Man, in his wisdom epitomised in four teeth, always wanted to correct what he thought were mistakes of creation. For such structural adjustment he devised such dubious means as mega-dam construction, landfilling, cosmetic surgery, silicon implant and so on.

Man is greedy. He wanted it all big -- the big bang, big boy burger, a big brother attitude, Big Apple. In Babel he wanted to erect a tower as high as the heaven. In the Narmada valley he wanted to build a dam so high that it sank half the civilisation in that part of the world. Planners and contractors somehow convinced him that the big dam would give him enough power, and make Kutch wet and even waterlogged. How? Any plan? Have faith, man. Kutchis refuse to believe.

A big leader of India had even gone to the extent of calling big dams temples. He believed it, though he regretted the belief later. The ever-faithful leaders who followed him repeated the temple bit. A blasphemous senior journalist actually wondered whether these structures were temples or tombs. Big dams came up anyway. There was big money involved in them. Those who questioned it all were often shortchanged.

Builders of big dams acted like gods themselves. "Let there be flood," they said. Presto! Manibeli, a tribal village in Maharashtra, goes underwater, huts, hoes, kitchen-knife and all. "Let there be money." State coffers open up. World Bank rushes with millions of dollars. "Let there be rehabilitation." Thousands of hectares of land and very attractive rehabilitation plans appear on paper.

The trouble started when tribals from flooded villages went to see the land. They are just not there. Imaginary homelands! The same piece of land was slotted for several families, over and over. Sometimes the allotted land was rocky, but quite magically covered with a thin layer of silt, dug up from the Narmada. The veneer of arability disappeared in the first rain. These gods must be crazy.

Then recently there came a writer who believed in and practised the theory: small is beautiful. (It was a theory developed by a European shoemaker, who always made shoes one size smaller.) She took exception to the small is beautiful theory only in the case of her creativity and the advance money she received for a novel she wrote.

The writer questioned everything big. She stood for small dams, small dreams and even a small god. Some critics say she took and international business practice of downsizing too seriously. The idea was to downsize development and even gods. When she wrote it all in an ironically big write-up, a big writer got very upset and wrote back. "Aha, aha, aha..."

The writer of small dreams went to the valley, sang, trekked, boated, drinking the water of the dammed Narmada, now laced with silt. Over 300 city men and women, including those with bigtime jobs and salaries joined her braving dehydration and diarrhoea.

A chief minister of the biggest state went to see her off and got and extra-large protest t-shirt free. CMs of smaller states kept in the valley kept quiet. In a big-money state some dam enthusiasts performed a ritual quite popular there. They made a big bonfire out of the writer's books. Earlier such rituals were performed on chapels, you may recall. The government clamped curfew at the state border to prevent the writer and her friends from entering the state. We don't want no corrupting influence che.

The writer's trip made a big media event. Fair enough. As the floodwaters rise in the valley, the big-versus-small fight is on. In office lobbies, beauty parlours, newsrooms, jogging tracks and slimming clinics people argue over the relative merits and demerits of big size. It is becoming fashionable for hardened journalists in big newspapers to write passionately on the relative merits of a small size. The press barons are worried. An overworked press club barman told me the other day that he was worried too, as journalists of late order only small pegs.