Dara, The Gentle Giant

I am a student. Probably 8th standard. 1958 or so. Ferozepur, Punjab. Come winter, the school is suddenly abuzz with stories about this new inmate, a giant, in the District Central Jail. 

He enjoys a special status not found in the rule book. Is free to move around. Has a special dietary allowance consisting of kilos of milk, meat, and ghee as also dozens of eggs. Goes jogging, for exercise, around the jail compound twice daily with one fellow prisoner cradled in each arm.

We hear new stories everyday. The stories emanate from a classmate, whose father is the Superintendent of the jail. This high security prison is where Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev were kept by the British. The new inmate there is Dara Singh, Rustame-e-Hind, the title named after Rostam, hero of the Persian epic Shahname. 

Although Dara is the proclaimed kushti champion of India, we know that actually he is the world champion. And we know this because the Indian wrestling tour includes a number of foreign white wrestlers. The crowd's favourite whipping boy is the improbably huge Hungarian wrestler King Kong. Many are beaten and sent packing but King Kong is a fixture. 

We know that professional wrestling is not quite real, but we do not care. Dara is not just unbeaten, he is unbeatable. 

Dara is held, we are told, in connection with an incident involving murder. As the tales about his prison stay begin to get taller and taller, some scepticism surfaces and pressure to 'trust but verify' mounts. Our friend arranges a visit one Sunday for a bunch of us.

Bursting with excitement, we land up well before the appointed time at the 20 ft high gates of the jail, where our equally excited friend waits. A seemingly seven-footer guard opens a five-footer door embedded in the gates and we are escorted to the Superintendent's office. He deputes another guard to take us further in and cautions us not to stray far from the guard. 

Another door at the end of a dark corridor opens into a largish open sunlit courtyard. And there is Dara Singh. Seated on a stone platform . Clad in a langot. Getting a vigorous ghee massage from a couple of similarly clad well built blokes. Surrounded by a dozen or so thuggish looking characters. 

Dara looks towards us and smiles. Our friend rushes forward and greets him as one would a favourite uncle. He then proudly introduces us as fans. One by one we all move forward to shake hands. With each introduction our friend grows an inch taller, having earned our everlasting gratitude and friendship. At least for a few days.

Dara has a surprisingly soft grip and delicate shake. To each boy he mumbles something unintelligible. We have never seen anyone so handsome, so well built and so gentle. Dara Singh will never be a bigger hero.

Dara Singh RIP 

Snippets 

• Dara Singh's films basically gave a start to actress Mumtaz's career. His successor as Rustam-e-Hind, younger brother Randhawa married Mumtaz's younger sister Mallika. Randhawa and Mallika were also actors.
• Before there was Dara, there was The Great Gama. Rustam-e-Hind of undivided India. Rustam-e-Zamaan, the world champion. Former Pakistan prime minister Nawaz Sharif's wife Kulsum is a grand daughter of Gama.
• The Hungarian wrestler, Emile Czaja, professional name King Kong, also acted in a Hindi movie, playing himself. He was known outside India as the "Indian Wrestler".
• Dara Singh's first movie as a lead actor, ironically, is the 1962 film titled King Kong.
• I was about to post this when my younger brother's weekly call came in. Just before disconnecting, he says, "Hey, do you remember...

The Unique I.D.Project 2

Click here to start reading Part 1

I meet UIDAI

Aadhaar enrolment started in 2010. There seemed to be no urgency to enlist.

Some months ago, I ran into UIDAI at the local post office. UIDAI occupies a ramshackle desk, in a passageway. It is surprisingly free of any papers and files that one normally expects in a government office in India. It is also free of any electronic hardware.

In person it is a lady equipped with a school notebook and a pen. She is reading a magazine. I enquire about enrolling. She reluctantly puts away her reading, pulls out a form and tells me that if I want more than one I should get photocopies made as she is running out of supplies.

I ask her if I can download the form from the UIDAI website. She says I can but it won't work in Karnataka as the state government has tagged on some questions of local interest. So I should get copies made, fill up the form, attach supporting documents confirming my identity and come for enrolment.

I suggest the following Saturday. "No Sir, you can't pick and choose", she says, "I will allot a date and time as per the running schedule in this diary. It would be better if you can come once before that and show me the papers to make sure that you have everything right. On the specified day you will go to the designated place where they will record your fingerprints and iris image."

I leave knowing I will never go back. If they want it badly enough they will come to me.

Sure enough a few weeks later they set up camp at my club. I go through the process. The fingerprint device is acting funny. It takes ten minutes and a lot of high pressure supplemented by the officer-in-charge pressing with all his might on my hands to complete recording the ten digits.

This was six months ago. I am still waiting for my card.

Tripta Sen enrols
Tripta*, who lives in Delhi, has been luckier.
 
She was among the early birds to turn up to be counted. She got her card within two weeks. Not satisfied, she went to another centre and filed another set of papers with the same information. Soon she got her second card. "This time the photo is good", she says.

And now that she is going in for a new hairstyle, what should I say to Tripta?

* name changed. maybe.

The Unique I.D. Project

This topic has been on my mind for some time. The writing was hastened by an e-mail I got from an NRI friend wanting to know what was this "udi udi thing" that aunt Chitty in Chennai was all excited about. Same day I got a call from good friend Tripta Sen in Delhi, who wanted to know what will happen to her Aadhaar card if she went in for a drastically altered hairstyle.

If you know all about UID click here to go straight to me & Tripta.
Else carry on reading..

What Is It?
The 'unique personal I.D.' project of India, given the vernacular moniker Aadhaar, meaning 'the foundation' or 'the base', is the most ambitious people tagging program ever in the history of mankind.

UIDAI, the unique identity authority, has been set up to create, own and operate a database of all residents.  A unique 12 digit random number is allotted to each individual. His photograph, fingerprints and iris are recorded and an Aadhaar card is issued. Some 170 million cards have already been issued. That is 14% of the population.

No one has explored all the ramifications of such an undertaking. The Government obviously has a lot of good things to say about it.

It will enable focussed delivery of benefits and services to the marginalised and the under-privileged. It has the potential to eliminate the large number of fake and duplicate identities in various benefit lists and even employment rolls. "Financial inclusion" of the have-nots is a phrase much bandied about. 

Not Everyone Likes It
Such verbiage is normally enough to ensure easy passage of mega budget projects through the legislature. Aadhaar, however, has attracted much opposition but has been rammed through without any meaningful discussion on the costs and benefits or of consequences.

Issues like invasion of privacy, surveillance, profiling, potential misuse and  data security have never been adequately discussed or explained.

It is not obligatory to enrol, but those who don't will find life very difficult as a number of benefits, subsidised goods and services will need proof of I.D.

The home ministry which handles internal affairs, one would have thought most in need of such a data base, came out strongly against Aadhaar to start with. They plan their own "National Population Register" to weed out illegal immigrants. Then earlier this year they mysteriously shut up and it was reported that they will cross link their database with Aadhaar.

Eventually, all other lists like voters, tax payers, passports, ration cards, the population register etc will get cross linked to Aadhaar.

Who Runs It
Extremely unusually for India, the Government has roped in a highly respected and successful private sector I.T. technocrat to head the organisation. Some feel he has roped in the government to finance and push through a megalomaniacal venture.

He has the rank of a cabinet minister and is authorised to bypass or cut-through the normal bureaucratic red-tape associated with any governmental creation and/or change. He has put together a crack team to implement and supervise the project. The grunt work of enrolling people has been outsourced to private parties. The home ministry is now a "partner registrar" for certain "sensitive" zones.

The only direct communication from UIDAI to the public has been about the physical process of enrolling. Press lightly to register fingerprints. Don't smile when giving your mug-shot. And the like.

How It Will Work
The Aadhaar database will be accessible from any place in India that has mobile coverage or internet reach.

The Aadhaar card is not a smart card. By itself it has no value, except as a reference tool for your Aadhaar number. What you always carry around, your fingerprints and your iris, will establish your identity. For example, you go to a bank to open an account, or to the polling booth to vote, you present your finger(s) to a machine and there you are.

A hospital should be able to access your entire medical history just by reading your finger prints.

As an itinerant worker you should be able to have your bank account, ration card and health insurance etc. transferred to wherever you choose to go and work in India without getting tied up in paperwork and red tape.

Can the card be duplicated or faked? Easily. But no harm is done. The card by itself accomplishes nothing. The biometric data individually are also not foolproof but taken together you have as good as zero error.

Click here to go to Part 2

Impressions of Calcutta 2

Fifty Years Ago
Click here to start from Part 1

I explore the city travelling by buses and trams with friends. At a few paise per trip, one can go all over town, all day, without spending a rupee. Buses all over India are overloaded, but Calcutta gives the word a new meaning. Remarkably, a female can get into a 40 seater bus carrying 80, be offered a seat, travel in peace and come out of it untouched. In Delhi it would be a miracle to emerge unmolested.

In fullness of time I land in Park Street; virtually a carry-over from colonial days with its continental food restaurants, western bands, crooners and cabarets. There is even a smallish Moulin Rouge with a rotating windmill on its fascia. Most men are in suits or at least ties, and most women in western dress. Calcutta, one finds, is the only Indian city without a hypocritical attitude towards alcohol, entertainment and romance.

The Burra Bazaar with its Marwari dominance is a different city within a city. Here be the chaps who make money and create jobs. One of them, R D Bansal, produces and finances Satyajit Ray films.

The colleges, the book shops and the coffee house of College Street are another fascinating world. The coffee house is a hotbed of student politics increasingly turning left. Marx, Engles, Che and Mao are the heroes here.

Tangra is a sizable Chinatown from where emerge beauticians, excellent shoes and other leather products as also superb banglafied and indified Hakka Chinese food.

Bihar is everywhere in the city. From Rickshaw pullers to coolies to water haulers and herders of butchery-bound live-stock, you name any backbreaking job and there is a Bihari willing to take it.

The city is full of aesthetically pleasing buildings. Most are poorly maintained. The Victoria Memorial will never grow up to be a Taj Mahal, but it is a pleasant place to go to, as are places like Belur Math, Dakshineshwar, Bandel Church and Botanical Garden.

Some of these are also places where urban romance flourishes. There is nothing more romantic than a walk by the lakes, or a slow sail boat across the Ganges, with the light rain and the setting sun conducting the background music playing in one's head.  Young couples have a hard time getting any privacy and head out to a dozen or so lover's lanes just to get away from prying familiar eyes. Like in many Indian cities, the cheapest and best private space is cinema seats in the last row - after the show starts.

Indian Statistical Institute founded by P C Mahalonobis is a nationally and internationally famed place of academic excellence. This is where, for the next six years, I live and learn. Learn to live - neither wisely nor too well, I am afraid. And to love - too well but perhaps not wisely.

It is an idyllic place to study and work. Its vast campus is an eclectic mix of the ancient and the very modern. Fellow students are from all parts of India and a few are from other countries. One learns the ways of 'others'. One learns about local cuisine, music, film, theatre customs and so on. One learns the local language. And Addabaazi.

The ISI faculty harbours many tall intellects of a calibre rarely seen together in any one space. It is the cradle for India's statistical back-bone, giving birth to the Central Statistical Organisation and the National Sample Survey. ISI also plays a large role in shaping the Planning Commission and later the National Informatics Centre.

ISI is where India's first mainframe computer will be installed and the very first post-graduate programme in computer science will be started. In course of time, there will be no academic or professional space on earth involving statistics which will remain untouched by ISI alumni or faculty.

After I left in 1968 I have gone back to Calcutta a few times. Sometimes for business but sometimes also 'just'. To touch favourite places. Or to touch base with favourite people. As I write this I have tried not to update my first impressions and have referred to later events only where they bore a direct relationship to what I observed then.

As I write this Mamata di is the Chief Minister, her Trinamool having displaced the CP(M) after thirty-five odd years. She promises to turn Calcutta into London of the east. And has started out by painting the town blue.

Impressions of Calcutta

Fifty Years Ago

It’s 1962. I arrive at Howrah from small-town Punjab at the ripe old age of fifteen. As a student-select headed to the Indian Statistical Institute, having side-stepped the IIT system which refuses to let me in till I reach sixteen, I feel a foot taller than my five feet few.

Emerging from the railway terminus, the first thing one sees is the Howrah Bridge. One word: majestic. The sprawling and muddy Hooghly underneath is a sharp contrast to the slim, gushing rivers of the Punjab.

The next thing one notices are the clichéd teeming crowds. Most of the men are dhoti-kurta clad: a sartorial effect I have seldom seen in Delhi or Bombay. The kurta is called punjabi; I never find out why. Women, and even teenage girls, are mostly clad in saris. No salwaar-kameez.

Beggars - rarely seen in the Punjab, occasionally in Delhi, and often in Bombay - abound here. Then comes the shock of the inhumane hand-pulled rickshaw; long banished from other states. One is familiar with the concept but the reality is something else. From time to time, the government avows piously to ban the rickshaw and rehabilitate the pullers. No progress so far.

Dr. B C Roy who was the chief minister for 14 years has just died. A towering figure in Bengal politics, his demise paves the way for the decline of the Congress, and the rise of the Communist party.

Though it will be 15 years before the CP(M) gets to power, Jyoti Basu, a relatively young lawyer, is getting noticed in trade union and industry circles. He will eventually become the chief minister, but be denied the opportunity to become the prime minister by his party.

Film is the cheapest and most accessible form of entertainment. In three languages. Hindi films, made in Bombay and Madras rule the roost. A unique-in-India feature of the old style movie theatres, mostly showing English films, is the in-house bar where one can enjoy a glass of beer (or something stronger) before, during or after the show.

Satyajit Ray has already made his mark in Bengal and internationally. His work though is little known elsewhere in India, except to art film clubs. In 1962 Ray makes his first film with Waheeda Rehman. Suddenly people outside Bengal take notice. Later, Bombay will happily absorb some Ray girls like Sharmila Tagore, Jaya Bhaduri and, less successfully,  Aparna Dasgupta.

Many film makers are, or claim to be, influenced by Ray. Others, like Ritwick Ghatak and Mrinal Sen, make excellent films but no one receives the adulation that Ray commands. Many Bengali scientists, academicians and artists have phenomenal accomplishments to their credit and have acquired considerable fame but in bong consciousness Ray is the sole eminence of recent vintage who deserves to be right up there with Kobi Guru and Netaji. To this day. Fifty years on.

Kobi Guru is, was and will forever, be the colossus everyone pays cultural obeisance to. Be it poetry, music, theatre, stories or painting he has left a phenomenal legacy. Your average bong, I discover, is much more into music, poetry and theatre than the denizens of northern and western states. Each household harbours a budding poet, actor, musician or singer or all four.

Music shows and events are aplenty. A harmonium is a standard and low-cost piece of household furniture. Music teachers, poorly paid but highly regarded professionals, are as thick on the ground as tuition teachers elsewhere. Often an avenue of ready romance for their pupils.

There is a wide-spread theatre scene which can only be described as passionate and vibrant. Theatre, however, is an expensive pursuit and is in a state of perennial decline for want of patronage, for production and at the box office.

The sport of choice, and indeed passion, is football. Gully football is all pervasive rather than gully cricket. Almost everyone has a favourite club team. Often a personal preference clashes with that of a sibling or spouse; leading to unending, loud, sometimes ferocious and often hilarious arguments. Chuni Goswami becomes my hero and by transference Mohun Bagan is my team. Chuni leads India to her first and last Asia Cup football title. He plays in the Bengal Ranji Trophy team. He captains the Mohun Bagan hockey team. He will go on to act as the hero in a movie, Prothom Prem. India has never seen a sports person like this.

Durga Puja is a phenomenal festival. The whole city is transformed as its entire cultural ethos comes into play. Puja pandaals come up everywhere in public spaces; throwing an already chaotic traffic into a deeper mess. The goddess emerges gradually taking shape from clay. Many artists work day and night to mould, paint, be-robe and be-jewel her. Loads of food and sweets are made, bought, distributed and consumed. Much shopping for new clothes happens. Gifts are exchanged. Teenagers go a-hunting all over town looking for adventure and meetings with the opposite sex, both planned and per happenstance. Neighbourhood gangs of boys spring up to protect the local girls - nobody asks the girls if they want it. . and everyone has a good time.

Click here to go to Part 2