A snarling extension to one's persona

 

As if hundreds of stray dogs weren’t enough, the village lads have started keeping pet dogs, not with the cause of polishing the streaks of affection in them. The pitbulls and other fierce dogs—hardly needed for security—are a fierce snarling extension of their angry selves to present an intimidating picture. Two lads walk with their dog. Another one passes on his bike. ‘Take away this fat sloth!’ he taunts. ‘Saale, we will make him pee on your bum!’ they shout with derision. A fierce dog is an expression of raw, romanticized anger to them. And they flaunt it. It scares ageing people like me though.  

A master of lies

 

This neighbor believes in his lies to the extent of turning his white lies into golden nuggets of truth. No wonder, it also means that he naturally changes any fact into fiction. It entered my mind to suggest him to take to writing, a profession suitable for creative souls like him. But then he thinks that writers are most negligible and mad people. In any case, he uses his creative instinct to milk situations and circumstances by twisting reality in a way to make him accomplish little cheatings and sweet little forgeries. It’s a kind of gentle milking, not an outright stabbing robbery.

A bunch of grouchy fellows

 

This particular petrol pump has a very combustible staff. They have frayed tempers all the time. It seems staying near oil has given them fiery tempers like the commodity they serve to the engines. Say anything, and they will speak very tartly as if that also is a part of their job. I have never seen anyone smiling at this establishment. I always keep wondering how come so many snappy, cranky people have been brought together by the chance winds. I once tried to infuse a flame of smiles there, but it aggravated the situation. So I also try to be like them when I’m getting petrol there. Do in Rome as the Romans do.

The perils of communalism

 

If we look into the communal history of the last four decades, we find a disturbing pattern in India. Big communal violence has shaken our social fabric almost once in a decade: Delhi riots (1984), Mumbai riots (1992-93), Gujarat violence (2002), Muzaffarnagar riots (2013), Manipur violence (2023). Statistically a big communal flare-up jolts the fabric of our unity once in a decade. And during the lull period, there are little-little fireworks that are kept alive by politicians, vigilantes, hardliner religious leaders or anyone belonging to the power-aspirant group—the slow-smoldering smoke in the social fuel wood that reaches its burning point after a decade.

Polarization on religious grounds is a dangerous pill of instant profits. So the communal element is a big trend in our politics these days. But statistics point to a great danger to our unity if this divisive element isn’t weeded out from our socio-political stream. As we can see from the above statistics, minor communal haggling and rhetoric creates enough fire under the social ground that it bursts out in a big flare after a decade. But the law of mathematics doesn’t stop here at the once-in-a-decade big communal flare-up. The big-scale communal fires separated roughly by a decade will churn out something far bigger in nature after their incubation period is reached. For example, the exponential growth of hate like it happened in 1947. That was preceded by a communal bug that incubated for almost 90 years when the Britishers systematically introduced the element of communal divide in the Indian society after the first war of independence in 1857. And now, with year-long little communal propagandas going full throttle, resulting in a big tragedy almost once in a decade, we may reach the very same partition-time critical limit of social breach in 2040s, that’s almost hundred years after 1947.

Even impartial mathematics is pointing to the dangers to our unity by the communal bug if political parties, organizations, institutions, religious leaders and other influential groups don’t discard divisive communal rhetoric from their plan of action to gain power and influence. 

Urbanization

 The ones who stay in a village may have a notion about relatively cleaner air than the cities. But things are changing very fast even in the villages. In the villages also the disposable plastic per household is on the increase. The farmers keep dung heaps, not too far from their houses, which they use as farm manure at the beginning of a new crop season. In order to avoid the plastic from going into the fields they keep burning the little heaps over the weeks—a very simplistic solution to turn the plastic rubbish invisible in the air instead of seeing it in physical form in the fields. So I can smell poisonous plastic burning multiple times a day. Little do they realize that the very same plastic now goes into their lungs in another form. The day is not far when the hypothetical solace of breathing better air in a village will lose its relevance. The villages will turn as polluted as the cities unless we find a better way to dispose our plastic. It could be as simple as collecting your plastic garbage in a sack and dump it at the dumpsite outside the village near the town. But who will take that much trouble. We need quick solutions for everything these days.

The pride of naked nativism

Railways, airways, ships, computers, television, bra, lipstick, tops, sandals, phones, judiciary, administration, hill stations, cricket, political system, business,  commerce, almost everything around has roots in colonialism and the society of colonisers. Discard all that first, only then your naked nativism will have any legitimacy. But I was wondering what would be left then. Only false pride in naked bodies would be left perhaps. 

A,simple Jat cricketer was lamenting that Team India should be named Team भारत because the word India is rooted in colonialism. Poor chap, little did he realise that the game that earned him millions was started by the colonisers themselves. So now people are throwing bouncers at him, asking him and other prpogators of new-brand Nationalism to stop playing cricket altogether. Boycott 'India' would boil down to boycot 'cricket'. And if cricket is gone, half of India will die of boredom. 

Lekin agar har ek angrezi cheez ka boycot karoge to nange ho jaoge. Aage ki taraf dekho nahi to muh ke bal giroge.

Wealthy Beggars

 

There are very well educated and well-off beggars as well. Their first instinct is to demand money. Like this gentleman in a BMW on a congested road at the local town. In a messed up bumper-to-bumper situation, a rickshaw-puller gives a tiny bruise to the expensive machine’s taillight. The rich beggar gets down, puffing out fumes of anger, and slaps the poor, old, weak rickshaw-puller. And straightaway demands money for the damage. He holds out his hand. He wants money at any cost.

The Funny Game among Errant Kids

 

Let’s talk about Afghanistan from the geostrategic point of view. Please don’t feel bad if the life of an Afghani citizen is seen almost inconsequential in this talk about ‘the great game’. Isn’t it all about the strong gobbling up the weak across all species in the naked, raw game of survival? The cosmic juggernaut is nothing but an expansionist onslaught that uses weak as the fodder for the strong to take the march of expansion towards more elemental sophistication. In the same vein, geostrategic manoeuvring is primarily about the interests of the superior powers. The interests of the hosting yard teeming with its poor masses, where the game is played, are inconsequential just like your feet hardly care for the world of the ants as you march on the higher scale of your ambitions, far higher than the tiny world of ants.

Whoever goes to Afghanistan doesn’t go there as an enemy of Afghanistan. He goes there as someone else’s enemy. The rugged, barren land is a huge arena for the bad guys to play out their muscle-flexing and brain-tweaking games. It’s like in a bullfight the grass gets trampled. And trampled have been the millions of Afghanis since the past many decades. The Britishers went there as the enemies of the Russians. The Americans went there as the enemies of the Russians. Presently, Russia, China, Pakistan and Iran are there as the enemies of America. Pakistan has more reasons to meddle there. They are there as the enemies of India as well.

The Afghan tragedy is that nobody has gone there as a friend of Afghanistan. It is always some outsider’s enemy. And enemy’s enemy makes a very shaky friendship. China and Russia will realize it during the coming decades. For the Russians it will be a repeat lesson if they cross over the line again. And a superpower-intoxicated China has to learn this Afghan lesson inevitably if it really wants to claim the superpower status.

The Afghanis have more or less accepted poverty as their most prized asset to sustain their fierce pride, clan loyalty, spirit of independence and a culture of killing and dying. Dying and killing isn’t too much a shock in Afghanistan. It’s very easily digested. Craze is craze. Someone fights for superpower status, the Afghanis fight to keep their ideology and medieval principles. It’s their opium like there are other forms of opium world over to drive people, states, institutions and societies crazy. Just true to the main Homo sapiens trait of opium addiction, the Afghanis love taking long draughts at their version of opium.

It’s good that the Americans have packed their bags. Instead of having their army in the enemy’s backyard, it’s more practical to have a lethal naval unit that can move to any part of the world with effective deterrence. On top of it, take a quantum jump in space warfare. Be several years ahead of the nearest rival. Be in a position to harm the enemy’s space assets. It’s just like sitting on the high ridges from where you can easily target those struggling up the slopes. If you have to play your silly game at any cost, at least play it well. The formula is: Be up there in the skies, higher than the others and trample down your enemy if they dare to stare at you in the skies.

Meanwhile, the ‘graveyard of empires’ is surely going to be the graveyard of the next superpower also. Taliban know that the new friends aren’t supporting them as such. The Chinese are merely opposing the Americans. In this, the Chinese are repeating the American mistakes of nurturing a genie that is sure to go against the master at any cost. Well, nothing immoral about it, it’s simply the genie’s opium. Over all, it’s a smoke-clouded, crazy game among opium eaters of different varieties.

In future, fundamentalist Islam is a bigger threat to China than America. America doesn’t operate reformation camps for the Muslims. There an ordinary Muslim goes about his/her routine without too much pressure on their faith. The insurgent groups in Central Asia and Taliban are well aware of what is happening to Uighur Muslims. It’s a temporary accommodation on their part to take China as an ally.

One, but, must not forget that fundamentalist Islam’s first priority is keeping their faith intact, however objectionable the outer world finds it. Therefore, China will surely realize it later. The badlands of bloodthirsty jihadis aren’t that much of a threat to America as they are to China. The superpower status definitely costs you the sleep of many nights. Americans, let the situation keep worsening in China’s backyard and its flares will surely reach the red bastion. In fact, by being there America was doing a bigger favour to the Chinese than to itself.

What about Pakistan? They haven’t learnt any lessons from their fire-mongering against India, which ultimately destroyed them to the extent of making them a vassal state of China. Wait, China is a very tough taskmaster. The Red Father will extract the costs at a nice rate of interest. The Chinese are not like Americans that they will pour billions of dollars in the name of fighting terrorism while you keep sheltering Osama Bin Laden. They know how to take more at the cost of giving less. Very strict businessman, I tell you. A democratic creditor will at the most pull your ears and shout at you for bunking your payments. However, an autocratic creditor will spit on your face and put its index finger in your arse for the littlest error. So take care! Already there are proofs of this in our neighbourhood.

What about the modern, educated, cultured voice of sanity in Afghanistan? They have no option. They have to leave and set up their world at some other place. The simple message for them is: ‘Please leave at any cost, however possible!’

Pakistan you be careful of the TTP. They will continue pulling your beard. And China you, don’t count off ETIM like you have done so far. Taliban is a great encouraging example for them. They have an idol now in the form of a triumphant radical Islamic group taking over an entire country. India, keep supplying the Northern Alliance with material help because as a regional power aspirant you too are helpless. So to keep your interests, you supply guns to the Northern Alliance. America, you please keep a low profile for some time and focus on your technologies. There is no need to get into a street brawl with the red bully who wants to dissipate you. You just mind your own business for some time and don’t get instigated by the puns and pranks about your so called ‘defeat’ in Afghanistan.

In Afghanistan, victory and defeat mean almost the same. Their own defeat is no defeat. And the outsider’s victory is no victory. Why the hell people go there to fight? It looks like a circus ring now. Abandon it. Of course, help those who want to come out, give them visas and facilitate their rehabilitation. But allow the lovers of medieval practices to lead their lives as they deem fit. After all, it’s their opium like you have your own.  

The fight for world supremacy has better avenues. This barren land is very boring. Go and write success stories on the sea and in upper atmosphere. Have countless submarines, aircraft carriers and destroyers. There is more mobility. Now please disturb the aquatic world. There has been enough terrestrial mischief. And run to the high ridges, I mean go higher into the skies and throw pebbles from there at your enemy’s pot. Well, in any case, the space wars will acquire legitimacy very soon. So why bother about these poor Afghans. Leave them at peace in their caves, elder councils, medieval beliefs and chuckling smiles at both dying and killing.

The Grubby Game

 How to make yourself appear more presentable, if you cannot absolutely bring out any change to your own self? Well, our cognition and interpretation of reality is relative and comparative in nature. Use it. Make yourself stand by the side of a still messier persona and emerge as smarter guy—apparently though—without any change in substance. You will be at least symbolically better.

Well, Taliban are far smarter than the last time they were bundled out two decades ago. To make it better for them, they are learning politics pretty fast apart from firing guns. So they may be up for a better innings this time. Given their past, they are almost unacceptable to the world outside Pakistan and Afghanistan. They cannot change their skin altogether. So what was the option? They allowed IS-K, a far bloodier version of terrorism, to stand by them and thus appear more acceptable and less savage. A very smart game!

Please don’t commit the mistake of categorizing terrorism in good or bad terms. These are plants from the same nursery. Taliban, IS-K, TTP, LeT, JeM and many others are simply different plants in the nursery managed by Pakistani generals and the ISI. These are mere chess pieces, move up one, take back the other, sacrifice this one, abandon that one as per the varying situations. The more pieces you have, the better it is. That’s why the Pakis keep many outfits under their patronage. You cannot just rely on one.

In the face of the gruesome bomb attacks at the Kabul airport by the IS-K, when there was a stampede to leave the country as the Taliban took over, the West would naturally find Taliban a bit more digestible because maybe they are apparently less bloodthirsty.

The West should not be too bothered about who rules Afghanistan. They should forget about it for some time. If at all you can do something, facilitate the safe exit of those Afghanis who want to leave the land in turmoil. Then leave the field clean for the nursery of fundamentalism to thrive unchecked in the backyard of China. Terrorists have no friends. China may think that its clout in Pakistan will be sufficient to keep its Uyghur plans intact. They will realise the folly of this assumption in the coming times.

The concept of Islamic jihad is above and beyond either alliance or falling out with outside powers like America and China. China is temporarily part of the scheme just because America is out of it. Its temporariness they will surely taste with much bitterness in mouth with the passage of time despite tea sharing with Taliban leaders.

Did you ever see a case where there was a fire in a house and its immediate neighbour did not feel the heat? The Chinese will also feel the heat. About the Pakis we need not say anything because to them feeling the heat is a normal part of life by now. They are used to it.

The Talibs have as much a right to rule as the Americans, Russians or Britishers if they can capture Kabul like they have now. Let it be the way it is. Why force a change? When the land is ready for it, the change will come from within. Give resources to the Panjshir valley group to retain their freedom so that this can be used in future. Don’t allow Ahmad Massud’s land to fall in the hands of Taliban. The West still needs a bit of foothold in the backyard of China. This little space should be sufficient. Use it for geostrategic purposes, focus on ETIM. If you have the guts and resources to nurture it, do it. Recognize Taliban and give them the protocol-driven respect that a ruling group deserves. It will make them more responsible and bring less mayhem in the lives of ordinary Afghans. Why douse fire if the water you throw works as fuel and aggravates even the embers.

At the moment, we can try for a better Taliban. It’s prudent to abandon the ‘no Taliban’ strategy. Their political office in Qatar has given them some training and experience about how to handle things diplomatically instead of talking through guns all the time. Slowly they will loosen the Pakis grip on their wrist because a grip by an outsider is the least they want. Till now they have been focused on ousting America, after some time and cool Afghani deliberation they will prefer to have their hands free of the Pakistani grip also. They just cannot help it. They have to shake off any foreign grip. Pakistan has been handy for the Talibs so far in capturing Kabul. But if they stabilize their power for a considerable time in Kabul, Pakistan will be less handy.

So guys, aim for a better Taliban and the worse of other terror outfits in the new superpower's backyard.

Dumplings on a Rainy Day and Croaking of an Old Toad

 

Soul is the real substance! This physical being is just the shadow of that true self. Ironically we grow up believing the shadow to be the substance and substance to be the shadow. It requires reverse conditioning to be truly on the path of evolution.

***

For good people it’s very difficult to enter a relationship and still more difficult to come out of it! For bad people it’s very easy to get into a relationship and still easier to come out of it!

***

There is no absolute truth. All we have is just a pliant, relatively swaying sea of fractional truths. We draw out our suitable share of tit-bits of truths from this sea to complement our sense of identity with the self, i.e., ego, self-consciousness, our perception of the things, our vision of the world and the people around. 

***

  

Women are humanist! Almost perfect except one thing! Their humaneness crosses the zone of perfection and slightly touches an arena where bitchiness for their own sex starts in free flow. It is here the man's chance to appease his women opens up its welcoming arms. A man has to realize that it is more practical to say a few negatively critical remarks about other women than millions of appreciating words about his woman!

***

In the burning whirlpools of the desert storm, some tears shed by a suffering heart vaporize and go high in the sky for rainy prospects. Don’t get senty guys, it’s just an airy oasis.

***

Don't take victory for granted. She is a very choosy bride. She has her own, sometimes illogical, criteria to pick up the groom.

***

A nuclear bomb undoes all other types of technical superiority in conventional warfare. Similarly, leaps in space technology will see a country undoing various technical superiorities in the hands of rival countries on land.

***

To escape boredom, a man has to just extend his normal schedule; the same extension, which overlaps a woman's effort to tide over her boredom, turns her into a sinner.

***

The best compliment for my book Faceless Gods was by my friend's six-year-old daughter. Struggling to hold the fat book in her small hands, and lost in the dense text, she gave the expert review, "Uncle has got a very nice handwriting."

***

Truth need not be salted. Even in its bland form, it's more vocal than any well-peppered, politically correct, hypothetically safe and socially convenient cuisine.

***

We deserve our airy moments—little-little somersaults and froggy jumps over life's grounded roadblocks; tiny ballooned flights above the rough, rugged realities on the surface. But we must not forget, we are terrestrial beings not the airy angels. So guys ensure that you land rightly on your feet after airy jaunts and not crash-land on your bum.

***

Staring at the misty past

and forcing myself not to see the future eager to unfold itself too fast,

I wave at the nostalgic strains still beckoning and faintly alive,

How I wish I could dive

back into the pools of the past,

To have my moments last

at a place that held me in its cradle soft,

That pious embrace which still holds me aloft!

The Overused Broom

 

Within a year of springing a massive surprise for Modi at the centre, people gave still bigger surprise to Kejriwal in the Delhi assembly elections. Kejriwal had become Delhi Chief Minister, for the second time, and vowed to manage more prudently this time.

 

Of all the millions happy, unhappy, jubilant and sad souls lost in the crowded hubbub in Delhi, he was nursing his share of injuries. He was no money-making contractor, he was no real-estate property dealer, he was no builder or an industrialist either. He was a mere grassroots level social worker. He had his common dreams of bringing the real change beyond the hypothetical clamouring, the selling of dreams. When Kejriwal landed on the poor man’s stage, the aam aadmi’s stage, with broom in his hand and a vow to swipe away their miseries, he had appeared a messiah to him, a great sacrificer who had kicked a highly prestigious job to speak out the voice of the masses. He had believed in him. While Kejriwal build up hopes in many poor minds and famished hearts, he did his share of clearing the slums and gutters, taking it as the new revolution. It was no politics, it was beyond that. Despite many voices to the contrary, he believed in it.

During the previous elections when Kejriwal had played the mastercard of fielding the poorest of the poor next door people, giving hope to every tom, dick and harry that he or she can not only be an MLA, but even a minister. But much water had gone down the gutters to further pollute Yamuna since then. The social movements are easier to shout, political parties are harder to manage. It needs to be a smart politician to manage a party, and run it as per your whims like you run your business. It needs money as well, and lots and lots for that matter. Beyond the symbolism of turning sweepers into ministers it needed money and people with clout to survive as a party against the seasoned soldiers already in the fray having money, muscle and legacy.

To dream a political dream is everybody’s right, more so in a democracy, and still further so in the world’s largest democracy. So he had also dreamed. While his hopes gradually dismantled, as he worked more and more vociferously in the streets, in the nukkad sabhas, in the slums spread the message and ideology, his chances were becoming slimmer to get the contesting tick, to become an MLA, to carry out his dreams of a still better society. The times had definitely changed. The Aam Aadmi Party was not just the motley group of social activists; it was a political party with all the traditional requirements to succeed against the stronger claimants to the throne. The more he worked, the more distant he became from the party patriarch, and more so as the dates of announcing the AAP candidate from his constituency drew closer. The day in fact arrived and his dreams shattered and his belief finally broken that in indeed it is politics, nothing more, no revolution. He lay in his room. A successful contractor who had spent his life in making money and building clout had grabbed the ticket. The poor social worker was left with his broom to clean his house that had missed many a cleaning while he went out of his way to clean wherever he found the space and time to do it.

 

He was lying sullen, broken and sad. As a wounded man he was putting question mark at AAP’s changing priorities to field more suitable candidates and leave genuine workers like him cleaning the slums with broom. He was accusing, with his whole self. He had even shouted aloud when the news had been broken to him.   

Most of the AAP MLA contestants can be easily farmed for fraudulent charges!

 

For most of the time while he had devoted his selfless services in just return for mere bread and butter, the Delhi NCR saw unprecedented real estate boom for the last two decades. It had created a niche class of property dealers who used muscles, politico-bureaucratic links and a tendency to look over the small hedge of legalities, to become really rich. In the same chain of development, there were contractors or thekedars who climbed the ladder of prosperity very smoothly by stage-managing things at many levels. At the state level, the moment a property dealer or contractor gets to a level wherein he can afford to loiter around after political guns in the area in his SUV with a bunch of ideal thugs, he jumps into the political bandwagon. These new political hatchlings mostly join the regional outfits because the latter have very strong identity-based politics for the local population.

So over the last two decades, while he just added more grey hair to his head with his social service, Delhi got its rich share of crorepatis. They had achieved all. Since every rich Indian inherits a political tendency, these newly rich politically ambitious groups of people either sneaked into the BJP or the Congress. But there were still scores of such political aspirants left for the AAP to be welcomed with their stashes of currencies. He did not qualify to enter the political party because he had no clout, no money. As it is, in a crowded mess like India the eligible seats for political representation have severe limitations to accommodate the huge number of newly rich people eyeing legislative assemblies. The AAP patriarch smartly smelt the political hunger in this big section of newly rich contractors and property dealers, just like he had smelt the activist hunger in the revolution-aspirants in the civil society. The grand social worker, Anna, and the smaller hatchling, the social worker of our anecdote, nameless, just extra enthusiastic, both had served their means to a particular end. The newly rich and the locally influential crop of political dreamers were the ones that counted now.

To help the AAP in raising its political platform these left-out political aspirants were in a position to donate crores for the noble cause. From his personal experience the ruminating activist, left out in the race to get the MLA ticket, recalled, with simmering wounded soul, very decent-sized queues of crorepatis seeking ticket for contesting assembly elections. They donated like anything. The party of the common man was pitted against the party of the rich and thus needed more money to run and operate in a corporate manner to beat the rivals to fetch victory for the masses. His broom now resting in his room, he helplessly witnessed and yelled at anybody interested in listening to him that inside the room the AAP was filling its coffers with money from these newly wealthy cherubs; at the public platform they were ensnaring the poorest of the poor through their politics of symbolism in the form of same jersey, same old car, same muffler, and what not.

He condemned the tsunami type victory, carried by hollow symbolism and less of substance. It propelled all and sundry, raw, immature crorepatis and even some lucky but smarter than him social activists to the legislative seats. He knew it well that very rarely can the paths from the contractorship, property dealing and even social activism (mostly as a profession) avoid illegalities. He had been successful himself in not falling in the trap of such shortcuts. But that sounded like a mistake now. He knew many of the AAP MLAs who could be found guilty of provable indiscretion. His soul was burning that with proper case studies into the history of these MLA hatchlings they can be easily put in the dock.

He was hoping the BJP and the Congress were listening to his soul’s raving. But he had now apprehensions that the BJP will allow the AAP to grow to some manageable size, because AAP’s growth would be only at the cost of the Congress. Spitting out dejectedly he realised that the AAP and the Congress are into the politics of symbolism that pacifies and pampers the bruises of those deprived socially, politically and economically.

While he was prognosticating doomsday for the AAP for having cheated the genuine workers like him, a more practical person told him:

The BJP will not totally wipe away Kejriwal. Despite best political brand management, the traditional BJP vote bank has remained the same. So now the effort seems to divide the non-BJP votes. Congress ruled for six decades with hollow symbolism that ultimately busted as the poorest of the poor remained the same and its Ministers broke all records of corruption. As a new-born baby that is yet to get its skin tainted with sunburns, the AAP is trying to shift Congress loss to its favour.  

He was watching the oath-taking ceremony on TV now. With a sunken heart and dejected spirit, he looked at the broom lying in the corner. He did not feel like picking it up even to clean his room.

A Little Slice of Peace

 

Can Indian Government's population policy be freed from political compulsions?

 

The question had always come back to him, slipping out of his mind and then returning without any answers.

The importance of this question attacked him with unpardoning urgency this time as he travelled by train in the undisturbed snow-bound wastes of Kazakhstan. Almost as big as India, the central Asian country has a population of just 19 million. Luckily for them, and terribly unlucky for us, he thought, the population of this similar-sized country is even less than the Delhi NCR. After landing up there he had not seen a single stressed out, worried and strained Kazak face across all age, classes and categories. In contrast, he could hardly recall a fully healthy face—even among the teenagers—in the frenzied Delhi Mob or anywhere else in India. His interpretation was simple: in congested ant swarms you cannot expect healthy, confident, strong-willed individuals. You find robust grass grazers like rhino in the undisturbed, undulating pastures, he mused as the train chugged ahead. In the terribly congested, stinking lanes of a place like old Delhi bazaars you see a sea of pathetically beaten down people carrying out their day to day survival fight. The contrast lynched him. There the humans can beat even famished stray dogs in pathetic appearances, he felt far away from that maddening crowd.

Indians have bred like anything, looking at the endless snowy dunes meeting the horizon he realised. Especially ‘they’ have been paranoid about adding to their population. He always addressed that particular section of the Indian population as ‘they’. He had had his quota of secular education and dithered from direct name-calling. But far away from the secular-bound reflections, he took a break, resolved to call a spade a spade. A brave endeavour by a secular-principled Indian, indeed! Unfortunately Islam came to be interpreted in terms of quantification only, he was more direct in his reflections now.

Of course Islamic frenzy has multiplied their population world over. So has the violence. Look at the quality of life in the congested neighbourhoods! Look at their contribution to world culture, peace, innovation, etc. Of course, it leaves much to be desired about their contribution to make this world a better place.

A painful injection to his secular self. He felt the pinch. He just waved away it away and tried to focus on the population-less charm on both sides of the train; miles after miles the distances seemed fathomless; peace appeared to take limitless snowy strides, without human intervention, without clatter and noise.

From the window of the train chugging up to some northern Kazak city his ideas hitting the cold hard reality on its head were abounding across the perfectly calm snowy desert. Already in India the reactive culture hate-mongers had more starch in their khaki shorts, more oiled sticks and more lungpower because the times had changed. The paper soldiers could now dream of making it a stronger India. He found his reflections not too extraordinary under the chime of the time and again fell to the temptation of looking them as the cause of the problems.  

Rampant Islamic quantification contributes more to world disharmony, and its role in world peace is almost negligible.

He had something to think about the clauses in the Indian constitution. In his present state possibly the Khaki-shorts-clad uncle would have embraced him as the bravest son of India.

It is high time that we pay a bit less lip service to the hypothetical Godly status to the so call democratic clauses in the Indian constitution that have done more harm to India as a country in return of just inconsequential praise and tiny certification of being a good democracy. Central government has to come out of that pit of idealist secularism and devise some direct and indirect means of checking the minority population.  

Sipping his morning tea in the pantry car, he had not seen any human intervention in the nature’s sprawl on both sides of the railway track, except occasional outcrop of a little hamlet and small town. Look at the nature, only the weakest species have the largest numbers, his mind was now taking a course where his khaki-clad-uncle would have given a rap on the knuckles. He had a friend who could barely provide even basic education to his two daughters, but he was under constant pressure to have a male heir.

Hindus also have their big role in breeding like ant swarms. Centuries old beliefs like the necessity of marriage, goddamned requirement of possessing a male heir, etc., have meant that Indians force themselves to just add to their species at any cost.

The people he saw on the stations appeared all healthy and hence happy and rich. His mind was drawn to the contrast in the crowded slum in Dharavi, Mumbai. There you fight even for your single breath. Now he was reflecting at the problem just as a problem. A secular idea indeed! His education was stronger for his temporary fits.  

Indian poor class does not produce more and more children to get more helping hands in traditional business and occupations. Ask any poor couple, do they expect help from their children once they grow up. Not many will be found to be optimistic about their future. In fact majority will agree that their position will come down after having more and more children. Still they produce. Strange!

He had tried many times to find out the reason, the psychology. Why the poor people produce children while caught in a strange apathy, a peculiar indifference, absent-mindedness? The poor old much maligned political class of India can silently take any blame while gathering the rewards in lieu of the blames. He was quick to direct his guns in that direction.

Indian political class has glorified poverty by paying lip service in the form of so many fucking social assistance services. These measures were never intended to remove poverty by raising people out of the pit by providing them concrete skills. These were just limited to providing them meals like you give charity to a poor beggar. Do not hate the poor, but of course we can hate poverty that kills the soul of a human being.

He looked at ‘poverty’ as the nasty instrument that dehumanised the self.

Let poor people face the music if they produce children beyond their economic means to provide them a decent life. Do not just give 25 Kg grain to the BPL section so that they carelessly add more mouths in their hut to chuck it out. Let all social benefit schemes be strictly conditioned in proportion to the number of kids they are having.

As the train chugged ahead on its path to still calmer destination, his mind was brimming with disincentives for the poor households brimming with loads of children beyond their carrying capacity.

Sum and summary is that we need to check population at any rate, he concluded. Otherwise we will spoil the chances of taking India to a decent position in terms of social development. Not only this, we will also spoil the environment anywhere we settle. He saw around, it was clean. Indians had not started settling in that majestic part of the world.

 

Beating the Ghosts

 

The sweltering heat of India had blossomed a new flower. Mass-anger lynched India catapulted Modi to the Prime-ministerial chair with unprecedented gusto. Good days are coming, everybody firmly believed, only the irritated Congress spokespersons denied it. The guy from The Broken Dream, slogging invisibly in the publishing houses, felt avenged. After all, his destiny had been broken during the Congress rule both at the centre and in the state. He had had his tiny share in the anti-congress tirade in his unrelenting facebook posts, a convenient means of putting out your voice in the noisy clatter of the bigger world. His hate for the grand old party would not end with just this election debacle, there were many more fronts to be tackled.  

Modi Sir, Congress is yet to be defeated!

 

He was framing and formulating a letter to the prime minister, admonishing him of the bleaker scenario that might go in favour of the adversary. He was cutting, fumbling, rewriting and redrafting his efforts to sound meaningful to the man who was now leading India to a new horizon, as they claimed.

Sir, we are lucky to have you as the un-politician type Prime Minister of India. Your Majesty’s administration in Gujarat fetches you enough credit points to be taken as an administrator first and a politician second. The new educated generation has high hopes from you. Right from the evening of May 16 when the election results were declared you have been busy like a true son of mother India and have started drawing the roadmap for a better India for the majority of the Indians. We don’t have any reason to be sceptics regarding your capability to take India ahead on the path of multi-dimensional progress.

Sir, but there is a roadblock that you might face when you again fight for another innings in the year 2019. It is born of a certain Congress legacy. All of us do agree on taking Congress and Corruption as synonymous. And rightly so! But decades of Congress-type mis-governance ensured that the very roots of the tree got corrupted to the core. Corruption is not just about 2G Spectrum, Commonwealth Games and Coal Block distribution; it is also about the common Indians’ belief that without shortcuts nothing can be done. It generates a mentality that does not consider the shortcuts or the typical Indian jugadbaji as the means and mechanism of corruption, but the simple convenient facilitators. People have come to accept the extra costs as additional service charges; officials in various departments have come to consider it as their well deserved unofficial bonus. These officials have set up their budgetary benchmarks to keep their families. Unofficial bonus plays a major part in satisfying this excessive-consumer-lorn mentality. Any cut in this part, which clean governance surely will result into, will find them recalling good old days with nostalgia.

Ask anybody what does government service mean. They will say it is about having safe money, almost no work, and unofficial bonus for the small amount of work that one is supposed to perform officially. For this great facility people pay lump-sum amounts to get a government job. Since they start their journey after paying the unofficial bonus to somebody, they also claim it back when they get the governmental chair. But Sir, your-style governance will mean full work and no such bonus. That will find millions of government babus shaking their head in disapproval. Some of my friends are government teachers in Delhi. Their academic enthusiasm found them supporting Kejriwal vigorously. Straightaway Kejriwal talked of more effort by the idling government teachers. They were asked to stay in school for couple of extra hours daily to cover up the massive loopholes in public education system. Immediately their faces got shrunk. They started abusing Kejriwal and accepted their blunder in supporting him. So millions of public sector workers and their dependents will always prefer Congress-type work culture and governance. It will be very difficult to convince these guys in 2019 that the work they are being asked to perform without the unofficial bonus is a contribution to nation building.

Congress and its constituents abused power. But they were really kind in allowing it to be abused by anybody to the lowest rung. India is a free country in every sense. One can defecate by roadside, one can spit anywhere, one can cross red lights, one can call the prime minister a clown, one can molest women, etc., etc. Good governance will find things falling in place and people feeling cheated that their wings have been clipped. Manmohan government had a bad reputation and they allowed anybody to throw jibes in media in whatever form one wanted. The top office in the country has lost its dignity. You, Sir, will definitely try to get it back. But then people might start calling you a dictator, extremely sorry Sir to use the word. Even poor Manmohan will earn few credit points for being very lenient and allowing even beggars in Delhi to throw obscenities in his name.

Sum and summary is Congress leaves a ghost. Congress might be out of the seat, but it still survives in spirit in millions of Indians who are in a comfort zone based on the old mindset and its profits. Rectifying things in full vigour might see the Indian infrastructure improving, but Sir you might lose votes as well. How long the well-meaning Prime Minister can inspire people to come ahead for building the nation. It is bloody massively populated country. For one chapati there are ten claimants. At this level people cannot see the world beyond their home and hearth. So Sir your nationalistic agenda might see India progressing in infrastructure, but at the cost of massive indents in your popularity since Congress is ruling India in terms of work culture, narrow mentality and unofficial bonus! 

Getting 335 seats in the Parliament is no guarantee that whole of India has given a go ahead to the green signal of nation building. It is very easy to shout as a part of the crowd baying for revolution. But it is far more difficult to come out of the self-cantered zone and contribute extra for the nation in lieu of the same rewards. It is very easy to excite voters into a frenzy; but far more difficult to turn these frenzied zealots into responsible and self-governing citizens. Ask people to take extra responsibilities and their faces will shrink. I think already we have millions of shrunk faces because the public sector might now be open for six days a week. I have already heard many babus lamenting why did they voted for a particular party. Mother of all political evils, the Congress, may still have something to smile about!

The honorary Prime Minister will have to focus on self-governance apart from good-governance. Only self-governance can make unruly Indians as responsible citizens who will positively contribute something extra required for good governance leading to a better India.

The Mishits

 

As the heat and fervour was building up though the summers and smouldering political tempers, and India looked again to get a saviour from the conventional political corridors, there were many who agreed that Ramdev and Kejriwal missed it. In their failure India also missed the chance of putting in front certain individuals and personalities that would have changed the apparent face of events in a totally unexpected, unconventional way, as the eventful times during the couple of years preceding the general elections in 2014 promised.

 

In the immediate Indian history two people have let the rope slip through their hands and fall back into the hole where they started from. They could have reached the summit being pushed and prodded up by the revolutionary fervour. Revolution is not just about the drastic changes born of bloody battles and massacres. In contemporary times revolution basically connotes mass frustration reaching the boiling, effervescent point and the spilled-over froth carrying a few chosen individuals as the representatives of the surge for change.

The UPA-2 messed up things. Even the common man struggling on the path of survival felt its pinch. Scams, ever-rising costs of living and the deplorable living conditions of the people, the aam aadmi, whose representative the UPA government claimed to be, disgruntled the masses. These small-small agonies came to be voiced out by the civil society movements. And these small rivulets of common man’s frustration merged to form two streams that carried two individuals as the modern-day revolutionaries. They seemed to hold the light leading out of the long cave of gloom and despair. Baba Ramdev and Arvind Kejriwal missed it! The reasons have been that they came out too ambitious than they appeared initially. It boils down to their not doing justice to the image that people held them in.

A lot needs to be accomplished in the health sector in India. Inefficient health infrastructure, fake medicines, unethical ways and means adopted by the medical fraternity and on top of that stress and shortages of basic amenities of life mean that majority of Indians face health problems of all types across the year. Ramdev to begin with served a Yoga pill that appeared so easy and approachable even to the average Indian. His Yoga was customised for mass appeal. Given his vocal skills it was sold well. It caught mass fancy. People fed up with traditional system took a nosedive into the pool of Ramdev panacea. Ramdev also had very strong words against Pepsi and Cola. People in fact started to use these as toilet cleaners. Very surprising that he no longer talks about them. Sceptics grope around to find the financial aspects of this silence.

Ramdev vaunted of mighty nationalism. People believed him as well. But we have to take it with a pinch of salt. If his Patanjali medicine outlets sell even his versions of sweetmeats then it shows more of business skills and less of a diehard nationalist. It comes down to make good profits as is proved by his millionaire status. Indians are very good followers. People raised him to the status of the saviour of the country when he talked of bringing back the black money from Swiss accounts. Almost two hundred thousand people clamoured under his leadership at the Ramleela ground. People accepted him as a revolutionary taking India to a new dawn of major shift from a system allowing 10 percent individuals sitting over 90 percent of resources to a system where majority will get at least the basic needs of a common day. Such major shifts demand at least a few broken heads and bruises. Ramdev the nationalist then, scared out of his wits for his life, tried to run away from the show clad as a woman. The aura was punctured. Next day we saw the crying baba who had forgotten to change women clothes he was wearing and crying before the media. People just said this is no revolution and he is not the modern progeny of Bhagat Singh and Shubhash Bose he eulogised on the stage. Today all common Indians believe him to be a smart businessman only.

Similarly, Kejriwal served a curing pill to the masses suffering from political illness and with no cure in sight. Social movements were just struggling as an ineffective appendage to the Indian democracy. Then Anna was smartly portrayed as an icon figure by the smart group of people who voiced people’s frustration. Media is a new business. Its raw material is anything new and happening. So the Indian civil society movement that was hitherto sidelined was portrayed in modern clairvoyance as channels competed with each other to increase their TRPs. The whole of India saw a new creed of selfless Indians following Anna Hazare. They challenged the prevalent system in all its versions. Arvind Kejriwal and Company jumped to another orbit as this movement showed signs of halting. In his stupendous success as a politician Arvind just cashed on the mass frustration at the collective level against the chosen few who were seen plundering the resources in various forms.

Kejriwal sold dreams. And rightly so. When things are effervescent you have to act as a catalyst to take it to the boiling point. When you can convince a common voter that you have equally bright chance to be an MP or MLA, it will at least ensure that people will come out of political apathy. Broom as a symbol and the very name of the party served as masterstrokes. In India symbolism is more powerful than the substance. So these symbols of cleaning the system and taking the aam aadmi to the centre stage of development worked wonders for them in Delhi Assembly elections. People when conscious of themselves can spring a few surprises. And the surprise was thrown in the faces of mainstream political parties. The Aam Aadmi Party got 28 seats. But at this moment the common man’s juggernaut came to halt on account of still weightier plans of Arvind and group. Delhi people had trusted them. They welcomed AAP’s decision to form a government even with Congress help! People were expecting exemplary action. Unfortunately even as the CM and as ministers the AAP leadership could not come out of their revolutionary and activist mode. Governance is different. It’s very easy to shout slogans, and very difficult to bring effective changes.

 

It was more than apparent that they were more interested in carrying on their movement that was catching mass fancy across India on account of the unexpected success in Delhi. The AAP leadership did not want to let go of their hold on the common man’s psyche. So just hyper-sensitised all issues. The wheel of their popularity was rolling across India. So Kejriwal ever-eager to keep it rolling even during the parliamentary elections jumped out of the CM chair and again started with the typical noisy accusatory game of hitting the big fish with verbal pot-shots. A lesson here. It’s not possible to keep the graph of mass excitement at the same level for too long. As a leader you just cash on the temporary peaks of mass excitement like he did during the Delhi elections. But to expect it to spill over the coming months and do the same in parliamentary elections is like asking too much from the common man struggling and lost in the issues of bread and butter. It was a historic blunder on Kejriwal’s part to jump out of the CM chair and run for the PM chair. He could have done wonders as an honest administrator. People would have understood his handicap as the leader of a minority government surviving on the Congress support. All his works would have set up a new criterion of clean and honest governance in the country.

Now when they were slogging it out across India there was hardly any difference between them and the other political parties except the cap they adorned. But how long the common man would be impressed by the broom, the tag of the aam aadmi party, typical revolutionary accusatory shoutings, and selling of mass dreams? This distinction was going to be even more diluted as they took brave pot-shots against the high and the mighty politicians. To sustain your visibility when the mass hysteria subsides, you need to have some accomplishments in your kitty. The AAP could have achieved those small milestones in administering Delhi. But they were dreaming too big and grossly overestimating the degree of mass hysteria.

A lot many people still wished both Ramdev and Kejriwal had turned out to be the way they proclaimed. Alas! Our retired, single, lonely social worker was again looking for the directions to dump his opinions, as his election victory-born enthusiasm for Kejriwal again nosedived to the dustbin of criticism, a sort of betrayal against the masses. He ended up voting for the BJP by the way. And when the famous single man of India acquired the highest decision-making chair in the country, he applauded, feeling proud for this man who had the whole country as his family and who would act as selflessly as he in his neighbourhood in feeding cows, stray dogs and homeless people. He indeed found a meaning in life again because he belonged to the select group of single-by-choice people in the country, who looked to a larger cause beyond the mundane confines of a domestic life involving clock-hand type circles around the same axis. Many people passing through his street had a sweet taste in their mouths.

 

 

The Mute Button Gone

 

It was February 2014. The sun had started to shine a bit more warmly across the fog. The atmospheric god had impregnated the late winter air with seeds of spring to smile in March. India was also waiting for a spring, a blossoming of hopes, rejuvenation of broken dreams, and avid aspirations for the ‘good days’ to come. There had been a thaw in the retired history professor’s frozen pension funds. After much hassles and bruises to his panicked self, he had the financial support meant for his old age. A new dream waited India in May after the whirlwind of multiple-phases of elections in April to May, when a billion people would go to vote, the mahakumbh of democracy!

 

For all that he had believed and consequently undergone, the professor had every reason to pitch for the BJP. With his knowledge and academic background, he was eligible to give what and whys of the more suitable political choice. The BJP candidate, been informed about ‘that’ episode, had canvassed his all out support. Nursing the injuries and consolidating his belief in his version of history, the old academician went overboard in his support to help India have a new dream in new hands, in Modi’s hands, who had single-handedly changed the fate of Gujarat.   

 

Why the BJP brand of politics is a safer bet for the Indian democracy at present? He used his ideas and opinions to woo the educated voters for the BJP. He had regained his confidence and no longer just wrote in the journals. He could thunder from the public platform. After all he was singing hymns to the rising sun only which would just provide him warmth after the frigid winters during the day. He spoke with authority, with conviction, as a politician:

 

Family politics is one of the biggest issues that plague the Indian democracy. The Congress led by Gandhi-Nehru clan and the smaller regional offshoots has checked the flow of democracy from reaching the grassroots level. That’s the reason Swaraj is still a distant, almost impossible, reality even after 66 years of independence. Even within the folds of democracy, only autocratic tricks can succeed in maintaining power concentrated in a particular family. In this regard Gandhi-Nehru type of manipulations have done the greatest harm to the spread of democracy and independence across the widespread strata in India. Consequently, things did not change much for the common man of India post-independence.

The BJP’s brand of politics is in sharp democratic contrast to the Congress in this regard. Atalji headed the NDA as the Prime Minister.  He could focus just on his democratic duties instead of wasting resources and institutional powers in consolidating family fiefdom to keep it floating across generations. The new BJP Prime Minister designate, Narender Modi, will be in a far better position to function as the topmost administrator of the country in comparison to let us say somebody from the Gandhi-Nehru clan. The latter will again have to go into undemocratic manipulations, directly and indirectly, to maintain their grip as the first political family in the country.

In the present conditions the BJP is the only option for the spread of democracy in India. Under Modi, the BJP will take the Indian democracy to the next stage when Swaraj will be a possibility under the care of the new rising son of mother India! 

Homage to the Martyrs

 

The professor with unconventional historical sense was fighting his mini battle of rights. He took it as his little movement against the exploiters. His pension and other funds on hold, he was waging a war in the court. It was just a week short of the first anniversary of his revolt, the fateful speech. So much tortured by the injustice to his righteous self by the stronger exploitative state force, he drew massive parallels between himself and the martyrs who had sacrificed their lives on this day, March 23. Having lost his enthusiasm for dust-raising speech, he now appeared all eager to vent out his angst in his journal. He firmly believed, and now more than ever, that those who really shed their blood for independence occupy just a few pages in the history books, and the ones who enjoyed the fruits of independence have manipulated history books. He was writing some more pages on behalf of the revolutionaries, thinking it would be handier for more convenient times under a more suitable government. His heartbeat up patriotically, he was jotting down: 

While you go full throttle on weekend enjoyments, take out a moment to remember three martyrs who on this day decades ago kissed the noose of death with such love and affection that no pining pair of lips can ever match the selfless compassion behind the lock. March 23, Sahid Divas of Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev! At each step we take liberty for granted. We see the signs of growth and prosperity for ourselves in all directions, we can go out and shout regarding the causes of our grudges, we can afford to be totally individualistic and still be counted as the best people around, we can afford to allow the greatest injustices right there before our eyes and still be counted as legally clean, we are even free to take socially permitted actions to cut down the freedom of our fellow citizen, we are free man! Free for the best and the worst. But they were not free. At each step they knew that their fates lay in outsiders' hands. Their spirit always felt the cold iron of fisticuffs. They knew one single step as a free man is far better than 100 miles travelled as a slave. Even if it meant cutting their lives in the nip, while their youth was blossoming like a spring rose. They had their sip of justice and freedom. For a larger cause they defied this strongest instinct of self-preservation. They found themselves defined by their identity as Indians, not just self-seeking individuals. They died for a vision. For freedom. Was it just from the colonial rule? No, it was a dream to set all individuals and Indians from the slaving chains inside, chains of narrow parochial means, of moral apathy, of criminal negligence of murderous assault on ones fellow human being, of blindness to self-evident acts of abuse, of saddest old eyes left on road looking at the Mercedes shooting away, of abused young women left on the roads to bear more and more criminalised behaviour by the people of the same species. As a homage to these martyrs, let us open our eyes and see the larger picture. At least be a bit more caring for the world around us. As free individuals we have to pay this nominal fee at least!