Having stretched everyone and everything out of any recognisable shape, the interminable UK lockdown is letting us out to play again. Kind of. We step gingerly into the spring sunlight blinking like participants released from a Deep Time experiment that has gone horribly wrong. Whereas the volunteers in the French 40-day study were deprived of all news during their spell in a cave, here the general populace has been force-fed little else for over a year now. And what a tasteless, unsavoury smorgasbord it has been, and with no foie gras to show for it either. 

Now That’s What I Call Mildly Amusing vol. 372, features myself on the London Underground surrounded by half-asleep commuters half-buried alive in their copies of the free morning ‘newspaper’. Page on page of misinformation, fear, scandal and celebrity goss is hardly the nutritious cornerstone of any self-respecting day. 

Sometimes I would arm myself with a copy of Positive News, a little-known, quarterly newspaper comprising, for fairly obvious reasons, just a few pages. I sometimes took tiny pleasure in holding the paper up and peering over the top to observe any reaction to the leafy-green title. Sometimes there was the classic double-take then head down again, occasionally a raised eyebrow or two and even the odd knowing smile. No one ever asked or demanded to know what this heretical nonsense was, but then even eye contact on the tube is to be avoided. In time the glad tidings diminished to the point where the paper quietly folded (though not in the origami sense) and that was that.

Those occasional journeys reminded me of just how braced we are for the impact of continual incoming bad news, how sedated and complacent we have become and yet how eagerly and unthinkingly we ingest whatever the media gristle fountain spews out. Even if we disagree with it, we still drink from that pointless, poisoned well just to make sure. Even at a safe distance it’s hard not to inhale and feel the familiar toxic rush of negativity coursing through our veins. And anyway, why does news have to ‘break’? Can’t it arrive unbroken or at least a little more gently? The wise advise: stay away from the news.

Through the splintered prism of the media we observe the mighty edifice of tradition cracking and we measure the chunks of falling masonry against it. That is all quite understandable. But look more closely and there is also light and the green shoots of something better peeping out from between those cracks, like daisies though concrete and that is surely positive news. But as with that flimsy newspaper, we don’t hear enough about it. 

The ancient wisdom, safeguarded in India for the ages, explores the human condition in extraordinary detail. It is said that all you ever need to know about anything is contained in the first few chapters of the Bhagavad Gita. Within the constraints of Nature, it suggests, human behaviour may be broadly divided into three interflowing categories: tamasic (evil, ignorant) rajasic (busy, passionate) sattvic (pure, spiritual). It’s not hard to see in which two we are, collectively, most likely to be found, doing whatever it is we think we’re doing.

We know all about tamasic actions – they form the very fabric and content of recorded history, and we know about the atomising levels of rajasic busyness that have taken over our lives in modernity. What we don’t hear quite so much about is the sattvic, that is to say, future ways of being and doing that have more to do with Silver and Golden Ages than sloughing off Iron for Bronze. So, let us then consider not the lily, but the green shoot, a ray of golden light, a soul-warming model of how business, that most selfish of human activities, might be conducted in more enlightened times.

People not from the UK often claim that fish and chips is what we like best; and perhaps there was a time when potatoes ruled the waves but the fish have long since headed north, and who can blame them? They wisely decline to swim in the Channel or the North Sea on account of the pollution and our Atlantic fishing rights were given away years ago. We are an island with about 25 fish. However, fishlessness notwithstanding, it is widely accepted that our preferred food is, in fact, Indian. There are around 12,000 Indian restaurants in the UK and thank heavens for that – they saved us from the tyranny of meat and two veg. Colonisation never tasted so good.

Dishoom is a relatively new chain of eight restaurants in the UK whose cuisine and ethos is refreshing, to say the least. It’s food and style evoke old-school Bombay and the Iranian cafés which populated it in the early decades of the twentieth century. It’s a heady, nostalgic mixture infused with the flourishing Mumbai jazz scene of the time. But what makes people queue round the block in the rain is not just the cuisine or the elegant recreation of a bygone era or that the staff come out with umbrellas and glasses of hot, sweet chai for the waiting customers – or rather it is that. 

The ethos of Dishoom rests on the concept of seva, selfless service to others, and this is the golden thread that runs through the organisation from the owners down to the smiling, quietly attentive waiting staff, and is the secret ingredient that gives the experience its distinctive quality. To dine there is to be looked after but in an unpretentious way, and that detail makes for queues. Even if people don’t know about seva they certainly feel it. Even if they don’t know it, people just want to feel the love. Even if it’s just for an hour or two, they will wait in the rain.

Just the notion of not being brazenly ripped off but actually being shown some care is both obviously natural and yet so obviously missing from our profit-driven culture. Which brings us to the next point. Extending seva into their business model has meant that Dishoom has partnered with Magic Breakfast to provide a ‘meal for a meal’ – a free breakfast for hungry children in the UK for every one bought in their restaurants. That’s more than two million to date. Add then the meals donated through the same scheme in India and, as of last month, they will have donated over 10 million meals, pandemic or no. The positive consequences of this ‘cycle of goodness’ permeates just about every aspect of society and is having a transformative effect on the lives of countless children.

It seems to be a very profitable way of doing business too. By reaching out to give, to include and not to grab, everyone’s needs are met and a natural balance is found. People intuitively know when something feels right, hence the queueing. The mechanism of such an approach aligned with some higher ideals appears to take on a life of its own and and so becomes something greater than the sum of its parts. 

It’s a small example, but a very shiny one, and one that makes you wonder what the impact would be if the general business model was not based solely on profit at any cost but on something a little more sattvic and satisfying for all concerned. There is a finer principle at work here, one that seems both foreign and yet native to our higher sensibilities.

Even I can see that if you give people what they want – what they need – and not what you think they want or what will make you the most money, and do it in an organised way without abusing anyone, you will do well. This may still be self-interested but at least it’s enlightened self-interest, which is a stepping stone to an even more selfless framework. Perhaps the very concept of business itself will eventually dissolve into a higher system of service and exchange further down – or up – the line.

Clearly, growth is necessary to thrive, but only to a certain point. If unlimited expansion is the goal of the business model, where does it end? Is there an end? Instead of trampling over others and one’s own values for financial gain, imagine corporate business as a force for good in the world. Imagine companies actively seeking ways to improve the lives of those within and beyond the compass of their own primarily self-interested activities. No, me neither. But one day it will be like this, and perhaps not so far away, because time and circumstance will force a rethink of the business model. It has to: there is nowhere else to go.

If the whole world lived as the USA (apparently) does we’ll need five earths, compared to India’s 0.7. There are obvious conclusions to be drawn here, not least about population, values and poverty, but the point is a valid one. On average we’ll need 1.7 earths to live as we do, which is to say that for every year it takes the earth a year and eight months to regenerate. Joy. All nature seeks and requires balance and reciprocity and there’s our gauge and our cue. The obsession with growth has to be transmuted into equilibrium sooner or later. As some savant tweeted: ‘I believe we can build a better world! Of course, it’ll take a whole lot of rock, water & dirt. Also, not sure where to put it.’

Meanwhile, we watch the cracks for indications of dissolution and regeneration while taking heart in the fact that there are green shoots beginning to appear and that ultimately there can be no satisfaction but a satisfied mind.

Finally and very eponymously, I should mention that Positive News was saved at the death by individual donations and has since metamorphosed into a flourishing magazine. Otters, apparently, are making a comeback. Joy.