The year's last day

 

It’s a balmy afternoon on December 31, 2021. The sun-warmed moments are sleepwalking their way to a cold evening. The last hours of the year on the peripheral, marginal sprawl of another time unit readying to say goodbye. Time and its slipperiness, it elusive prowl reaping sheaves of lives with the scythe in its hand. Space and time in an emblematic tussle, laying out a well-manicured matrix of things, phenomena and happenings.

There are the thinnest sparse traces of white in the blue skies, some kind of little commas in the seamless narrative of mother existence. It turns the afternoon blaze to a kind of yellowish tinge. The sky looking down with an unpretentious grace as the earthlings’ vaulting desires hurtle up to form a cosmos of their own.

The frost-beaten trees hang there with their attitude of tortuous durability. The sparrows are engaged in sharing chatty tips. A tiny group of six or seven parrots goes with their thrilling and fascinating squawking as if discussing the seamless fabric of fruity flavors. A flock of pigeons, a few dozen of them—maybe around hundred—flies in a beautiful formation as if drawn by the smell of some unusual delights. Every time they turn southwards, their white underwings flash a silvery blaze in perfect symmetry. What a celebration of the spirit of freedom! We humans may harbor traces of melancholy but they are bidding a happy goodbye to 2021. And their formation and the flashing of the silvery underwings against the sunrays, as they dive in a particular direction, exposing the whitish underparts of their wings to the sunrays, beats any aerial show managed by we humans to commemorate our victories, national days or other landmarks in our history. It’s a subtle, simplistic saga and augurs well for the coming year. We have to hope for the better because mother nature is splashing her joy with such prominence through the emblematic agents of peace.

Sher ka bachha

 

A few weeks back, 65-year-old Randhir, a hardworking farmer, happily shared the exploits of his two-year-old grandson. The kid is surely large for his years. ‘He shakes up and bashes all the children including four-year-olds,’ he shares the proud, panoramic characterization of the upholder of his pedigree. ‘He is strong, I can see,’ the grandfather is already mulling over his future as a famous wrestler.

The kid must have felt the encouraging vibes emanating from his grandfather. But the proud grandpa should know that kids basically hone their skills—good, bad and all—within the house to begin with. So even the grizzly bear look of the grandmother, a strong peasant woman, was not sufficient to deter the little wrestler from making her the object of his fun exploits. Carrying his exploits a nice notch higher, he hit her with an iron blowpipe on her knee. It was a painful strike leaving her in an ennui and indecision whether to throttle the perpetrator or to heave him over her head and then dump as a punishment. But a crisp articulation of the intent to defend her child by the boy’s mother, herself a big woman so much so that when she decked herself for town visits she looked like a caparisoned jumbo, deterred the ageing matriarch from carrying out her intent. She went limping for many days.

‘The boy did what I always intended to do but could never do it for the plain fear of her,’ Randhir secretively mused. There have been long and sluggish decades of their matrimonial innings, both of them trying the art of scapegoating to find fault with each other in their routine farming life full of challenges at many fronts. You could sense the oppositional molecules floating in the air whenever they were together. The plain fact is that the sturdy woman, all along these years, has been strong enough to pin him down in a hand-to-hand combat and emerge winner with a clear verdict. So he is happy that his little grandson has done what he failed to do in decades.

Little did he realize that the children love to have fresher objects to carry out their commendable feats. Randhir is far away in the serene precincts of a peaceful place in sleep. Suddenly he is jolted out of his siesta by a painful strike on his head. The kid gallant is seen grinning holding the peasant’s favorite danda. He saw stars in the day forming constellations holding staggering forecasts for the lamp of their pedigree. But he somehow checked his impulse to beat the boy like a young errant colt. He closed his eyes and tried to regain his dream world.

Another strike and this time he swipes to clutch the culprit but the attacker slips away. Randhir now knows the offender has to be taught a lesson. He feigns to sleep. The fun-loving boy stealthily creeps up to him and before he aims his third strike, Randhir comes to life like an old, black panther. The little antelope is in his grasp. He picks up his chappal and gives four cool strikes at the little marauder’s bum. The boy now maintains distance and doesn’t stealthily approach his grandfather when he sleeps. He thinks his grandpa feigns sleep especially to lure him to strike and then grab him to beat him.

The hawker opthlomogist

 

The spirit of commerce is zealously relishing its sway over the modern-day mass psyche. All our passions, prejudices, pride and myriad other silent inconsistencies of our character go onto feed the spirit of the corporate operating with an officious smile, promising enduring homilies and affinities. Even the artless, hardworking rural rustic society is falling into the sheen of the corporate. There are entrepreneurs wandering in the streets, like this hawker who is shouting, ‘Get eyesight glasses. Get your eyes checked and get a number ka chasma so that you can see even an ant on your neighbor’s wall.’

Well-qualified ophthalmologists beware now. He is a small thin man with a testing kit on his bicycle. These are the times of doorstep delivery of products and services. Even the malls look like a kind of obligation now. There are so many people who are open to the idea of delivering anything from needles to road engines to your doorstep. Every street has a peasant woman selling garments and clothes apart from buttermilk and milk. One provides dung-cakes also. I recall a very kind-hearted, ever-smiling, loving custom clearing agent. Mention procuring a fighter jet to him. ‘Ho jayega, worry not!’ he is always there to help you keep your hopes alive.

Your video, my video

 As they play tera video mera video, the basic issues remain as murky as ever. To be sure the Indian political scene is hitting newer depths every passing hour. The primary issue is the safety of women at all levels: be it riots, crisis, strife, workplace, household, public places. Do they even have any shame left when the union ministers start tagging the ghastly videos of women being disrobed and beaten in an opposition ruled state? This is done to silence the critics of governance failure in Manipur? Can it be compared at all? When a Tribal woman is disrobed and beaten by some women at a market place over allegations of stealing, don't you think it's a social tragedy, a joint failure of our value system? Where is Mamta Banerjee in this? If the police and administration fails to punish the guilty then it turns an administrative failure. Or to take it even further, why wasn't a police personnel available within the seconds this happened to stop it. That much blame we can put on the Bengal government.  

To counter Manipur horror, the ruling party is citing soul chilling murder and mutilation in Rajasthan. It was a family feud. Long before the government fails to avoid such incidences, it's we as a society that have failed. Gahlaut government turns guilty the moment there is a proof of inaction subsequent to the crime. How can you even compare crimes falling in the category of abstract, sudden social failure at the level of a few people, driven to the act by a strictly personal reaction, to systematic, collective governmental failure as in Manipur. The main point of criticism in the devilish Manipur incidence is about the government not taking action for almost three months. There are proofs of it. The delay in lodging FIR and the subsequent police inaction. That's where you fail as a government. Whatever happened was unpardonable but had the BJP government been sensitive and considerate, impartial and honest, the matter should have been brought to justice. If justice had'n been delayed it won't have shaken the national conscience like it has done now. It's not only about what happens, it's also about what did the government do after the crime had been committed. And the saddest part is the tweat by the union minister about the Bengal video. Does it serve any purpose about a woman's dignity? What purpose did it serve? Did it undo the horrors of Manipur? Look at the gloat in their eyes as they share the nasty videos of naked helplessness. Just to counter the criticism over Manipur. So vindictive. Just to score political counter punch you become a facilitator of a video that tatters the modesty of a woman with the passage of each second of its going live. Stinking, mucking, horrifying sludge game. And this is the India they promised us! Just imagine their capacity and efficiency to find solutions for crimes against women: They just facilitate naked videos of women and then compare.

Chronicles of little Nevaan

 

Little Nevaan is at a temple with his Mausiji. With innocently garlanding ease, a kid has crammed many Sanskrit slokas, so no wonder he is the centre of attraction. With an acrobat’s agile leap, he jumps from slogan to slogan, garnering heaps of praise from those around. Poor Nevaan is already tired with practicing alphabets and numbers on the slate board and assembling and reading educational puzzles before coming to the temple. And now this irrational and idiosyncratic chanting by this chit of a boy. As if there is a savory slice of lime pickle in his mouth, which he likes with an impeccable and uncomplicated sense of cherishment, Nevaan tries to divert the show in his direction.

With the urgency of rattling trams and angrily hawking vendors, he recites Gayatri Mantra and Mahamritunjya Mantra. Egged on by the heady pampering of his parents, the other child unleashes sloka after sloka from his big repertoire. Coming to terms with a sense of humane realism, little Nevaan brings out the best shot in his kitty. He starts whistling. It’s his inalienable right to showcase what he considers to be the best item in his kitty. He hammers his tone to stonewall the Sanskrit slokas coming out so profusely.

Only a gentleman with silver-grey hair tries to be the solo audience to his offering. Nevaan fails to grab attention. So the other boy wins the show—prominently, purposefully and publicly. On top of it, it gets him another reprimand from his ever-correcting mama. He responds. At night, his mama opens her phone to find a notification from her Amazon account regarding a payment failure of one lakh rupees. Nevaan put an i-phone and a gold ring in the cart and made an unsuccessful attempt at payment. He knows his mom loves the money more in the purse instead of its changing forms, especially the costly gadgets.

There is a visitor at the house. He is haggling him with the question, ‘When did you come beta?’ Now little Nevaan is clueless about dates and days. It was about two weeks ago when he arrived at his maternal uncle’s house, yours truly by the way. The questioner looks serious enough to have his answer at any cost. He repeats the question a few times. ‘I came on the day I came here,’ Nevaan gives the asker a crisp glimpse of his much-sought answer.

I’m reading and little Nevaan is looking for something more substantial, a playmate. Lost in the reclusive and remote world contained in the book, I try to ignore him. He is making strange guttural sounds. ‘What is this?’ I’m forced to enquire. ‘I’m asking “What are you doing?” in Chinese,’ he enlightens me. ‘I’m reading a book,’ I reply in Hindi to his Mandarin query. ‘No, no I’m asking what are you doing in reading,’ he simplifies the query. I make it that maybe he wants to know what I’m reading. ‘I’m reading that little kids shouldn’t disturb the elders when they are reading a book,’ I try to somehow salvage my reading session. This piece of information doesn’t fit his plan at all. ‘No, no I was just asking what are you doing,’ he tries to avoid the unbecoming issue of kids disturbing book-reading elders. And before I can reply he says, ‘Ok, I see you are playing with a book.’ He continues with his strange sounds. The answer to his second main question doesn’t exist because the question itself has been wiped clean on his slate.

By the way, his mother is very happy. ‘He has started to get up in Inglish now!’ she gushes. ‘Today he said, “I’m oothing in the morning,” and last night he said, “I’m sleeping,” so that means he is sleeping in eengleesh also!’ Well, this world seems to be some primeval mother’s creation.

I’m engrossed in the miseries of the bigger world. The paper spread in front of my face carries deep and voluminous folds of activities that grown-ups are engaged in. Geostrategic wars, political brawls, diseases, killings, sports rivalries holding my attention with their clawy tentacles. I’m sitting on a chair. Little Nevaan is standing in front of me. He is a bundle of energy carrying ecumenical vibrancy and a dreamy future-map in his twinkling eyes. I’m, on the other hand, carrying a timeworn load born of weathering of long years. No wonder, our worlds are completely different.

The double spread newspaper chronicles a sage of grit and glories of the past twenty-four hours. He is staring at the full-page luscious advertisement by a global food chain. Crunchy grilled patty, juicy toasted buns and grilled burgers are presented for a child’s food paradise. A picture speaks thousands of words. He has read entire tomes by the time I finish reading a few news columns. ‘Sufi mama, why aren’t you reading? You are just looking at the a, b, c, d. Read here. Yummy yummy masala mar ke, aha!’ he informs me that he has read all the pictures and I have been merely looking at the letters in the meantime.

He has turned a big informer in the house now. The gossiping neighborhood aunties use his informing skills. ‘Don’t tell what you hear inside the house to the people outside!’ he gets a reprimand from his mother. So he decides not to inform anyone about anything said inside the house anymore. ‘Ma doesn’t call you bulldozer auntie. Ma doesn’t say that your car is khatara uncle ji. Ma never says that you beat uncle with a stick aunty ji,’ he tries his best not to divulge any secret anymore. He is very happy as he returns. ‘Ma, I didn’t tell them anything as you said,’ he tells her and expects ice cream as a reward today.

He is around three and is taken to the doctor for a routine vaccine. He howls. All his wrongs for which he gets reprimanded flash before his terrified eyes. He thinks he is getting a punishment for all those pieces of mischief. ‘Dotter, dotter, please forgive me! Maaf kar do! I will stop eating candies. I will not watch mobile. I will stop watching cartoons on TV. I will study,’ he realizes all the sins that have possibly landed him in trouble. After a long list of will-nots, he realizes his sins are too big for these promises. Then he tries to bribe, ‘Dotter, I will give you the best plane, the red fighter plane!’ The doctor is amused. ‘O really! I will take it as my fees.’ The needle goes in. A loud cry. The tone is bordered on the abusive frequency. His mother senses it. She tries to forestall it by putting her hand on his mouth but Nevaan is successful in splurging a cuss word he has caught in the streets from the mouths of older street urchins.

We buy a new cycle with side-supporters on so that he learns the art of paddling and balancing. He is serious and sullen and sits in a corner. ‘Aren’t you happy with this beautiful gift?’ we ask. ‘No, I’m not happy. Now I have to fall from it many times!’ he explains the reason for his being in sullen mood. He has seen a few little ones toppling over as they learnt cycling. ‘What gift is this? I have to fall many times to play with it. No, no it’s not a good one,’ he condemns the latest purchase.

He is getting another dose of reprimand. He has written ‘Pupaya’ on his worksheet. The last papaya he ate didn’t come too sweet. So he improvised to make it sweeter. ‘But Ma, pupaya is very sweet,’ he tries to convince her. Maybe pupaya is sweeter than papaya. But in the world of grown-ups, the helplessness to adhere to the factual correctness doesn’t leave any space for the sweetness brought by a kid by changing some vowel.

The other day, after two hours of memorizing and writing exercise, he writes ‘Grabs’ for ‘Grapes.’ His mother gets a practical clue and grabs him by head and shakes it quite forcefully to ruffle his nicely done hair. He looks shaken like a pigeon cat-handled by an angry cat. He doesn’t react, he responds. ‘Ma, you tell what is two plus, minus, multiply a, b, c, d, dog and cat!’ he yells his question.