Happy New Year

Three new year greetings that were sent to me - three perspectives:



http://www129.123greetings.com/card/12/31/05/37/FP21231053755510.html



=====
I wish I could wish you all a very happy new year.

I cannot because both this region and the world today faces an ominous future. There is political instability, public policies bordering on the insane, public outroar, hegemonistic activities of the powerful, an impending climatic catastrophe, not too happy changes in the geological activity of the planet, and the sighting of a comet that may, hopefully, miss us by a whisker. Not to mention the old enemy, religious intolerance.

There seems to be no ray of hope.

Probably the only ones those would be happy are the ones who like to play and thrive in troubled waters. That includes politicians, policy makers, greedy scientists and social workers. There is more work now for all these groups.

I am not happy, despite my nomenclature these days as a social worker, because I tend to identify with the planet and its inhabitants. I realise that it is my house that is burning. I realise that I cannot rush out because there is nowhere to go. You cannot, as the saying goes, step out of the world.

There was life in Mars. Perhaps science could find a way out to recreate earth's climate on that planet. Perhaps a lucky few, we know who they are, could just make it. A lot of money has been invested into the process. Much more is needed and hence the desire and the subsequent implementation of plans to milk the planet dry.

But there are some of us who would not rush for a ticket even if it was offered for free. We love this natural world of ours too much to act like rats. We would rather go down with the sinking ship.

I have discussed many options with my friends. The size of the coming storm makes such ideas seem like a paper boat in the face of a tsunami. But it is ideas translated into action that save in the end. If we are prepared we need not start from scratch.

Let me end this note with an appeal to prepare sincerely for the future.

Let 2008 be an year of selfless action.
==========

I identify with the last one, but despite the miseries (around us), life is a mystery and wonder and I try not to be one-dimensional about it.

So... I also add : have a happy new year 2008.

Timbaktu pics

We swam in a natural pool. It was great fun.



This time when I visited Timbaktu I was shocked to see a bloody great canal passing just outside the Timbaktu land. It seems the government is executing a lift irrigation scheme from somewhere to somewhere. It was pretty shocking to see this, because it is so in contrast to Timbaktu. These people have been labouring patiently for ages to regenerate the land do ecologically sustainable improvements, conserve soil and water etc. And suddenly big engineering lands up outside your doorstep. The water is the canal is not flowing water (the project has a long way to go), but water that has percolated into the canal from Timbaktu land. Add injury to insult!
The speed of the development was astonishing -- I did not see any hint of this when I was last there (a month or 2 months back). They also quickly put put a couple of buildings for their offices/workers, which I didn't capture in photos. I didn't get a chance to talk to Timbaktu people about this, but I don't think they were even aware that this was going to happen at that time (actually slightly wrong see below). It comes home very clearly to you how government can bulldoze its way through. How would you like this kind of thing to happen to you out of the blue ?

A small ironical sidenote: actually this project has been in the works for ages it seems. How long ? Well, Kalyani at Timbaktu tells me that when she graduated with a diploma in civil engineering and was looking for a job 10 years ago, she heard that the govt. for recruiting for this project and was advised to apply for it. So the project languished for 10 years and then got off to a rousing start in 2 months. Excellent.






Some of the natural regeneration work at Timbaktu. These are common lands that are protected and afforested. The density of trees is due to planting and protecting efforts and dissuading unrestrained grazing.


More Timbaktu pics:

www.flickr.com More of ahminotep's photos tagged with timbaktu

Raagi Idly

Hatching eggs

Did you use to that phrase when you were young to signify a person who was not doing much. We did in Coromandel colony. (At graduate school in Physics, we used another picturesque phrase 'doing diddly squat').
Anyway, the appropriateness of the 'hatching eggs' simile was brought 'home' to me recently as a pigeon has been hatching eggs on our balcony. The process goes:

sit on eggs
continue for most of the day and night

When we first saw an egg we got a little stressed and considered dumping it. Later we moved it to a shoebox next to the pot but the bird seemed to abandon the egg, so we put it back. The bird has built a little nest and laid one more egg after the photos we took.

Photos from our Diwali trip

(I'm going to Pune 26-28 Nov)

Broccoli flowers

This is what broccoli flowers look like, if you don't eat the florets and let them flower. Does it make you feel guilty ?

New look (again)

For a lark, I decided to shave off my hair when we went to Tirumala. Quite stupidly I haven't been properly documenting the various stages. But for starters here's a photo taken today from my cellphone camera, couldn't find my normal one.
I'm quite kicked by the new look and wondering if I can keep it permanently. Its a bit ironical -- we read that the traditional rationale for shaving your head when going to a temple is that its a surrendering of the ego -- by reducing your 'face value'.

Water Posters

http://www.indiawaterportal.org/blog/index.php/2007/10/29/undp-posters-on-water/









Cool posters on water



To explicate the points being made:
1.) Water- and sanitation- related diseases even today, kill lots of people, especially children.
2.) Poor people (particularly women) in developing countries spend a huge amount of time on accessing water for the family, time that could otherwise be spent on income-generation or girl children going to school.
3.) There is a very paradoxical situation in developing country city slums. Most of the population of the city gets piped water supply at reasonable rates (usually subsidised). However the slums can't afford the cost charged for setting up a new connection for piped water or because the slum tenament is unauthorized, the corporation does not supply them water. They end up paying a lot more (upto 10 times more in some cities) for private water supply through tankers or some other source. This is not just an Indian phenomenon, also there in cities like Jakarta, Lagos, Nairobi. The thing about this is that for other necessities (like healthcare, education, food) the poor spend a lot less than others and get services of poorer quality. In the case of water, the poor are spending a lot more for less quality.
4.) The right to life is a human right but it doesn't mean much without water.


If you haven't tuned out yet -- from my reading, water is getting to be a serious problem even in the developed countries. The southwestern United States (including southern California) has been feeling more and more water shortages and muted arguments are beginnning, about sharing the limited water. This is besides the more well-known disputes with Mexico about sharing river waters. Another problem is the pipeline systems of cities. These are very expensive to maintain and replace and most utilities even in the developed world have neglected them. The result is that the water infrastructure of most cities is in urgent need of replacement but there are no funding sources.

We are off to Nemeli (Priya's place) for Diwali.

My water, your water

Our apartment complex has stopped water service between 1 and 4 in the afternoon and 12 and 5 at night to conserve water. It sucks and is very inconvenient. And I know from working on water that there are many more convenient and sensible solutions (RWH, recycling, metering and tariffing, personal consciousness and conservation) all of which are not so easy to implement in a community group like an apartment complex.

I do not appreciate the irony of running a website to help people with their water issues while not being able to fix mine.

Travails of a ticket

This is how my ticketing experience went for the travel to Delhi:

-- I booked the ongoing ticket and return ticket separately (ergo, extra time spent)hoping to squeeze in some personal vacation time with Priya in Delhi which didn't work out
-- Suddenly an important meeting came up a couple of days before the scheduled departure, so our office person had to go the airport and waste hours to get both tickets rescheduled after paying decent amount of money. You can't do rescheduling online.
--when I went to the airport on my departure date, I found that the ticket had been postponed to November 13th by mistake instead of being preponed to Oct 13th, so I ended up taking the next flight out after paying a sizeable difference. The ticket had a fairly illegible scrawl for the new travel date, and I'm fairly sure it would have been the airline's fault for a wrong reschedule.
--the day before my return I noticed that the ticket said that I needed to carry the same ID that I had booked the ticket with. This had been done by our office person with my PAN card which I wasn't carrying. I called them and they said they couldn't guarantee anything even with a xerox of the PAN -- it would be the discretion of the people at the airport. Rather than stress, I bought another ticket on the same flight at a hefty premium again and cancelled this one after losing some money.
-- at the airport they didn't ask for any ID at all.

Fuck you Indian Airlines and Jet Lite and all you other stupid airlines out there !

Meetings in Delhi

I was in Delhi for a long trip 13th to 18th and met several government types including fairly high level people. Very interesting, scary and a learning experience but won't talk too much about it. Was in a couple of meetings with Sam Pitroda, Chairman of the NKC. Instead here are photos and other stuff. The recording was made on my cellphone. I have been feeling for a while that given lack of time, I might try podcasting instead of blogging. However this first attempt is painfully amateurish and painful to hear. I am however always ready to lay it all out, so here it is. Photo context is in the audio.

Recording is at : http://www.geocities.com/ahminotep/Upload/Delhi.amr. Works on real player for me, but needed a software update.

The Written Word blog has a post about the Delhi Metro

The first two tomatoes from our balcony garden. I have a lot more respect for the red colour of tomatoes after watching the amazing change from green to red in just a few days




Cooking Ragi mudda at home (well in my case, watching Ragi mudda being cooked and making a general nuisance of myself)

From a year-mate at college

The Malejodi CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) is based on the principle of connecting people to the source of their food. When you join the Malejodi CSA you are entering into a partnership that is dedicated to bringing fresh, organic produce directly from our fields to your table. Your membership helps to provide a ready market for the organic produce that we grow, and in return, Malejodi will provide you with fresh seasonal produce each month.

CSA members make a commitment to support the farm through their membership. By joining, you become an active part of the farm's success and community.

About Malejodi:
Malejodi is located in the foothills of the Western Ghats, near the source of the Nethravathi River in Belthangady taluk, Dakshina Kannada district, Karnataka, about 320 kms from Bangalore. It was purchased by its current owner in 1995, and has been farmed organically for all its life, as far as we can tell.

How Does This Work?
Our 2008 CSA season will begin in March 2008. The season will run for a six month period, and membership can be renewed thereafter every six months.
Produce will be delivered to member’s residences (in the Ujire/Belthangady area, Mangalore and Bangalore) once a month beginning March 2008. Depending on harvest times, the gap between monthly deliveries may be as low as 20 days, and as high as 40 days.


Share Size & Cost
In 2008 we will offer 12 full CSA shares in addition to a limited number of non CSA produce shares (This is for people who want to pick and choose what they want to buy at a fixed price, though Large and Medium share CSA members will have the first priority to both their share of produce and any excess quantities that they may want of the produce).

The following choices are available:
• Large Share (Rs. 1200/month, feeds 4-5 people)
• Medium Share (Rs. 700/month, feeds 2-3 people)
• Non CSA produce Share (a la carte ordering, product availability and prices will be notified by email roughly 2 weeks before delivery for you to place orders by phone or email)

We will accept check payments. We require a non-refundable deposit of Rs. 1500 at the time of requesting membership to hold your share, with the balance of your share price (which is 6 months of payment) due by February 1, 2008.

Membership includes your monthly produce, a newsletter, recipes, and if we get our act together, invitations to CSA work events and farm events and the opportunity to enjoy the farm.

To get more information or to sign up for the CSA, please email us at: malejodi@gmail.com

What Do I Get Each Month?
At Malejodi we grow over 100 varieties of grains, vegetables, fruits, tree crops and herbs. Each month you'll receive a diverse mix of crops that are in season. While no two months will be the same, here is an example of what we think would be a typical Full share in April.

Vegetables:
Ash gourd
Lady-finger (Bhindi)
Bitter-gourd (Karela)
Tomatoes
Various Greens
Brinjal
Beans

Fruits and Tree products:
Mango
Raw jackfruit
Papaya
Coconut
Tender Coconut
Banana fruit
Raw Banana
Grains:
Rice (white or brown par-boiled)
Urad Dhal

Spices:
Ginger
Turmeric powder

Herbs:
Curry-leaves
Coriander leaves

Beauty, Health and Miscellaneous products:
Shikakai powder
Herbal tea
Honey


Since our deliveries are monthly (something necessitated by economic and ecological constraints), we will supply only those quantities of produce that will keep under storage for the appropriate time (a week to two weeks for vegetables, longer for grains, pulses and oils). We will also accommodate requests for some shuffling of produce based on personal preferences (tender coconut instead of coconuts or coconut oil, for example). Our goal is to provide sufficient quantity and variety from the crops we grow to ensure that you receive excellent value for your membership, though the vagaries of nature and farming might go against us on occasionally, hopefully compensated by its bounty at other times.

Crop List
In the 2008 season we are either growing or plan to grow the following*:

Grains:
White rice
Brown rice
Urad dhal
Moong dhal
Sesame

Vegetables:
Lady-finger (Bhindi)
Dry Beans
Brinjal
Elephant Yam
Green Beans
Greens (Basale, harive)
Tomatoes
Melons
Bitter-melon
Bamboo shoot
Snake-gourd
Ash gourd
Summer Squashes
Elephant Yam
Colocasia
Various Herbs and medicinal plants

Fruits and Tree products:
Amla
Avocado
Banana (raw, ripe, flower, and stem)
Breadfruit
Coconut (tender, ripe, copra and oil)
Betel-nut
Cashew nut
Jackfruit (raw and ripe)
Mango (tiny for pickling, raw and ripe)
Sithaphal
Guava
Papaya (raw and ripe)
Pineapple
Pomegranate
Tamarind
Drum sticks
Spices:
Ginger (raw and dried)
Turmeric
Black Pepper


*We may occasionally have to provide produce from other farms in the area to supplement our quantities, and some of the crops here may not be yielding during the first season itself.

===========================
Return/refunds and fine print:
We will need at least 7 full shares to make the project viable. In the event that we have less than 7 sign-ups by January 2008, we will refund your deposit.
Once the CSA begins, and you feel that you are not getting value for your money, we ask that you talk to us and explain the source of dissatisfaction immediately (produce not of adequate quality, too little in quantity, variety of food not what you expected), and give us a chance to correct it during the following month. If you are still not satisfied, we will gladly refund your share price from the point forward of your first telling us of your dissatisfaction.

Malejodi farm
Anand and Alpna

malejodi@gmail.com

Full article text

As an easy way to archive, I'm pasting the article referred to earlier here ..


Let's look for some fluid solutions
Mumbai has both a flooding problem during the monsoons and periodic water cuts. The solution should be obvious: water harvesting, as Chennai is doing with great results The key benefit for Mumbaikars from rainwater harvesting will be in reducing their dependence on the ubiquitous water tanker
VIJAY KRISHNA



R AINWATER HARVESTING is one of the keys to making Mumbai a more livable city.
As Mumbai continues to grow, bringing water to the city from outside becomes increasingly difficult. We are running out of sources to tap into. As competition for this limited resource intensifies, people outside Mumbai are not going to willingly give up their water for us. Rainwater harvesting is a solution that is literally in our backyard.

How much water can Mumbai harvest? On long-term average, Mumbai gets about 2400 mm of rainfall a year. Taking an area of 437 sq km gives us about 2800 MLD (Million Litres per Day) over the course of a year. So depending on how serious we are about it, we can get anywhere from zero to 2800 MLD of our water requirements from rainwater harvesting. Compare this with Mumbai's current water supply through BMC of about 3500 MLD, of which a fifth or more is lost in leakages, and another 1000 MLD shortfall, which is met from other sources. This should show us that rainwater harvesting has serious potential.

The key benefit for Mumbaikars from rainwater harvesting will be in reducing their dependence on the ubiquitous water tanker. With rainwater harvesting in the rainy season, people should be able to meet their requirements along with the BMC supply In fact several ‘ear . ly adopters' of rainwater harvesting report that the recharging is continuing to give them water even in summer months. From the macro-view, more water from rainwater harvesting means less water needs to come into the city from outside, reduc ing costs, energy consumption, and increasing sustainability and dependability. As more and more people harvest rain, there is going to be a perceptibly positive effect on flooding - something surely no one will complain about.

We must recognise the limitations of the city administration in water supply Despite the talk . of a world-class city and provid ing 24-by-7 water, BMC cannot conjure water out of nowhere. As the city's needs grow, it becomes ever harder to find new water sources and transport the water to the city As a part of the . solution, BMC should aggressively promote rainwater harvesting and legislate it after appropriate preparation. Businesses must recognise that rainwater harvesting is a sound investment for ensuring Mumbai's future. It must be implemented in offices as a matter of course. Housing societies must be helped in implementing it. Asian Paints has set a great example of rainwater harvesting and sound water management - and it has added to its bottomline.

How are other cities faring? In October 2002, the government of Tamil Nadu passed an ordinance making rainwater harvesting compulsory for all residences and giving people a year to construct the facilities. This was after the situation got extremely bad - in 2002, Chennai was getting a jaw-dropping low supply of 194 MLD from the municipal corporation compared to the requirement of 790 MLD. 2004 was a bad monsoon year and 2005 and 2006 were good years. Nowadays, Chennai is seeing rising groundwater levels. For example, a study by Chennai Metrowater showed that between June 2005 and 2006, the average groundwater level in the city was up by 2.5 meters, thanks to water harvesting. The trend of falling groundwater levels has been reversed. Chennai now is better prepared to face a drought year. According to Sekhar Raghavan of the Chennai Rain Center, saline water intrusion, a big problem in coastal areas of the city has come down dramatically, with the level of dissolved salts falling by as much as 80 per cent in some areas- one of the big success stories of compulsory rainwater harvesting. This is something Mumbai also stands to gain from harvesting rainwater. Chennai is also experimenting with largescale desalination, but the cost of water produced by that technology is very high.

Bangalore continues to grow rapidly but it has few water supply choices left. There is only so much water it can extract from the Cauvery and the interstate fight with Tamil Nadu over those waters make that hardly a reliable source. Thus Bangalore too needs to adopt rainwater harvesting and water recycling in a big way or suffer Chennai's painful experience.

There is every reason to make rainwater harvesting compulsory in most cities, including Mumbai. The water crisis is real, and rainwater harvesting is an essential component of the solution. So many housing societies and companies have already implemented rainwater harvesting successfully There is . no dearth of organisations in Mumbai that will offer support in implementing it. Asian Paints runs a Total Water Management Center at its Bhandup office that is free and open to everyone. The company says it has helped people harvest 100 million litres of rainwater to date. Eureka Forbes also offers free rainwater consultancy and has helped many housing societies in setting up their rainwater harvesting systems. L&T Powai, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, St.Catherine's Home, Andheri to name a few are successfully using harvested rainwater. A listing of groups that offer consultancy and design can be found at http://tinyurl.com/2lca98, along with examples of successful rainwater harvesting. With the kind of rainfall Mumbai gets, it is only commonsense that we use the water judiciously and don't seesaw between floods and shortages.

There are some other aspects of the water problem that need to be looked into. One is wastewater recycling, which has enormous potential. There are already working examples that show its viability The other is water con . servation - the best way to implement that is through pricing water at a level that encourages people to conserve. But the pricing should be by slabs, ensuring supply to everyone irrespective of their ability to pay .

Vijay Krishna works for Arghyam, a trust dedicated to water issues


http://epaper.hindustantimes.com/artMailDisp.aspx?article=14_09_2007_013_001&typ=0&pub=264

A big deal !

Through various circumstances, I ended up writing an article for the Hindustan Times, Mumbai edition. Op-ed no less ! It appeared on September 14th Friday.

http://epaper.hindustantimes.com/artMailDisp.aspx?article=14_09_2007_013_001&typ=0&pub=264

It was a lot of fun getting together the material for the article, though it was scary. I talked to a bunch of people in the course of doing it. Also I kinda cheated in writing it as if I was a Mumbaikar. But hey, I can live with that. Overall I think the article was somewhat unremarkable and didn't show a lot of insight, but given the constraints, not bad.

This is quite a big deal for me. Since I like reading and writing, I have always nursed a hankering to write in public. Its great to be able to fulfil that.

The online supplement to the article is at :
http://www.indiawaterportal.org/mumbairwh/

Travels

The Hotel de l'Orient in Pondicherry



I've been travelling a little bit here and there and its keeping me happy.
I went to Thane (suburb of Mumbai) in August for a couple of days on work.
Then we went to Kalahasti late August.
Last weekend I was in Timbaktu and midweek this week I was in Pondicherry/Auroville for a workshop kind of thingy. Pondy was definitely the highlight and I want to keep going back. The French town is gorgeous more so because its a sight you don't see anywhere else in India (perhaps Goa). I picked up an interesting music CD this time called Pondy groove, a crazy mishmash of French, English, traditional Indian, fusion and whatever else.

Timbaktu was remarkable for the amount of water I saw this time including the huge and amazing Mushtikovela tank. I had the privilege of seeing it reach to 6 inches of the full tank level (FRL for the cogniscenti) and a couple of hours after I left, I was told that it overflowed.

PS: ***@!#$#*(&&(*&&)Q#R*&(*&(@&#(& Tamilians for changing the name to Puducherry. I am composing in mind a rant against Tamilian-ness, that I will post to the Written Word.

Remarriage !!

For reasons which remain very unclear to me, Priya's family has been very keen that we go to Kalahasti near Tirupati and redo the tying of the knots there. This finally happened on 26th August (a couple of days before our anniversary). Her parents were also there. Overall quite an uneventful experience. The diety is quite interesting -- it is a shivalinga but a very svelte tall thin version. Both at Kalahasti and Tirupati the chamber where the diety is kept has a certain mystical feel to it. There is a background chant and the chamber is deeply recessed with lighting and I do get affected by the atmosphere which is quite rare for me. At Kalahasti we were there at the time of the aarathi cermony which is a small spectacle with lots of loud musical instruments including a chap bashing together two brass plates creating a tremondous din, and overall again creating a certain atmosphere.
There was an interesting side-episode where the grand pujari, the senior person in the hierarchy, showed some interest in our case dismissing any possibility of 'dosha' (which is why we had gone there), and quite accurately telling Priya's parents that if we didn't have children it was because we didn't want them.

Photos are at the hotel where we stayed, cameras were not allowed inside the temple.

More about Kalahasti

Balcony kitchen garden

Our balcony garden expanded significantly courtesy Priya's mom. There is a creeper that we planted (broadbean) that is growing wildly. An interesting side effect from applying our own compost is that every pot has sprouted one or two tomato plants. Overall, it gets me great happiness to see a minor jungle happening on our balcony. Now we have a few edibles happening there that are nice. We planted broccoli. One of them gave us the edible flower, but before growing much the flower seems to be 'blooming' which is disappointing and leaving us with the tough choice of eating it now or letting it grow more and become less edible. The tomatoes are also growing nicely and we have a coriander pot that has been through one harvest already. Palak is in the offing...