Modern day Slaves

This is my first attempt at writing a blog post on my tablet. There are just too many gadgets all around us nowadays.
Our television is playing in the background - it always is as soon as I get back from work. We don't really watch anything seriously - we mostly flip channels, I catch a few snippets of some football matches on the sports channels once a while, catch a few headlines on news channels - flippant, nonchalant time pass - but it's on nonetheless.
On most days I spend umpteen hours on my laptop at work and often on coming back home, I spend a little more time surfing on my personal laptop - paying bills online, checking statuses and snaps of friends & family across the world, going thru my G-Mail inbox and mostly deleting umpteen unsolicited e-mails.
On the way to and from work, I connect my mobiles to my Bluetooth enabled devices to basically extend my office environment into my car as well. Once in a while, I also use mobile car chargers to keep my mobiles going.
And as for mobile phones, they are becoming more and more intrusive. With smartphones thriving all around, it is the first thing that I use in the morning (desperately trying to turn off an irritating new alarm app) and the last thing at night (checking a few messages on Whatsapp) and anytime thru out the day when I get some breathing time (checking out SMSes on my way up the escalator at office) etc. and yeah, it's my personal phone. The official one rings so much that at times, I can hear it ringing in my ear even when I am fast asleep.
There is a PS3 on which I have hardly ever played anything, although I make plans almost very other weekend; a MP3 player which I use at times for my jogging even though I have more songs on my mobile and I could have jolly well used the mobile only; a music system on which we keep thinking that we will hear our collection of CDs and cassettes, but end up mostly listening to the same inane repetitions of songs played by RJs on radio channels....
And to even think that I was even contemplating buying a SMART TV!!!

They Flash upon that Inward Eye

I gazed – and gazed – but little thought

What wealth the show, to me had brought...

It's been more than a year, give or take a few days. And yet, I have never really done my heart's bidding – to have my meal at night, switch off all the lights and sit out on the ledge of the balcony of our 11^th floor apartment looking out over Croydon, London. To look down in silence over the glare of a city forever frothing with energy and gaze up at wondrousness at the expanse of a sky that seems contentedly becalmed.

Somehow, whenever I have stepped out, I have always looked down first – at the lights, shimmering all around in different shades; the myriad sounds that evoke a thousand confused connotations all at once; the cars, the buses & the pedestrians, all in an unseeming hurry to get somewhere - a collage of activity, energy, confusion, hurriedness.

And then, as if to set the mind at rest again and to soothe your soul, the eyes wander to the view above - to the ethereal serenity of the sky; the slow, but unerring trundle of the silver-lined grey clouds. The mind frees itself from the shackles of reality and wanders unhindered, into the realms of fantasy. Cotton balls floating around on a grey sea, dragon shaped monsters lining up in formation for a battle, serrations of a mountain range hanging upside down from the firmament – there arises, almost a childlike innocence in the vivid imaginations of the mind. Dozens and then with the passage of some more time, perhaps hundreds of the twinkling stars come into view, each assuming an identity of its own, if you peer at them hard enough – till you get oblivious to everything around you and that tiny speck of light far, far up there, seems to be the only thing that you can see. The silver glow of the moon creates a séance like atmosphere - It is fascinating – the feeling of being one in harmony with an unknown cosmic order at large.

And then a cold breeze blew and with a shudder, I realized that it has been almost an hour. As I switched on the lights again, I can almost hear myself groan. But, then every good thing has to be momentary, for us to recall it with pleasure.

 ..... For oft, when on my couch I lie

In vacant or in pensive mood,

They flash upon that inward eye

Which is the bliss of solitude;

And then my Heart with pleasure fills,

And dances with the Daffodils

---------- William Wordsworth

Where have they all gone?

It was one of those typical grey, bleak, wintry London mornings when you go through the motions of the whole day, having seen nothing but different shades of grey. I had woken up later than usual and later than what would leave me with a decent amount of time to get ready and go to office – I decided to work from home. So, it was that I had the luxury of time in my hand and was standing in the balcony of my 11^th floor apartment overlooking the expanse of Croydon, when a house sparrow decided to pay me a visit. It flitted on to the railing to the right of me, hopped around my legs a couple of times, wandered along the length of our balcony in a rather forlorn manner and then took flight and disappeared as suddenly as it had come.

It was there for a mere 5 minutes, but it suddenly made me realize how infrequent sparrow sightings have become in urban areas (and I am not speaking of London alone – I was in Bangalore and Mumbai for considerable periods of time before coming to London and try as I might, I couldn’t recollect seeing a single sparrow ever). Yet, they had been such a familiar sight when I was growing up that one would pass by without even a glance or not notice their chirping amidst the general din and even, I guess, get irritated at times, when too many of them would hover around, on the balconies and the rooftops.

What exactly is the reason for their diminishing numbers in the cities, I do not know. But what I definitely do know is that their numbers must be drastically falling for I do not see them up and about ever and I doubt my children, when they grow up, would ever see one outside of a text book.

My guess is that they have fallen prey to technology and have lost their nestling sites – how many houses do you see today that have holes and nooks from which, straws are sticking out?

How I wish mine in London had not been a modern apartment, but an older house with its sealing not so tight. That fleeting sparrow visit definitely made my day, a lot less greyer.

The Charm of the Written Word

I am told that it is not that kids of today have completely moved away from books. Somebody I knew had read it somewhere. I hope it is true. For I for one, believe completely in the age old maxim of "Books are a man's best friend".

A lot of what I am today is because of the kind of things that occupied my mind and time during my youth and reading happens to be one of the chief activities that would keep me busy then. And boy, did I love reading? I used to have a voracious appetite for books, ever since I recollect - and this was for all kinds of things readable - books, magazines, newspapers and later e-books etc - I have never discriminated against any medium of readable information. The use of them however was dictated by the availability, weight of the wallet, ease of reading etc at different times.

As a kid, I used to go to my grand-parents's houses regularly during my school vacations - both sets - paternal ones in Patna and the maternal ones, a little yonder, in Bhagalpur. Both my grandfathers had a healthy appetite for books and they, thankfully, transferred their genes on to me, albeit in different ways.

My paternal grandfather would spend hours reading the morning newspaper (in fact, later, when we used to stay with him and I was much elder, there would be a fierce competition in the house regarding the primary possession of the morning newspaper between me, my father and my grand-father !!) and would regale me with stories and events from there and from the works of various other authors, of which he had considerable knowledge. As a kid, the newspaper fascinated me - it seemed to me, a mysterious fount of stories from all around the world - it was through its pages that I learnt of the splendour of Angkor Wat and Borobudur, it was through those pages that a certain Diego Armando Maradona kindled my love for football, it was through them that I first heard words like glasnost and perestroika. In fact, the habit of spending at least sometime in the morning, come what may, going through the pages of the daily newspaper is something that I have strictly adhered to over the years, since I was a 7 year old boy. The sections that aroused my interest have expanded - but the order has remained constant through the years - sports, headlines, world news and then the rest. As a kid growing up in Kolkata, THE STATESMAN was regarded as the finest epitome of the Queen's English and we were asked to go through its editorials religiously in order to improve one's vocabulary and spellings. I am not sure how many of those weighty articles really caught my fancy at that age, but I must say that the sessions have not been in vain.

My maternal grand-father, on the other hand, had bequeathed a fine set of tomes for his descendants, for he was, unfortunately, no longer around when I really began reading earnestly. I hardly have any memories of him that I can draw up, but I owe my interest in a plethora of esoteric subjects completely to his collection of books. On countless afternoons in Bhagalpur, when the rest of the inmates of our house would rest in slumber, I would take apart those weighty tomes - page by page. There was one book especially that I cherished the most - LIVING TOGETHER AS WORLD NEIGHBOURS - Don't remember the author , but I do recall Macmillan as the publisher - but I recall reading with rapt attention the description of the peoples , cultures and histories of the whole world. It used to have lovely photographs of different cities of the world - most of them in B&W - but they seemed to light up the world for you in front of your eyes - the minarets of Kremlin, a long liner passing through the Panama canal, two-humped Bactrian camels loitering in the vast steppes of Central Asia, a Russian family sitting down for breakfast in their traditional Cossack costumes (I still remember, how surprised I was at seeing the quantity of food they had at their breakfast table), students milling around Heidelberg University, regarded as one of the oldest and grandest seats of learning in Europe etc etc. It had also a spectacular set of maps of each continent (in fact, the maps in that book with vast swathes of colonial Africa with names like Belgian Congo, Rhodesia, Nyasaland, U.S.S.R etc would seem perhaps, to be completely from a different planet to a kid of today) and this book was singularly responsible for my keen interest in maps and geography, something that I retain, to this day.

Of course, there has to be constant encouragement from parents and a lot of interest from their side as well before any habit is really ingrained in the children. I have imbibed my love of reading and knowing things - all kinds, all over the world - from my mother (who, having been raised up in small-town Bihar, has never ceased to amaze me with her knowledge of global events and her keen enthusiasm of learning about things even now - guess, my grand-father is to be credited) and my father, who used to spend so much time explaining to me such diverse topics as the structure of the United Nations, stories of different wars, dictators etc.

Kids today have a much larger and mind-boggling variety of entertainment options to choose from. I am not sure whether the Famous Fives, Secret Sevens, Enid Blytons etc form part of the consideration set of kids these days. But I hope that they do - books maketh a man. Very true.

Service that touches your soul

I usually take my meals at the TISCO Guest House in Jamshedpur where I am staying – they serve great food and more interestingly, there is a certain panache with which they do so. But this day was a little different – we had been out to Patamda, a remote block in East Singbhum district and it was nearly 3 p.m. by the time we made our way back to civilization. The Dining Hall timings are till 2 p.m. and I thought that I could do with a change from the usual offering of Continental cuisine. My driver assured me that he knew of a few good places near the Guest House itself, which are not too exorbitant, but dish out good food.

Off we went driving along roads and by-lanes, till I sighted this place – ANAND – A HOUSE FOR PURE, VEGETARIAN SOUTH INDIAN MEALS. A sudden bout of nostalgia, induced by my daily ritual of eating at my favourite Udupi joint near Colaba Apollo Bunder, gripped me. “It's time for some Dosa-Chutney” said by taste buds and I decided to oblige them. In we went; myself with my driver in tow.

Tables and chairs stacked in rows and columns – the place resembled my old Engineering hostel mess. The place seemed packed – I managed to catch hold of a passing waiter -

“Bhaiyya, table khali hoga kya?”

He manages a swift, sweeping glance of the full expanse and a wave of incredulity sweeps across his face. A stern rebuke follows -

“Table se kya matlab?? Chair to khali hai na.”

I can't deny that – I think of seeking a 2nd opinion from another waiter, but then decide otherwise – they all look the same and I can visualize the 2nd one speaking with the same conviction about the need to efficiently utilize space.

A set of 5 tables had been arranged in a row to look like a long bench on my left – 3 of the chairs were empty – I decide to sit down. The others who are using that bench-like table, are obviously in a big group and do not seem too pleased with my decision to infringe upon their space. I don't give a damn – I am famished.

No one seems to be appearing – I try to catch the attention of a few of the waiters, darting all around. No success. I almost grab the next guy who comes close –

"'Bhaiyya, Masala Dosa milega?”

I had decided to forgo the right to demand the menu card before I chose a dish.

“Main is table ka nahin hoon sir..'

- curtly said with the shrug of the shoulder. I wait – a menu card is whizzed across the table to me, much like one throws a flying saucer in the fields.

A look at the menu card rejuvenates me – my eyes are peering down on the longest list of assorted dosas that I have come across – all neatly lined up in order of hierarchy.

SADA DOSA Price
MASALA DOSA Price
ONION SADA DOSA Price
ONION MASALA DOSA Price
RAWA SADA DOSA Price
RAWA MASALA DOSA Price
RAWA O.S. DOSA Price

(The abbreviations come in – they make the most mundane sounding name interesting, if you like rolling around the acronyms in your mouth)
RAWA M.S. DOSA Price
................................ ..................
COCONUT R.M.S. DOSA Price

I like this – I decide to go for the ones with the longest acronyms. The waiter - my table's this time – has thankfully appeared -

“Bhaiyya, ek Coconut Rawa Masala Dosa (my rolling tongue comes up with the acronym Cocoramado – I love the Latino twist to a Tam dish) aur ek Idli-Sambhar (for my driver – he would prove to be the more intelligent one)”.

“Sirf Plain Sada Dosa milega saab.”

This guy loves simplicity – and he says so with a no-nonsense tone. I am resigned to my fate –

''Wohi la dijiye aur do Thums Up”.

They serve earlier than I expect. We pounce on it like a pack of hungry wolves. The Thums Up arrives a little later – it is positioned as a substitute for dessert. I catch a few eyes around looking at myself and decide to go a little slow in my consumption. I am down to a respectable pace by the time I start sipping on my Thums Up. My driver chooses not to follow suit – he is through with his meal in a jiffy and decides to wait outside.

“Aur kuchh chahiye kya?”

The guy is not pleased at all that his afternoon snooze is being delayed and he makes it evident that he won't relish serving you, if you decide to be brazen enough to order something else now. I am not thinking of it anyway – I love this place so much that I can't think of robbing it of any more of its stocks. I nod my head to say 'no' – he scampers off and comes back with the bill with an alarming efficiency. I am only halfway through my Thums Up. He waits for a few seconds before announcing :

“51 Rs huya hai sir..”

He doesn't seem to be too pleased with my speed and is standing besides the table, staring down at me. I implore for some more time -

“Bhaiyya, khatam karke deta hoon paise.”

He decides to take pity -

“Haan, haan thik hai”.

I take out a crisp Rs 100 note and place it in the small bowl – my man is now happy that the saga is about to end -

“You like the food, sir?”

He blurts out in English. A little part of the training that he got, seems to be still floating around in his head. I nod my head. I am being honest – the food was ok.

He is back with my change.

“Have a good day, sir. Do come back”.

English again - He seems to have shifted gears completely – this guy still expects me to come back to this place after all this?? I take an instant liking to this innocent invitation and leave a decent tip.

As I step out, I notice a small banner to my right -

“OTHER RESTAURANTS SATISFY YOUR HUNGER, WE SATISFY YOUR SOUL”.

I can't help having a good laugh.

India - A modern, progressive nation..???

Bant Singh is a poor Dalit villager from the Punjab – a nameless face in the vast multitude that live in the rural belts of the country. Unknown and unwanted in a country which has shifted its focus to cities, to the more successful faces of “India Shining”. A country which is in a frantic race to join the league of developed nations and which chooses to push the obvious lacunae, that point otherwise; under curtains.

Bant Singh's daughter Baljeet Kaur was raped by upper caste Jats three years back, when she was a mere minor, a Class-IX student, returning from school. Bant Singh comes from a family of agricultural labourers, a breed that is synonymous with bonded labour and slavery in the Punjab. In these parts of the country, as in many other parts indeed, the Dalits have no rights – violation of their daughters, is seen as inconsequential, as acts of daily mundaneness. Mere arithmetical additions to statistics that shock no one any more. The families are usually offered lucrative monetary compensations and are expected to keep quiet and move on with their lives. The physical and mental depredations are to be seen as mere blips in the journey of time.

It is sad that these things happen in Punjab – a state where 31% of the population is Dalit – the largest proportion in any state in India. And it is all the more ironic that the protagonists of our stories are all Sikhs – a religious cult founded on the very principle of anti-casteism, which was so very rampant in the Hindu hierarchy. Unfortunately, with time, old regressive customs have an uncanny ability to override the laudable ethos of equality and morality that give rise to new socio-religious orders.

But Bant Singh was not one to keep mum. He fought back – filed a court case against the culprits and had them incarcerated. An act of defiance which would cost him dearly. A fortnight back, some of the relatives of the accused, beat him up mercilessly on a lonely stretch of road and left him to die for good. He survived, but his limbs didn't – Bant Singh has lost both his arms and a leg and as I write this, doctors are still at work, frantically trying to save his sole remaining leg.
The political establishment in Punjab, dominated by the upper castes, chose to conveniently close their eyes ...... and the media followed suit. Fashions shows in Chandigarh and the social peccadilloes of Bollywood starlets were deemed to be more worthy of occupying newsprint. The attack went unreported and it was only when the limbs were amputated, that the local media found the story salacious enough to report.

And yet, Bant Singh would not have been able to tide over these times had it not been for the grass-roots activism and support of the CPI, CPI-M and CPI-ML in his area. A CPI-ML activist from his youth, it was the sense of empowerment that the movement had imbibed in him, that helped Bant Singh stand up to the perpetrators of such heinous crimes. He was promised support and his case brought to the fore, thanks to the activism of the communist leaders from Punjab. In fact, it was only after Harkishen Singh Surjeet took up cudgels on behalf of Bant Singh, that the case was taken up in earnest in the media.

In these enlightened days of a resurgent India, it has become fashionable to criticize the leftist parties at the drop of a hat and to blame them for every roadblock that pops up on the path of economic liberalization. We conveniently choose to forget the less fortunate across India. We are interested only in the output and we do not care about the conditions of the labour force, the vital input for our dreams of economic prosperity. The labour force in states like Punjab are treated as pariahs by those with money and the caste problem is but another angle of the same problem. For many of these nameless, faceless people, the communists and the leftist social activists are the only hope for salvation, for social survival, for that little dose of dignity that would help them keep their heads high.

No nation has truly progressed with only an elitist minority bearing the fruits of such success. The sooner we realize this, the better for all of us.

“Now, that I have lost my limbs and can't do anything anymore, I have all the more time for my activism and to spread the message of solidarity and equality amongst all my brethren.”

May the force be with people like Bant Singh.

Unsung heroes

I am in Jamshedpur these days, working on a social project as part of the first year requirements of my job. The project is intended to provide us with a feeling of social commitment and an opportunity to see the "real" India, as different from the glitzy view that we get as blue-eyed MBAs working in the big cities.

The "real" India - it has become fashionable to dwell upon the dichotomy of India's progress - commentators have increasingly brought to the fore the "Bharat" that lies in the rural areas as starkly different from the "India" that we educated, urbanites see around ourselves.

We are hardly bothered - too safely ensconced in our smug cocoons to worry about tribals starving to death in Kalahandi or farmers contemplating suicide in the ravaged fields of Telengana. The notion of distance is a huge comforter; we convince ourselves that all such ills are confined to the peripheries, someplace outside our domain of interest. The India that we see, and are comfortable seeing, is the India of brash, confident, educated, youngsters; of fat pay checks and swanky cars; newer and newer multiplexes and foreign brands.

And thus, interaction with the community stakeholders here in Jamshedpur has been so much of an eye-opener. I have been working in the domain of Family Planning and Reproductive Health and it is a vital aspect of health, so often ignored, especially amongst the economically less fortunate groups.

Jharkhand remains a backward state and most of the tribals here, wallow in ignorance and a plethora of vices, that have gripped them in a fatal embrace. HIV-AIDS is spreading and the numbers lie, because most of the cases go unreported or unaccounted for. Female mortality is high; Sexually Transmitted Infections and Diseases are rampant. The moral fabric of the indigenous society is fast crumbling - men are chronic alcoholics and drug users and mistreat their wives; female foeticide is common and the girl child is discriminated against; the average age of marriage settles in the range of 14 for girls and 16 for boys; family planning remains an anathema to most, incest lurks in the shadows amongst most communities, especially those masquerading as conservative on the outside - none of these are unknown to us; as conscientous Indians who read newspapers, we are aware of all of these. Yet, individual stories of pain and suffering hit you hard, when you hear them from the protagonists themselves.

And it is therefore, all the more surprising that individual stories of bravery and defiance rise from these very depths of despair. Of people who are willing to risk the wrath of the majority to stand by certain values that they believe to be true and want to propagate amongst their brethren.

A 22 year old tribal girl from the Tiu community addresses a crowd of 500 people, men and women, from far-flung villages, advocating the cause of contraceptives and condoms, and explaining the advantages of family planning and safe sex.

A young Muslim girl takes up the challenge of making the young girls in her community aware of reproductive health, sexuality and health, HIV-AIDS etc.

Young boys in a community of slag pickers take up cudgels on behalf of their siblings and hapless mothers and decide to rid their fathers of the vices of chronic alcoholism -- and succeed.

They stand up to their community elders and become the voice of their generation. They fights against all odds to strive for their own education, to take major decisions about their own lives in their own hands, to change the mindset of everybody around them.

They are the heroes of our nation - anonymously fighting against all odds and keeping the faith that they will succeed despite frequent setbacks.

Lure of the Blog

Anonymity is the perfect refuge of the the hesitant and the "not-so-sure" ones. And yet, the urge to vent one's feelings and ideas is, I think, universal. And perhaps, lurking, undeniably, somewhere down there in each man's heart, is the desire to get acknowledgment from the world at large. A perfect concoction, therefore, to write a blog. A cozy little forgotten nook, where you can simply pen your own unique vision of the world. Every new post is a concrete achievement in itself, and you are the sole arbiter of its worthwhileness.

Read it at your own peril

I had to do it to start it off - some kind of a preamble to myself.
It has been a fairly long innings and though quite mundane superficially, it has had its fair share of the exciting and unprecedented. Born in one of the forgotten small towns of India and have spent most of my life in the megapolises of Kolkata and Mumbai and yet, it is the small towns that I associate myself. Am yet to find out what exactly I was meant to do in the laps of Gaia and have hence chosen to flow with the supposedly correct career choices and moves in life. But, we are digressing. "Who am I" was not the essence of what I set out to answer here - rather it is "What symbolizes me" - a few of them then:

In love with books, read anything under the sun, Bong in quite many ways, not so 'Bongish' in a lot more ways; obsessed with soccer (that is a visible Bong streak), a Liverpool fan in a sea of new-found Indian love for fancier teams like Chelsea; an Engineer and a MBA (isn't everyone this, these days?); elusive writer of imaginary stories, curious spectator to the many hues of life - a vagrant to the core, driven by wanderlust; constrained only by the practicalities of life.