Mending the Shipwrecked Boat: A Battle into the New Year

December 30, 2007

Sajan Pal is back there in the exotic chaos in the Horn of Africa, in Djibouti, and I can visualize his innocent puns and attempts at fun at the cost of the giggling maids there; Sandeep with his typical Casanova approach to life; and the slow-paced life over there in stark contrast to what we see here.

It's a completely different world out there.

I have to take care of our business affairs here for the time being till I return, and Sandeep probably will come back to India for some time to spend time with his family. So we are thinking of planning it in rotation: two of us there and one here.

Now, coming back to the situation here in India, thankfully, a hugely, mammothly ungainful year is on its deathbed. Today is its penultimate breath. Tomorrow will be the last one.

Well, thankfully, the year 2007 will die, but not before giving me a big bouquet of disappointments. Most of it has been ungainful, except the time in Africa, where life is experienced in a different, slow-paced dimension, as well as the few dollars that we have saved after bearing the high cost of living there and managing business by greasing palms at every step.

The rest of it seems to have gone almost in loss—ungainful.

But even with its mercilessness, it plagued me straightforwardly. It did not play hide-and-seek. It did not encounter me stealthily. All it did was in utter, cold, unflinching disdain and mercilessness.

How did it do this?

Well, by laying bare all judicial pretensions of justice, fair play and uprightness at the apex of our judicial system.

Why did I wait for three long years for this thing?

Thank God I have this African business venture in partnership with my friends to put in the face of the critics who might say that I haven't done anything. But still, alongside this so-called business, I have been hoping for justice and for availing what I truly deserve—my HCS post.

And for that I have been pinning all hopes on the judiciary.

The reason is that I had absolute faith in the system of justice at the Supreme Court level. But as it has turned out, it is just a central-level version of the state-level judiciary.

Otherwise, how can the annayaymurti dishonourably and criminally neglect the plight of a hundred job seekers who are hopelessly pitted against the mighty state?

I now see the state as a mighty sabre-rattling agent, subduing puny foot soldiers like me and my batchmates.

Once again, the urge to go to Bastar to have my little share of justice myself arises, but what can a poor, frail writer of still poorer words do to entertain such revolutionary sparks deep inside his heart?

The simpler reason for turning a blind eye to such glorious ideas is that I am afraid to die. The forces will easily kill me. And there won't be slightest noise against it. 

I know that I will be wiped out like an inconsequential speck of dust, like a little worm, if I am brave enough to go to the Naxal areas and become one of them.

I am thoroughly a pen soldier, with body battered and bruised, with weapons and shields lying in the dust, with hands lacerated and in no position to wield even the pen now.

So I am left with no alternative but to stand silent like an uncomplaining, mute sheep and then, in all humility, honouring the constitutionalities of the mighty state, start on the work of restoring the storm-wrecked little boat of life, now lying in the sand, upturned, its planking disarranged, its bottom moth-eaten.

Though this work is infinitely tedious, I have decided to go along with it, even though it means gulping big sips of humiliation and enduring pinpricks from the justice-seeking conscience.

It is perhaps still easier to carry such a load of your wreckage to build another boat, to sail off in the same sea of your doom, rather than beat your chest standing on the shore and challenge the mightily surging waves.

Those who think that they can challenge the fury of these waves might be right in their own ways, but given my fondness for what I have left, given my weakness and fragility, given my fears and inhibitions—given all this—maybe I am also justified in forgetting about the sin against me and not harbouring any thoughts of revenge against the mighty enemy, for doing so would be sheer foolishness.

If hideous Hooda and his Italian-posturing lady master have stage-managed a wrong, it still only represents, in my mind, a wrong done by the state. But since the state can never be wrong, it turns out to be no wrong at all.

So now I have started focusing more on our ragged, jagged business venture in the exotic chaos of East Africa.

I hope destiny will finally give us tiny bits of luck in the form of little opportunities that will help me in mending my shipwrecked boat of life.

The sea monster heaved it and beached it on the humped shoal of its constitutional back, and then tossed it like a puny slingshot against the sheer rock face.

Thrown against a rock, broken, I limber back to some sheltering grove, hoping this time my little wormy path won't wrongly cut across any politically shiny superway.

How good this country would have been if the type of politics being perpetuated hadn't existed.

It would have been blissful to have a political class which does not put unguarded, puny, weaponless foot soldiers in the position of having to guard themselves against the warring factions among the politicians.

Because very rarely does a political shot go on to hit the political rival directly. It kisses the poor flesh of some poor citizen, pitted, jammed in between the mighty, heavily guarded foes.

So they have their heavy political potshots, breaking many a poor head.

Let them enjoy this bloody game.

The time will perhaps come when the wormy, bleeding swarms will arise en masse to push back against all the surrounding charioted parties.

Yet it is too optimistic to think of such a revolution in our current setup, because the evil cronyism now carries a huge chunk of the upwardly mobile middle class on its pampered back.

And these neo-super units are too obliged to join the poor ones. They, in fact, enjoy the prospects of having their own types of potshots against these filthy, impoverished fellows.

They are the check dams which will prevent the river of agony from going out of control.

The exploiters are strengthening the flood banks.

In all probability, the river of agony will remain tamed.

Now I have learnt to live with my pains—pains in the soul, pains in the conscience, pain in the head—going round and round in a vicious circle, one giving rise to another and vice versa. It is not even clear which breeds which one; all father one another.

Though it is usually discomforting to have such pains always nagging, gnawing at your existence, I would be really happy to have them as long as I live, provided they don't wipe me out completely.

I am fighting it out all alone amongst them.

All alone.

My weapons and shields consist of self-derived and self-supported beliefs, willpower, negation of certain realities—a well-managed package to erect a model of pseudo-reality in which I manage to believe myself surviving at an average level.

But as time grows old and circumstances change for the worse, which I have reasons to believe surely will, the army, the agents of pain, will multiply like termites to eat the tree of my life.

I know that the odds will turn in their favour.

But what can you do under circumstances over which you have no control?

I will just do what I can manage.

I will continue with my battle.

Painful and taxing as it is, it has its own excitement and pleasures. I am not sure. I am not aware of lesser or greater pleasures, for there are many in both categories in comparison to my own.

But my little kits of pleasures and huge bundles of pains constitute the identity of my being.

It is a bloody battle ahead, and I am preparing for it.

I certainly will lose portions of myself in the bloody, unsparing battle.

Well, God bless me!