The First Grey Hairs: A Losing Battle Against the Advancing Troops of Age

 **November 2007**

I am thirty now.

A few strands of grey hair have suddenly appeared on my chin. A definite clarion call of age.

We do our best to hide the signs of our advancing age. We are pitted against these rebellious outcroppings on our face and head. But we don't let them prevail without a stern colouring, masking and cutting fight while they are still in the minority.

During our thirties, we weed them out, colour them, do everything that cosmetics allow us.

But over a period of time, it proves to be a losing battle.

It takes almost a decade for us to accept the baldy, wrinkled, grim reality by the forties.

The rebel line is beyond our powers, and we meekly accept our fate.

I, being in my present state, have clearly and cleanly cut down the rebellion, for there were only three enemy troops.

It is, however, another matter that I will be required to repeat the feat every time my stubble is a few days old, because I can cut the outer vestiges of age—that's true for a time—but not the roots of it.

They are too deep. They can't be rooted out.

It will happen, as it has been happening always to all of us.

God Versus Me: Who Has Let Whom Down?

 **October 2006**

I do not know whether God has let me down, or is it the other way around, or both of us have let each other down, or only one of us—either He or I—has let down the other.

Or none of us has let the other down.

If God has let me down, then I end up justifying all my deeds, which further implies that I have always done what I should, or could, have done under the circumstances.

But since we are designed to learn to do good only through practising the wrong, I ought not to claim perfectionism: certainly, I must have done many wrongs on my path of goodness.

So God has not entirely let me down, but maybe a bit.

If He has created me, then He should have saved me from blunders by putting the right sense in my head while I floundered and committed mistakes.

Maybe He has created a limiting circle around me, making it a rule through providence that I will never be able to break those circular fences—that is, the world outside is beyond my reach, and the world inside is within reach.

And within this built-in platform, you can make or break your destiny.

Maybe I have been banging at the fences, futilely trying to get a passage out, and in the process depriving the self of that hassle-free, cosy, routine, risk-free, ordained circular plaza ride inside the cubicle.

The possibility does exist also that both of us have let each other down in our own ways.

Maybe there were times when His soft, spiritual, guiding voice of sanity divinely whispered logic, prudence and practicality into my puzzled ears, while I decided to be lost in the crashing noise of imprudence, impracticality and nonsense.

Also, there might have been occasions when, sincerely and deservedly, I was crying for help, comradeship and guidance from the cosmic authority, but it somehow left me without support.

If I look at my long trials, tribulations, prayers, undeserved sufferings and pains, then certainly I find myself undone by Him, for what I have done for myself certainly does not deserve what I have got at this stage.

So, from this point of view, He has certainly let me down.

If He designed or created me to do something else, which I, a mere mortal, have been fighting so far, then I have overgrown my shoes and certainly let Him down.

For He, being the Creator, reserves the final right.

Then maybe none of us has let the other down, He being He and I being I.

He, the greater God in His own sphere, and I, a lesser one in my own.

But the entire debate thus far has been from the angle of my sufferings only.

Have we ever cared about God's sufferings—either in His own world, not connected to ours in any way, or in His own cosmic, patronising relation to us as the Supreme Father?

Looking at the extent of pain, miseries, sufferings, unhappiness and tragedies in this world, it sounds improbable that there exists a safe closet in this vast cosmos where such things have no meaning.

Maybe in that heavenly space there are pains of their own type.

But we humans, in our exalted, mortal, ignorant selves, ignore the larger picture and are ever focused on our sufferings.

Isn't it a rule that my pain is some earthly worm's gain, and vice versa?

Whatever we lose, we end up doling out some opportunity, some luck, some leverage to some fellow earthling.

So this perpetual reversal of roles between pain and gain among ourselves—the thread of our existence, the cords that make us puppets, the players on the stage—creates the hallucination or illusion that there are vast, separate, unjustified pools and chunks of pains and pleasures, while in reality the constant sum of pleasures and pains remains the same.

It is a grand quotient involving both the darker and brighter aspects of nature.

But all this futile hypothesising does not make me oblivious to my own unredeemed sufferings.

It stings at my head, screams justice, screams for justice from Him as well as the earthly beholders of it.

But nothing changes, and time just fruitlessly flows away.

And now it has started to bypass me, copiously taking long, cruel draughts of the sap of patience, prayers, faith, belief and confidence in me.

Now I no longer battle for anything.

I just stand like an item of vegetation, waiting for the happenings.

They may be good or bad.

It makes the littlest of differences.

Haryanvi Pop: From Traditional Raginis to the Glittering World of Music Albums

 **July 2006**

The Westerners started packaging their music in albums.

Very efficiently, as we are very apt at it, we took the clue very soon.

The music bazaar was agog with grossly tampered sound, beat-driven, electronically recharged *desi* music albums, which, to an extent, lightened the burden of Hindi film songs to calm the millions of musical souls in India.

Each and everybody who could have any semblance of pretence to dancing or creating music jumped onto the bandwagon, not taking it too seriously from the artistic point of view.

This consumer element in the field carried big bucks for those in the fray and probably provided foot-tapping, mostly boozed-up moments at ceremonies and weddings, which were never memorable but fizzled out like any modern consumer product, giving the baton to some new substance in a modern package.

It but provided classical strength to the *old is gold* type of film songs, which have ruled the roost in our hearts for decades.

Taking a cue from the Hindi album scene, the regional outfits blossomed.

They appealed to limited sections, mostly on linguistic lines.

Punjabis went almost mad with it.

Each day dawned with scores of Punjabi music albums, which went on to blare all night during wedding dances all over North India.

And now the latest trend in the neighbourhood is Rajasthani and Haryanvi albums, imitating all the former elements of all genres.

It is a huge, motley mix of inspired wordings, music and dance themes.

Nothing is original, or perhaps the suave impersonation could not be possible without some originality.

Who takes someone speaking Haryanvi seriously?

They appear simpletons, even buffoons, to some urban people.

But they enjoy their peculiar dialect of simplicity and arrogance.

Raginis have given way to Haryanvi music albums.

Here, the university girls dance in a very naive manner to the crudely, rudely probing wordings of the dialect.

And they are successful as well.

On local cable networks, they blare their raw senses day in, day out.

In fact, they have pushed Punjabi songs from DJ floors during weddings.

The Moneyed Class: The Hidden Price of Being Rich

 **July 2006**

There are rich people, and there are super-rich ones also.

The latter might have their own phenomena which we might not find too easy to explain, for an almost insurpassable gulf exists between them and we commoners.

So our talk must primarily concern the former ones—the rich people whose paths periodically run close to ours; who, in the process of making a sufficient amount of money, aren't, due to the nature of their occupations, capable of shutting their lives completely from passing through the busy, buzzing thoroughfare of petty struggles, huge pains and almost no gains, of hope, strife, etc., witnessed by we the commoners.

And enviously, the people at the lowest rung stare at them, hate them for their miserly treatment when it comes to paying for the labour done for them by the labouring class, their scornful and haggling ways in criticising the poor ones, etc.

Very often, the poorer ones estimate the incomes of those local moneywalas, minus the apparent costs of living, and then arrive at a huge sum as the balance.

They wonder why this constant nagging and haggling is done by them even though they have so much surplus in their accounts.

To some measure, they are justified in this, but not completely.

Why?

Because a great source of outflow from their coffers remains unaccounted for in the process.

It is the price they have to pay for earning big bucks while rubbing so close a scornful shoulder against poverty, destitution, misery, unemployment, crime, corruption, frustrated crowds and much more.

Their trophies shine too brightly in this melee.

And mind it, they don't live almost fortified like the super-rich, who have their similar problems at the super level.

So they pay, and a considerable sum, for enjoying their status.

They pay to the bureaucracy, to the politicians, to the police for protection and to keep their wheels running.

Then these rich scions from towns, small cities and posh localities in big cities pay to the extortionists who threaten them with murder and kidnappings if they deny the amount demanded by them.

It is a big sum.

So the cost of enjoying their status is far, far higher than we think it to be.

If we arrive at the exact figure, we won't be too jealous of them.

Three Sevens and a Thousand Knots: The Auspiciousness of Human Imagination

 **7 July 2007 (7-7-7)**

Three sevens in the day's denotational worth have put—now this is a surprise, given its universal reach this time—the people in India, not so particularly, and Western countries, not so generally, into some astrological pit of specialness, auspiciousness and uniqueness.

We do not know where the spark to this effect came from; we do but certainly witness its matrimonial configuration on a global scale.

Lakhs of marriages have been fixed for today.

Banquet halls, reception halls, chapels, temples and hotels—all are in for a tough schedule. Their capacity to get the new couples done within a cramped schedule is to be tested throughout the day and very late into the night.

Coming to the special day and the belief behind it.

We are the ones who make or break such things.

So if the common conscience jumps onto the bandwagon, then nothing wrong with it.

Matters, after all, mean a lot in our lives.

So if the yoke is put on a supposedly auspicious day, then we, just for the sake of criticising astrology, should not run in to rob this mundane day of its special status.

All days are the same.

So if we decide, for our sake, to make some of them special, then what is wrong in that?

Good, bad, ominous, auspicious.

All these are our fantastic, civilised thinking constructions.

We have sired them, not vice versa.

So why browbeat over our own offspring?

We will dump it as easily as thousands of obsolete ones in the past, the moment we sire a more suitable, updated, renovated, improved one.

So let us raise a toast to the day's auspiciousness.

Let us drink to the happiness of thousands of souls who will tie the knot today to become partners in pain, pleasures, loss, gain, summer, winter, weepings and joys.

If the day entails such a happy phenomenon, then it itself becomes sanctimonious.

A rationalist might find it illogical, but then this is what differentiates us from our creations—the machines.

Our quotient of humanity derives sustenance and survivorship from this innocent, illogical, pleasantly irrational, pliant, softly veiled, hazy, misty, murky pool of our frailties, weaknesses, uncertainty, vagueness and zealous sureness.

The Mischievous Monkey in Africa: When Self-Deprecating Humour Came to My Rescue

 **Diary Entry: 2008**

Long time back, about 20 years ago, I was in Africa for some time. We were doing business, our little group of friends.

On one weekend, we went to this nightclub, and I got high on a few bottles of beer, and there I was, prancing around like a monkey on the dance floor.

I am one of the most horrible and most weird dancers in the world. I hardly know how to synchronise movements that are required for dancing.

But I felt liberated that day. There were tensions in business, and I kept on dancing, dancing.

Then, in the wee hours, somebody had been watching me very, very carefully, and I found out that it was a very handsome, almost six-foot-tall African woman, attired in traditional dress, apparently from a good family.

And when the dance floor was closed and I was coming out, she followed me and held my hand very firmly, thinking that since I was high on alcohol, I might be easy to carry away.

And it appeared like I was being kidnapped!

And in a husky, loud voice, she said, "Oh man, I have a problem."

So, very meekly, I asked her, "What is your problem, ma'am?"

She said, "I can't help it but take you to my bed."

I was shocked and surprised. That was such an open invitation!

And she laughed.

There was at least truth and frankness about it. There was no coquetry involved; she straightaway hit the point.

And me being a mischievous monkey, I knew the best way to deal with such frankness was through puns and jokes.

Become serious, you might be in trouble, because that was Africa, and from all angles she appeared to be an influential woman. I had a feeling that she had connections, and if she felt offended, if I denied straightaway, she might put me into trouble.

Anything could have happened.

So I took it very lightly, and I did exactly the thing that I have done a few times in dealing with such tough situations.

I slipped. Started babbling self-deprecating stuff. With the face of a suffering moron. 

She was holding my left hand, so I gave a guffaw of laughter, very naturally, as naturally as she had asked me about sleeping with her.

I slapped my thigh with my right hand and made such a meek and pathetic face.

I said, "Ma'am, you are a beautiful woman, and there shouldn't be any reason to say no to your proposal. It's an honour, in fact, to be invited for intimacy by a woman like you.

"But I have a still bigger problem than yours."

She was surprised.

She asked me, "What's your problem?"

I said, "This thing does not work."

I said it while pointing to my middle, to my private parts.

She was shocked, and then I kept on elaborating on it.

"Ma'am, I have been wandering across nations and continents to seek a remedy for this thing, to make it work, but it has failed me."

And I made such a PTSD-suffering face as if it were true.

"Even here, I am running around to get some traditional herbal medicine from shamans in Africa so that they can force some life into this limp thing of mine."

And I kept on babbling, high on alcohol, and she just started laughing.

She got the pun behind it, and even in the throes of passion, with my humour, I was able to put her into a situation where even as a woman who proposed to a man unqualified, unconditional intimacy, even she wouldn't feel denied and offended.

So she started laughing.

She patted me on my back and said, "You are a very interesting man."

And she was just rolling over with laughter.

She said, "I have never, ever seen a man like you, who is purposefully playing down his virility and manhood just in order that he doesn't want to get into intimacy with a woman."

Then she said loudly, "Liar! I know you are very much operational there!"

She pointed to the intended thing.

"You are very much active there. As a woman, I can feel it, but you don't want to. You don't like me. But that is not an issue. You are a funny man. That is most important."

And she just let go of her grip.

So my takeaway from this episode is that humour, and especially self-deprecating humour, can come to your help in testing situations.

The Brothel at GB Road: A Researcher's Misadventure in Old Delhi

I can recall another such incident during our trading days.

I used to go to Old Delhi's grain market quite a lot, and there was this quite entertaining but lecherous friend of mine who was interestingly fond of women, and that would sometimes take him to the professional women of the trade.

Now, that part of Delhi is quite congested, so we would park our car at a distance and walk about one kilometre to go into the narrow alleys where the grain merchants traded.

That was in regard to our export-import trade from Africa. So we were looking for buyers and purchasers of commodities, and we had to pass this red-light area, the famous red-light area of Delhi, GB Road, where you have women begging for your attention even in broad daylight.

So one day, this friend of mine got an itching to visit the brothel in broad daylight, and there are so many stories about that, that anything can happen.

So since he was insecure about going there alone, he insisted that at least I should give him company.

When I said firmly no, he played his card quite well.

He knew that I am a researcher-type fellow who is always looking for material for his write-ups.

So he tried to convince me that, "You can go. You will have plenty of research material. Suppose you are writing some story and you have a character, then you will be able to build up the plot well if you have the firsthand experience. You don't do anything, you just go there."

Now, when it comes to reading, writing, researching, I have this soft corner.

So I thought that nothing would be forced upon me unless and until I willingly did something.

So I went with him.

It was a very narrow, dark staircase leading to the upper-storey brothel rooms, and it was spattered with paan and gutka spatterings by the clients.

He was ascending the stairs in front of me, and the moment he entered the threshold, it was a dimly lit room, and he was grabbed by two women.

And I saw him struggling a bit, but then since he had intended to do the thing, he allowed himself to be taken away.

And at that moment, I just stopped at the threshold.

I put both my hands against the doorframe, and only one step was inside, and I jammed myself there.

A woman came and she held me by the hand and tried to drag me inside because these are very poor women. They are always looking for clients, and if somebody goes there, even if the purpose is something else, even suppose somebody goes there, some NGO worker, their first intention is just to latch onto that person and treat him as a client.

So despite my pleadings, I found that now two women were just, you know, holding both my arms and trying to drag me in.

And then I started doing the same mimicry that I did earlier.

I said, "I just came here to watch."

They said, "What is there to watch? Everybody comes here as a client."

I said, "I don't have any money."

Then they tried to put their hands in my back pocket, and somehow I managed to get one hand free and didn't allow my wallet to be stolen.

Then I spoke to them in a very courteous manner.

I said, "See, I am an educated person. I respect you. This is your profession, just like anybody else has their profession, and I don't judge.

"In fact, my friend is a social worker for women in the trade, and I have visited a few places with her in order to highlight the problems faced by women like you.

"So won't you please show respect to me? I show respect to you."

But still, the head lady of that establishment said, "No, no, you just come in and we can just talk."

I said, "No, I won't be able to come. I don't want to come."

Then she said, "What is the problem?"

Then I played this.

I made such a sad face that my thing doesn't work, and she started laughing.

She pointed to a girl.

She said, "She is an expert in it. She will make it work. Don't worry. You don't have to do anything."

And as they tried to force me in, I slumped on the threshold and put my feet against the threshold.

And when they found that I might topple over and go down the staircase, finally they had to let me go.

So it happened like this, and I just came out running at top speed.

Old Days: The Lost Charms of a Slowly Unfolding World

 **28 June 2006**

From the sixties, seventies, and even eighties, technology has taken such leapfrogs that the era mentioned, though famous as far as golden nostalgia brought forth by the past centuries is concerned—easy-paced life, lilting agonies, ecstasies of natural blooms, of superstitions, of abounding yet bridled quest to know, slow-paced inventions, soft passions, dreamings, struggles—appears too far off, distant, with its almost mystic charms, mythic charms, and charming legacies.

Now, with inhuman ingression into our mind, body and soul, the fastly piling-up mountain of modernism finds us worlds apart from these not-so-distant decades.

So, looking from where we are in this first decade of the twenty-first century, we find ourselves separated by an insurmountable wall from that era of our fathers and mothers.

The time when they grew up, studied, romanced, committed moderate follies, when the laborious long cuts in relations and professions had slowly winding seeds of pleasures, pains and lessons.

When distances were not covered as fast as now, when communication did not fly out with the speed of light from every pocket to almost every other, anywhere inside and outside the country.

When the path to success meant a whole sequence of human destiny rather than the instant phase and blinding blaze of modern entrepreneurship and profession.

When failure meant a chance to start again rather than a stigma, as it is now.

When money was inside pockets rather than, like the present, when it glitters everywhere around but the safe closets and pockets.

When lost letters separated lovers, and in the forge of finding, the true gems of the human heart poured forth in the form of beautiful, profound poetry.

When, sitting in the rusty and creaking cart of not-so-high technology, we were forced, or rather necessitated, to witness the glorious game of life with its still glorious, gradually unfolding uncertainties, its pleasant helplessness, its effervescent rejoicings after the long thirst of piled-up desires.

When our gaze did not graze the hair-tops while we rocketed forward like a mad rush into our own explosion.

Ahatas: The Bonhomie of the Guzzlers

 **2003**

The guzzlers are on the brink of bloating themselves into big, inflated balloons of oblivion and an unhealthily smouldering flame of artificially imposed restfulness.

It is beer and more beer for the young. Old-timers still cling to their tested brands of alcohol. But summers, at least, belong to the new generation, and it's beer.

Getting a contract for running a wine outlet now means a big, very big earner. In villages, daily sales happily reach ten thousand rupees for most of the month.

In the cities, there are *ahatas* by the wine outlets. These are dingy, crowded, not-so-clean places where the drinkers get a corner of seclusion at the cost of snacks at highly exorbitant rates provided by the keeper.

In the evenings, these places throb with the maximum pulsation of their alcoholic hearts.

Drinkers of all sorts and categories gather. Since the space is not much, they are very happy to share the tables, and a whole new world opens before the participant in this muffled, slow-paced, forgetfully throbbing place.

If we remove all other pros and cons of alcohol, one thing stands out marvellously: the bonhomie shared by persons who, aided and enlarged by wine and beer, share their unrestrained, shameless words with persons whom they have met just on this table for the first time in life.

And the topics draw from somewhere. The topics of discussion—new information surfaces suddenly. Many rumours are quashed, while new ones take birth.

All seem to have accepted, even the most belligerent ones, the principle of bonhomie and peace among the community of drinkers.

Discussions spill over like wine over a glass, and gentlemanly remarks leap over from one table to another.

It is like a beehive, a community of high-need familiarity.

The way talks are held, tongues slipping over words, but the intention becoming gentler and gentler.

Drinkers talk while time moves away sluggishly, yet so fast.

It appears as if some new foundation for some solid acquaintance has been laid. But most often, it is not so.

They talk, they depart happily with dreamy, swooning musings, and forget all about it the next morning under the glare of a real sun and a real day.

Real Success: The Long and Dusty Trail of an Unfinished Quest

 **2002**

What lies behind real success?

First of all, let us denote, in all sincerity and encompassing consensus, the meaning of real success.

Let me clarify from the first that the difference between “success,” the common noun, and “real success,” the qualified one with an addition which carries the whole essence, like honey in a flower, of the term, should be the unshakable, unflinching assumption for our further discussion.

By and by, let it remain as simple as this.

The differentials between success and real success can be seen as clearly, without needing even an iota of evidence, as that between day and night.

Let us begin with real success.

It is that finest, unadulterated spirit, brewed during long, perspiring, patient, honest moments.

This spirit is pure, devoid of any admixture of luck, chance, favour or any other short-cutting manoeuvre.

The sanctity of this brewery matches any holy shrine on earth.

Any attempt, in most of the times, in fact, the process, is left unfinished when the tired, uncompromising brewer breaks down, not to see the bloom of this earth but to see the light of some other world.

His tools lying there, his body lying like an unsung signpost.

It is inevitable as well, for the goals of real success are too great and big to be achieved by an individual follower during his lifetime.

So the process is borne on the shoulders of the brave conscripts across the generations.

They pick up the tools of the defiant, valiant volunteers and wage the war ahead.

And whenever any individual succeeds, the trophy is shared by the entire generation.

Too large are the repercussions of this achievement.

But who remembers those fallen heroes on the unillustrious and dusty path of real success?

People just see the puny avatar and the godly, divine one with the same eyes.

Then there are real successes at the individual level, a shortened, crisp version of the common real success.

Here the merciless brewing might go on for a few generations within the same family, like the one at the larger generational level in the society of the earlier case.

Fitting myself and my family into this smaller version of real success, I am entitled to notify my family for such a case.

I see a long and dusty trail of pains, pathos and travails, at least from the times of my great-grandfather.

Suppose I succeed in becoming an established writer or a civil servant, for which my father himself had a definitive leaning and which always prompted him to spend a large portion of his salaried income on books of various genres.

Who will read the long and wordy tale of disappointments, losses, even humiliations, spanning all his life and most of mine, in addition to the shaking repercussions and crippling vibrations of sustaining such a passion across a generation, and that too in a countryside family surrounded by almost illiterate farmers?

Given all the situations and limitations of such a goal under such a setup, where you are required to earn and learn as well, it was inevitable that this decent middle-class family tumbled in status to that of lower middle class with the passage of time.

How will people get enough time to read the mildly great lines of this neat and clean, real story of a big family quest for real success?

Here I am, having dashed all the hopes of a conventional career.

In the second half of my twenties, yet to earn a single penny and even orbiting like a perilous moth around the flame of my passion.

Read as many pages of classics as possible every day and write a few justified lines with pen and paper in a day.

Such is the goal.

You work really hard, as hard as anybody around.

Picture to your mind the feelings of your near and dear ones: the father long past retirement, sisters needing your support, mother too living every day from dawn to dusk in the barn, your brother who should have blossomed under your care but is waging the real, practical struggle of your path.

There is so much you ought to do.

And you deliberately kick all these deserving responsibilities to keep glued to the one beyond which you can't see.

You feel the guilt of it, the pangs of it, the more so seeing their uncomplaining faces around you as time passes.

You become unbearably guilty on that account.

But at the same time, you have been laying the foundation of some future superstructure.

What serves such a superstructure if it fails to meet the present petty needs of your family's lives?

Don't they stand to get such needs fulfilled?

It is usually torturingly perplexing, but I have gone too far, like an addict.

Can't even dare to look back now.

The Slim Towers of Prosperity: A Two-decade Old Letter from a Changing India

Naomi Canton writes in Hindustan Times, dated October 28, 2007, and after reading her first-person account of India, there is a trigger that pushes me to write a response.

Dear Miss Canton,

I read your first-person account of India, HT, October 28, 2007.

The exotic East has always appeared alluring to the street-smart, practical, adventurous West. Maybe for a long time, the East, and especially India, served as an extensive museum abounding with marvellous antiques.

But then globalization is such a strong force. It is a great leveller, like a mighty bulldozer. It has levelled up the pleasant variants of sweet, sweet differentials blooming in different nooks and corners of this world.

This mighty wave of monoculture will perhaps eventually end up painting the entire planet in the same commonly accepted shining colours of capitalism, cars, ultra-modern utilities, language, lifestyle, etc.

The process seems irreversible.

The globalization train is being led by the West. We Indians, and practically the entire East, have always been good passengers on this train to modernity. We might squabble among ourselves, closeted in our noisy compartments, but when it comes to the journey itself, all of us seem to have made up our minds to follow the planet-chugging rigid line of steel.

It is no wonder, then, that you found India, at least the urban centres, emerging as the Xerox copy of ultra-modern cities in the West.

Definitely, the boom and bustle of the cities' urban economy has burst through the ceiling. Indian cities are buzzing with swarming tentacles, immense stores of pleasantries, but also sufferings and even miseries in their corridors.

Yet these are islands of prosperity, and these are an eyesore to the famished, historically spread-out masses across the length and breadth of the country.

Now things have acquired such a shape that after enjoying world-class facilities in an urban centre, one moves just a few dozen kilometres into the countryside, into the tent of reality, and one is awestruck by the contrast in the fates of the classes and the masses.

The churning between vertically surging classes and the horizontally slumbering masses is happening across sharp, clearly defined angles.

If the towers of prosperity rise too high on a little space, with a tiny section of affluent people in them, then there is every danger that their weight might become the symbol of envy, exploitation and misery to those who live under the towers' underprivileged shadows.

I am not over-exaggerating the danger, knowing fully well that the process of capitalization is as real as any other natural force. But the way the haves are being enabled by the modern system to pile on and on to the slim towers of prosperity, in blind contrast to the base-level, earth-clinging, dirt-licking humanity around them, they might, after some time, having abandoned all hopes of a rise for themselves, get on with the task of digging into the foundations of the towers of prosperity.

So the shining slim towers need to broaden their bases in order to sustain themselves, and consequently accommodate more and more humans in the surrounding, supporting, lesser towers around them.

I do write, or rather try to write, and quite simply I'm seeking readers.

Once you write, good or bad, you also want to be read. Seems natural. 

I have written a novel. I just send it to anyone whom I think might read it as a piece of work, throwing some light on some hidden surface.

I am forwarding it to your email box.

Hope you will enjoy the piece of write-up.

November musings from the distant past

November 4, 2007, Sunday

Yesterday evening, General Pervez Musharraf declared Emergency. Islamists on the prowl in every nook and corner were cited as the prime factor, judicial interference led by the resurgent CJP Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry being the other.

So while the democracy-aspiring rest of the world laments and regrets the imposition of martial law on this uneasy neighbour, who is always creating troubles for us, the lights ditheringly go out, armoured vehicles take position before important buildings, the Constitution is disbanded, private news channels go off air, and internet and telephone networks are jammed.

There are deserted streets.

Nawaz Sharif is lamenting over his woes in some foreign land, the brave lady launching a cautious diatribe. She can't be over-offensive because the General at least allows her to step on the soil and do a bit of politics as well.

The rest of the world is humming with some ugly anticipation for the situation to take some more exciting turn, making it newsworthy for others. Because who, after all, is worried about the other's house on fire in real earnest?

So the military once again shows that it is not eager to go to the barracks for some rest. Rather, it wants to be there at the top, at the helm of affairs.

November 12

There are people who are egotists. They find most of us—or look down upon us with a frown—as juniors in skills, calibre and intellectual capabilities. Their chin is drawn uncomfortably inwards in their constant efforts to look down upon the lowly placed fellow human beings at the lower planes.

Then there are utterly humble guys who always find themselves lowly placed in comparison to the esteemed superior beings who hover more confidently at a higher plane. These pusillanimous guys stumble while walking, always ogling, chin drawn upwards, to see the shining suns above.

Also there are some guys, though they are a tiny minority, whose incisive impulsivity cuts down the larger ridges to their own level and enlarges the smaller ones in order to put the whole society on the same level-headed plane.

As they say, every type of excess is painful in the end.

The same applies to the above three categories. It robs them of the dynamism which activates the shoots and saplings in our personalities.

We should try to avoid falling into any category.

Our mind's eyes should have the dynamism to stare upwards respectfully at the superiors, look confidently at those on the plane coinciding with ours, and sympathetically and supportively at the lower ones.

This dynamism of our sight propels us forward in a pleasant variety of ways.

The lokhandi rakshash (iron demon)

 

Railway companies launched first railway projects in British India with Christmas gaiety to add to their plunder of resources. The purling pioneers, the scheming teamsters, busy in introducing railways in India. It was a godless game, unsparing, unsentimental, involving hardcore business.

The practical and startling burst of logical energies by the colonizers. While the oriental masses sought and waited for the unnamed largesse of luck and fate (based on faith in gods and idols): the maddening reveries, the irritating expectancy, the lethargic love for the powers unseen.

Vagueness mumbling around among the native subjects, the Westerners meanwhile gobbled practicalities with gourmet’s delight. With pinpointed focus, the colonizers first whitewashed the colored silhouettes of the oriental panorama and then, as fiery accompaniment to heartless logic, painted it with steely monochromes of loss-gain. Dully surmised: an era of humiliations and privations for the natives.

Despite all this, the story of laying the first railway line is quite interesting. The princely states funded the projects as the then Calcutta and Bombay competed to get the honor of having the first railway line in India. Among the caterwauling and ecstatic scintillations, the ship carrying the engine and allied equipment for the Calcutta line lost its way in the choppy seas and reached Australia instead of the destination port.

As the patrons of the proposed Eastern railway bustled with itching vexation, defeat hard on their heels, the Western railways won the race and completed the project ahead of their rival. So symbolic of the West’s win over the East.

The Bombay-Pune line was opened with much fanfare. It let loose a tidal wave of excitement, fear and rumors in the Indian society. Gossips went boisterously adrift among the natives. People had all the time for impractical, fissiparous, episcopal talk. It (the train) is a lokhandi rakshash (iron demon), they said. So no high society or upper caste Indian should travel in the demon cart. If you sit in it your dignity will be in ruins, the pundits admonished. Pitiful sarcasm and plain fear floated around.   

Some native plain-speak patricians maintained that the iron demon ran too fast taking the ill-fated travelers to the destination in too short time. With confidential smirk, they maintained that it results in shortening the unlucky travelers’ lifespan. Some said the iron demon thrived on human and animal sacrifices on its demonic iron path. For every mile traveled it needs multiple sacrifices, they whispered with fear and apprehension. Well, the bloody sights of accidental hits on the tracks might have sired this belief.

The native could travel only in the third class carriages. These were open-sided compartments having just roofs overhead to save the passengers from direct onslaught of weather elements. The Britishers maintained that the Indians don’t need closed compartments because they don’t feel the heat like the fair-skinned rulers. These third class compartments were open to all Indians irrespective of caste or social rank. The higher caste Indians raised objections that they won’t travel with the untouchables because that pollutes their bodies. But to the Britishers all Indians belonged to one class, the lowly class of ignorant native masses. So they kept the rule that whoever pays the fare gets to travel in the train. 

Youth: The perennial foolishness

 

Youth is blunderous and foolish; of altercation and itching adolescence.

It was another physically uplifting and mentally relaxing Govardhan parikrama. On the way back in the afternoon we get into a shared car from Govardhan chauraha. It’s an Ertiga, a seven-seat vehicle.

For such car pools, they squeeze three passengers on the front seat by the driver’s side, four on the middle seat and three at the back. At 200 rupees per passenger it fetches 2000 rupees for ten passengers who are packed so tight that there is hardly any space to even shift one’s bum by just a millimeter.

I’m squeezed on the front on a little pad put on the hand-gear panel, one passenger each on both my sides and the driver to the right of all of us. To allow any meddling with the hand-gear I have to give the best of my effort, fixing all my energies on the toes that are continuously trying to get a better position to make the tensed body slightly relieved and keep it short of the breaking point in terms of mind and body both.

The wiry young driver fits in the little niche available to the extreme right on the car’s front seat. How does he manage to drive from so little a space is a miracle in the art of driving.

The middle seat has three passengers, an old woman, a young girl and a young man. The young man bristles with irritation and unease when the driver tries to force down the customary fourth passenger.

The young man is cozily fitted with the girl. He doesn’t want any intruder. The driver tries to put the old woman between them and then force another male passenger by his side on the left.

The young man panics seeing the chance of losing the cozy feminine proximity. He throws the typical male chivalry. ‘I’ll pay for two seats. Don’t let anyone in now!’ he flaunts his bravado.

I don’t care about money, he wants to show, confidence oozing from his bearing. The girl must be surely impressed.

The backseat has three passengers including my brother.

The boy strikes a conversation with the girl. ‘I think I know you,’ he says. ‘Are you from that locality, near this place, around that square, the grey painted house?’ he strikes gold in acquaintance. Yes, she is from the house he mentions.

I don’t think it’s a chance meeting. He seems to have planned this journey; must have been following her itinerary through some means, maybe some informer in her circle of friends. Most probably, he has been following her and now trying to pass this meeting as a chance occurrence.

He seems a very smart guy; knows how to build up a conversation with a girl. I’m from this and that, near your house, we stayed in a rented apartment, I saw you on the roof, you are maybe Sudhir’s classmate, he was my classmate in another school near that place. He seems to have done his research.

We are listening. She is doing B. Tech. He has joined his father’s business.

The conversation is progressing well. The driver and the boy between me and the driver get itchier with each sentence flowing from the girl’s mouth after the initial temerity melts and she starts talking comfortably. My young neighbors cringe visibly as the conversation at our back involves smiles and laughter.

Aah, the evocative idioms of youth! Unabashedly comparative, relative ethos of adolescence! I can feel the hormonal storms of jealousy boiling in the bodies near me.

Youth is so foolish. It takes everything so-so seriously. And personally.

The two boys in front feel as if their masculinity is tarnished when the girl is taken away (they feel sure of it) by another boy even though they don’t know any of the person involved in the talk emanating from the middle seat.

The driver and his neighbor share a collective identity as the ones who have lost a girl to a feral cat who has no right on her. A rival tomcat is courting a girl! How is this possible given their own handsome self in the near vicinity!

Oofs, the cross-pollination of affection!

The two boys in the front seat get fidgety with the passage of minutes. Youth is so-so execrable. The driving turns more and more brash. The driver is now driving like it’s a serpent at full speed on the busy highway.

I know that he is trying to assert his masculine endowment through heroic, dangerous driving. Or maybe he is trying to scare the couple by taking utmost dangerous turns.

The other boy is egging him on. They didn’t know each other before this journey started. But now they are close friends in their binary as the losers who bear the ignominy of a girl being whisked away from their clutches by a third thug.

The other boy is speaking as if he is drunk, like a heartbroken majnu who doesn’t care about life anymore; a loser in love who is ready to face even a violent death provided the rival is also crushed to pulp on the highway.

Every time the boy and the girl strike a new topic of conversation, dangerous driving touches a new high.

Not able to bear it anymore, the offended driver takes out a pouch of cheap stimulants available in the market like food ration, chews at its corner, spits out the plastic piece with disgust and squeezes the semi-fluid concoction into his mouth.

It gives an instant high, they say. With this new bout of intoxication he does his best to add one more number to the teeming list of road accidents in India.

The fat old woman shouts that she has to see her grandson’s marriage. She engages in a hit and run verbal duel with the driver.

Meanwhile I keep praying silently—I have to invest the entire pilgrimage’s punya to reach home unscathed and not get mauled like a worm on the highway.

It was a big relief to get out of the car after a couple of hours of missing dangerous crash on the busy highway by a hairbreadth dozens of times.

Well, we nearly turned into a casualty of hormonal storms clashing foolishly among the young people.

 

The roots

 

A fair-colored slim boy of twenty-two, Ayaz Ahmad is a Muslim from Kashmir. He works as a truck driver with a contractor specializing in earthworks.

I ask him if he can understand Haryanvi. ‘Of course, I can understand most of it. I’m a gujjar. I understand Rajasthani language because it’s the language of our tribe, the nomads, our ancestors!’ he says with perky pride.

Then I realize that Haryanvi and Rajasthani are similar in crude countryside intonation. ‘Haryanvi is similar to Rajasthani,’ I hear him saying with a touch of Haryanvi in his Rajasthani-based dialect.

His ancestors were wandering nomads from Rajasthan. They must have been Hindu. Those were relatively easier times for crossovers—geographic and religious. They must have migrated to Kashmir and there they took up Islam.

The way he says, ‘I’m a gujjar!’ gives an idea about his feeling of pride for their primary ethnic identity. ‘Gujjar’ connoting more about an occupation, a pastoral living, a distinct nomadic culture. And the way he puts it, it seems that he is more secure in asserting this base identity than he would be in asserting his religious identity which is an add-on to his basic identity.

People, however far they might bloom in the sky in the form of flowers, fruits and new shoots, have a devotional respect for their roots, the roots hidden in the soil, grit, grime, dust of time. They maintain a mythic connection even with the most distant roots they can recall.  

The buffalo is bigger than the brain

 

Ask a Haryanvi farmer about his young son and there is a big probability that he will share his qualifications in terms of weight. The mass of muscles holds far more significance in the farming psyche than any other bundles of skills, qualifications, specialties, achievements, etc.

A simple light mind but burdened with excess gravity of land issues thus making it a weight-centric world.

The farmers are light in thought and heavy in hands, so there is this natural inclination to analyze things in terms of weight.

An uncluttered brain, but burdened brawn with society’s problems of bread and butter.

I have heard it (judging the human worth in terms of sheer mass of muscles) so many times among the farming folks that it seems to be almost a natural rule. If the young man is 100 plus in kilograms then the proud father would tell about this with such spirit and enthusiasm that can never be touched by a father whose son has completed multiple PhDs.

Well, in the farming community, the buffalo seems to be bigger than the brain. Their simple straight wisdom wears no make-up. There is just the dust of plain hard work, which turns them prone to look at life in terms of weight.

I recently asked, with a soft academic timbre, a hefty guy about his son. I meant to enquire about the young man’s education and the career he is into. I expected him to mention the boy’s educational status given my domain of books and literature.

‘O, he is going great. He turned 120 kg recently,’ he gushed with pride as he stood with a naturally proud stance. The stance born of being at ease with a head where ideas travel very lightly, but shoulders carry the weight of stony issues of bread and butter.

The boy’s weight almost double of me! Double qualified than me in the farming lingo despite the fact that he is a mere matriculate and I hold three master degrees in different subjects.

No wonder, with my bookish weight, I carry a sultry, stifling air in the company of the farmers in the village.

Weight is a far-reaching elaboration of someone’s worth (by default) among the farming folk.

A farming body is trained by harsh seasons. It breeds lightness of reflection in the head and a capability of bearing weighty responsibilities on the shoulders.

Unadorned thinking in the brain; rock-solid endurance in the body.

The outsider

 

Ashiq Dar is from Kashmir. An operator of heavy machines (Poclaine earthmovers), he works very hard, presently working for a contractor who is into legal sand mining from slightly high sandy plateaus of agricultural land in the plains of Haryana.

Ashiq earns 22000 rupees per month. We have a parcel of land on the elevated agricultural plateau called thali in local parlance. The surrounding farmers have removed many feet of sand to level the fields to make it more productive and arable with irrigation from the field channels. Our land thus stood as a tiny tableland, its margins caving in, the slopes falling.

It came to a point when it was no longer arable. So finally we are forced to remove a few feet of sand to level it up like the surrounding fields. And Dar’s heavy machine is shrieking with force, removing sand.

They work late into nights. ‘Isn’t it too much? The working hours?’ I ask. ‘Just doing my duty. The owner paid us full salary even during the two months of lay-off during the monsoon season,’ he says as a man of conscience. A hardworking man has certain compunctions by default.

Earlier he worked in a company where he operated the machines for 18 hours daily for three years.

This contractor provides food and shelter. He leads a sparse life, almost in isolation and exile. You can imagine the sparseness of his life by the fact that his monthly expenditure is just 2000 rupees including the phone bill.

He was married three years back. I ask him about his marital status. ‘Well, what to say? I’m married and unmarried both,’ he says resignedly. His wife quarreled and forced him to separate from his parents right after marriage. But things took still worse shape even after setting up a separate home and hearth. She left him to stay with her parents. There have been brawls, shoutings, beatings, police reports. Laws have changed in favor of the Muslim women. If he goes for a divorce, he will have to pay maintenance money to her. So the issue is painfully lingering on.

‘She is able to give me 24-hour headache. That’s her full time job. During the time when I’m not operating the machine, more and more updates keep pouring in. They lodged police complaint and got my father arrested. Then it’s about my public image as well. She is still my wife officially and imagine someone telling me that your wife was standing there in the market, talking to this man or woman, doing that,’ he looks in pain.

I understand his frustration, the grating cry of his loneliness. He takes cover behind non-stop work and douses himself with more work to forget the tension at home. I know I have heard only his side of the story. The truth lies somewhere in the middle, either this or that way of centre. But despite that I have a feeling that he is a wronged man. It shows from the way he works non-stop.

I give him sweets as Diwali gift. ‘Happy Diwali!’ he says. ‘Happy Eid in advance to you whenever it comes,’ I say. He is genuinely touched. I can see moisture in his eyes. Honesty has unaffected manners.

A hardworking Kashmiri man working day and night here in the plains in north India, saving every single penny, leading the life of an ascetic almost. Facing scores of domestic problems born of a marriage gone sour.

And then it’s only such people, working hard and innocent of any wrongdoing, who suffer on account of some communal flare-up.

There are scores of such little stories lost in the dust, confusion and oblivion of daily grind of life. The real traitors and betrayers go scot free despite their incendiary motives and vulgar desires.

Notes in the air

 

An ASI demands money from a man in Delhi. Otherwise I will implicate you in a false case, he threatens the man. The filthy dark side of misuse of official position; the little hatchlings of despotism running their miserly, avaricious show at little nook corners where small-time people get caught in the net of their greed and have to pay to get out to run the show of their pitiable daily life.

The man but carries some counterbalancing courage and secretly lodges a complaint against the corrupt cop. The latter is put under a scanner.

In consequence, a vigilance team keeps watch from hidden quarters while the complainant hands over 15000 rupees (crisp 30 notes of 500 denomination) to the bribe-seeking cop.

As the vigilance team pounces to catch one of their own ilk taking bribes, the corrupt cop, sure of the futile striving of any other sort, hands over the possession of money to the free air. He throws the notes into the air. As if the sky, in throes of cosmic generosity for this little erring kid, would take all blemishes on its blue apron thus absolving him of any wrongdoing.

There the notes fly like little kites. Money in the air. The complicated code of alchemical panacea for the impoverished human soul. It must have been a dreamy sight to so many hungry souls bustling with the undying desire to add more weight to their wallets. The sight of money carries an enormous leverage over our moralities, conscience and ethics. It can brusquely change the course of one’s life, forcibly holding one by the collar. So much so that even a man going to a temple for puja would comfortably run to gather some free bucks in such circumstances as unfold in this episode. The gap between what is preached and what is practiced is pleasantly, mischievously narrow. It’s naturally bridged in such situations.

Dozens of passersby jump to grab the free booty on offer. They give a tough competition to the vigilance cops in collecting the money.

Less importantly, the vigilance team could collect only 10000 rupees, some of it they had to take by force from the looters. More importantly, some people managed to run away with 5000 rupees.

A pious inauguration

 

A young couple goes to buy a Thar Rox from a Delhi showroom. The purchase formalities are completed. All documentation is done. The simmering niceties of the courteous staff. Richly fine smiles of the receptionist. The entire establishment smirking obligingly.

The brand new SUV is displayed on the showroom’s first floor; parked there with its well-defined compactness. Magniloquently. The beckoner of distant dreams on country paths and curved intricacies in the hills.

The proud, excited couple is sitting in the SUV accompanied by an employee from the showroom. The vehicle heralds the exciting prospects of many off-road journeys. Lovingly lolling journeys calling munificently.

But before that they want to complete a ritual, which our honorable defense minister performed in France while buying Rafael jets—a lemon squeezed under the new plane’s tyre. As per our cultural traditions, squeezing a lemon under a new vehicle is considered very auspicious. Our beliefs propel our journeys from bullock carts to fighter jets to space ships.

The excited owner but accidently presses the accelerator too hard. Futuristically over-imaginative maybe. The SUV jerks gruffly and moodily. There goes the SUV on its first journey on the path of excitement. It’s an interesting off-road journey right from the start.

The brand new SUV crashes through the glass panes and lands on the road below. Luckily there are no injuries to the passengers. No passerby injured either. Just a poor man’s bike gets a little damage.

Well, that proves to be a successful crash test at least. The company will take pride in the fact. Free real-life testing it turns out to be.

I hope it doesn’t breed distrust between the partners. The wife might get doubtful about her husband’s capabilities of being a good driver of the SUV of their matrimony. I hope this momentary goof-up isn’t incisive enough to be detrimental to their matrimonial health.  

Maybe time itself was overcautiously overloaded and thus nervously goofed up during those moments.

The primordial paternal urge

 

Flatworms are hermaphrodite—one individual having functional reproductive organs of both sexes. Each flatworm guy (or call it a girl) has egg-producing ovaries and sperm-producing testes.

As a result of this unique biology, they engage in a fascinating competitive process of mating. It’s a ‘penis-fencing’ duel. The rivals try to stab each other with their two-pronged penis to inseminate the opponent. The winner carries the tag of being the father. He lacerates the loser’s skin with his lust-lance and injects his sperms. The loser becomes the mother carrying the burden of fertilized eggs.

They fight to be father because pregnancy and being a mother costs much at the level of investment of life energy. Being a father is an act. Being a mother is a tough process. As a mother, you launch the next generation by burning your own life fuel.

In nature there is this fatherly greed and lust to pass on the genes at the minimum energetic costs of reproduction, while being a mother involves huge amount of energetic contribution including pregnancy and post-birth rearing of the newborn.

The willing-to-be-father lancers raise their bodies to flaunt their two-pronged penises. The combatants give their best to stab the opponent. The successful stabber injects sperms into the rival’s circulatory system.   

Sometimes, both combatants end up lancing each other and carry the proud tag of being mother and father at the same time.

Basically, at this level of life’s manifestation, it’s about being stronger or weaker. Today’s strong guy is tomorrow’s weakling in the face of a smarter, stronger opponent. So being father and mother occurs in succession, or simultaneously in too closely contested matches.

The penis-fencing duels may last an hour sometimes. So this is no lovemaking, it’s plain war. Sometimes the smaller guys turn out to be more agile and get a better chance to lance the big, burly rival. Small guys also can win, as they say.

Firing for a Ceasefire

 

The mean streets of geostrategic dominance. A racily written drama of power game where the plot skittles forward with unusual regression in human values. Crunching, wacky, tantalizing game of attrition. A soulless testimony to what we call progress. Incurably slanderous.

Many would naturally say that Trump is super-bright, idiosyncratic, staunch white supremacist. Hounded by the progressive intellectuals, the American president means business though. And ceasefire also. The latter as a means to the former. As a poetic man, I would always prefer bloodless business wars rather than bloodied battlefields with rotting human corpses.

Ceasefire is a lovely term. With ceasefire, India, Pakistan and Trump all claimed victories in their own terms. Though it’s outright funny how can Pakistan claim any type of victory using any yardstick in a confrontation.

With ceasefire, Israel, Iran and Trump again claimed their own versions of victories.

Let’s hope there comes a day when the same word ‘ceasefire’ allows Russia, Ukraine and Trump to claim their share of victories.

In the ceasefire equation, it’s clearly visible that Trump is a nice catalyst agent. A powerful ceasefire agent he is.

He claimed that he used trade to facilitate the Indo-Pak ceasefire. He used B-2 bombers to bring about Iran-Israel ceasefire. Now the onus is on him to decide what catalyst role does he play to bring about Russia-Ukraine ceasefire. If he does it, I think he will be a very strong contender for the Nobel peace prize. There is always the next round of noble nominations Mr. President.

Above all, let’s celebrate this ceasefire between Iran and Israel. After all, millions of common Israelis and Iranians, who have no role in causing this war, can go to sleep peacefully after many harrowing nights.

Furthermore, let’s pray for peace in Gaza as well. The ‘two-state solution’ is the best option. Let there be a safe and strong Israel. Let there be a Palestine state. And let Iran remove the Israel-annihilation clause from its state policy. Just three simple one-liners in foreign policy and millions will sleep peacefully unafraid of bombs and bullets.