Orissa, mining, marriage and smartphone

On an early December evening two news agency journalists and an investment banker were travelling in a crowded intercity train into the mining and industrial belt of Orissa. The three hour journey seemed longer than usual.

It was pronounced winter, cramped train coaches and jostling of people from all walks of life - executives, government employees, fruit/chat vendors and daily labourers – catching the last train to the mining hinterland of Orissa. The three from Mumbai were on a their way to a journalist friend’s wedding in Angul, industrial capital and the most centrally located city of Orissa.

The immobility inside the train forced them to converse relentlessly in order to evade the drudgery of the small yet tough journey. Topics discussed varied from whether to sell gold just when it has hit the peak to the charisma of Obama that was worthy a Nobel. Heated arguments followed and the intellectual cells of the brain were stimulated.

The concentrated intellectuality was also lightened by some talk of women, i-pod and twitter, but it couldn’t beat the pursuit of talking about money and economy. The three realised they despite there humble background were talking something incomprehensible to their fellow passengers, who were dumbfounded.

The three realised exposure to metro-life and education has already created a water tight compartment between them and their own people who are pressed against them in this cramped coach, who speak their own language and about their own region.

A quick realisation was enough to stop the discussion about stock market, 8 percent growing economy, mergers/acquisitions, investment banker fees and switchover to local issues. The three spoke to their co-passengers in Oriya about the best trains in the route, new industrial development coming up in their neighbourhood and how is the government paying after the sixth pay commission report was implemented. It was relaxing to all of them.

The three finally reached their friend’s wedding reception and joined the celebration dinner. Here they were surrounded by locals, many of them related to the the hundreds of small and large neighourhood industries.

They overheard two of them talking in distress about China’s pressure tactics about lowering the offer price of some commodity.

One of them soon recalled a coverpage story he did about black gold (iron ore) and China some years ago. The three soon discussed how thousands of small time exporters have turned rich overnight by exporting minerals primarily iron ore from Orissa to China, world’s biggest steelmaker. However, with insatiable demand and import monopoly Chinese authorities are deciding prices in the past few months.

While chatting over Orissa's mineral policy and unknowingly meandering through the large open air banquet space the three spotted the glowing faces of the bride and groom which reminded them of their own families.

The gorgeous pink designer lehnga and neatly tailored western suit was making the couple look like one of those from the Shahrukh Khan starring Bollywood movies. Both of them were sitting on two large princely chairs, ususal in most Indian weddings.

At the entry of the marriage hall there was red ticker going on intermttently --Devidutta Weds Purabi-- all in capital letters. The guys joked, it looked a ticker on a television set or a news platform.

The groom, a telecom reporter and the bride, an engineer were trying to hold eachothers' hands in the absence of few attentive eyes but had to soon stay away from eachothers like a playful couple in a garden.

The groom, 48 hours ago on his wedding day amused everyone by his typing skills on the his smartphone. The instrument was in his hands even as he was tying knots with the bride. Whether it’s his affiliation to technology or effort to update his status on Facebook, the invasiveness of the tech revolution was loud and clear.

The bride also earned some reputation 48 hours ago by beating hands-down the technosavvy groom in a thousand-year-old game of finding the cowdy. The groom complained about the sharp nails of the bride going against him.

The three idiots had a nice wedding experience afterall.

(all characters here are fictitious and don't bear any resemblance with anyone living or dead)

Bhubaneswar Post

Early December I had to plan a quick holiday to my home town Bhubaneswar to be a part of the mostly unplanned year-ending weddings of friends and relatives. The sojourn was demanding from the beginning as I had to opt for the 40-hour long train journey from the west-cost to east coast of India with air tickets suddenly out of reach after the wedding rush began.

As every unwanted event in life provides us with some pleasant surprises, this laborious journey provided me with the opportunity to finish ‘Sea of Poppies’, a five-hundred page long novel by Amitav Ghosh, which I had my hands on for the last six months.

Bhubaneswar, the capital city of Orissa state in eastern India, is a large, expandable and beautiful settlement but without the million plus population that every large Indian city possesses.

As the wedding season was in progress I had move throughout the city which exposed me to the newly developed roads, malls and hospitality infrastructure in the city. It was a surprising and refreshing moment to discover the beauty of your hitherto neglected sleepy town after struggling nearly a decade in the dismal infrastructure of some supposedly largest and most developed cites of the world.

I understood the with population just under a million, radius stretching over fifty kilometers and initial town planning by legendary Le Corbusier, Bhubaneswar remains one of the best definition urban cities in India along with Chandigarh, also designed by the French architect.

The largely unmanaged yet clean structures of hundreds of Shaiva temples, Jaina and Buddha caves surrounded by numerous water bodies and greenery intermingle gracefully with the clean, western swanky buildings. The good thing is that most people of Bhubaneswar can still see the sky in the morning and evening, get their vegetables from the garden and buy their grains annually from villages in the outskirt to beat inflation.

Middleclass, confident, moderate and aspiring is how the city represents herself in the first decade of the new century. All is well in the political and administrative epicenter of this small eastern Indian state. But like acid test paper a certain part of the city its changes colour everyday to showcase the distress in the hinterland. The road stretching from Bhubaneswar station to the legislative building always hosts quiet protestors of various sort amid small policy cover.

Most protestors are people from the tribal dominated non-costal parts of the state where world’s largest miners and steel makers are waiting to set shop. Most protests are about losing land, insufficient compensation and rehabilitation. As mining related protests dominate, real issues like malnutrition, hunger, lack of health facilities and illiteracy take a backseat.

Some of my friends from Delhi and Mumbai made some passing comments at the hoardings across the town. “Like brokerages, asset management companies grabbing every corner of advertising place in Mumbai … steel, ingot and billet companies do the same in Orissa.

Soon I discovered the truth in their observation Bhubaneswar airport there are two-dozens of hoardings of natural resource firms. One of the most controversial projects had a large hoarding depicting a happy tribal family with a caption larger that the photograph saying, “Mining happiness for the people of Orissa.”



My neighborhood pan shop endorses ‘Surana billets’, my dilapidated primary school walls had ‘Vijay saria’ asymmetrically painted on it and to my horror I discovered the lichen adorned walls of my boundary bears the names “Too Strong saria,” written in cheap brick colours. I quickly removed the stains and breathed easy.

As mining advertisings are creeping on everything in this coastal city discontent and people’s war is creeping in the vast tribal plateaus of the state.