The Wonder that is India

I wrote this post on the day India went into the first phase of elections, around a month back - I am publishing this on the day on which the election results are about to be declared

The world's largest democracy goes into elections from today onwards – a massive exercise of franchise of a billion plus people, spread across a month over the length and breadth of the 7^th largest nation in the world. And as the Dance of Democracy, as most media houses in India are calling it, unveils, a comedy of epic proportions is being played out on the national stage.

Consider a few of its choicest examples:-

1. Anybody who has been following the elections news and rhetoric knows that the BJP considers itself as the only party that can protect India from terror. It trumpets the achievements of Advani as a Home Minister as if he were Superhero Ironman, while condemning tinny-voiced Dr. Manmohan Singh as the worst pansy to have occupied the exalted chair of Indian PM. The Congress took umbrage to this and declared that the BJP's claims were fraudulent – were they not after all the people who threw in the towel in the face of the Kandahar hijacking drama and released dreaded terrorists? The backroom boys at BJP had no answer to this and they did two things – i] Advani claimed that he was not consulted before the Government decided to submit to the hijackers' demands (would he have done differently?) & ii] they decided to paint the Congress in the same brush by saying that Dr. Manmohan Singh, as Leader of the Opposition was consulted and presumably, he agreed with the Government's line of thought. Are they kidding themselves? Their own Home Minister claims to have known nothing, while the Leader of the Opposition was informed of the details? Nonsense!!
   
2. By the same yardstick, is the Congress trying to fool us by saying that they would not have done the same as the BJP Government? Our erudite PM calmly pointed out that the Congress when faced with a similar situation had decided to take on the terrorists head-on and that shows the Congress resolve. Quite laughable – How can the two be compared as similar situations? IC 814 was hijacked and taken to a country, whose Government was decidedly inimical towards India at that point of time, while the 26/11 terrorists were operating on Indian soil and had been surrounded by Indian troops from all sides. Plus, unlike an aeroplane, where all passengers were trapped as a bunch and could be finished off in a single attempt, the majority of the guests in the Taj and the Oberoi had managed to come out and the terrorists had only captured people in clusters. Does the Congress mean that it would have launched a Mossad style commando operation in the heart of Taliban country? Figure out what comes to your mind when you think of that possibility and you will know how absurd the Congress' claims are
   
3. Even more hilarious is the attempt by the ex-Janata Dal leaders like Laloo, Paswan etc to rake up that issue. Perhaps they have forgotten that unlike the Kandahar case where 189 innocent lives were at stake, the Janata Dal Government of V.P. Singh released 5 dreaded terrorists in exchange for Rubaiya Sayeed, the daughter of the then Indian Home Minister, Mufti Mohammed Sayeed.
   
4. The number of times the word 'communal' is used in conjunction with BJP, one has to pardon the kids of today if they think the two are synonyms. One would imagine that the word 'communal' denotes any kind of activities that demonstrate a pronounced bias in favour of a particular community or bias against a particular community. By that yardstick, what would you term the following:- i] the Congress led Government's decision in Andhra Pradesh to give a 5% reservation to Muslims in Government jobs and educational institutions in a flagrant violation of the Supreme Court's diktat on a cap on reservations; ii] the decision by the CPI-M in Kerala to align with Abdul Nasser Madhani, an indicted criminal, who was arrested for his role in the 1998 Coimbatore blasts, that killed 60 people – incidentally, it is the CPI-M which makes the loudest of noises on the BJP's alleged communalism; iii] virulent casteist stratagems employed by parties like the BSP and the RJD – remember the famous slogan of the BSP – Tilak, Taraju aur Talwa: Inko maaro joote chaar?
   
5. Politicians of all hues and philosophies have been caught on air distributing cash – almost all of them have come up with ingenious excuses on account of tradition, ceremonies etc. Methinks, these are the next possible explanations for all peculiarities which afflict all our political parties:-
   

Crime	Justification
Booth rigging, Electoral Malpractices	Martial traditions of the larger Indian race – the BJP will go ahead and claim it to be true Bharatayita
Dynastic nepotism overshadowing democratic election of leaders in political parties	Close knit family culture in India – after all, even God Shiva entrusted the military command of the Divine Army to his own son, Karthikeya
No attempts at providing bijli/sadak to the long suffering people of their constituencies	Heightened levels of environmental consciousness – ensuring that electricity reaches to all corners of the country would mean commissioning even more thermal power plants, which means more burning of coal, leading to hideous consequences for the ecology; more roads will mean more of those obnoxious low-cost Nano cars will clog the roads – Shiva, Shiva
No attempts at ensuring the security of the Indian population	It contravenes Charles Darwin's axiom of Survival of the Fittest – those, that fall victims are simply obeying the laws of Nature
Humiliatingly agreeing that no Indian born leader is good enough to lead the oldest Indian party that led us to independence	Atithi Devoh Bhava – And if the foreigner is the God (Deva), then how can mere mortals hope to lead instead of the God?

Who are we blaming??

Hardly anybody in India knew who Jade Goody is, a couple of weeks ago. Now of course, she is perhaps topping the list of the most hated person by an Indian. And all because of a reality TV show – Big Brother – whose Indian spin-off – Big Boss – is one of the stupidest (and to attain that tag, you have to be really special) TV shows I have ever watched on sitcom.

As the racial row erupted and threatened to engulf all kinds of players [at last count, apart from the TV channel, the contestants and the gullible all-knowing audience; the Governments of both UK and India; leaders of the European Union, Bollywood actors, starlets, wannabe models; had-been TV stars turned TV hosts; cricket celebs; newspaper columnists across the racial divide – all had pitched in with their thoughts on this], I daresay, I watched with keen amusement the indignation that Indians and South Asians, in general, exhibited at the treatment meted out to Shilpa Shetty. At the very outset, let me state that I haven’t seen any episode of the concerned TV show and my knowledge of the events that unfolded at the show is purely from media reports and video clips of the concerned episode when it all started.

First things first – I was initially surprised that Shilpa Shetty, who is still going reasonably strong at the Bollywood sweepstakes, would want to participate in a much-rehashed reality show with co-participants, who can only be described, in polite terms as either have-beens, also-rans or wannabe gone wrong (Ms. Lloyd would fit the last category perfectly). But then, from what is all turned out to be, I think it was a smart move by Shilpa’s agent – for it has definitely made her a household name now in the U.K. and if not the Oscars, perhaps she can aim for a few BAFTAs.

While I am in no way, condoning some of the remarks that were passed around in the show, I am amused at the sudden bout of propriety being exhibited by all and sundry, when it must be borne in mind that a majority of these participants do not have the privilege of elitist up-scale education and class that Shilpa seems to have and infinitely more importantly, when it is widely understood that nobody would like to see a program where there are no tamashas, no fights and bitching, no envy or jealousy. Clean, nice, polite people, who are always adjusting, make compromises in the bigger interest, who are welcoming towards one and all, who never fight amongst themselves or take nasty, bitter broadsides against each other behind each others’ backs, do not make for good TRPs. That is just what it is all about – Channel 4 could not have just scripted a nice wonderful happily ever after kind of a show and still hope to catch eyeballs. I am not being sarcastic – sure, it has backfired to a big extent and there are plans of scrapping the program altogether, but all this muck still made national headlines and everybody who previously did not know of or did not see Big Brother, is now wiser about it. And who knows, perhaps the news that it will be scrapped altogether, might just make people nostalgic about this 7 year old program and it might just burn out like a supernova at the end and ah!, what a grand finale that would be.

But all this brouhaha brings me to the larger issue of racism. We, i.e. all who have melanin in different dosages and in higher content than whites in our system – are too quick to react to any kind of behaviour that mildly suggests a racial undertone to it. And yeah, it has got to do with our history, of the past unjustness exhibited by our fairer brethren etc. But the fact is that all of us are racist deep inside and it just manifests itself differently in different people.

Gujaratis in Mumbai are unwilling to allow non-vegetarian tenants or residents in their housing complexes, the same goes for South Indian Brahmins in different parts of cosmopolitan India – Bangalore may be the new buzzword in the global arena, but if you go to Malleshwaram and say, that you are a fish-eating Bong and would want to rent a house, the landlord is most likely to smirk. God save you, if you are a non-vegetarian in Borivali and you need to buy eggs urgently – all the best, trudge miles for a shop that stocks it. Try going to some of the most happening places in the sunshine beaches of Goa – some of the Hindu converted “Portuguesophile” Goans would treat you like dirt and through subtle means, would try telling you that those places are reserved for the gora chamdis. Imagine, being marginalized in your own country by your own people. And we display these traits copiously – go down to the Gateway of India in Mumbai anytime and you would see scores of us, always eager to help the white tourist, whenever he needs something or being over-enthusiastic in answering their questions or allaying their fears [there is the other kind too – the one that fleeces them like hell, but they too act in the most subservient manner to the whites]. Ask the same people to help out a Nigerian or Kenyan tourist and they suddenly remember lots of work or display plain disdain for people, who are more coloured than they themselves are. Sure, for the economically weaker section of this subservient domain, it is simply the power of the relative currencies that dictates their action, but notice the difference when some of the airlines crews interact with white and black foreigners and you will know what I am speaking of. We label backward places as “just like Bihar”; we tend to think that all Tamilians must say “Aiyyo” at every thing in the most stupid manner and we portray accordingly in movies and serials; we tend to believe that every Muslim in the neighbourhood secretly supports Pakistan in an Indo-Pak cricket match; we think that all Mongoloid looking young females in the cities must be sluts and the males, drug-addicts; we think all Bongs are too arrogant and feign intellectual prowess of the most irritating kinds; we believe that all Marwaris are nothing but money-minded ogres who would do anything to make profits; we believe all Parsis are zany idiots etc etc.

Who are we blaming then??

Welcome to the Gowda Circus

Mr. H.D. Deve Gowda likes to call himself the humblest farmer in India. His son, Karnataka CM Mr. H.D. Kumaraswamy professes to live by the ideals of Simple Living – High Thinking. His son, Mr. H.D. Nikhil Gowda obviously decided that he had had enough, living in the shadows of his illustrious forebears and decided to step out into the limelight in his own inimitable way.

And what a grand entry he has made – if you happen to stay in Bangalore, you must have noticed news about him and his deeds, screaming at you from the front page of news-hungry papers. From what we read of him in the newspapers – and never mind that it constantly changes course on a daily basis – we know this much – Nikhil Gowda is apparently a college drop-out. Thus, the academic route to greatness being closed on him, Nikhil chose to test his future as a politician by debuting on the surefire anti-social plank.

The event as it seems to have occurred, without the many twists and turns inserted later, is as follows:-
Last week on one of the weekday nights, Nikhil Gowda and some of his companions (I am starved of a better noun, for reasons explained later) decided to have a gala time, stooped in drunken revelry. When the party wound up at around the wee hours of the morning, Nikhil et al found out that they were so busy drinking, that they had forgotten that their stomachs had been grumbling for some time now. So they trooped over to Hotel Empire International on Church Street in Bangalore and demanded Ghee Rotis and Chicken Kebabs at 0330 hrs. For want of the financial muscle that Nikhil and his ilk can flex, the poor kitchen staff at the Empire International are not the ones who can party similarly. So they had done their bit for the night, closed the kitchen, swept the floors etc and had peacefully dozed off. Nikhil of course, would have none of it. He was the C.M.’s son – that gives him the right to kick people out of their sleeps at whatever time he wishes and order Kebabs and Sherbets. So it was that when the Empire staff pleaded helplessness, the Lord Nikhil Gowda decided to teach them a lesson for their insolence. He and his henchmen decided to vent their ire on the furniture and equipments inside the hotel premises and they ran amok. The hotel staff to their credit, showed considerable spine in fighting off the ruffians and in the course of this fight, Nikhil and his cronies, being outnumbered, decided on a quick retreat. Finding that physically they are not up to it, they decided to put their well-oiled connections to use. So the gang went to the nearest Police Station – Cubbon Park and filed a complaint of assault and bodily harm against the Empire hotel staff. And then they decided to get in touch with their underworld friends, whom they carefully groom for such occasions, and pressed them into action. Faced with the might of the professional goondas, the staff at Empire International succumbed this time and could only watch helplessly, as their place was thoroughly ransacked and some of their colleagues were sent to the cleaners. Incensed, their GM – one Mr. Junaiz went over to the same police station and filed a complaint against Nikhil and his cronies. He also claimed that the CCTV at his hotel had recorded the entire incident and this would be the clincher.

If you liked the above story, I guarantee that you will love the parts that will follow.

As expected, this incident created a storm – the Opposition parties conveniently forgot their own track record and lamented that complete breakdown of law and order in the city and decried the C.M. for encouraging his kith and kin to throw their weights around. Our simple living-high thinking C.M. however had a novel explanation for all this – he claimed that his son was not involved in this incident at all and it was all the handiwork of jealous opposition politicians who wanted to vilify him through his family. He lamented the fall in moral standards in politics that enabled some unscrupulous characters to use innocent kids like his sons as pawns for their political gains. Former PM Deve Gowda said that “Boys would always be boys” – as if that explained and condoned everything that had happened.

All this had happened in the morning after the incident. The media hawks would have none of this and ridiculed the C.M. To bolster his case, Kumaraswamy claimed to have overheard a secret conversation in the Assembly a couple of days earlier, in which two politicians were hatching a plot to unseat him through a scandal involving his family. Peculiarly, he claimed to have proof of this conversation – methinks, Kumaraswamy is perhaps one of these James Bond kind fellas, who moves around with tiny radio antennae fixed to his wrist watch, recording clandestine conversations – and more unusually, but in tunes with the recent trend of political dramas, he refused to make it public, saying that he will do so at the opportune time. The Empire International owners were also lent some friendly advice – pronto, Mr. Junaiz issued a press statement that the complaint he had filed in the Cubbon Park P.S. only named unidentified assailants, as in the dark, the hotel staff had not been able to identify the miscreants. The Police Station officials duly agreed with this version of the story. So what happened to the CCTV tapes and all the evidence – we were told that unfortunately the CCTV at the hotel had gone kaput that very week and had thus been rendered useless. How nicely convenient!!

More was to follow the next day. This time, Mr. Junaiz stated categorically that Nikhil Gowda was not involved as he had been a regular customer at the place and had he been involved, all the hotel staff would have instantly recognized him. He stuck to the anonymous goonda theory. The C.M. decided to do his own bit to clear the increasingly murkier air – he said that Nikhil actually had been sleeping in his house, when some of his acquaintances decided to pay him a courtesy call in the middle of a night and dragged him to some party – yeah, the C.M. claimed that his doodh peeta innocent bacha was dragged to a party. Actually, it was conveniently discovered that one of the guys named was somebody called Syed Ehtesham, who had a prior criminal record and also had some Congress connections (C.M. Kumaraswamy is from the rival JD-Secular party) – all fingers were immediately pointed towards him and this guy became the scapegoat. Kumaraswamy claimed that he had been planted by rival conspirators – Nikhil too, lost no time in disowning Ehtesham, claiming that he had not known him at all and they just had some common friends, perhaps. The Hotel staff was roped in to corroborate this story – Junaid claimed that Nikhil Gowda was actually standing outside when the entire melee happened and Ehtesham was actually the villain. It is more dramatic than the average Bollywood potboiler – methinks Junaid and his staff were struck by lightning and they suddenly remembered that the hitherto unnamed guys were Ehtesham and his cronies, while good boy Nikhil was just a mute spectator.

As I write this, public focus has been shifted to Suvarna Karnataka celebrations – Kumaraswamy has decided to don the mantle of guest editor of the Times of India in Bangalore for a day, where he has handpicked articles on subjects close to his heart (as claimed by the newspaperJ) – social justice, equality for all, development of the poor and the trodden etc – you guys know the list.

I? I just love this country. Where else would you get so much entertainment for free??

Of musical lamas and wounded bodybuilders

I have been paying a lot of attention to all sorts of news items that appear in newspapers and the electronic media ever since I have landed in Jamshedpur. There is not much to do once I come back from office in the evening and the news never fails to provide enough snippets to ensure that all sorts of emotions come rushing through.

Here's a random collection of some stories that aroused my curiosity:

A minister in Rajasthan has been censured by the media and her party colleagues for glorifying the practice of Sati. I am amazed at the resilience of Indian beliefs or worse, at the shameless pandering to local sentiments to garner votes. It is a pity that nearly 60 years after independence, we still have to grapple with issues that would make the Dark Ages seem like a supernova in comparison. And to think that the minister in question is a lady herself.

Parochial sentiments too refuse to ever die out. And Bongs with their infinite fondness for Sourav Ganguly are not the only ones to blame. At the recently concluded Mr. India contest in Mumbai, the favourite was a son of the soil – Shyam Rawathe. He was however, upstaged by Bijit Gogoi of Assam, who went on to win the coveted title. The Shiv Sainiks however, were in no mood to raise a toast to him. Instead, they rode up to the dais in droves, brandished knives in front of the judges, announced that a person from North East does not deserve to win any pan-Indian award as they are all terrorists, kicked Gogoi out of the stage and forced the judges to reverse the decision and announce Rawathe as the winner. When the media finally caught up with a shaken Gogoi in Guwahati, he brushed off the incident as an act of immature people and in an admirable gesture, appealed to his Assamese brethren to ensure that this sort of treatment is not meted out to athletes and spectators from across the country who would soon arrive in Assam for the National Games. My salute to this brave man – he deserves to be Mr. India.

The North East has traditionally been given the cold shoulder by the media, by other Indians and the Government in most areas of national life. Somehow, we have never been able to accommodate them in the national mainstream; a fact, borne out by the above snippet. And yet, this part of the country has made us proud on a number of occasions. Dingko Singh gave us a boxing gold in the Asian Games, half of the indigenous talent that we are still able to produce in football come from Manipur, it was in Imphal that the Azad Hind Fauj waged a valiant guard against the British, with considerable help from the local populace, Tripura gave the Hindi film industry its finest composer duo of S.D. and R.D. Burman etc. And yet again, a simple, unheralded Buddhist monk from Arunachal Pradesh has made us sit up and take notice of the region. Lama Tashi has been nominated for the Grammys in the world fusion music category for his album on Tibetan chants. Lama Tashi is multi-phonic singer which means that when he sings, it seems that a whole lot of people are singing together. A rare musical genius and doctors from around the world are conducting studies to figure out the secret behind his unique gift. Unperturbed, he promises to continue enchanting us with his soulful music.

And to wind up, an illuminative piece of wisdom from Carl Jung:

All the greatest and most important problems of life are fundamentally insoluble. They can never be solved, but only outgrown. This "outgrowing" proves on further investigation to require a new level of consciousness. Some higher or wider interest appeared on the horizon and through this broadening of outlook the insoluble problem lost its urgency. It was not solved logically in its own terms but faded when confronted with a new and stronger life urge.

Most of the Indian politicians won't know Carl Jung from Carl Lewis, but they seem to be faithful adherents of the above maxim :))

New Year and New Cheer

Euphoria on the arrival of yet another New Year is perhaps one of the biggest expositions of that eternal human feeling - hope. We renew old pledges for this year's New Year resolutions, make up some new, hoping to better one's track records in keeping them; we entertain friends and relatives alike in the hope that the streak of merriment such unleashed, will continue through the year unabated. We feel confident that a lot of the worries that plagued us would solve themselves somehow, lot of the rewards that should have come our way, would now be able to reach their rightful claimants. We look up the newspaper pages and the infectious streak of optimism is there too - hi-tech gizmos that will liven up the New Year; the films of the Bollywood and Hollywood biggies that are sure to rule the roost; how Chidambaram, Montek, Manmohan and many others of their ilk are going to make India an epitome of 3rd world reaching 1st world; Bihar gets its messiah and a hopeful deliverance from years of being the butt of national snide remarks; a new captain and coach are hoping to cement their pedestals in cricket history in our neighbouring country etc etc.

It won't take a geeky statistician to tell you that the probability of all the good things to happen in a single year are the same as Sania Mirza winning a Grand Slam this year (I believe I am not being too pessimistic here :)). But hope must burn bright in the hearts to ensure that we are able to shrug off the many failures and raise a toast to the few successes that would definitely happen this year.

And it is indeed a miracle that every once in a while, something happens to ensure that we do not completely lose our streaks of optimism. A terrible natural disaster like the tsunami that engendered destruction and death, vicariously lead to peace in Aceh in Indonesia, thus sparing thousands of gruesome deaths in the future. A woman was apparently pulled out of rubble in the Pakistani Kashmir after two months of being under that.

A Happy New Year and a salute to the spirit of hope and optimism amongst us !!