Extraordinary in the ordinary

Ordinary beings possess extraordinary potential to win against odds, to jump over hurdles, to smile over tears, and, most importantly, to be happy when there aren’t enough reasons to be. They are the faceless constituents of a massive commonality. They are surrounded by a swiping generality. They are coloured in the monochromes of mundane reality. Still they are special. We have to acknowledge and celebrate the extraordinary in the ordinary people. I see heroes and heroines in my simple characters. They fight, and oftentimes fail, but write a little passage in the infinite book of life: an ordinary life that was lived substantially. On the small stage of life, they live very intensely. Somehow, the world would not be the world that is still beautiful without their contribution. They heave humanity onwards in its march to some better destination.  

A Girl’s Dream; A Woman’s Nightmare

She had grown liking him. He as the chocolate boy of Bollywood was her first crush as the rosebud of her feminine self blossomed to womanish likes, dislikes and desires through her teens. Her school and later college friends teased her about this unachievable ‘boyfriend’. She herself took it to be the first love, not just a crush. In her room any other picture or wall adoring had to fight for a tiny inch square of space as Aamir’s seductive gaze peeped from different angles, in different moods and different surroundings.

As a teenager, growing up in Delhi she had all the fancy possible to a teenaged self for the good-looking Khan. Day in and day out she pined for him as the prince-charming wooed not so good-looking heroines, but luckier than her, in romantic, sashaying, melodious stories. So many times the girl in her visualised herself as the heroine dreamily courted by the charming heartthrob. The infatuation was to the extent of convincing her that it was pure love and she could not so much as fall in real love with any of the eligible guys around on the Delhi University campus.

While the innocent feminine bud was blossoming in her teenaged self, she had liked and appreciated each and every movie the actor churned out. As she lit up as a full woman she turned out to be remarkably confident. She could speak and express her opinions pretty eloquently. She was beautiful, young, outgoing, all the necessary ingredients for a student politician. As the ABVP presidential candidate in DUSU elections she created ripples and brainstormed the other opponents with her charming persona and won the election. Even the senior leadership in the BJP took notice of this next generation political crop that would carry the saffron flag ahead on the political path to make India a developed Hindu Rasthra.

Practical life is far away, beyond and beneath the innocent, selfless cooings of adolescence. The girl who loved Aamir for his any type of role in any movie was now a practical woman who praised his performance in some selected movies. She was reserved now in her praise of the actor, even in intimate conversation with former college friends. She now formally appreciated the crusading police officer in Sarfarosh, ferociously nationalistic Mangal Pandey in Mangal Pandey: The Rising, and the cricketer peasant in Lagaan who valiantly fought with rustic wooden bat to beat the Englishman blue with his Hindustani determination.

Her oratory, charm and enthusiasm were sufficient to get her a contesting ticket by the BJP in the 2015 Delhi assembly elections. As Kejriwal’s symbolic Tsunami coasted to an unprecedented political catastrophe for the ruling party at the centre, she also lost. It was a massive dent on her young political self. She knew a major chunk in her constituency comprised Muslim votes. They must have gone 100 percent against her. She was becoming more nationalistic, but she was becoming anti-Islamic in equal proportions.

As the autumn of 2015 arrived to drizzle down pale leaves off the branches, the art and literature tree of India also seemed ready to shed its extra burden. It was no spring, no fruition, but it thought of doing its duty for the safety of the nation under the BJP government. Even though there were cool, sunny days of earlier, the tree got panicked of the impending storm of ‘intolerance’. It shed many trophies hanging from its secular branches. It was doing its duty to save the nation. Writers and artists were herding to return their awards. People just looked around to find any type of damage done by the storm. But nothing had changed. It looked the same. The very same India. The writers and artists said they were protesting against the malice in ‘their’ hearts. Elsewhere the world became still unsafe and more violent as the ISIS and western powers got embroiled in a bloody game to turn common man’s life hell. At the start of the last week of November in Delhi, the winter was creeping up inevitably amidst all talks of the intellectuals and artists harking too much of ‘intolerance’ and the common man trying to peek through the smog to find out the devastation wreaked by the storm. But it was the same polluted, smoggy air in Delhi and elsewhere. India had not changed. It was the same India again. Then Aamir Khan jumped into the bandwagon. He threw a googlie. He added weight to the scared guild of writers and artists.

She was furious about the statement. As an exception as a good looking young female politician, she had hundred thousand plus followers on twitter. Aamir had turned villain overnight. And to her more so. Beyond political posturing, she was offended at the level of a common, nameless and religionless fan who had made Aamir the star that he was. She tweeted her blog link to the effect:           

When Aamir Khan says he and his wife get scared for the safety of their children, it's like somebody travelling in a cruise liner coursing through the safest waters and getting on the sun deck and instead of feeling blissful and obliged cries 'I am going to be drowned in the storm'. Meanwhile millions others are happily rocking their little boats to safety in the waters that are always risky for their little carriers because these are too mundane and small.

In a news channel in a debate among artists, and rightist, centralist and leftist politicians, she was almost shaking with anger. Her voice audible over the dissenting Congress spokesman:

So the illustrious superstar's Hindu wife is scared for her kids! We the audience, who have made her husband a superstar, deserve a chance to know exactly the reasons that scared her out of guts and run for asylum. We want to know the specifics. The star couple has to clarify:

How many threatening calls they received?

How many trishul wielding sadhus were found chasing their kids being carried in a secure SUV and having armed bodyguards?

How many naughty kids in their class jeered at them for having a Muslim father?

How many directors and producers denied Aamir a cast for being a Muslim?

How many times the Muslim superstar's wife was chased out of a mall for bringing shame to the Hindu nation?

How many times they were harassed by the 'agencies' on flimsy grounds.

Alas there is no answer to these questions. There would have been multiple answers to these questions had Aamir been in a Muslim state. This is incredible India. His poorly calculated political statement exposes him as a man who looks at society through religious glasses.

At one point, she got so hyper to shut off all dissenting voices in the studio to stare straight at the screen and ask it straight from the actor, who might be watching the prime time debate or may watch later if it got into gossips with its sledge hammering affects. With her nostrils flared up like a wounded woman whose man had been caught erring, she addressed invisible Aamir: 

Dear Aamir, we as the people who made you a star at the cost of our time and money just ask you a question. Are millions of applauds and claps and heartfelt appreciation by Indians, just as Indians and not as Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs and Christians, fall short of keeping you happy and safe in India against fake innocuous media posturing by certain individuals? Even you know what you said was anything but reality. You said it on political grounds. But do you even know what sense of insecurity it will fuel in the minority community. The minority communities are already unjustifiably on the back-foot psychologically because of genocidal fee-faw scenarios forecasted by the pseudo-secularists in the country who use this fear to catch their votes. You have been an entertainer. Why did you turn a politician suddenly and started making one section of people scared and the other section angry?

But she forgot that even the fan in her turned a politician now and was looking at the adorable star with blurred judgmental eyes. Her anti-Aamir tirade went on for a week. In an interview to a news magazine, she carried her fight against the off-hand remark by the actor:

Steeped in super-stardom, cocooned in super-luxury, safe in the safest of a palace, guarded uncommonly by law and own bodyguards, if Aamir's proxy concern through his Hindu wife for the safety of his children stands even a chit of logic, then millions of unprotected children of poor Muslim parents would have come under untold and unparalleled atrocities so far. Has something that drastic happened in India, except jingoistic posturing of pseudo-secularist people making fake noises? If that shakes the superstar's palace and convictions to the extent of him feeling like leaving the country, then shame on we the audience who made such a common persona a superstar. He should ask Tasleema Nasreen and Salman Rushdie what it means to feel threatened on religious grounds!

Her political mentor, a senior politician in the BJP at the central level was telling her. His words boosting her sagging morale. She was his fan now. He was saying:

India is tolerant as long as a billion people, brought up on pseudo-secular diet for six decades by the Congress government, stay nonchalant and ignore the birthplace of the supreme beholder of their faith. And when they clamour for a simple desire to built a monument at the most important place in their religiosity, this simple innocuous wish that gets manifested everywhere in the world in the form of altars and monuments ranging from Mecca to African jungles, comes to degrade India as an intolerant nation.

Times change, so do we with our changing tastes, likes and dislikes. We sometimes totally turn our back to the past, even when there are such little grounds to do so.

More Ordinary than the Common Most

Do you still remember that guy in The Broken Dream?!

Well, he was now trying to forge an identity on the anvil of the corporate sector with the crude and heavy hammer of hard work, little realising that this was urban India, polished, smart, suave, not his countryside where things were as they appeared on the face value, good or bad. Here it was all about smartness: a shrewd, clever mentality and attitude that you naturally acquire when part of a massive crowd struggling to survive in cramped spaces and always falling short opportunities. And naturally you take fellow human beings as rivals only; it is difficult to think otherwise. There is cut-throat competition and you need smart, light, sharp chisels hidden in your pocket to work less and plan and strategise more. Here you have to wear the mask of extreme politeness to prove your education and civilised status, even though that very moment the second layer of your skin might be demonically on fire. However, true to his straightforward convictions he spent much of the times on his desk, from dawn to dusk, lost in the perseverance of the soul, while many suspicious eyes took breaks to look over his back, their eyes full of insecurity and mistrust.

Having slipped from the summit where he was just about to put his triumphant flag when the strong uncontrollable blizzard just saw him toppling down the treacherous slope, he had somehow managed to hold onto this tree jutting out the precipice. It was just instinctive reaction to survive. He knew he had to earn his bread and butter and of course there were many eyes on him still trying to find out how he would act now. When he started his climb again, already on the wrong side of age to build up a career in academic publishing, he saw many already in senior managerial positions even though they must not have read and experienced even a quarter of what he had learnt from both in books and the overall open book of life. And wherever he landed up with his ambitionless self carried by unassuming persona, full of cemented ideas and many brimming convictions, his heart full of the miseries, and mind stuck up to just the job, he left a mark, and his presence was felt a bit more disturbingly than  it should to ensure a safe journey through the corporate corridors.    

After his selection to the state civil services he was once happily packing his common stuff to join the duties of Subdivisional Magistrate when the Congress Chief Minister of Haryana had got loose motions over this tiny 'coming to power' and used all his majestic powers to piss at the hard work of all his poor batchmates. They had every reason to take themselves to be the first-hand witness to all the ‘Congreslike’ corrupt ways, as they termed it suffering in helpless cynicism, of judicial manipulation. With the pieces of his broken dream in his pocket, he had then come to Delhi to earn his livelihood in the ruff-and-gruff of the private sector. He had started to drink, to create that hallucinated reality wherein the things which really pinch otherwise took a backseat and many pseudo-realities came to the forefront with their trivial convenience, to stop the time at a juncture where the past’s pines, present’s pinches and future’s insecurities melted into a strange ennui. He would continuously blabber, ‘Lo! Hee…hee Gandhi-Nehru geenies would not leave me in peace!’ A common man wants to have extraordinary reasons for his downfall. If defeat be, let it be at the hands of the strong and the mighty. It still somehow gives him a pat on the back gesticulating that it was no common fight, it was a good one and you were pitted against the strong and the mighty.

Even though it was pretty coincidental, but it affected him a lot, taking a flake off the purple crust of his wound. His hard innings in the publishing office had just started, leaving him just a small time, nameless, powerless slogger on the editing desk. He literally cried once during the weekend drinking binge, ‘They have robbed me of my soul’s labour of ten years...these...ugh...Congress pimps of criminality!’ And somebody whom he did not know, and not having anything to do particularly, having a Congress flag on his office and house nearby where he had taken his rented accommodation, had turned out to be his enemy, as if the latter had heard his outpours. Why did this stranger whom he had not even seen turn out to be his enemy? He was his landlord's enemy yaar! So the influential Congressite took revenges by forcing down nails into the new tyres of his old car. He got it done to anybody and anything that was apparently related positively to the enemy. It was quite individual, general level action, reaction or whatever, but he as the oversensitive victim took it personally, and very-very particularly. ‘...Congress....you just make a staunch anti-national element in me! Guys please throw these goons out of power because if they get another chance, I fear this law-abiding common citizen of India will end up as a terrorist! So save country, save humanity and save this common man! Pleeeeaaasssseee!!’ After all the new tyres from an editor’s salary are more precious than they actually should, but that’s how it was and it took him into a furnace of rage.

He was trying his level best to come to the terms of a reality that he had not even considered as the worst case scenario; his worst case scene having been the PCS if not the IAS. An editor on the other hand is almost nameless and faceless among the tomes of proofs and manuscripts at various stages. On top of that it is like walking on the razor’s edge, you just cannot afford not to make a mistake. The world is yet to see the first perfect editor. On top of that it was academic publishing, the crazy professors taking slingshots and still it paid like pocket money. The world was changing very fast around him. People were getting unimaginably high salaries around him, and these were the students who had looked up to him as inspiration. He had even instructed them proudly so many times. It looked a still bigger failure, or fall rather, against the background of these pinching facts. Bigger fall, he read bigger causes. Oofs look at the frustrated common man’s cynicism born of little-little defeats and falls that he pours out ineffectively from the little personal stage, namelessly and facelessly. Psst just storms in the tea cups! 

Corporate career is great. It keeps you on the razor's edge. He liked the innings to begin with. He worked harder than required in fact. He felt the pleasure of learning as he was forced to grow his skills at all levels. But it’s dissipating as well. It saps you in the long run. He felt this dissipation while coming back at the end of a tiresome day in office. ‘So it’s always advisable to slowly built an alternate pedestal in the medium term--say for the next 5 to 10 years--so that when things get too hot in your present position you can easily jump onto that one.’ Given the heat and attrition felt in the smouldering issues he was already having some inhibitions about the long-term survival in such an environment, especially if one is just equipped with simply one visible weapon, the hard work. He had the faint idea what it can be about. ‘This new platform can be based on the real passion.’ So while he was toiling it out against his real interests, he avoided getting frustrated with the solacing thought that it was just a temporary effort to create a bit more stable platform to jump bigger into the space that would justify his talents, skills, sincerity and calibre.

He had to convince himself to stay on the mundane path, slogging at a job that was almost incomparable to what he had achieved in the PCS. He forced himself to forget that his magisterial chair had been unjustifiably snatched away and he had been made to sit on a chair where anybody decently educated to the postgraduate level could have sit without all the hard work he himself had gone through. He forced himself to take it as a sort of investment for the future. He was trying his level best to cling to his dream; to keep it alive; to slowly and systematically chalk out a medium term plan; to invest time and money in moderate amounts and when the things were ripe jump onto the platform that he deserved. All this was easier said than done. His father who always supported all his actions, ranging from follies to the best ones, felt the pinch of seeing him slogging it out at a level where he would have reached in any case even without all the penance he had done. His father’s health was falling and so the necessity was even more to stay in the job. The more he worked, the more number of projects he accomplished, almost mechanically, trying to forget his identity, just the work like any other pettily self-absorbed happy colleague around him, the more would cynicism strike back. Still he had to work. He had to forget that he would have been a red-beaconed officer, if not for that debacle, and again he would grumble from the safe hideout in his rented room. 

Having burnt and baked well in the furnace of knowledge and experience he spoke and acted impressively and that would instantly create ripples in the senior’s mind because in his flashes of brilliance he very much appeared like a replacement for the senior position. A talented junior having the conviction that he is surviving in the job on the basis of hard work not the senior’s goodwill, very easily becomes an eyesore to the boss. Of all the sectors in the private industry, publishing is lucky or unlucky to have all the highly qualified, educated, bookish-type big-dream-holders of the past who carry a bitter cynicism in their wounded selves, having failed to achieve their dreams. When you re-build your innings from the scattered pieces of the original dream, having full knowledge that the new one is going to be just a mundane dream like any other lying unrecognised in the society, almost of the level achieved by even those commonest souls who in fact never had the urge to build any dream but still reached that milestone just like it was the most natural thing for somebody human, from the mere status of being human, you feel the pinch man. You still try to justify your struggle, you still want to fight to forge a bit less common identity and having failed to do even that, a cynicism creeps in you. The very same happens to this class of highly educated people forced to survive in the editorial departments. Editing is very rarely the first career option for any young soul. It is mostly a fall back, almost a contingency plan, an effort to carve out bread and butter when all other options given your educations and skills are spent. So the people in the editorial departments are the wounded soldiers. They have the mind and education still nudging and aggravating the bitterness forcing them to almost misuse it to pamper their distrust and slain ego and cut any bud of a prospective rivalry to their hard-fought managership.

Across all the companies he worked for he found himself surrounded by insecure colleagues who more so pampered the boss as more and more of their deficiencies would come to surface in comparison to his soul-absorbed hard work. He was after all from an educated peasant family, and hence hard work came naturally to him. But considering their natural right to be more educated, well-mannered and better polished they parroted their excellence in terms of smart work in comparison to his mere hard work. Now he could never find out the riddle of this smart work. If there is a script full of errors needing corrections at many levels more than one to just make it a decent book, where you just have to follow the basics, if doing even that comes to be counted as hard work only, then he always spat hell on the so called smart work. Smart work to him came to be this: Appearing far more sophisticated than you actually are; appearing to be more busy than you actually accomplish; managing things in a politically correct way not to create insecurity in the erring boss; instead of taking the project to a smooth finish, creating issues that would apparently need extraordinary solutions, taking more time and projecting light on you that you did a very tough project; to manage to appear a not-so-smart subordinate who appears to survive on the superior’s kindness not the hard work, etc., etc. What the hell, where do all these gems of smart work help in turning a horribly messed up piece of writing to a presentable book. He would just give his best shot in accomplishing the worst of projects without allowing it to be taken as a tough project because there were no issues in it and of course it would naturally come to be counted a very common-type project. In any case he kept on hopping from one publishing house to another, hoping to find a better, less politicised environment, where there would be better bosses and colleagues. But it would never be because the same set of people staffed the offices in publishing. Go anywhere. All this while the feeling of what he could have been ...if not for ‘that’ debacle...kept on pinching him with bigger force.  

 

In one company he came across a brown-eyed human machine. A kashmiri pandit. He always told him ‘think more feel less’. A very practical advice but not for someone like him whose wound was a bit deeper leaving him oversensitive regarding his hardened convictions. Like any other oversensitive person trying to be the Phoenix he used to write poetry and to get into good books of the educated superior he showed it to the manager sometimes. The great practical man who had won a great career fight to emerge as victorious far away from guns in the valley told him that poetry is nothing but malady for the mind.

There was a very long-pending chemistry project. Many editors had got cold feet looking at the thousands of handwritten classroom type jottings with beetle nut and gutka spots sent by the eccentric professor. The manager smartly pampered his Jat ego, called him a Jat many times, to inflate the legendary pride that this community pumps up after being addressed as such. The Jat editor thus got ready to sacrifice his editorial blood for the Kashmiri manager, like many of his kinsmen were doing as real soldiers in the valley. For almost one year life meant just that project to him in all its forms. There were big stakes financially. It was for the IIT entrance exams and there were advance orders. Everybody knew something big was coming and even the CEO acknowledged the tireless worker sometime during the lunch hour. But then the group of smart workers was getting exposed in the light of such soulful, hard-worked assault on the editorial desk. There must have been many rounds of smart works involving poisoning ears. As he neared the finish line braving across the pining sands, the manager turned colours like a chameleon. He and the smart workers were pitted against the hard worker. More poisoning of ears by the cool arse, farting otherwise on the chairs. The manager hissed venomously like a kobra. He knew how to bite...instinctively like all the slithery reptiles of the species.

There was a new entrant, a friend and colleague of his from the previous company. A brilliant editor but extremely poor in selling his skills in the recruitment test involving verbal and the written sections. He even facilitated the answers to the questions that they asked in the recruitment process to enable his entry in the company. He just wanted a friend as his colleague again to make it more tolerable for him in the killing monotony of the work. Since his applicant friend did not have the capacity to present his skills smarty, he as the over-excited friend even talked many times to the manager to turn the tables in his friend’s favour. He was a friend indeed. He knew his friend was a peerless editor, but just for that little deficit in not being extrovert enough to sell it he needed this help. Great news, the friend was selected, even though just a year back he had been rejected in the previous attempt. This friend of his turned out to be smarter than he thought and pitched his loyalty for the manager and bargained his friendship to get long-term benefits for his family. Well, pardonable, no issues and no grudges! Basically we ought to think for the benefit of our own family first. Just to be human man! The manager must be having super-smartness to make him think more about a bright career and feel less about losing a friend.

As the manager played cat and mouse with him to draw him to the exit gate he wondered it was just impossible to come across a more spiteful person. In his weekend drunken outpours he forgot about the erring Congress now and had his helpless revenge in indoor cries, ‘You swine...It was simply my folly to expect a friendly kiss from a snake...the helpless creature is bound to bite only.’ He was so grossly mistreated by the said Kashmiri man that, well, he thought in his nightmares, if a community could give birth to even a single such human being then it’s better that Kashmiri pandits left Kashmir valley because it is too heavenly for such vindictive people. A wound direct to our own individual self can turn us against others’ collective wound. His typical Indian mind bound by parochial limits reacted like it does often times: we react and spit venom on the religious, caste and regional basis after getting hit in our individual man to man skirmishes. It’s so easy to generalise! Burning with anger and lynched with helpless agony, his year-long penance gone down the drain, he even nursed sympathy for the militants in Kashmir. ‘Kashmir valley is better without pandits!’ he tried to have his raging revenge by thinking as badly as possible. Almost all of us can be demons in thoughts, and we seek reasons for such demonic thoughts. He was such presently, all because of this man and his smart managership!

A Machiavellian manager believes in the principle 'the end justifies the means'. Very smartly such an individual follows the principle: 'I will do anything necessary to achieve my objectives.' Such a manager runs after this credo like fish swimming in the waters. With every breath he inhales the tendency to manipulate others and force them to perceive things in his terms. Utterly self-serving and duplicitous, the Machiavellian manager is made for success during these not-so-good times. The cold hard steely rationality in him reaches a peak to become almost amoral. Ever driven by these tendencies such a manager engages in more political behaviour than anyone around. The mind is always ticking to plan such schemes as will allow him to take advantage of others. Well, he could verify it from his personal experience. Each and every bit of this definition bespoke a thorough lynching by the Machiavellian hunter.

So this particular Machiavellian hunter was inherently spiteful, at least to him, simply because the junior did not seem appropriate for a peaceful future. Possibly he himself had the nastiest of communal experience in the valley when he had to leave home and hearth and rise like a Phoenix in Delhi again far away from the heaven here in the rut and grit of the maddening crowd. Whatever might have been the experiences, our experiences cannot overhaul the instinctive basics of life. All of us are good and bad as per our convenience. The manager must have had one million justifications for his actions that literally drove someone to madness. But full credit to his capabilities; his designs were just meant to achieve certain objectives like a computer.

As he gave him cuts after cuts, the poor to-be-slaughtered lamb wondered, ‘There is not the least bit of human element!’ Haa...haaa just visualise the keema being made of a soft flesh like him by such a heartless, stony juggernaut! Buddies, just count your stars lucky that there was just one such hunter playing all his cards in the basement corridors of the company where he had finally decided to retire from come whatever may. To the now gone numb guillotined editor, the superior’s eyes glinted with inhuman, brown, snaky predatorship. Those eyes now seemed to just monitoring the basement to strike poisonously at anything not matching his designs. God, this man's mind was ticking 24 hours a day to plot, plan and do away with everything to his dislike like weeds in a farm. Well, well, well... the manner this modern pseudo-chanakya was torturing the hapless editor and was plotting with such insidious finesse that the poor academic worm would have dropped his corrective pen to pick up a killing gun and join the jehadis in Kashmir! More than that such an individual might force you to pick up guns against the real you...the real good self...pump bullets into you softer flesh to become better equipped in surviving in the mud. After countless tortured days and endless gloomy nights while he futilely fought to save his job, working harder than ever, he was rapidly losing the last bits of confidence still fuelling his fight for bread and butter. If such a strong-willed person is hell bent upon pulling you down, it becomes a mere countdown leading to your crash in the gutters and it happened.

That feeling of victimisation, that pain of unjustified punishment, that fundamentally unreasonable logic of all the hard work going into the drain, and more importantly those who were already having a nice time, now getting even better enjoying the cool rewards of the project accomplished within a fortnight of his exit, all this and more drove him literally to insanity. Even what had happened to him in the civil services appeared nothing in comparison to this. There he was just a vague, faceless victim of the far bigger system; here he was direct victim of somebody’s ambition. For almost a month he was bedridden in a delirium, burning with impotent rage and resentment. It was a real loss. He felt like a goat killed in that halaal way, slowly-slowly put to death, to give more pain, for the taste and sadistic pleasure.

All of us would very much like to shoot off to glory like Phoenix from the ashes. But then we have our limitations. All of us cannot be heroes; otherwise the concept of heroism will become redundant and this ordinary world will have too many heroes. He was far commoner now than he was earlier. As the fever ebbed out to give him a semblance of normalcy, he again had to work, to earn his bread and butter and mind you it was no extraordinary situation, everybody else in Delhi was doing it. It involved thousands more capable than him and possibly in worse conditions still. That was the only solace and he picked up his corrective pen again.

It was a supposedly better publishing house this time but here the daggers were drawn along different lines. The plush interiors were suffused with richly clad, profusely scented and overenthusiastic vanity about the empowered women and girls. He had decided to keep a very low profile; not to get highlighted either for the good or the bad. With his simple countryside brain this was all he could strategise. It was all that smartness meant to him. In their pleasant narcissism bright, attractive, cultured females are no less in bitching and jealousy against their own replicas than the illiterate peasant women. In fact here the situation might get even worse given a brighter platform and more awareness. There were so many young girls and women, all of them good looking, all of them from good families, all of them ultra modern, and all of them bitching and jealous of each other. He had to maintain a balance; no animosity, no friendship; and distribute his attention and loyalty to all of them, that literally meant to none of them, without making them realise any particularity and consequently unleashing their anger. 

Of all the always-expected happenings and mishaps in an environment that is suffused with so many educated, good looking, narcissism-lorn young ladies, one particular issue was raising its head. There was a Hindu princess and there was a Muslim princess. Both were popular and in demand in their own ways. Both had their share of male adulations and attention. But then such exclusive popularity and being in demand among the same set of people can very rarely go smooth. There are bound to be edges of attrition. They had their own delicate touches in the form of unique looks, sense of fashion and what not. They were on an equal footing in all the elements of this rivalry to be more influential and popular except in one sense that the Muslim princess had a bigger clout having being there in the company for a longer time. The Hindu princess was a fresh lotus in the pond and basically on account of being a fresh gust of breeze was creating ripples that was much resented by the Muslim princess who got insecure that she might lose her footing.

Having a bigger history and deeper clout with that particular company the Muslim princess took front-footed shots at the subtle charming deliveries of the Hindu princess. It started just as a skirmish between two individuals but it had all the propensity of acquiring very particular sharp edges running into religion, personal lives and even the affiliations of those around. These personal skirmishes were smouldering in the form of many so called official project related issues, as they say it, but is it possible to keep personal prejudices, likes and dislikes away from the professional issues? So others were also getting drawn into the quagmire. To him it appeared to happen repeatedly, unjustifiably, without any professional reasons and without any provocation by the poor Hindu princess. That was the impression carried by the appearance and strengthened by the more aggressive, loud-mouthed minority princess who looked a tormentor and the other one just a meek sufferer after some time. The reasons of catfights became plainly personal after a point.

The minority princess had definitely a bigger clout. The Hindu holy cow was seen shedding tears many times. It would bring a few men almost on the verge of fighting for her cause. But the offended princess would bite back with more ferocity even though almost teary eyed on the surface. If the Hindu holy cow raised an issue, other educated Hindu lambs eating the grass of hypothetical secularism ran to defend the Muslim princess. After all religion was a main issue and nobody wanted to sound communal by siding with the princess from the majority clan. She had this minority shield. Caught in a difficult situation, she was even heard shouting the plaintive tales of Muslim sufferings in India. She had numerous tales of army atrocities in Kashmir to share while the sheepish colleagues appeared excusing themselves for the majority’s tyranny. She was educated enough to know this secular conscience in educated Hindus and never missed a chance to be pampered in office like a real princess. Under the bombardment of her endless tales of Hindu atrocities against Muslims, the secular bread earners, the educated chicken-hearted Hindus, were ever so eager to prove they had read enough books to turn a blind eye to anything done by her to assure her that they loved and cared for her. Many would run with hankies to wipe her tears and mutter against their own religion and curse the Hindu princess who was not letting her in peace so far away from her home in the valley.

Earlier during the build-up of the Modi wave that catapulted him to the PM chair, she was always splattering venom against Modi and was casting Nazi type holocaust forecast of Muslims in India if he came to power. It was here that he lost with her. To him the Congress was the main enemy and since enemy’s enemy is your friend by default, he was pitching all out in Modi support as a revenge for his little debacle from power during the Congress rule. Once during the course of her endless anti-Modi tirade during the lunch hour, he lost it and asked her, ‘Do you think the Muslim population of India would be sent to gas chambers if he comes to power?’ It was scandalous, not expected among educated, law-abiding, educated, secular people. It was a communal remark. She had many tears to shed to the higher management and he was severely reprimanded. In fact would have almost lost his job had not he shown that uncharacteristic silence during the reprimanding session.  

The educated Hindus enlightened by the hypothetical lines of secularism now clearly allowed the Hindu cow and the bull by default to be bitten and smothered by the victimised princess. This falling out with the minority princess put him in a light where he clearly came to be perceived supporting the cause of the Hindu princess. Very easily there were rumours that he was having an affair with her and that is why he had splurged communal venom on the helpless suffering minority princess. The males smouldered in the fire of jealousy for having missed what he achieved. During his drunk forgetfulness he was now shouting ‘Kudos to Hindu secularism!’ as much as he shouted of the helpless pain in that meeting where she had again shed tears to turn the tables in her favour and he had been reprimanded by the well-meaning bosses for being so savage to think communally and that too in a publishing house among the most enlightened gentry in India. He cried aloud, ‘Is there any overenthusiastic RSS or Bajrang Dal guy who can issue Hindu version of fatwa against this woman!?’

He had lost his right to professional excellence with the blot of the communal issue on his editing face. The more he worked, the more difficult they became. They even jibed that with that type of mentality he better fitted the khaki-shorts and stick-holding gang. The more he worked, the more were the rumours of his liaison with the Hindu princess. The more was the noise by the ever-crying minority soul in the company, who had seas of tears to shed for the atrocities on Muslims, about Modi’s genocidal plans against them, etc., so more was the effort on part of the enlightened Hindus to prove their secular credentials. They were now outrightly supporting her despite nightmarish professional blunders of late. To save the soul of the Indian constitution they had to help her in the job come whatever may. These enlightened Hindus thought that they were the last hope for a secular India, and he being the chief enemy to their clean motives with his scandalous affair with the Hindu princess. With maximum number of projects under his belt, but with communal slur on his face, bearing the tag of the tormentor of a helpless minority princess, he came out of the increment review meeting, the revised figures of his take-home in his hand. He had got an increment of just 500 rupees equal to the oldest employees in the company, old Ram Swarup, the peon who was working for the last two decades. It was sheer insult. But rightly so, he was just a hardworker and not smart enough to be called a secular person, the stamp and authenticity of being really educated. They said he is hardworking, does the maximum number of toughest projects but that does not save him from being an uncouth peasant. He is just not smart enough. With his 500 rupees increment, feeling almost a year-long work gone waste, he yelled, of course after getting drunk, ‘God knows when bigger plotters would join this particular publishing company and dismantle the hideous rein of that poor bitchy minority princess ruling over those gayish, half-woman secular subordinates!’ His soul drenched in misery, he was lecturing a much younger boy from Varanasi, who had rented a room in the same block and listened to him with particular attention. He tried to brainwash the young man, taking it as his revenge against the secular class.

 

'Educated Hindus', read it as synonym of 'pseudo secularists', consider it their Bhagwan-ordained duty to criticise any type of Hindu cultural pro-activity. They press the panic button if Hindu consciousness takes slightest political path. They start croaking in large numbers, putting their knowledge and linguistic skills to the best of their abilities. Haa haa funny species!! They end up creating more insecurity in the minority community. This type of hypothetical lip service also qualifies as a form of communalism. The world will be a far better place if these champions of secularism try to bring down paranoid insecurity prevailing archaically in the minds of the minority community.

Well so much for the debate! Pseudo secularists have made it endless to keep their language skills sharp. Away from this world, a Hindu khaki-shorts clad man was heard lamenting: 'The worst of a Hindu will still be less aggressive and more accommodating than the best of a Muslim!'

His every mistake being counted as a blunder, and the minority queen’s blunders passing of as inconsequential slip-ups, life was getting worse. How do we change this world for the better with such differentials? Secularists of all genres pounced upon this class enemy. There were many more issues with the minority princess. Using her clout and being in the best books of the superiors she would never miss an opportunity to pull him down, his hard work lying scattered around him, being struck down by her smart strikes. Getting mistreated like this he was being again pulled out from his drunk, hypothetical support to the Jehadis in Kashmir. She was also from Kashmir. When he would come back after a frustrated day, he would reflect in a rabidly communal manner. His drunken revolts now targeted the minority community she belonged to. Not being able to take particular targets, he as a petty Indian took generalised pot-shots. He was truly a big mocking fan of Hindu leniency! He had read history as one of the optional subjects during his civil services preparations and knew enough facts about the medieval period to fuel his tongue during the drunken sprees.

Hindu pliancy flows even swifter than the Ganges in Monsoon torrents. Fastly carried by the forget and forgive dharma, the educated Hindus would prefer to just flip over gory pages in Indian history--such as Taimur Lung wiping out the entire Kaafir population of Delhi and thousands of desecrations of Hindu temples and idols to build mosques having gates upon Hindu idols so that the true species of Allah could walk over them--and gloatingly stuck at pages of Hindu tyranny like semi-aggressive acts of naked Sadhus breaking a mosque to just commemorate the birthplace of Ram Lalla! Hindus can afford to be better students of History!  

Things got so bad and he just on the point of being asked to go that he cursed her now by her religion not as a wrong-doing individual. During the final build-up to his smartly managed exit, even at their worst they had not anything to say against his performance. He had finished more projects than anybody around and that too the intentionally given toughest ones to land him in a soup.

He was getting stubborn now, even more obstinate than the roofless street urchins. Vowing to focus on being smarter and less of a hardworker he again entered another publishing house. He had turned very snobbish by now. Being smart was not just his cup of tea. He was technically almost peerless in his editorial work, but being smart was just not his cup of tea. Possibly, more than a better edited book they need smarter, more convenient people. In the bookish, stuffy, insecure interiors, infested with poor little clerically educated funny Indians of this new publishing multinational company—that’s how he termed people and the interiors now—a farty, gayish, woman-bodied poor man—that’s how he looked at his boss now—was sticking to his chair for almost a decade! His eligibility and skills: poisoning the ears of a bigger, smarter female who herself had God knows what means used to reach that departmental head position; giving negative feedbacks about his talented juniors; nurturing a servile intern because new joiners are not a threat to his position; etc. Only one thing was clear to him now, and this he jotted in his journal without drinking, in full sense and using his bugged, injured logic:

The academic publishing sector in India is infested with bottom-licking, non-creative, semi-skilled managers who are the products of a very poor system of education that just puts clerical eligibility in their little poor Indian brains. With severe leadership and team-building limitations, these insecure funny middle level managers, just think 24 hour a day to plot and scheme and strategise against any potential threat to their position. Unluckily Indian corporate is infested with semi-skilled insecure bosses who stink with their poor ass in their positions just by swiping away the careers of real hard-working subordinates.

All his efforts at being a smart worker went haywire again. This particular poor little creature who could torture him with such an aloof and cold smile that he appeared worse than a butcher. He termed him as barely a man in a woman-type body: A terribly vindictive poor little demon in his indirectly lethal ways. His superior managed by gratifying the ego of a just-saved from spinsterhood, ageing boss. The latter was yet another perfect example of a vicious, vindictive, scheming modern ageing single woman who knows her strengths to serve her professional utility. ‘Just like any other poorly informed Indian, this gang of people with severe technical and editorial limitations pay hypothetical lip service to smartness, coolness, polished manners. But does it help in making a rubbish script into a nice book?’ he would question. He knew he was a dumb hardworking donkey who could just pull the worst laden cart full with unresolvable papers to the safety. Forget about smartness. He can just bray without being smart. 

Every time he left a company, he would hope for a better system staffed with better people who would just not swipe his hard work with their smart broom. But it would not happen. Only God knew what was to become of him.

The Journey Beyond

 

The cruel, hot and humid evening in the last week of July had struck the calamity. It sniffed out the brightest lamp to burn in the recent Indian history. The guide, the patron, the scientist, the nationalist, the one who belonged to all of us just as an Indian was gone! India cried.

When the news flashes started pouring in, the young man sank in his chair. APJ Sir appeared bubbly and energetic like a child. It was difficult to believe someone so influential on young India’s minds was gone so suddenly. He looked at his little study cabinet and the titles flashed again taking him to an inspired world.

India 2020: A vision for the New Millennium; Envisioning an Empowered Nation; You Are Born To Blossom: Take My Journey Beyond; Target 3 Billion; A Manifesto for Change: A Sequel to India 2020; Reignited: Scientific Pathways to a Brighter Future; Transcendence My Spiritual Experiences with Pramukh Swamiji; My Journey: Transforming Dreams into Actions; Indomitable Spirit; Ignited Minds: Unleashing the Power Within India; The Luminous Sparks; Mission India; Inspiring Thoughts; Forge your Future: Candid, Forthright, Inspiring; Turning Points: A journey through challenges.

He had all his books. The vivid snapshots for empowering individuals for a developed nation through igniting minds. The great man was igniting minds like he had ignited rockets to take us high into the skies. Having read all his books and having watched his innumerable speeches time and again, the young IIM aspirant considered Dr APJ as his patron, pratham guru, the foremost teacher in his pursuit to excel as an individual and contribute to the bigger cause of nation building. The great man’s ideas, ideals and systematically arranged plan of actions to take India out of the pits of poverty had influenced him so much that each day spent in books had appeared a concrete step to a brighter future. As the news reels started pouring with more details the gravity of the loss struck him. He was crying inconsolably. It was so unexpected, so sudden. He was forging his future as the great man had instructed in his books. He went to the books corner and took out each and every book to caress it. In the salty sea the titles flashed immortally to console him, like saying ‘I’m still around’.  

The next day, all Indians lined up to pay homage to Dr APJ Kalam, not as Hindus, Muslims, Christians or Sikhs, not as rich or poor, not as this casteman or that, not as bigger or smaller, but as a single sad obliged entity. They paid the tribute to genuine Indianness. Politicians from divergent streams merged to a single block of much-obliged, head bent down gentry. It proved that it is possible to overcome narrow parochial divisions that restrict our prospects of individual and collective growth. As millions of teary-eyed Hindus folded their hands before the fatherly figure and millions of Muslims put their praying palms out for the peace of the departed soul, it gave a prospect that Hindus and Muslims can have a lot in common than they are having presently.

Visualise India without the assuring names like Agni, Prithvi, Brahmos, Nag, Trishul and of course the nuclear armaments, it instantly shows why we needed APJ Kalam. We can hold our dreams of becoming a developed nation because we have a semblance of security born of his military science achievements. We can more assuredly move on to the path of development because he has laid down a whole plan for us to follow. The Missile Man, The Most Popular President, The Big Dreamer, The 2020 Visionary, The Professor, The Speaker! He had many avatars, but just one dream. The dream of making India big by igniting minds, by firing the creativity and potential in youth, like he fired our leaps into the space through ballistic technology. It is difficult to analyse whether he was more of a scientist or a spiritualist. When death sniffed out this bright light from amongst us, he was still dispelling darkness from our minds.

He touched the presidential seat with an unprecedented grace. Ironically, his ascension to the political seat was facilitated by the so called ‘danger to the secular fabric’ in the country. Still more ironically, his chances for a second term were nullified by the so called ‘safe-keepers of secularism’ in this country. He deserved to be the President again. But who can tame the genuine motives in earnest souls? Dreams are no slaves to posts and positions. More luckily for the Indian youth, the ex-president kept on his path of igniting minds through his relentless lectures and public addresses. Few people do the things they love doing most even till their last moment. The tragic hand of death cannot snatch away the legacy the great man left when he collapsed on the lecture stage. Heartiest salutes to this Bharat Ratna! May almighty bestow him all peace in after life! 

The young student was in utter mourning as he saw the great son of India’s final cremation rituals in south India at Rameshwaram. As earth was being put into the grave to lay the overworked son of mother India to eternal rest, with tears in his eyes, the young student was holding You Are Born To Blossom: Take My Journey Beyond to his bosom. Yes he had to take Dr Kalam’s journey beyond. He opened the book and just flipped through the pages. Yes he was there, as a teacher, as a father figure, to guide, to show light! 

The Overused Broom

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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