# 27 Shahrukh and Randomness, Notes on Notes, etc.

Home in Satoli

Shahrukh and Randomness

“Dark forests with trees like giants…vahaan kabhi mat jaana, Mohit bhai!”, 

Shahrukh reported when Sanjoy and he came back from a documentary shoot at the mountain campus of the Indian Veterinary Research Institute, Mukteshwar. Before the second evening turned into night, Shahrukh persuaded Sanjoy to pack up their cameras and drive to Nainital, to streetlights, and to television in their hotel room.

In all my years of holidaying and trekking in the Himalaya, I had never heard of Mukteshwar. Through our childhood, the mountains meant Kashmir. Gulmarg, chiefly; 4 weeks every summer in a cottage on the edge of the golf course, with a few days on Dal Lake on the way up. In the 70s, our summers shifted to Himachal, where my parents rented a cottage above Dalhousie. When I wasn’t with them, I explored the side valleys of the Beas, and notched up treks throughout the Garhwal, from the Valley of the Flowers to Kedarnath and Yamnotri.

Mid-July is not the best time to holiday in the northern foothills. The rain can be incessant, with landslides and closed roads. But that particular summer, possibly 1989, I desperately needed a short break, and decided not to venture too far afield. Family friends owned a flat in Nainital, and gave us the key. But, even on July 11th, the monsoons had not broken, and as our little Maruti mounted the last climb into Nainital, we were daunted by the gaudily clad crowds on the Mall Road. 

I swung the car around 270 degrees, and exited towards Bhowali, stopping where the wraiths of clouds crept through the old English cemetery, past tombstones documenting the deaths of young English officers dying half a world away from home, of children struck down by whooping cough and tuberculosis. We sipped a glass of red wine to our own health, picked up bags of plump apricots from the bazaar, and found lodgings in the Bhimtal tourist home, where we continued to toast our health through the evening, and well into the night.

The next morning, after several rounds of coffee had restored us to some approximation of health, we explored the environs. Naukuchiyatal lay that way, the road sign suggested, around the opposite side of Bhimtal, and off to the left. And north? Mukteshwar. 

“Let’s go to Mukteshwar”, I announced. 

“Never heard of it”, Annu replied, “but why not?”

I told her of the dark forests and the giant trees, and she and Brigitte needed no convincing. In an hour and a half, we were driving through cool mists, the road flanked by enormous deodars, far from the boat rides and Maggi stalls of the lower hills. As we climbed clear of the valley, we entered a campus of handsome stone buildings, and the pocket-sized post office of Mukteshwar. A temple announced itself up the rocks to the left, and the road dropped down to the PWD rest house.

Beyond, except for a tiny garden, lay vast valleys and ridges echoing into the distance. We walked to the edge of the garden, where a copper plaque pointed to the giants of the Himalaya, to Chaukhamba and Kamet, to Nanda Devi and Trishul, now shrouded in monsoon clouds. We invited ourselves into the parlour, where window seats looked out onto the views through tiny squares of glass. The chowkidar offered us ‘chai’, but we asked for empty glasses, and raised a toast - to autumn views of Nanda Devi.

We were back that October, to deep blue skies, sparkling views of the peaks promised by the plaque, and many toasts to our good fortune. Again for Diwali, then early the next year, when Rouma refused to get out from under her two razais till we could reassure her that the sun was warm in the garden, blessed by the panorama of the high Himal. 

“There’s a village somewhere here”, she said, after her second coffee, “Sitla..it’s gorgeous”.

Indeed, the chowkidar confirmed, just twenty minutes down the path at the bottom of the garden. That afternoon, we invited ourselves into an estate in Sitla, where Kanai and Lakshmi Lal made us feel like old friends over coffee and home-made cake.

“How do I buy land here?” I asked them.

“Get in the back of the queue”, Kanai reacted.

But I was smitten by the Kumaon, and I spent the next couple of years looking for a patch of land in the forest, among dark forests and tall trees. It wasn’t in Mukteshwar, where most of the land is owned by the government, nor even in Sitla, but in the next village, of Satoli.

It was to Satoli that my wife and I moved for an extended honeymoon, in 1997. We had taken a year off to celebrate our marriage, but as the romance of the monsoons yielded to the golden, intoxicated light of autumn, we couldn’t tear ourselves away. Our son spent his first 5 years in those forests, toddling up and down the paths, cramming his mouth with berries off the bushes, learning to swim in the irrigation tank, being rocked to sleep by Dave Matthews pounding into the stillness of the night.

Those six years in Satoli were a whole life-time, far richer than the fabric of my scanty dreams. I was long possessed by the intent to live in nature, but even as I profess to live by reason and logic, I remind myself of the power of randomness. Of that whole set of randomnesses - that one sentence by Shahrukh, those giddy crowds in Nainital, that signpost in the Bhimtal bazaar - that fleshed those dreams into the joyous song of life in Satoli.

I haven’t met Sharukh since he became a superstar, but if I do, I will share this story, and  ask him to join me in a toast to randomness.

Noteworthy

Where have all the 2000 rupee notes gone, an April article in the Frontline magazine asked.

The Minister of State for Finance told the Parliament that, in November 2021, the pink notes accounted for 15% of the value of notes in circulation, down from 37% in 2018. 

This drastic reduction has nothing to do with the demand for 2000 rupee notes. It is clearly a part of the stated policy to move India towards a cashless economy. To nudge us along - not so gently - the RBI has stopped printing 2000 rupee notes. If you need to withdraw cash from your bank, or an ATM, try getting 2,000 rupee notes. I’ll wager you can’t. The notes have virtually gone underground, which is the expected outcome of an artificially induced shortage.

Meanwhile - you might ask - how is the cashless society project coming along? Not so hot. In November 2016, we had 17.74 tn rupees worth of notes in circulation. That number has now crossed 30 tn., a growth of 67%. India’s preference for cash is evident, not just in mandis and informal markets; even in e-commerce, half of deliveries are paid by Cash On Delivery (C.O.D.), and the percentage rises as you go from the metros to smaller towns.

Bludgeoning people into submission - as this government tried with demonetisation - does not qualify as policy, which must take into account people’s concerns and preferences, and find ways to address them. There has been a great deal of policy thinking about why people prefer to hold cash. Bruce Bartlett, a senior policy official in the US Reagan and Bush administrations summed it up well, “Convenience, dependability and anonymity.”

The US dollar provides this service globally, and one of the more startling statistics to come my way was that over two-thirds of 100 dollar bills were held overseas in 2011. I haven’t seen a more recent number, but it seems logical that the recent strength in the dollar has driven demand even higher.

I doubt that rupee notes have any international demand - a 100 dollar bill is a great deal more convenient to stash away than sixteen Indian greenbacks of 500 rupees each. And a lot more stable.

Of course, if you are an Indian politician, especially in the BJP, then you have the special  currency that is convenient, dependable and anonymous - the electoral bond.

SWP vs SIP

I acquired a pre-dinner habit in May - checking the NSE (National Stock Exchange) site, to see whether foreign investors had once again taken money out of Indian equities. So far they have done so, every single day. I texted as much to Vivek Joshi on Thursday. 

“FIIs have a Systematic Withdrawal Plan”, he responded. In 2022, it seems to be a lot more ambitious than the Systematic Investment Plans (SIPs) of Indian Investors, which funnel 10 or 12,000 crores a month into Indian equities every month. In comparison, net sales by FIIs in May, with a couple of trading days still to go, total 53,790 cr., just under 7 billion USD. 

Despite this determined exit by foreigners, Indian equities are holding up well, which points to a strong sense of optimism by Indian investors. One can only hope this act of faith is not misplaced.