Remembering

Potshots, Remembering

Maha-Rat-Bandhan

Mani 2 Comments

Namaskaarams, O most Valued Readers! With the grey cells encased in a kind of cerebral permafrost from this grey winter that has enveloped Dilli in a dismal, reeking, sunless chill in which the only daily cheer is brought by the Times of India headline proclaiming that the ‘Air Quality Has Improved From Severe to Very Poor’, I finally found the energy yesterday to stir the frozen appendages and digits, a cell at a time, to compose a small research paper on ‘Rats and Other Politicians I Have Encountered and Studied.’

When, lo, the news emerged that Shri Nitish Kumar, erstwhile Chief Minister of Bihar and senior member of the ‘Mahagathbandhan’ supported by Congress, CPM, CPI, RJD, Trinamool Congress and other affiliated scoundrels of the I.N.D.I.A alliance, had resigned his Chief Ministership and been resworn in as Chief Minister of Bihar supported by BJP, Lok Jan Shakti Party and other affiliated scoundrels of the N.D.A alliance.

With this, Nitish Kumar has created a record of sorts among Indian politicians in defecting from one political party/alliance to another and being sworn in as Chief Minister of Bihar no less than nine times despite assembly elections being held in Bihar only five times.

Suddenly, the chill softens its bite. In a trice, the Rats I Have Encountered and Studied are forgotten. Only the Politicians I Have Encountered and Studied fill the lattices of the decrepit mind, twitching their bristly whiskers and baring their yellowing rodentine teeth in unholy glee; the glee of those political ascetics who, akin to spiritual ascetics in their own unique ways, have abandoned all earthly desires to do public good and egoistic compulsions to be principled and humble, and instead dedicated their lives to the energetic pursuit of power while energetically evading the pursuit of conscience, creditors, and law enforcement agencies.

And now, amid the dim recesses of memory I espy a short article on the same theme composed for and carried by the Indian Express almost exactly twenty years ago: in 2004, just before the Lok Sabha elections that evicted the BJP-led NDA and brought in the Congress-led UPA.

Here’s the article in full . With the Lok Sabha elections due in a few months from now, I wonder whether my proposed solution still has any merit?

Stable horse traders

[Indian Express: May 3rd, 2004]

Our politicians would make chameleons turn green with envy. The BJP has ditched the DMK and allied with Jayalalithaa’s AIADMK — the party that brought down its government in 1999. The Congress has tied up with the DMK, which it abused in 1997 on the floor of Parliament for its alleged links with the LTTE (thereby bringing down the UF government). Sharad Pawar of NCP is backing the Congress — from which he broke away in 1999 with these immortal words to Sonia Gandhi: “The Congress manifesto should suggest an amendment to the Constitution of India, to the effect that the offices of the president, vice president and prime minister can only be held by natural born Indian citizens. We would also request that you, as Congress president, propose this amendment…”

Now that exit polls predict a hung Parliament, the likes of Pawar, Mulayam, Laloo and Mayawati are licking their lips in anticipation of singular largesse from the ‘single largest party’. Ministerial berths will obscure issues of foreign birth; suitcases will assure reprieve from civil suits and CBI cases; doublespeak and whitewash will transform ‘communal’ into ‘secular’ and vice versa.

How can such deceitful practices be ended?

Perhaps the president of India could adopt the Vatican’s system of electing a new pope. Just as the College of Cardinals is locked up in the Sistine Chapel until it chooses a new pope (by two-thirds majority plus one within 13 days, or a simple majority thereafter), the president could incarcerate the newly elected MPs in the Lok Sabha till they similarly choose a consensus prime minister. As with the cardinals, our MPs should be totally sealed off from the outside world during their conclave.

Elected this way, the PM would already have proven her/his majority support in the House, and may then choose a Cabinet from among the MPs and get on with the business of governance.

No doubt this MPs’ conclave will be acrimonious and lengthy. But at least it will ensure a stable government. All arrangements could be made to ensure the MPs a comfortable sojourn — including medical teams to treat any injuries suffered by them during their debates.

One detail: How do they indicate to the outside world that they have chosen a PM? The Vatican cardinals send white smoke signals by burning their final (successful) ballot papers. Our MPs could send similar smoke signals by setting alight their party manifestos!

Ancient writings, Musings, Remembering

Choose

Mani 5 Comments

Warning: violence; no political correctness here

This is one of half a dozen short stories I wrote back in mid-1993: soon after I quit my job as a banker of 13 years’ vintage to don the lifelong disguise of writer… …and soon after Bombay, and India, plunged into a bloodfest organized by an unholy alliance of religious and temporal kooks, primarily Muslim and Hindu; a bloodfest that polarized India, lasted nearly 10 years and still erupts from time to time. The stories explored different manifestations of violence; the themes were all largely drawn from reality…and often, as in this case, built around personal experience.

I thought I’d wipe 30 years’ dust off this story and post it now…at a time when we feel pressurized to Choose every second of our lives in every aspect of our lives between This extreme and That extreme in a world that’s become Binary, a time when Russians and Ukrainians are slaughtering one another, when Hamas has achieved spectacular new depths of mass butchery of men, women and children in Israel and Israel is reducing Gaza and the bones of its residents to rubble…

I’d welcome your comments, Gentle Reader, as always.

I could see the highway as I descended the steep lane from my hill-top colony. It was awash with rain water, twin ribbons of glistening, rippling grey-black macadam stretching away in both directions, deserted at this early hour. The narrow mud-and-rubble divider that ran in between was as black as the ominous cloud-layer above. It was cold, and I shivered as the moisture-laden wind from the west tugged at my shawl.It was a good half-a-kilometre down to the 24/7 medical store on the road that led to the railway station. I had a terrible migraine, and needed to buy an inhaler and tablets.

I crossed the little bridge that gave on to the highway and waded across the flooded road till I reached the divider. Stepping on to it, I turned and began to walk along its length, picking my way carefully through the jumble of stones and clumps of rain-drenched grass. Walking along the divider would be slow and slippery, yet far preferable to wading along the verge where the water was deepest. And on the divider, at least I could be confident that no hidden brimming-over potholes waited, open-mouthed and hungry, to swallow me whole.

I saw movement to my left. In the darkness, two—no, three black shapes materialized on the verge and began to cross the road ahead of me. The men must have come up from the sprawling shanty-town that lay to the left, below the highway. I watched as they ascended the divider and walked towards me. One of them, I saw, carried a shapeless black bundle upon his shoulder.

They stopped, all of a sudden, about fifty feet ahead of me, and went into a huddle, heads close together. Something about their manner, some faint, inexplicable sense of uneasiness, made me slow down and come to a standstill. They hadn’t seen me yet. I watched as the tallest figure—the one with the bundle—brought his arms up and swung the bundle off his shoulder. It landed in the mud with a soggy thump.

The three figures stood, motionless, as though waiting for something.

I glanced at my watch. 05:20.

In another ten minutes, the great convoys of Bombay-bound trucks would be released from their shackles at the toll-tax gates a kilometre up the highway to the north, and soon the three lanes to the left would be filled with countless tonnes of hurtling metal and the air would reverberate with the triumphant roar of the trucks as they sped towards the wholesale markets and industrial belts of the great city.

As yet, though, the silence was disturbed only by the bubbling and chuckling of the flooded drains and sewage canals on either side of the highway. A light drizzle began, but I just stood there and watched the three figures as they hulked over the dark bundle at their feet. After a moment, the tall one—obviously the leader—squatted down and began to work at the top of the bundle. Curiosity overcame apprehension; I crept forward till I was barely twenty feet away from them, and now I could clearly see what was happening. The bundle was a jute sack, the kind used to pack grain or sugar in; the tall man was undoing the tight knots that bound the sack’s neck, with what seemed to be extraordinary caution.

He worked away silently, and his companions stood about him, watching his busy fingers as intently as I was. A pale, watery-grey light broke out over the dark hills to the east, just as the tall man undid the final knot and sprang back.

For a few seconds nothing happened. And then…the sack moved. One of the men laughed softly, but was shushed by the tall man. Their eyes were on the sack; if they’d seen me, they showed no signs of it.

Again, the sack moved…as though, deep within its rough, sodden folds, something was wriggling about, struggling to emerge.

A hum reached my ears, and deepened and grew steadily till it pulsed and throbbed in the thick atmosphere. The trucks were on the move, and approaching rapidly.

The three men had apparently been waiting for this; for, each one stepped back a pace and reached into his shawl. Their hands emerged, and now each hand bore a weapon. Strange weapons they were, too. The tall one held a long metal rod with a vicious hook at the end; one of his companions gently, almost lovingly, swung a bicycle chain; and the third man had a chipped cricket bat in his grip. Heart thudding, I watched and waited; not knowing what to expect beyond the conviction that, whatever it was, it was going to be violent.

The hum became a roar, and the first of the trucks passed by an instant later in a welter of noise, tyres hissing in the water and leaving a great filthy brown spray in its wake. It was followed a few seconds later by another, and then another, until the vehicles were thundering past in a continuous stream and the very earth trembled beneath their weight. The spray from the tyres rose ten feet into the air, and added its muddy weight to the drizzle; but I was oblivious to anything but the drama unfolding on the divider.

The tall man stared at the passing trucks for a moment, nodded to his companions as if satisfied, and then kicked the sack viciously. The sack shifted a foot, and from within it emerged shrill shrieks that made my skin crawl and my hair stand on end. It was the sound made by rodents in anger and in pain…

Now, something moved along the neck of the sack: a large lump, moving up slowly, followed by a smaller lump. The small lump suddenly shot forward until it collided with the large one; the neck of the sack twisted and turned, there came a squeal of agony from its interior; and then the larger lump disappeared and only the smaller lump moved, closer and closer to the mouth of the sack where it lay in the mud.

I held my breath as the lump reached the mouth of the sack. I darted a glance at the three men. They stood about the sack, tension in their stiff, motionless limbs, their silhouetted weapons infinitely threatening.

The mouth of the sack widened, and something emerged. At first, only a pair of long, dark whiskers; trembling, sniffing the air for threat and danger. The men stood like rocks while the whiskers twitched for an interminable period…and then, with shocking suddenness, a lithe, grey-black form leaped from the mouth of the sack and bounded straight across the divider—towards the deserted road on the right side.

The three men were faster. Like striking cobras, their arms rose and descended, again and again. One terrible shriek, quickly cut off…and the rat lay, broken and bloody, in the muck.

Even as my mind struggled to make sense out of what I’d just seen, the sack moved again. Horrified, yet fascinated, I watched as another pair of whiskers emerged from the mouth of the sack and tested the air. This time, one of the men expedited things by tapping the sack cloth behind the lump. The rat—it was a larger, rangier specimen than its unfortunate predecessor—shot out and headed straight down the divider. Towards me! I yelled involuntarily and leaped several feet into the air, but it was unnecessary; the bicycle chain cut the rat nearly in two, and for a horrible moment both segments quivered perceptibly in the mud.

Someone hissed. I looked up and saw all three men staring at me. Their faces were completely expressionless, but there was something about the glittering eyes in their dark sockets that sent a thrill of terror down my spine. I felt as though I were an intruder…yes, an intruder…at some dark, secret ritual being practiced there, in the middle of the highway.

This is ridiculous, I told myself. I’m in the suburbs of Mumbai, this is the twentieth century, neither the place nor time to imagine things…

The tall man took a single step towards me, and suddenly the impulse to run seized me. Run, the voice in my mind screamed. This is something you don’t understand, you can’t understand. Get away! Run!

But just then, a frenzied squealing from the sack diverted our attention. Turning my head, I saw no less than three rats fall out of the sack in a writhing lump.

A strange, feral cry rose from the men’s lips, the weapons rose even as the rats scrambled to their feet. Two scuttled to the right, and were butchered before they reached even halfway towards the deserted road. The third, however, headed for the road to the left. Towards the river of trucks, and their churning, grinding wheels.

And now a strange thing happened. The three men paused, weapons poised in mid-strike, and their eyes followed the rat as it crawled painfully towards the edge of the divider. One leg trailed behind it, apparently injured in the scuffles within the sack. The men made no move to hinder its progress.

The rat reached the edge of the divider, hesitated and made as if to turn about and crawl along the divider instead. The tall man reached out and flipped it around with the hooked rod in his hand. The rat staggered, fell over and landed on the road, whiskers twitching nervously as giant wheels passed within inches of its nose.

The tall man prodded it behind the tail…and the rat ran. With what little strength it had left, it ran across the road in an awful three-legged gait.

The three men hunkered down on their heels to watch its progress, and their eyes were wide and glittering, mouths half-open, eager…I couldn’t look, didn’t want to look, and yet I strained my eyes and peered beneath the passing wheels. I couldn’t see anything, but the three men obviously could. A simultaneous cry rose from them, savage triumph in its tone. The tall one raised his face to the sky and chanted aloud, almost as would a priest invoking celestial powers. His words cut through the rain; they were in rich rural dialect, they were weird…and they froze the blood in my veins.

Behold, the beast Chose its path through the Blaze

It Chose the Path of Pain; by its own Choice has been slain

So shall we treat Bearers of Misfortune in coming days

Faced with the Fire of our Wrath they will Choose…and be cut in twain


I felt my knees tremble. I willed myself to move, to leave that terrible scene, but I just couldn’t. The sack was full of frantic movement now, as if its occupants were aware of their doom; as if, somehow, they knew that an awful ritual of Choice awaited them outside the sack.

I stood there and watched while two more rats emerged from the sack, turned right and were promptly beaten to death. A third one emerged, a young one; small and thin, with a piercing high squeak. This one opted for the river of trucks, and was ground into the slush by a speeding sixteen-wheeler. The three men cheered.

But now, the sack did a little flip; and then a huge shape distended the neck of the sack, crept closer to its mouth, and the three men tensed and held their weapons at the ready.

A giant sigh went up from them as a large, grey-whiskered snout appeared at the mouth of the sack. Small, crafty eyes peered this way and that; pointed ears twitched; and then the rodent crawled out onto the mud and sat down on its haunches as if absolutely nothing untoward was going on.

Rajah, I heard one of the men whisper in awe.

Rajah. The King.

I saw what he meant. The Rajah was easily the biggest field-rat I’d ever seen. He must have been all of thirty inches from weathered snout to leathery tail, with a lean, muscular body and a certain look about him, a battle-scarred, war-veteran look. Cats would have had second thoughts about tangling with such an adversary.

The tall man raised his hand and the thin steel rod whistled as it scythed down. The Rajah was faster. He sat there till the very last moment…and then, in one fluid motion, he sprang into the air, slashed at the tall man’s bony ankle with long, yellowed teeth, landed in the mud with a thump and then ran straight for the divider’s edge. To the left, where the endless procession of trucks roared and churned the flooded waters of the road.

The tall man yelled in fury and pain, dropped his weapon and hopped about on one foot, holding his ankle. His companions, after one quick glance at him, turned and followed the Rajah’s progress. I saw the great rodent reach the edge of the divider, and suddenly madness took hold of me. I wanted this rat to cross safely, wanted it so badly that I yelled aloud. I wanted the Rajah to reach the other side and turn around and thumb his hoary nose at these murderers. I yelled encouragement as the Rajah stepped off the divider and scampered across the road. I squatted down on my heels and watched him go.

And how the Rajah went! Like a bullet he raced across the foaming surface; a huge set of wheels swished past, and for a few seconds all I could see was a sea of frothing brown water; but then I spotted him again, already halfway across, snout in air, tail waving about furiously. For a moment it seemed certain that he would be hit by an approaching petrol-tanker. The giant truck bore down upon the Rajah, the scene disappeared in a brown waterfall…and then the Rajah was scampering along on the other side, unscathed. He didn’t turn around to thumb his nose, he just vanished over the verge, but I was too elated to care. Hoarse, near-hysterical cheering reached my ears, and it was a while before I realized, with a start, that it came from my own throat.

I stopped short, then, and looked around at the three men. They stood there, staring back at me, and there was hatred, pure hatred, in their eyes. The tall one hissed something, and all three started to move towards me.

No, this can’t be happening to me, I remember thinking as I squatted there, paralysed by the look in their eyes. But then I saw the steel rod rise, and I leaped to my feet and I ran, dear God how I ran. I ran back towards home, and I kept seeing their faces as I ran, especially their cold, glittering eyes. I reached the point where I had crossed over from the bridge, and now the screaming torrent of trucks lay between the bridge and where I was, but I heard the pounding of feet behind me and I just ran out onto the road, screaming myself, and dodged and twisted and shut my eyes and kept going, and the screeching of brakes filled my ears and I fetched up with a great thump against something hard and waited for oblivion.

I opened my eyes and found myself in the grip of a policeman: a very large, very annoyed policeman. Even now I remember the smell of stale sweat from him, the crumpled uniform, the dark circles under his eyes from tiredness or lack of sleep; he must have been a night shift constable returning home from duty. He stared at me, breathing hard, as I gasped out my tale of violence and terror. From time to time I twisted my neck to peer towards the divider, to see if I could spot my pursuers between the passing trucks. But there was no sign of the men. A new fear grew in me as I babbled my incoherent tale: the policeman wouldn’t believe me; he would think I was stoned on drugs, or drunk, or insane.

At length, he released his iron grip on my shoulders. He stepped back a pace, surveyed me from head to toe, and then spat to one side.

“So these men scared you, did they?” He went on without waiting for a reply. `Ah…well, I understand your fear. What they did must have seemed a little strange to someone like you, an Angrezi-wallah city-dweller…especially someone who doesn’t understand our local culture, doesn’t even belong to our province…”

I gaped at him. “I was terrified,” I mumbled. “They were madmen, the way they killed those rats…they might well have killed me if I hadn’t fled!”

He waved a thick wrist and laughed indulgently. “Now, now, stay calm. Yes, what they did was certainly unusual, quite different from tradition, from the conventional ritual…”

“What! I don’t understand…”

He went on as if I hadn’t spoken. “…But then this is a big city, you see, things cannot be done the same way here as in our villages. And so naturally such things can’t be done in the traditional, proper ways…”

I couldn’t believe my ears. “What do you mean…”

“These men…they made do with what they had,” the policeman went on, his voice a little dreamy, “Back in our villages, we traditionally catch the rats and put them in a pot—a matka—rather than a sack. And we place the matka in a bamboo trap, and light a slow charcoal fire below it.” His eyes shone as he warmed to his theme. “This bamboo trap is just like a maze, you see, there’s only one winding way out of it. The rats have to find this way out – or they’ll burn. At every turn they have to make a choice. A choice! And even the rats that make the right choices, as they go, have to pass through a series of bamboo gates before they can get out. Each gate is delicately balanced, it is a gate of Death. If the rat so much as touches the gate it falls, and its finely sharpened bamboo splints impale…”

But I didn’t wait to hear anymore. I fled for home.

All this was last Tuesday. I haven’t been out since.

My neighbours, my friends and office colleagues, think I’m unwell. That’ll do for now. I can’t tell them the truth, can I? I can’t tell anybody the truth. No-one would believe me; they’d laugh at me, they’d think I’ve gone crazy.

There’s plenty of food and stuff; I have home delivery from the kirana store halfway down the hill, certainly I’m not going to starve to death. But for how long can I shut myself in here? How long can I keep up this pretense, how long can I go on like this?

I can’t sleep; I dare not sleep, the nightmares are so bad now, the migraine like a fire consuming my senses. I need to go see a doctor!

Hell, I’ve got to go to work! I’ve got to ‘phone people.

But to do all that, to do anything, I’ll have to go down to the highway. And I can’t do that.

But I’m not safe here, either.

They saw me flee across the road, they know now that I live here.

Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow; but sooner or later, when bad luck, when some misfortune strikes them, they’ll think back and they’ll remember the Rajah. The One That Got Away.

And then they’ll remember me.

I, Bearer of their Misfortune. I, their enemy.

And the highway’s where they’ll be waiting for me, with their weapons. Or else, they’ll come for me, here, at home.

Sooner or later, I’ll have to choose. between going out and just cowering here in terror.

Like the rats, I have to choose…

Musings, Remembering

Cerebral cords and chords

Mani 5 Comments

[or, when Nothing threatens to become Something]

How time flies.

How time stands still.

Afternoon now. The 9th of July 2023. The mind in vacuous vacuum state, that so typically follows days of intense work.

I just did what I usually do…browse through a folder titled ‘Random Space’ in which I place all manner of scrawls on a continuing basis. This browsing activity acts on me like grazing on grass acts on cattle: it relaxes the fevered brain, especially when I delete utter rubbish that I come across (as happens quite frequently). 

Lest you don’t believe me, here’s something I found, written in February…in strangely similar mood. Strangely enough, it too dwells on grass grazed upon long ago…well, a refined form of grass anyway:  

[Verbatim…]

Feb 15th 2023:

Afternoon now.  After desultory work, editing news clippings after two days’ intense design and review of newsletter. What better time than to relapse into reminisce, to sink effortlessly through the decades to the dreamscape that was 1973–77…

Hawkwind plays, now, selected for me by that monstrous yet lovable Spotify algorithm. An album called, simply, Hawkwind. And now on the screen the calibri-11 and arial-9 exactly 17-point spaced mishmash of text melts and rearranges itself at dizzying speed, briefly I see shadowed faces in it, of friends of eons ago, Shankar and Raju, Kalyan and Raghu, Hocky and Sojan and Buddha and Rohan and Bhaiyya and Sen and Ronnie and Geeta and Meera and Shanks and so many others, appearing and dissolving in the cerebral grey-brown smoke that was so characteristic of Asharam’s hash (it came with golden seals on it, Farsi script too, all the way from Afghanistan, like chocolate bars but so much headier…12 rupees a tola.

A time when my monthly allowance—meant among other things for mess fees of 200-something rupees and for survival on the rest – was 300 rupees; at a time when dad’s salary back in Shillong was – what? About Rs 900 take-home?

Ah yes, I went through that 300 as smoothly as an otter through water, as Asharam’s hash went down the throat and lungs into the blood and brain. At least twice I ‘forgot’ the mess fees and asked dad for more; what were my excuses, I remember not.

And now, the lyrics from ‘Mirror of illusion’ caress the mind, draw me down, down the Great Chasm of Contemplation and hurl me over the raging, eternal,  Cataracts of Cerebral Chaos…

In the cold gray mask of morning I cry out
But no one feels the sound that I shout

And you don’t hear me through the tears you’ve shed
In the dreamworld that you’ve found
Will one day drag you down
The mirror of illusion reflects the smile

The world from your back door seems so wide
The house, so tiny it is from inside
A box that you’re still living in
I cannot see for why
You think you’ve found Perception’s doors
They open to a lie

Briefly, I emerge from the maelstrom at the shout of a remembered quote, echoing off the canyon walls:

One of the most important rules to follow on the Path to Contentment is to erase, on ongoing basis, any and all memories that evoke strong emotions:  good or bad. Especially the bad, which tend to burrow deeper and create far many more encrypted-password copies of themselves in different regions of the cerebellum.

[Alambusa IV: “Recombinant AI and other neuroquantal speculations”: Rakshasa Press, 2144 CE]

I try and follow this principle by efforts to keep up with what is being researched – and sometimes, discovered – in science. Usually, within minutes of reading something I achieve that utterly blissful amoeba-like state of complete blankness that restores equanimity with the blessed knowledge that with each passing second I understand even less than I did before, and that the end is in sight…but I’m never quite there (or I wouldn’t be writing this, would I?)

Consider this gem of an insight into the nature of ‘quantum entanglement’, from a most wonderful article dated 22 February 2023 in the Quanta Magazine  titled ‘Physicists Use Quantum Mechanics to Pull Energy out of Nothing’ [read it here]:

“The trouble arises from the bizarre nature of the quantum vacuum, which is a peculiar type of nothing that comes dangerously close to resembling a something. The uncertainty principle forbids any quantum system from settling down into a perfectly quiet state of exactly zero energy. As a result, even the vacuum must always crackle with fluctuations in the quantum fields that fill it. These never-ending fluctuations imbue every field with some minimum amount of energy, known as the zero-point energy. Physicists say that a system with this minimal energy is in the ground state. A system in its ground state is a bit like a car parked on the streets of Denver. Even though it’s well above sea level, it can’t go any lower…”

I just love this idea of a ‘peculiar type of nothing that comes dangerously close to resembling a something.’

It reminds me of the description of the One in every religious book I’ve read.

It also reminds me of exactly how I felt when I first heard Rahul Gandhi explain, at length, his vision for India’s socio-economic development.

[Mercifully, this 5-month-old reminisce on nothing, tantamount to nothing, ended here…indeed, I’d forgotten all about it till today. ]

How time flies.

How time stands still.

Quick! Hit the delete button!

General ravings, Remembering

Rewriting History, and Historical Mam…er…Memories

Mani 2 Comments

History is back in the news.

As the Union Education Ministry, the NCERT et al. embark on yet another exercise at rewriting Indian history, ostensibly with the noble purpose of creating better history textbooks for our school kids, yet again do we see the usual culprits—a plethora of netas and academia and intellectuals and activists and journalists and social media influencers cutting across ideological, political, religious, ignorance and idiocy spectra— snarling at one another over what should or should not be depicted in the history textbooks, and how the depictions should be done, and by whom, and so on ad nauseum.

Sounds familiar, no?

It’s always been like this. Since Independence. Every time a new political formation comes to power in Dilli, our netas and their chelas at once develop acute hysteria over history and  proceed to rewrite and re-rewrite already rewritten history … till the next elections come along and they are thrown out and the next lot comes in and does the same.

Over 25 years ago, my dear departed friend and colleague-writer Ghatotkacha had suggested what I still believe is a fine and most sustainable solution to the problem of how to depict our history…but sadly, no-one paid attention to him and he passed into history.  [You can, if you like, read about Ghatotkacha’s solution here…be warned, not for the faint-hearted or politically correct]

My own earliest yet most vivid and enduring memories of history are of historical mammaries.

Seriously.

I schooled in Shillong from 1962 to 1972, at the St Edmund’s School. The Irish Christian Brothers who ran the school were among the finest of teachers; but they were as thoroughly confused and clueless about the history curriculum prescribed for Indian schools as were the Powers-That- Were: meaning, the political leaders, academics, administrators, and affiliated geniuses at the Union and state levels who were responsible for deciding what kind of history we Indian kids were to be taught in Independent India.

And so, in the absence of any sensible guidance from the Powers-That-Were and non-availability of any decent standardized textbook on history for junior school kids, the Irish Brothers in their wisdom decided that we kids would read from a history book that was a kind of supplementary reader for kids our age in the United Kingdom.  And so in the mid-1960s, from Class 3 to Class 5 if I remember correctly, we kids read from a hardbound history textbook titled ‘The March of Time’, authored by the rather interestingly- named E C T Horniblow and published in Britain in 1932.

The March of Time was a work of extraordinary beauty to us; well written, with large-sized text in attractive font  and many full-page illustrations in colour.

The March of Time was also a work of extraordinary irrelevance to us.

It taught us of historical characters we’d never heard our parents or anyone else ever mention before. We read of characters like Canute, and Ethelred, and Alfred the Great, and Angles, Saxons and Jutes; of Vikings; of Magna Carta (no, not the rock band), of Romulus and Remus being brought up by wolves and roaming around till they founded Rome (or perhaps I got it all wrong and they were actually lost till they found Rome?); of a Roman soldier named Horatio who stood on a narrow bridge over the Tiber with two other soldiers and fought off a million-strong army of horrible villains called ‘Goths’ (or were they Huns?).

I was particularly thrilled by the full-page depiction of Horatio and his friends fighting off the Goths/Huns; because some of the Goths/Huns   bore striking resemblance to adults I knew, including a couple of teachers and relatives.

All in all I found The March of Time very interesting, but quite mystifying.  I just couldn’t figure out what all those blue-eyed fair and lovely people and their stories in The March of Time had to do with my life or my past.

But I didn’t care—nor did any of my dishevelled-collared, muddy-shoed, classmates.

Because The March of Time also gifted us, on page 23 (or was it 25?), with a full-page depiction, in glorious colours, of the Celtic Queen Boadecia.  

Boadecia the Great, Boadecia the Beautiful, Boadecia the Warrior, who led the common people of Britain to revolt against their Roman rulers! Boadecia, who wielded a sword and possessed not only a courageous heart but the most magnificent and gravity-defying pair of mammaries we had ever seen in our less-than- ten-year-old lives.

No textbook in the world has ever been opened as frequently to page number 23 (or was it 25?) as we did The March of Time; no textbook page has ever been studied more intensely, pored over more devotedly or dog-eared more severely than that page with its full-colour depiction of Boadecia the Bodacious baring all (and Boadecia had a lot to bare, and she bared it very well indeed).

Boadecia left a lifelong impression on my/our young minds; she opened our eyes and minds to the beauty of history.

Even while writing this, I took five minutes off to try and find The March of Time’s incredible depiction of her on the Net…alas, to no avail. The portraits of Boadecia in Wikipedia etc. are pitiful, pathetic, fifth-rate imitations of the supremely endowed Boadecia we were privileged to gape at all those decades ago. 

Even today, whenever the word ‘bodice’ is uttered by anyone (admittedly a rare occurrence), all thoughts are instantly swept away from my disintegrating mind by a mighty flood that rises from the Cache of Ancient Memory; and in the flood’s wake there remains only one shining crystalline cerebro-neural vision, untarnished by decades—of  Boadecia the Bodacious, She of the Magnificent DD-scale natural resources.

Sadly, the March of Time itself is now but a mam…er…memory.

Still, considering the ghastly never-ending  arguments in India over how history should be written and taught,  I do believe I and my classmates were luckier than today’s school kids. We had a glimpse of a much better depiction of global history—rather, many glimpses of one glorious depiction of global (if not globular) history—during our school days in the 1960s.

Jai Hind. Hail Boadecia!

Musings, Remembering

The Lamp of Life…and Death

Mani 10 Comments

Today’s Saturday; a day to go before Deepavali dawns.

Death floated lazily over me today morning, as She so often does.

Yea, today I saw Death as She. Tomorrow perhaps Death will be He; or perhaps It; or simply the One.  Death takes infinite forms, Death rules us all, Death alone among all Gods and Prophets and other fantastic creatures with which we populate our skies and imagination is ever close to us, from the day we are born. 

As a dear doctor friend puts it: by far the most common cause of Death is Birth.

No, no, there’s nothing ‘fatalistic’ or morbid at all about discussing Death. In fact, the eve of Deepavali is such an appropriate time to muse on Death; for Death is the End and the Beginning of all things including Time itself.

“Yama, Death, is never to be feared…only respected,” another dear friend had once counselled me, long ago, at a time when she —and we—knew she would die within weeks; a time when I felt the numb desolation and dread that you have felt, all of us have felt, with the realization that one, whom you love dearly, is going to die soon.  “Sure, fear pain if you must; but never fear Death. We’re all afraid of pain, of becoming helpless, dependent on others …but Death ends all pain, ends fear…and so never fear Death. You need not invite Yama…He will come when He has to! You needn’t wait for Yama’s arrival, he is never late. But you must respect Him when He arrives.”  

The dear friend was Jaya; my mother. The conversation took place over 26 years ago…the morning of 2nd August 1996. She’d gone through a few days of mild, recurring headaches, and when she’d experienced a sudden dizzy spell our neighbor and doctor-friend advised her to get a routine scan just to rule out the possibility of a ‘mild stroke’. So, we called the scanning centre and got an appointment for the next morning; and Jaya and I took an auto-rickshaw to the scanning centre – she vociferously criticizing me and dad all the way for needlessly fussing, and wasting half-a-day (she had a book of hers to proofread, another one to write with a tight deadline), and declaring that it was all a complete waste of time and money, and that just to prove she was fitter than any of us, we would walk home the nine kilometers from the scanning centre.

Well… we sat around at the centre and waited our turn, and I remember there was a little kid there waiting like us with his young parents, the kid was teary-eyed with pain but bravely silent—a terrible spinal injury, his anxious parents told us—and Jaya chatted with the little tyke and teased him and even got him to smile (she had a magical way with children); and then our turn came and I stood next to her while they did the scan, lead-lined coat and all, and even then I knew something was seriously wrong because I had to hold Jaya steady on the trolley, her left arm and leg kept sliding off though she was quite conscious; and then the doctors came out of their little console room and asked permission to do a contrast scan or MRI or something. “Sure…but why?” I asked. “We’re seeing something we’re a little concerned about, we want a better look at it,” they replied. So they injected her with a radio-dye and did the scan again while I stood beside Jaya, and then they took me into their little room and showed me what their screen was showing them, and I forget their exact words but the image on the screen and some of their words phrases are burned into the mind. Mass lesions. Temporo-parietal region. Aggressive glioma. In essence, she was in the terminal stages of a brain cancer.

And after we returned home—of course we didn’t walk—and told dad, and we called brother Bala who was in Bangalore, the enormity of the situation hit like a tidal wave, and Jaya was calmest among us, and she took my hand and led me up to the little corner which was her puja room and she lit the lamp and we had this little chat about respecting Death, and she made me vow that I would not let any surgeon’s knife come near her.  She wanted no surgery, no medical interventions. She just wanted to be at home with us. She made me vow by the lamp of the little puja-room upstairs, the lamp that I’d always lit for her from when I was a kid whenever she couldn’t light it herself because she was away, or during the time she’d suffered burns from batik and taken months to recover.

And so I vowed.  

Jaya stayed with us at home for two weeks, growing weaker by the day yet almost gently, in little pain other than the on-off mild headaches…she kind of faded away till the night of August 17th when she slipped into coma and we moved her to a hospital where a wonderful doctor took her under his wing, a doctor who knew precisely what to do—and perhaps as important, what not to do. She stayed there for ten days, till Death came for her on the 27th August.

Sorry, gentle Reader, I didn’t expect to meander down this path of personal memory when I started this; but I think that’s the nature of the strange, misty trails that Death sometimes allows us to walk awhile, alongside with those whom She has come for. You too must have walked these trails…they transcend time and space. I mean, here’s something that happened 26 years ago; yet it’s as clear as it happened a moment ago, while I can’t remember anything about yesterday or even much of what’s happened today since I saw Death a few hours ago, while lying on my yoga mat out on the terrace.

Today morning Death took the shape of a bird; a kite, to be precise.  Even before I opened my eyes I knew Death was approaching; for the quiet of early morning was shattered by a sudden frenzy of chirping and cheeping and chattering, and hundreds of pigeons and mynahs and bulbuls and doves and sparrows took flight and squirrels and chameleons and garden lizards scampered and scuttled in a mad scramble for cover among the leafy boughs of the park trees or behind walls and flower-pots or beneath bushes and roofs and piles of leaves.  The kite floated lazily in an ever-widening circle, high overhead, ever higher, till She disappeared from view beyond the edge of the awning.  

The silence endured awhile…but presently, the Wild-Creatures’ all-clear signal was given and the birds and squirrels and lizards and the rest of them returned to their normal morning activities. For a little while, it seemed, there was a new watchfulness in them, perhaps because they’d been reminded of Death, inexorable, inevitable; up there, down here, among us, unseen, watching and waiting, waiting to pick us up at the appointed time. But very soon they were all cheerful and boisterous as before, any fleeting fear evaporated, forgotten.

Perhaps this is as it should be with Death.

Yudhisthira of Great Vyasa’s eternal Play, the ever-questioning Seeker, that impulsive, often unthinking, ever-self-doubting human whom each one of us resembles to some degree,  got it right in his interrogation by Death:

Yama: And what is the greatest wonder of the world?

Yudhisthira: Every day, every moment, we see living creatures depart through the Gateway of Yama…yet we live as though we are immortal.  

We live as though we are immortal. We must. It is right that we live Life without fearing or obsessing about or dreading Death. What is Life but a fleeting spark in the timeless, dimension-less Realm of Serenity whence comes all that is and was and shall ever be, to flicker and dance awhile in this dream we call Reality and thence return? The Realm that is the Supreme Singularity, the One, the Maha Black Hole whose Event Horizon is the Gateway we call Death?

Omar beheld it so clearly, expressed it so joyfully:

What, without asking, hither hurried whence?

And without asking, thither hurried hence!

Another, another Cup to drown

The Memory of this impertinence!

Death is a mercy, a gift, a blessing, the Lamp-Bearer on the Path Home. Death is a wonderful reason for us to live Life to the fullest; lives that don’t cause others or our own selves hurt or pain or sorrow or despair; lives of joy and laughter and light-heartedness and contentment and exploration and discovery and reflection, of compassion and love and fulfilment.

Happy Deepavali.

Musings, Remembering

Nation Notions

Mani 7 Comments

I was with a friend in her car. In the back were three more friends, all women, one of them Indian, the other two German:  a mother–daughter duo.  

It was the evening of January 25th, 2020, cloudy and chill at dusk. We were caught in a traffic jam—the only saving grace being that we were on the lovely Amrita Shergill Marg, bordering the Lodhi Garden in central Delhi, and so there was plenty of foliage (albeit blurry) to look at and discernible quantities of that rare element, oxygen, in the diesel-and- petrol -scented air. 

After about 30 minutes of crawl-and-halt, we drew alongside a small group of policemen, who were trying with limited success to keep motorists to their lanes.

“Jai Hind,” I greeted them, as I always greet personnel of our armed forces and police.

 “Jai Hind,” they responded.

“What’s going on?” I went on in my semi-tapori Hindi, “Why this jam?”

“The result of a little VIP transit, sir…it’ll all be cleared in a few minutes.”

I thanked him, and we sat in silence for a moment. And then my young German friend spoke up softly, clearly, in English: “Why did you say that to him?”

Puzzled, I looked around at her. Her Indian friend giggled but didn’t say anything. “Say what?” I asked.

“You said ‘Jai Hind’ to that policeman…why?” she murmured, now slightly embarrassed. Her mother, who spoke very little English, looked on in bemusement. Her Indian friend giggled again, in a slightly self-conscious way.

The question was simple, perfectly straightforward;   but in a flash I realized what it was she was really asking and why she was asking; and what the young Indian’s slightly nervous giggle might mean too. It was January, 2020—that was the time when the Shaheen Bagh street blockade was at its peak; when young women and men not just in India but across the world were charged up with the heady passions and revolutionary slogans of the quaintly-oxymoronic  ideology known as Left Liberalism; when any word, any sign, of showing solidarity with or pride in or support to even the idea of India was not only old-fashioned but had somehow become equated to becoming a ‘Modi-bhakt’, a ‘nationalist’, a ‘fascist’, an anti-Muslim fanatical Hindu. In India, and across the world.

It was a time when even uttering ‘Jai Hind’ more or less branded me as a narrow-minded bigot unless otherwise proven…or clarified. 

The two young women were – are- very dear to me; the question was honest, direct and clear; and so I thought awhile before I replied.  “’Jai Hind’means ‘Hail India’, or ‘Victory to India’ if you like,” I said. “I greeted that policeman with ‘Jai Hind’ because I am proud of my country, I love my country, and tomorrow is our Republic Day—the day when, in 1950, a couple of years after winning independence from British rule, India adopted its own Constitution and became a full-fledged Republic.  So then,  for the first time we Indians had drawn up and given ourselves our own rights, our own guiding principles to live by, the systems by which we would govern ourselves and so on…all the things that we had fought for and won,  and that we must hold on to and defend.  And so January 26th is a good day to remember.  A good time to say ‘Jai Hind’, and of course that’s why ‘Jai Hind’ is a good way to greet military personnel, police…”

I trailed off, wondering whether I’d made any sense at all. She’d listened attentively as I spoke; silent, clear-eyed, nodding slightly. 

“Ah yes, of course, now I see,” she murmured. In the meanwhile her mother, who had been listening as intently to our exchange, asked her daughter to explain in German, which she promptly did.

And then, both of them smiled and chanted: “Jai Hind!”

And we all chorused Jai Hind, and soon the jam cleared, and merriment returned and dissolved the tedium.

A trivial episode, no doubt; but for me it was important…and lingers in memory.  

I will always be grateful to my German friend for her question.

It helped me think a little, reflect a little, learn and re-learn and un-learn much more than a little.  About India, about what this insanely chaotic, wonderful nation means and what it is founded on, and what holds it together…and what can and does tear it apart.

Jai Hind.

Remembering

From Eternity to Eternity

Mani 11 Comments

I’ve never been embarrassed about wearing my sentiment on my sleeve – if only on occasion. And 26th July, 2001 was one occasion, the 2nd anniversary of Vijay Diwas – the Martyr’s Day in remembrance of the uniformed ones who gave their lives during the Kargil war, 1999…a war during which a few dear friends in Army and Air Force had played active roles. Today being 26th July, here it is: for all fauji friends, for all men and women of the fauj, past and present and future. With respect, with love.

On the night of 26th July last year we lit two little lamps out on the balcony and gazed at the lambent flames while, and on the still air we heard the whispers of names…Clifford Nongrum, Haneefuddin, Saravanan, Kalia, Ahuja…names of men we had never met yet seemed to have known so well.

Surely, they would have been no different from any other young men in the world?  In their love for laughter and revelry, for the scents of rain upon earth and flowers in a woman’s hair, for home-cooked food, the warmth of a family gathering, a boisterous game with children…they too must have yearned for leisure, for romancing, for peace. One of them had played the guitar, another had a voice like Rafi’s. Rich and varied were their tastes in music, as indeed their backgrounds and origins. Yet fierce were the bonds that had joined these men of diverse faiths, united them in their battle to preserve this very diversity, this richness and variety.

A strange, overwhelming sense of loss came upon us even as the flames rose steady and unwavering. We glanced up at the high-rise apartment blocks all around, at their dark balconies and terraces. A stray breeze brought a brief snatch of canned laughter from some TV set in some curtained lounge. And bitterness and anger welled up, sudden and surprising. How could they all be so callous, the inner voice raged, how could they forget the martyrs of Kargil so soon.

But the self-righteous and sentimental mind’s voice was abruptly quelled by a remembered voice from childhood: easy, self-assured, slightly mocking in tone, the voice of a young soldier, slain in battle long ago.

“Listen,” he had murmured, “in life, what others think or do doesn’t matter a damn. What YOU do is the only thing that counts. Before you, before each one of us, there’s a path; the path of duty. Seek that path, follow it, all else falls into place. It is so simple…”

The voice faded back into the caverns of memory; the flames flickered. And suddenly the twisted, tangled coils of sentiment and anger dissolved into a moment of deep understanding. Indeed the martyrs of Kargil had fought obdurate foes, in the harshest of conditions. They had endured terrible pain, died warriors’ deaths. But they were men who believed – nay, who knew – that beyond death there is no joy or sorrow, neither friendship nor enmity; there are no borders or lines of control, nor remembrance nor names.

There is only the peace of Eternity.

That is why our soldiers treated even the enemy’s slain with dignity, with honour. And that is why they were victorious.

We turned away, then. Fleetingly, sadness returned as we beheld the dark balconies all around. A flicker of yellow drew our attention to the right…and we gazed spellbound.

Down there, beyond the compound wall, set in the humble doorway of a tarpaulin-roofed dwelling, two candles had been lit. Their flames rose steady and unwavering. And again on the still air came the whisper of names…Vikram Batra, Neikezhakuo Kengurüse, Kanad Bhattacharya, Vijayant Thapar, Mohammad Hussain…

[‘Slain victors’: The Pioneer: 31 July 2001]