Whose dreams?

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The world stands in judgement of mothers far more than it judges fathers. Perhaps the differential stems from the order of nature. In the animal as well as the human world, mothers remain the primary incubators and nurturers. Their bodies, emotions, thoughts are invested to a greater degree and in more immediate ways. Motherhood transforms their lives in a far more essential manner than it changes a father’s daily routine. Of course, there are demands on him to provide and protect but the degree….it is a matter of degree….

And then along comes the judging, following either of the two trajectories. If their children mess up, the Moms did not guide enough and should their kids shine, they are living their dreams through the children. I have never been able to make up my mind on which of the two views is more unfair.

For the sake of argument, let’s base the unfairness on outcomes. In other words, let’s presume that criticism when kids go tangential would be more acceptable than judging Mothers whose sons and daughters end up authentically autonomous. Why would people accuse these proud mothers of fulfilling their personal ambitions through their children?

It is true that a sizable animal population does not care for their offspring once they have been given birth; some species are born independent but the female cobra, mammals and birds care for their young until they are able to strike out on their own. This nurture ensures the survival of the species. It is owed by one generation to the other. I would go so far as to call it moral parenthood.

The level of nurturing would rise with every step up the biological kingdom. At the sophisticated stage of mankind, parental responsibilities ought to go far beyond the basic provision of food, clothes and shelter. In a complex and conflict ridden world, who else but the parents will primarily ensure the right software programming in their children’s hearts, minds and souls that will keep them safe and growing in the world outside? Granted that parents make mistakes but so long as there is love and desire for the young’s welfare, it all pretty much falls in place.

Recognizing and acknowledging and showing the kids that they are worthy of harbouring a dream is step number one. Next comes the path to realizing those ambitions. With so much information clutter swirling in their spaces, a little bit of filtering does no harm, it is in fact critical for some clarity and focus. It is the modern parents’ responsibility to be well informed and socially savvy enough to be able to function as a sounding board for their children. They are certainly not stoking their own embers by facilitating the path ahead for their young.

I would challenge anyone who says it is all right to leave the children to figure it all out for themselves today. These are tough times. Never has a generation been so far out and so in need of an anchor as this one. It would be too dangerous a waste to leave them without a moral compass and a clearly outlined work ethic they can use to climb a ladder they have defined for themselves.

Modern parents cannot use the excuse their own parents did viz. that they knew no better. It is not about living one’s dreams through the offspring. It is about placing your own dreams on hold until you have brought up your kids to nurture theirs and be well on their path to realizing them.

The coat

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Does life imitate the movies or is it the bioscope that is inspired by blood and bones?

I don’t know but I have my list of incredible moments that seem to happen only in the movies.

And my all-time favourite is the coat scene.

People talk of the horrors of physical deprivation and hurt but there is an ache of the inside that is way higher, touching a point beyond the labour pain high of 57 del on the scientific scale of pain. Invisible on the outside, it rages deep within, rising in the throat and creeping in sour waves into the pit of the stomach. The chill converges on the lungs. There is the fearful headiness of a reckless, roller coaster ride. Your vision is blurred by regret, self-berating and lonesomeness.

Time for the coat!

And as though on cue, it is at these quiet times of desperation that the Knight Errant appears out of the mist in a soft focus in the movies, the music dims and the hall goes still. There is a magical connection. Two pairs of eyes meet and a wave of hope and strength and kindness is transmitted from one to the other and the broken begins to build back, right there. That one gesture injects her with glowing steel in the veins, making her as good as new.

It is my definition of the most beautiful human transaction ever! 

Did you ever have this happen to you? Have you experienced or witnessed and acknowledged pain in all these years you have treaded this earth? Cast a cursory look around, particularly in idle mode at the traffic lights, there are several there, crumbling inside like a wedge of carrot cake or a ball of ice lolly under that public mask of nonchalance. Some are probably on fire inside, like their throats have been taken by the guts. Of course they drive with numb limbs, grey lead in the toes pressing on the accelerator, hurting, crying, and scarring inside while those with the power to wash it all away stand outside these high walls of need, unseeing, unhearing, and refusing to take off their coats!

When faced with pain in fact, the most common reactions range from outright denial to an outraged defensiveness. Listen, cut the drama and let’s move on with it, shall we? There are so many tragedies taking place in the world? So many people do not have the time or the luxury for all this sighing and feeling. And what are you crying over this, I have seen worse. If you heard what I have gone through, you would shut up with gratitude!

The coats of empathy either do not exist in real life or are few and far between. For the most, we do not respect others enough to accept their pain. We are scared to engage outside of our own comfort zones. Even though we know that we ought to look at them with gentle eyes and say in a grave voice that we understand, we bluff them and ourselves by saying it is just idle nerves; and this on a good day. On the others, we tell ourselves that their cry for help is a personal attack on us.

Dear God, let me be otherwise. Give me the strength, the kindness, the faith to be the one holding out the coat.

Neanderthals

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The country is in the throes of an inexplicable regression.

Cover up or get raped! This sentiment currently riding India’s public spaces gets steadily strident and sinister. Stay safe with traditional clothes. Dispense with jeans and shorts if you want to preserve your modesty. Cleavage is sure to invite dirt. So watch what you wear and how!

The sneaky, lying voices emanate from everywhere. A clicking of the tongue that originates from the inside of homes, extending to the legislative cabins, echoing on roads, TV studios, peepal panchayats, school corridors and police stations; why will women not listen and stick to the Indian mores while picking their clothes. More and more, in this pluralistic, populous, progressive, democratic home of the Indus Valley Civilization, half the citizens are being told to shore up against the other half under layers of clothes. There is a siege within; a social deceit in the avowed “good and safety” of women.

The diktats are not new. What is scary is the deliberate denial of the collaborative nature of correction needed. There is a vengeful focus solely on the molested. No one will talk of what the molesters ought to do. It is presumed that he can’t help his testosterone throwing him into epileptic spasms of salivation and penile erection at the sight of female flesh. He is XY, the most potent sample of a biped and beyond redemption as far as lust and lechery go. Legs, arms, midriff, silhouette, even eyes at times, he is not fussy; it can all set him off like a pack of crackers. Horrors of horrors, they would have you believe he is particularly turned on by a whimpering, resistant, petrified and unresponsive victim of sexual assault.

So you have these loathsome creatures rubbing their prized maleness against you in buses; the boob pokers who will elbow into your chest pretending to look elsewhere as the young, growing girls wince with pain and shame; ass grabbers, snaking out of the crowd to grab a handful. Fairly dutiful around their immediate family women, they then step out into the streets, these roving masses of testosterone, stripping women with their eyes, doing them right there in public, boring into them.

Lo and behold, the unchanged, continuous, purest descendants of the Neanderthals. A girl’s upbringing has metamorphosed but quite clearly the baby boy book has not been updated. As a matter of fact, their growth has been in the skill of double dealing. In the same breath that he uses the word “sexy” with intent to compliment, he blames victims of rape for having invited sexual assault with their “hotness”. On the one hand item numbers extol ‘jawani’ and ‘badnaami’, on the other there is this all pervasive moral din over culture and tradition. The rules are different. A guy sporting his tight butt in body hugging jeans is celebrating his masculine frame but a woman sporting a low neckline is begging to be violated. Biceps on a man state power; a trim waist on a woman spell invitation. The horrific sanction extends to men in positions of trust and responsibility. Try sharing the chiller with them and they will be quick to tell you how men will be men and how even boys are not spared. 

The numbskulls do not want to see that it is not about the right to expose but about the right to exist without shame, fear and guilt.

I have two daughters and I am scared witless. How do I have them balance their education with conformity? Having brought them up to breathe progressive notions, how do I sell oppression to them guised under the cowl of tradition? What good really is the visible progress made by the successive generations of women in their family if the end goal is the go back into hiding? Do they need, for their own survival, to acknowledge that no one really cares for the autonomy, dignity and authenticity of women? That just a scratch below the skin of modern civilization is the molten, pre-historic “burn the witch” hatred. That the men in their lives may view their independent thinking as an attack on their masculinity, deserving to be mocked and put down. And that the tool they will call in might be rape wherein lays the truth that sexual harassment is not about sex. The deal is about power, control and domination.

It has been said over and over and bears any amount of repeating. As much as the violations grow so must the protests amplify. To summarize therefore and reiterate and register again and yet again:

Rape is violent

Rapes are mostly committed by men women have little reason to suspect

Rape has nothing to do with the dress of the victim

Rape visits the weak and the timid, kids included


What you and I can do right away is to:

Stop laughing at rape jokes

Boycott movies that glorify rape

Speak out when the victim is blamed

Engage men in addressing this criminal attack on those who hold up half the sky

The ax forgets but the tree remembers. In remembering, we can give this daily, horrific occurrence a language that will snatch it out if its "unspeakable" yellow, ticker tape.

Letting go

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I hear it a lot.

“You have sent such a tiny little girl all that far away!!” 

The refrain comes from various quarters, family, close and extended; even friends and those seeing her for the first ever time.

My reaction is uncertain. I am never able to pin the proportion of concern, blame or awe in that phrase. Is it an exclamation? An accusation? Or plain, good old disapproval? They could even be marvelling.

It is true that she has flown a distance and most certainly, her frame might be called petite. Add to that her chronological place in the family; being the younger will always peg her as the junior, the little one, the kid sister, and the smaller, irrespective of the passage of life she might be traversing at the time of these observations.

She has been travelling yes, living with strangers, moving over unfamiliar territory, discovering her pace in alien cultures, sustaining on exotic fare and foreign air. I have gone over the map of strangeness she must have to traverse over and over. Are there moments of crushing loneliness that first night in a strange bed? How often do the bouts of anxiety strike over the local security systems and formal procedures? What is the degree of denial that takes place in situations she is not at ease enough to seek help? How wholesome and healthy are her emotional negotiations in spaces she has no prior knowledge of?

It takes a lot. There is the pre-departure preparation. The mandatory drill of Visa acquisition, pondering over luggage content and weight, airport transit Visa where needed, currency exchange, baggage tags, first aid box, online familiarisation with the country she is approaching, establishing some form of contact with what will be her nodal host agency, working out her international communication protocol over differing time zones….it is unending. 

 

Would it have been easier to have her closer home?  For the family, most certainly, that would have given us a greater degree of control and ease of operation.  Her cheery, tongue-in-cheek presence would have buoyed up the evenings. There would have been the joy and pride in her steady growth and accomplishments. One doesn’t need J K Rowling’s imagination to fathom the bonus reason there would have been to spring up from the bed each dawn. But the thing to ask is, “Who is this about?” Is it about the child and her unpainted canvas or the parents who would be wary of risks? What is owed, how much, by and to whom?

What will it be for our young? Order, safety and convenience or lives free of fear, guilt, shame and self-doubt? Years lived inside high walls of custom and tradition or the core autonomy of being? The excuse of having borne external decisions or the consequences of one’s personal courage and conviction? A morbid hark- back to what might have been as against an edgy touchdown amidst unfamiliar challenges?

It is the reason I go clinical on the drive to the airport. There are the constant backward glances at the passenger seat, in vain attempts to frame imprints of her face. The goodbye hug is over before the mind is able to record her aura sharp enough to last until her next visit home. As we re- enter the silent home, echoes lunge out from spots she has just vacated. There is nothing left to do but to track her flight. It is only when she lands safely that the slackness comes.

It emerges all over again that parenting really is in letting go, in allowing them their spaces to evolve, in making it possible for them to meet life at the front door, in acknowledging that flesh of your flesh they might be but they are individual persons with a life map their own. Attachment, need, togetherness are merely the illusory fuels that crank the business of living. Truth be told, there is a song that they hear in their heads, a path uncoiling ahead. There should be happiness enough just over some shared notes. Not to bemoan or sigh therefore, but to cheer and whistle them on!

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!!

Buried in the hearts

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So much has been written about pets and their going away that any more words seem certain of sounding platitudinous. But like air and water and sun and the earth, thoughts by their intrinsic nature, are born to be shared.

If my Mom is Dad’s first love, Fluffy was his other lady love! He had a name for her, “Gudia”.

Originally a fifth birthday gift to Aqseer, Fluffy was by extension her sister because the pup’s mother Candy was my Dad’s dog and that put Fluffy laterally in the same orbit as her five year old owner. But it so happened that over the years, with our constant moves and unsettled tenures, the pooch found her way back to her original home. And there she stayed for twelve long years, until her passing away at the remarkable age of 16 years on this 18^th May.

Far more through omission than by commission, Fluffy grew up to be Dad’s personal dog. During those vacation seasons of family gatherings, while the hordes gathered around Mom, Fluffy stayed loyal to Dad, dismissing all the gaiety and cheer in favour of his busy shadow. They had quite a pact. Dad would take one look at the giggly story telling session involving a bunch of excited grandkids leaping all over the prostrate yarn spinner in his master bedroom, turn to Fluffy with a crisp command ,“Let’s go Fluffy,” and the two would be off to the guest room!

It is Dad who knew the little tricks to make her finish her meal! Many a crisp, green, cucumber they have shared under the table. The doggy bag of goods with every non-veg purchase was a foregone conclusion. She received her care: the bath, the medicines, the walks, the brushing chiefly from Dad. I know the highlight of her day was a tummy tickle with his big toe! She was also partial to a demonstrative action on her little head.

Once an energetic little ball of white fur, for a while lately, age had begun to slowly but steadily creep up on her. The eyes were dimming and her limbs deflating of strength. Dad was clearly running out of tricks to feed her.  She gave off a whiff of weariness and fatigue. Most of the day was spent in a stupor. The doorbell that would once shock her into wild yelps no longer penetrated the curtain that was drawing close.

I am glad we were around to sit over her as she departed. There she lay under the fan, covered with one of Mom’s fine, new dupattas. As we drove to a calm and open place at dawn to lay her to rest, I couldn’t help but recall all those other occasions when she would be hanging out of the car window in excitement, ears twitching and tail furiously wagging. Having found a neat place under a tree, a little pit was dug up and Fluffy laid down for her final sleep.

It has been seven days. Is there a canine paradise she has gone to? Did the phantom of her mother Candy stand at the doorway, awaiting her? I don’t know but I sure am glad, she is at rest on a path that her owner walks every day.

You Fluffy, dear dog, in the truest sense, are buried deeper in our hearts!

Raison d' etre

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I have been watching the skin on the back of my mother’s hands very closely! In consonance with the changing texture and folds of that organ, there has grown in my head a sketch of what it means to watch one’s parent get on in years.

There was a time when the hand was smooth and unblemished. It would deftly, with one quick sweep, craft a long bindi on the forehead; Mom used a “jooda pin” and lipstick! Blessed with an insistent industriousness, those hands rustled up an astonishing range of magic in the kitchen; her imli chutney, dahi vadas, red garlic chicken and missa praunthas came flawless, off those very grips. Her squeaky clean work surfaces continue to baffle guests. Be it the cooking range, the utensils or the utilities, everything gleams and winks! And woes betide anyone who dunks a bowl uncovered in her state of the art refrigerator!

There is a fan following to rival Rajesh Khanna’s. Her painstaking handicraft adorns a multitude of family homes. It is her energy, her thoughts, the beats of her heart, her occasional fatigue, her self-discipline, and her intense desire to make us richer, this entire maternal cocktail that toasts us from our walls and windows in colourful macramé and crochet marvels. Before the ready-made garments hit the Indian markets, she would crawl the corridors outside many a high end store, drawing inspiration from unaffordable kids wear, beckoning from the show windows. Patching, repairing, darning, altering, and beating stubborn stains…it is all in a day’s work. 

I must not leave out the drill of the milk that has been handed down the generations! An assembly line chain of setting the curd, portioning some for buttermilk, churning a part for the wholesome white butter which is then heated into desi ghee; there is religion there!  As for her knits, they are indisputable wonders of yarn.

I recall with a smile, my parents returning from one of those regular Army parties, there she would be, carefully folding away the saree no matter how late in the night it was, Dad accompanying the winding down process with a narration of the evening’s highlights. Having inherited the gene for cleanliness from her own mother, to the point of being finicky, you can always tell her pillow from the extra little towel cover. And I have not seen anyone else slough and scour and cream their feet with the vigour she does.

Kartar Kaur and Sardar Jarnail Singh Brar

Brought up by a stern and disciplinarian mother in the India of 1930-1960, I think my Mom learnt early on to hide her strength and keep it firmly out of sight. She had a parent who considered her craft work a waste of precious time, better spent on good, solid housework. While our daughters today, roam the world as free spirits, my mother had to account for every extra minute she spent out of home. There was no other way. Her silence had to become her armor.

I have witnessed as a child how she rarely protested excessive imposition on her personal space and time and internalized the need to keep peace, at all costs. Some may say that it is a form of escapist evasion but having lost a father she was very close to, at a critical juncture  in her life, who is to say what the voices whispered in the ears. I suspect they said, “What for? What for? What for?”

We talk today of having our own lives, beyond and away from exclusive parenthood. The theory of personal fulfilment views a desire to stay connected with the children through some furrow of the brow. There is the doctrine of letting go, of a love that is completely unconditional and space friendly. Modern gyan also extols the virtue of not living through one’s brood.

I am glad my Mom defies it all in her own unique way. Her parenthood remains the axis it was, it has just wrapped in grand-parenthood as well. A huge chunk of her fulfillment comes from the trials, travails and accomplishments of her progeny. She is like the sun, visible, life-giving but never close enough to burn.

Does she control her children? As much as an anchor does, yes! Is there fear in her love? To the degree that empathetic pain causes, perhaps. Did she ever cut the apron strings completely? In the manner of the cords metamorphosing into lifelines, of course.  Does she live through her offspring? Well, they might even qualify as the raison de’ etre.

And I am afraid, no one is complaining! As a matter of fact, I might be emulating this example of letting go in a manner that has them connected and coming back!!!

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 golden PTM

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On the face of it, this is just a regular Parent Teacher Meeting. There is general sprucing up of the premises, the usual written circular has done the rounds a day prior, carrying the official guidelines on an appropriate conduct with the parents, the ceremonials are out, bulletin boards updated, PTM related papers in order and come the day, the families begin to troop in.

The air is thick with emotions. There is nervousness competing with pride; guilt trading with fear; need switching between finger pointing and placing appreciation on record.

It has been several years but I have not been able to tell who dreads the PTM more , the teachers or the parents. It would be accurate to say they both experience mixed feelings. Teachers have been known to fret over the exhaustive number of adjectives they feel pressured into using; for the parents it is a day of personal validation, a tick mark almost on the authenticity of their parenthood.

Something clicks the moment parents lower themselves into those chairs facing the teacher. The curtain parts and the mist lifts, a lot many things fall into place for both of them. With experience, I have learnt to read between the lines and use that awareness to advantage for the child sitting sandwiched between the two points of authority in her life.

The format being what it is, a lot of the discussion happens over the child’s head and in his face. Quite a chunk is made up of annoyed words from both sides at times. There are serious expectations, acute disappointments, an impotent rage sometimes. I remember a father who began a forceful tirade, “Ma’am, she does not listen to me. That makes me very upset.” The mother looked on, maintaining a helpless silence as their daughter and my student visibly shrunk into a ball. I reached out and pulled her close, watching her mother’s eyes speak to me. There was a watery reflection in her eyes as the father and I thrashed out parental prerogatives.

Oh yes, tears are not uncommon. There is a lot at stake in the course of a typical PTM for everyone involved. It is the time for self-authentication of all!  There was this mother who was concerned about her child not reading enough, not studying enough, not researching enough! She had a busy job and was desperate to put whatever time they had together to good use and understandably so. In all her agony and fear for her child’s future, she had stopped seeing the child. I jogged her gently to try and picture what his typical day out of home subjected him to. She saw soon enough that what her child needed most was her acceptance and at the end of what became a counselling session of the mother, the two walked out of the room happily enough, hand in hand.

Another face is imprinted in my mind of a mother whose eyes welled up when her nine year old daughter turned on her with an abrupt, “How are you going to take care of my uniform? You are never at home!” And a father again, expressing anguish at how the family was not able to provide their son the care he needed and deserved because the mother worked in another town.  A flash another time, from a defiant eight year old, telling her Dad in no mean terms what activity club she intended to join up!

There are lessons that jump at me from this close brush with one of mankind’s most complex preoccupations in life, the fool proof raising of their children. The understanding is nearly crystal clear now, with the benefit of hindsight, the 6/6 vision that comes in retrospect, always but always and invariably when you can no longer use it.

The biggest and the most important of the golden rules is that the children need us and that they do heed us. They are knocked around so hard and fast outside; they do not have to be badgered at home. They ought to be able to come in to an unconditional acceptance. They do watch their parents very closely, absorb and learn almost a facsimile of the example being set by them and even though they may not emulate right away, the images endure, surfacing many a times, years later.

Parents exert a tremendous influence on their progeny. We need a lot more faith in the way we bring them up therefore! 


If we are OK, there is no way our kids are going to be anything but OK.                                                                                                                                                                                                           

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!