The Fear

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Have you any memory of when this insidious emotion seeped into you? This dark, acidic, bile colored thing called fear. Do you even remember a time when you were young and fearless? Nothing bad could ever happen to you. Then you became a parent! That new little life sucked out all your bravado, turning you into a perpetually on edge, dithering duh. You have lain awake at night since. You have spent hours staring vacantly at the clock, numb at the disastrous thoughts swimming around your head while the kid is out on the city roads in the middle of the night. You have dialled then disconnected their number thirty two times, sick at the switched off tone. The once  potent and flourishing you has aquired an abiding faith in the worst case scenario. You latch your suitcase with a thick metal chain in the First AC now. You cover your jewellery with a scarf or a dupatta when out. You submit yourself to medical checks regularly. You track your children like a hound. You plan and string up several standby options. You subscribe to insurance plans. You suffer anxiety at the smallest plan going awry. Some fears are specific in these parts. Your cup of tea may run cold. The gulab jamun may not be served hot. Your weekend movie booking may come up against a houseful sign. Your maid may vanish for days without notice. Your child may be unmarried at 30 years. You just might bump into a relative when between jobs. God forbid, should India lose to Pakistan! What are we to do with ourselves? The air rings with, "Be careful. Don't get run over, mugged, hijacked, maltreated, swindled, rejected, used, abused!" So paralysed are we.

Sharing

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I was born without the gene for sharing the samosa. It feels bad,

almost mean to not want to split a dosa or a bhatura down the middle. I have to bite back the effervescent negative nipping at my lips every time someone in the vicinity says; “Shall we split the kachori?” They come unbidden, the uncharitable thoughts. First off, the pleasure seems unfairly halved. The operation leaves me feeling cheated, unfulfilled. This sharing phenomenon is made worse by control freaks who declare in restaurants, “Shall we all order different things so we can sample it all!”

I would rather also wait for the entire chappati to appear from the kitchen over home meals. It irritates me to have someone tear a lovely, hot roti into two and then wave the steaming half floppy at my plate, “Here, take this while the next one comes.” With just the half, I lose direction; I am not sure where I am on the road to satiety.

Then there those, “You go ahead and order some, I am feeling quite full, I will just take a bite if I feel like it.” While you lean back from your favourite and freshly served gourmet dish, the first scoop may snowball into three, even five and you silently swallow your hunger pangs, waiting for your companion to announce their verdict on the dish you agonized over ordering. Woes betide if they should twist their lips in distaste at the first bite, “Too spicy!” How are you going to get past that bile in the throat as you go to work on the rejected food?

Have you ever sat across a risk taker foodie? They have to order something new and unfamiliar every time. This adrenaline of the novel quickly transforms into rapacious looks cast at your familiar white idlis once the disappointingly odd dish is banged down in front of them. Don’t be surprised if the exotic gets pushed aside for the pleasure of the gastronomic familiar in your hitherto boring plate!

There is an acquaintance that does this with impunity to her hapless husband. She will ask for vague edibles, take a bite, purse her lips with distaste and then pass it on dismissively to her dustbin of a man. And we all know how the brownie and vanilla ice cream gets ordered on a sharing basis. All goes well until the table comes to the last crumb. Suddenly everyone is full up, incapable of another spoon. The lot sits staring at the plate, shaking their heads as the spoonful of ice cream puddles up.

Ah yes, we are Indians and it is in our culture to be altruistic and sharing. The virtue has been exalted and given to us as a legacy and tradition. I can therefore but reflect upon my savage behaviour. Meanwhile I continue to inform company that I shall be eating the whole meal by myself.

 Lo siento mucho! 

Hospitality (Micro Fiction)

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Asmita was your typical Indian mother. Guests were gods and friends of her children avatars of God. The household pulled out all stops when the young people came visiting. Not only would all the domestic services be pressed into action, family members took time out to be social around the visitors. The best of snacks would be served in the fanciest of cutlery. The farthest nook of the pantry would be dredged up to rustle every possible snack. “Girija, pull out the dry fruits and slice some apple. Isn’t there something in the freezer, are the sausages over? Steam them quickly,” the help at home was used to the drill.

Smiti bustled around the dining table while her friend Saurabh flicked his phone screen. “Mum, why don’t you let the eats be, he will help himself if he wants to,” Smiti’s voice held a speck of exasperation.

“Come, come…try the chips Saurabh. Would you care for some fruit juice?” Asmita was unfazed by the lack of response from their guest. A lifetime of conditioning had rendered her incapable of registering anything but gratitude for hospitality. One corner of her mind did curl at a certain look that passed between her daughter and the boy but the generic focus on playing a role did not permit any great realization.

“How are your parents? Where do they live? What does your father do?” went her one way friendliness, articulated to put the guest at ease.  Saurabh had begun to shift, his chair scraping a few times. The smile was in place but his hair had begun to lose its shape. He lowered his head a little, the spectacle frames screening his gaze safely.

“Smiti, would your friend prefer lemonade? Ask him to stay back for dinner. Where is he going to go eating now, his roommate is out of station as it is.” A quick dash into the kitchen to brief the cook and Asmita was back with the guest, “Twenty minutes, the food will be on the table. Would you like to freshen up?”

Smiti led him away in the direction of the bathroom. There was the sound of urgent whispers, almost a verbal duel. “Are they arguing?” the mother knit her brows, quickly dismissing the thought , “Can’t be, they are such sweet kids. It is so wonderful to meet friends of our children, we must make them feel at home. It builds faith and trust and communication with the young people.”

“Auntie, I will be making a move. It is getting late and I have an exam to give tomorrow,” Saurabh had begun to edge towards the front door.

“You don’t 'give' an exam beta, you 'take' an exam,” Asmita smiled her indulgence. Two pairs of eyes met again over her happy head.  “Do come again!” she trailed after the pair to the lawn gate.

“Mum, I will just walk him to the bike,” Smiti forced a smile at her mother.  Asmita nodded encouragingly and held back a little, all the time staying in their line of vision. In a few moments, the mother daughter pair was strolling back into the house. “Mum, I need to get going, there is a workshop planned at college,” Smiti escaped into her room and within seconds, her ‘getting ready’ music had come on, audible through the door.

Asmita was still gathering up after Saurabh when an angry vibration startled her. Smiti’s phone was protesting. Just as she lifted it, the screen lit up, “Dude, your Mum is painful, too much formality man…not meeting you at home ever again!” 

Reminiscence (Micro Fiction)

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Lovely was your typical Punjabi bride; audible from metres off. Her bells and baubles bespoke of life’s promises. The one discordant note in her squeaky new life was her mother-in-law. “I think your Mum may be a latent hypochondriac,” she had begun to make tentative sounds around her groom. 

Mummy Ji regularly updated her list of ailments. If it was, “The smoke from the sheller is burning my throat,” one day, it would be, “The pesticide on the okra has upset my stomach,” on another. Her irksome aches and pains were rivalled only by an intense distrust of the medical fraternity. She refused to present herself to what she called a “plain MBBS.” Her physician had to be a specialist with published research and an award or two.

Fatigued with this on-going saga of ailments, the family had all but tuned her out. Lovely was Mummy Ji’s uninitiated and obligated listener. This one way monologue formed the basis of their flaky familiarity over the next decade or so. Lovely learned to mask a growing impatience with courtesy and silence. “I think her mind plays tricks,” she would tell herself.

There was more; an obsessive preoccupation with cleanliness and an ever present insecurity over religion and rituals. “There is so much to be grateful for, why can’t Mummy Ji be happier?” Lovely had graduated in her communication with the husband. But there was no insight forthcoming from the family other than a hurt withdrawal.

Until one day.

The house shot into an overdrive. Beeji was coming home from the hospice. With her terminal prognosis and a life expectancy of three months, she had expressed a desire for reunion and reminiscence. Lovely did not know what to expect. She had never heard anyone speak of Beeji. A mute spectator, she watched the bed ridden elder wheeled and settled in.

It was one of those lazy summer mornings when a lone hawker’s cry wends around tree lined lanes. Lovely sat playing cards with her nieces and nephews. Mummy Ji was hovering over Beeji, concluding the diaper drill. The patient lunged suddenly, the room going still. Everyone turned to the bed. Beeji was holding Mummy Ji’s hands, tears rolling down withered flesh, “I am sorry, so so sorry.”

She had carried the bitterness of her son marrying below him half her life. “I would not acknowledge your mother-in-law while we lived together,” she looked at Lovely. “My hurt ego preferred hospice care to being dependent on a daughter-in-law I did not consider fair, cultured and religious enough for my son. I was wrong.”

Lovely turned to her Mummy Ji, suddenly seeing it all. “Do you see how Beeji’s dismissal affected your DNA, your cells? It made you compulsive and obsessive. How can you bear now to change Beeji’s diaper after a lifetime of painful rejection?”

“That was her karma; this is mine,” the smile was wan. 

Ferment

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My mouth feels acrid most of the day. If you are a nobody like me, neither rich nor poor, you will know what a fermented existence it is to be like the fly: irritating enough to elicit a frown but not threatening enough to warrant more. Now before I get the rap from you dear reader for being an ingrate, for not appreciating my privileged existence, for pointless negativity let me assure you I am as sane as they come. Why then does my cranium curdle as the day progresses?

You have gone into the Basrurkar market, parking with care. Business done, you return and eye the vehicle placed across the road, gauging the angle of turn. No one moves so you get behind the wheel and begin to ease out, trying to catch someone’s eye for guidance. Not so much as a muscle twitches until your car comes to rest on the van behind with a dull clunk. The place erupts. You are a person of murderous intent thereafter.

You return from a shopping spree, laden with bags and the nagging feeling you were fleeced. The bargaining, the silly sweets for change, the tepid Thums Up thrust at you with an insistence it is chilled, the shoe pinching in rhythm with the sweat dripping; a dull ache has begun to hammer at the head. All you can think of is dumping yourself unceremoniously in the car to first switch on the AC. What do you know;the parking attendants have done the disappearing act.

You are blithely power walking the poodle, sniffing the moisture in the air appreciatively when along comes an Audi 4, crunching headlong into the storm water, spraying you with the drain dregs at a brisk whoosh. All you can do is gnash your denture in time to the strains of Honey Singh’s vocals emanating from the dimming tail lights.

You just shelled out something to the tune of twenty four thousand rupees for two pairs of progressive, transition, monochromatic spectacles, having settled on a green and blue david johns and another in maroon, after trying out some thirty four frames. The optician positions your head to mark the center, reaches for the frames and drops them to the floor. With nary a remorseful breath, he bends to pick them up, blows esophageal air twice and proceeds with the event. 

You have paid a packet for a holiday promised with adventure and action. A lot many people seem in charge and there are several communications, the leader guiding you to the camp on phone, even awaiting you near a mountain road for the last leg. Just as soon as the money exchanges hands, there is a Houdini act, all of a sudden you have been declared self-sufficient.

You just craned your neck at the petrol pump in response to the attendant calling attention to the zero marking on the pump. A second fellow proceeds to wipe the windscreen with flair. You debate whether to step out for greater vigilance. Too late! Payment made, credit card slip signed with a greasy pen and you drive off in relief, only to puzzle over the fuel needle that refuses to rise where you want it to.

You are out on a road trip and had the foresight to put the car through a servicing before setting out. But the water logging and moonscape on our roads have brought your steed to a grinding halt. You count your stars it happened close to habitation; there is even an ATM close by for the unforeseen expenditure. You advance, bouncing leaping, grinning at the guard outside only to find it all deathly silent inside. Of course, it is not working!

After precise spelling out of the fond message, having selected with care the most appropriate combination of flowers and cake for a loved one’s special day and having made an advance payment online, Ferns and Petals delivers it all with a minuscule card, the words scrawled in an illiterate hand!

It is these little things. After all it takes only a teaspoon of curd to ferment milk!

Inaction

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Far lonelier than the dark depths of Pluto can be public patches deserted by living, breathing people. And it happens, with unfailing regularity. This desertion of a civic responsibility then threatens our welfare and survival as a species.

Let me start small.

The black dog  got too close for comfort today. It came within a foot, saliva swinging and swimming over meat eating canines and he growled. I had no forewarning. He was quite placidly settled on a mound of sand in the nippy air. I was swinging along energetically, bent upon extracting the most out of the morning jaunt.

Just as I made to negotiate the turn, Blackie got to his feet. Crouched over dipped forelegs, he ducked his head, fixing me with eyes rolled back. Overcome by a fearful cold wave, I swung my short black baton, screaming with my stomach. Three more strays meanwhile had crept up behind the vicious leader, baying and snapping. They began to  encircle me, scraping the tar with their claws, bodies primed to pounce. All sense of my surroundings began to recede. I only saw and heard and responded to this one live threat facing me. Rattled at their aggressive hostility, I lunged for a brick and swung it at the pack. Their ears promptly went flat just before they loped off.

I stood there, shaking. My heart raced and sucked for breath. 
As I regained focus and the eye lens cleared, I looked to my right; there had been the slightest of movements. A morning walker was edging tentatively into view, leading his Dachshund by a leash. He had seen me! He had heard me! I saw that in a snap from his crafted gait. He had waited for the inconvenience to pass before entering the scene.

We are like that. We hate engaging on terms not familiar to us. We also have a fundamental belief in our ineffectiveness.

That is it. Our daily life is fuelled by a numb inertia.

We don’t really believe we can make a difference. When we talk of changing the system, we are invariably thinking lofty, as in systemic at the national and global level. Truth is that we have our own personal circles of influence within our reach where we exercise total control. The slightest shift in those still waters of habit can

shoot off vibrant impulses of change.

What if that gentleman had stepped forward? What if he had not dashed back to routine safety? What if he had charged at the brutes? What if he had come with me to lodge a complaint at the guard room? 

My faith in humanity would have soared, infusing me with the energy for a hundred civic deeds. Imagine the positive domino effect. Instead I came away from the experience feeling alone, afraid, isolated, convinced that our homes are lined by mean streets.

It is not that we are powerless. We are power wasters. More and more, our strength has come to mean numbers. We do not assert affirmative social action even in the immediate radii that belong to us. Inaction is more convenient.                                                                                        

Tally ho !!

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I feel tormented by it and have nowhere to go. My colleagues poke fun at me when I approach it, reigning in their faces just short of a smirk. As a matter of fact, they do not bother with that tiny courtesy on occasions. They are quite open in their enjoyment of my discomfiture. They peer over my shoulder, feigning a patient calm, as I wipe, place, press, rub and try again. Brought up to be a nice girl, I step quickly out of queue and wait a slow slot to step back; all the time, my blood pressure steadily spiking.

The stress begins right there on approach, some hundred metres from it. Something heavy spirals up from the pit of my stomach as I move closer, the dread grasping and clenching my throat in a sour grip. An inexplicable sadness steels up and the feet slow down. But there is no escape. It has to be done.

Is it my gene blueprint that is unfriendly and reticent, not forthright enough to be called at will? I have wondered at the pattern and texture of my skin. The frequent rejection must say something for my unwholesomeness. I wipe and clean and blow some seven and a half times but at each turn: woe! Sneaking a look around to make sure there are only some close friends around, I have tried standing on one foot, even raising an arm once to strike that one potent, all successful stance. Tapping, shaking, and caressing….all to no avail.

The idea was to regularize and simplify and assist. Who would have thought it would challenge my self- belief? With every rebuff, I came away smaller. I struggled with rectification projects, seeking technical assistance, sheepishly requesting human masses of flippancy for sympathy and the magic cure. All I got were those gloating expressions of fake sympathy. Oh yes, we will do something, the person is not in today, try next week, it could have been done the day before and so very easily but where was I?!

It isn’t much to look at. There is the small black box, tacked on to the wall, drawing sustenance from an unremarkable wire. It is no-nonsense. There is only one or the other; it is red or green, no amber please. Despite the dust and grime of an intrepid, daily human contact, it inspires an emotion called reverence. You want to fold the hands and bow, “Please accept me today. Show me the uplifting green.” Standing there in a puddle of frustration at the succession of petulant reds, I have achieved an intuitive understanding of why the antediluvian man began to worship inanimate objects. What else is there to do when the tangible asserts?

I understand the Fingerprint Attendance System is a fool proof monitoring gadget but what is one to do when it insists you are not you! Which of us speaketh the truth? I am at war with this machine here. Tally ho!!

Small town dead end

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I am just back from the movie Ishaqzaade.

On the face of it, a usual and the regular outing for us empty nesters, going to the movies. But this particular viewing turned out very different, ending up becoming an experience in fact.

For one, we chose to go to “Delite Diamond” on Aruna Asif Ali Road to watch this flick. It is a very different world from the DT Star Promenade. The crowds wait outside on the pavement until the hall has been emptied of the previous show. The popcorn is cheaper and less buttery, the coffee frothier and sprinkled with chocolate powder. People are aggressively unapologetic, answering cell phones in loud, completely at home voices. No one bats an eyelid when annoyed voices are raised at audible conversations.

There were several side shows in progress inside the hall, running parallel to the drama on screen. When the movie broke at intermission for instance, there came in a harassed looking man, shuffling up to the last row where we were seated.  He did not look like he owned a movie ticket. There was in his hand a tiny digital camera instead.  After a momentary hesitation, he took quick and furtive pictures of the couple sitting two seats down the row, to my right. There was a muted flurry, a subdued, almost calm suspense, broken eventually by the lady who squeezed past my feet, grazing them slightly, to go and stand near the photographer. A couple of urgent voiced exchanges later, it was established that the picture shooter was indeed her husband who had come to confront her with her office boyfriend!  I gaped as she walked out of the hall and her husband lowered himself next to the much younger Lochinvar to ask him outright and distinctly so, “Are you having an affair with my wife? I want to know. I have a five year old son.” The paramour says, “No, no…there is no such thing.” Just like that!!

A young couple entered late, again to my right! She wore a comprehensive hijab over her face, covering it all but for the eyes. The cover came off completely just as soon as they were settled into the far corner. The two proceeded to bond over intermittent lunges and a heart to heart dialogue, treating the movie hall more as a safe getaway than a space with any clear purpose.  One of their phones would suddenly begin flashing as they pored over some mutually gratifying photographs

This is India, I told myself bemusedly.

Far more than anything else, there was a dissonant pathos in these alternative lives unfolding around us. In their needs clearly on display, there shone a reflection of what lay at home. The movie hall was many things to many people. A comfortable, air conditioned break for the policeman on duty, an escape from drudgery and despair for the adventurous lady and a cosy cove for the young couple.

Interestingly, the images on screen spun a similar story of the small town life in India. Against a realistic location of small landfills, grubby rail tracks, grimy toilets, sweaty and unkempt humanity, Zoya and Parma lived their curiously escapist existence. I saw a certain menace in Parma’s filial obedience and loyalty. His childish and short range reactions were as though, cries of defiance against the terrifying violence around him. Zoya’s inner world was unravelling even more make believe, if anything. From being a filmy and pampered daughter, she was cast out of the family in a cruel turn of events. Her unrealistic flights of fancy with Parma were chilling in their disconnect with what lay around her. There was sexism, there were clichés, there was a predictable end but most of all, there was a deep seated desolation in the jagged frames of Ishaqzaade. They spoke of people dying to live, of hating to love, of defying to die.

For me, the predominant flavour of the film was one of no place to go, no cause for hope, and no silver lining to the cloud. In the movie’s dim lit fabric lay a tale of chronic clan wars, deliberately cultivated male chauvinism and the validation of might being right. The only bugle belongs to the male heads of the Chauhan and Quereshi families, the rest provide the shell for their mounting.

Ishaqzaade is the dead end of the small town India. It is not about living but about staying alive.                                                               

Talent that hurts

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Talent hurts in India. We do not respect talent. We do not know what to do with it. As a matter of fact, we do not recognize talent. I would go so far as to say that ours is a culture that seeks to actively suppress talent.

I am talking about the innate, inborn ability that some people just seem to be born with. It could be a remarkable degree of flexibility, there may be a comfort level with words, or your child perhaps has the marbles for figures. The common thread is that the gift stands out in a crowd and therein lays the reason for alarm.

The logical and unquestionable thing to do would be to celebrate the flair and promote it at the highest level with the greatest possible gusto. But that calls for a certain degree of security and we are a people under constant threat of survival. So what do we do? We kill talent. We negate aptitude by ignoring it, by undercutting it, by discouraging it.

Take any field. Sports, the classical performing arts, academics; there is no discrimination; the throttling is across the board. An aptitude alone should be good enough to merit progress; it is instead drowned in a web of politics, corruption, indifference and an unprofessional ignorance. Some of our most prestigious, national level institutes of learning are manned by coaches and teachers who are at sea themselves. They train half-heartedly and with redundant knowledge and techniques. Out of touch with contemporary realities and bogged down in a maze of community favours and the quick buck, the last thing on their mind is excellence! There are huge gaps in knowledge; they have not stayed current with the happenings and are incapable of placing the skill they impart in any relevant context. 

Our academic institutions are no different. The children struggle over years and work to their bones to make the cut off marks into our top most universities and colleges, and what do they get after that golden foothold?  Intellectual fatigue, mediocrity and disillusionment. The emotion they come out with is exhaustion. Be it the IITs, the SRCC or the National Law Schools, there is an institutional indifference to any hunger to grow and learn. The thrill and excitement of ideas is entirely missing. The only value addition, if it can be called that, is the networking that comes from attending these highly reputed schools.

Take the knowledge imparters themselves. Do they have any leadership in their own fields? Have they contributed to the intellectual capital of our country? It is no secret that there aren’t all that many blazing trails of work visible on the Indian firmament. Little wonder then that we do not figure anywhere in the world rankings of ideas. The drought is not just of water!  We are quite content to be mediocre and do not rue the fact that we are irrelevant in the sphere of learning and academics.

There is no concept of individual brilliance. No culture of promoting innate talent above parochial considerations, above personal narrow interests, above community envy, above everything else. We are suspicious of any quest for excellence, attributing it to ulterior motives, more often than not. Our public spaces are crowded with ceaseless chatter of an unproductive kind. Very little peer exchange of ideas or theories or constructive critique takes place. In most office areas, the exchanges invariably revolve around grouses, entitlements, grievances, gossip and personal travails.

The world is not taking note of us in their “intellectual reputation” rankings. Perhaps we need to accept that our strength lies in our diverse cookery, intricate handicrafts and the amazingly talented Bollywood! We ought to lay claim on leadership in these fields. 

The heritage crisis

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Heritage?

Monuments and sites?!

Well, this news did not make the headlines but the world observed Heritage Day on the 18^th April this year.

If you were to stop the average John, Jaani, Janardhan on the road with this story that did not break in India, he would shrug it off! In a country struggling under the crushing weight of poverty, illiteracy and corruption, any mention of heritage is treated with incredulity, “People are dying here and you are talking about preserving history!” Oh no, we are not a nation too high on heritage walks or recording of ruins! The appreciation of a glorious history is a luxury, as far as we see it, befitting races that are developed beyond the basic sustenance mark. Those are people who have sublimed beyond survival, with refined antennae for finer levels of cultural assimilation. 

But there is a crisis now and we need to change that perception quickly and how?

We are a country at a cusp in time. India was shining, and then the circus of coalition took over. Today we live in spaces wherein the traffic is berserk, the TV channels completely cacophonous and an entitlement oriented citizenry clamouring for their rights 24/7. We are so caught up with internal and external security threats that no one is watching the back door out of which, unknown to us, our history and heritage are quietly vanishing.

A far greater number of people study Sanskrit outside of India today, for one. Hindustani music and classical dances have more and more takers outside the country. The most authoritative and best researched books on our history, our culture, and our socio-religious nuances are written by non-Indians. We are oblivious, indifferent, and dismissive of our phenomenal legacy. If pushed, most Indians will claim a sense of pride in what is known as the “5000 year continuous civilization” but scratch some more and the shocking fault lines will show up.

In a typical Indian home, any talk of the hoary past is synonymous with excavating buried ghosts and likely to invite impatience! There is little sense of lineage or history inculcated in the children. Most learn from watching their family elders who do not respect or recall family lore. The contempt for what has gone before extends into school and colleges where History and Sociology are trashed as subjects inferior to the analytical Sciences and requiring only rote memory at that. There is nil acknowledgement of the urgent need to infect the new generations with the desire to claim, take charge of and guard their own historical narrative.

We forget that we are only as good as our stories. And to grow unscathed beyond our diversity, we have to come to grips with our past, outlined in our own idiom. To move forward with vigour and conviction, we need to constantly look back at our common cultural wealth. Those are our survival coordinates. It will give us strength and lasting power to know and interpret our monuments, our sites, our deities, our traditions, our beliefs ourselves rather than have others tell us what we are about.

I shudder to think, how wretched my daughter Asawari would have felt on a foreign campus, to meet others who perhaps knew more about her history and heritage than she did.

What is the matter with us, one wonders? How did our records come to be in such a terrible state of disrepair. It is no secret that we hang clotheslines on archive balconies and house our historical treasures in rooms with broken windows and leaky roofs. Pigeon poop on priceless papers is not unusual and the less said about the ill-trained and destructive staff, the better. Arguably, of the 1000 plus heritage structures in Delhi alone, many are soot covered on the inside from the squatters’ chullah smoke!

One does not hear any talk of the crisis need to preserve our heritage sites on any popular and mass forum. The deplorable fact is that there is no domestic labouring or analysing or applying or studying of our past. The state of our mental bankruptcy is such that we mock the intellectual scholar, declaring she is too serious! The Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH) has been desperately looking for Heritage Walk Leaders to lead their week end meanders, to quote one such symptom!
http://www.intachdelhichapter.org/index.html 

Jaya Basera

I have been on some of their walks with Jaya Basera, a young and passionate advocate for heritage conservation. The average size of the group she leads is about ten in all, an atom of the ocean that is Delhi! But the stories she relates and the facts she quotes, bring to life an achingly beautiful echo from the days done. Hidden under the dust and grime and foliage are sounds, sights and smells of a bygone era, a foundation on which we stand today. Ironically, India’s conservation quick fix for all these hauntingly charming monuments is to put a lock at the entrance and keep out the intrepid urinators, dogs, romancing couples and future cricketers.

Are we a nation then, not rich enough to afford the preservation of our past or not wise enough to sit up and take notice of the time running out? Is it money that we lack or do we suffer the debility of attitude and desire? Do we really care about where we come from? Or are we too caught up in the mundane grind to hear historic notes straining to reach us from our crumbling glory? What is the state of our common legacy? In what condition does our combined heritage exist? 

It costs just fifty bucks to take our kids on one of the heritage walks and sow the seed that might one day fill this void in our national portrait. 

The truth is that if you were to take away from us our history, literature, culture, we would cease to exist!

Middle class

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This one is the latest whipping boy of TV anchors and panelists. 

It was the Anna phenomenon that threw the Indian middle class into the limelight. For the first time since 1947, a swathe of humanity lifted itself up and marched into the Ramlila grounds and the waiting TV cameras. Until that moment, the lot had remained invisible; they did not vote, they did not agitate, they did not terrorize, they did not steal, they went about their business quietly and stayed off the national radar.

The one thing that fuelled and jettisoned them was the phenomenon of liberalization. While the visible India was busy looting the exchequer and wheeling and dealing and living it up, the middle class was adding to its investments in real estate, their children’s education, savings plans and personal entrepreneurship. The prospect of a dispensable income, a comfortable life style and future security were factors driving this relentlessly working mass of humanity. Through all this lifetime of drudgery and thrift, their glue and anchor remained the family unit. Needless to say, one generation’s drive prompted a saga of growth and opportunity and evolution for the successive progeny.

It is no secret that India’s growth rate spiked and so did her international image.  From a dowdy, meek, terribly diffident and nice body language, Indians made the ballistic switch to designer wear and attitude, going so far as to begin to wear their provinciality with a panache, some of it stoked by the “Dabangs and Piplis”  from Bollywood. Nowhere was this metamorphosis more evident than on the cricket field where the polite guys of yore had transformed into cocky, finger waggling images of defiance.

Today, when this newly confident middle class is blamed for being selfish and impervious to its social responsibility, I wonder at this surprising and misdirected demonization. In his recent interview with Barkha Dutt on NDTV, Javed Akhtar trashed the trending “anger” of the middle class, calling it a very self-oriented and self-focussed concern. He said the educated and professional India was supporting the Anna movement for her selfish reasons and that no one was actually bothered about the deprived and the poor. It is another matter and perhaps Javed Saab is not aware, that a sizable number of this reviled middle class’s children are choosing to shun dazzling salaries for social activism, based in no mean measure upon a sense of security provided by the consolidation efforts of their parents.

It would therefore not be far fetched to say that this segment’s “selfishness” in fact makes up the stable, productive, sane fabric of India. They are the class that harbour and nurture the “value system” of the nation. 


India’s middle class has had no help from any quarter. They are entirely self-made. They are also the component of India’s population that stand the most to lose, with the greatest value at stake. It is their hard earned prosperity that struggles to survive in the shadow of bribes and corruption and it is their peace of mind and a good night’s sleep that thrashes around under the ever present cloud of a national guilt over India’s disadvantaged.

The simple question to ask: Is it the people’s selfishness or the policy paralysis that got us the Standard and Poor “junk rating?” The key to improving our SP rating is simple; clear the long pending Parliamentary Bills, enforce our phenomenal laws, stop robbing the state coffers and leave the rest to India’s middle class. Rather than vilify the golden goose, the country ought to work to make it easy and possible for more Indians to come into the fold of this enterprising and ambitious section.

Aaja aaja jind shamiyane ke taley

Aaja zariwale neelay aasmaan ke taley

Jai ho! 

Public policy

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One of the things that tears at me is the guilt that the girls may be growing up more alienated and cynical about the government of the land they were born in, than I ever was.

It was enough once upon a time to have the government take care of economics and national security. On the infrequent occasions we ever spotted the leaders on the international stage, they appeared dignified and in control. The public intellectual spaces were filled with the literate renditions of editors and academicians. The country’s citizenry was not nearly as energetic and critical as it is today.

Democracy was spoken of as a gold dusted legacy, bequeathed us by lofty visionaries. We uttered words such as republic, people and common good with a hushed reverence. I was certain there was no feasible form of government other than the God given government of the people, by the people, for the people.

Along came the concept of self-fulfilment; the flighty but compelling notion of realizing personal potential and to the fullest at that. Like the dormant Sierra Blanca prodded to life, an array of brand new "quality of life" issues spewed forth in full public view. Environment protection, a participatory democracy, the pacifist agenda, gender sensitivity, welfare state, human rights, arms reduction, energy renewal, terrorism management, nuclear policy; a whole lot came to be expected of the government and of each other. The powers had to keep the fuel prices down, prevent earthquakes, assure us jobs and food security, make us proud citizens of a world power and keep the enemy out.

The media quickly strapped up and came out in full regalia to report this transition. From that broadcast beaming on, I was never sure ever again if Aqseer and Asawari were indeed growing up in a world as twisted as the media made it out to be. It bothers me today that they have to see a lack of civic community spirit, a paucity of social trust. I do not want their public consciousness to be imbued with distrust, contempt and cynicism. I would rather they not be forced to either resign themselves to the mess, settle for the least of the evils or set out on the warpath with the sound of bugle.

I would have them believe instead, in the power of change. The power of public opinion is like the sleeping python, I want to tell them, the deadly menace a promise only until the coil unfolds and begins to hiss. As enlightened citizens of the country, they would do well to be prepared to tell their government to spend their money with responsibility, represent their interest and behave in a trustworthy manner. It is only a myth that the present form of government cannot be restructured. Other democracies have been talking for years in terms of limiting serving terms and balancing budgets, shifting power to the states and setting up electronic citizen meetings, for starters.

May the young therefore be, utterly sophisticated citizens of the world today? May they have so strong a sense of ties to their country and community that between a prayer for the nation and a reshaped public policy, they settle only and only for the latter! 

News cynic

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Inertia is a lot more than an inevitable, insipid physical phenomenon. It can have a definitive effect on the directions our lives take, unbidden and well hidden under the busy layers of daily living. It is quite possible that years may slip past, marching along to music that was little more than the blahs! And then, unexplained, unplanned, quite out of the firmament, there will come a bolt. Voila! A book, a chance conversation, a quotation on some bulletin board, a meter of a poem, some bit from a blaring song and there is a click! A curtain rises, the fog clears and the vantage point shifts.

For half my life I had been a fan of the Indian media. It was the fourth pillar; their brand of investigative journalism the only fearless feature of a toady and mangy milieu. The admiration began with Arun Shourie and the fiery paper that Indian Express was under his executive-editorship. It was almost as though he pioneered the scandal and corruption exposes. Then came Nalini Singh’s “Ankho Dekhi”. I had a fascination for “Newstrack”, the news video journal. Those were the days of Khushwant Singh’s Illustrated Weekly and Doordarshan’s mannequinesque news readers, laden with Lakme foundation and the flower in the hair.

Staid, lumbering and a trifle bland, it was understood that barring the likes of DAVP (Directorate of Audio Visual Publicity) and Doordarshan, the media would function as a watch-dog of democracy, creating awareness among India’s illiterate multitude and fulfilling the responsibility of social development. Those were simpler, if poorer days. The country was not caught up in any great creative spiral and there was a semblance of faith in the distant leadership. I would go so far as to say there was a delusional sense of security that things were being taken care of.

The leaves turned soon and how. The red light came on for me rather late in life, thanks to a continued, if naïve faith in the purpose and power of media. It was with General V K Singh’s saga, the vicious denouement of the Armed Forces in press and on TV that the bile rose into my throat. The hate speeches on panel discussions instead of informed debates, the haranguing of the Chief by anchors who became judge, jury and executioner, the complete disregard for decency and maturity in reporting….my decade long media inertia melted in the blasé heat of breaking news and inflammatory headlines.

I no longer watch news with a sense of awe struck pride. Mine is a jaundiced scrutiny. I am looking for shoddy research, the stakeholder’s slant, tailored views or just plain mischief.

Our media is growing to be the biggest challenge to the idea of a nation, is what I have come to increasingly believe.

There are issues.  Is media ownership ever going to be a public trust like it was meant to? Is there going to be some degree of self-regulation on any channel or publication? Is the media accountable to anyone at all, other than the TRP ratings? Is it promoting a public sphere? Is there doctoring of the news going on for vested interest holders? Are the news people creating an atmosphere of suspicion, rather than trust in the democratic institutions of the country?

TV news has had an unfettered run for far too long. It is time perhaps to bring in what they have been holding at bay all this while: the Broadcast Services Regulation Bill.