A Fistful of Goodness

For one-and-half years life seemed to invigorate his retired self with a new meaning. He had retired couple of years back from the admin department of the university college. He had no family and had beaten the pangs of loneliness with the belief that he will have a larger role to play in life. As a father he fed the stray cows, dogs and beggars, and spent a major portion of his salary in it. It was a hard conviction that he is changing many lives for the better. This handful of a purpose—a bit larger than the common householders’ motives and responsibilities in life—had kept him going. Robust, pink and tall he exuberated confidence and as a member of some NGOs—whose other members misused funds—he did his best to follow the pious, socially relevant tasks mentioned in the statue and memorandum of understanding of the organisation. But now he was feeling life was just passing him by and took himself to be a failure, not even able to accomplish what many householders did while taking the responsibilities of raising children. And he had all the time to himself and hence should have done more important things in life.

He still saw almost half of his pension money go into what he considered to be the bigger causes, the bigger responsibilities when you shower your love, affection, care and money not on your own children but on those who are related to you just as fellow human beings as per the principles of humanism. He wanted his deeds to be recognised but it did not work out apart from some pictures of charity functions in the Hindi City supplements of the local newspapers and it was never sufficient; these not-so-important highlights in the not-so-important pages of the newspaper supplements. He had to justify his decision to stay unmarried by taking on a bigger responsibility. For decades he had tried to come on the centerstage of social reform by attending Arya Samaj meetings, for years he had tried to bring national level social change through the NGOs he was associated with, for decades he had spent a major portion of his salary in feeding cows, dogs and beggars. It had kept him going, but it had not fetched him recognition as such. So in his sixties now and the rope of life rapidly slipping across his palms, he was desperate to stop the slippage and hold it tight to climb to a spottable appreciation-worthy height. It was not being selfish; it was the simple innocent desire of a better-than-the-common-householders human being.    

Then this time period (July 2011 to November 2012) took his rapidly dispiriting self in its eventful folds. There were flashes of noteworthy history. Like so many others he rushed headlong into the effulgent stream to contribute to the common man’s cause and carve out his slice of history. His father was a strong cadre man of the Zamindaar League of Ch. Chhotu Ram during the British period. Anti-congressism was a legacy he had inherited. In tea stall debates he ripped apart the grand old party’s misrule, put down any voice to the contrary with his pinpointing examples. These were but rubbing salt to his injuries as the UPA 2 set unprecedented levels of misadministration and unaccountability. To make the fire brighter he had jumped headlong into the Anna movement for Jan Lokpal Bill to weed out corruption from the posts ranging from the peons to the Prime Minister. He formed a local Janchetna Morcha to make people aware of the great Anna’s mission. Looking at hundreds of thousands thronging the Ramleela Ground during Anna’s fortnight-long fast, he even started to believe that things in India will change so drastically that it will be considered a second liberation movement in independent India. But then there is a saying that Congress is Hathi Ghaash, a grassy weed that survives all your onslaughts till you burn and bury even the ashes. So the more he would use his money in ferrying more people to the fasting site, the more he spoke in small local meetings, the more he distributed the copies of the proposed Lok Pal Bill, the faster grew the Congress. The grand old ruling party was temporarily on the back foot while so many modern revolutionaries pitched battles against it to free the common man from corruption, nepotism, cronyism and what not. But once the ageing and worn out social worker took juice to end his fast, the Congress made a quick recovery to cover up the cleared patches.

Much to his chagrin, by the end of the year the Congress appeared to have derailed Anna movement to a great extent. The old hag of a party, he often cursed. The party and its handlers were too clever, witty and stubborn to be outsmarted by the social worker. Anna's movement had jolted it, to begin with. It was a social movement, a mass movement. Blatant corruption and nepotism had left massive holes in the pockets and dreams of the poorest of the poor and big scars on the conscience of the well-to-do middle and upper middle class of India. Fortunately these literal scars were equal, if not bigger, to the real scars of the poor masses, the aam admi who gave the Honourable Italian-born iron lady a decade to wield all powers without any responsibilities.

While the Congress slowly punctured the wind out of the storm, he was trying helplessly to pump enthusiasm in the movement’s sagging spirits at a community hall meeting in his city:

And what did they do? The ruling government...They have just redefined the contours of coalition politics in almost criminal manner. Shared interest policy has become just a policy of blindfolding the conscience and constitutionality to allow the allies and cronies to amass as much wealth as possible. They are just eyeing the successful completion of a full term. But at what cost? Who paid the cost? We did it man! We the struggling and toiling masses of India, silently and law-abidingly continued to add to our struggle to match the horribly rising monthly budgets. On the other end of the tunnel, our political akaas just stashed the money of our labour in Swiss accounts. It is an open secret. All of us know what is going on. But what can a bread-earning bunch of frustrated souls do. It can just grumble. And we just grumbled till Anna Sahib gave a voice to our harmless ineffective bickerings. Lo! Stay united like the sinewy tributaries that merged to form a tidal wave at Ramleela ground. It literally submerged the wrong-handlers of our well-meant parliamentary democracy.

But Congress is Congress my dears! The bigger noise at the Ramleela Ground and the smaller storms like his apart, it will just stick to its ways. At any cost! Under public bombardment, the Congressites dodged, feigned nonchalance, pretended even concern; but all along the way they were up to a smart plan to change a mass social movement to a political one so that it loses its savioural social identity to become a big political gimmick like its own. They knew that they can outsmart any group on the political platform. So poor Anna was systematically dragged into the political arena where the fight was not going to be one-sided like earlier. There would be punches from the both sides. Anna was fighting on a holy pedestal where even the semi-goons workers of the Congress were afraid to take direct or indirect pot-shots. Now they had dragged him into a muddy field. The same familiar game. Anna sahib was up for something new now! Good luck!

As the year changed and the winter gave in to the spring, his meetings would attract just dozens and even the great Anna himself had reasons to feel disheartened on account of the smaller numbers at the next chosen venues. The sharp edge of typical tricky Congressite political wit had punctured the high-flying balloon of his ideology.

He knew the movement was now tottering to head lurchingly in any direction that would save it from falling. He put his best foot forward to invigorate it like he had shouted anti-emergency slogans and had been slapped hard by a policeman.

In the middle of February 2012 the great Anna fell ill leading to much speculation and theories. He grabbed his anguished version of the story, wrote it with terrible anger. It was like the Britishers torturing Mahatma Gandhi. He wrote his opinion and tried to get it published but all refused this apolitically ranting rabid talk. Disgusted and considering himself to be a revolutionary he got pamphlets published and put these wherever his strength allowed him to.

Either it is stage-managed or happened due to the natural causes, but Anna sahib's suddenly aggravated health problems mean that the possibility of Civil Society leaving some dent on the prospects of certain political parties, largely Congress, are ruled out for the time being. Mind you, it is the same great old man who braved the heat and humidity during the North Indian summers for 13 days and still came out hale and hearty and in high spirits to promise to undo Congress' interests in assembly elections across India. The sudden deterioration in his health, and some sceptical talk of intentional wrong diagnosis and treatment, force a habitual cribber like me to inculcate some concerns about the human hand in all this. So while the sleaze and swindlery unfold in the UP elections, the Civil Society lies sidelined in hospital. The Yuvraj and the Queen have glamorized the gloomy scenario prevailing across the underdeveloped regions of the state where masses have been strategically kept in the same age-old poverty clutches so that they can just see as much as it is planned to show, majorly at the time of elections. Salman Khursheed talks of Muslim job reservation; Diggy Raja also takes jibes at anything smelling of Hinduism....This is communalism at its worst. Ironically, communalism in this country has come to be defined just as any insecure voice for the interests of the majority. While anything said and done to garner minority sympathy, and thus garner votes, becomes ineligible under the clauses of ‘communalism’ to stand out as an act of piety perfumed with all genuineness and goodwill. Mind you, under the objective clauses of the definition of 'communalism', Congress may qualify as the worst communal political outfit in the country. Its pro-Muslim outpours are forcing the Hindu consciousness to be tilted towards the BJP almost by default. Coming back to Anna Saheb and Civil Society, whether his health problems are natural or man-made, it is at least an opportunity for the movement to keep away from the political mud. He possesses the moral force and needs to invigorate it far away from the mucking political cauldron. Wish him good health! If the great man recovers to be capable of keeping fasts--his major force--then we can just hope for bigger movements. We should not forget, a morally clean and hospitalized Anna is far more effective in the long term than the semi-politicized version of the great man throwing mud-lumps at semi-goon politicians and getting smeared himself as well. He earned mass following through sheer moral force and integrity at all levels. He has done penance for it. It is a lofty pedestal. His penance will further take him vertically above and enlarge the aura behind the icon. He need not get into a hand-to-hand scuffle with the plunderers of this country. From his lofty moral throne he can breed energetic gangs of conscious citizens who will turn his vision into reality. Let us just pray for his coming back to health and regain the control of Civil Society movement.

During the days he would wander around the places where he thought the people must have definitely read the piece of reality. He met people who greeted him out of sympathy for being an active loner, while he looked deep into their eyes to trace any glint of the light born of his revolutionary article. People but just seemed busy in their dusty fights on a day-to-day basis and within weeks even the last of his pamphlets at the safest place on his own gate was gone, some street urchin whom he must have fed sweetmeats sometimes tore it out just to be more playful.

Not much bothered about the Anna effect, in March the Prince was furtively rallying the poor and destitute in Uttar Pradesh. For a moment it became probable that the poor Indians will once again rally blindfolded behind his regal aura. And for good reasons! After all we have been such nice, gentle, almost non-challenging followers for the last millennium. ‘The results in Uttar Pradesh, however, might show some light at the end of tunnel,’ his social-reforming spirit could now just survive as anti-congress jibes at the fag end of the dissipating storm. ‘The mute masses in India are now slowly rising to their own feet to chart out their own courses. These might be the struggling initial steps like toddlers, but will surely translate into calculated, purposeful and independent walks to well-set destinations. The democracy in India may come to age after the hopeless six decades since Independence,’ he ineffectually told the tea stall gathering who seemed more eager to fart, sip tea and smoke bidis.

Agendaless he stayed at home and cursed the mass apathy. Assembly election campaigning was at its peak in Uttar Pradesh. On the television he agonisingly watched the Yuvraj (as he called Rahul Gandhi, the mightily beneficent Brahmin, to put one another definition bestowed writhing in pain and anger) blessing huts after huts of the poor Dalits! ‘Poor people but understand the politics behind it. So they won’t faint of delirium and ecstasy at the touch of his rich slippers on their mud floors. For too long they have rallied behind the clarion call of the Panja (the Congress 'hand' as they call it). Surprisingly, they called the hand as 'panja', i.e., the claw. “It will hold the rich and upper castes by throat and make their lives better”, they digested their horrible tales in free India with this optimistic thought for six decades. Now but they realize that this is in fact the hand that has been spanking their bums, making them dance to the hopeless winds from all directions. You need not waste your time to appease them anymore Yuvraj! They have more approachable, earthier messiahs. Maya is there! Mulayam is there. Where does the 'panja' go now! Devoid of traditional low-caste votes, it might now become the ferocious agent of communalism in the country. Muslim appeasement fella! Congress might be 127 years old, but its penchant for swaying the conscience of masses still survives. Gandhi wanted its safe and respectful cremation. But it denied to be laid to rest. The mutations in it are strong enough to undo all the natural laws that ordain the death of all physical and biological phenomena through birth, youth, old age and death. Let us see what are the policies adopted by the oldie now!’ he was speaking to himself as if in delirium.

Almost nothing left of the Anna movement, and his individual and collective failure buzzing in his body, he clutched at anything that might put the ruling government in poor light. These were his leftovers after the storm had ineffectively passed. He felt he had been deprived of the last chance to highlight his unmarried life’s shinier worth in the society. People now knew him as somebody who knew all that is wrong with the government. He was heard telling the retired group of oldies in the park one morning:

 

You know why the UPA government has managed to survive the grisly tantrums of coalition politics? Simple: It has no democratic principle, ethos, morality and specific guidelines of political righteousness. The only principle it follows is just sticking to power at whatever cost. Be it allowing the ministers from the coalition partners to plunder the country through scams like the 2G Spectrum and Common Wealth Games or disgracing its own railway minister by rolling back the budgetary provisions just after the railway budget, the UPA just sticks to power like a dirty fly in bazaar hallucinated by the saccharine aura of cheap sweetmeats. And now they eat their cake and have it as well.

He had started to believe that the world ended where his opinions ended. He smelt a rat now in whatever went wrong anywhere, even beyond the Indian shores. And definitely the UPA must have done something wrong to make things go wrong. When you target your enemy by default you come across revolutionary insights, so did he. The other day, while Anna relaxed in his native village, Jan Lokpal Bill safely neutralised through political posturing, he was heard venting out his frustration to his younger charlatans in the NGO:

It is no secret to what extent the top-boss in India helped the Sri Lankan army to wipe out the culprit Prabhakaran. It was a sweet revenge--and may be justifiably so given the sanctimony of human relationships and the cause of justice for the victim. But now that very action is condemned at the UNHRC meeting to again appease the viruses of coalition politics. India has condemned the military action and the violation of human rights in the events leading to the decimation of Prabhakaran who was eagerly following the polling scenario in India while bombs (many of them sent as avenging gifts from the bigger neighbour) burst around him. The gorilla leader was hoping for a government change in India and hence the possible lessening of heat from the Indian side. But fate had decided otherwise. While the LTTE leader awaited the declaration of Indian parliamentary results and the war zone came to be dangerously confined to bullet shot range around him, the UPA again came to power unexpectedly thus destroying all his hopes. It was a typical Hindi movie end. Well, you guys can just imagine why and how all this happened.

The infection of hate against the UPA government, and more particularly the Congress, caught him with such force that his diseased judgements found him accursingly hateful of the whole political class. India definitely was at the forefront of a revolutionary change for the better. He had started to believe that there will be a political purge, the strong and mighty nexus involving criminal-businessman-politicians will be pushed off the centre stage and the common man will take the lead. But as the spring was eaten by the swift hot swirls of the building up heat, the summers saw the movement lying in the lurch. However there was still hope left. Arvind Kejriwal, one of Anna’s lieutenants, was pushing up heat against the system. It again fuelled his passion to see a freer India in the independent India. The masses like him looked forward to another unselfish, totally patriotic star, a revolutionary, not a politician. As he watched Kejriwal slowly building a bit of confidence in his Jantar Mantar protests, his commonmanship caught the mass fancy. Kejriwal wore half-sleeved common man shirt, had the most common next door face, and the pitch in his speeches was like somebody from the mohalla is speaking in your favour. During one of Arvind’s cough-interrupted speeches, he even cried aloud, ‘If Gandhism is a philosophy, not individual legacy, Arvind Kejriwal, then, is the modern Gandhi!

With his common man’s body, common man’s voice, common man’s face and common man’s shirt, the famed aam admi, Kejriwal seemed to reap the poor harvest that had been sown during the Jan Lokpal Bill movement. All this appeared far beyond politics. A cleansing endeavour. Wherever his new-age Gandhi would address the meetings and bring more proofs of politico-business nexus, he would be in the front ranks, the tri-colour draped on his head and his soul pining to liberate the mother earth from her own sons gone wrong. During the summers, monsoons and the autumn of 2012, Kejriwal kept on repeating the open secret that there is a cartel that has hijacked Indian democracy; it involves mighty politicians belonging to all the mainstream political parties, big business houses, senior officials and powerful antisocial elements; they complement each other and help each other in monopolizing things for mutual benefits and plunder the resources. Well, everybody knew it but Kejriwal challenged this criminal nexus with proofs in press conferences. The new-age Gandhi made people understand why they stand marginalized and stigmatized like this.

He had become a Kejriwal bhakta, taking the common men’s messiah as the embodiment of selflessness on the path of pure deeds for the emancipation of the hijacked Indian democracy by the strong and the moneyed. At one of the tea stall debates, he was heard powerfully espousing the Kejriwal cause:

All the thieves have started barking against him because he is their common enemy. Everybody knows how people like Mr Ambani control top ministries in India. And when Kejriwal shows fearlessness and puts them in dock they go for witch-hunting. Media is also controlled by these big economic and political tycoons. So the journalists are also leaving no stone unturned in demeaning this new Gandhi fighting for the little freedoms that have been denied to the common man of India. Hope people have their brains with them and won't be influenced by the propaganda organized by the exploiters.

In one of his fiercely revolting outbursts, he even summarized: ‘Rebels are in the Chambal Ravines; Dacoits are in the Parliament!’

 

Arvind Kejriwal was sued for insulting the Parliament. His blind supporter termed it as the tragedy of Indian jurisprudence that allows the big fishes to escape the net and get elected to the Parliament; then they rape the system but pay lip service to the Indian constitutionality by praising its loftiness.

Even the commonest of the common man’s face lit up a bit uncommonly as he got an opportunity to address a gathering in his home city at a function attended by the new hope of the masses. Sharing a stage with the common man’s saviour was the best dream he could ever dream of. When his term came, he spoke in the tone of a representative of the slaved humanity by the new colonists, the brown-skinned colonists.

...Their actions are, however, never interpreted to mean the insult of Parliament. Words ... mere words are sufficient to prove their credentials of clean citizens of India who keep up the honour of the Indian Parliament. On the other hand is our Kejriwal whose each and every action pays homage to the rule of law, justice and honesty in the country. But his true words make him a culprit under the Indian law. Nonetheless, Civil Society is a force to reckon with now. All the thugs, scoundrels and rich ruffians who always look forward to a rich political innings have to rethink their plans now. Already the buffoon of Bihar, the master swindler who has amassed billions over two decades, has been left to digest the fodder he has eaten so long. He befooled the hardworking Biharis by playacting the common man and plundered the mineral-rich state for two decades. Many villages in Bihar, meanwhile, just knew that the light meant the Sun and the lantern. There is no electricity in villages. 'It’s a city thing,' they accepted the hard reality in Lalu-accent. The system which allows such thuggery will accept you as long as you pay lip service and will condemn you the moment you open your mouth. But actions of Mr. Arvind Kejriwal are pure enough to give him a clean chit in the Lok Adalat. Why care about the Parliamentary fools! One more thing: the Parliament and the Constitution are for the people of India not the other way around. We gave the right to certain individuals to frame them as per our aspirations. Now if we the common masses are making noises for a change then why these plundering rascals are finding it unlawful? Just incorporate the common man's wishes. That’s all! Our Civil Society representatives hold the right to call a 'shit' a 'shit'. How long they will force us to call it 'sweetmeat'!

He firmly believed that it was a new freedom movement in the independent history of India, and Arvind Kejriwal the new-age totally patriotic, self-sacrificing, great-job-kicker messiah who will facilitate transition to a new-age democracy where there will be no corruption and misuse of higher machinery, politics will come out of the clutches of the money and muscle power, public servants will be accountable for their deeds, people will get the basics that they have not since independence (food, water, electricity and education) and many more common things that fulfil the dreams of a common man. His belief in all these little dreams and his consequent followship of the new-age great man continued to grow as Delhi got reprieve from the scorching summers by the monsoonal fury with its own share of different type of woes, as rainy season held out its periodical baton to the autumn leading to the great festival line with the start of the winters in November. But then there was a roadblock to his dreams. His enthusiasm got punctured. The revolutionary spin-off of the Anna movement safely landed in the political castle that he was so long throwing pebbles at. In November, amid much bickering and dissent by Anna and his still surviving band of new-age social reformers, Arvind Kejriwal showed uncommon guts with his common man’s body and face. He formed the Aam Aadmi Party, the party of the common man, formulated to fulfil the common man’s dreams. Well, it is open secret how much of commonality you are left with once you become a registered politician. He knew it, the activist of our tale. He felt duped. His last dream to be a part of the real change in the country lay shattered. The AAP was to be just any other party he knew, he had no doubts. As the coming times would tell, on the political stage, in the games of maligning and mud-slinging and secretive manipulations, AAP’s common man’s face would not remain as common as they claimed, it will be the face of any other party, having the same characters in it like any other party.

His dreams shattered, he stayed at home these days. He had left the rope that would have taken him to a bit higher in the sky fetching him his little bit of acclaim born of selfless service for the common cause. It took him months to realise that his life was far more purposeful in his little world of little deeds, the pure-hearted steps of feeding a cat, dog, cow and beggar; the genuinely reformative acts of sponsoring the education of a poor child; the little-little charities to the needy ones. These might not fetch him media headlines, but these will reward him with smile and genuine affection in the eyes of both the obliged animal and the impoverished human he did a favour to.