I am fond of Latin America. In the 1980s, when I was coordinator of the Energy Research Group for IDRC in the 1980s, I visited it often, and had picked up a bit of Spanish and Portuguese to make the visits more interesting. José Goldemberg was a member of the Group. Twenty years later, he had moved from being a scholar to a minister; so I visited him in his lair, which seemed surprisingly modest to someone used to Indian ministers. This column was published in Business Standard of 1 April 2003.
SAO PAOLO REVISITED
Last week I revisited Sao Paolo
after 17 years. When I was last there, my friend José Goldemberg was professor
in the University of Sao Paolo. Everything interesting in science that was
happening – and at that time Brazil was in the forefront of renewable energy
and alternative technologies – seemed to be centred on the USP in Sao Paolo or
COPPE in Rio de Janeiro. At petrol pumps there were special hoses for what they
called olio verde – green oil – which was really unpotable alcohol. Olio verde
is is still there, but my friends told me it was an expensive mistake. Now it
is our turn to repeat the mistake. Thanks to Ram Naik, we all have to buy
petrol contaminated with 10 per cent alcohol. And for whose benefit? That of the
sugar barons. And of the politicians of UP and Maharashtra who lean on sugar
mills in times of need.
Soon after we parted, José
Goldemberg became president of the USP. From there he went on to become
Brazil’s minister of science and technology. Now he is minister of environment
in the state of Sao Paolo; he said modestly that because he was honest, the
politicians found it useful to have him around. Anyway, visiting him was a more
pleasant experience than visiting one of our ministers. There were none of the
security paraphernalia that surround the latter. A female gatekeeper allowed me
in as soon as I told her who I was. The taxi could enter and be parked in the
compound. And Goldemberg had just two secretaries.
My other friend, Antonio, learnt
a lesson after his third or fourth marriage; now he is into his nth
relationship. Not with the one I had met a couple of years ago, but with
altogether more intelligent and literate Francesca. Francesca is out of her
first marriage. Her husband and she had lived long years in London doing their
respective Ph Ds; as they entered their working lives, they found it easier to
do without each other. Antonio has Paula, a daughter from his penultimate
marriage, who prefers to live with him rather than with her mother in Panama.
She is training to be a psychologist; as part of the training, she goes and
gives company to poor patients in a public hospital, which keeps patients
with physical and psychological ailments together.
Leno, Francesca’s son, lives a
more complicated life. On Mondays and Wednesdays he lives with his mother; on
Tuesdays and Thursdays he has swimming lessons in a pool closer to his father’s
place, so he stays with his father. Not a bad life, except that his father and
mother live too far apart for him to have a dog. I recommended a chihuahua to
him; he can then carry it around in his pocket.
Sao Paolo looks like a western
city – full of high-rise buildings, wide avenues and motorways criss-crossing
the city. But for a first-world city it has some surprising features. As one
walks around the city center, one finds someone selling a pair of shoes, another
a stack of 78 rpm records, a telephone, or a computer keyboard. Some people
have got through everything saleable, so they just sit around and ask passersby
listlessly for money, without much expectation. At one place there was a queue
of a couple of a hundred people; they were apparently queuing for a job.
Francesca herself is looking for
another job, but she is not queueing for it; she is going about it
systematically. She showed me a list of a dozen jobs she was pursuing. She had
applied for none; she had been recommended by her friends. She had put down
asterisks against three or four; in those cases she had got access to the
presidents of the companies or institutions and was going to meet them.
Unemployment in Sao Paolo, I was told, was running at 20 per cent; with so many
people hanging around, fair or impersonal selection procedures hardly stood a
chance.
In Sao Paolo there are traffic
jams in the air sometimes; there are too many helicopters. Sao Paolo has the
highest number of private helicopters in the world. I was told they belonged to
people who did not want to be kidnapped. (That, apparently, is also the reason
why everyone who can afford it lives in a high-rise building. Security is
cheaper if a large number of rich people share it; and to have a helipad on
top, you need to build a tall building.) For getting kidnapped can not only be
expensive, but dangerous. My hotel provided a helipad; endangered moneybags
could come, have dinner and fly back unmolested. They could even hop across the
street to a restaurant which has a sign saying that there are only two places
in the world where the cow is sacred – India and the restaurant. The restaurant
specializes in beefsteaks. But beefsteak is relatively straightforward.
Brazil’s national dish is feijoado. It consists of a bean soup with various
parts of the cow, such as the tongue, the tail, the udder and – well, I had
better stop there. The cow is most likely to be of Indian descent, for Brazil
has 10 times as many Ongole cattle, bred from stock once imported from India,
than India has.
Apart from beefeaters, Sao Paolo
is also famous for shapely women, for Brazil is the world’s champion in breast
enlargements. And for those that do not need to acquire curves, there are gyms
that promise to increase their height, and clinics that promise to alter their
looks. Men do not change their appearance, but they make up for it by talking a
lot impressively. No wonder Paulistas change partners so often; there is so
much temptation around that they get distracted.
Just like Calcutta, Madras and
Bombay, which have lost their neo-Gothic character to haphazard commercial
development, Sao Paolo is scattered with beautiful classical and colonial
buildings, dwarfed by boring skyscrapers. Fundaçao
Escola Comercial Alvaro Penteado, which invited me to Sao Paolo, has a
beautiful building from the beginning of the 19th century. It is
engaged in a tug-of-war with the municipality, which wants it to renovate the
façade; the school says it will do so only if the municipality removes the
kiosks in front of the building.
For those who are put off by the
cow’s members, raw fish is just the thing. Sao Paolo has excellent Japanese
restaurants, for Brazil has a million and a half Japanese. However, I would go
all the way to Sao Paolo just for its caipirinha. The barmen mix sugar with
crushed lime, and pour rum on it. It is so smooth – and so deceptive – that every
time I had it, it knocked me out. These Paulistas, they certainly know how to make
their guests feel at home.
