The Neighbourhood Battle

In the summers of 2013, China's Himalayan Drills had become worrisome. The retired Brigadier never missed a chance to warn that ‘they’ can anytime put a knife in our back. He always believed that with a bit stronger political leadership and a bit better basic amenities, the fight would have been different. After all he still remembered many soldiers fighting in angora shirts forget about jersey. And it was as cold as you can imagine.   

His two neighbours had been at loggerheads for long. One was strong, financially and socially in a decent position. The other was comparatively lesser on all these counts. The stronger one would not miss an opportunity to badger the opponent and never skipped a chance to prove his strength and the other's helplessness. One day he heard the one, who was always at the receiving end, saying, 'I am going to an all out with him. Even if he beats me it’s better to be fully defeated instead of getting insulted all the times!' Driven by the concept and brooding over his insults, he went all out with the enemy at the next provocation! It was unexpected given his unresponsiveness of long. The stronger opponent was taken aback and before others, including the retired Brigadier, intervened he had bloody mouth and many bruises. The Brigadier knew the conditions in which the man had attacked finally. He drew the moral of the story: Sometimes it serves to hit hardest when you are pushed against a wall; when you have been completely cornered!

Each time there was some news of the Chinese wrongdoing in the Himalayas, the soldier’s soul pined for revenge. He openly confessed he hated the Chinese to the core of his heart. When this episode happened in which the unprovoking underdog had finally hit, taking the stronger transgressor by surprise, the polish-mannered soldier had even abandoned his neutrality in the affairs and went to the winner’s house to even congratulate him for his brave battle.

The repeated Chinese transgressions into the Indian territory and India's helplessness in this regard served the ex-soldier a corollary to the episode narrated above. He was telling the man representing India in the episode:

China, on account of the War and repeated intrusions, has taken it for granted that India will remain inert to all provocations. Can India act ultimately like you? If China can cross over into our territory, cannot we go for the same exercise sometimes? Suppose China reacts at the level of using force at our China-type intrusion, we will also earn a right to ward them off at the same level if they play the mischief again. It will only define the LOC more definitely---after all you are supposed to put your stamp of authority on your land through the use of forces to the utmost capacity. It will just balance out the position.    

Amarnath Yatra

The soul eating focus on the editorial desk gave him a tired and brooding look. He, the young man from The Broken Dream, seven years down after the debacle at the hands of the state, looked different from his still-enthusiastic face at the start of his innings in the publishing sector. The civil services candidates, at least from the humanities background, cram bits and pieces of all subjects to be jacks of all trades and masters of none. And when the sledgehammer of reality smashes the dream, all they are left with is to grope around for some respectful means of earning bread and butter. He had been a bookworm, so faced with this challenge to earn his bread, by default sneaked into the publisher’s world. He had always worked with his civil-services-preparations-born ethos. It only means more and more hard work. But then you have to be smarter at many levels to excel in the corporate. The more he worked, harder became things for him. In the melting heat of July, his life unbearable under the harsh torchlight of insecure bosses and jealous colleagues, his mind literally on the brink of insanity, he escaped to the blessing climes of the Kashmir Himalayas, to find himself, to regain his lost footing, to seek solace, to find a saviour, to be with himself.   

Life is all about exploring the self--its limitations, its specialties, its weaknesses, its strengths. Putting yourself in inhospitable conditions can be one of the means for this. The holy cave of Amarnath is situated in the frigid heights of higher Himalayas. As you move along the rain-lashed, slippery and stony mountain track, you find yourself caught in a dualistic chasm. Pleasure and pain side by side. Sighs of agony as well as excited palpitations of heart over the nature's masterwork. In the misty heights the melting glaciers are a visual delight; but the hazy heights lacerated by gloomy, craggy tops gets into your heart like some ice-cold stare of a corpse. 

Walking on treacherous muddy foot-track, with life and death side by side, with agony and ecstasy mating to give a queer sensation, he felt the little world in Delhi inside the cubicle of an office to be funnily tiny with its tinier characters. How could that little hovel turn his life literally into hell? This boundless, open nature cannot give enough pleasure like that tiny bread-earning hovel can give you the misery. He recalled the faces, the faces that had literally broken his hardworking convictions in the professional life. The selfish seriousness on their faces loomed more dangerously than the risky precipice he was taking a rest upon. Their plotting and strategising appeared gloomier than the threatening raincloud surrounding that mountain top and admonishing to come his way to make the climb more treacherous.

Gasping like a fish without water, for the oxygen was seriously low, he found the next little step as the most unachievable task in the world. One look however at the melting glacier on the opposite side of the valley uplifted his spirits like Phoenix. He saw the signs of warmth triumphing over snow: emerging pastures side by side with snow. Yes, green gives solace! The mountains lost in their massiveness just took his tiny existence into their mystic oblivion. He just surrendered! Even their selfish, smart, suave, polished, over-imposing selves, that always intimidated the simple human being in him, appeared a puny little, inconsequential piece of craziness against such massiveness surrounding him. It became bearable for him. Their triviality and this massiveness. ‘We should realise that we are mere parts of nature that can simply smite our existence away in just one angry stroke of little finger!’ he mused and seemed to admonish his detractors.

He looked anxiously into the sky for the traces of rain. The clouds building up around the surrounding hilltops sent down still chillier sensation down his spine. But then a look into the deep gorge across the sheer precipice carrying the track, gave him an outwardly sensation of fear and excitement mixed with a strange elation that cannot be explained in words. He saw fellow devotees struggling along the labouring ponies. These were the rare moments when one can really feel the agony of a fellow human being because you are put in the same cauldron.

The last portion of the valley leading to the shrine was still covered with heavy snow. As he walked over it, he slipped and regained control like a toddler learning to walk. ‘After all we are always God's kids,’ he had a smile on his face. A smile that was so comforting that it could outweigh hundreds of unshed tears in his eyes which they had given him. Despite all the quagmire of terrorism, he felt Kashmiri Islam to be beneficent. At no other place one will find a Hindu religious occasion being supported by so many Muslims. All the hawkers, stall operators, tent owners, porters, foot massagists and alms-seekers were Muslims. At no other place in the world you will come across a Muslim stall operator welcoming a tired Hindu pilgrim: 'O Bhole come and take shringaar for Mata Parvati' In delicious Kashmiri and warm hospitality the locals called him 'Bhole!'. And once inside the majestic cave, he just found himself lost in the divine trance of the ice lingam, Baba Barfani!

He felt safe and sheltered there. The Ice God giving him warmth that his lacerated self needed so much after all of their cold gestures and frigid petty selfishness had turned him to hypothermia, even though Delhi was burning with heat. But he had to go back to the fire. Mustering up courage he started his journey back. Back to where he began from!

Luck, the Slippery Eel

He vividly remembers one Holi. At least seven or eight years back. Drunk and mired in cheap colours like toads in filthy waters, they had hitched upon a tractor and went to the district city to spoil the appearance of their friend's beautiful wife. After spreading disharmony in his household, the Holi-smitten lampoons were coming back to the village. The tractor was giving a stiff competition even to the cars on the potholed road. They yelled at the top of their ebriated, coloured rascality. There was a scene by the roadside. Such a scene instantly gives an ecstatic high to almost all Haryanvis. A man was thrashing his wifie; possibly the result of an argument while they travelled on their scooter. Poor Bajaj Chetak was the mute spectator to this gross act. The hooligan-carrier tractor came to a halt and the first instinctive reaction of the demonic group of friends was: 'Aur maro s*** ko!' And they laughed all inclined to get free entertainment from the spectacle.

As a presumably better educated human being his instincts immediately clobbered down the common Haryanvi instinct and he yelled: 'Aurat pe attyachhaar!' They respected him, those father-defying idiots. So they just jumped down and many heart-felt fist strikes found the man bleeding from mouth in just few seconds. The lady cried: 'Harramjado he is your jeejaji and works with Haryana police!' So all daredevilry was gone in an instant. Totally slouched, civil-dress-clad policeman was dazed beyond all limits. He looked a perfect Hindi movie villain. They were aware of the consequence, even though he was not on duty and was doing something that should have taken him behind the bars. But then it is not the convention. The policemen can be allowed such freebies sometimes. Realising this they just chickened out of the scene even more efficiently than a murderer ever did. His friends cursed him, ‘Your bookish ideology got us in trouble. It would have been better to laugh. The Police in Haryana is held in fearful awe by the common mortals, at least by those who are just common citizens without any background defined by wealth, prestige and the so called connections.

A bloodied policeman can get you in serious trouble. The tractor was mired in mud, even the number plates. So by appearance it just gave clue to its manufacturing company, nothing more. All nasha gone, they washed it clean in the village pond and took a vow to send it to the sheltered barn for at least a month. He had heard the fabled stories how the policeman spanked the naked bum with a leathered monster. His poor bum already twitching against the painful strikes, he prayed to all his Gods for rescue. But luck certainly falls in our laps however unlucky one might be feeling. He could not believe what happened onwards. Next day, one guy from the beating squad was reading newspaper by a roadside barber shop in the village. A policeman came and asked for the approach route to a neighbouring village. 'What happened' the scared reader asked. 'Yaar yesterday some goons on a red tractor gave a bloodied jaw to one of our policeman! Look at the guts!'  

It happened like this. The lady who was being beaten had her maternal uncles in the said neighbouring village. She had spent some part of her pre-marriage time at her mamaji’s place and was seriously aware of the family feud going on between her mamaji’s family and a peasant family in their neighbourhood. That day some elders from this rival family had reached the eventful spot and intervened while the real culprit group chickened out. Nursing insult and unfathomable anger, and not being able to find the real rascals, she and her husband had conveniently farmed these people who had in fact resolved the issue. Pure bad luck for them. Well, somebody’s good luck is at the cost of someone’s bad luck. Luck changes hands man, impersonally, mechanically, like the coins flow from one pocket to the other in the bazaar. It might slip out of a King and land up in the beggar’s bowl and the vice versa.     

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!   

Smashed Dreams

‘Mother India’s dreams have been smashed,’ many who took out time to look at the scenario in 2012 appeared to pay the famed hypothetical concern. This concern is fuelled by the petty individual-level disappointments fathering little-little grudge-born cynicism, the latter then delivering its grandchild, the I-know-it-all attitude. There were many frogs croaking in different voices in the muddied pond. Everybody was taking pot-shots at the Congress, the grand old, wrinkled century-plus outfit, well past its prime, and getting mistreatment by the revolting grandchildren like they snatch the crown of authority from the ageing heads.  

Somewhere the retired professor was jotting down the collective fury, crowning it with his individual misery. His farewell speech indeed had ruffled a few local-level feathers. It had reached the university Vice Chancellor’s ears. As all of us know, during the present state of the affairs, this august position is a subtle, academically justified means of the state government to have its political share in managing the academic institution as per its suitability. So even though the issue had not raised any ripples in the state capital a good 200 kilometres away, the VC had deemed it fit to take it politically at his own level, feeling politically responsible, lest it created troubles for him later. So the professor’s post-retirement leisure and peace had been disturbed a great deal. A mini racket had been busted. For years most of the staff had been claiming LTA (leave travel allowance), like they do in most of the departments, without travelling, just taking a tiny short-cut, assuming it to be almost a legal right now because it gets done so easily and also all others elsewhere taking it--theses little impregnations of commonly allowed illegalities, to deliver a baby of malpractice when the situation demanded. So the last year’s case had been put under enquiry, and his pension put on hold consequently. Afraid to speak loudly, the professor was jotting in his journal:  

It is the time to rethink. Rethink at the collective level. The time is ripe. Any educated Indian will accept that the Republic has been mismanaged terribly. Overflowing wealth in Swiss accounts bears testimony to this. If we compare the wealth amassed in dubious foreign accounts in independent India with the wealth drain during the colonial regime, I am afraid there might not be much difference between the two figures. The only consolation we can draw is that instead of the White man it is the Brown man who is doing the same profiteering chores. Indian judiciary is incapable of catching these big fish, it eats up the little ones, the helpless ones.  

Do you remember the guy from the The Broken Dream who now slogged in the private sector for his bread and butter? He worked the hardest he could, looked back many a time at the prestigious position he had been deprived of by the Congress government in Haryana, again went back to work even harder, only to be stalled by rampant office politics that allows the politically smarter ones to move on, leaving the apolitical hardworkers in the position where they belong, the real hardworking, subordinate donkeys. The anti-congress political analyst in him raised tirade many times:

The question arises: Whom to blame? Even with a pinch of salt, majority of us will agree that the kind of political ruling class and culture that emerged after Independence is more or less sired by the Congress. As the juggernaut that fetched us freedom, it occupied a holy, absolute and unquestionable status. Dreamy-eyed Indians don’t question the illogical circumstances developing in their lives. They still worship their deities. Congress was a deity. Unfortunately public service rarely comes out of the bum feeling the warmth of divinity perpetually carpeting the throne. So for terms after terms the masses paid homage to Devi Congress by voting in its favour. But the religious trusts are rarely managed well by the priests.

Sukh Ram, the Hindu with a scared soul, and thus a natural supporter of the BJP, was irritated by default with whatever the Congress did. Lynched by the so called ‘Muslim-appeasement policies’ of the first political family, he was prattling about the multi-generation political business in India:

The lesser genies are just the offshoots of the same colonial hangover like the absolute power, milking the public resources for enlarging self-interests, using public authority to cut down any wind of change, family raj, etc. When non-Congress politicians amass wealth to lay a solid footing for dynasty-raj in their territories, they are just taking a logical and justified clue from the rulebook of the first political family in the country. It is tragic for the democracy. When as a legislator you lose sight of the constitutional objectives and responsibilities of public service for the masses and instead focus on establishing your lineage on the throne, then all the golden lines that were framed with dreamy eyes in the lengthy sessions of the Constituent Assembly take a backseat and become strings to a farcical puppet show of money, power and vagabondage.

The Frog Fella with his senses jolted had turned a philosopher. Very surprisingly! He could have lost his senses as well, but it happened otherwise. He was hammering his judgements with intellectual solidity and envisioning darker days for the democracy:

Indian democracy is supposedly evolving healthily. But in reality it has been a malnutritioned and unhealthy baby. Where is the political choice at the national level? Literally every Indian is using bad words for the UPA government. There are not too many praises of the BJP either. What will people do? A fractured mandate is a real possibility. The regional dynasty-rule-lorn satraps will enjoy the hotchpotch poultice brimming up in Delhi. Over-fed Congressites will belch and burp and happily welcome a break after enjoying the public resources for a decade during its latest innings at amassing wealth. The Yuvraj will go sight-seeing, relaxed and visit Dalit homes and try to find out the taste in the famed dal-roti of India. The Maharani will give more focus to her Hindi lessons. The BJP is trying to see beyond Lal Krishna Advani. Its house in disarray, how much it can cash on popular angst is still in doubt. Maulana Mulayam plays his cards well and always sees the throne in Delhi a distinctly achievable target. Mayavati is happy to rally all the historically mistreated dalits behind her and make them believe that merely voting for a dalit and showing the index finger to upper-caste candidates means the Buddha-sent justice for them.

The Kejriwal ignited soul--his disillusionment now healing like a wound getting the coagulated crust towards getting a political skin)--our ageing unmarried social reformer from A Fistful of Goodness was shutting up many lesser noises to raise his toot of a mini-white-revolution:

The question is: How long the educated middle class in India will continue with its famed apathy and allow the present kind of ruling establishment to thrive at the cost of the common good. The popularity of Civil Society Movement provides a glimmer of hope. But how long can a movement survive and sustain while harping from the clean pedestal of morally clean apolitical carpet? How can you fight evil politicians without jumping into the political cauldron? It is like hunting a lion with sling-shots. For an effective fight it has to be inside the political cage only: a hand to hand real fight. But the moment they try to do it, even their supporters point fingers in admonishments that they appear just lesser dirty politicians in this avatar.

Among all this hoot and holler, the red-nosed guy from Friends and Foes, his time buddy safely in his pocket, was telling his co-passenger in a noisy, rickety state transport bus plying on a pot-holed road:  

The main problem lies with the kind of political machinery that has taken the driving seat in the wagon of Indian constitutionality. So the main fight is there only. As far as the Civil Society Movement is concerned, we can do them a favour--clap when they take mud-shots at the so-called starched khadi wears by fighting with as much political force as possible. In the looming directionless scenario, I think this is the need of the time. Who knows this extra hand will come with a pleasant surprise. So Ramdev, Anna Saheb & Company, the soon-to-retire General and many others should be encouraged to draw as much politics into their movement as possible. At least politics played by educated middle class will be better than the one played by people like the buffoon from Bihar.