What would you be if you lived a hopeless life? Today I went out to purchase an electronic tabla and on the road I came across many people who had no life in their eyes. It all started when I saw a beggar; or may be he didn’t beg but just looked like a beggar. Something bad had happened to his hands: both hands were terribly swollen and putrid. They looked like tennis bats because they didn’t have fingers and on both the hands there was a partition in the middle. So his hands had such two gargantuan fingers. In one partition there stuck a cigarette that he wanted to light. He had either purchased the cigarette — which didn’t seem possible considering his disposition — or had found it lying somewhere. Now and again he requested the passers-by to light it but people just shrank away when he approached them. I kept looking at him, hoping he wouldn’t approach our car. I was waiting outside a music shop while my guruji was trying to get me a good electronic tabla.
There was no life in that beggar’s eyes, leave alone a chance of finding some remnants of hope. Like a lost soul who had no business being in this world he walked upon the pavement, with dragging feet and laden shoulders and a swarm of flies giving him constant company. Even when people shrank away from him he displayed no expression — he simply moved on. He was the first person among many that I saw having no hope in their eyes. They walked like zombies, carrying the burden of their living moments upon their spindly, stooping postures. They had nothing to look forward to, and no two days were different to them. Their yesterday was same as today, and their tomorrow will be same as today. They spend their days just because death hasn’t occurred yet. I cannot go into their psychology but it must be amazing to know what keeps them alive; considering how we get upset at small things. People having all the privileges of the world kill themselves because they cannot find happiness. Why don’t these people, who are very poor, who are constantly shunned by society and embraced by misery, kill themselves? Why do they carry on living? Certainly they don’t nurture hopes and aspirations as we do, and obviously they are not happy. I never romanticize poverty so I assume that a poor person who has no clothes to wear, no food to eat, no place to live and no opportunity to improve his or her life is not happy about the way things go everyday. There is something deep, or something really mundane in all this: seemingly comfortable people blow their heads off or jump off the heights, jump in front of running trains when they can’t handle difficulties and here there are people who have no reason to spend living another day keep living till a very old age, foraging for food, losing their limbs, getting kicked around, living naked not by choice but circumstances.
Just a small, nano-small genetic accident and I could have been in place of that person with tennis bat hands and he could have been sitting in the car looking at me. Is it really an accident or some divine incident? A wave of realization hit me with an amplified clarity: doesn’t all this falsify our notions of having and not having, doing and not doing, being and not being? I get up in the morning full of plans. I sleep thinking about things that I need to do in the coming months, and even years. Life is full of life, life is full of hope. It is replete with plans and strategies. It seems I have endless things to achieve and there is so little time. There is always this race against time. I know from where I started, I know where I am going, and I know what roads to follow and what roads to avoid. This is so great! It all makes living worth it. Despite all the hope in the world if I feel down, if I feel sad because certain things are not happening the way I want them to happen, then there is very little difference between me and that man with tennis bat hands.
There was no single agenda behind this post and it may be that two different paragraphs are not related to each other, but somewhere I feel, that man with tennis bat hands had appeared to deliver a message, a message I haven’t been able to properly decode yet, but some day, very soon, I’ll decode it.
As far as my blog is concerned, I’ve been keeping a low profile for a few days. It has something to do with my internal energy that has evaporated through the pores created by self-nurtured tergiversations. Not to mention the little finger of my left hand that developed an abscess without an apparent reason. There had been a harmless itching at the tip of it and I had been absentmindedly rubbing it against my payjama. Then all of a sudden it developed this strange sort of puss. Then, again all of a sudden one morning I woke up with a swollen little finger. The surface of the finger was dotted with medium-size balloons and the lower portion had grown as fat as my thumb. I panicked because I didn’t know any reason. So I went to the hospital; the good surgeon made incisions here and there with quite a liberal hand and squeezed out all the puss he could. Of course before going on a rampage with his knife he injected a few drops of local anaesthesia, which was quite a bloody affair, and on top of that, I doubt if the anaesthesia ever worked that day.
I squirmed with pain as he cut small pieces of my skin. He had told me there won’t be much pain, but I had no idea how much pain for him was “much pain”. Anyway, I swallowed my pride and gave out a repressed scream. He apologized and promptly inserted the needle of the anaesthesia injection exactly where he had just made a cut and orchestrated the unbearable pain with his instruments of torture. I wondered why he was so resentful of me having that puss in my finger.
After having a go at the tip of my finger for good 20 minutes, he gave out a satisfied sigh and declared that he would put a bandage on it. My finger no longer remained my finger — it looked like the finger of someone who had put his finger into an exploding landmine. Nothing to worry about, he threw a cursory glance at my ravaged finger and said, it’ll be alright in a few days. I had no choice but to trust him. When my driver saw the heavily bandaged finger he thought half of it had been chopped off. The finger is OK now and I can type without any trouble.
Back to the ambiguities that have been playing free-style wrestling inside my head. I’m not going to write about them because they are, sort of, private, but I’m sorting them out, and I think things are back to normal. Even ambiguities are great learning lessons because they help you clear out the intellectual cobwebs that spiders of daily routine surreptitiously keep weaving. They are dangerous too, for they can lead you to a path of total isolation and self-destruction. The trick lies in weeding out the right from the wrong and there is a very thin line that separates the right from the wrong, especially when you evaluate right and wrong ideologically and not according to what other people opine about them. Putting your priorities into right perspective helps here. Once you know what your priorities in life are, the cobwebs are cleared, the ambiguities disappear, and you end up realizing how much you value those priorities, whether they are the people around you, your work, or the dreams you want to pursue.
This is my favorite time of the year…summer is planning to give way to winter. The days are sunny but the sun is not irascible. When the lucid sunshine filters through pristine leaves it creates a dreamlike ambience. OK, I’m sounding a bit esoteric but I really do feel as if a transient peace permeates through the atmosphere and I just want to lie somewhere — ideally under a shady tree — and spend the rest of my life in that disposition. I especially love it when blissful droplets of shadows lazily dance over the floor when the trees sway in tandem with the wind. The wind, yes, it’s warm, loving, relaxing, and if you care to discern, somewhere hidden it has the hints of the approaching winter. This mood will go on till the end of November. I do most of my reading during these days.
I remember one such evening a couple of years ago when I was sitting outside with a book in my hand. One would rather call it an afternoon. No, I wasn’t married, so it must have been more than three years ago. I sat on a chair, the branches of the Gulmohar tree stretched over my head, a leisurely wind played with the trees and the surrounding plants, and some white clouds the size of cotton balls moved directionless upon the backdrop of a clear blue sky. I was reading, if I can remember correctly, Nicholas Nickleby. The reason why I remember this is, this too is a book, like The Brothers Karamazov I took a long time to complete reading — more than 5 months. The difference between both the books is, I started reading Nicholas Nickleby on that day, somewhere around August-September, and I’m just about to complete reading The Brothers Karamazov by now.
During the weekend I read another 400+ page of The Brothers Karamazov in some marathon reading sessions — yes, reading 400 pages for me does tantamount to marathon reading for me, although people finish 2-3 books during their weekends. I hope to improve my tally during the coming months.
I recon writing about this book is going to be a bit difficult, because, although there is a single ongoing plot, this one plot is made up of multiple sub-plots and almost all characters are individual novels in themselves. The underlying theme of course is a constant conflict between the conscience, morality and sin. The Karamazovs, excluding the father, are three brothers, and it is only the youngest one who is devoid of any sinful notion and hence, does not suffer from any internal conflict; and he is a monk in the initial stage of the novel. All the other characters commit sins one way or the other. They are either unrepentant, or are so remorseful that their melodramas go on and on for pages and pages, to an extent it begins to sound dreary. But all in all, it is going to be one of the best books I’ve read so far (incidentally, there are more than 15 books that come under “one of the best” category).
Today (I mean, yesterday: it is 12:42 am now) was Rakhri, what in India is known as Raksha Bandhan tyohar — a day when sisters tie bands on the wrists of their brothers so that the brothers protect them in the hour of need. This tradition dates back to the times of Humayun when a Rajput queen sent him a Rakhi (a decorative band made of colored threads) and he faught with his own men to save her.
Ever since then it has evolved into a major festivals. No matter where brothers and sisters are, they try to exchange Rakhis and gifts. Bothers mostly give money in exchange of the band although gifts are also given.
My elder sister lives in Canada so I sent her a gift from Amazon.com. My younger sister was visiting us on the occasion of Vasudha’s birth so I gave her money.
The festival bears fond memories for me. When we were young we used to get up early in the morning, bathe, get dressed and then perform the ritual. An elaborate breakfast cooked by our mother, consisting of halwa-puri-chole and kheer used to be an added attraction, plus mithai. It used to be more pleasant when my sister got married, because very early morning she used to come with her two kids and the house used to brighten up in their presence. When I grew up and was still not earning, my mother would surreptitiously slip money into my shirt pocket which I later on gave to my sisters. How I miss those days! (not the part when my mother gave me money that I gave to my sisters, but the times we spent together). Those days hold their own dreamy, lambent charm.
My progress with The Brothers Karamazov is epic in the sense that it has taken me more than 4 months to read around 400 pages of it. Agreed, it’s a fat book and just picking it up seems daunting, but I love the book for two reasons: first, it is written by Dostoyevsky, and second, it is really a good book. It is an interwoven creation of philosophy and murder mystery. Dostoyevsky is a brilliant story teller, although I feel he could have done it with less talking. I guess by the time he wrote this book (I think it is one of his last books, and in this he has tried to reconcile with the Church) he was quite famous and hence, people would read (they still do) whatever he wrote.
I have vowed to finish it next week because it is stopping me from reading other books.
Here in India we often hear people trampling each other to get food, water, medicines and clothes. Some or the other natural calamity becomes the cause of such scenes and the spine chilling images give you sleepless nights, lest this happens to you one day. Once on TV they showed a flood hit area; people were tearing each others’ clothes, pulling each others’ hair, throwing people in the ditches to reach the trucks that had brought food. But a stampede to get a laptop?
According to this report a rush to purchase $50 laptops caused a stampede, resulting in many people being admitted to the local hospital. A local school was selling 1,000 odd iBooks for $50 each. Normally an iBook notebook costs around $1,000. Although the school gates were to be opened in the morning, people stood in the queue from 1 am. A lady was so afraid of losing her place in the queue that she peed in her pants but didn’t leave her place. What tenacity! Just see the level of desperation:
People threw themselves forward, screaming and pushing each other. A little girl’s stroller was crushed in the stampede. Witnesses said an elderly man was thrown to the pavement, and someone in a car tried to drive his way through the crowd.
This seems a bit bizarre, doesn’t it? I mean, OK, I would love to lay my hands on an iBook, but like this? Never! I’ll be ashamed of myself for the rest of my life. Fighting for food seems much more preferable. No, I change my mind. I think fighting for a cheap laptop is better than having to fight for food and clothes, much better.
There’s another song related to the Independence Day that is ironically so sad.
Ab koi gulshan na ujde
Ab vatan azaad he
Rooh Ganga ki Himalay
Ka badan azaad he
Translation: Let no garden be detroyed now, since the country is free. The soul of the Ganges and the body of the Himalayas is free.
The country got free in 1947. There were riots in 1984. There have been countless riots before and after. Thousands of families have been butchered. Millions of houses have been destroyed. Countless gardens have been trampled. The soul of the song writer must be crying somewhere up in the heavens.
They were burning him as if playing a normal street game. A few kept him pinned down to the ground while others poured petrol on him. After kicking him to the content of their hearts they torched him. With a burning body, he ran here and there. Someone brought a burning tire and with the help of a long rod and put it around his neck, receiving a great round of applause. They clapped and they chatted. There was no sound coming from him. He just ran like a giant flame, aimlessly flailing his arms in order to capture something in the air. They playfully avoided him, giggling, joking. Then he fell on the ground, giving up the fight against the unknown demons. Some just danced around without purpose, clapping each others’ backs. None looked angry. None of them looked familiar. I watched this from my window. I knew that it was just a matter of someone pointing to our house. With bated breath I waited. Every second was like an hour. I knew they would move on looking for the next victim to kill, the next house or shop to loot and burn, but when? Would they discover our house before that? This thought redefined the way I think of home. This was the same road that used to look so friendly, brimming with neighbors and tens of familiar faces. Now, at a grey dusk, it looked like the shadow of hell, with strange, unknown monsters wandering around as if they owned the world. In my right hand I held my crutch, and in my left hand I held a cricket bat. My legs trembled with fear and excitement while I remembered my grandfather saying, “If we have to die, Veera (brother), let’s make sure we take one of them with us.” I knew I couldn’t even raise the heavy bat but it was kind of reassuring to hold it. My sisters had already been sent upstairs to our Hindu neighbors. I had refused to go, and my mother had silently accepted that if we were attacked, I was to be the first one to confront the mob because whenever loud noises seemed to be approaching, she would say, “Pali uth, crutches pale!” (Pali, get up and put on your crutches!)
My grandfather had been taken to the backside of the house by my mother and grandmother on some pretext, as he wanted to go out and challenge the crowd, the mob.
Long after the riots, in the school bus when I sat near the window, boys would tease me from their balconies. When I travelled in the auto with my mother people from the nearby vehicles jeered at us while my mother constantly cautioned me not to say anything. A classmate of mine was told by his parents not to talk to me because I was a Sardar (of course his parents were summoned and the principal gave them a piece of her mind that they would remember for a long time). It was not hatred, but a sinister pleasure: Look Sardar, we can humiliate you and you cannot do anything about this, you cannot even dare to utter a sound, because soon a mob will gather, we’ll first cut your hair and then burn you alive.
Now that I’m grown up, I can feel through what the Jews had to go in the Nazi Germany. I hated Hindus then — not all, but the ones who had taken parts in the killings and lootings. I wanted to take some sort of revenge. When my cousin visited our place and told me that they were collecting iron rods to create make-shift weapons in case there was another attack on the community, I gladly gave him the TV antenna pole that lay behind our door. We used to talk for long hours making strategies to make sure we were not caught off guard the next time. We knew the equal fight was not possible, but half of the mob wouldn’t go back even if they attacked a couple of Sikh guys, because not all stories were hopeless. At many places single individuals had put up fight and chased away crowds of twenty people. A friend of ours, with his two brothers, had saved the local gurudwara from being burned down; they had a gun and a few swords. Wherever a few armed Sikhs could gather, they chased away the approaching mobs.
Like me, many people have first person accounts to remember. They all know that 1984 riots were not a spontaneous action (Narender Modi’s famous action-reaction — kriya-pratikriya thing). They were organized; they were incited in full connivance with the administration. We saw the army tank rolling in our colony well after 3-4 days. This was the level of speed with which the government acted. I don’t want to get into who should be punished and who not, but it was so horrifying that now, at this time when I’m writing this, it’s hard to believe we went through those days when the sounds of death were echoing everywhere. It was like living in the enemy territory. All our neighbors were nice but what would they do if a mob of 50 people descended upon us? In total there must had been 350 houses in our colony, and 10-15 belonged to Sikh families. It was as if we were living in a dark, dismal dread.
Although punishment acts as a deterrent, I’m not pretty much concerned about the current debate on the Nanavati Commission’s findings and the PM’s consequent apology. The PM need not be apologetic about the pogrom as he was not an active politician at that time. But he should be apologetic for belonging to a political party (Congress I) that propagated the pogrom. Punishments and apologies are technicalities basically; the clock cannot be turned back. Those who died horrible deaths cannot be brought back; those who went through horrific experiences cannot wash them off. I saw the kind of violence I would never like my child to witness.
People who took part in rioting should bear at least some consequences, if for nothing else, just to show the future generations that a semblance of law exists in the country. Those who were children in 1984 have grown up now as the citizens of the country. They should not have to live with an impression that in this country if you are given a free hand, you can perpetrate any kind of brutality without incurring the wrath of the law.
For the whole day, one or the other channel whether it is radio or TV, keep broadcasting patriotic songs on the eve of the Independence Day and some of them are so rich in emotions that they give you goose pimples. Regrettably we listen less to the radio and watch more of TV which is not even 5% of satisfaction that the radio used to give back in those days when multiple TV channels were not known even as a concept. I’m going to list here a few of my favorite lines picked from various songs.
Kar chale hum fida
Jano tan sathio
Ab tumhre havale
Vatan sathio
Translation: We have sacrificed our lives and our bodies, O’ friends, now the country is in your hands, O’ friends.
This is from a film called Haqiqat that was made in the wake of the Chinese invasion of India in the early 60s. It was one of the best songs of Mohammed Rafi and whenever I listen to it it brings tears to my eyes. It further says:
Sans thamti gayee
Nabz jamti gayee
Phir bhi badte kadam ko
Na rukne diya
Kat gaye sar hamare to
To kutch gum nahi
Sar Himalay ka hamne
Jhukne diya
Translation: Our breaths stopped, our pulses froze, but we never let our advancing footsteps cease; we didn’t care when our heads were cut, but we didn’t let the Himalaya’s head down.
Thousands of Indian soldiers were killed first, because the Chinese had a huge army, and then, we were caught off-guard. Our leaders thought: since we are so peaceful, nobody should attack us.
Here’s another beautiful song sung by Mukesh:
Hothon pe sachai reheti he
Jahan dil me safai reheti he
Hum us desh ke vasi hein
Hum us desh ke vasi hein
Jis desh me Ganga beheti he
Mehma jo hamara hota he
Vo jaan se pyara hota he
Zyada ki nahi lalach humko
Thode me guzara hota he
Thode me guzara hota he…
Translation: Where there is always the truth on the lips; where the hearts are always clean, we live in a country, we live in a country where the Ganges flows. Whoever is our guest, is dearer to us than our lives; we are not greedy for more, we can manage well with less, we can manage with less…
There are also songs that are full of poetic bravado.
Taqat vatan ki humse he
Izzat vatan ki humse he
Himmat vatan ki humse he
Insaan ke hum rakhvale
De kar apna khoon seenchte
Desh ki hum phulvari
Bansi se bandook bana dein
Hum wo prem pujari…
Translation: We are the strength of the nation; we our the honour of the nation; we are the valor of the nation; we are the protectors of the humankind. We water the flower beds of the country with our blood; in an instant we can turn our flutes into guns, we are such devotees of love…
The song is from the film Prem Pujari. It’s a full-fledged military song. A platoon of soldiers sings it in the movie.
There are more than ten other songs that I can list here, but right now I have to get back to work. I’ll, may be continue in the next post.
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