An Ode to Audit

Nearly fifteen years ago I was posted as the Addl. Divisional Railway Manager of Nagpur Division in the South East Central Railway. We had a huge narrow gauge network in the Division, the vastest in the world at 700 kilometres. The railway line passed through thick forest and connected many stations, which had no road connectivity. The narrow gauge trains were the only means of communication available to the poor villagers and tribals inhabiting these lands. The famous Satpura Express ran on this network between Balaghat and Jabalpur. The network has now been converted to Board Gauge and the romance of narrow gauge is gone for ever.

Nainpur was a major junction on the narrow gauge network and was frequented by Divisional officers for inspections. A night stay at Nainpur would help them inspect many segments during a single visit. Train journey from Nagpur to Nainpur would take eleven hours and was extremely tiresome and backbreaking what with sharp curves and lurching of the carriages, which were fifty to a hundred years old and had poor suspension. Even the villagers would not travel such long distances. They used the trains to connect with nearby villages or small towns. Students would go to school and vegetable growers would sell their produce in nearby consumption centres.

Railway Officers going to Nainpur or Seoni would travel by road. Roads were rather good and even though they traversed the same forests, it was possible to cut diagonally and reach Seoni or Nainpur in just three to four hours. So, one could leave early morning one day, do some useful work that day and the next day and come back the next evening. Going by train would have wasted too much time. This doesn’t mean that tracks on the rest of the network was not inspected or attended. That was done in short stretches over a number of days.

Well, one fine day I got a letter from the Audit Officer questioning why officers were not travelling by train. After all they were railway officers and must travel by train. All written replies about the duration of journey and time being of essence was dismissed by him. I asked him in a meeting if a State Road Transport Corporation officer always traveled by bus, or did he sometimes travel by train and air too. But, he would have none of it.

Finally, when nothing seemed to work, I said in a tripartite meeting (the Executive, Railway Finance Officer and the Audit team) that all future tripartite meetings would be held in Nainpur and that all of us would travel by train. That was a meeting every month and would have taken three to four days of staying out in near wilderness,  not to speak of the bone-shattering journeys to and fro.

The Audit team was stunned. Said, “Sir, please write some justification once again. We will close the case. And, they did.

A New National Festival (दिल्ली की सर्दी)

Delhiites must think that they are God’s gift to Indians. They enjoy the best civic amenities in the country. Delhi has the best roads, pavements, parks, malls and schools. A Delhiwallah enjoys the  benefit of the best universities and colleges, and the best hospitals, both government and private. Delhiites have uninterrupted power, clean water, roads that are swept every night and drains that flow like smooth single malts in their collective oesophagus. An average citizen of Delhi thinks he has arrived in life what with rubbing shoulders with the mighty and the powerful.

Yet, the annual gripe and grouch on pollution by Delhiwallahs visits the whole nation with unfailing regularity. Come November and the city is agog with plaintiffs crying white death, “Oh, the air is filthy, smokey and we can’t breathe. Damn the farmers of Punjab, Haryana and UP.” Juxtaposed pictures of Delhi in June and November are flashed across newspapers and in social media to prove how the nation has failed its capital. Oh, how thankless and how uncouth the unwashed Indians elsewhere are! It is for them that the privileged elite can’t even have an easy breath while strolling in the lush green Lodhi Garden and Nehru Park and the Europe-like vistas of Chanakyapuri and Connaught Place. That the rest of India pays for the carpet grass and blossoms of these parks and yet can’t ever imagine a fraction of that in its towns and mofassils is not even a wispy thought in their minds.

Yet, the same Delhi residents, in spite of the spectacle they create on pollution heaped on them by the hoi polloi of the netherworld of India can’t get their act right on COVID-19. The most educated and aware single, contiguous lot of people, supported by the best healthcare system in the country, still throw up an ever increasing number of the infected, five times higher proportionately, than the rest of the country. Who is to blame for such carelessness, and who will bear the brunt when the high pressure cauldron of Coronavirus ultimately cracks open to inflict on the whole country yet another wave of the deadly virus? Surely not the farmers of Punjab and Haryana.

Show me a photo of Delhi in June and November of 1950s and I will show you the same contrast. Visibility impairment by fog is not a proof of pollution. Well, there is some smoke that creates a smog. The smog continues much after all the paraali is burnt and disposed of. The pollution is as bad, or worse in December and January. Surely There is no smoke coming from Punjab and Haryana then. It is from Delhiites’ own cars, buses and two-wheelers.

Yet, firecrackers are banned in Diwali. They are banned not only in Delhi, but in entire India just because someone in Delhi approaches the law and lawmakers and the Green Tribunals that Diwali is oh-so-polluting, and merriment of children in Patna, Bhopal, Lucknow and Mumbai; in Jaunpur, Hubli, Nanded and Midnapore is clamped down. This is an annual ritual and the whole country of one hundred and thirty crores is deprived of festival fun of a few hours in a year so that smoke of firecrackers doesn’t blow in the winds from Indore, Nagpur, Coimbatore, Kochi and Jaisalmer straight to Delhi. I have never heard of someone from a smaller city or a village ever seeking a ban on Diwali festivities.

The whole nation must collectively lament that Delhi has polluted air in the winters. We owe it to them. The entire media chokes and coughs like there is no other event they have to cover. Sino-Indian standoff takes a backseat, so do politics, COVID, Kashmir, article 370 and Masood Azhar; the country suddenly becomes a place of harmony and peace. Isn’t smog over Delhi the biggest apocalypse that has descended on the humanity?

So, friends and countrymen! Let’s celebrate the biggest festival of India - the Smoggy Winter of Delhi.

Winding Down

What is the age at which one should begin to think of uncluttering life? Fifty, sixty or three scores and ten? Now that I am quickly approaching sixty I think the time has come to take stock of belongings, desires, missions, targets, relationships and to-do-lists.

Why do I think so, you may ask. Ain’t I still productive, have enough energy and drive to deliver for the society and doesn’t being active keep one young? I surely want to remain young, or at least remain youthful like a young man. Who doesn’t? But, I can see the horizon in the distance, where the sky meets the sea. I also see the sun, well past its zenith, though burning bright, is speeding towards it. Can I stop its descent? Can anyone? I have discovered a special vision now - I can see around things. I can see behind what is before me, and I see the rainbow meeting the earth, a beautiful rainbow, however.

I have no misgivings in my mind that I am here to change the game or its rules, not any more. There is the next generation, the vivacious and the driven, who thinks so now. So, no high-octane gas fuels my drive now; I ride a sedate sedan - easy and comforting. The sedan must be light and nimble, though. So, what do I do with my five hundred book collection in two large Victorian cupboards? What do I do with the cupboards themselves? My lead-crystal glassware, which I collected to serve the finest brews to my connoisseur friends, looks at me sadly and reminds me that my friends too are on the same path as mine.

The book that I wanted to write and had been putting off for the day, when I would have time to invest, should now wait since the time I have on the planet has many demands on it, the least of which is of writing a book. So, should I dust that forgotten recliner and at least read up some of my library? I kept buying self-help books on how to win friends, how to cook that chicken soup for my soul, my collection of management books that were to teach me how to motivate, how to run a startup and what kind of boss I should work for - they all seem purposeless. I have gotten by rather well without their help. 

Do I really need to go out and see the world now, when I am free from encumberances, or will be soon? The Caribbean cruise, the Egyptian pyramids, the Louvre - haven’t I seen enough even though I may have missed those. Does bucket-list tourism make any sense, or spending time with the ones you loved makes for a more fulfilling life?

What about the lovely furniture that we curated so longingly, the silk drapes and the satin covers? Do I have enough of them, or an excess of them? Is it even a question to ask at this stage? What about the electronics - the hi-fi music setup, the gadgets and watches? Do I still renew them every few years? How many such renewal cycles do I have left?

Will I still be beguiled into desiring and acquiring more, or will I begin to shed baggage? The nest is empty, yet it is full. One thinks that one should buy a new car, and a large one, so that it could carry the whole extended family - children and grand children - once they all gather together. Should I buy a new car at all? Will I be fit enough to drive it after five years, ten? Should I move into an old age home? Would it not steepen the downward incline to be in the company of setting and dimming suns?

What are the commitments one had made and to how many people? Let’s get together one day, let me come by and say hello to you the day I get some time, O! Shouldn’t we, the old gang, reminisce over a few drinks and go back in time. If only one had the time! When I look back twenty years and wonder if there will be another such looking back after another twenty years, I don’t get a sure answer.

So, I ask myself, “ Should the next five years, or ten or twenty, be lived easily or more intensely?” Isn’t there so much that is left unfinished? Isn’t a five year period now far more valuable than it was twenty years ago? Should I begin to wind down and leave the reins, which I never actually controlled, or should I make up for the lost time one last time?

I am undecided.