A Mutinous Fart in the Fields

The early winter is pouting like a dusky beauty in this last week of November, to appease, to assuage, to help, to strengthen and to make everybody’s smile more charming. Through its mist-laden cool nights and sun-tanned days, it is trying its best to invigorate the flora and fauna that usually gets lynched by the weather extremes in North India.

Rambeer is feeling the balmy solace of this November sun. His eyes are closed and he looks more pensive than a rough farmer like him should. To be linguistically correct he should have been called ‘Ramveer’, i.e., brave like Sri Ram, but in the farming community the finer edges get broken to leave a blunt-faced reality. So for the convenience of the cattle- and women-abusing tongues, he is called ‘Rambeer’. He has many nagging thoughts plaguing his simple mind not used to calculations outside the sums and deductions related to agricultural inputs and outputs.  

Like many other farmers he has also been done in. He is feeling fucked. The other day he had got his virgin buffalo force-mated with a seasoned male buffalo. There were all signs that the young animal was ready for mating to be pregnant for the first time. It was braying all night and had gone romping around flirtatiously, broke its rope, and when they caught it, it was a ghost buffalo with mud all over its body, shrubbery dangling from its horns. Typical signs of a mating call, they say. He was not the one to go missing on a chance to get fresh milk in the family so had immediately hired the services of a muscular, lecherous male buffalo belonging to an equally lecherous farmer. Initiations are seldom smooth. There was quite a scene as they facilitated the act. The unsparing male buffalo landed with its forepaws on the denying young little filly. The lusty monster’s nostrils full of guffawing, frothy, salivating, sneezy liquid. Fearsome sight, but then the street urchins clap at the scene as well like they are witnessing street circus. The poor animal underneath lost its footing and fell under the masculine black weight.

He now cursed, spat and muttered that he has been painfully banged like his young buffalo. He recalled the eventful scene yesterday and said aloud he himself has been treated in the very same manner by the bulkier buffaloes, the bigger forces: the weather, hence the God automatically; and then its representative on earth, the market, hence to the poor farmers like him, the Government again automatically.

Gentleman, farmers suffer at two very distinct levels. Either it’s the impersonal hand of God that simply holds them by ears and smilingly makes them see the mysterious spectacle of undoing all their hard work. If the God is busy doing some more important undoings somewhere else, thus sparing the tillers for some time, the Government does it from His side. Low prices hit the farmers even worse, because here they complete the crop cycle with certain dreams but return almost empty-handed from the market. So caught between these two supernatural forces, the poor farmer gets just one weather-saved and market-saved crop in four seasons. And that surplus keeps him on the path of survival.

This time paddy has been fucked by the Government-cum-market force. Rambeer’s face had glittered like he had struck gold under the hoofs of his male buffalo, 12 years ago, when he sold Basmati rice at INR 2600/100 Kg. Mind it that was more than a decade ago. Can you believe the same stuff fetched a paltry INR 1400 this season? Almost half! That too a dozen years down the line. Meanwhile the costs of farming inputs had skyrocketed. It indeed defies logic. Some educated farmer might very well crib aloud, ‘Capitalism how can you leave a certain section in lurch like this?’

Rambeer as a landless farmer had taken a portion of some other big farmer’s land on rent for paddy farming. The sum they agreed upon was just on the basis of the expected price of at least, in the worst case scenario, INR 2000/100 Kg. Robbed of all his profits by the fluctuating market forces and stockists’ manipulative mantra, he returned from the market with just the money that would go into settling the rental amount. It meant he had simply worked for free. The landholding farmers have pretty thick skin that makes them immune to any sentimentality born of a crying landless farmer. So there was no option of sharing the loss. An agreement is after all an agreement and if you do not keep your word, people won’t give you land on rent anymore in the coming seasons. So keeping the word was most important. And why would a better placed farmer get a hole in his pocket by such acts of philanthropy like waiving off a bit of debt in lieu of unpredictable market-born losses? So Rambeer had just simply handed over whatever he had got from the grain merchant to the bulky better-placed farmer. Anyway, if the market forces and the shining economy of India, for their survival, presume such acts of kindness from a bit-better-placed farmer, then to the hell with such a system. Those who have hundreds of millions in Swiss accounts are better for such philanthropy. The Swami who was recently talking of getting that money back had been cowed down by the lady with glassy eyes and Italian steely resolve.

Rambeer’s reverie is broken by the arrival of another farmer who tills the neighbouring patch of land. Nursing the market insult, he hatefully stars at the stunted growth of his winter tomatoes. An ex-serviceman, in late forties, this farmer has been working with all his army ethics on his small landholding. 'This country is up for bloodbath, I tell you!' he frets and fumes like an aimless light machinegun. Rambeer even gets scared. Gosh! Guys there is real fire in the eyes and practical intent in the farmer-ex-soldier’s words. 'The fuckers have stashed all the money in Swiss accounts. That’s our money man. While they cheat us through low agricultural product prices and very high cost of livelihood. The behen****s... ', sorry guys an angry farmer cannot do without gali-sali, 'have fucked farmers at all fronts.' 'Unemployment...these graduate farmers of the 21st century India are not dumb like their forefathers. Believe me man the day will come when they will just barge into Parliament and just kill the lawmakers there!' Dear-o-dear what a stormy spectacle it becomes. He is literally shaking as if we just now have the first leader of the peasant uprising in this agrarian belt. He seems to recall his still bigger losses in life, ‘I have never been lucky, hard work does not pay as they say in the books. Even in army behen****s fucked my chances of a promotion forcing me to retire just at the age of 40 and that is when you need the financial back-up for your family, your kids are growing up, you need more money.’ The dispiriting spectacle of his stunted poor tomato plants takes him back to his in-service miseries. He is wearing a faded, coarse-clothed army shirt that helps him in farming like denims did with the cowboys.

It is the very same shirt that gave him a chance to become a part of what the common man presumed to be ‘the liberation movement in independent India’. His ex-army shirt gave him an opportunity to contribute his common part to the common men’s movement led by the common man and his team of self-proclaimed common men and women?! Yes of course it did! It saved his life just a day before he and Rambeer had planned to add to the weakening voice of Anna from his Ramlila maidan platform as his fast entered the second week in the terribly hot and humid Delhi in August. It happened a day before they had planned to see the great Anna who had literally hijacked all forms of media in the country. The farming ex-soldier was cutting Jowar, the long-stalked fodder crop, moving his sickle with expertise. The fodder crop had overgrown grass on the ground. His sickle must have touched the reptile. With its venomously instantaneous hitting prowess, the cobra struck at the hand wielding the instrument. Sometimes you are unlucky to fall even on the smoothest of ground, without hitting any obstacle, without walking carelessly, even while watching your feet. At other times, you might be lucky not to trip even once while the terrain around might not spare even a single smooth step. It was one such stroke of luck, the good luck that we need and aspire for so much. The cobra hit precisely the way it should when provoked like this. The farmer reacted with the usual not-so-agile reaction of the hand whose beholder is just cutting fodder lost in so many mundane things. But he was lucky, an odd chance, an exception. His army background saved him, or more particularly his army shirt did, or more specifically his habit of wearing his clothes always with full sleeves, or still more specifically the big cuff button that you have on army dresses saved him, or still more particularly his caring wife was the beholder of luck in that only yesterday she had retagged the about to get off button with her needle work. It was a little chain of good causes that fetched him that bit of life-saving luck. The cobra’s snout hit the big button, as providential as a bullet meant to hit the soldier right in the middle of the heart, hits rather the coin, five rupee coin in the pocket to get ricocheted. The black hooded reptile’s fang got entangled in the button hole. The official army wares have big buttons, if you can recall. Both the human and the deadly reptile panicked out of their wits. The farmer ex-soldier but deserves more credit in that he did not faint. With death hanging down his cuff button, he used some odd still-working chamber in his brain to throw away the reptile with the help of his sickle. The cobra was as longer than his height. When he had stood, holding his hand at it maximum possible distance from his face, their eyes meeting for the flash of a second, the reptile’s head still higher by a few inches, he had stolen a look at its tail still touching the ground, and then he had just given the best shot of his life in blowing away the enemy with his sickle. That was the closest he had faced death.      

The Anna movement had caught Delhi in the whirl-wind of many such disgruntled hardworkers! Both Rambeer and the just saved ex-soldier-cum-farmer had added to the disgruntled clamour in the Ramlila maidan under the presumption that they are playing their tiny parts in the new revolution. A new liberating moment in the country’s political history. But all this would just end up as a damp squib, the movement just acting like a safety valve to let out the over-boiling mass angst. There would be just another political spin out: Kejriwal and his socially active band of non-descript workers who would also get a ride in the political bandwagon and the great Anna will again go fasting innocuously at his village in Maharashtra. The mountain turning out to be a molehill, the future seemed really for some political jerks and pulls by Kejriwal and group who defected to have a share in the ruling pie.

However, on this sunny November afternoon, in the year 2011 to be precise, right here in the fields, the real but always ignored stage of losses and sufferings, there is a mini-storm, a tiny-revolt in the butter-jug. The soldier still appears to carry that revolutionary spirit that he mustered up in yelling ‘Bharat Mata Ki Jai’ towing the aged social worker’s clarion call to set people against the mighty and the corrupt in the country. Two ranting, aggrieved farmers now at least believe that they have a right to grumble and nurse their injuries through verbal outpours.  

The Self-Performing/Made-to-Perform Puppet

 

Contradiction is inherent in nature. Positive–negative, acidity–alkalinity, dark–light, and many more, are all manifestations of a homeostatic balance. You know stars are held by this same dual, contradictory nature. Gravitational force pulls the molecules to the core; at the same time super-temperatures force the molecules to stay away from the core at a feasible length. The stars smile and shine just because of the contradictory chemistry of these two opposing forces. Remove either of these and the star meets its death. Remove gravitational pull, the star will explode as a supernova. Remove the escaping force born of high temperature, the star will get sucked into its own core as a black hole. So survival means a fine zone in the twilight of creation and destruction. Natural laws apply to the humans as well; they hold the same validity if we treat an individual as a system. A human life is a wonderful phenomena sizzling like a shiny star in the twilight of humility and pride, altruism and selfishness, good and bad, faith and atheism, creative and destructive, etc. So the greatness lies not in casting off one side of this undercurrent. It lies in just tilting your balance just a bit on the side of the so-called good aspects in the pair. Why? Because we are social phenomena as well, apart from being the natural ones. Our consciousness equips us to shine and survive like a star–but with a definite purpose. The purpose of general well-being; of helping others in maintaining the same balance of survival; of contributing proactively to the overall balance hung between two contradictory frames. We can contribute more than our natural states have defined for us. Believe me! It works. Just help someone in need. It can be a tiny bit. You will feel yourself elongating your natural self a bit to the positive side. This is being human.

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Individual is for the social system; social system is not for the individual. System is always larger and will prevail when it comes to protecting its common interests in opposition to the individual ones. If the individual finds the system suffocating and intolerable then he has to bow out of the system and take natural state of freewill in jungles, which is just going backwards and denying the evolution of culture and socialization. ‘Individual will’, mind you, is always determined by the ‘general will’. Perfectibility of individual is not a totally hypothetical concept altogether. It is attainable. The mankind can give a full throttle to the individual freedom on the platform provided by the social system. He has to obey certain laws nonetheless. There is no chance for him to escape the arena. To play the game and win it, you have to stay in the ring with your status of a social player. The system is too big. If he attempts an escape, it becomes a suicide morally, socially and physically. The attempt to escape is futile. Just by taking birth on this earth, the individual surrenders his right to possess a totally free individual will. He has the irremovable tag on his conscience, on his physical self, on his convictions: the tag of a citizen of the kingdom of the social system.

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Guys, individual freedom has always remained a fundamental ideal and belief since historical times. However, it is not to be achieved by casting off all society and civilization or by going back to a so-called 'natural state'. The perfection of man, his freedom, his liberty, his happiness, and the growing mastery of his own destiny, all are dependent upon a clear understanding of certain laws of nature and society. We have to accept that both nature and society have worked according to these laws to enable us to get the idea of this so called 'freedom'. So the pursuit of the baby’s interests should not turn us blind to the interests of the mother.

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Why does truth pinch most of the time? Simple, because it is no chocolate, sugar candy or mellowable sweetie-pie lump of ice cream! It is a hard, sour, iron ball guys. It has pinching rough stony edges to its surface. Come into contact with them and they will take a few flakes from your skin leaving a red or purple bruise depending on the intensity of truth contained in it. Now the question arises, 'Why does it almost always leave a grimace on our face instead of a smile?' The simple fact that all of us almost always rub cold shoulders against this ironed ball having thorns for our soft skin, proves one fact: that we are not subjectively inclined to accept the objective reality as it stands in abstract. But doesn’t it mean that we have moved poles apart from truth and its manifestations while going on the path of individual and collective improvisations at the subjective level. May be the reason for our success in emerging at the top of the food chain in the game of 'survival of the fittest' is that we have institutionalised ourselves to negate and defy, and do without, certain basic truths that form the core of creation and nature. Nothing wrong with that! It, however, is paradoxical that most of these scions of truth--against which we have always been taking cudgels--form the core of our moral, humanistic, religious, spiritual and aesthetic vision enshrined in preach books. Strange!

A Half House

The dying year had inaudibly moaned in the clatter and chatter of the New Year Eve’s celebrations:

You salute the rising sun and the upcoming fates,

And dump the rest as mere names and dates.

But my burdened self on death bed (or in labour pain?) sighs,

'Dears, you forget those fallen promises amidst these hasty byes!'

 

But there were not too many takers for the dying year’s hymn, the soon-to-be-past calendar entry and swiftly it was January 1.

The crowded was intoxicated by a promising future:

This foggy, cold midnight says,

The next sun will have fresh rays

that will warmly gloat over the wrong shades

bitingly, filthily draped around the beleaguered, beggared, deprived mass of flesh,

Tomorrow it just won't be mere trash!

A beginning it will be, all new and fresh!

The New Year had struck its first second on an exceptionally foggy and cold night. The drunken revellers around India Gate had enough of shouting, blabbering, clamouring, jostling and even dancing to have their share of forced fun under the dimmed yellow glaze of mercury lights. It was young India, metropolitan India, celebrating the New Year eve with the enthusiasm and expertise of the Western world. The motley mix of crowd was singing a welcoming hymn for the arrival of the New Year. They also said a hasty goodbye to the year that was just gone. Premature welcome notes and hasty obituaries are seldom feasible. But human frailty rarely takes on the feasible things by instinct because unfeasible things appear too common; and feasibility teases with its daunting impracticality. The year that was gone did not matter much now; the year that had taken birth meant everything to everybody. Lost in the boom and bang of welcoming festivities, nobody appeared to pray for the dying year. We rejuvenate and kill our time; we do the both. All energies and intentions focussed now on enlivening a fresh time. There were but some souls that were trying to recall how much she or he was to be blamed for the past year’s death. Even in this little group there was still some exceptional soul or couple of souls at the most who still carried lifeful memories, all fresh and alive, of the last year. The last one or two such odd people did so because the present might have appeared too gloomy to them to participate in the futuristic revellery.

She stood alone in the crowd, looking more backwards unlike the rushing forth, firecracking stampede around her. Like any other young girl enjoying the freedom in the crowd, she had tried her best to sway to the exhilarating tunes of the time. She was beautiful, tall, slim and dove-eyed with Kohl in her eyes, a presentable replica of the famed Bengali beauty, much in demand and taste in Delhi. She had manners, culture, custom, education and a seductive nose ring to add to her interesting persona. She was a casual drinker but today she had not taken drink. She wanted to stay fully in senses to feel her situation as it should given her condition. She was both maker and the breaker of the self. She had this realisation and appeared ready to accept all the good and the bad that life offered her now. She had had her decent share of fun and education at the JNU, the prestigious institution where taboos do not subdue basic instincts and the young souls unyoked from blindfolding curiosities about the opposite sex have full enjoyment and lofty education. Now on this densely foggy cold night, she seemed more to reflect back than looking forward to an interesting new year. One could easily see that she was terribly alone in the crowd. Leaving the pleasantly agitated crowed, looking almost without any tinkling in her heart at the firecrackers busting the foggy cloud, she silently left the place to reach her rented double roomed apartment.

When she reached her place, it very well appeared as an abode well suited to a married couple. An unknown person would have immediately dubbed it as the place--a sweet home--of a married couple. There were insignias of traditional cosy Indian domesticity. Yes it looked like a sweet home. The bed, the kitchen, the living room, the household items, everything gave full inkling of a happily married life. She had done her cultural and caring best in accumulating the vases, the colourful living room rugs, the sofa coverings, handcrafted cushion covers, aesthetic lampshades, attractive tapestries, the curtains, the artefacts in the showcase, the little study in a corner with books, etc. And the now redundant guitar! He liked playing guitar after his busy schedule as an economist with a big accountancy firm and she had gifted it on his birthday. It was a good one having taken her full month’s salary to bring a smile on his face.

All the stage and its setting appeared the handiwork of a wife rightfully decorating her home. She but was a girl, not a wife. The place was just double roomed house, not home. Now it was fractured to even lose its tiny house stature; it appeared just a half house and that too meshed up, like a storm had terribly jostled a nest in the high branches of a date palm, tearing away half the sinews, leaving behind a gaping hole. The man who had generated that wifely care in her, her live-in partner, her heartthrob from the JNU days, a Punjabi youth in excellent in debate and academics and much more in rugged looks, had vacated his share from her carefully woven family set-up. His family continuously insisted on getting him married in the traditional Indian manner to a Punjabi girl of more suitability. Like the famed educated Indians’ instincts to keep the both worlds to themselves, he had dilly dallied for three years—the time during which she brought the best out of her as a partner, as unofficial wife—and ultimately moved towards the family, the last year piling up more bitterness and fights, finally resulting in the little thing of the break-up. To her but it was more than a break-up. She had nurtured her domesticity like a perfect wife. She worked in the editorial department of an academic publisher, came back all tired up after the head-eating work on manuscripts, cooked delicious food and kept home like any traditional Indian working woman does. Her domesticity, her little world but was not safe. After all, there are always all types of odds against the live-in relationships.

She had felt that vacuum building in him. She had tried to be more affectionate, more caring, tried her best to pour the last bit of her physical charm during their lovemaking, but all these alibis irritate a man who has decided to look the other way, who is just looking to justify his decision to separate. The more she tried, the more it created issues. After that he had started shouting more and more over more and more little issues. She was having palpitations about the impending disaster. She knew she was fighting a losing battle. She but loved him, and hated him for his slippery convictions, and as a last ditch effort had forced him into sex—which had become a rarity for the last few months and occurred only of her initiative—even though he was still ranting about a trivial issue. She had hoped to douse the storm of his anger in the feminine folds of her receptivity. But it had been all of a punishment and nothing of lovemaking. The very next day he had left while she was in her office. When she came back it was a house that had been hit by a storm, too shocked to feel the pain she just collected her leftovers. There were vestiges of the past they shared. In the pair of bathroom slippers, in old trackpants, t-shirts left behind perhaps with the instinct that it was her duty to put away the garbage things. There were many things left behind, most of these being of no use to him anymore, including she.    

She could not sleep once back in her broken nest and just dumped herself in the rocking chair where he did the same during the happy times. She just vacantly stared at the scores of artistic souvenirs they had exchanged as replica of their love. The first day of the year opened its eyes outside and she fell into a tired doze of sleep for an hour and got up with a shudder. Getting afraid of her pathetically brooding and suffering self, she realised a modern self-standing girl was not supposed to be broken like this. It was a presumption. A difficult concept to hang onto at this moment, but she forced herself into believing this. It was a fresh day, first day of the year. Like sun was struggling to cast its first ray behind the fog, she struggled to force a ray of normalcy into her life.

Being normal means having breakfast, she realised. Habitually she went to make the toast like he liked it, realised with a shudder that he wasn’t around, tuned herself to make it the way she liked, ate without much thoughts, mechanically. She was but eating her own bits of individuality to help her rise on her feet. And she did rise. She had to move ahead and for that at least today she needed to be outside to discover herself, to find a little purpose to cling onto. She needed a foothold to keep at least hanging down the cliff and not fall into the painful depth. She just left home, aimless, destinationless; just to go through Delhi. The idea just caught her in the fall from the precipice and she found sympathy and solace in Delhi, the good bad Delhi that had made her and broken her. The same Delhi was beckoning her.

   

Walking through a poor locality in Delhi was revealing. Bigger miseries perhaps make you cope with your own cuts a bit better. A little kid aged barely seven or eight came pulling a rickshaw carrier. It was loaded with empty plastic cans and the lad was just going almost half way down on each side to complete the paddling circle. More child self-bread earners washing dirty plates by a kulche stall. So early in the morning and instead of getting breakfast before going to school they were earning their own survival tit-bits. Littlest of children taking a bath at a public tap after the late night stint at the eating point where the midnight revellers had left a trail of dumped sorrows and excreted pleasantries. Childhood almost withered in them. These were the men boys. Getting their skins hardened with antisocial strains; fed by the scorns and abuses of their merciless masters. Well Delhi has so much to cheer about, but far more to ponder about sadly.

She had always nonchalantly passed by this side of Delhi, like any other self-possessed educated better placed youngster in Delhi. With a wounded self, she felt their pitiable condition now. She had received some calls from a woman from an NGO working to educate poorest of the poor. ‘Ma’am please sponsor a child’s education! Please help us nurture a future!’ the lady would almost plead and she politely, trying her level best to subdue irritation would always say no. After all the NGO sector in India has been maligned by the mandarins who carry out business like any other profession in name of charities, funds, donations and what not. She could very well recall the lady telling her that they would share all the details including the family photo of the child getting education with the help of her charity. She saw a tiny bit of purpose in like: To help a poor child in getting education. She resolved to call back the lady as soon as possible; surely today afternoon only. From being almost a dead log of wood, immediately she felt like taking a course, a bit more control of herself.

A cow—dung-smeared and fed on garbage diet, lip-serviced worship and myth—was busy eating the stenchful muck of a colony’s garbage house. Deprived of the entire mythical aura it appeared a big pig just munching the leftovers. A well-off gentleman stopped his car, pulled out a chapatti, offered it to the humble and forgiving creature and fulfilling his quota of religiosity and grabbing his share of blessings sped away. Hats off holy mother! Even though we have forced you to eat garbage, you still give us a chance to fulfil our fleeting religious duties. She stopped by the cow. A beautiful girl standing by a pitiable cow at the garbage house. A few people even stopped to watch this odd spectacle. She felt the cow’s woes. The famed animal in Hindu mythology, the beholder of Hindu pride, the catcher of Hindu votes in communal politics, and who cares really whether it eats excreta-smitten vegetable leftovers tied in a ploy bag. She had always felt deadly scared of the stray cattle. Under the surge of sympathy and pity, the fear took a back seat. She approached the dust-binned holy mother as another wronged person. Her presence was unnervingly clean, perfumed and scented. Even at her uncaring worst she appeared clean and polished in her most casual dress. For the first time in her life she touched a cow. She touched its head. The cow seemed to look around for some offering, the holy beggar. But her touch was even more gratifying. Their eyes met. Hers sleepless and dreamy without Kohl. He had always told her that she looks a sleepy goddess without the kajal. The cow’s forgiving, forgetting, mellifluous dark pair gazed into her painful self. Their sorrows met, melted, and soothed each other. She just kept on caressing the dark grey head raised before her. She had tears. Possibly the cow had even bigger tears. She saw the dirty trail of eye secretion down the corner of the animal’s eyes. A trail of sorrows born of the cocktail of myth, legend and religion. The Muslims would very much like to eat beef; the Hindus on the other hand want her to live eternally even if it meant living alongside a pig in the gutters.  

The mundane realities of a still more common world had taken her in their strides. She just boarded any one of the buses to any of the places in Delhi. A poor man’s daughter, beautiful in her own way, was singing in the bus. The slate pieces tucked in her fingers chimed with melody as she sang a beautiful melancholic Rajasthani gypsy song. When it came to rewards, the peoples’ reaction made it appear like she was begging. She felt the badness of this world: A girl, an artist, a poor man’s daughter singing amidst a crowd of the relatively well off citizens and they just taking her to be a beggar only who asked for unearned money. She had seen many such spectacles in Delhi and these did not mean much to her like they do not to any of the better placed people around. After her performance, the girl walked down to gather coins. Literally everybody seemed to have enjoyed her song, but almost nobody seemed eager to give a coin. ‘We do not support beggary,’ they famously chime. The child artist’s little bowl having a few coins reached her seat. Today she had the heart and time to feel the beauty of the act. ‘The act was better than many of the cinematic bullshits that she watched in multiplexes at the cost of many hundreds,’ she realised. Without listening to any nay-saying calculations by her smart brain, she felt her hand going into her wallet and a 500 rupees bill fell weightier than any coin into the bowl. Many eyes turned towards her and took her to be a mad person. ‘What has happened to this girl,’ somebody muttered. ‘What has happened to me! I have felt the pain that you do not!’ she shouted to everybody and nobody. They were shut off at her revolt. The little girl artist touched her feet. She smiled at the tiny figure and put her hand on the little head. A pair of eyes smiled most genuinely at her.

The bus was plying over the Yamuna. ‘We are the polluters. Just see the rivers of kaliyuga we create. The poison, black, muddy, slithery, foul-smelling monster creeping into the guts of our holy rivers! Where is Yamuna? No it’s not here! We have killed it,’ she could not help ignore the pathetically suffering sewage moans of the dead Yamuna. There had been so many joyrides in his car earlier, over this very bridge, over the same suffering Yamuna. She had never seen Yamuna like this. Yamuna to her like most of us flowed uncomplainingly carrying its load of shit and myth. She cast a glance at the vast stretches. The riverbed was dry, just two black rivulets serpented across the sands like a snake couple carrying poison and fanged proximity. It was a deplorable sight, the suffering, stinking Yamuna. It was a stinking hell, undoubtedly. She had a look of sympathy for the poor Yamuna. It appeared just a big drain of mucking filth and sewage. During the Monsoon, the rains kiss its dirty, pugnacious, purple-faced layer and provide the facepack, the nutritious sandy waters from the hills. For a brief time Yamuna captures back its riveting river glory. A new avatar, Yamuna the holy river, but for how long? Just for a couple month at the most! After that it’s again the same sad drainage. The name but prevails; from the road and railway bridges people throw coins. It blesses them, or at least they feel blessed by the uncomplaining mother, all forgiving, all pious. ‘Jai Jamuna mai!’ a very old hand put all life force to toss a coin into the beggary Yamuna’s bowl, starved of reverence, starved of rains, full of sewage. The Bihari beggar lady balanced herself in the fraction of a second as she stole a Namaste to the river and nearly avoided a fall on the bus conductor who immediately demanded money for the ride in the bus. The woman just had a toothless sheepish grin to give him and he retorted, ‘You have money to throw in the river and you do not have for buying a ticket!’ It was a whiplashing reprimand. Before he could carry on with his rant, the young single woman rose from her seat and bought a ticket for the old woman.

She was seeing across the gloom inside her. There are many things to look around your feet when the bigger world above your head loses its meaning temporarily. The sun had also partially succeeded in cutting across the foggy facade. It was a silvery noon having some vestiges of the dark cold night. But it appeared more optimistic for the sun might smile any moment.

A Walk over the Peanut Husks

The month of December in Delhi is not just about aggravating respiratory symptoms and phlegmatic fountains, it is also about peanuts, the poor man’s almond. Sonia-push-pulled-drawn-rolled UPA 2 has been enjoying power for the last six months. For the year 2009 just a week left to survive with its bag of good and bad. The Prime-Minister-in-Waiting having failed twice, there is high chance he might never fulfil his dream. Much as Advani might try to keep himself physically fit in his eighties, to survive, to keep his dream alive; it’s Manmohan the mask man who wields power for Sonia, his face remaining the same despite all criticisms and loads of insults in the media. More than governing they seem to be grooming Rahul for the chair sometime in the future: The aristocracy surviving in its 21^st century avatar in the world’s largest democracy.

The road-spitters, peanut-munchers and hunched-defecators have given the motley mix of ideologies embaled in the box of pseudo-secularism another chance to rule their destinies. The UPA gang clamours too loudly, ‘Wolf, wolf! It will tear you apart. The atrocities will surpass even Hitler’s genocide.’ So they stay away from the wolf and take shelter with the non-wolf, which has no teeth to bite, but enough brains to plunder public resources unprecedently. Its constituents having come to an agreement not to block anybody’s progress to get more zeroes at the end of their Swiss bank accounts.   

The grand old man of contemporary politics stands robbed of his chance to rule India. Even in his milder avatar, begotten after praising Jinnah, he is not acceptable. Muslims wouldn’t accept the BJPwallah even if he reads kalima and turns Muslims himself; and Hindus do not like this curious unrecognisable mixture of saffron and green. So the grand old man, with Hitler’s whiter version of his moustache, harbinger of a not so bloody revolution, a milder one and acceptable as per the national and international standards, stands mute and meek. Not caring much about a Muslim bullet, he seems more scared of a knee-rattling hit by the stick held by Khakhi-shorts-clad angry persona.

The RSS will not spare him and let him go unpunished. He has to put his claim down; they might go for a better choice now to fit their dream of a nationalistic, resurgent India. However the pain of the patriarch bowing out is overshadowed by the symbolism of a concept: The concept of being democratic in its management. There is a contrast. The fissure between the BJP and the Congress. There are more democratic traces in the former’s mode of operation. The latter just clinging to a particular family, and the former putting down a patriarch who almost singlehandedly formulated the present avatar of the big national party. All its ideological designs still under the carpet, but at least in letter the BJP seems to have paid a huge respect to the Indian masses by asking Advani to go. Can the Congress do the same to the Gandhi-Nehru family if they also fail twice consequently?

The Congress begins and ends with the famed foremost political family of India. The Nehru family is virtually the definition of Congress. Peoples’ emotions have been put on a stranglehold by erecting a well-functioning system of loyalists ever-oiling the causes of the first political family. Accept it or not, it’s impossible to think of Congress without the Gandhi-Nehru clan. What Advani did for the resurgence of the BJP was no way short of Nehru’s efforts to make Congress a family set-up post independence. As far as the efforts are concerned Advani has been as great as Nehru in erecting a national level political structure. But still when it comes to the BJP, it’s possible to smell its chances beyond the Advani clan. It can be drawn as a positive for the Indian democracy. Now the issue just trickles to the question, is it possible to imagine the same fate for the Gandhis? Not as long as the Congress we are acquainted with!

The Spitting Phlegmatic World

December is very cold in Delhi. Smog grips life frigidly. There is enough pollution and traffic to create serious trouble to old lungs, coughing asthmatic creatures. In any case Indians are world famous in leaving an endless unbroken spit chain on the sidewalks, hedges, walls, pillars, roads, anywhere, even on the passersby many a time. Summer spit is relatively tolerable, a silvery gob having numerous little bubbles, saliva trails, almost innocuous, at least you have to convince yourself as you struggle to avoid the spit mines, only to fail. People do it with relish, the art of spitting. During winters but it becomes obnoxious. Lungs get affected. Spit turns phlegm now, terrible looking, dense, yellow, puke inducing. You have to save your footwear at any cost. More pollution, more smoke, more phlegm.

There are rag-picking urchins, who roam around, very tiny, faceless, almost unnamed. They let out a seasoned jet stream of spit that lands at quite a distance. Sometimes they even spit from an unseen distance at the nice shirts of the more privileged ones. This mischief, this grudge, some criminality in its womb, in a tiny heart and tinier mind in tiniest body. Dangerous probabilities, at least for the higher society. There are very old figures. Lying hidden in a sack. You do not know whether it contains a dead body or a live human being. The suspense is over; a terribly old, dishevelled head of a scary skeleton of a female comes out to have its share of spitting. Not enough throwing power in the lungs, it trickles down, the saliva and phlegm. Hangs down and tries to claim its share of earth. The spitting children; the spitting old woman. One almost recently born; the other about to die on any of these cold nights. We need special care as we enter and fade out of life. Generally kids have parents to protect them from all dangers. These kids do not have anybody to bring them into shape like a pot-maker shapes his earthenware. The elders are supposed to be in the same safe hands as they fade out of life. Kids and elders are the same: To be pampered, to be protected. This spitting world is a different one though. Careless, roofless, unprotected, they just spit, sometimes even more venomously than a Cobra.   

The dirtier blame game to clean the dirt is on somewhere far away in better environs.  Copenhagen Summit on Climate Change, 2009 is busy bookishly as a political tug of war between the developing and the developed world. Anyway the issue is just fit for politics because we have done irreversible damage to the environment. Let them just accuse each other now. Things will never be the same. We are up for nasty times! Our best of sincerity is just not enough to undo the blind massacre of the environmental systems for the last few centuries.

The fate of the air for their lungs being decided on another continent, five labourers get into the brand new AC DTC bus, red coloured, low-floored, swanky interiors to stamp India’s progress. It has been a mistake on their part. It’s damn costly, the ride. To make it more intolerable there is no open window to allow them to spit out their revolting miseries. So they have to retain gutka, tobacco and beetle nut stuffed in their mouths, like they keep their miseries in slums stuffed in their souls. ‘Didn’t you know the fair,’ the conductor reprimands them as they stand shell-shocked after getting the figure. It is INR 125 to the destination—almost equal to a full day wage earned by each of them. Pain is evident on their faces. To make it more painful, they cannot even spit. Bloody thing is sealed to keep the interiors warm. They feel the hot air gushing out of the air-holes along the sides. It is a bit comforting; they seek solace in it.

Neither in a position to go back (because so many eyes are expectantly ogling them for their next move) nor able to stand there because of the economic pinch of the mishap, they just stand there trying to come to terms with the reality. And even deprived of their poor man’s right to spin anywhere! ‘At least there is some space to stand comfortably and reach the workplace without much pains! And also the warm air,’ they appear calculating the takeaways for the many bucks gone from their pockets. They should know that it’s a very costly bus, costing 5.5 million rupees. So they should contribute. They should feel proud that they are giving the largest chunk of their salary to the Delhi Government.  

Now that unprecedentedly high living costs are eating into the meagre salaries of the labourers in Delhi, isn’t it suitable that they move to smaller cities to give bigger chances to their tiny dreams? Some voice of sanity should convince them to go for this option. Instead of rotting like garbage items, they ought to fight it out in smaller towns and cities. Delhi is too big now, and equally bad. Just see the countless humans lying around even more worthlessly than the garbage dumps! Let the big people enjoy the polluted, vitiated air in the national capital. Poor people, let us just go back to our roots!