India Rising: Tales from a Changing Nation (35 page)

Similarly, India itself has changed much since my last visit. In
some cases, the speed of transition has been phenomenal. Cities such as Mumbai and Bengaluru are almost unrecognisable from before. Elsewhere, in the villages and smaller towns, the first raindrops of change are only just beginning to fall. Like the seasonal monsoons, however, Indians know more is on its way. There is nothing to stop it, no power in the universe to keep the hand of globalisation at bay. Some look up to the skies and see nothing but storms and squalls. Others hear the thunder and believe in the new dawn that lies beyond. All know themselves to be on the cusp of something momentous. Only the wilfully blind remain in the dark.

On Sunday afternoon, I travel with Tashi down the mountain road to the village of Masdura. The settlement is little more than a scattering of houses clinging to a slope. It boasts only one patch of marginally flat ground. This serves as the village football ground.

Tashi and his fellow monks are down to play Ghoom police in one of the early rounds of a local competition. Sakya United Football Club, plus several reserves and hangers-on, emerge from the squash of the team jeep. In Tashi’s youth, the monastery rules prohibited football. Today, the monks have their very own club.

We all head to the changing rooms, which are housed in a metal shed beside the pitch. Tashi, a tenacious, sure-footed midfielder, is captain. He takes the role seriously, talking his team-mates through the four–four–one formation (the pitch can only accommodate nine players per side) prior to kick-off and generally buoying them up.

The whistle goes.

I watch the game from the sidelines. It’s impossible to see beyond twenty feet or so because the fog is so dense. Shouts pierce through the cotton-wool sky. Every now and then a player bursts out of the mist and charges down the wing before being swallowed up by the smog once again. The spectators jump up at the prospect of action, then contentedly return to their seats.

The monk next to me fills the gaps listening to David Guetta on his iPod. Two others fall into a heated debate about the English Premier League results from the day before. The match ends with
the police as victors – three goals to Sakya United’s one, which came late in the game courtesy of Tashi’s right foot. We’re treated to an extensive account of his darting run and deft finish during the ride home. The visibility being what it was, there is no one to contradict him.

The team stops for steaming
momos
and milky tea at a family-run Tibetan restaurant back in Ghoom. After eating, some drift back to the monastery. Others move through to the proprietor’s front room to slouch on his sofas and watch a game show on television. Tashi and I stay at the table. He leaves in the morning. We talk about his hopes for the future. I ask if he could ever see himself living in Tibet one day. His parents fled in 1964, five years after the Chinese occupation. He doesn’t think so. Tibet will not become an independent nation again. Not in his lifetime, at least.

‘So you’re stuck in India then?’

‘India’, he replies without hesitation, ‘is my home.’

This populous, overstretched nation has reached out to the offspring of refugees and offered him shelter and protection. Here, he is free to travel and practise his religion, he reminds me. He has a passport and, if so inclined, the right to vote. If he could, he’d like to go back to Tibet on pilgrimage. ‘To see what it’s like.’

My time with Tashi has been too brief. The next morning, he’s gone before I rise for morning prayers. I enter through the temple’s square door to the sound of rhythmic chanting. The older monks are sat in two lines facing one another. A junior monk walks the room with a large metal kettle, filling cups with tea. Two teenage monks are prostrating themselves in the open doorway, punishment for a minor act of ill-discipline. The morning sun streams in behind them, turning their dark robes scarlet. On either side of them, with their backs against the wall, the youngest monks giggle, yawn and occasionally contribute to the recitations. Their chief animation comes at the musical interludes, when they excitedly blow or beat the instruments that they’ve been assigned. The result is a wild, joyous cacophony.

Watching the smaller monks, I’m reminded of Tashi. As a child, he too used to lark about during morning
pooja
. Now he’s an
adult monk, with official responsibilities within his religious community. He’s no stooge, though. He has grown into his own man. Like any individual, he has his personal passions and desires. He longs to hone his English. He wishes to travel. He’s learning Spanish. In some ways, it is easy to see the son of refugees in him. He speaks Tibetan at home. He likes football, not cricket. He tunes into CNN, not Aaj Tak. In other ways, he is classically ‘Indian’. He listens to Hindi music. He watches Bollywood films. Even the religion that frames his life owes its origins to the land he now calls home.

I’d returned to India with a latent fear. The country was globalising. Its consumer classes, as Captain Gopi had profitably foreseen, were on the rise. The ubiquitous brands of the Global Village – McDonald’s, Vodafone, Coca-Cola, Google, CNN, et cetera – were there on the high streets, there in people’s living rooms. Would India become subsumed? Would the commodified, conforming hand of global capitalism swallow it up?

My meeting with Tashi quieted that fear. India will change. That much is inevitable. A tangible example of this had come to me a month or so before, during a weekend visit to an ashram in Ahmedabad. The monks of the Swaminarayan sect are strictly ascetic, renouncing personal use of modern technologies such as computers and internet. Yet that hasn’t stopped them developing a religious theme park in Delhi, a spectacular sound-and-laser water show in Gandhinagar, a multi-media publishing house and an IMAX feature film about the childhood of the sect’s founder. ‘Society is progressing,’ one senior devotee had explained to me. ‘It’s not possible to stop that process. So we try to use technology in an educating and positive way wherever possible.’

India has a gift for absorption, a wondrous ability to amalgamate, to subvert and, for want of a better term, to ‘Indianise’. As a nation, it is too diverse, too full of paradoxes, too confident ever to be homogenised. India’s strength, it is often said, is in its plurality. It takes from others and makes of them its own. Down the centuries, it’s seen a litany of foreign ‘conquerors’ come and go, from the Persians and Greeks to the French and British. Today’s
purveyors of globalisation are simply the latest in that line. All before them have left their mark, but none ever succeeded in curbing India to their will. Yes, India will change. Yet it will do so, I’d wager, on its own terms.

I think of Tashi travelling away on his bus. The thought of him gives me confidence in the continued strength of India’s absorptive nature. He is Indian, as Indian as a Goan fisherman, a Mumbai businessman or a wandering sadhu on the banks of the Ganges. In many ways, he is a direct product of this extraordinary nation – of its linguistic traditions, its cultural history, its culinary tastes, its political customs, of the whole jumble of beliefs and ideas that make India what it is. In a small way, infinitesimal though it may be, Tashi is shaping India too. The country is richer for having embraced him. Culturally, it bears the imprint of his past and the footsteps of his present. New India awaits the contribution of his future. As it does the contributions of a billion and more individual Indians like him.

With a triumphant crash of cymbals and blowing of horns, morning
pooja
finishes. I cross the courtyard with my bag and head to the new concrete steps. I am leaving Ghoom once more. It’s a new dawn and for once the clouds have lifted.

Life moves on. People’s circumstances change. As with India itself, the stories of those who inspired this book continue to unfold. Below is a very brief update on how their tales are progressing.

InMobi’s growth figures are speeding off the charts. Since we met, Naveen’s brainchild has grown to become India’s largest internet company. The ex-McKinsey recruit now has more than a dozen offices around the world that oversee 55 billion ads per month. At the last count, investors have entrusted him with around $200 million to continue growing the company.

Despite his failsafe predictions, Captain Gopinath appears to be finding the logistics business harder to crack than he anticipated. Teething troubles at his new venture Deccan 360 have seen his air cargo business grounded and several hundred people laid off.

Babu has a new job. His former boss negotiated a position for him as driver to a wealthy Mumbai businessman’s wife. She owns a Honda CR-V, a solid ‘good status’ car. Babu continues to live in Murty Nagar slum and dutifully attends to his crippled father every Sunday. His hopes for his own private fleet remain on the drawing board.

Shortly after my visit, Svasti landed an investment worth 54.5 million rupees from a group of private lenders. New regulation has since thrown India’s microfinance sector into a spin. Even so, the Mumbai startup recently garnered an additional 45 million rupees from a Swiss private equity firm. Svasti now has eight branches across the city, over 12,000 clients and a loan portfolio of 195 million rupees.

Hindusthan Unilever’s Shakti programme carries on expanding, with men being enrolled alongside women. Known as Shatimaans, the likes of Srilatha’s husband, Srinwas, are given bicycles
and sent out to sell Unilever’s products in remote villages. As for Srilatha, she and her fellow Shakti Ammas have added basic bank accounts to their list of wares. The move follows a tie-in between Unilever and the State Bank of India.

I continue to receive occasional emails from Naval. He has extricated himself from his squat in Goregaon and is living in a Hindu temple in Kalyan East, Greater Mumbai. His work experience with Home TV led to a more permanent assistant job with Doordarshan’s flagship channel DD1. As for Arya Banerjee, her ascendency towards Bollywood stardom remains on course. In a case of art mirroring life, she recently won plaudits for her role as a rising actress in Milan Luthria’s acclaimed film,
The Dirty Picture
.

On the cricket pitch, Yusuf Pathan’s rapid-fire century helped him land a $2.1 million deal with Kolkata Knight Riders. India also went on to triumphantly win the World Cup, with the inimitable Sachin Tendulkar emerging as the team’s top runs-scorer. Off the pitch, the IPL’s money-making ways led to a major corruption scandal, which saw the Rajasthan Royals and the Kings XI Punjab temporarily suspended. The lucrative league bounced back for IPL4, boasting two new teams and a brand value of over $3.6 billion.

In Bengaluru, Prasanta is still diligently swimming lengths at the K. C. Reddy Swim Centre. He followed his success at the Commonwealth Games with a Bronze Medal at the Asian Para Games in Guangzhou, China. Officialdom has finally started to take notice of him. The President of India recently awarded him the prestigious Arjuna Award for his sporting achievements.

Fashion Week grows bigger by the season. Ashdeen is still writing the odd piece for
Elle
and is tickled pink because Beyoncé recently used one of his embroidered gowns for a recent music video.

Rahul (user ID ‘Jet Blazer’) and I remain in touch over Skype. He finally secured a multiple-entry visa to the US, although his employers at Global Infonet are dragging their feet on his relocation deal. For the moment, he’s moonlighting as a freelance IT consultant and harbouring plans to crack the US all on his own.

Sunny is now the proud holder of a degree in journalism and
mass communication from Manipal University. He and his girlfriend are still dating. They recently plucked up the courage to confess all to their respective parents. The news went down better than expected and Sunny hopes to marry within a year or so.

As for Mr Kanphade, the pony-tailed Deputy Collector hit the national headlines once again – this time for denouncing a visit to Gadchiroli by the Home Minister as a ‘waste of time’. It was, I fear, the last straw. My attempts to reconnect have led only as far as a LinkedIn connection with a Nagpur-based fitness instructor of the same name. I rather like the idea of Mr Kanphade persuading his clients up onto the five-metre diving board.

Ashish left Teach for India when his contract ran out and is now working as an information system specialist for an educational charity. The website for his citizens’ forum, AwakIND, is now live and counts over 9,000 members.

Vivek at MumbaiVotes has teamed up with the Association for Democratic Reform, a pioneering transparency non-profit, and continues his battle to hold Maharashtra’s politicians to account.
Rajesh managed to complete his film about the widows of Banares and is currently touring it around the festival circuit. He plans a sequel to
Children of the Pyre
, but has as yet failed to raise the necessary funds.

I keep track of Arjun’s dizzying array of projects via Twitter. The tree-planting record will feature in an upcoming documentary about the environmental work of his Holiness Gyalwang Drukpa. India’s health reforms and the prohibitive cost of prescriptions is currently occupying his documentary-making energies. On the side, he’s developing a SmartPhone app that converts content from environmental textbooks into video format.

Tashi is still studying in Kathmandu. After years of not hearing from him, I see him pop up on Facebook most days. He recently changed his profile photo to the Liverpool Football Club insignia, which makes me chuckle every time I see it.

India is a large country of many languages, geographies and people groups. Even its most well-travelled citizens require the occasional helping hand to see their journeys through. How much more the foreign visitor? So my first thanks goes to the innumerable impromptu guides who sprung up on trains and in cafes, on rickshaw rides and in taxis, to point me in the right direction. Dozens went far beyond the call of duty, many of whom are already mentioned in the pages of this book. Those that don’t feature include: Poulomi Shah, Sudha Menon, Meera Menon, Danish Siddiqui, Gee Vishnu, Usha Imison, Daniel Imison, Tusha Mittal, Richa Nara, Rebecca Noecker, Ramesh Menon, Jim James, Alexander Treves, and many more besides.

My particular thanks to Greg Hughes and Kanika Bhattacharya in Mumbai for taking me in as a temporary lodger and treating me as a lifelong friend. Thanks too to Shruti Ponnappa in Bengaluru, and Stephen Moss and Francesca Pessina in Delhi, for their generous hospitality. A special thanks to Kumar and Pauline, who hosted our small family during many long, humid months in delightful Kochi.

This book was written in three continents over a period of eighteen months. For providing me with a desk on which to work and for silence in which to think, my enormous gratitude goes out to: Alan and June Willis in the UK, Lia and Frans Hendriks in Holland, Zsolt Buday and Jennifer Webster in Spain, Mike Legge, and Pamela Murphy in Argentina, and the kindly folk at Kashi Café, Ethnic Passage and the Abad Hotel in Fort Kochi, India. Belated thanks too to Jon and Bronwyn Ward for helping me out of a pickle.

At Faber, special thanks to my editor, Walter Donohue, who originally suggested this book and kept believing in it (and me) throughout the process. My thanks also to his colleagues Archana Rao, Kate Ward and Rebecca Pearson. I am indebted as always to my agent, Georgina Capel, for her unerring enthusiasm and implacable commitment to superlatives. This book has benefitted immensely from the close attention of my cricket-loving copyeditor, Michael Downes, and my genius friend Matt Chesterton. Early drafts were also vastly improved thanks to the insights of Salil Tripathi, Simon Gammell and Henry Shawdon.

This book could not have been written without the unstinting support of my flacita, Emma, who, among countless mini miracles, successful weaned our youngest on dhal and kept our eldest safe from the garden cobra. Seth and Bo, my two little imps, a lifetime’s thanks for joining us on our journey. May your early days in India leave you with a lasting taste for adventure. And finally, Mum and Dad, Boney and Bo, thanks for your love and loyalty over so many years.