TOMORROW IS A BIG DAY. Big days present a threshold. They bring along great potential and some anxiety. Most big days in those days were associated with exams, especially our qualifying exams; they had the potential to open doors for us. That time was relatively more stable than today. The benefit was a lack of anxiety. The downside was a lack of opportunity. We didn’t have too many big days.

Tomorrow, the price of petrol is going up. I have a Kinetic Luna (named perhaps after the mental condition of those who owned it), which runs forever on one liter of gas. It even runs on the fumes left over in the fuel tank, so you must try really hard to run out of gas. It has pedals which give you the impression that it could be ridden like a bicycle. But pedaling was strictly for the birds – to get you to a gas station. Yes, even the Kinetic Luna needed to be filled up occasionally. I was extremely anxious as this was my last year in school and money was not something I had a lot of.

There were only three viable career options for most middle-class people like me; become a doctor, or an engineer, or join the Civil Service or Armed Forces. Business was not an option unless you had your own money. Credit was difficult to get and there were really no business ventures apart from manufacturing and trading. All the Services, IT (in those days that was the abbreviation for Income Tax), ITES, and export businesses were at least 30 years in the future. This was India with 150% import duty, no television, limited radio, no FM, Illustrated Weekly of India, and Life Magazine (if you had the money to buy it). Air travel was such a novelty that when someone traveled by air, he made sure he mentioned it in every conversation before and after the trip for several weeks. His family would go to the airport to see him off, all dressed in their best clothes. The traveler would wear a suit and tie, or a sherwani. At the airport, people would sometimes garland him, and he would take formal leave of all present – perhaps because he was not sure if he would return. The flight would be in an Avro or Caravelle, flown by our one and only Indian Airlines.

One of the things that affected us all at the time was the Telangana Agitation led by Chenna Reddy against the Congress Party led government headed by Brahmananda Reddy, the Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh. Andhra Pradesh was the state formed after the annexation of Hyderabad State and had been created by adding districts from Maharashtra, Karnataka, and Tamilnadu. Andhra Pradesh is said to have three parts, Andhra (which was not part of Hyderabad State), Telangana (all part of Hyderabad State), and Rayalseema (parts of it were from Hyderabad State and others from Karnataka). Telangana always demanded to be given the status of a separate state due to the separatists’ claim that this area was being neglected for infrastructural development. Whatever be the truth of this allegation, politics is a matter of feeling more than fact. So, the first large scale agitation for the formation of a separate Telangana State started within 15 years of the formation of Andhra Pradesh. Osmania University became a hotbed of turmoil, and several hundred students paid with their lives in the resulting clashes with the police. All of us lost one academic year because of this agitation. Finally, and most ironically, the outcome of all this loss of life, time, resources, and dreams was that Chenna Reddy became the Congress Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana remained a dream.

My daily routine, through school and college, was to go horse riding every morning. I would leave home on my Luna while it was still dark, navigating the road more by estimation than sight, and reach the AP Riding Club at the first light of dawn. I would then ride for two to three hours, dividing my time between three or four horses by turn, interspersed by 2 tea breaks where for the princely sum of Re. 1 we would get 4 cups of very sweet Irani chai. Sure, they were not very large cups. If you were not concentrating, it was entirely possible to finish the cup without even being aware that the tea was gone, but it was tea, nevertheless. This tea would be shared with the two riding Ustaads (teachers), both ex-Hyderabad Army Cavalry NCO’s known for their excellent seats in saddle, their parade ground voices, and their extremely colorful vocabularies applied impartially to the two legged and four. In those days we learnt social skills early. I guess we still do. And those who did not know the rites of passage would hit a stone wall, the bewildered expressions on their faces bearing mute testimony to their ignorance of the ropes. A surprisingly simple system but to some, an enigma.

One of those bewildered ones was the then not too well-known Telugu film actor NT Rama Rao (NTR). The first time I saw him at the riding club, he was in strawberry pink pants and a rose-colored shirt with a white Stetson on his head. He, poor man, just walked in, brandished his ticket, and demanded a horse. Ustaad Havildar Abdul Hameed Khan, a tall lanky, taciturn man with a patrician nose, dressed in khaki jodhpurs, cotton sweater, and beret, looked him up and down in silence. Then in his best parade ground voice he roared, “Yeh Phulsungni ku ghodi lau re ma ke laude.” Duly with much ceremony the worst nag in the stables was trotted out. Quite understandably, the horse took exception to NTR’s clothing and started doing the backward circle dance. Horses do this when they don’t approve of your dressing, to let you know that they don’t want to associate with you. However, when Ustaad Abdul Hameed Khan reminded her of her ancestry in the most colorful terms, she stood still and NTR mounted. After he had done the shortest half hour that I have ever seen and was led to the stable to dismount, he looked at the beautiful thoroughbred mare that I was riding and asked Ustaad Abdul Hameed Khan why he didn’t get her. “Hau, hau ek din tumare ku bi deyinge,” (Yes, yes, one day you will also get to ride her) was the reply. Then he turned to me and snorted, “Thailay ki sawari hai aur yeh ghodi chalata katay” (He rides like a bag of potatoes and wants to ride this mare, huh). Little did he and I know that this man would one day sit on the “throne,” as the Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh. Sad to say that the AP Riding Club is no more. I don’t know where our Ustaads Abdul Hameed Khan Sahab and Sayeed Khan Sahab are. I wish them well as they were wonderful people and a big part of my life and training as I was growing up.

Gear was important. You had to wear khaki jodhpurs, white shirt, hard hat, leather knee-high boots polished to a high shine, and a leather belt to be able to get some ‘respect’ in those days. The boots were made in-house by Thambaswamy, a shoemaker who measured your feet and made your boots. Made to order and handmade were the default of those days. I recall the advice of my friend and mentor Nawab Habib Jung, who told me to make sure that my boots had a thick, hard, and rigid sole, so that if I fell and the horse fell on my leg, my foot would not be crushed. A year or two later, this happened to me, and I recalled with gratitude this excellent advice. In winters or on formal occasions you also wore a navy blazer with a single split at the back. You carried a whip, but you almost never used it. Jeans, or God forbid, ordinary trousers were not acceptable, and neither were ordinary shoes. It was less about dress than about etiquette, and discipline.

‘Horse riding’ was a bit of a misnomer really and it should have been called ‘character building’. Our Ustaads didn’t just teach us riding. They taught us character, manners, discipline, commitment, and responsibility. They didn’t achieve this by ordering us around. After all, they were instructors in the Riding Club. And we were not troops under their command, so they had no real authority over us. However, they offered us opportunities, most of the time unspoken, but clearly what resulted thereafter was the result of the choices we made. It was their way of influencing without authority – one of the most important lessons I learnt in my life. A lesson that has continued to yield results, working across cultures and nationalities both in the corporate world and later as a consultant and teacher. Naturally, they had no idea all this would happen. But I would be a gross ingrate if I didn’t acknowledge their contribution. I am most grateful to them for what they did.

My day would begin at dawn, mucking out the stable of the horse that I would ride that day. I would groom the horse, saddle it, and lead it out of the stable and only then would I mount up to ride. Riding was a passion that I lived for. And as the case usually is with anything that one is passionate about, I excelled at it. I especially loved dressage, which involves very small discrete movements that get the horse to do things in an almost magical manner. Rider and horse as one, centaurs of Greek mythology; man-horse. Riding in the mornings. Some study during the day. Evening walks on the rocks of Banjara Hills. Early nights to wake early for riding the next day. That was my life for many years. It kept me healthy and out of trouble.

The entire grooming process took anything from 30-45 minutes and the work was smelly and sweaty. There were grooms who were paid to do what I was paying to do, but I enjoyed it. It built my relationship with my favorite horses. They recognized me and whinnied to greet me. I carried carrots or apples or some jaggery in my pocket and they would nuzzle my pocket for it. I would take it out and hold it in the palm of my hand. To feel the soft, silky nose of the horse as it picked the treat out of your hand is a special pleasure. It was character building, though at the time I didn’t even know the phrase. But learn I did and to this day, those lessons help me in life.

So, what was I learning? That I was responsible for my charge. That my own welfare depended on how well I looked after my horse. That if I hadn’t tightened the girth or failed to pass my hand under the saddle blanket to smooth the hair in one direction and the horse got a saddle sore, then I could not ride until he was well again. That if I did not check the soundness of the tack and the stirrup leather broke and I fell off, guess whose fault it would be? That how my horse, the saddlery, and even the stable looked, was not a reflection on the horse or the stable, it was a reflection on me as the rider. If I rode the animal, its welfare was my responsibility. My horse depended on me, and you never let down those who depend on you. How my horse was cared for was my signature.

Once my ride was over, my job continued. I would dismount and lead the horse into the stable to unsaddle him and rub him down. I would let him cool down and take him to the water trough to drink, ensuring that he didn’t drink too much as that would give him colic. Then I would lead him back to the stable and put fresh hay on the floor and his feed in his feeding trough. Finally, I would wipe down and hang up the saddle on its tree and bit and the bridle on its hook. Only then would I be free to leave. Riding taught me many lessons in life; not the least important one being responsibility.

The horse itself is also an amazing teacher. Horses have an uncanny knack for sensing weakness in the rider and using it to their advantage. They sense the hand on the reins and behave accordingly. They respect strength and kindness and take advantage of weakness. They will punish cruelty and are very loyal to those who take care of them. A horse is a very intelligent animal and a great judge of character. That’s why the bond between a horse and his rider is a bond of affection born out of mutual respect. A horse is not always forgiving and blindly loyal like a dog. A horse tests you first and then decides to be your friend only if you measure up. With a horse the relationship is one of equal partnership, not of master and servant. However, to learn all these lessons one must ride the way I have described. If you ride the way rich youngsters do nowadays – the groom does all the work and stands there holding the horse, the kid mounts up, rides, dismounts and walks away – you learn nothing. The horse is not a motorcycle that you can mount, ride, park and switch off.

About twice or three times a week, I would stop by at the home of my dear friends, Capt. Nadir Tyabji and his wife Saleha Aunty. They lived in a lovely bungalow at the junction of Road # 10 and # 1 which had a large garden with fruit trees and a lawn at one end of which was a pond. At the time when I would show up there after my morning ride Nadir Uncle and Saleha Aunty would be having their morning cup of tea on the veranda in front of the house. Nadir Uncle would open the gate, and I would drive in on my Luna. Then we would go around the side of the house to the veranda where Saleha Aunty would acknowledge my salaam, and the cook would bring out another cup and a fresh pot of tea. We would sit on cane chairs and sip our tea and talk about everything from how the fruit trees were bearing to the ecology of the pond before us. From the politics of India to Indian and Hyderabadi history. From the way in which values, ethics, and morals were eroding and deteriorating to how one must make choices, tough choices by which one pays the price of living by one’s values. It is true that you may lose your promotion, but the alternative of losing your self-respect is far more painful and expensive.

Growing up happens not from reading books but from spending time in the company of elders who are worthy of respect. I was lucky to have many such people in my life who took the time and trouble to speak to me, guided me, asked me challenging questions, yet didn’t impose their answers on me. Nadir Uncle and Saleha Aunty’s son Hashim, my contemporary, was away at Doon School at the time, so I didn’t see much of him. Later when I was working in the tea plantations, Hashim spent two weeks with me, which are a high point in my life because of the thoroughly enjoyable walks in the jungle and all that I learnt from him about wildlife and ecology of the rain forests.

Nadir Uncle was a retired naval officer who was the local representative of the World Wildlife Fund (that’s what it was called then). He was a passionate conservationist and loved to speak about the wildlife and birds all around us. He was also related to the famous ornithologist Dr. Salim Ali whose book ‘The Book of Indian Birds’, is still one of the best on the subject. Dr. Salim Ali’s autobiography, ‘The Fall of a Sparrow’, must be made essential reading for all youngsters. In those days, Road # 1, Banjara Hills was lined on both sides with bungalows with large gardens with not a single business in sight. So, there was no shortage of nesting sites and food for birds. Mornings were delightful with the number of birdcalls you could hear. Nadir Uncle taught me to identify many that I didn’t know. We would stop in mid-sentence and say, ‘Red vented Bulbul’, ‘Pied Kingfisher’, ‘Crow Pheasant,’ and so on as one bird or another insisted on interrupting our conversation.

Meanwhile, Saleha Aunty would pour our tea, and we would sit together in pleasant silence watching life in the garden. One day Nadir Uncle took me around his own garden to show me the variety of birds and insects that lived there. I have always maintained that you see with your knowledge. It was as if a new world was being opened for me. I swear I didn’t do it on purpose, but Nadir Uncle was such an interesting man to listen to that, especially on weekends or when I had holidays, I would stay on until Saleha Aunty would call out, ‘Nadir, Yawar, come for breakfast.’ We would proceed inside and have a proper English breakfast of eggs, sunny side up, toast, butter and orange marmalade, and tea once again. Having spent a good couple of hours with these dear friends of mine (both older than my parents) I would proceed home, ‘fully fed-up and fulfilled’ as my dearest friend Berty used to say.

One day Nadir Uncle said to me, ‘Come early tomorrow. I want to show you something.’ I was very excited and cut short my morning ride and showed up at his house just before 6.00 a.m. Nadir Uncle was ready (I’ve never known him to be late for anything) and we walked past the house for a little over a kilometer until we reached a fair-sized pond at what is today about the end of Road # 10. This pond was ringed with reeds and had a few Acacias and a Tamarind tree bordering it. It had lilies growing in it and so a part of its surface was covered with lily pads, sheltering guppies and tadpoles which lived in the pond. Frogs would sit on the lily pads and talk to one another or simply take the sun and sing to their mates, only to dive off into the water at the first sign of a shadow in the sky – a raptor circling in lazy arcs or a Kingfisher looking for a meal.

As we neared the pond, Nadir Uncle signaled me to walk softly and not to speak. Very silently we got close to the pond and Nadir Uncle pointed out what he had brought me to show – a family of Jacanas walking across the pond on lily pads. The mother hen anxiously leading her little brood, all so light that the lily pads didn’t even dip to their weight. He then spoke to me about Jacanas and other birds that live all around these small ponds all over Banjara Hills. On this walk we also saw some Teal and two Moorhens on the same pond. A Black-naped Hare darted away. Ring Necked Doves cooed from the trees. An Asian Green Bee-eater perched on a terminal twig of the Acacia waiting for an unwary insect to come past. Then it would swoop up, catch the insect on the wing, and return to its perch, all in one smooth curve. A Pied Kingfisher waited on a low branch of an Acacia bordering the pond waiting for the unwary fish or tadpole. A dragonfly decided at that moment to rest on a lily pad. Its last rest, as it proved. The Kingfisher swooped down in one arc, picked up the dragonfly and returned to its perch, all in a millisecond. Since dragonflies migrate on the Monsoon winds from Mozambique, flying across the Indian ocean, to end up as a snack for a Bee Eater is tough. Come all that way to be eaten? But that is how it is. Life in nature is far from safe.

During our walk, Nadir Uncle also explained to me how mistaken the expression ‘free as a bird’ is. Birds, he explained to me, are highly territorial and almost wedded to a place, to a tree or trees, and to a habitat. So, if the habitat is destroyed, the tree cut, or the pond dried up, it often spells the death knell for many birds – not to mention insects, fish, and other aquatic life which depend on that habitat. That pond is only a memory today, dwindling with time. The pond is long dried, the trees cut down, and an apartment building sits on its site. The Jacana and her family, the Kingfisher and who knows what else, all gone to make way for cars, motorcycles, noise and pollution, garbage, rats, pye-dogs (feral mongrels), and people. Fitting companions I would say, one to another.
We would talk about wildlife in India, the effect of the destruction of habitat and the effect of the ban on shooting which was so easily defied by the rich and corrupt whose entertainment is to shoot anything that they can catch in their searchlights. Collecting what they can of the dead and leaving the wounded to die in slow agony.

Nadir Uncle also spoke about his experiences in the Indian Navy and issues of command and the price to pay for standing up for what is right. It is in the company of elders that one learns about life and that is something that I was very fortunate to have all my life. My mother used to jokingly say, ‘All your friends are at least 30 years older than you are.’ I think it was a mark of the times, like the Zulu proverb, ‘It takes the whole village to bring up a child.’ The ‘village elders’ in those days took their job seriously and our parents appreciated this. It was common to be corrected, even reprimanded if required, not only by teachers but by elders who were not even related to you. We accepted this and appreciated the fact that someone older and wiser who had better things to do than to worry about our welfare, took the trouble to worry about our welfare and corrected us. We didn’t get offended. We accepted the correction, and it brought us closer. That is how these people were our friends in ways that were more meaningful than just some teenager hanging out with us. And that was how I learnt. After all, what can another 15-year-old teach you? The stories we hear mould us. Not all of them need to come from our parents.

It is the variety and diversity of life experience which is the foundation to build a lot of skills. This comes from adults who have led interesting and challenging lives. We learn through their stories; we see with their eyes, and we exercise our own judgment.