Brown Jugaris

As Indians we need to learn that sometimes sticking to some more feasible (and more Indian sounding) means and mechanisms does not essentially indicate the signs of a poor, third world country. We just need to come out of this age-old British Raj habit that anything said, done,contrived or any product, service or technology do not necessarily become the reference scale for excellence to provide our own stuff with relatively poor marks. 

Western toilet seats are great! They serve a great purpose in countries where the people to loos ratio is pleasantly equal to 1:1. You use your utility and any unbecoming fallouts are still digestible because its more or less personal like your underwear. But in India,a single loo bears the burnt of so many gastronomical furies as would not be suffered by the combined total of a whole Western settlement. Still the Indian way served its purpose as well. Now coming to the grafting of Western loo concept in India. Big families, big offices, big crowds at public toilets in malls, cinemas and elsewhere make it nightmarish even for No.1 type, forget about putting your ass down for No. 2. And if the urgency forces you, its just like perching upon somebody's great work just seconds ago. But putting our asses to so many eager bacteria and viruses we draw solace in the fact that we are doing it in the Western way. 

Another example is the poorly creaking state of new Greenline buses in Delhi. It is modeled on the Western kind of public transport: smart, sleek, used by just as many passengers as wont even fill up all the seats even during the rush hours; and last but not the least meant for malai jaisa roads for best jerkless rides. Now here is the concept dumped in India: the poor thing travels sluggishly with thrice or fourth of its carrying capacity; its low floorboards hitting the road while it jumps painfully over potholes; technically inefficient DTC staff not having any clue whenever the poor thing runs into troubles. During the old days, the drivers were half-mechanics and sorted out most of the problems themselves. We have to accept that we Indians are jugaris (contrivers): the jugglers and contrivers who muggle up various unrelated elements to meet and resolve uncountable, ever-opening problems and issues. And this trait has seen the Indian elephant slugger ahead slowly but steadily on the path of growth. If we just graft the Western concepts outlandishly and slavishly we will just put our asses to risks. 

Materialism is Cool

Web of bondage! It has been a great topic of discussion between the materialists and spiritualists. Much as the spiritual guys will crib and advise against mankind's fruitless run after the so called 'physical fruits of bondage', the materialists on their part do have apparently justified arguments of this being the logical conclusion of the very story of our evolution and growth. With my limited perceptions, I look at the physical world as a sort of cozy room sheltering you from bad weather elements--your den that closes your being and gives it a physical identity. If the spiritualists call it a web of bondage which stops my soul shooting off into the hitherto undefined cosmos, then I am pretty much comfortable with this. Deprived of all the physical confines around me, I will just feel like a tiny speck open to the infinite risks looming around in only God knows what directions. My room, my set of comforts gives me a direction. I am pretty comfortable with that. I am its maker. It gives me a sense of pride for creating something out of nothing. Yes I do see through its windows that there is a larger meaning beyond the self-derived confines of the walls of my room. The feeble, but steady, light of faith tells and ensures me at least this much. But I am a human being. And pretty much in love with my identity and roof. If the spiritualists take pot-shots at me, I can just give them one humble and practical promise--I will try to raise the ceilings of my room to allow more of space of which they are so possessive. But I will retain the cozy confines of my room, my material bondage. Because that is being human! Its good to be materialistic as long as my soul can take comfortable slumber in my room; as long as I do not steal from others’ rooms; as long as I do not throw mudslings at others' rooms. One more logic, how can I walk the tightrope to infinity in the cosmic womb, unless I steady myself at a point with the bamboo of the physical fruits of my labour? It’s just like traveling in your car. The journey might be into the unchartered corridors of space, but you need a shelter, a roof. I am happy with the materialistic room around me. It defines this phase of my evolution. Without it I will be lost.

Rallying the poor

The Prince was furtively rallying the poor and destitute in U.P. For a moment it became probable that Indians will once again rally blindfolded behind his regal aura. And for good reasons! After all we have been such nice, gentle, almost non-challenging followers for the last millennium. The results in Uttar Pradesh, however, show some light at the end of tunnel. The mute masses in India are now slowly rising to their own feet to chart out their own courses. These might be the struggling initial steps like toddlers, but will surely translate into calculated, purposeful and independent walks to well-set destinations. The democracy in India may come to age after the hopeless six decades since Independence. Well, Yuvraj (the mightily beneficent Brahmin) blessed huts after huts of Dalits! But surprise, poor people understand the politics behind it. So they won’t faint of delirium and ecstasy at the touch of his rich slippers on their mud floors. For too long they have rallied behind the clarion call of the Panja (the Congress 'hand' as they call it). Surprisingly, they called the hand as 'panja', i.e., the claw. 'It will hold the rich and upper castes by throat and make their lives better', they digested their horrible tales in free India with this optimistic thought for six decades. Now but they realize that this is in fact the hand that has been spanking their bums, making them dance to hopeless winds from all directions. You need not waste your time to appease them anymore Yuvraj! They have more approachable, more earthy messiahs. Maya is there! Mulayam is there.Where the 'panja' goes now! Devoid of traditional low-caste votes, it might now become the ferocious agent of communalism in the country. Muslim appeasement fella! Congress might be 127 year old, but its penchant for swaying the conscience of masses still survives. Gandhi wanted its safe and respectful cremation. But it denied to be laid to rest. The mutations in it are strong enough to undo all the natural laws that ordain the death of all physical and biological phenomena through birth, youth, old age and death. Let us see what are the policies adopted by the oldie now!

Politics and Anna

Either it was stage-managed or happened due to natural causes, but Anna sahib's suddenly aggravated health problems mean that the possibility of Civil Society leaving some dent on the prospects of certain political parties, largely Congress, are ruled out for the time being. Mind you, it is the same great old man who braved the heat and humidity during North Indian summers for 13 days and still came out hale and hearty and in high spirits to promise to undo Congress' interests in assembly elections across India. The sudden deterioration in his health, and some skeptical talk of intentional wrong diagnosis and treatment, force a habitual cribber like me to inculcate some concerns about the human hand in all this. So while the sleaze and swindlery unfold in UP elections, the Civil Society lies sidelined in hospital. The Yuvraj and Princess have glamorized the gloomy scenario prevailing across the underdeveloped regions of the state where masses have been strategically kept in the same age-old poverty clutches so that they can just see as much as it is planned to show, majorly at the time of elections. Salman Khursheed talks of Muslim job reservation; Diggy Raja also takes jibes at anything smelling of Hinduism....This is communalism at its worst. Ironically, communalism in this country has come to be defined just as any insecure voice for the interests of the majority. While anything said and done to garner minority sympathy, and thus garner votes, becomes ineligible under the clauses of ‘communalism’ to stand out as an act of piety perfumed with all genuineness and goodwill. Mind you, under the objective clauses of the definition of 'communalism', Congress may qualify as the worst communal political branch in the country. Its pro-Muslim outpours are forcing the Hindu consciousness to be tilted towards BJP almost by default. Coming back to Anna Saheb and Civil Society, whether his health problems were natural or man-made, it is at least an opportunity for the movement to keep away from the political mud. He possesses the moral force and needs to invigorate it far away from the mucking political cauldron. Wish him good health! If the great man recovers to be capable of keeping fasts--his major force--then we can just hope for bigger movements. We should not forget, a morally clean and hospitalized Anna is far more effective in the long term than the semi-politicized version of the great man throwing mud-lumps at semi-goon politicians and getting smeared himself as well. He earned mass following through sheer moral force and integrity at all levels. He has done penance for it. It is a lofty pedestal. His penance will further take him vertically above and enlarge the aura behind the icon. He need not get into a hand-to-hand scuffle with the plunderers of this country. From his lofty moral throne he can breed energetic gangs of conscious citizens who will turn his vision into reality. Let us just pray for his coming back to health and regain the control of Civil Society movement.

Lion and Deer of the Social Jungle

Lion and Deer of the Social Jungle

Dharma of Social Jungle: The greatest punya of the social jungle is to protect one’s own interests at any cost.

Sin of the Social Jungle: Pap of the social jungle is to allow one’s own interests to be harmed under any obligation, duty or weakness arising out of the hypotheses of religion, morality, ethics or any other type of socio-religious injunction.  

Anti-socials, politicians, business magnates and others of their ilk are the social lions—a suitable personification of those fierce lions roaming in the jungles. Their ravenous appetite for power, perks and status needs and requires them to prey upon the poor weaklings, i.e., social deers. The social deer comprise the abject and still poorer personifications of those grass-grazing herds of deer in the jungle who just nibble at the grass blades; who are inherently weak products in the game of evolution. So the social deer are intrinsically weak and churn out virtues of the lameness and moralist talk, by creating the great facades of evil and sin (these are mere hypothesis), constructing the majestic and disillusioned citadel of religion and ethics—the fearful songs of the escaping and the fleeting hordes of masses.

All this also boils down to the question of being practical or impractical. As simple as that! If somebody is brave enough to defy the blinding hypotheses and naturally nurture his self interests at any cost then it is just a simple occurrence of a social lion. While the one who is constrained from following this duty to the self due to the weaknesses arising of physical, mental, social or family and compromises the real duty to the self, he then becomes the fodder to satisfy some lion’s appetite; becomes a mere inconsequential step in the staircase of somebody’s ascension to the peak of power and glory.

Judges—the so called upkeepers of justice on earth—are the most efficient and practical men (thus a fantastic breed of lion who are untamed and unchecked in any manner. At every step of the ladder of dispensing justice, they have to pamper injustice just to reach higher and higher. The talk of justice is too idealist and impractical. The hypothesis of justice survives to act as a sort of opium for the masses. Practical judges very soon realize that the elements like integrity, honesty, morality, commitment to the so called virtues are no aids to one’s entry to heaven; rather in the field of social jungle they are simply the antonyms for armour, swords, shields and lancers to cut down the fellow self-interested fighters. Just imagine the fate of a soldier devoid of all these weapons! He is just there to fulfill the natural function of getting slayed. Our day to day social survival is simply a battle for protecting self-interests in which deepest, mostly invisible and sometimes blood-soaked, cuts are inflicted on fellow human beings.

Here is this social lion, all adorned with the impressive mane of justice and crowned with the duty to protect the deers! He is still hungry to ascend a few more steps on the social ladder. To become a bigger lion, he is simply required to eat more and more deer. And he has done exactly the same! Very cleanly, smirkly and without batting an eyelid! He smoothly feasted on 102 deer. The very same poor herd of weak, impotent, cowering, justice-lorn group that had pleadingly looked at his face for two years in the Court of Justice. The poor group always unaware that it was nothing but the morsel for the satisfaction of his gluttony. In one merciless stroke—as all practical steps must be to qualify for success—he ate 102 lambs and burped away to further glory with new, vigour, health and criminality (the most virtuous trait to become a bigger, stronger lion), to eat still fatter preys at the higher seat.

For full two years, these poor lambs had looked at his indifferent face seeking some tiniest trace of mercy. But how can a lion go against its nature? They never realized that the wise owl perched on the highchair found them just tiny frogs to be eaten to muster up more nocturnal hunting prowess. Suddenly, swiping away all the gibberish, hypothetical talk of the weaklings, and bravely bracing himself up with the tidings of war weapons, he gave smart piece of winsome battle skills and mowed down all those disillusioned fools and weaklings who had come running to his cave, seeking life where only death had all the business to do. So to escape from one line they landed up in the den of another lion. And lions will be lions. If sheep run from one den to another, then it saves energy for the lions as well. So the Assembly of this lion, amply proving its status of being the regal court of the mighty canines, just sanctioned the luncheon of the grassy subjects under its domain. The King lion just proved his ruling status—an able commander of a still mightier Lioness eating still tastier livers in the higher capital. Her Highness, the top-most lioness, has longer teeth to taste even the mane-covered flesh of these lesser lions.

Jungle lions fight to keep their territories and the bunch of female cats. Social lions, especially the political social lions, are pitched against a tougher task. But they have far more chickened humanity to lunch upon and then wage the battle.

While the bull fight it out for the higher stakes, the grass tufts at their feet get inevitably trampled and mowed down and mix in the dust of nothingness and ignominy. Similarly, this group of 102 hardworking lambs, always pleading that it will be of great Civil Service to the lion got trampled upon.

The advisers and soothsayer rushed to preach that still there was a mightier den with stronger lion to get the injustice undone. But they forget that mightier lions perched upon still higher seats are still more efficient hunters. After all they rose through the same battle. Even if they unnaturally have some pity for the battered, bruised and blood-soaked horde and say ‘Mercy grated!’, then that will still rub chilly on some lonely conscience left out in the joint humiliation. What is the use of reaching the spring of justice if every step on the path forces you to forget the fundamentals of your life, the very sinews that grew with you? You just become identity-less. It is just like peeling off one’s own kin. What is the use of getting justice if on availing it—if one is lucky to avail it after all—you turn blind and spiritless by the time you are shown the make-believe fruit?