ‘worker’, and the historical social formations around work. Without reference to that, statements regarding the political left can also become misleading, as they have in the FGR, when it universlises Gandhi’s approach by stating that ‘similar experiments have been done in erstwhile U.S.S.R and other socialist countries’.

Let us consider vocationalisation in the Soviet Union and other socialist countries first. Gandhi’s vision of education was intrinsically located in the realities of rural India, as was his system of governance and essential production. At the forefront therefore to him was the carpenter, the blacksmith, the potter, the artisan, the handicraft maker, the agricultural labourer and so on. When he talked of vocationalising, he clearly had work related to such professions in mind. For the emerging Soviet Union of the 1920’s, education was intrinsically related to the creation of a massive industrial workforce. The rural artisan and peasant, very dear to Tolstoy (who greatly influenced Gandhi’s views in many ways)), was seen as a transitory phenomenon by the end of 1920’s (Anatoli Lunacharsky, who was charged by Lenin to put into place the Soviet education system stated around 1925 that Tolstoy’s artisan-based education might be allowed to continue for sometime, till it was replaced by industrial worker-based education). The development paradigm was rooted in massive industrialisation and collective farming, to replace household production and feudal agriculture. Work-based education, either through labour schools or polytechnics was therefore not related to handicraft but big industry. More importantly, the motivation was not merely pedagogic, it was deeply political. Class struggle being intrinsic to the Marxist thesis, creating class consciousness amongst the workers was integral to the Soviet education, and was simply called propaganda education. Treating such work-based education in the same manner as nai-talim can therefore be quite misleading, the political visions and developmental outcomes being very different.

It might be pertinent to refer to the US around the beginning of the 20th century here. Philanthropists worried about the problems of poor youth started small vocational programs outside the public schools around 1880’s. Between 1890 and 1910, vocational education in the narrow sense of job preparation attracted the support of a diverse range of social and economic interests. The National Association of Manufacturers was a strong advocate, pushing for schooling that would prepare workers for factories and workshops. After initial hesitation, labour unions supported and participated in these efforts. As is evident, the nature of vocational/ised education is deeply entrenched within the political ideology that promotes it, in particular the development paradigm under which it operates. For a class struggle-based industrial workforce of the erstwhile Soviet Union, work-based education is deeply ideological; for the capitalist US industry of the early 20th century, it is mostly vocational education to prepare a disciplined workforce; and for Gandhi it was deeply linked to his ideal of India that would live mostly in villages, and produce locally in a manner that was harmonious with nature.

To put it simply, the nation was clearly divided, rightly or wrongly, regarding such a future at the time of independence. As protagonists of the modern industrial India, the Governments that came in right after independence embarked on an industrial paradigm to which Gandhi’s nai talim seemed irrelevant. Rightly or wrongly again, it has to be conceded that that was the dominant political consensus of the times. Amongst the major dissenters of the Gandhian paradigm, then and now, are people for whom, perhaps, Gandhi was most concerned about, the dalits. Not only did they have his term for them, harijans, removed from the political lexicon, they have been vociferous in opposing any dilution of the liberating nature of Enlightenment values, in particular in the area of education. Spearheaded by the Columbia and London School of Economics trained economist, and barrister of law, Grey’s Inn, London decorated lawyer, the ‘untouchable’ Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, the dalit vision of development, education and human rights are firmly entrenched in the modernization paradigm, far removed from that of Gandhi.

The dalit aversion to anything based on traditional vocation should hardly be surprising. Given that the caste system is entrenched in the hierarchy of vocations, most of the artisanal castes being at the bottom of the hierarchy, relating them to education is viewed as a means of maintaining caste distinctions rather than obliterating them through liberal education. Vocation based education is tantamount to caste based education from this viewpoint.

I firmly believe that the major challenge to bring in work-based education in India would not be so much pedagogic, or formulation of policies. It is a political challenge; a negotiation with the liberal, left and the dalit points of view, in order to establish that work-based education can be progressive and emancipatory, both in a class and caste sense. The strong reaction of a section of left intellectuals and academics to the inclusion of local knowledge (artisanal or agricultural work would by definition derive from local knowledge systems) in the teaching-learning process, as proposed by the NCF2005 clearly indicates that the sites of resistance to work-based education are deeply ideological, and are not confined merely to the self-interests of the middle-class that views the dominant liberal system of education as conducive to their vocations.

The case for work-based education: Labour and Education

Sixty years onwards from the time of independence, we have the advantage of looking back how the system of education has proceeded, which formulations have been validated, and which have turned out to be flawed. To do so we could pose the question sharply: Has the predominantly liberal mode of education that the state opted for at the time of independence acted favourably to reduce inequalities amongst class, caste, gender and minorities; and has it transformed a majority of country’s population to creative, productive and secure citizens? The answer has to be a resounding no[12].

A few figures should help to support the answer. Even though the literacy rate has increased from around 21% at the time of independence, from a total population of around three hundred millions, to around 68% in 2001, out of a total population of around a billion, the absolute number of illiterates is greater than the population at the time of independence. This is of course related to the gross inadequacy of the school system. Where as it was constitutionally mandated that all children up to fourteen years of age should have received eight years of education by 1960, the situation in 2004 was that out of 21 crore children in the age-group 6-14, more than half, around 12 crore were never enrolled or dropped off by class eight, making a mockery of the constitutional mandates, which now includes the Right to Education for the 6-14 year olds guaranteed by the 86th amendment of 2002.

The progression beyond class 8 has been dismal. Only around 2.2 crore children are in classes 10 and 12, which reduces to half, 1.1 crores, in classes 11 and 12. Those in higher education number around a crore, most of them pursuing an utterly aimless undergraduate ‘liberal’ education degree in colleges that have been reduced to mediocre haunts. The degree of exclusion by class eight is staggering, particularly the drop off rate of 52%. Where as the non-enrolment of over three crore children could be attributable to lack of access, the non-retention of around nine crore children, and the lack of adequate achievement of those who do remain in schools must surely have to do with the education that is transacted. Two attributes suggest themselves, that the education is uninteresting for children and it is irrelevant to their lives.

Creating interest is clearly a question of pedagogy; how to make teaching-learning more fun and less drudgery. Relevance is deeply developmental; requiring weaving education around the social, cultural and productive realities of a child, while empowering her to ‘liberate’ herself from the exigencies of her birth, experiences and social/economic constraints. Quite clearly, livelihood considerations are related to education. An ‘educated’ unemployed is a serious problem, in as much it underscores the fact that the nation has invested in a person, without making him/her a productive citizen. The normal undergraduate and even post-graduate program would seem to be producing a large number of such unemployable youth. But the question could be asked: is that because jobs are not available or ‘suitably’ educated persons are not available for specific jobs?

That requires a scan of the labour profile of the country. In spite of the emphasis on industrialization in the initial five-year plans after independence, that could have created a large industrial proletariat, the labour force in the formal sector in India has remained abysmally low. In the decade and a half since the liberalization and privatization phase of the Indian economy, beginning 1991, where as the growth rate might is touching 8% per anum, it is accompanied by a decrease in formal employment, from 282.45 million in 1997 to 269.83 in 2003[13]. The decrease is most prominent in the public sector, from 195.59 millions to 184.49 millions, but evident too in the much hyped private sector, from 86.86millions to 85.34 millions in the said period. Unorganized labour however increased from 354 million to 390 million in the corresponding period, demonstrating clearly where the employment growth potential has been.

There is however a significant factor crucially linked to education within this employment scenario, which is the phenomenal growth of the service sector. The net decrease in formal employment is largely due to the decline in employment in the manufacturing/industrial sector, compensated by the increase in the service sector. This is also reflected in the disaggregated economic growth rates in the 10th plan period (2002-2006): the total growth rate was 7%, agriculture increased by a dismal 1.8%, industry by 8% and services by 8.9%.

The skewed nature of such development is evident from the fact that the sector that employs the largest labour namely agriculture is least productive economically, and the one that employs the least number of people, namely services, is the most productive.

What are the implications of this for vocational/ised education? It should remain undisputed that as far as integrating knowledge from non-organised areas of production, be that agriculture, artisanship, medicinal plants, forestry, construction, local water systems etc., are concerned, teaching-learning materials up to class 8 or 10 ought to be prepared in such a manner that they relate to the social, economic and cultural lives of the children, a majority of whom come from families of such backgrounds. The consequent relevance and identity of the school to the lives of the children, along with pedagogic methods that are interesting to the child might go a long way in arresting the massive drop-out rates, 52%, up to class 8.

The major question would be about purposeful streaming after class 10 and 12. It is evident that the existing undergraduate degree, in terms of quality, is neither a tonic for the mind, nor suitable for learning productive skills. The question is, if the vocational stream is to be enlarged at the 10+ and 12+ stages, along with improving the quality of the under and post graduate degrees, which directions should it take? The decline in the agricultural and industrial sectors and an increase in the service sector requires that we address this issue, in educational terms, with a fresh mind. The growth of the IT related service sector – call centers, outsourcing; and management related service sector require vocational programmes quite different from those pursued at existing ITI’s. Unfortunately, most of the educational needs in these areas are met today through the mushrooming of unregulated commercial fly-by-night shops, masquerading as private educational institutions; even as ‘universities’ as happened in Chattisgarh, where 52 such set-ups were granted university status, till the Supreme Court intervened. That is because the state has not responded to such vocational needs.

This of course doesn’t imply that vocational courses related to artisanship and agriculture are not required. One might in fact argue that if school education reflected the knowledge base of these sectors, that might provide an additional input to make these areas of production, where maximum labour is involved, more robust and active. However, one can also not overlook the over all constraints imposed by the developmental path the country unfortunately seems to be pursuing, which is higher growth rates with less employment.

Two things seem to be clear from these arguments. One that the hope that a very large part of the rural population would be proletarised as industrial workforce has remained a myth sixty years after independence, confirming Gandhi’s prophecy that India is essentially a nation of rural dwellers. Second, that instead of strengthening the rural economy, or creating manufacturing potential, hence employment, close to rural areas (as township manufacture in China has), India has stumbled on to the service sector, including IT related, as a major source of economy. Educational planning has however remained mute to such changes, and continues to blunder on with drop outs at lower stages and redundant degrees at higher stages, in a completely haphazard manner, benefiting dubious commercial education by default.

It has also to be recognized that the expansion of the service sector has given rise to aspirations, imposing educational demands that can be at complete variance with pedagogic principles. Take for example language. Crucial to the national system of education, as envisioned by Gandhi, elaborated by the Kothari Commission, and substantiated by researches all over the World, the use of local languages, if not mother tongue, in the formative years of formal education is critical to the creative growth of a child. Aspirations of parents and society at large for children, particularly in order to get a foothold in the IT related service sector is however pushing for increasing use of English as medium of instruction from the pre-primary level. Dalit organisations too favour learning in English as emancipatory, leading to dignity within the society. Can vocational/ised education remain immune to such demands? Learning English would in fact appear to be a major form of vocational education today!

Implementing work-based education

It is not as if NCF2005 is the first policy document favouring vocational/ised education. The Kothari Commission report and the National Policy on Education 1986, and its revised version of 1992 have already stated much of what NCF2005 contains. The question one may ask is: what have been the constraints on implementation?

Firstly, it is perhaps conceptual. Work-based education has mostly been interpreted as vocational education; a policy to create a separate vocational stream. Accordingly, we have seen the opening up of vocational education schools, or the addition of vocational education facilities in existing higher secondary schools. An overarching National Council for Vocational Education has also been set up, at Bhopal. Open schooling has also embraced the vocational stream, with the National Institute for Open Schooling (NIOS) and some state open schools offering a variety of courses.

It would appear that the National Knowledge Commission set up by the current UPA government in June 2005 has also been examining the question of production and work related knowledge in some detail. At a recent consultation on school education and literacy organized by the Commission, the Vice-Chairman of the Commission informed that their survey revealed that existing vocational institutions all together provide courses related to 80 vocations, most of them related to the formal sector. However, the Commission was reported to have compiled an exhaustive list of vocations covering both the formal and informal sectors, identifying 3000 vocations! So even at the level of streamed vocational education, a massive task awaits, in preparing courses in areas encompassing handicrafts, artisanship and other rural work.

This is quite different from integrating knowledge from areas of production, particularly from unorganized areas, into the mainstream liberal education. Evidently, such a task remains unattended. Will the publication of NCF2005 spur it on? Not unless attention is paid to the constraining factors. School books are made by the NCERT and state bodies like the SCERT’s/SIE’s/Boards. The faculties at these institutions and other textbook writers have mostly subject backgrounds, including from the Education discipline. It is obvious that they normally have no background, experience, knowledge, ability and hence inclination, to look beyond their subject areas (most of them also have no experience of having worked with school children, particularly rural). So in spite of what the policies might say, there are no matching institutional and human capacities to translate them into action; this has happened in the past and is likely to happen after the NCF2005.

In the first year after the NCF2005 when the NCERT has begun to write fresh books, I have formally participated in the effort as a member of a committee that is monitoring the new drafts. As a consequence, one gets an opportunity to read all the book drafts and interact with the writing groups. However one sees a great deal of resistance and throwing up of hands when it is pointed out to the writer groups how ‘knowledge from below’ could be incorporated, or generated from the children and teachers. The common responses are: ‘we don’t know how to do so; it is dangerous since the information is not validated; it will dilute the subject matter; that is not science/mathematics/history, or whatever’!

A mindset that considers codified liberal education as the only valid knowledge is unlikely to create teaching-learning material that incorporates knowledge from work. In contrast, while we were making textbooks in Eklavya for use in the government schools of Madhya Pradesh, not only were the rural school teachers (most of them also being farmers and artisans) participating in the process, but we would involve a carpenter, mason, farmer or other artisans wherever required. That is how chapters on leather tanning, bidi making, folk forms of mathematics, panchayat functioning, land, soil, and crops and so forth were written. Unless a similar process is initiated within the state owned textbook writing institutions, or people with such experience and understanding are involved in large numbers, rather than only cut and dry subject experts, implementation will not take place. The most evident example from the recent NCERT books is the class 3 mathematics book that has attempted to incorporate algorithms of folk mathematics, made possible because people behind it had worked in that area before, and believe in such integration. The class 6 mathematics book is however devoid of any such effort, possibly because its writers do not believe in the policy, no matter whether it is the NCF2005 or the Kothari Commission, or do not have the capacity to do so. The resulting approach, across the classes is therefore very uneven. But if that can be ironed out over the years, particularly in state level textbooks covering nearly 97% children is schools, it would be stupendous. That however would require a massive overhaul of the institutions responsible for textbook writing, teacher trainings and examinations. That, and not just writing policy, is the major challenge!

[1] Allen Graubard; Could Vocational Education be Progressive, Radical Teacher, Spring 2004, Center for Critical Education Inc.
[2] Judith Suissa; Vocational Education: a social anarchist perspective, Policy Futures in Education, Vol 2, No. 1, 2004
[3] Richad Pring; Closing the Gap: liberal education and vocational preparation, Hodder and Stoughton, 1995, (in Judith Suissa, ibid)
[4] C. Winch; Education, Work and Social Capital; Towards a new conception of vocational education, Routledge, London, 2000
[5] M.Smith: The Libertarians and Education, George Allen and Unwin, 1983
[6] Henry Fagg; A Study of Gandhi’s Basic Education, National Book Trust, 2002
[7] Harijan 5:222, in Fagg, ibid
[8] Harijan 5:197, in Fagg, ibid
[9] Harijan 5:261, in Fagg, ibid
[10] Sabysachi Bhattacharya; The Poet and the Mahatma, National Book Trust
[11] Harijan; 5:104, in Fagg ibid
[12] Vinod Raina; Where do children go after class eight?, Seminar, July 2006
[13] Vinod Raina, ibid

Lament for Boromir

2007-11-13T10:00:00.000-08:00

The Lament for Boromir is very poignant. The most interesting part of this poem is that Legolas composes the second verse, and Aragorn composes the first and the third stanzas; while, Tolkien believes that in his plot, Legolas is a better poet than Aragorn, and brings that out in the imagery of the verses. The second stanza is far more poetically dense in terms of expression, poetic depth, even construction as opposed to the stanzas 1 and 3. Talk about getting into the character and writing in the moment!!

Through Rohan over fen and field where the long grass grows
The West Wind comes walking, and about the walls it goes.
'What news from the West, O wandering wind, do you bring to me tonight?
Have you seen Boromir the Tall by moon or by starlight?'
'I saw him ride over seven streams, over waters wide and grey;
I saw him walk in empty lands, until he passed away
Into the shadows of the North. I saw him then no more.
The North Wind may have heard the horn of the son of Denethor.'
'O Boromir! From the high walls westward I looked afar,
But you came not from the empty lands where no men are.'

From the mouths ofthe Sea the South Wind flies,from the sandhills andthe stones;
The wailing of the gulls it bears, and at the gate it moans.
'What news from the South, O sighing wind, do you bring to me at eve?
Where now is Boromir the fair? He tarries and I grieve.'
'Ask not of me where he doth dwell --- so many bones there lie
On the white shores and the dark shores under the stormy sky;
So many have passed down Anduin to find the flowing Sea.
Ask of the North Wind news of them the North Wind sends to me!'
'O Boromir! Beyond the gate the seaward road runs south,
But you came not with the wailing gulls from the grey sea's mouth.'

From the Gate of Kings the North Wind rides, and past the roaring falls;
And clear and cold about the tower its loud horn calls.
'What news from the North, O mighty wind, do you bring to me today?
What news of Boromir the Bold? For he is long away.'
'Beneath Amon Hen I heard his cry. There many foes he fought.
His cloven shield, his broken sword, they to the water brought.
His head so proud, his face so fair, his limbs they laid to rest;
And Rauros, golden Rauros-falls, bore him upon its breast.'
'O Boromir! The Tower of Gaurd shall ever northward gaze
To Rauros, golden Rauros-falls, until the end of days.'

-- J.R.R. Tolkien

National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme

2007-11-12T16:13:00.000-08:00

The National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme is one of the few well-intentioned schemes to come out of the current UPA government. The NREGS guarantees 100days of unskilled work per family for every family that is below the poverty line. Now, lets not even go into how BPL classifications are calculated or the absurdity and lack of context to the BPL surveys. There are many points about this scheme which are at a macro level wrong --

As one of the recipients of this scheme famously said "Are our tummies on vacation the remaining 265 days?" What is the rationale behind 100 days per one member of family?
Providing work that required unskilled labor is essentially a welfare scheme. It is not promoting the skill sets of that targeted population. Its the classic case of "give them fish, rather than teach them to fish". Potentially the same money can be spent at every Panchayat level to provide training in skills that will lead the population towards economic independence and dignity.
As many social audits across the districts where the scheme is being implemented show, the muster rolls are largely fudged, corruption accounts for a huge drain on this money, and a very small percentage of the money actually trickles down to the intended recipient. In fact, Rajiv Gandhi, when he was the Prime Minister, famously admitted that only 15% of government spending manages to reach the recipient. The rest is wastage. A similar Employment Guarantee Scheme tried out in Maharashtra in 1976 had already fallen victim to this atrocious Public Distribution System. In fact, the Indian government does not have any evidence of being capable of properly implementing any social welfare scheme.

Given all these obvious issues, the question then is if not NREGS, then what? The problem is not restricted to unskilled work, and then neither is the solution. Clearly the solution needs to be autonomous, small, and needs to come from the bottom, from the folks who need the money. The government needs to stop dictating lives and stop interfering. The policies that restrict our manufacturing sector from matching the growth in the services sector need to go. Agriculture has to be supported, or the farmers transitioning from agriculture into manufacturing or services need to be provided the skills to do that (again, allow private enterprise, and it will come about organically, instead of some governmental masterminding). National budgets need to spend less on defence and instead pour some funds into Education (at all levels). And in the middle of all this, the right folks will get the right skills and will be able to get their right to livelihood.

A possible counter-argument of course is that while all this is happening, people are starving. Maybe a combination of some scheme with a larger solution in tow is probably what is recommended. However, the government seems intent on earning hearsay goodwill (read votes, and support of left-parties) by implementing only the welfare schemes, and the bureaucracy is happy to implement the scheme with its 85% drain on many crores of rupees!

The Agrarian Crisis of India Shining

2007-11-12T15:16:00.000-08:00

India is rapidly developing. Services sector is booming. Our GDP is increasing at 9%. We are cutting nuclear deals with USA. Our youth have the credit to buy German and Japanese cars and motorcycles. Our farmers do not have the credit to buy seeds. We are cutting deals with Monsanto and undercutting our farmers. Over 60% of our economy is reliant on agriculture. Agriculture sector is in a serious crisis. India is ready for a massive collapse.

Thats the story of two different Indias. If you really think about it, everything about India is pluralistic. Agriculture is fundamentally unsustainable. Like education, the country needs to subsidize and support its agrarian sector. Particularly a country who's excess of 50% economy is agrarian and excess of 70% of the population are farmers. However, as the policies of the past decade unfold, we are seeing a continued spread of farmer suicides across the country.

P. Sainath has written extensively on this crisis. Click here to follow the link to indiatogether.org and scroll down along the right column to read Sainath's reports on the crisis in

Andhra Pradesh (Anantpur and other nearby areas)
Kerala (Wyanad)
Maharashtra (Vidarbha)

I'll add more details to this post when I have more time.

Right to Education

2007-11-12T15:12:00.000-08:00

Education as a fundamental right cannot be denied in any democratic society. It is the duty of the Government to provide for and guarantee this fundamental right. The Right to Education Bill (RTE) provides a unified framework for enacting the 86th amendment of the Indian constitution, which guarantees this right to all it’s citizens. In 2006, the Indian Government decided to drop the long pending RTE Bill and pass it on to the State Governments as a model bill.

Many NGOs and people's movements are actively working towards pushing the government to table the bill once more in the parliament. Here are a few links and a reading list:

Bhopal Gas Disaster Survivors Struggle

2007-11-12T13:13:00.000-08:00

Shortly after midnight poison gas leaked from a factory in Bhopal, India, owned by Union Carbide Corporation. There was no warning, none of the plant's safety systems were working. In the city people were sleeping. They woke in darkness to the sound of screams with the gases burning their eyes, noses and mouths. They began retching and coughing up froth streaked with blood. Whole neighbourhoods fled in panic, some were trampled, others convulsed and fell dead. People lost control of their bowels and bladders as they ran. Within hours thousands of dead bodies lay in the streets. Read a survivor's account of "that night". More background here.

All that was back in 1984. The government let the miscreants get away, and also made a deal with Union Carbide as compensation for those who died that night. The survivors today have a fight of a different nature altogether, as they fight the contamination, the water borne handicapping diseases, physical malformations, societal stigma, hunger, poverty -- it never ends. I visited Bhopal in January of 2007 and met with the survivors and visited the contaminated factory site. It was a surreal experience. Folks are obviously in a bad state for resources. The ground water is badly contaminated and there is no other water available except once a week. The governmental promises about pipelines from nearby Kolar river have not been kept. The factory site is dilapidated and lot of chemicals still lie around, and with every rainy season, further deeply get entrenched into the water table of the area.

Despite all this, the Bhopalis will first smile, and then offer you a cup of chai and then ask you "Ab boliyen, kaise aana hua?" I'll add more details and links and stories here when I get more time.

Mehdiganj Water Struggle

2007-11-12T12:14:00.000-08:00

Mehdiganj is a village in Uttar Pradesh, around 20 Km from Varanasi. The communities in this village and in the surrounding areas have been facing a server water crisis and are fighting against the unjust practices of the local Coca Cola plant, which is the chief offender in their current water scenario. A few key points which are at the root of this issue are:

1. The ground water level in the area has gone down due to the excessive mining of water by the local Coca Cola plant.

2. The chemical waste let out by the plant into the nearby farms resulted large scale destruction of crops and soil has been damaged as well.

3. The plant has also occupied the local panchayat land and has been found guilty of tax theft.

A detailed website cataloging this struggle is available here.
More links:
Frequently Asked Questions (provides a lot of details and background)
Some documents (legal) relevant to the struggle
Demands of the local community in Mehdiganj

Wet trails at Firetrails 50

2007-10-15T09:40:00.000-07:00

This past Saturday, I ran my last race before the tapering down, the Dick Collins' Firetrails 50miler. Coming on the back of three successive weekends of 45miles of pacing in RDL, 47 miles at the Grand Canyon and some 18 odd miles on a hot day in Chicago, I was sure this would be slow, it would be hard (7800 ft. gain and drop in a series of hills on an out-and-back course), and I would definitely hurt. The course elevation map tells a good story of its own --

All that prompted me to take the 6AM early start as opposed to the regular 6:30AM start. There were two cutoffs, 6hr:15min to the turnaround in Berkeley's Tilden Park at Mile26, and the finish at 13hrs. The early start gave me a 30min buffer to push the Mile26 cutoff until 6:45.

The course is easily the most beautiful one I've run in California. It starts from Lake Chabot park, goes through some gorgeous single trails, running into a rather large grove of Redwood trees. From there onto a ridge which offered splendid views of the mouth of the San Francisco bay -- the city and its bridges; and then roll into Berkeley's Tilden Park. Couple of days of heavy rain had removed all the dry dust and rendered the course soft, leaving only a handful few patches of slushy bog.

I ran the first stretch with Marianne chatting about this and that, and she told me what it feels to run 100s and about her experiences with WS100 this year. Still concerned about the cutoffs, at the sight of the first bit of serious downhill I took off and pushed the pace. Its been a long time since I've pushed the pace on trails; throw in the hills, and the fatigue from the the past three weeks, and my legs were in completely new territory and promptly made noise. On the climb into the Mile15 aid-station I realised that I needed to take more salt than usual, and also eat more. Stopped for a goodish bit there and feasted on the watermelons while chatting with Carol (who was among the vols manning the aid-station). Carol saw my red Asha shirt and promptly said 'Hey you are Rajeev's friend' (Rajeev, Anil and self had met her during the night at RDL) . Then she said 'Tell Rajeev I'm missing him. The course is awfully quiet today'.

Much refreshed after the break there, pushed onward towards the cut-off and made it in 6hrs. Additional 15minutes buffer added to the 30 from the early start, I thought, deserved a good break. Promptly took a long break at the Mile26 aid-station. More watermelons, more chattering with the vols, the picnic lasted a good 10minutes. The return was a good deal easier. Found a second wind at the Mile30 aid-station and ran the next 14miles barring the hills. Met Eldrith with 5miles to go, and ran with her for a while and managed to run into the finish in 12hr:26min (11:56 on the clock).

Saw a lot of familiar faces on this run. Met Chihping twice, once when he overtook me and once again when I was a little distance away from the turnaround. Somewhere around mile 11 or so, someone came up from behind me on a single-track and I was letting him go ahead, the runner turned around and said you are keeping a very good pace and I looked up and saw that was Chihping. The man is indefatigable! The other high point was meeting Helen Klein. Helen had come down to run this race, and was also taking the early 6AM start.

In all, it was an awesome day. A most beautiful course, extraordinary set of volunteers, and super organization from Ann Trason, this race is easily the best I've seen since moving here to California. If I'm not running this next year, I'm most certainly volunteering here. The rewards were pretty good too. A rather nice 25th anniversary jacket, an inscribed wine glass, plus a running shirt, to round off one long day of fun and joy.

Double-crossing the Big Hole -- Grand Canyon Rim2Rim2Rim

2007-10-02T03:21:00.000-07:00

The day we tried to double-cross the Grand Canyon. We discovered you can cross it twice, but you cannot double-cross The Canyon. It provides you of its largesse -- in beauty and splendor, in heat and winds, in majesty and intricacy, in hills and valleys, in deceptive turns and grand spectacles. It demands its toll in blood and salt, in water and energy, in flesh and sinew. You have to pay and weaken yourself to conquer it. In the bargain, you have to feel a mortal, a survivor, not a conqueror. It was a humbling experience. It was a Grand experience. The day we tried to double-cross the Grand Canyon.

We were six, the usual four - Ganesh, Gaurav, Santhosh, and self, Padma - from California, and Arun - from Austin. The long journey began with goodies from Ashwini bakery as we drove up from Phoenix airport to our hotel in Williams. Santhosh was already in Williams. We stopped briefly at Flagstaff and bought essential supplies like grapes, avocados, Ensure, and Boost. In our original plan, we were to get to Williams, sleep a bit, and start the drive to Grand Canyon around 2-ish so that we could start our run around 3:30am. We figured that would enable us to return around 10pm.

Somewhere in between Flagstaff and Williams, I gently suggested that we get dinner and drive immediately over to the canyon and start our race at 1am. This was to help us in two ways -- one, we would be running without having slept at all, plus running in the night, so a good training for what might come in Cactus Rose; and two, we could come back sooner than the expected 10pm return. The crazy folks that are part of this group, all immediately jumped at the suggestion and soon it was decided that, that is what we would do.

And so we started at 1:30am. The plan was simple. We run down the Bright Angel trail since we can park at the trailhead. We cross the river, and break at Phantom Ranch. Then up the North Kaibab trail to the North rim. Then the return journey on the exact same route to return to our car. This would cover about 47miles in distance and over 10000 ft in elevation gain. After some initial hiccups, we stuck to this plan and went down Bright Angel. It was a glorious night, the moon was shining so bright, that we practically did not need our lamps. As we danced down by the light of the moon, across the Silver bridge on the Colorado, and waltzed into Phantom Ranch it was nearing 5am.

We had a long break at Phantom Ranch. Padma could hardly keep stuff in her stomach at this stage. We created a drop-bag and stashed all our warm clothes and extra food for the return journey, keeping with us what we thought would be sufficient to go the 28miles up the North rim and back.

The next phase was from Phantom Ranch to Cottonwood campground. The day was beginning to break as we left Phantom Ranch. Slowly, as the sun rose, the canyon walls turned golden starting from the top, even as the moon continued to shine relentlessly (see above).

The moon was shining on the canyon,
Shining with all her might:
She did her very best to make
The ridges smooth and straight--
And this was odd, because it was
The middle of a morning bright.

The sun was shining sulkily,
Because he thought the moon
Had got no business to be there
After the night was done--
"It's very rude of her," he said,
"To come and spoil the fun!"

[Adapted that one from Lewis Carroll's The Walrus and the Carpenter. ]

We covered the 7 miles and reached Cottonwood around 7:45am and were promptly subject to an interrogation by the park ranger there. Turned out he was something of a runner in the past, and had a lot of knowledge (not sure about the experience) about running clothes, shoes, camelbaks, gels etc. We regrouped at Cottonwood and left for the North rim at 8:15am. This stretch was relentless uphill and quite technical in large parts. There were a couple of water spots at Roaring Springs and Supai Tunnel. The last two miles were particularly grueling as we made our way to the top by 11:10am.

The North rim was very chilly and we were also over shooting our estimated time. So we figured we need to get more calories, and we hitched a ride to the restaurant. Got some hot pizza slices, a few sandwiches for later, and some hot chocolate over there, an hitched another ride back to the trailhead. Padma and Ganesh had made it to the top by the time we got there. Arun had (prudently) decided to turn around 2 miles after Cottonwood. Gave them pizza and we immediately started heading down.

The return to Cottonwood was steep downhill and we were mostly conserving our quads and not hammering down. In between, Santhosh gave in to temptation and took off, while Gaurav and myself stuck to what we were doing -- except for the last 2 miles, which we decided to run hard. and got to Cottonwood in 2 hours after leaving the North rim. We met Arun at Cottonwood who had spent many hours there socializing with all who were passing through the campground.

Cottonwood to Phantom Ranch was a nice runnable stretch. We left Cottonwood at 3:45pm and covered the 7miles to Phantom Ranch in a little under an hour and a half, just under 13 minute miles. At Phantom Ranch we met this girl who wanted company to hike back to Cottonwood. Having delicately refused ('no luck for her' as she chose to put it), we had our sandwiches, called spouses and parents to inform the delayed return, and started our journey back.

The last stretch lasted for ever. I was sweeping and coming behind the last runner, although I am now not sure why. At that point of time, it seemed like an important thing to do. Strange how the mind works when you havent slept and are tired. Slowly we marched up the South rim and time seemed to have come to a standstill. With about a mile to go, I decided to power it up and drive the car over to the trailhead from the parking lot (it was a little away). That was a good decision since it woke me up and got me warm and going.

Then came the hardest part of the entire journey. The hour and half long drive back to Williams with 5 folks sleeping in the car. Many times I thought I will have to pull out and sleep a bit on the side of the road. Then found some Boost and that woke me up enough to feel confident about driving back safely. I thought of it then and I agree even now, I would easily trade those 1.5 hours of driving to having to climb North rim for 3+ hours even at that stage.

Here endeth the double-crossing. It had taken nearly a full day (23 hours, 23 minutes). It was the longest any of us had gone (except Padma). What with the breaks in between and such, there are no sore muscles. Only recovery needed was from the lack of sleep. Crossing the canyon is quite an adventure, and crossing it twice is a fantastic experience.

Preparing for the Grand Canyon Rim to Rim to Rim

2007-09-27T10:38:00.000-07:00

This weekend we are running the Grand Canyon. Twice. Its called the rim2rim2rim. We start at the South Rim, run down the canyon walls to the Colorado river; then run up the canyon walls to the North Rim; turn right around, and run back down to the river; and finally, back up the canyon walls to the South Rim where we started.

We are 6, in this adventure. The usual four - Ganesh, Gaurav, Santhosh, and me - and Padma and Arun. Padma the meticulous has created a great document consolidating all information. This is what the elevation profile looks like.

Seems like we have an overall elevation drop and gain of 9675ft. split over 4263ft. on the south side over some 9+ miles and 5412ft on the north side over some 14+ miles, totalling to an overall distance of 46-47 miles. There are multiple water holes in the canyon (the various campgrounds), we just need to make sure that they do carry water at this time of the year.

The gorgeous views of the canyon promise to make this the run of a lifetime. Eagerly looking forward to this.

Pacing at the Rio Del Lago 100M

2007-09-25T12:06:00.000-07:00

This was an easy run. It was meant to be part of my training. It was meant to be easy since I was running with folks who had already run 55 miles even as I just started. It was meant to be simple and flat -- not much elevation, nor altitude. But, NO, those reasons didnt make it easy. In fact, turns out that, matter not the reasons and justifications, no 45mile run is an easy run. This run was easy for two special reasons -- the two runners I was pacing, and the incredible crew that had turned out to support them.

The run, for me, began at mile 55, at the Rattlesnake Bar. After a hard time locating it (despite accurate directions from Anil Vaidya, and persistent phone support from Anurag), the never-tiring Rashmi drove me to Rattlesnake Bar aid station just as Anil and Rajeev got there. We negotiated a rather tricky 12miles back to the school through multiple ribbon-less forks. Lots of folks apparently got lost in this stretch, including Gary (one of our runners, Char was waiting at the school to pace him), who lost nearly 4 hours.

The scene at the school was incredible. Reminded me of the scene at the start/finish line at Sunmart. It was loaded with Asha folks (apparently they were only 12, but the excitement and entertainment made them seem like 40). This was nearly 67miles into the race, and the runners had a longer recovery break, and also changed gear for the chillier night. We were also joined by Mouli who would pace with us for the next 10miles.

Couple of miles before Hazel Bluff, I spoke with Cory on the phone. She was at Hazel Bluff and sounded very anxious. Apparently Alan had not checked in at Hazel Bluff, and had past the Folsom Dam station a very long time ago. One look at her face at Hazel Bluff we knew all was good, there was relief written all over her face. She told us that Alan had missed checking into that aid station and had gone ahead to the turnaround. Alan was having a very hard race being unable to keep anything inside him from very early in the run. The strong runner he is, he walked and ran through it all, and got to a strong finish.

Amidst much singing and joking, the next 10miles went by faster than the previous 12 (in the mind only, the clock told a different story). We arrived at the Hazel Bluff aid station to be greeted by more Asha folks. Some refreshment, light banter, trading Mouli for Chakri later, we moved out for the final 12miles out and back section. We managed a 10minute sleep in this section at a picnic bench, while Chakri watched out for the three of us. Spent minimal time on the turnaround and as we got back to Hazel Bluff, Nattu caught up with us. He had also gotten lost in the Rattlesnake-School section and had spent some time at the school aid station. Soon he had past us, the bridge, and missed the downhill towards the aid station and had set out charting his own course on the freeway shoulder. I ran behind him to get him back on course, while Rajeev, Anil and Chakri shouted out for him before he saw us gesturing and returned.

Swapping Chakri for Anu at Hazel Bluff, we sauntered our way back the last 11 miles, walking almost all of it until the last couple of 100meters into the finish. Anil seemed much stronger than at TRT, and Rajeev was fresh as ever. We met Chihping a little before the finish. We had first met him in the night at the turnaround and he seemed to be hurting really bad. But the new dawn seemed to have done its bit, and when we met him Chihping seemed to be his usual self. Of course this was his 5th hundred miler in less than 2 months!

Pacing is great fun. You get to run a fair bit, plus the crew also takes care of you, as they do the runners. Essentially you get the benefits of the 100mile runners while doing the work of a 50mile runner! Minus the buckle, of course!

I have to repeat this. As Asha runners, we are a privileged lot. I've seen this in multiple races. We are the envy of all other runners, for the crew we have. I've run a fair number of races without the Asha crew, and the difference is incredibly stark. Blessed are we to be running these mountains and these distances, but to be cheered and crewed by multitudes of Asha crowd is very heaven.

Stevens Creek 50K -- blood blisters, DNF and other stories

2007-09-18T08:44:00.000-07:00

Ran (well, started) the Stevens Creek 50K this Saturday. It was a good day to run to start with and slowly got hot as the day wore on. This race is a long standing tradition in the Bay Area and is free of charge. The volunteers are from the local Audubon Society, and any donations to the Birdwatchers of Audubon was welcome. I started the day with "lead legs" and slowly got into rhythm running with Anil the first 5-6 miles. Soon my plantars started hurting and I let Anil go ahead. Pushed and prodded my way slowly to the first aid station, as the feet continued to boil.

The next 10 miles were excruciating. Could barely plant my feet on the ground. Dragged ass all the way to the aid station. Took me 5:17 to get to the 20mile aid station. Over there, I pulled my shoes off, and discovered lots of blue spots which hurt when I touched them. Eventually I learnt they were called blood blisters. Decided right there to stop running, and go back to my tried and trusted Brooks. Something with the Montrails -- my feet dont like them.

While administering to my feet, I saw Beth Vitalis finish. She was zooming through the trails, and a subsequent examination of her feet revealed many rather nasty blisters. Its a happy feeling to be home and having hot food fully knowing that ideally I would have been struggling on the trail, and folks like Anil and Padma were still doing that.

Orwellian truths on how to write

2007-09-17T07:59:00.000-07:00

George Orwell in 1946 published the essay Politics and the English Language lamenting the abuse of cliches in the English language.

Now, it is clear that the decline of a language must ultimately have political and economic causes: it is not due simply to the bad influence of this or that individual writer. But an effect can become a cause, reinforcing the original cause and producing the same effect in an intensified form, and so on indefinitely. A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.

Read the whole essay, its definitely worth the while of anyone even remotely interested in the language. Orwell summarizes his points with the following six suggestions to be followed when communicating in English --

Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
Never use a long word where a short one will do.
If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
Never use the passive where you can use the active.
Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

Link to couple more Orwellian articles -- Nonsense Poetry and In defence of P G Wodehouse.

Government fostered Inequality, or how the many go hungry feeding the few

2007-09-14T10:42:00.000-07:00

Read about this rather interesting restaurant in this essay by Russel Roberts. If You're Paying, I'll Have Top Sirloin first appeared in the Wall Street Journal, 18-May-1995.

When you eat there, you usually spend about $6—you have a sandwich, some fries and a drink. Of course you'd also enjoy dessert and a second drink, but that costs an additional $4. The extra food isn't worth $4 to you, so you stick with the $6 meal.

Sometimes, you go to the same restaurant with three friends. The four of you are in the habit of splitting the check evenly. You realize after a while that the $4 drink and dessert will end up costing you only $1, because the total tab is split four ways. Should you order the drink and dessert? If you're a nice person, you might want to spare your friends from having to subsidize your extravagance. Then it dawns on you that they may be ordering extras financed out of your pocket. But they're your friends. They wouldn't do that to you and you wouldn't do that to them. And if anyone tries it among the group, social pressure will keep things under control.

But now suppose the tab is split not at each table but across the 100 diners that evening across all the tables. Now adding the $4 drink and dessert costs only 4¢. Splurging is easy to justify now. In fact you won't just add a drink and dessert; you'll upgrade to the steak and add a bottle of wine. Suppose you and everyone else each orders $40 worth of food. The tab for the entire restaurant will be $4000. Divided by the 100 diners, your bill comes to $40. Here is the irony. You'll get your "fair share." The stranger at the restaurant a few tables over pays for your meal, but you also help subsidize his. It all "evens out."

But this outcome is a disaster. When you dine alone, you spend $6. The extra $34 of steak and other treats are not worth it. But in competition with the others, you've chosen a meal far out of your price range whose enjoyment falls far short of its cost.

Self-restraint goes unrewarded. If you go back to ordering your $6 meal in hopes of saving money, your tab will be close to $40 anyway unless the other 99 diners cut back also. The good citizen feels like a chump.

And so we read of the freshman Congressman who comes to Congress eager to cut pork out of the budget but in trouble back home because local projects will also come under the knife. Instead of being proud to lead the way, he is forced to fight for those projects to make sure his district gets its "fair share."

Matters get much worse when there are gluttons and drunkards at the restaurant mixing with dieters and teetotalers. The average tab might be $40, but some are eating $80 worth of food while others are stuck with a salad and an iced tea.

Those with modest appetites would like to flee the smorgasbord, but suppose it's the only restaurant in town and you are forced to eat there every night. Resentment and anger come naturally. And being the only restaurant in town, you can imagine the quality of the service.

Such a restaurant can be a happy place if the light eaters enjoy watching the gluttony of those who eat and drink with gusto.

People who are overeating at the expense of others should be ashamed. That shame will return when others are forced to cut back too. This requires deep cuts and an end to the government smorgasbord where the few benefit at the expense of the many.

PS: Link to Roberts' essay from a friend. This and many similar essays were reprinted in the book The Libertarian Reader, David Boaz, Editor, Free Press, 1997.

Pikes Peak -- up once, up twice, down!

2007-09-13T16:50:00.000-07:00

Pikes Peak stands alone in all its vibrant bare majesty. From anywhere in the area, you see all other hills dwarfed by this tree-less peak. The website talks about this race with a respect I havent seen anywhere else...

"There’s a reason trees don’t bother growing above 12,000' on Pikes Peak. They can’t! Makes one wonder if trees are smarter than runners. Above treeline most runners take 30 minutes or more, some much more, just to cover a mile. What little air remains can’t satisfy the endless stream of zombies hoping only to survive
their next step—a death march right out of a scene from Dawn of the Dead"

We got there on Friday, the usual four and our crew, Roopa. We had decided to do the Pikes Peak D-D-D-Double, which is Ascent (13.3 miles, 7000ft gain) on Saturday, and the full marathon (ascent and return) on Sunday. Padma was to join us on Saturday, she was doing the marathon on Sunday.

Finally, the key to our success on both days was the ideal pacing. We refused to run up the hill, and kept a very steady pace. I also discovered the low oxygen makes me talk continuously. Santhosh bore the brunt of my verbal diarrhea including songs from Disney movies...

The above was just one of the lot. The hill when paced carefully and walked steadily didnt offer much trouble. Also, we won the altitude lottery. Altitude sickness is like a toss of a coin. You either get into trouble or you dont. Padma got into so much trouble, at 12000 ft she could barely coordinate her walking. She was forced to (prudently) pull out at the treeline. The first day, we chilled out at the Summit for a while (14100 ft) and promptly got a headache. The second day was much better. The chart below gives an idea of the elevation and profile we were climbing.

In the end, it all worked pretty well. The ascent took us 5:14 and the next day the climb took 5:09 with 8:20 for the full marathon. Had to hold Santhosh back on the downhills and we saved our quads in the bargain. Gaurav, Santhosh and myself finished hand in hand, while Ganesh came tumbling soon after.

On the first day, Roopa deciding to do her long run, walked up the course up to Barr camp, and got down, covering over 15miles! A very interesting race, and a hard one at that. But it gets a lot more roadies (road runners) and is a little extra hyped because of that. If you are used to ultra distances, this one is fairly straightforward. Only trick is the altitude. If you get sick at altitude, then this is not the race for you. Either that, or you have to get there three weeks early and acclimatize to the place. This was the second of our series of four races. Two down two to go. Details on the other two will be up soon.

All in a day's work of an Indian MP

2007-09-12T10:53:00.000-07:00

Parliamentary Research Services gathers statistics of attendance of our esteemed members of the Parliament and analyzes them. Take a look at their MP attendance analysis for the period 2004 to 2006. Many trends fall out, including the fact that parties with no stake in the ruling government (BJP, BSP) have the lowest attendances.

It's quite incredible, to see how the public money gets spent. Check out the daily agenda in the Loksabha -- I've picked yesterday, pick your own date, yesterday is one of the better days. Every single report being presented to the council, has time marked to make a statement showing reasons for delay in reporting it.

"Statement (Hindi and English versions) showing reasons for delay in laying the papers mentioned at (1) above."

The real irony comes from Aug 21st agenda. Check this out --

12. SHRI RAJESH VERMA and SHRI NIKHIL KUMAR CHOUDHARY to lay on the Table minutes (Hindi and English versions) of the 7th sittings of the Committee on Absence of Members from the sittings of the House held on 7 December, 2006.

Minutes of a meeting held in december 2006 regarding absence of members, is being presented in August 2007!!!

All this is the loksabha. The rajyasabha doesnt let anything out. Today's agenda is "government business". In the name of all that is sweet and pure, what else can they ever do?

SocialWatch India had an article back in 2003. Quoting from it --

Time lost on account of unruly behavior: The Lok Sabha lost over 60 hours to disruptions. The cost of Parliamentary transactions is currently estimated to be Rs 18,430 per minute. The loss to the public exchequer can be easily imagined. The only thing that can be said in favour of MPs is that the time lost due to disruptions was less in 2003 as compared to 2002. One can perhaps attribute this marginal improvement to the increasing media attention to disruption of Parliament and the mounting public displeasure over the way MPs are squandering public money. Decreasing number of sittings: For 36 years from the time of its inception in 1952, the Lok Sabha sat for over 100 days every year. In fact, it averaged 138 sittings in a year for several years and came down to 102 days in 1988. Since then, it has fallen to just about 80 days in a year. But the year 2003 saw a further decline- the Lok Sabha sat for only 74 days during the year.

Unfinished business-pending Bills: In Rajya Sabha more than 30 bills are pending, which include the bills pending for more than 10 years. This includes bills such as the Indian Medical Council (amendment) bill introduced in 1987. In the Lok Sabha, the end of every session during the year 2003 saw about 30-40 pending Government Bills. At the end of the fourteenth session, the number of pending Private Members Bills stood at 261.

Who will watch the watchdogs?

What price, our education system?

2007-09-05T16:44:00.000-07:00

Today, Sep 5th, on Teacher's Day, spare a thought to the education of the children of India. For one fancy moment, imagine that we are not mired in the morass of an antediluvian British education system. If today, we were to invent an education system from scratch, unburdened of history, what would be its primary features? What does education truly mean? Is graduating from high school a measure of the quality of the education received? Or should a good education guarantee a successful life in a socio-economic sense?

Our current education system is often critiqued as one that "dims the diamonds and polishes the pebbles". Citizens, 'educated' ones, accept as a fact of life, that some kids are smarter than others. Is that really true, or is it just a reflection of a poor system which judges not too wisely? Forget examples of Gandhi and Einstein, each one of us are acquainted with at least one person who did not do well in school, but later was a success in life.

Our education system demands too much from the kids. First up, children need to be judged and judged well - read smart - to find opportunities to success in life. What can you say of a system which starts with the premise that one half will necessarily be judged unsuccessful compared to the other half? The system expects children to be good at everything in school to be judged smart. A child who isnt matching up to other kids in subjects on offer at school, but is excelling in painting and running, is deemed unsuccessful. You only need to talk to the child in question and you will hear, in marked diffident tones, "weak in math". How strong is a system which can make a child feel weak?

Which brings us to the essential question, "in the name of education, should we build on the strengths of a child, or as we do now, minimize his/her weaknesses"? Shouldn't the goal of our education system be, to create a body of strong citizens for the future, rather than a body of not-so-weak individuals? How can one uniform system be the solution to educate the children of a nation of billion individuals, with innumerable cultural, language, social, economic, and geographical differences? It appears to be a case of supreme ego (or 'fatal conceit', as Hayek would put it) to mandate one system of education upon the entire nation.

This is not to say that we do not need an education system. However, maybe it is time to revisit what should be the basis of that system. Quite likely that all the intellectual infrastructure the education system needs is the three Rs -- an abbreviation used from the 1800s, for 'reading', 'riting' (writing), and 'rithmetic' (arithmetic). The rest of the education system could then provide the atmosphere to foster the strengths of each child.

This Teacher's day, as we honor that important body of our people, who mould the minds of our future generations, let us give a thought to the how and why behind the moulding. Let us not condemn our children to mistaken notions of a vestigial system because we chose to turn a blind eye to its deep rooted ills.

Where then the promised freedom? 60 years and counting...

2007-08-15T16:45:00.000-07:00

Sixty years to our independence today, as India awakes to a new president who, when running a bank, took money from the women depositors, distributed most of that money amongst her relatives as loans and, according to RBI, did nothing to recover that money, thereby causing that bank to shut down. A president who can talk to spirits. A president who, during emergency envisioned an India where people with hereditary diseases were to be forcibly sterilized. And yet, a president who is a woman too. In any other mature democracy, our president would be in jail for fraud, not in Rashtrapathi Bhavan. Today, India celebrates its sixty years of independence and its first woman president! The two represent the cornerstones of the evils in our social, economic, and political systems -- a resting on the laurels of past actions (we are an ancient civilization), and an apathetic acceptance of our curtailed personal freedom.

The story of our freedom struggle, was not the story of a Gandhi here and a Nehru there -- it was about millions of people who wanted to be master of their own destiny. The British empire was a natural target, and the relief is palpable in the speeches made on that historical day, three score years ago. The tragedy is that for most Indians, political freedom was enough. An oppressive regime gave way to an oppressive state, and we did not protest. Lack of economic freedom continued to keep India poor, and we did not protest. Corruption was rife, and we accepted it as a way of life, and did not protest. Personal freedom was routinely denied to us, and we did not protest. In parts of our country today, people are treated worse than the British treated us, and we do not protest. We have come to accept mediocrity, and we do not protest. As a nation, we stopped caring for freedom once we gained independence.

Take economic freedom, for instance. At the time of our independence, the Indian economy was very different - it was much poorer and less industrialized, and government was less important - revenue was just 5 per cent of the gross domestic product. But our governments introduced industrial licensing, and later used it to create government monopolies in a series of industries, including heavy machinery, fertilizer, coal, shipping and aircraft, and prevent new private entry into industries such as steel. Traditional, liberal (in the traditional sense of supporting freedom) Congress-party workers protested, some even left the Congress and started their own political parties, but as a nation we allowed our freedom to be curtailed, little realising the fact that in this lay the seeds of gross economic inequality we were to see sixty years later.

Take trade, for example. When two people make a transaction, they only do so because both are better off. Prosperity is the result of a chain of such win-win transactions between people profiting by fulfilling each other's needs. But Jawaharlal Nehru once described profit as a "dirty word" and gave in to the fatal conceit, to use Friedrich Hayek's phrase, of imagining that the economy, and the lives of people, could be planned.

The benefits of economic freedom are largely unintuitive, and rarely has lack of that freedom been protested by the masses in any society. But what about personal freedom? The Indian Penal Code, drafted by our imperial overlords in the 19th century to keep us natives in place, and tailored on Victorian morality, is filled with archaic laws that should have been repealed 60 years ago. Section 377 effectively outlaws homosexuality. Section 295(a), that makes it illegal to "outrage religious feelings", routinely used by bigots, from all religions, to stifle free expression. It is filled with laws that criminalise the act of giving offence, outlaw victimless crimes and treat women as the property of men.

What about our education system? The British empire set up an education system which guaranteed to generate a body of clerks to serve the Queen. Not once did we think about reviewing the system. Nor did we think about spending money to guarantee education to all our children. When Gandhiji asked for compulsory eight years of education for all children of free India, he was silenced by saying there is no money to do that other than by supporting the sale of liquor. Till date, despite the 86th amendment of the constitution which makes primary education a fundamental right of every child, the government drops the Right to Education bill on false excuses of lack of funds. We, the citizens of India, all these years, accepted this lack of freedom, not just for ourselves, we let this visit our children and the future generation of a nation.

Milton Friedman, a prime proponent of local governance, once said -- "There are four ways in which you can spend money. You can spend your own money on yourself. When you do that, why then you really watch out what you're doing, and you try to get the most for your money. Then you can spend your own money on somebody else. For example, I buy a birthday present for someone. Well, then I'm not so careful about the content of the present, but I'm very careful about the cost. Then, I can spend somebody else's money on myself. And if I spend somebody else's money on myself, then I'm sure going to have a good lunch! Finally, I can spend somebody else's money on somebody else. And if I spend somebody else's money on somebody else, I'm not concerned about how much it is, and I'm not concerned about what I get. And that is a government."

Dr. Ambedkar, deified today as the demigod of Dalit politics, rejected the word socialist in the preamble of our constitution and remarked thus -- "What should be the policy of the State, how the society should be organized in a social and economic sense are matters which must be decided by the people themselves according to time and local circumstances. It cannot be laid down in the constitution itself, because that is destroying democracy altogether".

Freedom for a country should mean every person being free to live their lives as they please, as long as they do not interfere with the similar freedoms of others. These past sixty years, India's democracy has not matured into a participatory republic but has only remained symbolic by allowing an orderly transfer of power through the ballot box. Instead of participating in the governance and demanding our freedoms, for long we have allowed our mai-baap sarkar to treat us as subjects, not citizens, and continue to deny us our freedoms.

In the Hindu culture, the 60th anniversary is an important milestone, amongst other things an occasion to renew marriage vows. Sixty years ago, our nation married democracy, and this anniversary is an opportunity to renew those vows. Today is an opportunity to think about the freedoms we dont have; the freedoms that have been denied to us; the freedoms that we so easily didnt care for. There is an age old political adage that we get the leaders we deserve. Today, as India celebrates its sixty years of independence, let us be the leaders we
deserve to have.

Pacing at the Tahoe Rim Trail, another 50miler

2007-07-25T12:24:00.000-07:00

About three weeks ago, Anil asked me if I was free to come to Lake Tahoe on the weekend of the Tahoe Rim Trail 100, and pace them (Anil and Rajeev) in the night for 26 miles. It was to be the weekend after my Devil's Backbone 50 miler. I figured that would be a good way to move legs after the 50miler and also taper down for Pikes. What with the San Francisco half marathon lined up for the weekend after TRT, my running distances were half-life-ing quite well -- a damn desirable taper, I thought.

I agreed to pace. Roopa, who was initially going to come along, couldn't join due to running and other commitments. I decided to not drive and instead joined forces with GB (Deepak and Deepu to a lot of folks) and Aruna in SF. It also gave me time to read the just released HP book. Took the train up to the city, got picked up by GB and Aruna, and headed out towards Tahoe, after a brief brunch stop. It was all smooth sailing until we passed Auburn, when all of a sudden the car stopped accelerating. Thanks to good presence of mind by Aruna, who pulled over to the shoulder out of harm's way, and to Geico's towing service, we were soon sitting in the car on a truck and reading Harry Potter, while travelling back to the Nissan dealership in Auburn.

Auburn is a typical central California super-sleepy town. The Nissan service center was closed for the weekend. All rental car agencies were also closed for the weekend. Anu and Bharti who had started travelling towards Tahoe just a little while ago were reached just in time for them to travel our way, so that they could pick us up. All this while there was no guarantee that we would reach Tahoe in time for me to pace Anil and Rajeev. They had started running at 5AM and were expecting to get to mile 50 around 8PM. Too many constraints. So we just cest la vie -d it away, had lunch, and started reading HP7 while we waited.

Eventually it all turned out well, barely in time. Anu and Bharti came. We got picked up. We reached the start area just before 8PM. I changed in the car and ran down to the trail to pick up a pacer bib. And within 20-30minutes from that, Anil and Rajeev had come into the mile50 aid station.

I met Fagan at the mile50 aid station. He was hobbling rather bad. Meredith was helping him, as did I. We helped him change socks and shoes. He had run the first 50miles in 15hours, but had bust his quads in the 2400ft downhill of the last 7miles. Also met Jessi and Shawn who had cracked their races. It was rather nice to land up at TRT 50mile aid station, and run into 4 HCTR folks right away. They told me that MeredithT was also running, but they weren't sure where she was. We got Fagan ready and urged him to get going soon.

Soon Anil and Rajeev had come in and were attended to by the half a dozen minstering angels of our crew. Arul, Gayatri, Anu, Bharti, GB, Aruna were a fantastic crew, and the never-tiring Rashmi was holding it all together. The guys spent some time getting into warmer clothes, cleaner socks etc., had pizza and we left the aid station at 9PM, 16hours into their race. We had 19 more hours to cover the next 50miles, with various intermediate cut-offs in between. Rajeev and Anil were remarkably strong for having covered 50miles already. We started out walking up the hill to the Hobart aid station. The strategy was clear -- walk the uphills, power the straights, and run or shuffle the downhills. After a long-ish climb, we came up to Hobart. It had taken us a little over 2-1/2 hours to cover those 6miles. We ran into Fagan sitting in Hobart. He had taken over 3-1/2 hours to get up there, and was done. He seemed to be in pain, and was waiting for transportation to take him back to the start/finish area. Rajeev was joking with all the aid station volunteers as we tried to spend very little time there.

The downhill from Hobart to Tunnel was negotiated quickly and we set off for the Red House loop. These 6 miles were our best. It had some rather steep uphill climbs, and we kept a very good power-walk pace up them hills and covered it in 2 hours. Mind, I was just starting to run, but Anil and Rajeev had 50miles over me already! By now we were done with 67miles and we met Alan and Pete who seemed to be running together, were done with 85. Then we set out for the long 9 mile stretch to Mt. Rose, where we would meet our crew. This stretch was gorgeous as the darkest hour turned into a glorious sunrise over Washoe Lake. Anil was growing increasingly sleepy by now. As the day broke, we broke for a 15min nap for Anil. Met a few more runners coming back from Mt. Rose, who seemed to express an urgency if we were to meet the cut-off. That woke Anil up, and we ran. We took the downhills hard, power-walked the uphills and ran 3 miles straight to get into Mt. Rose at 6:35AM (cut off 7:40AM).

The entire crew was hanging around at Mt. Rose, waiting for the runners. We quickly changed into daytime clothes. By now, we had been discussing cutoffs and time strategies for a while, and I felt we (Rajeev, Anil, and me) were a team. There was no way I could drop off at mile 76 and let them do the last 24 miles by themselves. Besides, my ankle and shins were keeping quiet, and given that they had 50miles over me, we were moving slow enough to not have tired me out yet. In all, a decision was taken to go back the 24 miles with the runners. The only deal was I had come to Tahoe prepared to run 26miles and at night. For eg., I didn't have any clip2 on me. I had run out of the electrolytes I normally used. Didnt have light daytime clothing. Also had not eaten a lot during the initial running phase. So told myself that I need to be conscious of salt/sugar content and force feed myself at aid stations, to go the 50miles without trouble.

The return unfolded in phases. The first one was the 9mile stretch back to Tunnel. Anil was desperately sleepy in this stretch. We had put in about an hour buffer, and Rajeev had promised Anil a 10min sleep at Tunnel. However, along the way, Anil could hardly hold it in. At one point he sat down, and said I'll sleep two minutes and come. We let him take those two minutes (and exactly two) and urged him to continue moving. From there onwards, I let Rajeev lead ahead, and I stayed right behind Anil, until the end of the race. At another point, he (Anil) actually fell asleep on the trail while running, and seemed like he was running off course. That was when I actually felt scared. Touched and woke him up. Rajeev gave him some coke, and the sudden sugar and the caffeine seemed to briefly wake him up. Sipping coke, we pushed to the top of Diamond Peak, where we had water. We washed our faces, as Anil and Rajeev took a caffeine pill each. From there on, sleep became less of an issue, as we ran downhill all the way to Tunnel.

At Tunnel, Anil took his promised 10min nap and I reinforced my learning from last week that eating solid food is very hard for me at high altitudes. Pikes is not gonna be easy. We did the hill from Tunnel to Hobart at a fast clip and got into Hobart about 45min ahead of cutoff. Then the painful uphill to Snow Valley took for ever, fighting the damn flies, and we left the highest point in the race (9200ft) with 35-40min buffer. The last 7miles were excruciating. In retrospect, and Anil agreed with me later on this, we should have run hard. We had crawled to a slow pace, and the monotonous downhill threatened to sap our spirits. The only thing that kept us going was the knowledge that all downhills eventually have to end. Finally we got to the last aid station, and pushed past the final 2 miles, and ran in the last 100meters hand in hand. It had taken them 34hrs and 11min, and me 18hrs and 11min!

In all, an extremely memorable night and day. I got to pace my first coach (from Asha '03) and one of my first running buddies (Rancho '03) on their 100milers. I'll never forget Rajeev's constant encouragement over emails (and some phone calls) during my first marathon training. I was training alone in Austin, while the team was in the bay area. Rajeev had given me an envelope at my first marathon, with a note and some inspiring stories. Still read it, before my races. I've held very dear, my runs with Anil, Arun (Simha), Amit (Sethi), Anu, Kaarthik and others at Rancho from '03 summer. In particular, there was an 18-mile run in the Oracle trail on a particularly hot day. I had freshly had an ITB injury, and was hobbling and struggling to move, and Anil slowed down, stayed with me (from pretty much the start) and helped me to the finish, and then took one of my fuel belt bottles and went out for 4 more miles. These kinda things form hard to describe bonds, and this camaraderie is one of the prime reasons I keep coming back to the trails. Sunday, I was honored to run in, holding hands, with Rajeev and Anil.

Thanks guys, and CONGRATS on the 100miler!

PS: And a huge thanks to Rashmi and the crew for everything (starting from ferrying me there and bringing me back home).

PPS: There was a darned huge blister underneath my toe. Never realised when it started. I thought I had pebbles in my shoes. I even stopped once and cleaned the socks and shoe and put them back on. Finally turned out to be a rather nasty blister. Anil, the surgeon, stuck a scissors in it and cleaned it up for me. Need new shoes, I guess.

Devil's Backbone 50

2007-07-19T00:42:00.000-07:00

It all began at Dry Fork aid station in the Big Horn mountains in Wyoming. First, I had missed the cut-off at mile 34 in the Big Horn 50mile race, fought with the aid station volunteers to allow me to continue, lost that fight, and was sitting around pondering about the DNF while waiting for a ride back to the finish line. Next, on the flight back from Billings to Denver, Leah mentioned that she's gonna do another 50, maybe the Tahoe Rim Trail. That got me thinking, maybe I could do another 50 before Pikes.

To cut it short, Tahoe Rim Trail having filled up, and some umpteen searches later, zero-ed in on the same damn Montana mountain ranges and came up with Devil's Backbone in the Gallatin ranges. First up, I told the rest of the bloo-frat (Santhosh, Gaurav, Ganesh, Anita and Sanjeev), and they said you are crazy, do it! Next up, I sent a long email to Joe (Prusaitis, our 'cool' coach) asking him myriad questions. Joe replied "go run it... I would! /joe". I registered.

I should first explain what made this race different. It was going to be entirely unmarked and unsupported (except for a drop bag at mile 25). The Gallatin ranges were home to grizzlies and mountain lions and elks. The entire race would be run above 9000ft elevation. We were to climb a total of 12500ft, 8000ft on the way over and 4500ft on the return in an out and back rocky course. In the bargain we were to bag 4 big peaks and a bunch of little peaks along the way, the tallest peak at 11000 ft. The elevation profile looked something like this:

Tom (Hayes, the race director) and Liz (his wife) put this race up almost entirely by themselves, and they do a swell job. There were 38 starters, and we met up at Tom's house the evening before for packet pickup, a race briefing, and some dinner. Tom had said this earlier, and he repeated it again that there was a lot of snow on the course, and that we had nothing to worry about with regard to water. Of course, I didn't believe him. Who had ever heard of using snow to fill your camelbak! Then he went on to talk about the 4 confusing points on the trail, where one could get de-railed and lost. Then the next 4 and so on... I returned to my room sufficiently convinced that there will be some way lost on the morrow.

The race promptly started at 5:30am with daybreak. I had my strategy all in place. The first 7.5 miles were a climb to the top of Hyalite peak, and I was gonna power walk that entire hill. Soon effects of altitude started showing. Turns out high altitude makes you light-headed and dizzy. Soon the power walk gave way to walk and I joined ranks with Lisa for most of that climb. Lisa was training for Leadville next month, and she was walking up this peak as well. Halfway up the peak, I realised the potential of all the snow lying around -- sno-cones! It was getting hot by then, and the snow eaten with a bit of electrolytes was tasting heavenly. I dumped half my water and decided to stick to snow. (The previous night I had already dropped the extra 70oz bladder, and had decided to stick to just one 100oz bladder.) Liz had, the previous night, taught me optimal snow filling strategy -- you have to add the snow while the bladder/bottle is still half full with liquid, otherwise the snow wont really melt.

Hyalite peak was gorgeous. None of the greenery and trees and showy flowers. Rocky, bare, cold, and majestic. The starkness of it all was really striking. Paused briefly to pick up a poker chip (this was to claim proof of bagging the peak!) and to soak in the mood of the rocky brilliance, and started down the peak. This was around 11000ft elevation and I was fairly light-headed, dizzy and had a bad headache. We stayed on the ridge for a bit, and then came down the peak to Crater Lake and further down from there to the valley floor, all the while feeling sad about the dropping elevation since we knew we had to climb it all again.

And so it went on, crossing peaks and staying on the ridge for the most part, until we got to the half way turnaround point at the Windy cabin. Tom was hanging around there waiting for us. Just the four of us were left at that point -- Mark (Henderson) was running with Penny (Mooney) and Lisa and myself. All others had either turned back or had dropped from the race. We more or less started together from the halfway point, and I let the others go ahead as I slowly dragged myself up the steep hill. I couldnt eat anything all day (could be the altitude) and so was surviving on two packs of clip2 and electrolytes, some grapes and lots of snow. Tom who was going to sweep the course behind the last runner caught up with me. One look at me, and he said that there is no shame in dropping out, it is a hard race, particularly for folks who come from sea-level. I promptly decided to put some distance between him and me. After a while he caught up with me again, and this time he knew I was gonna go back the whole way. Then we started chatting different other stuff and checked out the scenery as we travelled the ridge. At one point we were in the sun, watching one section of the 360 degree view rain, looking at the mountains of Yellowstone national park in an other, and beautiful meadows going down the slopes in a third section.

And then it started raining. The good part was it cooled the day, from a blistering 90 to something quite chilly, probably something in the 50s. Luckily I was carrying my windcheater on me. Not much one can do when it rains on the ridge. Absolutely no where to hide. In time the rains stopped. Soon we hit some steep downhills, and these I was taking at a fair clip. For once I understood what Joe meant by kicking rocks. I was rolling my ankes all over, but for once I didnt care. Its very different and quite a delight to go down rocks along steep downhills at high altitude. Soon I caught up with Mark, Penny, and Lisa (who had joined forces since mile 25). At an other downhill I left them and made my way back to the Hyalite peak. There was a rather tricky (and dangerous) downhill crossing Hyalite peak, all covered up in snow. I was trying to move fast as I could with the sole intention of negotiating that downhill in daylight. The hill going up through crater lake slowed me down quite a bit. Then there were four dudes on motorcycles, who wanted to know what we were doing, and I just needed an excuse to sit down and talk.

Eventually the Hyalite peak was negotiated and as I proceeded further down, it started to get dark. All this while, in daylight, it was reasonably easy to spot the cairns and not get lost. Once it got dark life became very tricky. Soon I got to a point where the trail ended into a stream. In the distance there were two lights which could only have been a pair of eyes. At this point it was around 9:30pm, thats 16 hours into the race and 44miles covered so far. I knew there were three runners and Tom behind me for sure. I decided to wait for the next runner and team up and negotiate the last 6 miles in the dark. In about 20-30 minutes Lisa came by. She was having a hard time eating anything and looked quite done in. She wasnt sure which way the trail was either, and the eyes unnerved her too. (She had already been unnerved at a snow crossing earlier, and was in tears before she was helped across it.) So we figured we'll wait for the next runner. In 10min, the next runner turned out to be Mark and Penny along with Tom. Penny's knee was troubling her quite a bit and had kept her moving slow.

Tom took a look, and decided that the stream itself was the trail and that the water must have been flooded onto the trail with the rains. So we walked in the stream for some time and sure enough the stream stopped and the trail began. After this point, it ceased to be a race. It was too dark to negotiate an unmarked trail alone, and the five of us decided to walk it back to the finish talking and chatting merrily. It took a long while to cover those 6 miles. We crossed a few bridges, got our feet wet in many streams, and eventually made our way to the finish line.

Liz and Lisa's boyfriend Mike were waiting for us. They had a nice fire going, and we gathered around the fire, toasting our toes, while Liz bustled around getting us water and our finisher's pilsner glass. Its quite cool, it has the red devil logo and says "Unmarked, Unsupported, Unequalled". 25 of the 38 had finished. We had taken 18hours and 52minutes.

Tom and Liz put up a great race, besides being wonderful hosts. It was a real pleasure to meet them and run with them. In all, it was an amazing day. It was over 7 1/2 hours longer than the longest I had ever run. The unmarked and unsupported aspects were very cool. The best part of course was the sno-cones. And it all culminated in true trail running camaraderie, as the last four runners and the race director joined forces and talked and joked and laughed our way back along the last 6 miles.

PS: It was a week to the tragic death of Rick at the Greenbelt. As all other HCTR members, marking a memorial run for Rick on Saturday, I had worn black. After looking at the pictures that Joe had of Rick, I recognized having seen him in the Greenbelt a couple of times. Its such a terrible tragedy. RIP Rick.

Back to badass Montana -- DB50

2007-06-27T08:09:00.000-07:00

Found another 50mile race in the same damn Montana mountains. The Devil's Backbone. Sounds like a very interesting race. This is what the race website says:

This is a graduate level run (yes, like Hardrock). It is almost unsupported and unmarked. This CANNOT be your first 50 miler. This course is much, much harder than you expect. There are many cairns and you primarily stay on the ridge but with no ribbon it is still possible to get well off course. The "graduate" part is due to the requirement to carry what you need for 5 - 9 hours of running and once out on the course there is no easy way out until the turnaround. You are almost always above 9500 feet on a rocky (but beautiful) trail. Course starts and finishes at the Hyalite Creek Trailhead and is out and back on 100% trails with one significant climb to 10,300 feet and multiple short steep climbs totaling 11,400 feet. Though the climb is not huge, it is deceptively hard due to elevation and sometimes rocky trails. Please, experienced ultrarunners only! The course will not be marked except by FS blazes and cairns. It is generally well-worn except in meadows. Hand drawn and Topo maps available at the website. There will be nice streams multiple times in the first (and last) 7 miles. There is a murky lake at 11 miles (and 39 miles), and a very small spring a quarter mile later and lots of snow to put in your water carrier. There is a nice creek at the 25 mile turnaround point. Water has certainly been frequented by wildlife, especially the lake, so a filter is strongly recommended. Cutoff is 9 hours at the turn-around cabin. Exposure is extreme in case of a thunderstorm. Possibility of elk, mountain lions and bears (all seen in 2005) and the most beautiful views imaginable of Paradise Valley and the Absaroka and Spanish Peaks mountain ranges.

I promptly wrote to Joe about the race, and asked him myriad questions about it, and what I should do. Joe replied:

go run it...
I would!
/joe

I registered. This is on the weekend of Jul 14th. Much expectation exists albeit tempered by a modicum of trepidation.

Cornucopia of morass at the Big Horn

2007-06-27T05:22:00.000-07:00

At the end of it all, it hurt. The truth slowly hit home -- "Don't do fartleks between miles 28 and 34, it can't ever do good to your shins!". Being pulled out at mile 34.5 sucks. It was a new experience, first brush with not meeting a cut-off time, in fact even coming close to one, Ganesh's warnings and other jinxes notwithstanding.

It started off with a sleepless night in Billings and the rest of the bloo-frat arrived the morning after. Breakfast was had at Dennys over eggs and gossip and we drove out to sleepy Sheridan soon after. Montana is beautiful. Lots of hills and large undulating grassy meadows. Soon we were checked into the hotel and started preparing the drop bags, even as Santhosh provided customary entertainment. Dano had prepared very cool tags to attach to the drop bags. Met him and Mike and Clarence at the hotel, and Renee, Brenda, and Leah at the packet pickup. The 100milers were already on the course by then. Rest of the day was spent in anticipation, pizza, and Asha emails.

The day of the race started at 2:30AM. We got to the start in Dayton and took the race bus to the Porcupine ranger station, our start line and mile 52 for the 100milers. All the 50milers gathered together for many photographs, all decked in spotless clean shoes. Little did we know the kind of muddy quagmires that awaited us.

We started promptly at 6AM. Within the first 5 minutes I was out of breath, within 10, wheezing, and by 20minutes was running downhill with side stitches. I am not sure if it was the pollen or the altitude, but I sure hope it wasnt the latter. Then there was all the mud and slush and other subsidiary morass. Over the day, my leg went into the quagmires atleast 8 times (once until the knee), and at mile 3, breaking my no-fall-ever record, I did a sideways superman and landed heavily on my side -- falling on sports beans hurts!

Aid stations along the way sucked. Nothing to eat. We are too pampered by Joe's races. Progress was slow throughout the downhill, impeded by the mud and breath. Reached the first dropbags at mile18 with 10minutes to cutoff, quickly changed socks, replenished clip2 and endurolyte, picked up a sandwich and Boost and walked out. The next stretch was a long haul, a 2000ft climb in 3miles. I recovered quite a bit on this climb, and managed to power walk parts of it. At the top of the hill, at Bear camp, the volunteers told me that it was 7miles to Cow camp, and 4 more miles from there to Dry Fork, for a cutoff at 4PM.

No excuses, but that did throw me off. I more or less dawdled my way to Cow camp with an hour and 20minutes to spare (to cover my 4 more miles) and was promptly told that Dry Fork was 6 miles away. Now that suddenly sounded very hard. There was only one way out, and I started to do fartleks, and powerwalk the hills. The darned section also had a lot of rolling hills. Pushing through the fartleks, I came around a bend where I could see the aid station. I had 8 minutes and nearly a mile long massive hill, and on top of the hill, Dry Fork aid station. At the realization that I was not going to make the cutoff, my muscles cramped, and I slowly hauled myself up the hill, dragging my feet, and came in some 5-6 minutes late. The aid station volunteers refused to let me go on, even as I fought withthem for a while. Others who had reached before me, and had yet missed the cutoff had also been pulled out.

It was awful. I had never known the feeling of being pulled out after 35miles, with the last nearly 7mi coming in fartleks. A novel experience, cant say I enjoyed it much at that point. Then I chatted with Jennifer from Boulder for a long while, while we waited for a ride back to the start/finish line. By this time, I was also concerned I had messed up my shins, could barely stand, and could hardly walk. Eventually got back, and met with Ganesh. He had been pulled at the mile 18 cutoff point with Dano. Lots of 100milers had been pulled out. Gabe had broken his ankle in two places. Mike had fallen and hurt his rib. Clarence and Renee were pulled at the same point as me. Leah got pulled at the next cutoff. In the end, 3 folks finished the 50miler and 3 finished the 100miler from Austin, while a whopper 85 were pulled out or DNF-ed in a total field of 141. The Big Horn had taken its toll.

Santhosh finished pacing Joe and Diana (the 100milers). Gaurav finished 40minutes after them. The bloo-frat was half-done. A race to remember for the persistent hollow feeling that continues to rankle.

PS: Ganesh's ankle recovered easily, and my shins are much better now. Gaurav seems to have no lasting after effects, and Santhosh who was limping the most after the race, has stubbornly avoided visiting a doctor about his foot -- hopefully thats healing fine too.

Here Endeth The Hiatus

2007-06-14T11:00:00.000-07:00

The long break after Sunmart is over. Have run little and blogged even lesser over the past six months. Allergies have taken their annual toll and have abated now. Successfully moved to Palo Alto and soon after ran the Ohlone 50K from Fremont to Livermore. This running season promises to be long and interesting. Starting with the Big Horn 50M in Wyoming, hopefully onwards to Pikes double in August to larger and longer races as the season grows.

In other news, DNF-ed for the first time in life at Rocky Hill Ranch after 6 odd miles, victim to wheezing. It sucks to DNF and sit around at the finish line pasting stickers on finisher awards, while the runners keep looping for more.

Now for the obligatory Santhosh story. In his latest avatar, Santhosh the Strict, has taken to scaring little girls over emails and phone calls. Lesser described the better.

Here Endeth The Lesson

2006-12-13T14:43:00.002-08:00

Its over. The target race. The first 50miler. Culmination of all the hard-ass training.

Turns out the finish was nothing like the training or the run itself. It was a great 3months of real hard training. It was over 11 hours of extraordinarily good feeling during the race itself. But the finish was largely inadequate. I stopped because the race was over and the organizers were wrapping up the course, and our crew had called it a day. It was over, and that was it. No sense of achievement, no sense of accomplishment. Only a sense of looking forward to the next training.

Turns out at this distance, the finish mattered scarce, if at all. What mattered was all the training, the running 50miles, knowing folks are donating because I am doing this -- the age old adage "the end matters not, the means very much" coming true to each of its words.

As I look forward to more races and longer distances, I can only think of Thoreau -- "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."

Please to donate

2006-12-13T14:43:00.001-08:00

The race is over; and the fundraising isnt. All the running and these stories are for nothing without the funds for the projects.

Please donate using this link.

Please read through the project summaries on the right hand side bar to see where your donations will go. Do contact me (email me at vinod.2v@gmail.com) if you have any questions.

The pit crew at Sunmart

2006-12-13T14:42:00.000-08:00

Our pit crew at Sunmart was the greatest ever. Every single one of the 1000 runners at Sunmart saw them and was intensely jealous of the 6 of us. Our crew was simply fantastic. On a particularly freezing day, they cared not to warm themselves, but kept the boiled potatoes warm for us. When any of us reached the end of our loop, they egged us on with great gusto and a vibrant vim. Bub will particularly testify to the kingly treatment meted out to him at the end of his race.

Hoping I am not leaving any out, the crew consisted of ArvindR, AshwiniT, Roopa, Murali, Arun, AshwiniG, ArvindV, Sharanya, Savitha, Sandhya, Salil, Mahesh, Divya, Dwarak, Itisha, Venkatesh, Bharath, AnitaI, and Priyavadan!!

The race was painless and so easy only because of this crew! I cannot do gratitude justice to their support.

11 hours and 20 minutes in Huntsville

2006-12-13T14:41:00.001-08:00

The race story starts the day before the race. Got out of work right after lunch and we got a head start before the evening traffic rush. Roopa had already come over the previous day. In all, Roopa, ArvindR, AshwiniT, Ganesh, Santhosh, and myself we left together in a minivan. Santhosh had managed to upset AshwiniT by bringing a boxed chicken lunch into her kitchen!

The drive over had the usual strange encounters at restroom breaks in tiny towns of East Texas. This time at Navasota (some 30miles north east of Brenham -- where the previous encounter had occured). Ani, Sanjeev, and Gaurav had been to Houston for the packet pickup and we arrived at the same time as them. The rest of the night was spent sorting out the immense race packet, dinner and preparing for the race.

Race morning started in the usual fashion for us (Ganesh, Santhosh and myself) -- putting on the Spanish channel and watching a rabbi sing songs as hot girls shook their bodies - gauranteed to wake up Santhosh! In the next room Roopa and AshwiniT were up before us and had boiled and peeled all the potatoes. We were all ready and dressed for the sub-freezing point start of the race.

The race itself was in four loops of 12.5 miles each. We started off together for about a mile and then each of us took the race at our own pace. Santhosh as fast as he could, Sanjeev faster than he could (but he needed to for the cut off) , Gaurav a little behind Santhosh, and Ganesh and me together for the next few miles. Then as the miles grew, people spread out more and the concentration slowly set in. The day was a little cold, but we were prepared for it. The course was mostly flat and the roots were easy to negotiate in day light. The first loop ended in 2:23 and felt good. Had some potatoes, said hello to Murali who had driven on the morning of the race and went off on the next loop.

Then the loops came and went. The second was slower than the first, mostly because I wasnt sure what pace I was running at. The second took 2:42 and the third was really slow taking 3:09. The third loop was mostly introspective and it took my mind better part of 2 hours to beat the bodily devils. The last loop was faster than the third, and went slower than true time with the darkness coming in before I was done. Murali ran with me the first 3 miles and the loop went by in 3:06 and the end in full darkness was quite surreal. Through the race, except for the introspective parts of third loop, I was in great spirits, and nary a moment when I felt a cramp or low sugar. Thanks to the pit crew, the race was perfect in terms of nutrition and hydration.

At the end of it all, this was the result:

Viswanath Vinod
Loop1: 2:23:00 (pace 11:26)
Loop2: 2:41:09 (pace 12:54)
Loop3: 3:09:47 (pace 15:11)
Loop4: 3:06:40 (pace 14:56)
Overall: 11:20:35 (pace 13:37)

and this is what Coach Joe had to say about me:

Vinod, Looks like you were not sure what to run the first 2 loops. It may be that your first loop time was true but you need a lot more trail time to hold that. But for this race and where you were, it either worked against you or you took a long break back at our tent. Loop 2 was 20 minutes off the first loop. And another 20mins + on the next loop. I suspect that you should really be well under the time you ran. More likely around 10hrs. I suspect you will be the most improved when you run this race again.

Sunmart 50M 2006 Log

2006-12-12T12:23:00.000-08:00

29 Workouts, 375 miles later...

Dec 09 : 50 miles : Race
Dec 06 : 6 miles : Easy
Dec 03 : 12 miles : Easy
Nov 18 : 26 miles : Warda
Nov 15 : 7 miles : Hill
Nov 12 : 14 miles : Easy
Nov 11 : 31 miles : Long run
Oct 31 : 05 miles : Easy
Oct 29 : 12 miles : Easy
Oct 28 : 31 miles : RR50K
Oct 25 : 06 miles : Hill
Oct 24 : 07 miles : Easy
Oct 22 : 26 miles : Chicago
Oct 21 : 08 miles : Easy
Oct 19 : 04 miles : Easy
Oct 18 : 02 miles : Hill
Oct 17 : 05 miles : Easy
Oct 14 : 24 miles : Long run
Oct 12 : 05 miles : Easy
Oct 11 : 06 miles : Hill
Oct 10 : 05 miles : Easy
Oct 04 : 06 miles : Hill
Oct 01 : 14 miles : Easy long
Sep 30 : 22 miles : Long run
Sep 28 : 05 miles : Easy
Sep 27 : 06 miles : Hill
Sep 23 : 19 miles : Long run
Sep 23 : 19 miles : Long run
Sep 20 : 06 miles : Hill

The last (12th) week of Sunmart training

2006-12-07T14:40:00.000-08:00

The last week went by mostly in thinking about the race. There was one training run on the Wednesday where Joe barred us from running hills. We were to go down Hill Of Life slowly, run along the creek for about 30-40 minutes, and then run back and walk up the HOL, not run. More precautions were taken in the form of obtaining the Succeed caps for the race, adequate clothing etc. For the most part an uneventful, mostly waiting-in-anticipation kind of a week.

The 11th week of Sunmart Training

2006-12-04T14:39:00.000-08:00

This was the week after thanksgiving, spent mostly in the continued inertia of the thanksgiving week. Which essentially meant didnt run the two short runs, or the tempo run on Wednesday. I was still feeling ill from the previous week and promptly indulged myself into not running through the week. Come weekend, I skipped the 12mile run in favour of running Dekker on Sunday; and come Sunday, I skipped Dekker and instead did run 12miles around IF and some roads of North Austin. Nothing hilly.

Sunday evening came with a lots of anecdotes and advice and fun. We met Joe and Joyce for dinner at Gaurav's place. Ani and Gaurav made chole, pulav, and chapatis. Joe was at his raconteur-ing best, and regaled us with anecdotes from the history of races in Austin. Apparently about 12-15 years ago, there were no training groups in Austin, and Joe was among the few who were training with Paul (Carrozza of RunTex). More stories came out about Steve (Sisson, our marathon coach) who started out in the running business and was very fast. As the evening progressed, there were stories of Greenbelt runs, Steve's airplane superman demonstration, and also many an advice on eating on the trails. We ended the evening looking forward to the next weekend's race and another dinner with Joe and Joyce.

The 10th week of Sunmart training

2006-11-27T14:40:00.000-08:00

This was probably the easiest week of all training. We did nothing. There was a suggested 10 mile run for the tuesday, and owing to being in Cincinnatti, I promptly skipped that run. Good times were had with family in the corn states of Illinois, Indiana and Ohio. Some fundraising was also achieved. More fundraising emails need to be set up and sent now.

The 9th week of Sunmart Training

2006-11-20T14:37:00.000-08:00

These weeks were our hard yards of the training. Following the 31miles of Sunday, monday was 14 more miles (still making up for missing the back to back run on the previous weekend). The wednesday powerline loop was as always with some fartleks put into it, and Messrs. Mark and Fagan made me really sweat it.

Warda trail marathon was coming up on the weekend, so we mostly chilled out rest of the week. Warda turned out hot and hard, and somewhat useful in understanding how to setup your gear in a race where you loop around the start point 4 times.

The marathon at Warda

2006-11-18T14:37:00.000-08:00

The marathon at Warda was a hot and hilly affair. It started off with a fairly tame drive to Bluff Creek Ranch in Warda (we are getting to know the bylanes of East Texas fairly well, what with all these weird races). It started off a little cold, and as we saw the 50milers start their race and were warming up for our start, the organizers held a sweepstakes for trail running shoes. Bub (Gaurav) picked Ani's number and all good (and goods) was retained within the family!

The marathon was structured in 4 loops. The first half of the first loop went by listening to Joe's stories and his songs on farting. There was a small catch in the back, and I slowed down starting the first loop itself. The second and third went by with a little push. End of third, I met Ani whose ITB had forced her out of the race after 2 loops. She gave me her bottle and I took off my backpack and went out for an easier final loop. The best part of Warda was the piece of wood we received for finishing. Far better than the numerous lame medals we get after every road race, each in-distinguishable from the other.

The 8th week of Sunmart Training

2006-11-13T14:36:00.000-08:00

The week started out fairly tame, one easy and refreshing run in Portland, return to Palo Alto on Friday with two pizzas for dinner, and return to Austin on Saturday night. Nothing so far had prepared me for what eventually turned out to be the most surreal single day of my entire training, the race day inclusive. The Sunday was the Motive Bison Stampede half marathon race. Prior to the race, I wanted to make up for missing my 30 miles on Saturday. The entire team had run a hard run in Bandera and were more weather beaten than I was -- prompting an inspiration to ensure I catch up with them. The story of Sunday has to be blogged elsewhere, 'nuf said to say I did run my 30 miles.

In all this week turned out to be the most eventful week of the training, just because of the Greenbelt by night experience.

Surreal!! The day of the Bison stampede

2006-11-12T14:38:00.000-08:00

The day of the Bison Stampede started early for me. I was travelling back from Portland, and had missed the 30mile run at Bandera on the previous day. The Bison Stampede half marathon was scheduled to start at 7:30am and I was looking to get a 17mile run before that.

Greenbelt at 3am is incredibly surreal. I had run (finished) a few wednesday runs in the dark, but none of that had prepared me to run alone for 3 hours in the dark. The green light, the rocks and roots, a constant buzzing (which I attributed to some insect) added to the atmosphere. The powerline loop had never held such a charm. I ran the powerline, came down the hill of death, crossed over sculpture falls and went until 360 and returned up the hill of life to finish my 10mile loop. That had taken more than 2 hours. As I refilled my camelback, I was more than ready for the next loop. This time it was the usual powerline loop and this time it went much faster.

Then I drove over to Motive and met the Asha gang. The half marathon turned out to be the fastest part of the running that day -- I got through Motive in 2hours, my personal best in three years on that course.

The 7th week of Sunmart Training

2006-11-06T14:35:00.000-08:00

Most of this week was spent in Portland. Portland is a great place to run. Its really hilly and is almost always wet, and if you hit the trails, then it has a great tropical forest feeling to it. Considering it was a taper down week, coming right after the RR 50K, mostly we chilled out this week, partaking heavily of the fat of the land. The two runs in the hills of Portland however, were truly enchanting. Having run all my trails in Texas, Portland provided an extraordinary breath of fresh air.

On the RR50K course

2006-10-30T16:41:00.000-08:00

Rocky Raccoon is actually the name of one the trails we ran during the race. The course was quite pretty, lots of greenery, and tree cover. Rains over the past week had left the ground free of some mulch. Parts of the trail are sand and the rain had helped make that harden in some parts. Most of the trails are laden with jutting out roots and one really needs to watch out to not trip here.

The aid stations were stocked with bananas, oranges, cookies, and water, powerade, sprite and flat coke. Some also had peanut butter. Santhosh partook of enough food at all the aid stations that he had to take a restroom break. To be fair to him, Gaurav and myself also loaded up at all the aid stations and at the end of the first loop, and lucked out not having to stop.

I hate my Camelback. It leaks. A Camelback is a small backpack which has a bladder that you can fill with any liquid of your choice, and a pipe coming out of it with a nozzle that you can suck on from time to time. What with a leaky nozzle which opened up like the very Ganges when I bent down, I had to put the nozzle in my mouth when I was forced to tie my shoe laces end of loop one. That clearly turned out to be a mistake, since my stomach was sloshing with the Clip2-Cytomax mixture I had in my camelback, and it left me nauseous the rest of the race.
All learning experiences of course, and I have to take mine back to REI.

The most important learning experience of course was that in all over 7 aid stations, I spent about 40 minutes hanging out at the aid stations. Even if I reduce that to 2min/aid station, I would have finished in 5hr:38min instead of the 6hr:04min with absolutely no extra effort. Plus end of first loop was such a long break and stomach-full-of-clip2-water, that I easily took atleast an extra 8-10min warming up again. Random inefficiences need to be addressed.

The Sunmart course is going to be very similar and all this experience hopefully will be of some use. However, the entire last loop (4 loops of 12.5 miles each in Sunmart) and maybe parts of the third loop will have to be run in darkness. Promises to be entertaining.

Huntsville: There And Back Again

2006-10-30T15:58:00.000-08:00

Arvind Kejriwal was in town. Noted RTI activist from Delhi, heads Parivartan, Magsaysay award recepient ('06), Arvind is on a tour of the USA, and has been very successful in exposing many a case of corruption in the Indian government offices through the efficient use of the rather progressive Right To Information Act.

Santhosh and myself attended his very interesting talk and got a little delayed. By the time we picked up Ganesh and our dinner from Thai Kitchen it was just past 9pm. The drive from Austin to Huntsville is a little under 3 hours. Santhosh was in his elements and was constantly entertaining us with his thoughts on the moon and other desultory topics. Somewhere around Brenham, we did not connect from 290 to 105, and entered the red-neck town of Brenham. Here I'll refrain from placing blame, but Santhosh was navigating. Once we were in the town, Santhosh suggested we stop at a gas station and ask for directions to 105.

The gas station was deserted. Santhosh and Ganesh went in, while I was filling gas, and was promptly accosted by a rather inebriated gent (i.g.), who wanted to know what was in the cooler in our car, and if he could partake of it. I gently suggested to him that his tankard was rather full already, by a gesture of hand and an askance look, and further brought home the suggestion by locking the car and walking away. The i.g. then followed me to the gas station, and as I went in, he was distracted by the cashier, and promptly proceeded to ask him, the cashier, to part with some of his cash register contents. Fully conscious that we could be shot, we deliberated on what to buy and slowly made our way back to the car and left the gas station in one piece.

After much meandering through the town of Brenham, we finally got to 105, and even as we were picking up speed, we were stopped by a cop. I rolled down my window, but the cop insisted on walking around towards Santhosh's side, the door with the dysfunctional window. The cop asked us where we were from, and where we were headed to. When we said Huntsville, she wanted to know why we were going to Huntsville. By then we were all well into our granola bars and Santhosh's "to run a trail race" filtered through the granola bar, came out as "to run a trade race". Clearly not comprehending, the cop persisted, "Come again?". Santhosh, this time, "to run a train race". Now the cop gave up and asked me to step out of the car. I thought that meant a ticket, while Santhosh expressed to Ganesh his concern of getting to Huntsville in case I get arrested. The ever-persistant cop, again asked me what we were going to Huntsville for, and this time I explained with key words like race, running, marathon, and state park. It seemed to get across better, and she said, "Do you realise you were going faster than 60 in an under 60 zone?". I went on a long explanation about having gotten lost, and the interaction with the i.g. at the gas station. At which point the cop said drive safely, and sent us packing with just a warning.

The rest of the journey was mostly tame. Barring a few incidents of Santhosh flirting with the receptionist at the La Quinta Inn, and Ganesh and myself having to lug a spring rollaway bed up a large flight of stairs, we got to bed and lay down, and as the poet once said, let sleep pour over us in a healing wave, knitting the ravelled sleeve of care.

The return journey was no where as entertaining, but had its moments with Santhosh's song and dance routine (no legs), and an attempt to translate narumugaye. In all a rather memorable drive back and forth adding much to the charm of our first ultra-distance race.

Pirates of East Austin

2006-10-29T21:01:00.000-08:00

Post RR50K, we were to do a 12mile run on Sunday. All our half marathon folks were running the Texas Twister 10K on Sunday, and a decision was made to run 6 miles first, and then run the next 6 in the 10K and pace someone. What with holding the Rogue pirate flags, and it being the Halloween weekend, I decided to get some more pirate gear and run a pirate. A pirate bandana, a hat, an eye-patch and a sword were obtained. The fuel belt served as a band to hang the sword from, and it was all Yo, Ho, Ho, and a bottle of rum!

Immense joy comes while running in costume. All the runners, the cheering public, the volunteers directing the runners, the water stop folk, the cops on the course -- everyone says hello and wants to talk to you. Khushbu, having missed couple of training runs, was not very sure how the distance would go, and I decided to pace her at 12minute miles. We held our pace within a 5second error margin for all the 6 miles, and speeded up the last 300 meters. All the Asha folks had gathered either as runners or as part of the cheering staff, and everyone had a great race. Nivas with his 7minutes per mile pace, even came 2nd in his age group!

One should seriously consider running more races in different costumes. Lot of consideration and thought currently being given for a (warm weather) marathon dressed as Gandhi, with the dhoti, chappals, stick, glasses and hair (or the lack of it).

Rocky Raccoon 50K

2006-10-29T20:00:00.000-08:00

At the end of it all, the realization that the 50 miler is possible was greater than the realization that today we were officially ultra-runners.

The day started out with some latino music being played to some fat men dancing with pretty girls on the hotel room TV. Santhosh with his late registration had some issues with gathering collectibles, and the race organizers asked him to finish early if he wanted his t-shirt (which he proceeded to do)! We had Joe's race plan -- go easy the first two aid stations (7.5 miles) and pick up speed for the next four (8miles to start + 7.5 miles again) and go with your body and legs for the final 8miles. Our version of going easy meant 12minute miles and picking up speed was supposed to be 10minute miles.

We did the easy bit according to plan, and then Santhosh took off. On a trail, with no mile markers, and continuously changing terrain, its very hard to hold a pace, let alone judge what pace you are holding. By the time we covered 5 miles to the next aid station, turned out we were holding 8.5 minute miles. Suicidal! -- with a better part of 19 more miles to go. After the first loop we had a rather long break, and I took a while to warm up from there and let the fast boys, Santhosh and Gaurav, go. Ganesh the smart guy, had already let the sub-9min-mile runners go earlier itself.

The second loop was fairly introspective. More on that, and interesting happenings during the race, and some pictures later on. I kept 12minute pace for three aid stations, and came back to a 10minute mile pace for the last three miles. As I picked up my pace to a sprint to finish in a little over 6 hours (6hr:04min), there was only one thought, I knew the 50miler come december, will be done.

Huntsville State Park is rather green and wooded and quite pretty. It has its moments when the lake sneaks up on you with its fall colored trees. As many had told us before, the terrain does have a lot of roots, so if you dont watch you step (which you can't for most of the race), or lift your foot high enough between steps (which may be hard towards the end in Sunmart), you are bound to trip and take a spin. But the 50K was not so debilitating and roots and logs were jumped over even as we were finishing. Easy to get emotional when you go these distances, but that not withstanding, immense affection and gratitude flows for the team for all the support and camaraderie.

The 6th week of Sunmart training

2006-10-27T19:59:00.000-07:00

This week promised to be long, particularly the weekend. Following Chicago, and getting in late on Monday, a birthday for Gaurav was celebrated. Tuesday's 10miler got turned into 7 (giving respect to legs for keeping up in Chicago). Wednesday turned out raining and slushy. Many opted out of the quality workout. The workout was easy powerline 6mile loop, running the hills yes, but no running hard.

Running in a drizzle, right after a couple of days of showers is awesome fun. The leaves and grass are fresh and glistening, and according to Joe, the snakes are up and about. We didnt get to test the latter part of that, but we did finish the run with many a smattering of slushy mud all over our legs.

Following that, what with real sore legs, Thursday's run was skipped, while saturday's Rocky Raccoon 50k, in anticipation awaits.

A fine cold day in Chicago

2006-10-23T14:01:00.000-07:00

It started off feeling cold, and finished feeling much colder; and yet the run was cold, not at all. With the rain Gods holding back for the duration of the race and more, it was a great day to be out there racing; sure can't say the same for the million and a half who were standing in the cold and cheering.

Chicago is always an electric experience, with its excess of 45000 runners ensuring absolutely no elbow-room all the way to the finish line; and its nearly two-million-strong chanting and cheering crowd ensuring that the mind prevailed over body through the length of the course.

What with changed plans and other such life-schemes, I landed in Chicago around midnight the night before, and was promptly greeted by a cold and rainy city. It was still cloudy and cold when I met up with Gaurav, Ganesh, Ani and Anurag at the startline. We warmed up fairly quickly, in about 2 miles, and the rest of the race went by in a breeze. I was pacing a little over 9 minute miles until mile 20, when I felt a twinge in my quads. What with the 50K race coming up next saturday, I decided to take it easy, and dropped to 11+ minute miles and finished with an average of an even 10 mi/mile (4h:22m:26s). The good part is that I shaved 8 minutes off my best time. Ani did far better, she took off a full hour from her best marathon time. Santhosh and Gaurav, our fast boys, were pacing others, so no PRs for them. Ganesh did his usual 4:40-ish, not sure if that was a PR.

For the past few long runs, I've been starting off with legs feeling like lead, and this sunday was an exception. Felt great start to finish, and there does not seem to be much after effects either. In all, a day and a race to remember.

May as well run Dekker

2006-10-19T14:29:00.000-07:00

Have added one more race to this season's list. Dekker 20K is on December 3rd, and instead of doing the 12mile run on saturday, have decided to do the 12.4 mile 20K race on sunday. Dekker is a very hilly, usually very cold, yet beautiful race. One of the best races in Austin. I've been running it 3 years in a row now, and its easily one of the "my-most-fun" races. There are parts of the course where you suddenly come across a lake with mist upon it standing in Miltonian melancholy, as patience did on a monument, and wonder if you hit the perspective vortex somewhere and are now in the Misty Mountains about to enter Khazad-dum.

Needless to say, its a race most loved, and I'm glad I will not be missing it this year.

The 5th week of Sunmart training

2006-10-19T12:40:00.000-07:00

With the Chicago marathon coming up end of the 5th week, this week has been super chilled out. I did the easy 5mile run around IF. The wednesday hill-of-life repeats, started off with taking the short way down. Two repeats, and a long chat with Crash later, figured the hills were not going to help the going in Chicago. Today's 6mile run was shortened to 4miles, and saturday's 12miler looks all set to be shortened as well to 8.

With diwali coming up this weekend, and friends visiting Austin, also postponed the Chicago trip. Instead of leaving friday evening, have now pushed it out by a full day and am going saturday evening, running on sunday morning, and will be back in town on monday.

The 4th week of Sunmart training

2006-10-18T12:31:00.000-07:00

The fourth week came and went by largely unchronicled. The quality workout was to do the Powerline loop, 6+ miles, with 5min-hard--3min-easy fartleks. The most interesting run of the week was the 24miler in Bastrop State Park. The terrain was fairly soft and mulchy, with some rocky surfaces and a few rolling hills thrown in. What with a long stop to eat dal, and rice, and banana chips, every 8 miles, the day turned out to be more a picnic than anything else. And then came a birthday, and with that came the wife, and the back to back 10 miler was promptly dropped from all plans! Situation clamoured for a change in priorities and reason prevailed.

Races enroute to Sunmart

2006-10-11T00:13:00.000-07:00

There are 4 races before we get to Sunmart. A road marathon, a trail 50K, a trail marathon, and a road half-marathon.

The first of them is the Chicago Marathon, on October 22. Chicago with its 40000 runners and 2million spectators, promises to be a lot of fun. Besides, close to 100 Asha runners are running it (from many chapters) and at mile 19.95, we have an Asha cheering booth. The atmosphere of such a race is so electric, its immense fun to be in it.

The second is the Rocky Raccoon 50K. This will be my first Ultra-marathon. It is set in Huntsville State Park, same as Sunmart. So it will act as a dress rehearsal for the big one. The plan is to test out all the gear, the hydration systems, and try to eat at the aid stations and figure out what is comfortable and what isn't.

The third is Motive half marathon. This is Austin's annual "fall" half marathon, runs along a fairly hilly course in North Austin. I've been running it for the last three years, and would not like to miss it this year either. The only deal is the day before the race, I am running 30miles in California, and then taking the evening flight back to Austin. Plus, according to schedule, I have to run 7miles before the Motive race begins, so that the entire distance including the race is 20miles. In all, does not seem like I can even hope to race Motive, more likely that I'll be able to walk it out.

The last race is Warda Cardiac-run Marathon. This is a trail marathon in a hilly setting. The plan is to run the marathon, and continue running until we hit 35miles. This marks our last long run before Sunmart. Having never run a trail race yet, I am fairly clueless how this will turn out. However, by the time of running this, we would have completed a longer trail race (Rocky Raccoon 50K).

Races are a fun way to train. Its been 8+ months since I ran in a race. Eagerly looking forward to these 5 races in fall.

Update (Oct 19, 2006):
Have added one more race to this season's list. Dekker 20K is on December 3rd, and instead of doing the 12mile run on saturday, have decided to do the 12.4 mile 20K race on sunday. Dekker is a very hilly, usually very cold, yet beautiful race. One of the best races in Austin. I've been running it 3 years in a row now, and its easily one of the my "most fun" races. There are parts of the course where you suddenly come across a lake with the mist upon it standing in Miltonian melancholy, as patience did on a monument, and wonder if you hit the perspective vortex somewhere and are now in the Misty Mountains about to enter Khazad-dum.

Gear unlimited.

2006-10-10T17:22:00.000-07:00

The coolest part of Ultra-running is all the gear you get to play with. I just got my lights in the mail. When I started running, the only gear I had were my shoes. The first blisters and chafing brought on the dry-fit clothes and socks. Training alone brought on the fuel belt and then that was it for a very long time.

The ultra comes with its own set of additional gear. First off, you need to carry a lot of water. Not because you will need it in the run, its being prepared for getting lost and having to spend way more time in the trails than you planned to. Right now I have a hit rate of having gotten lost 3 out of 7 runs. That brought on the Camelback (in UT colors). The bag can hold 70oz of water, and has pockets to carry electrolyte/protein supplement drinks/tablets.

Then came the aspect of running in darkness. With the impending time change, and as winter sets in, our Wednesday runs are going to start in darkness, let alone end in it. Now I have a version of Sir Humphrey Davy's invention for the miners. A head lamp with 7 leds giving out green light! The whole thing weighs just 6oz. Plus a hand-held flashlight, just in case.

Then there are CLIP2s, and Succeeds, gaiters that Rajeev gave me... its gear galore. The good part is we are running a 50K race last weekend of this month, that is when all the gear and the fueling systems in race conditions will be experimented.