# 23 Demolition Derby, Learn With Friends...

Demolition Derby

MCD and Dharma

I live in a South Delhi residential colony which has the misfortune of straddling the Outer Ring Road. Its second misfortune is that the society which planned the colony laid it out with wide service lanes.  In a city starved of parking places, these streets have become a magnet for guest houses, banks, clinics, ‘luxury aesthetic clinics’, legal chambers and discreet offices without signboards. The laws on commercial use of residential property are quite specific; when I was a member of the Managing Committee of our society, I studied these carefully, so you will have to take my word for it, there are over 30 properties which are being used in blatant violation of municipal norms.

A few years ago, our Society moved the courts to take action against these violations, with a case-by-case listing of the nature of misuse. The court referred the matter to the South Delhi Municipal Corporation, which is supposed to have conducted a survey on the matter, and reported that “All is Well”. Which it is - for those who have clogged our service lanes with cars belonging to their employees and customers. 

This is an old story. In one of the more famous cases relating to the misuse of residential premises for commercial purposes in Delhi, a complainant moved the matter all the way to the Supreme Court, after the High Court ruled that there was nothing to the complaint. 

In a 2015 judgement, the Supreme Court over-ruled the High Court, determined that the commercial use of the property was illegal, and had a few things to say about the Municipal Corporation of Delhi.

• “ The MCD has ignored the relevant aspects of the case of deviation of the then relevant Delhi Master Plan, and unauthorised use of the basement, ground floor, mezzanine floor and the first floor of the said building.”

• “Instead of taking prompt action as provided under the provisions of the DDA Act…the MCD proceeded to regularise the illegal and unlawful activities of the respondent-owners…”

and

• “It is necessary for us to make an observation here that  the conduct of the MCD and the DPCC for their inaction is highly deplorable as they have miserably failed to discharge their statutory duties, on account of which there has been a blatant violation of the law.”

All of the above, just in case you thought that the Jahangirpur demolition drive had anything to do with the MCD’s deep concern for the Delhi Master Plan, and its commitment to discharging its statutory duties.

Learning With Friends

“I hope he’s giving you guru dakshina”, an acquaintance said in the changing room, when he heard that I had just given Madhavan his first swimming lesson.

“We’ve learned so much from each other over the decades, that it would be impossible to keep account”, I replied.

With friends, you can’t keep account of lessons learned, and dakshina due.  One birthday, a group of friends sprawled across my bedroom floor, to have Amit Varma give us a master class in poker. Two weeks ago, I finally gave up on trying to get under the skin of digital photo editing, and had Randhir come over and give me a ‘Lightroom 101’ class.

Twenty-five years ago, I was way behind deadline on shipping out my English translation of Tripurari Sharma’s Hindi play, ‘Kaath ki Gaadi’, a moving account of life among lepers. I had heard about this new phenomenon called e-mail, and asked Arun, an early e-evangelist, whether he would mail it to the Johns Hopkins Press for me. 

“I won’t”, he said. 

“But if you come over, I’ll show you how it’s done”.   

Teach a friend to fish….

The best lessons don’t come packaged with enrolment forms and test grades. Infants learn from observation and mimicry, largely from the parents who are their first role models. As they socialise, they pattern behaviour seen in the playground, and in the classroom, even while studying the blackboard for the learning outcomes prescribed by the curriculum.

I learned to curse in Punjabi when I joined a Delhi boy’s school, after years in a convent school in South India, where the atmosphere was a lot more genteel. I went to college with many of these classmates, and with them, I learned to smoke, and drink, and eat kebabs.

“Why did no one tell me meat was so delicious?”, I asked myself at age eighteen, till then the conscientious vegetarian son of a devoutly carnivorous mother. Beyond beer and barbecue, we gave each other courage to invite young women out to picnics and dance parties, and to flirt at discotheques. 

We taped records for each other, and sometimes the conversation went beyond “This is a great dance song”. Paranjoy would intone the lyrics of a new Bob Dylan song to make sure you understood the social commentary underlying it. And, after we had tossed a Frisbee around the D’ School yard, TR would order a coffee, and pull out the Times of India crossword from his shirt pocket. Fountain pen poised over the squares, he would goad me to find the anagrams - those are the easiest, you have to learn to spot them. And in the spirit of the cryptic clue, he took to calling me Doctor Clout. I was lost, just as he intended.

“ M.O. or Medical Officer, is a common clue for Doctor; Clout is a synonym for hit. 

Doctor Clout is M.O. Hit…Mohit”

I shared this moniker with another friend, Jackie, a true lover of words. Jackie chuckled till the tears came down his cheeks, and ‘Doctor Clout’ became the only name he ever used for me. In 1983, I came home from a business trip, to find a letter from Jackie, commissioning me to write a piece on white water rafting for the journal he edited, the SPAN magazine. I had never published before, and SPAN was a prestigious banner, brought out by the American Center.

 “Are you sure?” I asked him on the phone. 

“If you write a story even half as well as you tell it, you’re my man.”

Friends listen carefully, and they push you to learn. 

I made friends with another Mohit, in a water-filled quarry in the Aravalis outside Delhi. It had become my weekend swimming hole, and for several months, the only swimmers I saw there had walked in with me. I felt a proprietorial anger when I saw Mohit’s gang intrude on to the waters of ‘our lake’. My childish pique passed, and I swam to the beach where they were gathered. 

“You’re the Mohit who runs Adventure 18”, I confirmed. I had bought cycling gear at his shop.

“You’re the Mohit who crossed Perang-la with Shubhendu?” That was me, all right.

For years after, the two Mo’s swam together at the quarry. 

“ Water is really your medium”, he observed one day. 

And even as he encouraged me to train for my first triathlon, Mo urged me to learn the ‘Total Immersion’ school of swimming, which favours gliding through water, and bodily form over muscular strength. He gave me some tips in the green waters of the quarry, and I could see this was going somewhere. Since then, I have attended TI classes in Delhi, San Mateo, Windsor, and Kalamata. With TI, water has become even more my medium.

The swimming lessons I now give Madhavan are based on the Total Immersion technique. Friends enrich your life in a circle that glows with learning and growth.

Choose well.

Inflation Watch

Palm oil prices hit 1500 rupees per 10 kg last week, up two-and-a-half times in the last two years. They are likely to surge further when markets open on Monday, because the world’s largest palm-oil exporter, Indonesia, announced late Friday night that it was banning exports.

“We are terribly shocked by this decision of Indonesia,” the president of the Solvent Extractors’ Association of India, told Bloomberg. “We were not expecting a ban like this.” Indians consume 22 mn tons of edible oil a year, 15 mn of which is imported. Indonesia, from where we import 8.5 mn tons, accounts for the bulk of this import. Even if the export ban is temporary, it will create a surge in the prices of edible oil in India - affecting the consumption basket of households directly, as well as via processed foods such as biscuits, and soaps.

Indian food prices are the most visible component of inflation, and most acutely felt by the poor. A global shortage of wheat, and the rush to export from India, has also meant that prices of the grain are ruling very firm even at a time when it is being harvested. Typically, traders cede ground to the Food Corporation at harvest time. This year, food processors, exporters and local traders don’t want to run the risk of markets getting stocked out, and are all bidding for wheat arrivals.

In 2022, Inflation is definitely not transitory.