The Broken Dream

Well, let us start with a bit of his biographical sketch. It had indeed been a tough ride so far, but he believed that every perspiring step had not been without big-big revelations. ‘The greatness lies not only in achieving lofty targets, but in dodging the failure as well,’ he found himself convincing during those moments that pinched him with the realisation that he has nothing to show as a proof of his tireless efforts. He had been doing it so long that the contradictory thorns dividing success and failure had melted and he tried his best to believe in the Bhagwat Gita sermon that only karma, the selfless work, is supreme.

Everybody believed he had all that requires to become a civil servant, so driven by this belief, he just gave the peak years of his life preparing for the civil services. Civil services, the much coveted government job whose exam syllabus is so comprehensive, formulated under the supposition that it will enable the prospective civil servants to know something of everything, that most of the aspirants are seen tiring out their souls like the Bihari labourers in the fields. It is basically a battle to test ones stamina, of testing the brain’s brawny prowess. In one year of exam schedule, running through the prelims, mains and interviews, it catapults a tired bunch of almost intellectually spent aspirants to take the responsibility of implementing the policies formulated by semi-literate or even illiterate full-thugs, semi-rascals, quarter-criminals,  half-rapists, three-quarter-mafia. Afterwards these young educated males and females expertly learn how to keep their lives normal by becoming part of the ‘system’.

Like a bull pulling a heavily laden cart, almost mindlessly, uncomplainingly, taking it as the only option, with the head bent down, he also kept on moving on the path. By cramming as many things as possible he got interviewed once. The real dilemma but started when he came to face the bitter truth of having spent all his four chances, allowed to the general category candidates, in comparison to the double number of chances available to the reserved category, which finds these panicked young talented souls hating the candidates from the reserved castes for being pampered like this. However, this final fall in the Indian Civil Services was not before a praiseworthy interview call that saved him from the severe jolt of self doubt. In the coveted interview he got 110/300. He knew he had not done wonders like someone who got 250/300. This candidate surely must have broken all limits of human personality performance to get such a high score. But the affably puffed up persona of Mr P K Banerjee, the former defense secretary of India and the interview board chairperson, had other thoughts about his personality. The chairperson smirked, enjoyed each and every moment of his being in the coveted chair, laughed too much, and that perpetual enjoyment and froggy grin intimated the already scared guts of the village urchin.

All judgements apart, it brings to the forefront the main problem in the Indian recruitment system: unquestionable authority in the hands of the interview panel. Unfortunately it is more misused than getting good administrative officers. He was a village frog. With sheer labour he got 1082 marks in the written examination, a decent qualifiable score. Oofs, what range they have in the interview marks--110 to 250. It has all the potential to make or break anybody’s fate. How the hell one will cover up 140 marks?! Nursing his wounded spirit and in philanthropic ways presuming himself to be an intellectual in making, he even suggested the remedies to himself, ‘This all marks possible power in the hands of the interview panel is the chief cause of corruption and facilitation. Let it be made mandatory that the interview board cannot give less percentage marks than the candidate’s percentage in the written part. It will weed out most of the possibilities of misuse of chairs and shadowy recommendations.’ But who considers such unsolicited suggestions from unrecognised common heads.

The Provincial Civil Services (PCS) was available to keep the flame of the undying passion still alive. He belonged to Haryana. As all of us well understand, our choice of the PCS is just limited to the home state, because the way state public service commissions (SPSCs) function it is the open most secret in India. Well, in India most of the corruption breeds from the safe corridors of constitutionality. State public service commissions function as personal fiefdoms of the ruling party. The Chief Minster handpicks his cronies as office bearers to carry out his instructions without ever questioning anything in any regard.

It was Mr. Chautala’s government when he put up his well polished claim for the state civil services. Easily he crossed the hurdles to reach the interview stage with very high marks. But the all-sweeping powers of the interview panel saw him being rejected with just 28 marks out of 75. The chairperson and his cahoots seemed all eager to quash his confidence, possibly they had already prepared the final list, and his name not being there now it was the fruitless endeavour for him to seek out the best out of himself, and more fruitful for the interview board to bring the worst as some justification for himself to be rejected. But he was at his best that day and gave his supper-best. Still does one have any proof of performing good or bad in the interview except the word of mouth which is no proof in the eyes of the law? Just like he could say that he performed better than his 28 marks, the scholarly politician Mr. T C Bangar (who later became full time politician from Mr Chautala’s party) could very easily say he performed even worse than the marks that we gave him. In the eyes of the law the latter will be taken as more correct given his better stature in making this assessment. In the same batch, there were cases where candidates got as high as 70 marks.

Anyway, he learnt a few political lessons, so during the next recruitment, he knew exactly well how to go through the interview stage. But believe it or not, it did not involve any money going out of his already famished pockets. So, all cheers! He went comfortably home with an SDM rank and the future all bright. Everybody knew that nobody deserved to have his/her say in any type of favour done to him, because he thoroughly deserved the post. The destiny was but darkly chuckling because he was one of the 102 candidates of the ‘deer’ fame pitted against the ‘lions’ as we saw in Lion and Deer of the Social Jungle.

However, like Mr. Chautala proposed, Sonia’s Wazir, Mr. Hooda, in Haryana disposed with equal relish. Before he could join, the central government had the chief election commissioner of India dashing down to Chandigarh, announcing state assembly elections, putting all appointments on hold under the election code of conduct. And during this time, the type of wanton drama played by the Governor, state principle secretary and everybody else, it does not even deserve to be narrated to the civilized beings like the readers because it will further erode their trust in such high chairs. The Congress came to power in the state. Elsewhere in India, Sonia Gandhi had already started pulling strings from behind the curtain: the sage of the great Italian puppeteer and the made-to-dance economist Prime Minister.

His appointment denied and after entering the precincts of Punjab and Haryana high court he realised what a powerful entity the state is. It is a big behemoth. The way proceedings were monopolised in the court it made him feel helpless and victimised by the same state that was constitutionally obliged to protect his rights as a law-abiding Indian citizen. But here he was paddling like a skinny dog, trying with his meagre financial resources—the candidates continuously pooled money to get the best advocates for their case—to beat the mighty power and reach of the state. Is judiciary fair? He always had doubts. But with each day, the realisation dawned how fascistically the system of justice works. Who appoints the judges in the first place? Directly indirectly the politicians hold the strings of the puppets dancing on the judicial stage. Each day for a talented unemployed youth is torturous. Here after spending hundreds of thousands all they got was a few minutes stay in the house of justice. For two years the Lord of Justice did not even open its ears to their ever increasing clamour for justice. And then the verdict came, it had all the loopholes to make them sit out of employment for as long as possible. They went to the Supreme Court, lost without much noise, safely and silently. He had no hesitation in harbouring seditious thoughts that like the state high courts are playing puppets to the state governments, the citadel in Delhi is also always under the influence of the central government. After all who appoints and promotes the judges at all levels. It’s just a well oiled machinery of mutual benefits, that’s all…nothing else.

Mr. Chautala had been wrong in installing his stooges in the HPSC before being voted out of power, because many board members were made to resign just in the middle of their term and new faces installed in fresh chairs to sit for the next six years while the other government ruled. So when Mr. Hooda came to power he found a board full of the members with terms for the next 6 years. One unconstitutionality gave rise to another. The new iron lady of India easily got the ever-convenient Lady President to issue a notification suspending all the HPSC members. Meanwhile, while all these stronger wheels clanked on the high road of power, ego and what not, the candidates’ poor heads rolled in the tar and clinker of the pot-holed dusty common road.

The Congress said Mr. Chautala had manipulated the selection process. However, the ever vigilant state vigilance team looking into the case did not find the tangible proofs of the earlier government’s misdoing even after best of its efforts and they just continued eating more and more time. His soul silently asked them what you have been doing all these five years. For one wrong of Mr. Chautala you have ended up doing tens. In both supreme and high courts, the government of Haryana gave the plea that it had not any vacancy to accommodate the new batch. But see what they did. In a suitable month of the same year, they put up the notification for fresh recruitment. Wasn’t it the contravention of their own pledge to the court that they do not have any vacancies? Who cares, because the state cannot be wrong! The batchmates went to get a stay on the fresh recruitment because it was contrary to what the government had pledged in the court that there were no vacancies. And if at all there were vacancies then this duly selected batch should be given priority and allowed to join because the government had failed to present any proofs of malpractices in the recruitment process. But the great legal luminary—having the infinitely open-ended space to write anything suitable for whatever ends he might deem fit—just smartly said no, the government can do as it likes.

Now Mr Khattar from the BJP is at the helm of the affairs. Three governments; three majestic eras in the political history of three political parties; and just one dark endless night in the lives of hardworking candidates who are now moving towards middle age with a broken dream. The new Chief Minister can just walk over the issue, claiming he or his government are not a party to the issue. Moreover, there must be so many in his party almost dying to get their wards selected as PCS officers feeling left out and cheated for so long. The government also must be itching to put some lame duck members in the HPSC to work as their recruitment facilitators.

Now, having robbed of a decade of his penance for the civil services cause, he slogs out in the private sector. His pain is unbearable because as an educated and law-abided citizen of this country he always had this notion—born of his bookish knowledge—that state is there to protect his interests and courts are there to save his skin from the larger forces. He but stands robbed of this fundamental belief. It’s not just a matter of losing a job; it is the matter of losing one’s identity as an empowered citizen of an independent country. Now when he slogs out in most crowded buses, where getting a foothold is as precious as getting bonus from the government, he certainly doesn’t feel like an average country-loving Indian. He feels like an emigrant in his own land. He refuses his office colleagues when they try to put the tricolored flag on his desk on the occasion of Indian Independence Day. He even feels sorry about it. However it is his tiny revenge against his own state. Somehow, when terrorists strike against the state in any part of India, against all his wishes and rebukes by sanity, he finds himself groping for the causes why they are doing this, not being able to condemn it as an outright act of blatant violence.

Sorry, but it’s as natural as this. Just wanted to say something about him. Thanks if you have borne the trouble of bearing with this little story brow-beating the cause of a common Indian! All in all it’s just a terribly manipulated democracy in India, manipulated by our own stronger brothers and sisters. Like him I also feel that we might be just puppets dancing on the make-believe stage while the real game is behind the scene.

Dance on Chance

If we consider success and failure (the outcome or the result) as the twin sides of a spun coin (effort behind the result), we need to consider the difference between landing headwords or tailwords as the result born of the last moment’s extra swing, spin or any other momentum or movement tilting the scale on this or the other side. Now, there can be three factors involved in this extra force deciding the winner and the loser:

1.     The coin spinner or the tosser (subject).

2.    The revolving coin itself (object): if we suppose the object to possess some vague, mysterious, inexplicable factor born of its inanimate freewill.

3.   Some abstract entity (negotiator or referee): functioning either in the form of physical or natural laws like the atmospheric elements or in the shape of supernatural laws to either act/favour on behalf /or against the subject or the object.

As per the above supposition, the success or failure in a toss of coin—or our luck or bad luck in drawing a card from a pack—becomes a very subtle and nuanced game of multitudinous factors hidden in the simple act/result of the coin landing on this or the other side.

Everybody is well aware that purely mechanical laws of physical sciences defined by the input and output process do not completely cover the range of occurrences coming across in real human lives. Human lives come across too glaring loopholes to allow the application of scientific principles to human endeavours taking them as simple inputs and outputs. Oftentimes, mountains of work irrigated with the human will power, blood and sweat do not fetch even tiny molehills. On the other hand, sometimes an anthill of an endeavour fetches the mountain of a result. This mere incongruity in the outcome validates the point of including the subtle role of the outside agents (either in the form of physical things around us or the beings, things and forces whose working laws we have not interpreted and explained so far).

The role of the ‘outside agents’ is unreasonable to the persons of logic and reasoning. They will shout, ‘It’ll leave us as mere helpless pawns shifted and shoved on the chessboard of destiny by paranormal forces.’ Let the logicians huff and puff with their explanations. The mysterious factor still haunts, and those who believe in luck, fate, destiny and the most common denominator God will continue to shine as the superbly carved beads in the same string held by the cord of belief in the supernatural. They will continue to flaunt the divinely held string till the theoreticians break it with the pull of their proven hypothesis. The onus is on the latter for their path is made of either proving or disproving. The former meanwhile is just happy in surrounding itself to the misty, hazy, cavernous pit of unexplained, inexplicable, only to be realised and felt factors.

Even if we choose a most clinically collected set of mechanical skills (standardised and equalised) and put them in competition, we still have the position of one outperforming the others, i.e., we still have a result in the form of winner and loser. So if science cannot avoid the emergence of a winner from among the set of equally equipped instruments, we have to accept the futility of classifying winner and loser. It is a very lousy shortcut to define the helpless termination of a phenomenon—a mere hypothesis such as time (Einstein said there was no real time, it is just relative realisation) that has just been coined to meet a tiny, practical end. It operates in a chosen utilitarian, abstractly chosen set of possibilities and choices, so that the one category or group of players falling into it is defined as winners; while punishing the others with the yardstick of failure. If you remove these carefully chosen set of conditions and eligibilities—that are purported to remove chaff from the grain—every endeavour becomes beyond the tortuous segments of loss and gain to become a pure work, a complete phenomenon, existing unblemishedly in the fabric of happenings.

All of us work for success. Victory is the favourite child of all endeavours in the universe. Failure is the shameful, unwanted, depraved bastard born of misfires and mis-hits accruing from some fault, either this way or the other, born of invisible or invisible factors. The role of those who genuinely took part in the race is irrelevant; the ones whose fierce competitive urgency catapulted the eventual winner to draw out the last ounce of strength to emerge victorious. When the winner hits the finishing line it is just the culmination of a phenomenon, the whole phenomenon of race. We but just pluck out the winner like we take away a ripe fruit, while putting in the dustbin of failure the crushed windfalls that lie on the ground, the unwelcomed testimony to the process of ripening when chancy windfalls saw many being dropped onto the ground. The fallen ones but become the groundwork of the victorious, the one completing the race of ripening. Unfortunately, the whole set minus the ripe and victorious is cast away as the scrap in the process of hatching a victory: the long and wordy, sweat laden steps carrying one onto the top. These are the oblations and sacrifices to the Goddess of victory. The Goddess chucks up their flesh and takes big swigs of their blood, leaving no vestiges of those struggling sinews whose failure gave us our soul-satisfying winner!

It's high time we include the losers in the over-swapping concept of victory. Like the rocket fuel burning and turning to ashes while catapulting the victorious satellite into the required orbit, the fellow competitors also fuel the race. If not for their pushing with their best competitive spirit someone would not have been driven beyond limits to achieve some victorious feat. The losers are thus contributors to someone's success. Let's change the concept to make it more humane at least!  

Looking at the Bloodied Hands of Communism!

Darwin says all beings, across species, and the related phenomena across various natural processes, are propelled by the survival instinct among the constituting elements. In this tussle between the superior and the inferior, the nature evolves in its multitudinous forms comprising tragedies, ecstasies, pleasures and pains. It is basically a class struggle both at the intra- and inter-species level. Both in natural and human systems (we humans now operate almost in exclusion of nature), the fittest ones adapting better to the plummeting circumstances are the ones to take a lead in either milking the resources or in laying the framework for the overall system to function.

The human system is a big behemoth, intriguingly evolving, following the parameters of the jungle in its human variants. There is basically a fight for individual and even collective interests. Of course to make us believe that the human society does not follow the raw principles of nature (like the lion eating the deer—unsinfully—to survive), we have interposed the institutions of religion, morality, ethics, concept of good and bad, sin and pious deeds, karma, etc. However, as per the principle of social selection (derivative of natural selection), the human society moves ahead over time defined by clash of interests at various levels in different fields. If we remove the differentiating layers and levels in the society; if we remove the hypothesis of sin out of this struggle—like we have removed from the struggle between lion and deer—the leftover will simply boil down to a struggle between the more skilled and the less skilled. Out of the numerous levels of interests (ranging from individual, family, religious, state, earth,….), one clash of interest is at the level of the upper and the lower class. From the start of the known history, human affairs have been shaped directly and indirectly by the class struggles (between the upper and the lower), among individuals within a particular class on the basis of their less or more suitability, and even among the individuals of different classes. Although with changing times, the fields of struggle have changed as well. This broad overarching struggle contains many sublevels to trickle down to the tiniest triumphs, humiliations, wins, losses, exploitations, etc.

The communists have been tonking their ideas and ideology infested heads against this almost inevitable defining differential in the society that seems to be pushing the motley mix of minority’s triumph and the majority’s woes. As a counter to this, one might say that the Western liberal democracy might reverse the ratio. However, it comes at the cost of an invincible super state which with the purpose of safeguarding the majority’s interests has to be a still exploitative institution that mightn’t exploit its own have-nots much but then it can very easily do so to the teeming millions in the third world.

Taking up cudgels from the famished majority’s side, the communists thus unite the working class interests to make it super-strong so that it can suddenly go berserk and break apart the centuries old system of exploitation and its supportive elements. For this reason the communist movements are called ‘revolution’. Earlier it was against the monarchy, nobility, aristocracy embaling in them what we call ‘luxury’ aesthetically and intelligently supported by the religion. Religion, for its pious injunctions seems to be more effective in stopping a poor person from seeking alternatives than stopping the exploitation by the upper class. So the revolutionaries as atheists pluck out the sinews of long-held beliefs, convincing, providing solace and sympathy to the underclass. A Godless person is less accepting; carries immense prospects of imposing his will through covert and overt means. Hence religion is held culpable by the revolutionaries in the sense that it forces people—makes them habituated to their woes as the will of the divine forces beyond their control—to become adapted to their ill fate rather than putting the same time and energy in remedial measures. Religion, of course, for centuries has been good, sympathetic, solacing companion to the masses helping them in licking their wounds and swallow the sorrows. Thus the revolutionaries break its façade, terming it stagnant in its principles and in cohort with the exploitative classes. Religion too unfortunately demands its share of glitter and glamour that only the upper class can provide. After all, a poor person’s God is a lesser God. The religion of the poor with limited resources is even termed as animism.

Once the revolution led by the newly pious injunctions of classless society tears out (generally in a bloody manner) the ancient system, the interests of the former upper class are either hijacked by a dictator or an all powerful super-body—polit-bureau or the central committee—which in itself replaces the empty seat of godhood; a tiny blackhole type superforce to root out the still surviving differences of any type. Unfortunately, differences are bound to crop up somehow. So they keep on nipping the buds. This sudden rush of purgatory blood leaves gory tales far more horrible than the ones committed by the former system over centuries. Their tales of atrocities committed in just years outmatch the ones perpetrated across decades or even centuries by the earlier system. It is just like a helpless group of sufferers running away from the semi-lethal teeth of a wolf into the shelter of a hungry lion with super-strong claws. In this religionless weeding out for the cause of the supreme ideal, the religious tools of mercy and pity do not exist to act as the check dams. After all, religion has been constructed to function as a check dam to save a situation where ‘the lion eats the deer’ principle is allowed to operate in milder nastiness in the human society. In a Godless state all hell breaks loose. After many bloody strivings, the communists much to their chagrin find that the divisive curse of the selfish, individualistic interests still survives in one form or the other.

Capitalist, socialist, liberal democracies on the other hand are less glaring and more subtle in their deeds, because here the old exploitative forms have been redressed as modern principles of liberty, equality and fraternity. It is a subtle and white-blooded exercise: the old forces in their more acceptable avatars. It also promises to provide ample opportunities to the masses to struggle through the lawful checker work to move up the capitalist ladder to reach the class on the top. It believes in conversion rather than coup born of the clash of interests.

However hard the communist regime might try the class differentials will persist in one form or the other; simply because we are human beings, cast in so unique and numerous ways with billion ways of thinking; and not just same colour factory product.

PS: Something away from the main discussion in this topic! The reason why a democrat politician, an industrialist or a dictator occupies his/her influential position can be—among others off beat factors like luck, fate, destiny—that the said person is stronger in getting his conscience unchained from the restricting principles of good and bad in the game of survival. It boils down to: Who is more skilful? It is just a matter of more or less skills.

Why does He Want to Continue Writing?

Well, very small mundane facts define him. He continues writing with the intention of adding a bit bigger facts to define him. He writes not with the intention to outwit others claim to similar bit more bigger facts. Self justification is one of the easiest things coming to our nature. We justify even the worst of our deeds. He writes to justify the inherent tendency in him to survive as a professional writer. Not that he cannot do something else to earn his bread and butter. He definitely can. And he is doing in fact. But you know there is a piously whispering cooing of the real self that eggs him on to still keep trying to give his writing a platform.

Coming from that part of the north Indian countryside, where literature will be the last thing on anybody’s mind, where agriculture is the culture itself, he is the black sheep that is trying to get out of the herd to make this most unlikely career for anybody coming from the Jat land, or synonymously the buffalo land. Well on the down slope of youth, more than once he has abandoned the dream of full time writing. Many a time he has realised his limitations as a writer. Still many more times he has felt himself a victim of the forces beyond his control. Today when he gets up to try again to get a slippery foothold, he can very well hear the anticipating applauding whispering of the inherent voice again.

He fought for the most prestigious civil services positions in India. Fought decently well also, given his limitations and more importantly the literary limitations of the socio-cultural unit he comes from. The harder he worked, the more distant became the goals. He saw the worst of politico-bureaucratic-judicial game. When he finally fell his inner voice told him, it is more on account of the system’s failure than his own. So he has little sips of justice in the form of the inner thumbs-up by his soul.

Every time he fell, deeper were the analytical impressions on the neurons of his brain; graver were the bruises on his heart. If nothing more, it gave him the mood and inclination to write. Still he is fighting for his take away. His reward! He does not want it at the cost of somebody more deserving. He is not into comparison. We can compare just simple tangibles. How can we compare life’s thousand catapults that all of us get uniquely, single-handedly?

He is not taking writing in life as a competition, but as a fate’s lottery pot, wherein somebody will walk out with a smile. Having full faith in the fates’ evaluation, if he builds a platform to support his writing, he would also prefer to walk away with a broad smile!

Wishing him and others best of luck!

Politics: The Institutionalized and Constitutionalised System of Plunder, Injustice and Exploitation

It is about politics, the necessary evil for the contemporary world. Before we discuss the political ramifications for this politicized word, let us go back in time to take a look at the roots of the tree of authority that holds the thriving tree of politics in the modern times. Well it started with absolute monarchies.

It has been the supreme irony of our so called ‘civilized fate’ that try as hard as we can manage, we cannot stop the pyramid type, hierarchical and classified pattern of the social set up. In a pyramid social formation, the higher the class, the lower the weight on its shoulders, and higher the weight on the lower ones constituting the base. In the beginning we had the pointed peak of the social pyramid represented by the unrestrained, unchecked, all powerful potentate, the King, with all his weight on all below, and no weight on his shoulder at all except the light hallo of divinity falling on his crowned head. The crown just acted as a paperweight holding the paper sheaf wherein endless lines of unlimited authority decided the fate of those below. Sometimes the winds did ruffle the edges around the margin, but the sheaf as such was always safe; the centre of gravity exactly falling in its middle in the form of divine rights. Safely tucked under the big stone of cosmic proportions, the papery revolt just could not send even a single tremor across the book of divine rights.

Later, as the civilization unfolded a bit more, absolute monarchies were either blown off the top, or some checks and balances were put in the path of all powerful authority in the form of some constitutional provisions like elected representatives trying to bolster the principles intended for the emancipation of the lowest layers in the pyramid. (Times have more or less weathered the massive crown heads of monarchies and we are left with a few residual, beaten crags struggling in low relief with beaten joints and chips flying away attacked by the rasping desert winds of the popular unrest.)

Will we be ever able to wipe out the successive upper plateaus of exploitation (as the denuded pyramid comes lower, having lost its upper layers, the slag sliding down the sides and slopes to reach a one common uniform layer of everybody’s authority and thus none’s authority)? Under such a scenario, all authority denuded and spread equally among the masses on a uniform plain, will self responsibility allow things to function in all empowered citizenry? Will we function as expected and idealized? Well, answers to these questions lie in future’s womb. It depends on the extent to which the free citizens become self-responsible in a not so free world governed and managed by increasing mechanisations at the individual, social, institutional and governmental levels.  

Passing through successive layers of exploitation in the pyramid, we reach our very own broadly cut plateau at the top involving numerous players—legislature, executive, judiciary, bureaucracy, capitalists, criminals, religioners—our present political system at the top now. Times have eroded the pyramid and left this broader plateau at the top after cutting down the pinpointed head of absolute monarchy. Here all the evils of the former pointed absolutism have been handed over to a broader section of players. The dirt of absolutism has been raked up to be spread among the progenies of absolutism. The ‘will to power’ has sired numerous little crown-heads who try to convince the lower layers that this facelift is meant to ensure the equal rights for the masses. So here we land up with the grandchildren of absolutism, i.e., politics and its big, broad, legally secured crown of authority (which by the way is very safe given its broad supportive rim of constitutionality). Presently, politicians rule at the flat top of this denuding pyramid. Murkily spread over this vast pedestal of authority—their authority constitutionalised—suitably served and aided by the so call ‘influential class’, it now wears the ruling crown, a multi-headed monster, the great scion of absolute monarchy, changed with changing times, in its new avatar. What has but not changed is the will to exploit and self-serve to survive. Why not? After all, it carries the same blood in its authoritative veins like its grandfather, the absolute, all powerful King.

Earlier during the days of absolutism, it worked with impunity and through blatant dispensation of whatever it required to keep its clutch hold on the lesser mortals, now it does through the subtle art of politics, through ‘siyasat’. The long and windy corridors of political hypnotizers echo with lispy conspiratorial whispers; of suppression, secrecy, connivance, plot hatching and what not. Under the monarchy, the despotic game was limited to the royal lineage and their chieftains, now the crown is up for grabs by anyone interested. The only eligibility is the ‘will to power’. In its multitudinous aspect, the fight for little-little crowns up for grabs on the plateau: for legislature, for executive, for judiciary, etc. The rules of the battle in this vast battle ground are solidly fixed up in the constitution book. Rule are but rules, mere words noted down in hypothetical conjectures in the books. These cannot come to life and fight for their sanctity and protection if faced with blatant violations. Since brains are developing even faster for any law, for every rule there in the book, we delve deeper into our creative self to contrive bypasses and short-cuts to either escape their feeble dragnet or even poke our noses at them after judiciously cutting the netting. Our present set of power holders, the politicians, practically, suitably and efficiently manages the game. They munch the meat of authority and throw bones to their cronies, bureaucrats, businessmen and criminals. The unchecked orgy earlier perpetrated by a single monarch, is now enjoyed by a faceless many-bodied class, the politicians.

In all its forms, democracy is considered to be a religion drawing its inspiration and authority from the scriptures of the constitution. A holy book, but, is just a holy book. If not in full letter, but in spirit at least we easily violate the pious injunctions. Apart from these pious injunctions, what happens in reality is an open secret. Except for a few big, mighty words, constitutions are amended to suit the latest political masters’ present day growth prospects. See beyond the superficiality of the decked up bride of democracy coquettishly bragging the independence and autonomy of its various arms, you will see that the politico-bureaucratic-judicial-executive machinery is explicitly or implicitly, directly or indirectly, ultimately mastered and pulled along by the modern monarchs, the politicians. Take for example the bureaucracy, once considered the steel frame of the British Raj, it has now become feeble meshed cage with rusty, breaking wires and gaping holes. All of us know the fate of a bureaucrat if instead of becoming a hyena chucking up the leftover of plunder by some politician, he becomes just a ‘grass eating vegetarian cow’ honestly following the principles and rules of his service book. He is spotted like a black sheep in the easygoing white flock. Harassment and punishment postings ensure that an official of the same cadre and experience can be made a meat-eating hero or a famished zero by the lion, the politician. It’s a clear choice. Either become a steely, profiting arm of a politician or be ready to be thrown in dustbin corners of the bureaucratic corridors. All of us know how state level bureaucracy is selected! Corruption is constitutionally embedded. State Public Service Commissions are just handpicked bodies of the state monarch, the Chief Minister. Literally everybody knows how almost 100% manipulations go hand in glove with the state’s ruling politicians. Manipulations are simplest of things at all the stages of examination. If someone just pushes ahead in prelims and mains stages of the examination, the all powerful boards have powers to undo all the hard work and marks gap between the highest and lowest qualifiers during the farcical personality test. So the prospective provincial civil servants easily start their innings as political loyalists. To muster up high-end pay, perks and profits, they operate like loyal palace grooms discharging functions assigned by the political patron.

Without making much of noise against the plunder of public money, severe breach of laws, gross insufficiency of public morals and rules, the judiciary too toes the line. Directly or indirectly the political masters influence the functioning of justice dispensation. The dark corridors leading to the appointments and elevation to higher chairs in High Courts and Supreme Court definitely allows the politicians to hold ears of ambitious judges. Judiciary is allowed a free play by politicians in cases where only masses are involved. In such cases the judges can afford to have some discretion, be honest if they want and take money from one of the parties through the lawyers (like they generally do) to tilt the hammer of justice this or that way. But in cases where the ruling government’s interests are at stake directly, no judge can afford to feel the pinch at his bottom if he decides to be driven by integrity and honesty. Once in a blue moon, some odd case is deliberately picked up where the court gives verdict against the government and it is put on the front pages in media. It is just to keep people believing in the assumption that judiciary is fair. Poor masses do not know, under one such case highlighted, thousands of other cases where judiciary toes the political line go unnoticed. One hammer of dissent against government is at the cost of hundreds of political facilitations by condescending judges to appease political masters. Led by the instinct of self preservation most of the judges do not prefer to rub shoulders against the system. In this clattering noise of self gratification, the voice of justice gets buried in the stampede towards profits and promotions.

Politicians as the masters of the public and private economy are offered oblations by the business class. We have the biggest industrial houses of the country pouring unaccounted and illegitimate money in political pockets. Since it is a fight to further one’s own interests as far as possible, using any means possible depending on one’s own skills and shrewdness—it is just as per Darwin’s principle of natural and social selection—we come across the cut throat competition in the social jungle having its social lions and social deer. So we have the people who would never think twice before striking others’ head to boost their own chances. Of all the scoundrels, politics draws the fittest scoundrels who form a nexus among various scions of exploitative elements. Those who are left out of this fold become the poor, dispossessed, suffering underclass.

In the social jungle, the principles of raw nature like ‘the superior kills the inferior’, ‘might is right’, ‘stronger meat chucks the easy meat’ are prevalent in humane, implicit form. Whole façade of civilization has been created to screen the blind passions and intentions to kill and decimate each other. Instead of killing and exterminating each other, the human version is through cheating, forgery and outwitting. A lion is at the peak of natural pyramid and food chain, eating away the last interests and easy meat that successively struggle at the lower hierarchies to emerge victor at the next stage to be gobbled up by the more potent, powerful and skilled ones at the next stage. In social jungle’s pyramid, the apex of our food chain of interests is occupied by the social lion, the politician. Every lower interest at the lower hierarchies is finally destined to be deposited and digested expertly in its guts.

Politicians, thus, are the new age monarchs who are able to outsmart fellow human beings both at the individual and mass levels. Where will we end up with passage of time? Will the progenies of exploitation change in future? Or the politicians will even allow their own progenies to change them? Politicians seem invincible, not to be defeated by any change! 

The Artist

The most distinguished, defining and branding commonality among the artistic people is their lives predominantly over-arched with sorrow, suffering and hardness at the hands of the contemporary society. Mere mention of the word is sufficient to make one envision a life full of destitution, impracticality bordering foolishness, and self-absorbed persona taking the occupant to a cornered reality where he stands in muted aloofness.

Now the question arises why have such artistic people suffered all along the march of civilization. Simple! It is their affliction with this germ of creativity that ever lynches them to create something subtle, nuanced and an everlasting symbol of their calibre that will continue to fight against the swiping sand of time, to keep shining forever as an interminable legacy. This creative urge to leave an artistic progeny--which is so powerful among all natural objects that it results in sexual procreation willy-nilly in all species--in case of artists this ‘will to life’ strives to leave a creative legacy. They do not strive for a biological legacy; they slog out off-stream to leave an undying object of their artistry. In a way, it is an effort to move towards immortality in some artistic form, to leave a trace of this self-absorbed self in some form because it is not possible to achieve mortality in the physical form. At the common level, people are so inclined to leave their genes in the form of kids; it is just an effort to ward off mortality’s hammer-work that will see us lying in dust at the end of our journey. So we have elaborate social system of inheritance, matriarchy and patriarchy. An artist’s sense of survival is through his body of work that will stand solid against the cycle of life that does not allow anything or anybody to stand on the stage forever.

The artistic target being so noble and high, spanning so much time in the future, holding relatively longer moments in public memory; the investment of the soul’s blood and toil is also of the same Herculean scale. It includes devotion; worship; virtual surrender to the utmost urge to create the masterpiece. Aah, so much for this urge to immortalize the self! It requires penance, solitude, loneliness during those long spread out hours, while the world around walks smarty with immediate gains to still highlight the artist’s fruitless work. Kudos to this common man’s safe rut where so many move uncreatively, safely, smartly, efficiently, practically gathering puny perks and profits falling on the way as a result of tiny efforts and Lilliputian endeavours. So the rutted, beaten path of convention, of sheep-sleep-walking masses following the same path involves littlest risks, almost assured returns, monotonous efforts, repetitive patterns of life resulting in ever so expectable bits of money and the status of a similar mass-coloured sheep.

By following the path of convention, a man just puts in a very small, short term investment. It can be very easily followed, for you need not be an exception in any regard; need not take any risk whatsoever; need not put up any type of experimentation. You just imitate others; you just do what other hundreds of thousands are doing; you can even do it like a donkey yoked in its little cart going for miles of its own without using even a chit of its dull brain and the carter happily asleep dropping his reins and lines lose. The wheels trapped in deep furrows themselves guide the beast. To walk on this dusty, smooth, defined, clear pair of ruts it needs no special effort or creativity. Here just above-average skilled fake combatants run ahead to grab the lumps of tiny gains lying in the ruts, followed by the average skilled laggards trying to reach the front part of the mob, and at the end trail the less skilled struggling to defeat the tag of failure. So the pack train lurches ahead with its saddle bags full of little trophies and tiny rewards.

Fortunately or unfortunately, the artists do not toe this line of man-mules. They revolt and resist this mechanic soulless movement from nowhere to nowhere. The creativity in them enables them to see mammoth rewards at distant off-rut, off route places. However, the muleteers jostling around force the artist to move at the mass mobbed pace; filled with artistic fury, the creative soul revolts and steps out of the rut to move on fresh earth to reach its own set of rewards and bounties. Meanwhile, boonfully jesting and shouting train of human mules jeers at the artist’s first steps on the solitary path; they brandish their tiny trophies at him; try their best to distract and dislodge him from the unconventional path; bait him with Lilliputian trophies glittering under the conventional sun of their pack train. Not having anything else to distract him, they discard and condemn him as unfit for the mobbed completion in the dusty safe ruts. They shout ‘escapist’. But he just laughs them away, soulfully drenched in the drudgery of his soul’s creative instinct. He is fully immersed in the divine purpose of creating something unique, having a totally new version of reality. In revulsion they punish him with pauperization and ostracizing.

Hundreds and thousands of artist revolutionaries die an unknown and unsung death on the freezing cold slopes after moving away or parting ways from the normal path. Some of course reach the distant cave of their destination and carve out a masterpiece that is visible from the common rutted path and the commoners tired and bored throw praise and coins at him. From the craggy ridges its rays even entertain the streaming mass and they even sometimes praise his achievement after all the excommunication and call his self-imposed exile even a fruitful endeavour. The real artist is but still exiled in soul even though physically shoved by the hustle and bustle of common rutted brains.

There is a very simple reason why artistry is judged along very poor lines. It is all about money-making principles. We judge the effort in proportion to its money-making prospects. Since most of money-making is institutionalized within the parameters of the rutted path, the tools of artistry are redundant in the common thoroughfare. So the mob constantly yells failure at the artist while he sweats it out to leave his name written shiningly on the time’s fabric. The undifferentiated mass snubs the artistic revolt like a master pokes an errant slave, meanwhile the sun of ignominy and poverty shines on the bent artistic head absorbed in soul-work on the anvil of his creativity. For each word of praise, the poor artist has withstood uncountable number of chidings, snubs, hooting, lampooning puns and mocking looks. He but silently bears it like a strike from the ramrod of fate. Silently he just chips away the stones of adversities to reach the ever-shining gem of creativity, whose hook has been fastened to his heart, and the unrelenting line ever keeps pulling. He is helpless in the grasp of this passion-encrusted cord that would not let him go, even if they try against it.

He is the helpless moth, ever attracted to the fire of his creative passion. He just cannot help it even if that continuous fluttering around the glow means a final dive into the flames to be charred to ashes. Whatever might be the end, the artistic soul lives triumphantly, victoriously in the glory of its artistic passion. He sets his own goals and gets his own self-derived rewards, so societal acceptance or non-acceptance does not matter. Every little creative streak taken to its completion brings him own set of adulations and salutations. His stomach might starve; but his soul is ever satiated with big draughts drawn from the fathomless pool of his creative urge. Society may dub him as a failure but his ever sweating out conscience is perpetually vouchsafing and singing eulogies for his diehard spirit and really, really genuine efforts.     

Islam as the better Behaved Buddy of a non-Islamist

Educated Hindus love flaunting their pseudo-secularism. It stamps and validates their education begot in the great Indian way through rot cramming of donkey loads of books. It robs simplicity from hearts and breeds bitchy, pretentious brains. They crow at their artificial best when it comes to exaggerating the perils of Hindu fanatics, and downplaying the devilish deeds of Muslim fanatics. Of all the people, Sukh Ram gets abnormally jittery as he falls into the chasm flanked by the two extremities of these two important religions in India. The theoretical knowledge in his books, and his belief that he is true to his image as an educated Indian, tries to pull him out and not think about the sharp edges of comparatives. The fangs of these metallic hard protrusions do a serious harm to his skin. He winces with pain. There are perilous flash-backs and flash-forwards in his scared, buzzing head.  

A burly Muslim is soulfully skinning a goat. This trailer image takes him a decade back to a crowded bazaar in east Africa. A blood smeared image rises monstrously. Blood blood all over, on the clothes, hands and face. The figure walks majestically flaunting the feat, ‘Slaughtered 100 goats and skinned them since morning!’ It is evening time. Sukh Ram shudders. He recalls scores of those moments when as a weakling Hindu kid he sat around monsoon puddles to save ants and insects flapping for life in the little sea. The contrast! Scorchingly buzzes an old RSS pracharak’s word.  He was holding shakhas in the countryside to light a lamp of nationalism basically meaning awareness about the Muslim danger: ‘Let us be clear on this! The worst of a Hindu is still better than the best of a Muslim for world peace.’

Sukh Ram still tries to convince himself that he is not into comparatives. He but cannot help comparing Hindu Fanaticism with Islamic Extremism! With his limited capabilities and analytical skills he can just compare what he has seen or come across. He decides to take a look at the history sheet of the so called Hindu 'fanatics': ‘At the climax of their nationalistic chauvinism, they have just broken a medieval structure, i.e., Babri Masjid. And that too where? At a place where the supreme icon of my religion was born! So Ramlalla’s religious legacy has been hijacked in the name of justifying secularism on paper and in theory.’ As a Hindu he just cannot spare this heartburn, after all he spares his middle name (almost a surname for him) with the Maryadapurushottam Shri Ram. He just finds it amusing how in the garb of politically lucrative secularism the faith of one billion people has been allowed to be hijacked to politically appease 200 million people. Getting emotional about Shri Ram, who has been denied a temple at a place where he was born, Sukh ram naturally hates the Congress and Co. who in alliance with regional satraps like Mullah Mulayam have ensured that political gains theory considers Muslims as the most important element in vote-catch theory. ‘Just imagine who is dubbed communal?! The BJP!’ he feels pity for the BJP, the champions of his own faith. He holds a terrible grudge against his faith-brothers and even sisters, ‘Educated Hindus are the most vocal champions of raising dissenting chorus against anything aggressive related to Hinduism!’ Having grown up taking out drowning ants from water puddles, his soft self mollycoddling with the idea of secularism, he still cannot surrender to the Congressite bait of an esteemed self, the secular self. ‘The Congress gets votes for being what they pretend to be, what do I get from forcing myself into belief about something,’ he stamps his unorthodox thoughts not generally expected of an educated Hindu.

His souls rants out a long sermon as he closes his eyes and a burly khakhi short clad stick wielding figure tries to rake up a full fire out of the smouldering ambers of doubt and hate:

‘Why one billion Hindus are comfortable with the idea of a makeshift tent at Ramlalla’s birthplace? The reason is simple! Hinduism has been left unattended! It is lying in the open to be misinterpreted and misused by all and sundry including both Hindus and non-Hindus. Result is we have so many stigmatized characters, so called Godmen, within Hinduism who bring farce and shame to Hindus. There is nothing left related to Hinduism that cannot be twisted and changed to suit individual, collective, political and social choices. No sinew related to Hinduism is inviolable. If Bhagwat Geeta is lying at a public square, it is not a religious scandal. Somebody might just step on it to move ahead; another may move sideways to go ahead; someone might just pick it up and put at a safe place; and top of it, somebody might just kick it to land it at even worse place. This someone can be anyone, of any religion. When you leave your faith system to be misused at a level, where you end up having godmen like Asha Ram and Rampal, and where the supreme scripture can be kicked without even raising the dust around, where you do not leave even a single sinew related to it inviolable, you weaken yourself as a religioner, as a person, as a race! It is no clarion call to wake up Hindus and go aggressive and all. It is just a comparative situation: “Why one religion is more misinterpreted to be more violent?” ’

Sukh Ram gets really disturbed. His hands are nervously twitching, shaking and fumbling to get some support to hold onto the platform where his life-long education wants him to stand, a secular person. Does harbouring doubts about others’ religion means becoming communal? He tries to dispel these notions and clear his conscience as a full follower of the concept, to stamp his credentials that he is modern and progressive, not a religious bigot. He but falls, not being able to find a foothold as the shaky platform shakes even more perilously as the pracharak accentuates the intensity of his soul-stirring message, the comparatives being too glaring:

‘In Islam it is just the opposite. Just imagine a Koran instead of Geeta in the incident mentioned above. Do you think even a fanatic Hindu will dare to even come near the Koranic papers?! No!!! Reason is very simple! Islamists have not left even a single thing violable in their domain. That is why Islamists are ruling over their subjects like a hard-woven intact knot for so long and with such force. That is the reason why its extremist priests have such influence on the followers. That is the reason why we still see medieval barbaric things being committed by Muslim fanatics.’

Sukh Ram feels a painful twist in his guts. He cannot ignore the differentials. He is now somebody who gets afraid at the sight of a hardcore Islamist. He will be far happier and feel safe if things get changed in the Islamic world, if more and more things related to Islam are done and accepted like he the lesser religionist does. ‘That is the only way to break that final knot, to melt that blind adherence to the rigid lines misinterpreted from the original holy lines. It will give me a sense of immense safety if Muslim males, females and children lead normal lives in the normal manner of the current times without causing violent scandals and fatwas,’ he looks at his son playing with the soft, beautiful doll and assures himself that the coming times will be safer for his son primarily and the world secondarily.                    

He feels pity for the Tauji in khaki shorts:

‘It is even foolish to compare Hindu and Islamic fanaticism. When RSS and company get too agitated what does it result into? Long marches in khaki; lathi training; lessons for patriotism, ineffectual lectures from podiums because what can be expected from educated Hindus and even masses who will just move ahead with this solace that they are paying lip service to secularism. And pseudo secularists crow foul...bloody shitheads. On the contrary only a few Islamic zealots can hold the world peace at bay. No need to mention countless blood-bathed episodes resulting from blind Islamic faith. If we still do it then it sounds like comparing the attacking prowess of a peasant cart with a fighter jet.’

Emotional turmoil over, Sukh Ram thinks more about solutions, not just the problem:

‘If Islam can be misinterpreted in such dehumanised manner to unleash hell on earth, it is high time we fight to dismantle fatal Islamic stranglehold of extremist mullahs over its followers. Islam has to be brought under new set of its pure, holy, original rules. Its inviolable set of blind, misinterpreted beliefs nurtured by power-hungry mullahs should be cast away to make it compatible with other religions. Demon creating misquoted lines in Islamic books should be made to appear earthly and violable like any other misguiding book of other religions. Poison sprouting mullahs should be held by their goatee and made to eat raw barley for all this bloodshed. Shame...shame. This earth will be such a nice place without the aggressive, extremist followers of Islam.’

He finds himself fidgeting in his chair. Gets terribly scared lest it becomes blasphemy even to have such thoughts within himself. What if some fanatic Maulvi reads his mind and issues fatwa against the kafir? He is scared. It is plain fear. He is well aware of the scores of killings of those having progressive minds. ‘As a Hindu I am naturally inclined to get scared,’ he justifies his fit of scare. But today he has revolted in his mind; revolted invisibly in the safe confines of his chair. He is a full reformer now, unknown, faceless, beyond the reach of any zealous bullet and fatwa. He gets a surge of excitement for being the saviour of humanity, for nurturing revolution in his mind to positively change the fates of almost half of the humanity on earth:  

‘The only way the world can be saved from the jehadi type of Islamic deluge is to break the myth of inviolable principles sprung up by the bloodthirsty maulvis who twist lines in the Holy Scriptures to draw abstract, violent meanings. Muslims and non-Muslims both have been chained in the fear of a deadly retaliation if there is any effort to change these misguiding injunctions. Sporadic incidences to change have been met with killings, because these have been tried by individuals. Result is that Islam still appears the primitive faith meant for the older times. The only way change can be forced is to break the myth of inviolability of those who stand against change and hold their own misinterpretations as something written in stone. Let it be a frequent event. Let it be done by faceless institutions at public places so that panic stricken Maulvis do not know who has done it. Let it occur so many times at so many places that it becomes a normal issue like it is with any other religions. Let Islam be like any other peaceful religion. This is the only way to take out common Muslim population from the clutches of Islamic extremists swathed in medieval principles. Once they frequently see the people becoming free from the centuries old blindfolding principles, they will be more receptive to change. Larger forces in the non-Islamic world have to manage it with the help of faceless or not so faceless players.’

Reform! Change! Freedom! These heavy words tonk so heavily in his mind that he thinks he might be speaking loud. He gets really scared. Has he spoken loud to make somebody hear it? He prefers that nobody has heard him. It’s better to have it inaudible. It’s better for him, his son, his family. Getting even more scared, he even wants to forget it as a nightmare only.