September Chronicles from the past: Between the Monsoon, the Match and the Nation

The world has moved on unmindfully, unrepentantly, optimistically on the path of forgetting the losses and magnifying the gains.

The tragedy of the 21st—cousin brother's death—and the triumph of the 24th—victory in the Twenty20 World Cup—are left behind like a black dot and a shinier one, though a bit larger, put side by side in the dustbin.

Metallic and biological lives hurtle on the iron and cell rails respectively.

And such is the journey that, with each passing hour, both the tragedy and the triumph now acquire the same colour—that of unimportance and insignificance; a big greying happening in which the victor and the decimated, winners and losers, happiness and sorrows burn and boil in this elaborate vat of the past, to turn it into the sticky, flabby, tarred, dredgy fluid of the past.

Despite early promise, the monsoon has failed miserably—not a single shower of significance in the months of August and September to this date.

But despite this unfaithfulness on the part of the drenchy maiden, the paddy, thanks to the irrigation canals and channels kissing the fringes of the agricultural-scape of the village, is lush green, promising, sturdy and healthy.

A bumper crop the farmers expect.

So the farmers don't bother too much about this meteorological miss.

The sun during the month of September is very vigorous. So is the greenery around, and both, in a tango, make an eye-blinding canvas of nature.

The monsoon is gone. Almost. 

The almost blazing blue sky is now dotted with independently moving, fluffy white and grey wads of clouds, travelling lugubriously, aimlessly over the blue bosom of the sky.

The rear guard—all disheartened, dispirited—moving to reach up to the main columns of the Goddess of Rain.

These scattered clouds are the rear guard of the main columns of the Goddess of Rain.

In Myanmar, red-robed Buddhist monks, armed with the pistols of begging bowls and the war cries of peace and brotherhood, are moving in a massive march to raise a non-bloody resistance against the military junta.

But if not now, then in the coming days it will turn bloody anyway.

Given their legendary patience their robes can soak much blood.

Much blood. There seems to be more and more demand for shedding innocent human blood. 

*****

Cricket, cricket, cricket, and more cricket.

That seems to be the national credo.

It is the mighty banyan of modern India, with new shoots, saplings, roots, after the Twenty20 triumph.

So much so that overenthused players as well as fans, forgetting the past pains and humiliating defeats, proclaim us as the true champions now.

Much-piqued Mr. Ponting, the Australian, warns us to look back and notice the Aussies' triumphs in the Tests and 50-over one-dayers.

But overzealous fans don't pay any heed to the different versions requiring better skills and the likes at the higher hierarchy in the game.

Everybody seems to shout:

“We are the latest true champions.”

But it is very precarious—a beautiful vale and a precipice.

One single victory takes the entire cricketing scene to the beautiful vales of popularity, money, status, shouts and celebration.

But the precipice is just one step ahead, always.

One misstep and all is lost, all is forgotten.

Funeral dirges are sung.

I fear the very same this afternoon during the day-night one-day match against the Aussies.

The big three, the old veterans, will be returning to action.

Cricket, however, is a cruel game, and so are the fans and media.

Every action of the old pros, the time-tested heroes of the past two decades, will be scrutinised through the overexcited, overdemanding, overadolescent lenses framed by the new crop of swaggering hitters and fast runners.

It is an irony that the most boisterous section among the fans is that which thinks cricket is just a game of hit and run:

Hit, hit, hit.

Run, run, run.

Faster, stronger, stronger, showing a no-nonsense and powerful urge towards the cause of entertaining cricket. No place for test match class and elegance. 

The shouty fundamentalists and terminators, the crazy amateur fans who are not serious about the classics, the fundamentals of cricket, prattle that the gloriously grizzled feathers on the heads of old, ancient kings should be snatched and put on strong new shoulders.

The majestic trio thus have to wage a war which goes beyond cricket.

It is about outdoing their own robust pasts.

It is about outshining the vagrant urchins shiny and showy in their theatrics.

It is about winning matches in different styles for a different audience.

*****

Let's move away from the frenzied cricketing lanes.

Away from the frenzied cricketing lane, let us enter the silently hobnobbing back alleys to find out what is cooking. Secretly. Sinisterly. 

We are obliged to enter the back alleys because there are no open main streets in the swarming city of politics for we the common people.

What cooks there is either too simple or too complex, and thus missed by the poor masses.

In both cases, it is too simple if we understand and keep in mind a few subtle blocks beneath the political facade—the contrite art of indirect fight, using the pawns of blind masses, unsuspecting followers, constitutional machinery, channelising the frenzied, passionate, etc., etc.

But such dusty, cheap nuances are scattered unpretentiously around our feet to attract any critical glare.

Okay, be it so.

*****

The communists always—it is their soul force—want to shake the stage with ideological theatrics, even when they are part of the game and plot. The ever-cringing urge of revolution, I think. 

So the UPA government led by Mr. Manmohan Singh, the meek and the sleek and the most learned of the lot, is getting some serious jolts from the red shirts, crying foul over India's nuclear deal with the sign of imperialism, America.

So from the soldiers of liberation from capitalism, there is a war cry.

Belligerent China is much mellowed in its grip regarding India because it now has its band of wayfarers in the form of Leftists in India, the orchestra fuming with ideological fury.

So the Leftists shout:

“Go back on your treaty with the bully.”

They order the apparently meek Mr. Singh, while the new foreign-made Iron Lady fumes aggression into the oddly humble, turbaned mentor of the country.

The supporters of the treaty say that it will ensure the transfer of the latest civilian nuclear technology to India, as well as take us into the good books of the superpower.

The detractors and critics say there are unseen ghosts in the closet of weak clauses in the treaty, which will cut India's nuclear weapons programme, increase our distance from our traditional ally Russia, create more ruffles in the red feathers of the Chinese dragon, and naturally make us an object of targeting by Islamic jihadis.

The revolutionary communists are thus threatening to pull the cart of the government.

But after witnessing the initial all-round condemnation of their blackmailing, they are going cautiously now.

Let us see which way the camel takes a turn? 

This way?

That way?

How can we, the common people, know?

It is such a secret game out there in the top echelons of power.

Nothing can be certain when the matter at hand involves our dear red shirts.

Anything and everything can be expected from them.

After all, they are a class which will not blink an eye in shedding blood for some utopian cause. As it has proved world over. 

So smothering some ideological stand for commitment to peace; or tearing away any understanding they have with their partners -- these are beyond the cognitive reach of those who can't fully gauze the idea of killings for common good.

The earlier an understanding is made, the more digestible it will be to their supporters.

At least it saves their shirts from getting still redder. In mind at least. 

So while the red tinge on the Leftist brows gets redder, the pale-faced, learned Prime Minister, dumped helplessly at the helm of affairs, shows surprising defiance.

He has Righted the Leftist ways a bit, because his humble facial expression, by the side of the iron lady, was totally unexpected.

The allies wanted a far, far weaker response from the economist Prime Minister.

But the conservative fellow must have surpassed even himself by taking a strong verbal stand.

*****

Idgah Colony is Sonipat's poor Muslim locality.

Two or three thousand poor Muslims live in this crowded, narrow-laned, dingy-housed neighbourhood. A humble minority surrounded by people of other faiths, totalling about three lakhs in the city, mostly Hindus.

Terribly outnumbered, they have their own world of insecurities, inhibitions, visions, hopes and despairs.

Pakistan, with its brand of pan-Islamism, which of late is crumbling apart, is too far. They need to survive through manual, semi-skilled means and are somehow facing more trouble in making a living in these times when traditional occupations are losing their hold in rapidly modernising India.

So Pakistan might indulge in domineering slogan-shouting for the cause of Islam, but that does not change the ground reality of poor Muslims here in India.

In fact, it makes it tougher for them.

Against this background, life here in this locality moves slowly in the side lane.

During the last almost sixty years, Sonipat has had a decent communal history. Just for some tiny exceptions. A tiny cubicle of a mosque by the erstwhile railway crossing—which has been removed now with the coming of the first flyover—was perhaps the only exception.

A small group of vandals, acting big on the clarion call of nationalism, had broken a few tiles and bricks from the tiny mosque's small façade in the aftermath of the Ayodhya happenings.

Some patriotic organizations have their branches in most of the cities. No problem with patriotic organizations at all. They have done great work during instances of national calamities. Just that petty holligans join their bands during times of emotional upheavals and spoil the name of the organisers. 

Sonipat has its own.

Their fiercely focused agenda makes me uncomfortable. A bit. For my beloved Bharat Mata. Or maybe I don't know enough about them to give judgments on them. I want it to be peaceful, prosperous Hindustan and for that we need social harmony. 

Midway through the Twenty20 World Cup final, the cable network in half of the city and in most of the villages around came to naught. Connection was lost, leaving people fretting with anger. 

A rumour spread that the Pakistan-favouring Muslims in Idgah Colony had snapped the lines passing through their neighbourhood in order to stigmatise the taste of victory.

Frenzied cricket devotees, their devotion double-dosed with the help of religious divides, hastily arranged for a public screening at Mission Chowk, and they celebrated the victory with a triple dose of enthusiasm.

Triumphant firecrackers were burst before the mosques in the colony.

Two or three thousand supposedly sulking Muslims surrounded by two or three lakhs jubilant Indians. I thank god that no untoward incident happened later that night. 

The equation is too skewed to lend any credibility to the rumour.

I plainly accept that they can't dare to do any mischief.

They just cannot. Can't afford to do it. 

So I explicitly smell a conspiracy—some mischievous group trying to create more social division—and they have made a start in a populist manner.

It does not portend well even for such small cities, which have scatterings of minority religionists in a sea of the majority.

All I can do is to pray for our majestically multi-cultural motherland, one of its own kind in the world.