Divide and sell

One Wednesday afternoon the fixed line telephone in my Chennai home died. Suddenly. The broadband internet connected through the same cable was working.

I called the customer relations number. "This is Madhav, how can I help you sir?" asked the voice on the other end politely. The human voice came after 5 minutes of computer-talk that took me through the significance of numbers 1, 2, 3, 4. I explained the problem. I heard him typing into his computer. He gave me a request number and assured that the engineer will come on Thursday morning.

"We are collecting feedback from our customers, sir," said Madhav. "Can I take a minute?" I assured him that I will give feedback as soon as my phone is repaired.

Thursday afternoon I called again. It was Sheela at the call center. "What's the problem, sir?" I repeated the problem, I gave her my service request number. She assured somebody will come next morning. "We are collecting feedback ..." My response was the same.

Friday afternoon and Saturday morning we spoke with Raghav and Kumar. "Server linkage problem", "outage", were among the many reasons that they gave us. The problem, I felt, was affecting more than our line and the engineers at some end, somewhere, were working overtime to sort out this major issue. I felt bad for being impatient while the company's engineers were finding the solution to a larger telecom problem affecting thousands of customers.

On Saturday evening my wife Raji and I went to the relationship center. At 7.30 in the evening Lakshmi was visibly harassed. She must have been answering many like me. She took down my complaint again. I said that our complaint has been recorded innumerable times before; our phone is still dead. She said, "now that you have come to us we will send an engineer tomorrow." To pacify us she asked us to use the house phone and call somebody, somewhere. Raji went to the phone booth and I could hear her having a not-so-pleasant conversation with somebody at the other end.

Flash back to 1986. The television boom after the 1982 Asian Games had reached Thrissur in Kerala and my father, after much market research, bought a television from Mr Thomas's shop. To catch the airwaves it was necessary to hoist the ladder-like antenna from a 40-foot iron pipe harnessed to the wooden rafters of our house with tiled roof. Though secured with stay wires to all the coconut palms in the vicinity, the slightest breeze would shift the antenna's alignment and the spots that appeared on our TV screen would grow to become ever-bouncing tennis balls and obscure Neethi Ravindran's face and voice.

This was not all. Unlike the robust units of today, the television sets of the mid-1980s were temperamental and had frequent breakdowns. Suffice to say, my father made innumerable phone calls and Thomas made as many visits to our house on his Vijay Super scooter to repair the delicate contraption.

Though the transaction ended when my father carried out the television from Thomas's shop the relationship had only begun. And in the then small town of Thrissur, Thomas did not want to annoy an existing customer and put off future customers (asking the opinion of friends and neighbors was part of the pre-purchase ritual those days). The transaction had a name, face and person associated with it.

I don't remember to whom I spoke when I ordered my fixed line and broadband connection in my Chennai home 30 months ago. Neither do I remember who came to install the connection. My link with them was severed as soon as the transaction was completed.

Perhaps the two of them representing the same brand may not know each other and may be working for two companies that have contracted from the main company - one company marketing the product and the other installing and servicing it.

The call center which took my complaint calls (located in Bengaluru to service the requests from all over the country) would possibly be owned by an entirely different contractor company, with no power over the doings or undoings of the sales or servicing companies.

Poor Madhav, Sheela, Raghav and Kumar at the call center or Lakshmi at the relationship center, who are at the receiving end of the customers' ire may have no way of coaxing, cajoling or threatening the engineers employed by the servicing contractor company to visit my apartment to rectify my problem. Their domain is as large as the computer screen in front of them - typing messages such as "customer called again, wants the fault to be repaired by this evening." This is as unfair to them as it is to me, the customer.


Epilogue: On Sunday forenoon the engineer came to our house, checked the telephone, went down to the main junction box for our apartments, fixed the line that had jumped off the point and presto our phone was working. His investment: 10 minutes of his time. Our cost: 100 hours of down time, more than a dozen phone calls navigating through a maze of recorded instructions, a trip to the relationship center costing three hours and fuel, and increased adrenalin flow.

Colonial cousins

In August 1999, I attended a workshop for environmental journalists at FOJO, the journalism school of Kalmar University in Sweden. There were 20 of us, mid-career practicing environmental journalists from developing countries across the world. We talked much about how it is to be an environmental journalist in our countries.

What struck us more than environmental discussions was the fact that all of our countries had gone through a colonial past. It showed me, graphically, how a handful of West European countries had controlled the lives and destinies of almost the entire world.

“Colonialism” is a rather academic word for Indians of our generation. Maybe for our parents it would have been a palpable, tangible concept. But for us it was in textbooks. I remember it being repeated in the rallies of the Students' Federation of India at my college in Thrissur. You would know how "seriously" colonialism was referred to if I told you that we even had a strike, then, in Sree Kerala Varma College, Thrissur, to demand that the South African Government release Nelson Mandela from prison.

I felt colonialism in my bones when I lived in West Africa. Like how “Gulf” money hangs in Kerala, colonialism hangs over the air of many of these countries.

West Africa is predominantly Francophone – Benin, Togo, Côte d’Ivoire, Guinea, Burkina Faso, Niger, Mali, Senegal, Chad and Senegal. The Anglophone countries (those that were former British colonies) are like islands in a sea of French-speaking world – Nigeria, Ghana, Liberia, Sierra Leone and the tongue-shaped The Gambia. The two former Portuguese enclaves are Guinea Bissau and Cape Verde.

A lazy afternoon at a roadside eatery in Kpalime, Togo.

Almost all the countries in the region got their independence between 1955 and 1960. Ghana was among the earliest – in 1957. Benin, Nigeria and many other countries celebrated their 50^th anniversary in 2010.

Half a century is a long time for any nation-state to take charge of its own destiny. Driving through Ghana, and through the streets of Accra, one can see a country that has taken stock of its own needs. Ghana is far more self-reliant in agricultural and industrial production than its neighbors. The markets sell domestically-produced products at competitive rates. Arterial roads are world-class. As the national football team climbed through the ranks in the 2010 World Cup matches, proud Ghanaians drove their cars with flags fluttering. When Asamoah Gyan stood to take the penalty against Uruguay, an emergent nation cheered and prayed silently.

When I landed at the Abidjan airport in Ghana’s western neighbor Côte d’Ivoire in early 2010, I saw French soldiers guarding the hangar.  The French are still involved in the politics and economy of Togo, Niger, Benin and most of the other Francophone countries.

The British left when they left; the French stayed back. And that essentially marks the difference between the Anglophone and Francophone countries of West Africa.

Ghana has its own currency – the cedi. You needed a few thousand cedis to buy a US dollar. When this value touched 10,000 in 2007, Ghana issued the Ghanaian new cedi, which was US$ 1 to cedi 1. Currently the value of the new cedi has fallen to around 1:1.62. At this realistic exchange rate, which reflects the size of the Ghanaian economy vis-à-vis the US economy, the country is regulating its imports, exports and domestic production.

With the exception of Guinea, all Francophone countries use the Communauté Financière d’Afrique (CFA) Franc as the common currency. Since this currency has the support of the French treasury, each of these countries have to deposit 80% of their foreign currency with the French treasury. In other words, sovereign governments have control over only 20% of their forex earnings. The return – French backing ensures convertibility across the globe and stability that a common currency can give in comparison to the volatility that multiple national currencies could have created in the region.

The flip side is rather severe. The CFA is locked to the Euro at a fixed conversion rate of CFA 655.96 to a Euro. This means that it can swing anywhere between 450 and 520 to a US dollar, depending on the greenback’s health vis-à-vis the Euro.

Let’s put this graphically. US$1 = 1.62 new Ghanaian cedis = 16,200 cedis. Benin, whose economy is a fragment of the Ghanaian economy, the rate is US$1 = CFA 497. You get my point?

No wonder that my Indian friends in Cotonou are predominantly importers – bringing in rice, oil, commodities and FMCG products. They do export cashew nuts in which Benin has quality advantage. But predominantly the Francophone countries are importers with absolutely no competitive advantage with exports, given the artificially overvalued CFA.

During the period we were in Benin, Raji and I have a standard repartee. “Is product X available in Cotonou?” one of us asks. “If it is available in France it will be available here,” comes the reply.

What did this mean to us? Blowing up US$ 100 while shopping is as easy as snapping one’s fingers. The smallest currency note is CFA 1,000, the equivalent of Rs 100 but in real terms worth Rs 10. When I got air filled into the tyres of my car I paid CFA 500, the equivalent of Rs 50. I earned in dollars, lived in a good part of the city. Half of Benin lives on less than two dollars a day.

If only Sahir Ludhianvi’s words could be translated to French, Fon, Adja and many other West African languages – “Wo subaha kabhi to aayegi.”

Greener than we care to know

One evening on my street in Cotonou, Benin, I found four children playing under a table. The boy was pouting "brrruuuu", turning an imaginary steering wheel and shifting imaginary gears. The girls were passengers. 

The scene was similar, though a generation and a continent away. I have taken turns to be the driver and the passenger in imaginary cars in my childhood. I have had cordial as well as quarrelsome companions during my imaginary rides.

My primary ambition those days was to become a bus driver. It filled me with power thinking about it. On bus rides I would sit as close to the driver as possible, and keep his actions under constant surveillance. Back home I imitated his body language - reaching out with the left hand to shift gears or stretching with the right to press the bulb horn outside the door. I used to be particularly impressed with the power that his high position on the road gave him; he could look down at other erring motorists and shout.

My father worked with the then undivided Madhya Pradesh Government, and travel to Kerala on holidays involved long train rides. Steam engines had rhythm in their voice. In the early 1970s, in Bhilai steel township we could hear the engine coasting into the station over the sound of neighborhood gossip. The pistons clunked to a stop when the driver shut off steam. Clunk, clunk, clunk.

However, the diesel engine drivers impressed me more than their sweaty, black-with-soot, bandana-headed counterparts in the steam engines. Electric engines, which I saw only when we came close to Madras Central, were too quiet and smooth for my imagination. The diesel engine drivers were a picture of authority as the train came into the station, one hand on the window and other on the bright-blue control panel. The diesel engines embodied power, even when idling, when the silence was interspersed with ghud-ghud-ghud of turning motors.

I did not know, then, that more than the "authority" that a young boy saw in these occupations, these men did an environment-friendly job, transporting more humans and material spending minimal resource.

Imagine a long-haul train from Chennai to New Delhi - 25 coaches with 70 passengers on an average in each coach would mean transporting 1,750 men/women/children with one engine. There is one mouth to feed with fuel and one exhaust to take care of, i.e. if we assume that it is a diesel engine that is pulling the rakes. Since most of the main lines are electrified in India, the power to pull the train comes from a grid originating from a centralized power plant, thereby making it easier to deal with the exhaust.

We Indians take our rail and train network for granted. There may not be a man or woman of my generation who hasn't played train with friends in childhood – koo-chuk-chuk. Steam engines were mostly eased out by the time my son was growing up, but I did see him and friends snaking their way through our apartments. However, what we take for granted as a convenient and affordable means to move from point A to point B in our country does not exist as an option in many other parts of the world.

The rail line between Lome and Kpalime

in Togo disappears into the bush

Though the colonial masters laid the initial foundation for the rail network, Independent India systematically worked to strengthen and expand the infrastructure. In the past 30 months, I have lived in and traveled through four countries in West Africa. These countries too had gone through a colonial past – three under the French and one under the British. They too have had a few rail lines developed during the colonial period. The colonial motive was the same as in India – the railways were primarily designed for moving resources and troops that could be used for moving ordinary people. However, unlike in India, the rail system has not grown in these countries post-Independence.

Connecting urban centers and even villages with each other with a rail network is no more a challenge in India. The challenge is to see how the railways can be used to transport people within cities.

With the exception of Chandigarh, Lutyens Delhi and industrial townships such as Bhilai, most of the urban centers in India have grown organically from villages or cluster of villages. Laying rail lines through these unplanned urban centers and running trains through them is not an easy task – not only as an engineering exercise, but also as a political decision.

Trains for intra-city transport have the greatest advantage that any commuter can ask for in a city. They travel through secured passages and thereby have control over their running times.

During his three-year study in a college in Tambaram outside Chennai, my son knew exactly how many minutes his train travel from Kodambakkam would take. What he could never judge was the time needed to drive a scooter from Virugambakkam to Kodambakkam to catch the train. And since he knew there were trains every five minutes, it was something like stepping onto a conveyor belt at Kodambakkam and getting off at Tambaram.

Mumbai grew because of its suburban trains. So did the urban corridor between Guindy and Tambaram in Chennai. People bought property, built homes and offices along the rail corridors. The reverse challenge today is to create rail lines and run trains through areas where people have built homes and offices.

Delhi has done well with its Metro. Even in the late 1980s, a bus ride from Janakpuri to the Inter-State Bus Terminal would have taken hours. Today that travel time by Metro can be counted in minutes. Bengaluru took its first baby step recently. Kolkata, of course, prided itself for its Metro network since the 1980s.

Economic mobility in India has happened in the past two decades. Even as late as mid-1990s, there were not many families in the cities that owned cars. For most members of the generation that started their employment with the IT boom, a car (A-, B- or C-segment) has become their personal vehicle.

There is a historic and generational resistance against giving up the convenience of driving your car downtown. So if these young men and women are opting to take the metro or the suburban train, it means that they find it reliable, convenient and affordable; also environment friendly, though the commuter may not necessarily know it. The process has begun.

A tale on the hills

If you are a Google Earth aficionado you will empathize with my excitement of seeing satellite images of mountains and valleys in 3D and traveling through them. In spite of a slow internet connection this week in Cotonou, Benin, I was standing on top of Anamudi, the tallest peak in the Western Ghats of India.

The Idamalayar valley as seen from Anamudi

The pointer was showing north and I could see a deep gorge running east-west beyond the peak. I stepped beyond the ridge, into the gorge, turned my pointer west and flew in through the forested valley. It was like watching an IMAX movie at Prasad's in Hyderabad. I went down steps in the valley, into the midlands, and there the river widened into a reservoir. The legend on the map said Idamalayar Dam.

I did a U-turn with the pointer and headed back to the mountain. On the way back I noticed the walls of this valley were far steeper than the adjacent ones. This did not look like a gully, formed due to erosion, turning into a river valley. It seemed that the Idamalayar river was flowing through a rift valley formed along a geological fault. I checked my presumption on Google, and I was right. The earth must have cracked - some day in geological past - and the same force that thrust the mountain up created a crack for the river to flow.

When I was a young boy, I used to gaze at the Palghat Hills in the Western Ghats from my grandmother's house. The mountains had moods. They stood tall and cheerful on bright, sunny days, rocks reflecting sunlight and the forests taking a darker shade in contrast. They turned gloomy as they stood to hold back the monsoon clouds.

I could only imagine what was beyond the ridge. There are no limits to a boy's fantasy but the human eye has limitations. Today, sitting at my desk in West Africa, I can see far beyond the ridge on my computer. My knowledge is portable - I can see it on a smartphone in any part of the world. I notice that the Palghat Hills are contiguous to the Nilgiris, where I went to study in my teens. I also understand that the ridge that I thought to be the tallest hid taller mountains behind them.

The Western Ghats form a mountain chain 1,600 km in length, that runs parallel to the west coast at around 150 km distance. It runs through the states of Maharashtra, Goa, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Kerala, and though it has an average height of around 4,000 feet (1,200 meters), it has ridges rising above 8,000 feet.

The mountains, which form the uplifted edge of the Deccan Plateau, intercept the rain-bearing monsoon clouds as they enter from the west coast into the Indian subcontinent. This leads to high precipitation along the mountains, with some regions getting between 5,000 to 7,000 mm of rainfall in a year. This has led to some of the thickest and most biodiversity-rich forests in India to be located in the stretch.

The Western Ghats are home to evergreen, semi-evergreen, moist deciduous and dry deciduous forests. In addition, the mountains have the unique shola-grassland ecosystem in the upper plateau. This consists of grasslands on the hill slopes with evergreen forests of short-statured, close-canopied trees (shola forests) in the groin of the hills.

The shola-grassland ecosystem ensures that the streams flowing out of the small folds in the mountains have water throughout the year.  This system constitutes the ‘overhead water tanks’ for the plains of peninsular India, feeding into three major rivers – Godavari, Krishna and Cauvery – and hundreds of smaller rivers. For instance, the state of Kerala itself has 44 rivers.

In exactly a year from now, in October 2012, there would be international attention on the Western Ghats when India hosts the 11th Conference of Parties (COP-11) to the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) at Hyderabad. The diversity of life on the mountains is rich, and it is among the biodiversity hotspots in the world. It has over 5,000 species of flowering plants, 139 mammal species, 508 bird species and 179 amphibian species. Many undiscovered species and at least 325 globally threatened species occur in the Ghats.[i]  

One of the framework conventions that emerged from the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (more popularly known as the Rio Summit) in June 2002, the CBD recognizes biodiversity as a sovereign property, and aims to promote its conservation, sustainable use and equitable sharing of benefits.

Since CBD is only a framework convention, the member countries require national policies and laws to put into effect its principles. India was one of the earliest countries to discuss and enact a legislation to protect the country's biological diversity. The Biological Diversity Act of 2002 was gazetted on 5 February 2003. Through the Act, the National Biodiversity Authority (NBA) was established in Chennai in 2003, and the establishment of similar institutions at the state and local level was recommended.

The Biological Diversity Act mandates that the country's biological diversity and traditional knowledge associated with it cannot be transferred out of the country for research or commercial gain without prior approval of the NBA. Similarly, for commercial utilization within the country of biological resources or knowledge, permission has to be obtained from the relevant state biodiversity boards.

The NBA or the state biodiversity boards, while giving permission can order that a part of the benefit from the commercial use of the biological resource or the knowledge has to be shared with those groups or communities that helped to preserve the resource and develop the knowledge. The Act has teeth, and contravention is punishable with imprisonment and/or monetary fine.

This Act strengthens the other forest-related legislation such as the Indian Forest Act, Forest Conservation Act and the Wildlife Protection Act.

As a journalist working with the Hindu Business Line newspaper, I closely followed the evolution of the Biological Diversity Act from 1997 to 2002. It was an interesting process, that had many consultations with the public in which citizen's groups, environmental activists, tribal-rights activists, foresters, bureaucrats, parliamentarians were involved. More or less at the same time there were discussions for the development of  the Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers' Rights Act of 2001.  I wrote about the interface between these two Acts.

The biodiversity of the Western Ghats and the ecological services that the mountains provide, however, is far greater than what can be signified by legislation.  These ecological services are not only to the communities living in the hills but also to those living in the plains of peninsular India.  If the rivers do not carry enough water, it can adversely impact the downstream towns and cities and thereby India’s economic growth.

With new species of plants and animals still being discovered in the forests, the source of a wonder ingredient or molecule for medicine could be lost before being found.

While the forests in the Western Ghats have the power to reduce climate change by absorbing carbon dioxide, the mountain ecosystem can also be seriously and adversely affected in a warming world. In the higher plateaus of the Ghats , the climate is temperate even though they stand in tropical latitudes. A warmer world would mean the loss of these temperate pockets including its unique biodiversity. Economically, this could result in loss for the plantation industry – tea, coffee, temperate vegetables and fruits, etc. – that provide livelihood to millions and export revenue to the GDP.

As I zoomed out from Anamudi Peak on Google Earth and looked at the Western Ghats in their entirety, I noticed that the patches of green were fragmenting and the urban centers were expanding. Perhaps those living in the cities and towns do not realize that the mountains and forests give far more to them then what they are aware of in their day-to-day lives.

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[i]Myers N, Mittermeier RA, Mittermeier CG, Da Fonseca GAB and Kent J. 2000. Biodiversity hotspots for conservation priorities.Nature, 403:853–858. 

Dead starters and live economic growth

It was a year before he died. I used to work in Chennai those days and had gone to Thrissur on a holiday. The tube-light in the dining room was not working, and my father asked me to check it out. It seemed that the starter was dead. I got ready to leave for the store to buy a new one.

A green smokestack?

Father stopped me. He asked me to follow him to his study. His lung disease had progressed by then and he panted with the excitement of the effort. He took out a brown paper cover from inside a plastic box and said, "try one of these, it may work." I turned the brown paper cover to loosen the rubber band and saw his label for the contents inside the cover - 'Dead starters'.

My father was born in 1917, the year Indian soldiers who fought for the British in the First World War returned to their villages. Just two years before he was born, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, an Indian lawyer had returned from South Africa. Though not as an active participant, he had lived through the freedom movement and World War II. He had experienced scarcity, rationing and queues. For him there was nothing wrong in coaxing a dead starter to work for a few more months. 

Though the economic reforms were initiated in 1991, in 1995 (when my father tried to resuscitate starters) the Indian economy was not soaring. But even by then the use and throw culture was slowly coming into practice. Summer this year, when I had parked my Maruti 800 in Swaraj Round, Thrissur, I found a friendly message hanging from my rear view mirror. "Exchange your old car for a new Nissan Micra," it read. Just like that?

High domestic production and high domestic consumption is good for the economy. It is better than the export-led economies (like in South-East Asia before the crash of 1997), or the import-led economies (like in much of Africa). However, when consumption becomes an end in itself, when today's goods and services are bought from tomorrow's expected earnings, there could be danger ahead.

I was a journalist when Sir Richard Jolly, lead author of the 1996 Human Development Report which focused on 'consumption', came to Chennai to release the report. Explaining the concept of consumption to us, Sir Richard said that when the human waistline expands beyond 34 inches then the problems due to consumption starts. I presume the conceptual 34-inch waistline also exists for national economies.

Mall owners in Chennai today will assure me that waist size does not matter. They have jeans for all sizes. They also have jeans of all brands. They have enough jeans chasing my money.

This summer the contrast was yet stronger for me, since I was coming to Chennai from Cotonou in Benin, West Africa. In Cotonou, good money has to go chasing for goods and services. In fact, the city has a used-jeans market. I do not know how the supply chain to this market works, but I would not be surprised if the jeans used and put aside in Chennai would find their way here through a network of international traders.

To get a snapshot picture of the Indian socio-economy between 1995 and the present, I referred the United Nations Millennium Development Goal indicators. Infant mortality dropped from 72 per thousand births in 1995 (starting year for all remaining comparisons) to 48 per thousand births in 2010. Under-five mortality dropped from 100 per thousand births to 63 per thousand births in 2010. Maternal mortality dropped from 470 per 100,000 live births to 230 per 100,000 live births in 2008. The percentage of HIV incidence rate (mid point) in 15 to 49-year old decreased from 0.06% to 0.02% in 2009. With the exception of tuberculosis, which showed a slight increase both in prevalence and death rate, all other health indicators have improved between 1995 and 2011.

People's access to improved drinking water source increased from 76% in 1995 to 88% in 2008. Access to improved sanitation facilities, though still abysmal, increased from 21% to 31% in 2008. Telephone lines increased from 1.24 per hundred population to 2.87 in 2010. Mobile phones registered a dramatic increase. It increased from 0.01 per 100 population to 61.42 in 2010. Internet connectivity increased from 0.03 connections per 100 population to 7.50 in 2010.

However, all this was not without a cost. India's carbon dioxide emissions increased from 0.92 billion tonnes in 1995 to 1.74 billion tonnes in 2008 (more recent figures not available on the chart). The per capita carbon dioxide emissions increased from 0.96 tonnes in 1995 to 1.47 tonnes in 2008.

India comes 145th on the list in terms of per capita emissions, keeping pace with Georgia, Gabon and Angola. Qatar takes the top position with 53.5 tonnes emissions per capita in 2008; the USA in the 12th position with 17.5 tonnes; and the UK in the 43rd position with 8.5 tonnes.

When the country figures are listed, India comes third after China and the USA, and fourth if the European Union is counted as a block. Despite the ranking, the differences are considerable. In 2008, China had an emission of 7.03 billion tonnes (23.33% of the global total); the USA 5.46 billion tonnes (18.11%); the EU 4.17 billion tonnes (14.04%); and India 1.74 billion tonnes (5.78%). This data and analysis was made by the Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center of the US Department of Energy for the United Nations.

This is the data on which the entire India vis-à-vis the world climate change discussion revolves. There are two ways of looking at it. While one can argue that India is a major emitter, the counter argument is that a country with 17.28% of the world population only shares 5.78% of the emissions, and global warming is caused due to present and historical emissions. India's economic growth and increase in emissions is a recent development. The per capita emissions is amongst the lowest in the world.

I do not know how much of these arguments my father would have read through the newspaper. Even if he had, his philosophy would have been simple - if a tube-light starter can be brought back to life it should not be thrown away.

Welcoming an itinerant Maveli

This year Maveli is coming to Cotonou in Benin, West Africa. We are preparing to receive him on Sunday, 11 September.

Maveli is a good man, very considerate. He meets his people on a day of their convenience, rather than his. On Sunday his calendar should be full. I am sure as the earth turns he would be coming from Perth, Singapore, Dar  es Salaam to Cotonou. After shaking our hands he may be going to Accra, London, Chicago and San Francisco.

I am grateful, my King. We are humble immigrants, peripheral statistics in the global pool of migrant labor.

I left Kerala in 1987. Since then I have welcomed Maveli at New Delhi, Chennai, Hyderabad and now Cotonou. Many a year I have welcomed him at home, along with my family. Some years I have done it with friends, in a larger gathering.

At one such gathering, one of my friends asked me a question. "Did Parasurama throw an axe to reclaim Kerala from the sea?"

"I am told so," I answered. "I was not born then."

"Dashavatara says that Vamana came before Parasurama. Then how would it have been possible?" my friend persisted.

Touché!

The point, of course, is not to check the historical veracity of mythological stories but to imbibe the spirit that they convey. In almost every part of India there are two major celebrations in a year. Call them Onam-Vishu, Diwali-Holi or Diwali-Pongal, these are post-harvest festivals where historically a predominantly agrarian society thanked the Gods for a good return on investment.

We have moved from agrarian to industrial to service sector economics, but maintain these celebrations that remind us of our gratitude to the soil of our land. An IT professional, doing a project in India for a company in the USA, has very little connection to the soil or the harvest. But he joins in because the celebration of the day links him with every other Malayali in the world, and also to his forefathers who celebrated this day every year during their lifetimes.

My first Kerala Onam experience was in 1976. My father had retired from government service in Madhya Pradesh and had bought our home in Thrissur. He was keen that his children experience the real Onam. We made Thrikkakara Appan in clay and laid the floral design in front of the steps leading home.

Only once did I return to Kerala for Onam after I left in search of employment. It was in 1991, the first Onam for my son, and like my father before me I wanted him to experience it. He was too small and may never remember that day, but I could not fail in my duty of baptizing him as a Malayali.

In 1976, the going rate for a Kummattikali performance was 10 paise. I knew that many boys went around the corner, changed into a new mask and returned as a fresh Kummatti. 

Today perhaps there are not that many Kummattis in Thrissur. It is not worthwhile to perform at the bottom of a multi-storeyed apartment block. Who watches? Who pays? Today's equivalent of Kummattikali are the Onam special programs on Asianet and the umpteen other television channels in Kerala. People watch. And since they watch the advertisers pay.

With satellite links some of these channels are watched by Malayalis all over the world. These programs make the Malayali diaspora yearn for the land of mountains, rivers, backwaters, lagoons and beaches that they left behind. This 590-km long thin (it is 150 km broad at the broadest point) strip of land  has the tallest mountains in India after the Himalayas. Forty-four rivers start from these mountains, with 41 flowing west into the Arabian Sea. A mesh of tributaries and distributaries cover the state.

Historically, Kerala was the landing point for all those who sailed from across the Arabian Sea, making it a cultural and religious melting pot. Apostle St. Thomas sailed to the coast a couple of decades after Christ's Crucifixion, and his followers were among the earliest Christians in the world. He is said to have landed near the present-day Kodungallur, the town in which one of the earliest mosques was built in the country. Buddhism, Jainism and Judaism were also practiced in Kerala.

In the mid-1990s, the Kerala Tourism Department started marketing this beautiful and rich land as "God's own country." As a journalist, I listened to officials talking about packaging and promoting the state to the discerning global traveler. They were right - Kerala is known across the world today.

However, the strongest ambassadors for the state have always been those who traveled out in search of employment. Good education and paucity of opportunities were the push factors. One fine day, early in his life, my father caught a train to Mumbai. He returned only when he retired from active service decades later. My wife's father sailed to Malaysia, carrying his hopes and a steel trunk. A generation later in 1987, my friends saw me off in a train out of Kerala.

Raji and I were on a tourist coach in Dubai in the summer of 2009. We were driving into Palm Jumeirah. The Pakistani guide was talking about the engineering adventure, and how it had attracted the rich and the famous from across the world. He mentioned something about Shahrukh Khan. We overtook an Ashok Leyland bus with windows open. The workers inside looked mostly Malayalis.

Maveli, my King, this Onam please give joy to them, and to all of us staying inside and outside your kingdom.

Ouidah road

There is a road along the beach connecting the city of Cotonou to the historic town of Ouidah in Benin. Some pictures.