The Funny Game among Errant Kids

 

Let’s talk about Afghanistan from the geostrategic point of view. Please don’t feel bad if the life of an Afghani citizen is seen almost inconsequential in this talk about ‘the great game’. Isn’t it all about the strong gobbling up the weak across all species in the naked, raw game of survival? The cosmic juggernaut is nothing but an expansionist onslaught that uses weak as the fodder for the strong to take the march of expansion towards more elemental sophistication. In the same vein, geostrategic manoeuvring is primarily about the interests of the superior powers. The interests of the hosting yard teeming with its poor masses, where the game is played, are inconsequential just like your feet hardly care for the world of the ants as you march on the higher scale of your ambitions, far higher than the tiny world of ants.

Whoever goes to Afghanistan doesn’t go there as an enemy of Afghanistan. He goes there as someone else’s enemy. The rugged, barren land is a huge arena for the bad guys to play out their muscle-flexing and brain-tweaking games. It’s like in a bullfight the grass gets trampled. And trampled have been the millions of Afghanis since the past many decades. The Britishers went there as the enemies of the Russians. The Americans went there as the enemies of the Russians. Presently, Russia, China, Pakistan and Iran are there as the enemies of America. Pakistan has more reasons to meddle there. They are there as the enemies of India as well.

The Afghan tragedy is that nobody has gone there as a friend of Afghanistan. It is always some outsider’s enemy. And enemy’s enemy makes a very shaky friendship. China and Russia will realize it during the coming decades. For the Russians it will be a repeat lesson if they cross over the line again. And a superpower-intoxicated China has to learn this Afghan lesson inevitably if it really wants to claim the superpower status.

The Afghanis have more or less accepted poverty as their most prized asset to sustain their fierce pride, clan loyalty, spirit of independence and a culture of killing and dying. Dying and killing isn’t too much a shock in Afghanistan. It’s very easily digested. Craze is craze. Someone fights for superpower status, the Afghanis fight to keep their ideology and medieval principles. It’s their opium like there are other forms of opium world over to drive people, states, institutions and societies crazy. Just true to the main Homo sapiens trait of opium addiction, the Afghanis love taking long draughts at their version of opium.

It’s good that the Americans have packed their bags. Instead of having their army in the enemy’s backyard, it’s more practical to have a lethal naval unit that can move to any part of the world with effective deterrence. On top of it, take a quantum jump in space warfare. Be several years ahead of the nearest rival. Be in a position to harm the enemy’s space assets. It’s just like sitting on the high ridges from where you can easily target those struggling up the slopes. If you have to play your silly game at any cost, at least play it well. The formula is: Be up there in the skies, higher than the others and trample down your enemy if they dare to stare at you in the skies.

Meanwhile, the ‘graveyard of empires’ is surely going to be the graveyard of the next superpower also. Taliban know that the new friends aren’t supporting them as such. The Chinese are merely opposing the Americans. In this, the Chinese are repeating the American mistakes of nurturing a genie that is sure to go against the master at any cost. Well, nothing immoral about it, it’s simply the genie’s opium. Over all, it’s a smoke-clouded, crazy game among opium eaters of different varieties.

In future, fundamentalist Islam is a bigger threat to China than America. America doesn’t operate reformation camps for the Muslims. There an ordinary Muslim goes about his/her routine without too much pressure on their faith. The insurgent groups in Central Asia and Taliban are well aware of what is happening to Uighur Muslims. It’s a temporary accommodation on their part to take China as an ally.

One, but, must not forget that fundamentalist Islam’s first priority is keeping their faith intact, however objectionable the outer world finds it. Therefore, China will surely realize it later. The badlands of bloodthirsty jihadis aren’t that much of a threat to America as they are to China. The superpower status definitely costs you the sleep of many nights. Americans, let the situation keep worsening in China’s backyard and its flares will surely reach the red bastion. In fact, by being there America was doing a bigger favour to the Chinese than to itself.

What about Pakistan? They haven’t learnt any lessons from their fire-mongering against India, which ultimately destroyed them to the extent of making them a vassal state of China. Wait, China is a very tough taskmaster. The Red Father will extract the costs at a nice rate of interest. The Chinese are not like Americans that they will pour billions of dollars in the name of fighting terrorism while you keep sheltering Osama Bin Laden. They know how to take more at the cost of giving less. Very strict businessman, I tell you. A democratic creditor will at the most pull your ears and shout at you for bunking your payments. However, an autocratic creditor will spit on your face and put its index finger in your arse for the littlest error. So take care! Already there are proofs of this in our neighbourhood.

What about the modern, educated, cultured voice of sanity in Afghanistan? They have no option. They have to leave and set up their world at some other place. The simple message for them is: ‘Please leave at any cost, however possible!’

Pakistan you be careful of the TTP. They will continue pulling your beard. And China you, don’t count off ETIM like you have done so far. Taliban is a great encouraging example for them. They have an idol now in the form of a triumphant radical Islamic group taking over an entire country. India, keep supplying the Northern Alliance with material help because as a regional power aspirant you too are helpless. So to keep your interests, you supply guns to the Northern Alliance. America, you please keep a low profile for some time and focus on your technologies. There is no need to get into a street brawl with the red bully who wants to dissipate you. You just mind your own business for some time and don’t get instigated by the puns and pranks about your so called ‘defeat’ in Afghanistan.

In Afghanistan, victory and defeat mean almost the same. Their own defeat is no defeat. And the outsider’s victory is no victory. Why the hell people go there to fight? It looks like a circus ring now. Abandon it. Of course, help those who want to come out, give them visas and facilitate their rehabilitation. But allow the lovers of medieval practices to lead their lives as they deem fit. After all, it’s their opium like you have your own.  

The fight for world supremacy has better avenues. This barren land is very boring. Go and write success stories on the sea and in upper atmosphere. Have countless submarines, aircraft carriers and destroyers. There is more mobility. Now please disturb the aquatic world. There has been enough terrestrial mischief. And run to the high ridges, I mean go higher into the skies and throw pebbles from there at your enemy’s pot. Well, in any case, the space wars will acquire legitimacy very soon. So why bother about these poor Afghans. Leave them at peace in their caves, elder councils, medieval beliefs and chuckling smiles at both dying and killing.

The Grubby Game

 How to make yourself appear more presentable, if you cannot absolutely bring out any change to your own self? Well, our cognition and interpretation of reality is relative and comparative in nature. Use it. Make yourself stand by the side of a still messier persona and emerge as smarter guy—apparently though—without any change in substance. You will be at least symbolically better.

Well, Taliban are far smarter than the last time they were bundled out two decades ago. To make it better for them, they are learning politics pretty fast apart from firing guns. So they may be up for a better innings this time. Given their past, they are almost unacceptable to the world outside Pakistan and Afghanistan. They cannot change their skin altogether. So what was the option? They allowed IS-K, a far bloodier version of terrorism, to stand by them and thus appear more acceptable and less savage. A very smart game!

Please don’t commit the mistake of categorizing terrorism in good or bad terms. These are plants from the same nursery. Taliban, IS-K, TTP, LeT, JeM and many others are simply different plants in the nursery managed by Pakistani generals and the ISI. These are mere chess pieces, move up one, take back the other, sacrifice this one, abandon that one as per the varying situations. The more pieces you have, the better it is. That’s why the Pakis keep many outfits under their patronage. You cannot just rely on one.

In the face of the gruesome bomb attacks at the Kabul airport by the IS-K, when there was a stampede to leave the country as the Taliban took over, the West would naturally find Taliban a bit more digestible because maybe they are apparently less bloodthirsty.

The West should not be too bothered about who rules Afghanistan. They should forget about it for some time. If at all you can do something, facilitate the safe exit of those Afghanis who want to leave the land in turmoil. Then leave the field clean for the nursery of fundamentalism to thrive unchecked in the backyard of China. Terrorists have no friends. China may think that its clout in Pakistan will be sufficient to keep its Uyghur plans intact. They will realise the folly of this assumption in the coming times.

The concept of Islamic jihad is above and beyond either alliance or falling out with outside powers like America and China. China is temporarily part of the scheme just because America is out of it. Its temporariness they will surely taste with much bitterness in mouth with the passage of time despite tea sharing with Taliban leaders.

Did you ever see a case where there was a fire in a house and its immediate neighbour did not feel the heat? The Chinese will also feel the heat. About the Pakis we need not say anything because to them feeling the heat is a normal part of life by now. They are used to it.

The Talibs have as much a right to rule as the Americans, Russians or Britishers if they can capture Kabul like they have now. Let it be the way it is. Why force a change? When the land is ready for it, the change will come from within. Give resources to the Panjshir valley group to retain their freedom so that this can be used in future. Don’t allow Ahmad Massud’s land to fall in the hands of Taliban. The West still needs a bit of foothold in the backyard of China. This little space should be sufficient. Use it for geostrategic purposes, focus on ETIM. If you have the guts and resources to nurture it, do it. Recognize Taliban and give them the protocol-driven respect that a ruling group deserves. It will make them more responsible and bring less mayhem in the lives of ordinary Afghans. Why douse fire if the water you throw works as fuel and aggravates even the embers.

At the moment, we can try for a better Taliban. It’s prudent to abandon the ‘no Taliban’ strategy. Their political office in Qatar has given them some training and experience about how to handle things diplomatically instead of talking through guns all the time. Slowly they will loosen the Pakis grip on their wrist because a grip by an outsider is the least they want. Till now they have been focused on ousting America, after some time and cool Afghani deliberation they will prefer to have their hands free of the Pakistani grip also. They just cannot help it. They have to shake off any foreign grip. Pakistan has been handy for the Talibs so far in capturing Kabul. But if they stabilize their power for a considerable time in Kabul, Pakistan will be less handy.

So guys, aim for a better Taliban and the worse of other terror outfits in the new superpower's backyard.

A Few Moments in a Bus

 

Ten years is more than sufficient time to unleash massive changes in a metropolis like Delhi. But certain features are so deep-rooted that one can feel their shadows even while the things seem to have changed drastically. This sketch about Delhi is exactly a decade old but I’m sure you will still feel these lingering shadows when you visit the national capital.

Here is an early December morning. Salutes Delhi! To make it sound normal you are two-eyed. But there are different visions, different dreams, different destinations. Too much for a pair of eyes, for sure.

One of your pan-shots captures the swanky glitz-and-glamour of the resurgent India. Whether it is right-eye pan-shot or the left-eye, I do not know. But yes, the other eye’s camera shot pervasively covers the classic tragedies spread out in black and white. It’s a grizzled, murky screen having classic farce and tragedies spinning, whirring around the same axis.

It’s Muharram today. Many offices are closed. It just means you can drop your purse on the DTC bus floor and still you are left with a realistic chance of retrieving it. Eighth wonder almost! So at least you can see a few square feet of space around you. Great solace indeed. The air too is not stuffed with guffaws let out by infected throats and lungs, disordered stomachs, cheap scents and Deos from Palika Bazaar and above all the usual individual and collective frustrations drenched with hot, musty sweat.

See, when the vehicle-maker offers these buses (allegedly along with the kickbacks per piece and which is more important to our rampaging politicians), the real cost of the machine is just meant to carry this type of load, the festival load, once-in-a-time load when not many people travel on account of holidays or some other emergency.

On this observable stage, a 14-year-old man-kid jumbles into the finally justified interiors of the poor green line. Boy he is a real man, carries a pole that would tower above the poor bus if their vertical components competed. He slants it, his small hands manoeuvre it smartly and the camel is safely in the room. The pole is the dancing axis of many types of cheapest toys as you might say can be afforded by the childhoods mushrooming in the slums. All fellow-riders watch him in half amuse and half irritation. Some lampoons like yours truly even laugh at the free show.

Anyways, coming back to this character valiantly playing its part in the grizzly black and white ever-spooling movie. He rushes to the conductor seat after killing all the apprehensions and objections of the buswala about the pole falling and the kids-stuff getting a playground on their heads. The boy-entrepreneur gets the DTC day-pass costing 40 rupees. Man-o-man! How much this kid earns to afford the pass? Anyways, that is none of our concern like most of the Delhi things should not be. One fact is inescapable: the well-meant boy is well prepared for the day. The way he has tied the muffler, the manner in which his cheap jacket is buttoned up to the collar, the way trousers tightly fit his thin legs and the way the shoes purchased from the road-side hawker stand decently cleaned, all these portend a good, successful business plan.

One problem with the new DTC bus is that its doors open too invitingly with a hiss, as if it is specially welcoming you for a joy-ride. Carried by the swift winds of one such invitation, an adivasi family raids the semi-occupied bus. The conductor baulks, 'Not without tickets you thieves!' 'Hutt you miser, we have money!' the dark old lady draped in a big raggish blanket shouts. Only God knows how many of them are in the group! It is a defiant pariah unit cocking a snook at the organized hordes of Delhi. One monkey-like infant immediately grabs the handrails overhead and tries gymnastics. One of its itching fingers busts the balloon tied at the upper end of the toy pole. Both its owner and the conductor shriek painfully.

Many unclean, bright-eyed kids clad almost in rags carry their unsuspecting selves to the empty seats and dump the gypsy spirit for a while. Their neighbours almost vomit in disgust. They feel their dignity has been severely violated. A slim lady carries a toddler on her shoulder, an infant on her hip and most probably one more life inside her as the glossy black bulge of her abdomen shines from the short kurti she is wearing above the gracious folds of a grimy long skirt.

It just becomes a thoroughfare. The conductor fights for tickets. They stand their positions, gibberishly, savagely. And where are they going? The entire national capital region is their destination. No particular destination means destinations everywhere. It is just a matter of holding onto the ride till the fight with the conductor acquires serious colours. And the moment it does, they just dump themselves with the same teasing indecency like they had raided the bus and vanish from the scene.

Well, we missed a parting shot. As they get down and try to scrape through the jostling crowd, they block the path of a brand new Mercedes for a long moment. Delhi, salutes! You bear witness to the two paradoxical movie-makings by the camera lenses in your eyes!

The Croakings of an Old Toad -- 9

 

The huge sense of self-righteousness has its origins in a very little dark space in our egoistic chamber where mammoth ghosts of judgement and opinions burst to their seams. They have been suffocating in a little dark space and that’s why they run wild to assert and claim more territory in other’s mind once the door gets unlocked.

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Ma is still around and taking care of us even though she left her body almost two and half years ago. The other day, one of my aunties in our extended family lost her gold earring. Now it’s a catastrophe for a woman to lose her gold ornament. Apart from the economic loss, they take it as a bad omen also. Give her two for her lost gold piece, she but will still be sad and sullen about the lost one. My aunt is a very hardworking woman. She has a set-up routine of household chores like my mother had. Aunty gets up early and her day involves morning walk in the fields around the village, visit to the temple, many rounds to the cattle barn at a distance from the house and the rest of the routine tasks in their sprawling countryside house. Given her large area of movement over the dusty village streets, even to think of pinpointing some specific location where the probability of finding the earring was higher than others seemed a futile exercise. She and the family looked into all nook corners of the house. The temple premises were scanned and so were the streets and paths where she had walked on that day. Much disturbed she tried to sleep at night but sleep was nowhere nearby. She was in tension. Around half past three in the morning, she got a short span of sleep and my mother appeared in her dream. Auntie says my mother was seen brooming the streets on the side of the house and the little square falling on the other side of our house. Mother always cleaned the surroundings after cleaning the house. Young women less than half her age won’t even think of cleaning the neighbourhood streets for others to walk. But that’s how mother was. She lived a life that wasn’t strictly chained by mine or your boundaries. In the dream, cleaning the street in front of the house, mother said to auntie, ‘Don’t take so much of tension. Now go to sleep peacefully. You will find your gold earring. It’s lying near the platform facing the street by our house. There is a splinter of bamboo near it.’ Well, around eight in the morning auntie recalled the dream and went out to the said place. The earring was found exactly at the place mother had indicated. Just imagine dozens of people had been passing the spot and nobody spotted it. But nothing can miss a mother’s eyes. She is still around, keeping a watch over the proceedings of our follies from a higher dimension. 

The Croakings of an Old Toad -- 8

 ‘I am monarch of all I survey,

My right there is none to dispute.’

__ William Cowper

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‘Why should we live with such hurry and waste of life? We are determined to be starved before we are hungry. Men say that a stitch in time saves nine, and so they take a thousand stitches today to save nine tomorrow.’

___ Henry David Thoreau

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‘Be it life or death, we crave only reality. If we are really dying, let us hear the rattle in our throats and feel cold in the extremities; if we are alive, let us go about our business.’

__ Henry David Thoreau

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‘I have always been regretting that I was not as wise as the day I was born.’

__ Henry David Thoreau

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He was cold fire. She was hot ice. So he got summer cold and she winter fever. This happened after a brief spring.

۞

Keep poking the rays of your efforts through the chinks. It’s fruitful even though Thoreau is cautious, ‘The rays which stream through the shutters will be no longer remembered when the shutter is wholly removed.’ But still I feel those harbinger rays have their special place.

۞

Keep evolving and avoid the hard boundaries of concepts, institutions, cemented dogmas and hardened beliefs define you within an impenetrable stone wall. Be like Thoreau when he says, ‘I love a broad margin to life.’

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Our ultramodern intellect pushes us into the corridors of folly. As Thoreau says, ‘Up come the books, but down goes the wit that writes them.’

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Most of our perceived shortages are in fact our inability to accomplish the intended wastage. It’s not about the real shortages of basic needs. Those who really lack the basic needs are not haunted by the mental spectre of shortages because they are fully into the game of survival, hardly having any time to get mental suffering about the shortages. Those who really suffer—mentally—the shortages are the ones who feel helpless and feel relatively poor because they can’t splurge money like better off people.

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‘Every path but your own is the path of fate. Keep your own track, then.’

__ Thoreau

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Let’s celebrate the Environment Day! Mother earth is the root cause of all our joys. Go close to nature. She needs your healing touch. If Mother Earth stands any chance at all, it lies there if we treat each day of the year as the Environment Day. Everything less than it falls well short the least redemption.

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‘Why should I regret my incapacity for details and worldly affairs, when it leads to such pleasant consequences? I don’t regret it therefore.’

___ Mr. Skimpole in Bleak House

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