An India we have to address

I realize that I have already used two consecutive installments of this blog on "A midsummer nightmare" and I wondered if I should risk a third on a similar theme. This is, after all, a blog on a business school website.

But as things turned out, I came across an intense essay by a young friend who is of Indian origin but was born in the US and has lived there all her life. Her name is Meesha and she is a second year science undergrad. She visited India when she was 16, and wrote this essay when she was 19 for an English class. I was compelled by its elegant sadness to put it up here.

It talks of things about India that we all know but have to gloss over in order to stay sane. And it describes them through the innocent eyes of the very young who have never lived here.

It's worth reading, even as I look out of my Gurgaon window and see an entire horizon of skyscrapers twinkling with lights.

So here goes - an essay on a trip to the Taj Mahal.

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What constitutes the title “wonder of the world?” Is it a wall constructed perfectly to keep the enemy out, is it an ancient city on a mountain, is it a colossal theater, or is it a beautifully designed tomb for someone's long lost love? Furthermore, once titled, should everything surrounding the “wonder” be shrouded in a mask of majesty; can nothing other than the facade of it's name be perceived? Well, if that was the intent, I am witness to failure.

The Taj Mahal itself is the most impressive structure I have ever witnessed. As I crossed the threshold from the blindness of being behind the surrounding walls to a panoramic view of the Taj Mahal, the sheer size of the building and it's surroundings caught the breath short in my chest (opulence seems to have been one of Mumtaz's specialties). The reflection pool laid in front of the Taj is analogous to a red carpet; setting one up for the extravagance to come. While walking up the the steps, the sun reflecting off the marble and into my retinas provided the next transition of scenery: the inside. The tomb is embellished from top to bottom causing one's eye to dart frantically trying to absorb all of the information. Essentially, the ceiling is the inside of a giant onion dome that begs the question of how such a large structure remains suspended. After surveying the inside in it's entirety I left with a memory that will be forever have engraved in my mind.

With all this said, one may ask where the failure component occurred. The reason I suggest that I felt disappointed is not because of the experience of seeing the Taj Mahal itself, but rather the journey to get to it. When I think back on my experience, rather than feeling fond, I am immediately flooded with despair. The things that I witnessed on a five hour car ride changed my life forever.

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As I get into the car I hear my mother outside talking to her brother. She mutters in Hindi, “I don't know if I can handle this.” He reassures her and she gets into the vehicle. We start the journey in our air conditioned SUV that sticks out like a sore thumb on the winding dirt roads. As per usual we witness the occasional beggar or child selling corn on the side of the road. As the heat of the noon starts beating down on our metal case the air condition struggles to maintain equilibrium. We crack open a can of coke and drink it greedily. As the hours pass the scenery changes from the tranquil India I know to a very different world. I see nothing but shacks. Tiny “home” contraptions made of old car parts and scrap metal. People line the roads by the hundreds, so much so that we are not driving any longer, but rather, crawling.

The people are a whole new world too. Due to the lack of shelter their skin appears to be charred by the sun like burgers left on a grill too long. Their corneas and teeth are the same shade of unhealthy yellow. Their hair is matted to their head like a dog that hasn't been brushed in years. Actually, the longer I look at them the more they remind me of stray animals rather than people. The things they do start to strike me as beast-like. A naked man crudely blows his nose into his hand. A mother carries her child on her back while looking through a garbage heap with her hands. The air is thick with melancholy.

Then I see the most graphic image I have ever witnessed in my life. It is burned into my memory; vivid and brutally honest. When I close my eyes and think about this car ride I see a child wearing only a dirty loin cloth squatting on the roadside defecating exactly like my dog does in the back yard. I can see the discomfort of his severe diarrhea in his eyes. I can see him being reduced to less than a beast. He has been stripped of all humanity, he has lost what it means to be a homosapien; he is merely a mass. This is the brush that colored my world with an entirely different palate than I had ever imagined. Suddenly a stark reality set in that the world around me sucks.

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After this point the rest of the trip was cast in shadows. The trip that I had been looking forward to with a naïve sense of optimism, was now tainted with truth. Ever since this fated moment, whenever I see a homeless person, or someone being petty and materialistic, the image of that boy pops into my head and drapes me in a sheet of sorrow.

The reason that this trip had such a profound effect on me is largely because of the context I come from. I come from the world of middle-class America. Where I have privileges that only a fraction of the world has the luxury of enjoying. One such privilege is watching the trials of the world on the silver screen in the safety of an overly air-conditioned movie theater. I did just that when I saw the movie Slumdog Millionaire. I felt the same way the day I watched that movie that I did at the moment I witnessed that boy. I could not speak afterwards, and the rest of the day was cast in those same shadows.

I feel that I will revisit that boy many times in my life. Although, it hurts me, I am glad that I have him. He keeps me grounded. He reminds me of how incredibly blessed I am. He also drives me to help; to help him and everyone around him. Finally, I learned from him. I learned that India is a beautiful country rich with culture, but it is also a broken spirit. There are far too many little boys out there who don't know what it feels like to be comfortable and well. When I think of the Taj Mahal I taste a bittersweetness in my mouth. The structure itself is beautiful, but the journey to get to it is morbid. I find this to be a metaphor for all of India; the potential is there, but you need to go through a lot of hardships to reach perfection.

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A midsummer nightmare - part 2

My last post "A midsummer nightmare" received an overwhelming response - on this blog but also on Facebook and via email and phone calls. Many noble friends volunteered to help in any way possible to address the heartrending situation the post described. A friend from IITD days (Vivek Verma) even took the pains to translate the Hindi dialogues into English. I am appending his version - only slightly modified - at the bottom of this post.

Now, as the offers of help came in, I happened to be reading Richard Bach's "Hypnotizing Maria". The book argued that nothing was simply a coincidence - that Nature aligned itself to your cause if you willed it to... a "Matrix" type funda. I found that hard to believe completely, of course. Just as obviously, I was convinced that it would give you great confidence and power to believe something like that!

And as I prepared for an IIT reunion last weekend, I tried to play a mind game with myself: Suppose this string of events is not a coincidence? This blogpost and the response and now the reunion - suppose they're all meant to kickstart the social work I've always wanted to do? Would it help to believe that?

Anyway, I went to the reunion, planning to talk to my old friends about an effort to save these children. As it turns out, one of the first people I met was Sanjeev Khirwar, IAS, just returned from Andaman & Nicobar where he was the Chief Electoral Officer in the 2009 elections. I asked him what he was up to these days. He replied, "I'm on a special posting in the Ministry of Women and Child Development"!

So in between a screening of "Three Idiots" and a good dinner, we had the beginnings of a conversation on the topic.

Coincidence? Smile.

*****

Despite the success of Slumdog Millionaire, almost every Indian city still has children running up to cars stopped at traffic lights or attaching themselves to shoppers at markets. They are always caked with grime covered with a layer of dust, but that's a minor thing in our dirty, dusty cities. Instead, what is most frightening is when their young bodies are missing a limb or two or are deformed in some other way. Most of these deformations have been "sculpted" by grown up humans.

Some months ago, I was at the upscale New Friends Colony market at around 9 pm. I noticed a very young boy, perhaps 6 years old, with a shoeshine box. Then I saw a beggar child, then another, and then another. There must have been 7 or 8 of them, ranging perhaps between 5 and 14 years of age. They all seemed to know each other and in between begging one would run to another and they'd play for a few minutes until they latched themselves on to another potential donor.

It all looked very innocent and one might have been forgiven for thinking, "Well, this is not as bad as it could have been." Perhaps beggar children moved up in life when they begged at posher neighborhoods.

Thinking this, I went into a restaurant for dinner. When I came out, I saw that most shoppers were now gone and the children were clustered around the oldest boy who had no legs and was resting what remained of his body on a skateboard. He had a grim air about him. They were discussing some matters in a business-like way. The children who were close to him weren't smiling.

I felt a chill as I was reminded of the "lead child" role in Slumdog Millionaire. On a hunch, I walked up to them, kneeled down, and asked him, "Tum in sab bachchon se bheekh mangwaa rahe ho? Are you forcing these children to beg?"

His eyes dropped, then he looked away. When I asked again, he seemed to wake up. "Nahin, hum sab alag alag jagahon se hain. Hum ek doosre ko nahin jaante. No, we come from different places and we don't know each other." This was the first of several well-scripted and apparently well-rehearsed lies that all the children would tell during the course of the night.

I repeated my question, then grew angry. There was a little girl of about 7 with grayish eyes, hair brown from malnutrition and a thin but pretty face. I took her a few meters to a side and asked, "Tum kahaan se ho? Where are you from?" She gave me the name of a village in UP and then added for good measure, "Hum ek doosre ko nahin jaante! We don't know each other!"

"Tumhaare maa-baap kahaan hain? Where are your parents?"
"Main maa ke saath rehti hoon, baap to bachpan mein hi chal basey. I live with my mother, Dad passed away when I was little." The language was filmy.

"Tumhaari maa kaa naam kyaa hai? What is your mother's name?"

At this she wavered. Her playfulness deserted her and she started to look scared. I asked her again. "Sharda Bibi", she said finally.

A little boy, around 4 or 5, ran up to me. He was too young to know what to say and what not to say. One of his hands had been cut off.

"Yeh kaun hai? Who is he?"
"Yeh mera bhai hai. He is my brother."

"Sharda Bibi ka beta hai? Sharda Bibi's son?"
"Haan. Yes."

"Yeh tumse kitne saal chhotaa hai? How many years younger is he?"
"Pata nahin. I don't know. Iske maa-baap ne ise train ki patri ke paas chhor diya tha, do saal se humaare saath hai. His parents left him on railroad tracks and he has been with us for two years."

So that was the story she had been told.

"Do saal se Sharda Bibi ke saath hai? He has been with Sharda Bibi for two years?"
"Haan. Yes. "

"To yeh tumhara asli bhai nahin hai? So he is not really your brother?"

She did not try to answer the question. She just twisted away in the manner that children do.

"Aur iske haath ko kya hua? What happened to his hand?"
She knew the answer to this one. "Train iske oopar se nikal gayi thi. A train ran ran over him."

A wheel of a train is a big thing when compared to a two or three year old boy. It's very difficult to imagine that such a wheel could cut such a boy's hand off without mangling the rest of his tiny body. The hand had been cut off in some other way.

And as I asked the children one question after another, I realized that this group of children was being run by an organized gang. Though they had been trained to say they did not know each other, they had also been trained to say they came from the same village, and the contradiction between the two answers was obvious. Given the mutilation of the children before me, it seemed to be a very unfortunate village, real or imagined.

As it realized that there were calculating grown ups behind the children's stories, I grew angrier. Finally, I got up and charged to the nearby police station, hardly a hundred meters away from where these children were.

"Sir!" said the policeman at the gate, inflecting his voice to make clear he didn't really mean to show respect. "Aapko kyaa kaam hai? What do you want?"

I was livid. "Main SHO se baat karoonga. I want to talk to the SHO - the station house officer."
"SHO saab to nahin hain. SHO sir isn't here."

"Dekhte hain! Let's find out!"

And I walked inside as though I owned the place. Yet the thought crept into my mind, "Had this been any place but Delhi, I'd have been stupid to walk into a police station in anger."

I told the policeman at the desk, "Aap yahaan baithe hain aur sau meter dur bachche bheekh maang rahe hain. Aap yahaan kyaa kar rahe hain? You are sitting here and little children are begging only a hundred meters away. What are you doing here?"

The policeman was young and looked impudent in a subtle way. "Kisi bachche ne tang kiya ya chori ki? Has any child bothered you or stolen anything?" he asked.

"Begging allowed nahin hai. Begging is not allowed. Aapkaa kaam hai kaanoon ko implement karna. Your job is to implement the law."

He kept shuffling some papers.

"Aap sun rahe hain ki nahin? Are you listening or not?" I asked.
"Kisi ko bhejtaa hoon. Do chaante lageinge bachchon ko to sab theek ho jayega. I will send someone. Everything will be fine after these kids are slapped twice."

He evidently knew that was not what I wanted to hear. He was playing a smart game.

Just then I looked behind his desk and saw written there "DCP South East District: Shalini Singh". Shalini Singh and my sister had been in school together. Shalini is now one of the leading lights of the Delhi police.

I fell into the trap that all we Indians fall into, as we try to elicit some minimum responsiveness from the system. "Aap Shalini Singh ji ko phone lagaao. Main unko jaanta hoon. Make a phone call to Shalini-ji, I know her."

That got their attention. The subtly impudent policeman was suddenly awkward and soon got up and left. Another older and gentler policeman engaged me instead.

"Sir, hum kya karein? Ab to bachchon ko hum thaane mein band bhi nahin kar sakte. Agar bachcha thaane mein aaye to bahut procedure hota hai - nahin to humaari vaat lag jaati hai. Sir, what can we do? We can't even lock these children in a cell in our police station. If children come to the police station then we have to follow a lot of procedures, otherwise we will get in trouble."

"To aap kaise sambhaalte ho aise matters ko? So how do you handle these matters?"
"Sir, ek NGO ko bataana padtaa hai. Phir wo aate hain. Kabhi nahin bhi aate hain. Agar aaye to hum jaakar kuchh kar sakte hain. Sir, we have to inform an NGO (Non-Government Organization). Sometimes they come, sometimes they don't. If they come then we can do something."

"Yeh bachche kisi aur ke liye bheekh maang rahe hain. Koi inhe exploit kar raha hai. Saara desh Slumdog Millionaire dekh raha hai. Aur aap aisa matter investigate nahin karoge? These children are begging for someone else. Someone is exploiting them. The whole country is watching Slumdog Millionaire and you will not investigate such a matter."

"Sir, aap jo bataao wo karenge! Sir, we will do whatever you say!"

"To chalo mere saath. So come with me. Dekh ke aate hain ki ye aadmi kaun hain jo inse bheekh mangwaa rahe hain. Let's go and see who is this person who is making them beg."

"Theek hai saab, chalo. Yes Sir, let's go." And he adjusted his cap, picked up a laathi and marched with me out of the station, past its dark gate into the lights of the market.

Seeing us come, the children scattered. The oldest boy on the skateboard could not really move anywhere quickly, so he just played with a few stones - with one hand he'd pick them up and then drop them gently on the ground one by one. He didn't say anything, didn't answer any questions.

I found the little girl who had spoken to me. She was very scared now.

"Daro mat. Don't be afraid," said the policeman kindly. "Tumko kuchh nahin hoga. You will not be harmed." This kindness the girl could not take and she began to cry.

She quietened down eventually. "Tum kahaan rehte ho? Where do you live?" the policeman asked.
"Yahaan se ek-do kilometer dur. One or two kilometers from here."

"Kahan par - where?"
But she could not say it in words.

"Humey saath le chaloge? Will you take us with you?"
She nodded yes.

"Gaadi mein chalein? Shall we take a car?" I asked.
At this she brightened up.

So the policeman, the beggar girl and I walked to my car. I held her little hand as we walked. People would pass us and then do a double take when they realized what they had just seen. Some women instinctively pulled their own children closer to themselves.

The girl sat at the back of the car with the policeman. When I pulled the ten rupees out of my wallet to pay the parking attendant, I felt guilty of my wealth.

It was almost midnight. We drove a kilometer or two as she chatted freely. But after a while she sobered and said, "Yaheen rok do - stop here."

We pulled over and got out. We were at one end of a flyover. A small path ran by the side of the flyover and disappeared into the night. The girl led us down the path.

It was pitch dark - I don't remember seeing such darkness in Delhi before. On the left were some bushes. On the right were some walls. There was not a soul to be seen, if anything could have been seen in that darkness.

"Sir, yahaan par to koi kisi ko kaat kar phenk de to kisi ko subah tak pata nahin chalega. Sir, if a person is knifed here and dumped, no one will know till morning." said the policeman betraying some nervousness.

I was nervous too. "Bolo, waapas chal kar aur log le aayein? What do you say, should we go back and get more people?" I said, ever believing that everything could be solved with more resources.

At this he firmed up his resolve. "Sir, is vardi par koi haath nahin uthaayegaa - no one will dare harm someone in a police uniform!"

But he seemed to grasp his stick more firmly.

Then the path opened into some light up ahead. We could make out scores of small dark bundles, blotting out the reflections of light from the railway tracks.

Almost at once we realized we had walked into perhaps a hundred sleeping human beings. Many were on the ground, while a few were on cots.

The girl pulled her hand away and ran. She was lost at once among the bodies, some of whom were stirring awake and sitting up. We strained our eyes to see despite the poor light. We felt rats at our feet, scurrying between the bodies.

It was a summer night and there were also many mosquitoes.

Two coarse young men materialized in front of us. "Kyaa baat hai? What is the matter?"

"Sharda Bibi kaun hai? Haan? Kaun hai Sharda Bibi? Who is Sharda Bibi, who is Sharda Bibi?" demanded the policeman, asserting himself.

"Is naam ka yahaan koi nahin hai. There is no one by that name here."

"Tum bachchon se bheekh mangwaate ho? You make children beg, don't you?"
"Saab, aap kyaa baat kar rahe hain! Sir, what are you talking about! Hum bechaare to yahaan par kisi tarah se jeene ki koshish kar rahe hain! Humaare koi bachche nahin hain! We poor people are somehow trying to survive! We don't have any children!"

"Yahaan koi bachche nahin hain? There are no kids here?"
"Saab, ek do hain. Saab, hum to unko parhaanaa chaahte hain, aap uska arrangement kar do na! Sir, we have just one or two kids here. Sir, we want to educate them, please arrange that!" one said thoroughly insincerely.

"Sharda Bibi kaun hai? Bataao nahin to main tumhe andar kar doongaa! Who is Sharda Bibi. Tell me or I will throw you in jail!"

He was bluffing but I was getting very nervous. I pretended to make a call on my cellphone. The BlackBerry's screen looked most eerie in this setting of huddled bodies. I spoke some authorative English into my phone.

The bluff seemed to work, partly. "Achchha achchha, OK OK! Wo Sharda Bibi... that Sharda Bibi... Wo to yahaan se thodi dur par hogi... She must be a little ways from here." And he pointed down the tracks into the night.

"Kitni dur? How far?"
"Aadhaa-ek kilometer... About half to one kilometers... "

Needless to say, neither the policeman nor I was eager to go after this mysterious lady in this dangerous darkness.

Just then we heard some noises coming down the path we had just come. I tensed, but only till I saw who it was.

It was the group of children. They descended unsuspectingly from the path into the clearing. At the center was the legless older boy - he rode on a cart. The cart was pulled and pushed by the other children, and a couple of them had jumped in beside him. There was a Pied Piper air about the scene.

As soon as they saw us - the policeman and me - their chatter ceased. The adults stared at them and the children averted their gazes in guilty silence. Then one child scampered, and as if on cue, they all ran in different directions.

One of them was foolish enough to run close to us. The policeman grabbed hold of him.

"Kahaan jaa raha hai? Bataa, tere maa baap kaun hain? Where are you going? Where are your parents?" he demanded.

The boy was of the scruffy kind. He must have been about ten. He hung his head sullenly.

"Bataa, inme se kaun hain tere maa baap? Tell me, who among these are your parents?"
"Baap nahin hai, maa dikhaata hoon! I have no father, I'll show you my mother!" he said, suddenly angry and liberated at the same time.

He walked over to a cot where a body lay covered with a sheet. He pulled the sheet out with one flourish. A woman of indeterminate age lay there, groaning.

"Uth uth.. get up, get up!", he said sharply, but there was no response.

"Uth, uth, ye tujhe milna chaahte hain.. Get up, get up, they want to meet you.." the boy said and roughly pulled his mother into a sitting position by her shoulders. But when he let go, she again slumped back.

He moved to where her head was and hit her across the face!

She came to, a little, and said a few words. Then he hit her again.

"Bewdi saali. Koi phaayda nahin hai. Drunk bitch, there is no use!" he said, and walked away. All of ten years old.

I stood there stunned. That young boy already had a reality so complicated that I would never understand it.

"Pata nahin kyaa charhaa kar so rahi hai... Don't know what she is high on..." said the policeman softly. He must have seen a lot of things in his job, but he sounded like a lost soul.

I felt lost too. I felt like a man might when he stumbles across a mass grave.

"Yahaan se nikalte hain... Let's get out of here!" I said decisively, and the policeman was relieved.

I took out my phone and clicked a couple of photographs for the record. But there was no light to register in the phone's camera. All I got was a grainy gray of varying shades.

We walked back to the car, with me straining hard to sense any aggressive movement or noise behind us. I only relaxed when I slid into the car and locked the door.

The Rs. 14 lakh car looked like something from another planet. The beige leather and the blue lights on the dash were at once striking and empty. We drove back in silence.

"Sir, phir koi baat ho to zaroor boliyega. Mera cellphone number rakh lijiye. Humaaraa kaam hi hai logon ki help karna. Sir, if there is another matter then definitely call me. Keep my cell phone number. It is our job to help people."

I was half-impressed. But he had one aspect of me foremost on his mind.

"Sir, aap Shalini Singh ji ko kaise jaante hain? Sir, how do you know Shalini-ji?"

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A midsummer nightmare

Despite the success of Slumdog Millionaire, almost every Indian city still has children running up to cars stopped at traffic lights or attaching themselves to shoppers at markets. They are always caked with grime covered with a layer of dust, but that's a minor thing in our dirty, dusty cities. Instead, what is most frightening is when their young bodies are missing a limb or two or are deformed in some other way. Most of these deformations have been "sculpted" by grown up humans.

Some months ago, I was at the upscale New Friends Colony market at around 9 pm. I noticed a very young boy, perhaps 6 years old, with a shoeshine box. Then I saw a beggar child, then another, and then another. There must have been 7 or 8 of them, ranging perhaps between 5 and 14 years of age. They all seemed to know each other and in between begging one would run to another and they'd play for a few minutes until they latched themselves on to another potential donor.

It all looked very innocent and one might have been forgiven for thinking, "Well, this is not as bad as it could have been." Perhaps beggar children moved up in life when they begged at posher neighborhoods.

Thinking this, I went into a restaurant for dinner. When I came out, I saw that most shoppers were now gone and the children were clustered around the oldest boy who had no legs and was resting what remained of his body on a skateboard. He had a grim air about him. They were discussing some matters in a business-like way. The children who were close to him weren't smiling.

I felt a chill as I was reminded of the "lead child" role in Slumdog Millionaire. On a hunch, I walked up to them, kneeled down, and asked him, "Tum in sab bachchon se bheekh mangwaa rahe ho?"

His eyes dropped, then he looked away. When I asked again, he seemed to wake up. "Nahin, hum sab alag alag jagahon se hain. Hum ek doosre ko nahin jaante." This was the first of several well-scripted and apparently well-rehearsed lies that all the children would tell during the course of the night.

I repeated my question, then grew angry. There was a little girl of about 7 with grayish eyes, hair brown from malnutrition and a thin but pretty face. I took her a few meters to a side and asked, "Tum kahaan se ho?" She gave me the name of a village in UP and then added for good measure, "Hum ek doosre ko nahin jaante!"

"Tumhaare maa-baap kahaan hain?"
"Main maa ke saath rehti hoon, baap to bachpan mein hi chal basey." The language was filmy.

"Tumhaari maa kaa naam kyaa hai?"

At this she wavered. Her playfulness deserted her and she started to look scared. I asked her again. "Sharda Bibi", she said finally.

A little boy, around 4 or 5, ran up to me. He was too young to know what to say and what not to say. One of his hands had been cut off.

"Yeh kaun hai?"
"Yeh mera bhai hai."

"Sharda Bibi ka beta hai?"
"Haan."

"Yeh tumse kitne saal chhotaa hai?"
"Pata nahin. Iske maa-baap ne ise train ki patri ke paas chhor diya tha, do saal se humaare saath hai."

So that was the story she had been told.

"Do saal se Sharda Bibi ke saath hai?"
"Haan"

"To yeh tumhara asli bhai nahin hai?"

She did not try to answer the question. She just twisted away in the manner that children do.

"Aur iske haath ko kya hua?"
She knew the answer to this one. "Train iske oopar se nikal gayi thi."

A wheel of a train is a big thing when compared to a two or three year old boy. It's very difficult to imagine that such a wheel could cut such a boy's hand off without mangling the rest of his tiny body. The hand had been cut off in some other way.

And as I asked the children one question after another, I realized that this group of children was being run by an organized gang. Though they had been trained to say they did not know each other, they had also been trained to say they came from the same village, and the contradiction between the two answers was obvious. Given the mutilation of the children before me, it seemed to be a very unfortunate village, real or imagined.

As it realized that there were calculating grown ups behind the children's stories, I grew angrier. Finally, I got up and charged to the nearby police station, hardly a hundred meters away from where these children were.

"Sir!" said the policeman at the gate, inflecting his voice to make clear he didn't really mean to show respect. "Aapko kyaa kaam hai?"

I was livid. "Main SHO se baat karoonga."
"SHO saab to nahin hain."

"Dekhte hain!"

And I walked inside as though I owned the place. Yet the thought crept into my mind, "Had this been any place but Delhi, I'd have been stupid to walk into a police station in anger."

I told the policeman at the desk, "Aap yahaan baithe hain aur sau meter dur bachche bheekh maang rahe hain. Aap yahaan kyaa kar rahe hain?"

The policeman was young and looked impudent in a subtle way. "Kisi bachche ne tang kiya ya chori ki?" he asked.

"Begging allowed nahin hai. Aapkaa kaam hai kaanoon ko implement karna."

He kept shuffling some papers.

"Aap sun rahe hain ki nahin?" I asked.
"Kisi ko bhejtaa hoon. Do chaante lageinge bachchon ko to sab theek ho jayega."

He evidently knew that was not what I wanted to hear. He was playing a smart game.

Just then I looked behind his desk and saw written there "DCP South East District: Shalini Singh". Shalini Singh and my sister had been in school together. Shalini is now one of the leading lights of the Delhi police.

I fell into the trap that all we Indians fall into, as we try to elicit some minimum responsiveness from the system. "Aap Shalini Singh ji ko phone lagaao. Main unko jaanta hoon."

That got their attention. The subtly impudent policeman was suddenly awkward and soon got up and left. Another older and gentler policeman engaged me instead.

"Sir, hum kya karein? Ab to bachchon ko hum thaane mein band bhi nahin kar sakte. Agar bachcha thaane mein aaye to bahut procedure hota hai - nahin to humaari vaat lag jaati hai."

"To aap kaise sambhaalte ho aise matters ko?"
"Sir, ek NGO ko bataana padtaa hai. Phir wo aate hain. Kabhi nahin bhi aate hain. Agar aaye to hum jaakar kuchh kar sakte hain."

"Yeh bachche kisi aur ke liye bheekh maang rahe hain. Koi inhe exploit kar raha hai. Saara desh Slumdog Millionaire dekh raha hai. Aur aap aisa matter investigate nahin karoge?"
"Sir, aap jo bataao wo karenge!"

"To chalo mere saath. Dekh ke aate hain ki ye aadmi kaun hain jo inse bheekh mangwaa rahe hain."
"Theek hai saab, chalo." And he adjusted his cap, picked up a laathi and marched with me out of the station, past its dark gate into the lights of the market.

Seeing us come, the children scattered. The oldest boy on the skateboard could not really move anywhere quickly, so he just played with a few stones - with one hand he'd pick them up and then drop them gently on the ground one by one. He didn't say anything, didn't answer any questions.

I found the little girl who had spoken to me. She was very scared now.

"Daro mat," said the policeman kindly. "Tumko kuchh nahin hoga." This kindness the girl could not take and she began to cry.

She quietened down eventually. "Tum kahaan rehte ho?" the policeman asked.
"Yahaan se ek-do kilometer dur."

"Kahan par?"
But she could not say it in words.

"Humey saath le chaloge?"
She nodded yes.

"Gaadi mein chalein?" I asked.
At this she brightened up.

So the policeman, the beggar girl and I walked to my car. I held her little hand as we walked. People would pass us and then do a double take when they realized what they had just seen. Some women instinctively pulled their own children closer to themselves.

The girl sat at the back of the car with the policeman. When I pulled the ten rupees out of my wallet to pay the parking attendant, I felt guilty of my wealth.

It was almost midnight. We drove a kilometer or two as she chatted freely. But after a while she sobered and said, "Yaheen rok do."

We pulled over and got out. We were at one end of a flyover. A small path ran by the side of the flyover and disappeared into the night. The girl led us down the path.

It was pitch dark - I don't remember seeing such darkness in Delhi before. On the left were some bushes. On the right were some walls. There was not a soul to be seen, if anything could have been seen in that darkness.

"Sir, yahaan par to koi kisi ko kaat kar phenk de to kisi ko subah tak pata nahin chalega" said the policeman betraying some nervousness.

I was nervous too. "Bolo, waapas chal kar aur log le aayein?" I said, ever believing that everything could be solved with more resources.

At this he firmed up his resolve. "Sir, is vardi par koi haath nahin uthaayegaa!"

But he seemed to grasp his stick more firmly.

Then the path opened into some light up ahead. We could make out scores of small dark bundles, blotting out the reflections of light from the railway tracks.

Almost at once we realized we had walked into perhaps a hundred sleeping human beings. Many were on the ground, while a few were on cots.

The girl pulled her hand away and ran. She was lost at once among the bodies, some of whom were stirring awake and sitting up. We strained our eyes to see despite the poor light. We felt rats at our feet, scurrying between the bodies.

It was a summer night and there were also many mosquitoes.

Two coarse young men materialized in front of us. "Kyaa baat hai?"

"Sharda Bibi kaun hai? Haan? Kaun hai Sharda Bibi?" demanded the policeman, asserting himself.

"Is naam ka yahaan koi nahin hai."

"Tum bachchon se bheekh mangwaate ho?"
"Saab, aap kyaa baat kar rahe hain! Hum bechaare to yahaan par kisi tarah se jeene ki koshish kar rahe hain! Humaare koi bachche nahin hain!"

"Yahaan koi bachche nahin hain?"
"Saab, ek do hain. Saab, hum to unko parhaanaa chaahte hain, aap uska arrangement kar do na!" one said thoroughly insincerely.

"Sharda Bibi kaun hai? Bataao nahin to main tumhe andar kar doongaa!"

He was bluffing but I was getting very nervous. I pretended to make a call on my cellphone. The BlackBerry's screen looked most eerie in this setting of huddled bodies. I spoke some authorative English into my phone.

The bluff seemed to work, partly. "Achchha achchha, wo Sharda Bibi! Wo to yahaan se thodi dur par hogi." And he pointed down the tracks into the night.

"Kitni dur?"
"Aadhaa-ek kilometer"

Needless to say, neither the policeman nor I was eager to go after this mysterious lady in this dangerous darkness.

Just then we heard some noises coming down the path we had just come. I tensed, but only till I saw who it was.

It was the group of children. They descended unsuspectingly from the path into the clearing. At the center was the legless older boy - he rode on a cart. The cart was pulled and pushed by the other children, and a couple of them had jumped in beside him. There was a Pied Piper air about the scene.

As soon as they saw us - the policeman and me - their chatter ceased. The adults stared at them and the children averted their gazes in guilty silence. Then one child scampered, and as if on cue, they all ran in different directions.

One of them was foolish enough to run close to us. The policeman grabbed hold of him.

"Kahaan jaa raha hai? Bataa, tere maa baap kaun hain?" he demanded.

The boy was of the scruffy kind. He must have been about ten. He hung his head sullenly.

"Bataa, inme se kaun hain tere maa baap?"
"Baap nahin hai, maa dikhaata hoon!" he said, suddenly angry and liberated at the same time.

He walked over to a cot where a body lay covered with a sheet. He pulled the sheet out with one flourish. A woman of indeterminate age lay there, groaning.

"Uth uth", he said sharply, but there was no response.

"Uth, uth, ye tujhe milna chaahte hain" the boy said and roughly pulled his mother into a sitting position by her shoulders. But when he let go, she again slumped back.

He moved to where her head was and hit her across the face!

She came to, a little, and said a few words. Then he hit her again.

"Bewdi saali. Koi phaayda nahin hai", he said, and walked away. All of ten years old.

I stood there stunned. That young boy already had a reality so complicated that I would never understand it.

"Pata nahin kyaa charhaa kar so rahi hai" said the policeman softly. He must have seen a lot of things in his job, but he sounded like a lost soul.

I felt lost too. I felt like a man might when he stumbles across a mass grave.

"Yahaan se nikalte hain" I said decisively, and the policeman was relieved.

I took out my phone and clicked a couple of photographs for the record. But there was no light to register in the phone's camera. All I got was a grainy gray of varying shades.

We walked back to the car, with me straining hard to sense any aggressive movement or noise behind us. I only relaxed when I slid into the car and locked the door.

The Rs. 14 lakh car looked like something from another planet. The beige leather and the blue lights on the dash were at once striking and empty. We drove back in silence.

"Sir, phir koi baat ho to zaroor boliyega. Mera cellphone number rakh lijiye. Humaaraa kaam hi hai logon ki help karna."

I was half-impressed. But he had one aspect of me foremost on his mind.

"Sir, aap Shalini Singh ji ko kaise jaante hain?"

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Have a great New Year!

Best wishes to the entire PROTON family for the New Year 2010! Thank you for your friendship, respect, forbearance and patience in 2009 (and earlier).

The most significant thing that happened to me in 2009 was the birth of Ekagra. I am happy to report that just like his father, he's very fond of The Economist. You can see him here with one of the year-end editions.

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"Play suspended due to unfit playing conditions"

Just a few days ago, I wrote about how process-oriented the US was, and the contrast with India. In a separate post, I also wrote about how polluted our cities were.

As though to underscore both these points, along came today's one-day cricket match at the Ferozeshah Kotla ground in Delhi.

First, the pollution and haze. You can see it in these photos. It was in fact a lot worse on TV and in real life. A friend, Dr. Vijay Kumar of Amazon, was watching the match from Seattle and sent a mail saying that what he was seeing "is essentially a black screen". And he added, much as I had indicated in my previous post, "Sad thing is, everyone you meet in India will tell you that according to their newspaper, Delhi's air is cleaner 'per capita' than world cities."

Second, the pitch. It was a scandal. One would have thought that there would be a process to ensure that the pitch conforms with international norms. One could use bowling machines, play a Ranji game, have a third party expert certify it - whatever. As things turned out, the top DDCA and BCCI honchos were sitting in the stadium as bystanders as the match referee declared the pitch unsafe. And the thousands of money-paying cricket fans were deprived of a good game of cricket and their Sunday was ruined.

"Bahut shade hai" was a phrase we used to use at IIT. It describes today's non-match aptly.

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Global warming, local choking

There is nothing wrong with getting hot under the collar about global warming. But if you live in one of India's cities, you only have to look out of the window to see that local choking will get to you well before global warming does.

The biggest killer is the Respirable Suspended Particulate Matter (RSPM). It is the stuff that you see billowing out of trucks and diesel taxis. In Delhi, the RSPM levels are THREE TIMES higher than what is considered safe. And it's actually getting worse - the gains obtained from switching Delhi buses to CNG are being wiped out. The eight hour carbon monoxide levels are approximately 6,000 microgram per cubic meter – again THREE TIMES above the safe level of 2,000 microgram per cubic metre.

High levels of RSPM trigger runny nose, sore throat, burning eyes, wheezing, shortness of breath, bronchitis, serious complications in people with heart disease, and cancer. Carbon monoxide poisoning leads to nausea, headaches, shortness of breath, unconsciousness and brain damage.

So debate the Copenhagen outcome as much as you will. Stand up for our rights as a developing country if you must. But first please make sure our children will not be poisoned every day on their way to school and back.

[Source: Centre for Science and Environment (CSE)]

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The most process-oriented country

The United States is the most process-oriented country I know. You can see it in the principles of scientific management by Frederick Winslow Taylor (1856-1915) and the first automobile assembly line by Henry Ford (1913), to the Speedee Service System designed by the McDonald brothers for quick burger production (1940s) and more recently the cookie-cutter Starbucks expansion (pun half-intended) to 15,000 locations around the globe.

In 1870, the GDP of the US was less than the GDP of British India, and just a little higher than the GDP of Germany. Today the GDP of the US is nearly four times that of Germany and more than ten times that of India. While a part of this surge is probably due to American inventiveness and a history of free trade and open business, at least a part is due to the process mindset.

This process mindset is inculcated in children at a very young age. Sometime last year, my father was visiting my sister in New Orleans and spending an idle day organizing the things in her garage for her. Her son, then four years old, wanted to help. My father said, "You are too young to help with this, this is a big job". The little child replied, "Nanaji, when you have a big job, you should just break it down into little jobs. Then you can do those little jobs one by one".

This too is a principle of scientific management! Such process thinking is completely missing in the students the Indian educational system churns out. I can't remember ever being instructed about such things in any class, either in school or in college, even though I studied operations management.

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Lead time optimization - from SupplyChainge to Infor

On a cloudy Portland day almost a decade ago, I and two colleagues - Steve Hochman and John Thorbeck - pulled up in John's black Ford Explorer SUV to the office building that housed our startup, SupplyChainge. We were discussing what to name our revolutionary optimization and operations concept and software, which we believed could double profits at most apparel and footwear companies. "I'm not going to let anyone get out of the car until we finalize the term", said Steve. So, a few minutes later, we had Lead Time Optimization, or LTO for short.

We went on to trademark the term. When we partnered with Infosys (the Infy US CEOs Phaneesh Murthy and Basab Pradhan took a big bet on us) and went out to the industry, we did so under the banner of Lead Time Optimization. You can still find an LTO whitepaper I co-wrote with an Infy colleague Anil Pahwa on the Infosys website here. And there were other partners like IBM and Sun (see a Sun press release here).

SupplyChainge had a few good successes, by our standards. But when SupplyChainge broke up due to personal issues and the assets were transferred to Predictix, we thought the term LTO was gone for ever. So we were surprised today when another SupplyChainge colleague Prashant Kumar found via Google that the multi-billion dollar company Infor has put out a solution offering called Lead Time Optimization, almost totally identical in its target customer, its terminology and its concepts to what we had developed. Their whitepaper on the subject even quotes an article by Prof. Warren Hausman of Stanford, a SupplyChainge Board member, and John Thorbeck, my SupplyChainge co-founder! You can read the Infor Lead Time Optimization whitepaper here. I am skeptical that they have actually done all the very hard work required to make LTO succeed, but am willing to be convinced.

It is somehow satisfying to see that something that was just in my head at one time, and which we as a team had slowly built up into a full-fledged concept, application and commercial solution, is now being pitched by a leading software company. As Steve Hochman, now global head of supply chain strategy at Nike, says today, "SupplyChainge was about 10 - maybe 20 - years ahead of where the industry was when SupplyChainge was founded". And we were not smart enough then to know how to bridge that gap.

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Case study: How a software usability workshop can work wonders

We have all heard the usability spiel: that technology is more or less a commodity, that ease of use – and in fact “delight of use” – should be paramount. We have also heard the horror stories of expensive enterprise and consumer applications that failed miserably because they were just too “kludgy” to use. Yet even today, for every wonderfully user-centric design (think iPhone) there are dozens of desktop or web applications that are boring at best, and simply unusable at worst.

Why is this so? Perhaps the problem is that when you are early in the software development lifecycle, there are so many other challenges and moving parts that you have little time to worry about usability. You worry that bringing the “naïve” users in for design discussions will just derail the project or send it off on a tangent. On the other hand, if you wait till you are through with version 1, you have been compromised as well – it requires great courage to admit at this point that usability is poor and that major elements of the application have to be re-designed.

These are formidable challenges. Yet we at Nagarro recently had a very positive series of usability-related discussions with a major client, which may be useful to recount in this context.

The client is one of the world’s leading travel-related companies. We are building a business-critical application for this company that will be used by a handful of users. The IT project management on the client side had invested a lot of intellectual muscle into the functional and algorithmic design of the application. We too put in a lot of effort to make mockups of the entire application UI and these were approved by the client – but by the IT project management, not by the users. The users did see the application from time to time, but in short bursts and they definitely did not have enough time to play with it and give their feedback.

Then after we had a successful development release and were reviewing progress with senior folks on both sides, we all collectively realized that the usability of the application left quite a bit to be desired. It was a depressing moment.

It wasn’t just a matter of aligning data elements or fiddling with the color palette.

It wasn’t even a matter of trying to streamline workflows to reduce the number of clicks required for each task.

It was the fact that the application’s UI looked like it had been designed by highly analytical engineers and scientists, which it in fact had. Would the users – who were neither engineers nor scientists – find it easy to use? Would they buy into it? Would they find all the features that they would need?

Luckily, the client team comprised very intelligent and wise folks. Rather than blame the team members on either side, the client’s senior VP-level executive said, “We should think of this as continuous improvement. You all did a great job, but we now see it can make it even better. Let’s see this as a positive opportunity and move forward.”

So, no blame game, no recriminations, no requests for “free rework”. The gentleman basically had the wisdom to see that when you are building something highly innovative, you may have to iterate to get the design just right.

Still, on our part, we offered the client a free usability workshop with our best consultant, a person skilled at combining “right brain” creative thinking with the “left brain” analytical thinking required for software design. The users were the star participants in the workshop, which started from first principles – what exactly is it that the users want to achieve? Our engineering team got the chance to put itself into the shoes of the users and try to come up with metaphors and overarching design principles that would work for them and, hopefully, delight them.

The workshop ran for two days and turned our previous thinking on its head. Yet everyone was thrilled with the insights and we agreed we’d run such workshops for each new project. The client agreed to fund a few person-months of effort to upgrade the user interface. Perhaps the cost of the overall development rose by 10%. But as a result, the chances of the application being very successful and useful in the hands of the users probably doubled or tripled.

And that’s always the most important metric!

[This article was first published on the Nagarro blog.]

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The Double Slit experiment

It's Sunday, and while others may today visit a temple or a church or a mosque, I will be reading one of those books on quantum physics that are meant for lay people like myself ("In Search of Schroedinger's Cat", by John Gribbin). It is a thrilling read. Quantum mechanics results are so whacky and difficult to wrap one's brain around that they're almost mystical.

Let me tell you about one of the simplest experiments that shows the weirdness of the world we live in - the double slit experiment. Perhaps you performed this experiment in school - we did. All you need to perform it is a small light source (a bulb, let us say), an opaque sheet with two fine slits in it, and another sheet to act as a screen. If you put the bulb on one side, the slits in the middle and the screen on the other side, what will you get?

You might think that you will get two bands of light on the screen, one for each slit from the light passing through. But reality is different. Let me turn to Wikipedia to describe it accurately:

The wave nature of light causes the light waves passing through both slits to interfere, creating an interference pattern of bright and dark bands on the screen. However, at the screen, the light is always found to be absorbed as though it were made of discrete particles, called photons.

So you have individual photons not going in a straight line to the screen but instead hitting the screen in certain areas but not others. When you look at the total picture created by thousands of photos, you see these alternating bright and dark bands.

Yet if one of the slits is closed, the interference collapses and all you see is one single line on the screen, not alternating bright and dark bands. The photon acts like a particle moving in a straight line. Hmm...

But it gets weirder...

The most baffling part of this experiment comes when only one photon at a time is fired at the barrier with both slits open. The pattern of interference remains the same, as can be seen if many photons are emitted one at a time and recorded on the same sheet of photographic film. The clear implication is that something with a wavelike nature passes simultaneously through both slits and interferes with itself — even though there is only one photon present.

So:
One photon, one slit = Particle moving in a straight line
One photon, two slits = Something going through both slits and ending up as a particle on the screen (not necessarily in a straight line with either slit)? Yet if you send one photon after another, you will see each crash onto the screen at what seems like a random point, but gradually a pattern will emerge - the same dark and light bands that can be statistically predicted.

Something very interesting is going on here. Feynman once said that the double-slit experiment "contains the only mystery".

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