Schooling the Self, (Re)Cycling the Self

I was bunched with a few kids of Benaras, when I started school, to sit in a red and blue school-rickshaw. All I remember from those days are the posters of Shehanshah and Mard. Amitabh Bachchan, who would be a cop in the day and turn into Shehanshah in the night, wore chains, and blocked bullets with his bulletproof  left arm. Then, the arrival of the next dancing star, Govinda, with Inteqam, perhaps the first film I saw repeatedly. Later, I walked to school with a bunch of kids, from one village to another. Long eventless walk among the trees and birds. I don’t remember being very chatty. The walk encouraged an active sort of solitude. We carried our own jute mats, sat on the floor, wrote with homemade white ink on a black wooden plank. Even later, my father’s peon would cycle me to school. Very rarely my father would come and pick me up in his office jeep, which made me wait endlessly. I would spend that time watching bigger kids play gulli-danda; sitting next to a very obese semi-naked man, sweating all over, selling toffees and biscuits of indigenous variety; observing craftsmen make intricate and majestic kaaleens. Much later, for around a year, a schoolbus picked me up from home. Fear and loathing. Systemic violence. Not as bad as going to school in your own car, however, but only better than that. Passive consumerism. No romance with the outside, no possibility of it inside. Smoke, noise, discipline, punctuality, and serious bullying, pretensions, arrogance, affluence.

And then, I got my own bicycle to ride through Lucknow. First a mid-sized one for a few months before getting an adult-sized one. Time ran on wheels now. Spaces curved in on me as I would sometimes breeze past them, sometimes stand still and soak them. Like that spot where I chatted with Abhaya for endless hours before he would go across and sit in a tempo, I would ride back home. For the next ten years or so, the world as I imagined it, would play with me. It spread itself in a manner that would allure as well as tease, make me go after itself while it came at me. A boy on a cycle was an active participant in the world; he would offer his unprotected self to the world and allow himself to be taught as an equal who could not escape responsibilities. As the world blessed the boy with freedom and independence, it also told him conclusively, you shall have to bear the consequences for whatever you do, therefore, learn to respect and put a price on every choice you make. The cycle took him far and wide, often across the city when the school moved away. It gave him an intimacy with the city, with those who peopled the city, with friends, their houses, their colonies, their friends. I had entered a revised order of time-travel. That it wasn’t the fastest a man could go hardly mattered, that it was faster than himself always rendered an overspin, a spring to the jump, a new shine to every new day.

But there’s more to a cycle, lest you should overlook it. Slowly, it introduces within your body a regime of patience; the rhythmic negotiation between effort and result that it inculcates, resides within an orbit of patience. It teaches you what only dance and sport can at an early age, but unlike them, does not introduce ambitions of a largely visual achievement. While the young boy works with his musculature the paddles of a cycle, his perception also renders a musculature to the universe around him. This point requires elaboration. Much like the relationship between self-conversation and an ethical world-view as explored by Sundar Sarukkai, the musculature of self-at-work and the musculature of the world outside as perceived, operate in tandem. The insides extend their work-ethic to the outsides. The patience caressing the margins of the outsides infiltrate the self and consolidate the value of working with time. I am reminded of Rilke,

    Always trust yourself and your own feeling, as opposed to argumentation, discussions, or introductions of that sort; if it turns out that you are wrong, then the natural growth of your inner life will eventually guide you to other insights. Allow your judgments their own silent, undisturbed development, which, like all progress, must come from deep within and cannot be forced or hastened. Everything is gestation and then birthing. To let each impression and each embryo of a feeling come to completion, entirely in itself, in the dark, in the unsayable, the unconscious, beyond the reach of one’s own understanding, and with deep humility and patience to wait for the hour when a new clarity is born: this alone is what it means to live as an artist: in understanding as in creating.

In this there is no measuring with time, a year doesn’t matter, and ten years are nothing. Being an artist means: not numbering and counting, but ripening like a tree, which doesn’t force its sap, and stands confidently in the storms of spring, not afraid that afterward summer may not come. It does come. But it comes only to those who are patient, who are there as if eternity lay before them, so unconcernedly silent and vast. I learn it every day of my life, learn it with pain I am grateful for: patience is everything!

 

Think of patience as opposed to restlessness. Think of cyclicity as gestation – a consciously active resting, the tempo-building of a muscular patience. Think of Lucknow as if floating in the time-tub. Think of wit paddling through spaces, holding the interest of time in a manner that it forces it to stand still. Think of andaaz-e-bayaan and its own musculature.

The universe I inhabited demanded a regime of rhythmic discipline, of punctuating yourself, the tongue in particular, in a manner that it should hold attention, yours as well as others’. As Vinod Mehta writes in his mesmerising chapter on Lucknow, it was a sin to be a bore in that city. As one seeks a variety of interests and cultivates a few of one’s own to not be labeled as boring, one also learns to wait for interesting things to begin. It’s a bit like leaving outside the off-stump till you get one in your area. Through an entire process of cultivating rhythm of one’s anticipation, one learns to regulate the equilibrium of anticipation-response, to wade through stimulus-heavy chaos conserving energy and unleash it only at the right time.

Even though I was not cycling in the 60′s like Mehta, from Farangi Mahal to Sanyal Club, the traces of 60′s were still lying on the margins of the early 90′s, however low. Even today, as I chat with my muslim friends, as I listen to the gentleman at Izharson Perfumers in Chowk, as I sit and listen to the resonating voice of Ram Advani and notice his energy and excitement about books at 90, as I put a malai ki gilauri in my mouth, I can taste the margins of 60′s. I don’t ride anymore but the cyclic eye, rhythm, and patience, has been internalized by now. I always feel I have more time than others. I am always ready for a delightful phrase, a beautiful gesture, a telling manner, a moment of quirky behaviour, a desire to walk at one’s own pace, not take singles on a day when you don’t feel like them, as Boycott would tell us. Cycles, unlike cars and bikes, which constitute traffic, can be moody, as can be their riders. But it is not everyman’s thing to have moods. To have moods, one has to have a lot more – a desire to test new grounds in particular, and leave the comfort zone without any bitterness. I didn’t always find it easy to achieve. The bitterness also found many other sources. In the years to come, I faulted several times in judgment on account of a new found rhythm which was not yet in sync with my being, as a batsman would be hurried into a shot on a day when his body does not settle down. One can always cycle the self, re-cycle the self, school the self back to a familiar moment, gestate all over again, birth all over again.

Let me return to Vinod’s Mehta’s beautiful portrait of my city. I am particularly taken by the charm and tragedy of Safdar. His extraordinary quip to a car-driving friend, whom he refuses the honour of giving him a lift because he is in a hurry, remains etched on the memory, as one turns the page over to the next chapter. It should be not reduced to a mere flourish of wit, of gently breezing past someone’s nerves. The quip resonates with another sense of time itself, a time that cannot breathe inside a car.

With that, I turn the page to another city, Pune, another rhythm of movement, a bike, and to many new possibilities. But that page is blank yet, and the story is yet to come under my grip. Let’s leave that tale for another day.

After Sunset

Mujhe kya bura tha marna, agar ek baar hota [What would I have cared about dying if it were only once]

How does one write a travelogue when one wasn’t out to travel in the first place, when one is seeking instead? Indeed there is no contradiction between the two, they can very often co-exist, but perhaps for the first time, there was an overspin put on the simple act of traveling, and the journey must be seen in that context. It was after a very long time that I set out on a journey of the kind I once used to with great regularity. And from the very moment that I boarded my first bus, there was a pleasant feeling of fresh tentativeness, a long-lost excitement slowly blending with the lightness of the air surrounding me. With every passing minute, I could sense what I was getting into. I could recollect moments of ecstasy when something within me was unleashed, something that could not be contained inside, something that had a divine connection, an excess that called out to the larger whole. I could sense within me the completion of a full cycle, a cycle that left me at a distance from the origin. This was a segment of a spiral loop, there was no restoration on offer. There was no calm, no rest available to the soul. I had never been so weak, so torn from within, so reluctant and lethargic, as if struggling with my self-image, memories, and destiny.

At a juncture like that, one negotiates with pre-sociality, an emotion not of being aloof but of being one with what exists around. It is an encounter of the mutest kind, in which people one passes by and sees through need not be people, they might even be pebbles. It is not the encounter however, in the setting I sought I desired for this option though. As I desired for moments when I would carelessly walk to a tea-shop by the roadside and ask for a cup of tea, make small conversation, communicate through disabilities of communication, perhaps mock at language with a scorn that is greeted by the warmest of smiles. The choice I wanted was of inhabiting a universe that makes itself amenable to pre-social, semi-social, auto-social, para-social, modes that escape the clutches of sociality in various intriguing ways. Why, you may ask. Why would I escape the sociality that surrounds me? Perhaps because I needed to go back to the mark from where I would arrive once again to the peak of my run-up. Because amidst that deafening roar that surrounds you, there is a moment when you need to switch yourself off and walk back to your mark, turn and build up the rhythm. In those moments, there is nothing in front, nothing around, no sound, no sight. There is you, the earth beneath your feet that assures you with its firmness, the body every muscle of which slowly responds to your being, as you whisper* past and through all that could take your focus away. One needs the walking back with one’s head down, lost within oneself, to come to terms with the moment gone past. One needs to once again look at the red ball in one’s hands, admire its luster if its new, tightness of its seam holding onto the weathered surface if old. That red ball is all one has. Even when the last one of them have left you to fend for yourself, this one won’t. I boarded the bus to feel the leather in my hands, to talk to the earth I walked, and the air that whistled past me, to flick the sweat off my brow, and look at the world again, with a freshness of insides that only time and solitude can provide for.

It is in this context that I look at traveling. For me, it is a negotiation, between the known and the unknown. To know enough to be able to find your way, and never so much that you don’t allow destiny to intervene, is the trick. For every route you know, there exits one that you should be taking. It could be the same one, but it might very well not be. To always leave that little gap between your bat and pad, to keep the smiling assassin interested, has always been my way. When you walk into a new town as a stranger, you present yourself to destiny and hold its little finger. To have trust in one’s destiny is happiness, to know that one will be taken care of is happiness. Traveling introduces you to happiness that sees no conflict with anxiety, uncertainty, tentativeness, fear, and of course, disappointments. It shows you slowly how it is of extraordinary importance to have within oneself many universes without you residing in anyone of them. It allows you to absorb without displacing, retain without owning, inhabit without being arrested. And to delay the process of meaning-making. As you sits and stares, you are under no obligation to conclude. The moment is there to be relished at ease, and only later to be mad meaning of. It allows you to maintain a little distance from yourself, and distance means dialogue. Which brings me to landscapes…

It is most pertinent in today’s times to ponder about our relationship(s) to landscapes. The urban populations with their and their parents’ surplus income have been devouring landscapes like savage beasts under various heads. It is not just those who are ecologically insensitive, far more ruthless are those who violate in the name of sensitivity. It would be easy to invoke Illich’s brilliant response to them, “To hell with good intentions.” Much more nuanced, but also relevant, would be Herzog’s “The Grizzly Man,” a film that forces you to confront the conceptual limitations of being an intimate outsider. Can you cease to be an outsider because you are sensitive towards the natives? Is there an ethical and compassionate way of being in foreign territory that does not conflict with the journey that it takes towards becoming? And how do you restore yourself? What do you restore? What is the meaning of this cycle going from being the anxious outsider to restoring an insecure, undefined, underexplored self? Can you be yourself as an outsider when you cannot be your ‘self’ within your insides? There is a profound crisis in this slippage but an adorable romantic dream to inhabit someone else’s world, to be in the mountains, and in the forests, without being capable of inhabiting the domain of the self. But of course, a crisis that can be overlooked for the time being. Right now, it is about urban happiness, isolated homestays, folk wisdoms, and desperate photography. I cannot plead entiely innocent of that blame myself. The colonial ethnographer lives on within degenerate post-modern aspirations. We have language after all, we can talk, and explain.

When I set out, I knew I wanted to maintain my distance from this extra-sociality, retain my allergy to building desperate bridges that bridge nothing. We, as subjects, do not only have problems, we also are parts of bigger problems. Sharp and broken pieces of those problems stay within us as we move from one place to another. The pretense of an encounter with the other cushions our wounded insides and subverts the nakedness of a reflexive confrontation with ourselves. It defeats the very purpose of seclusion: to see oneself and one’s deeds to others through a pre-sociality, not blunt them within an extra-sociality that allows one to move on. The point is to acknowledge to oneself what one would not acknowledge in others’ presence. For there is no running away from oneself, something within always catches up. The wounds open every now and then, the lethargy and dishonesty never ceases to disturb. For just as the bowler must feel the power of that tiny red ball in his hands, the batsman must re-assess the position of his off stump. Everything else may be peripheral but to know where one’s off-stump is, is mandatory. There is a stamp of beginning in the dialogue a batsman has with his off-stump, a beginning before everything, a point of time when nothing else matters. Only when one roots oneself and one’s references within that vacuum like universe, can one be prepared for all that follows. As I sat on a big rock watching the big waves hit the bottom of the rock repeatedly, as I saw the two long stretches of beach on both sides, the emptiness around took me to that beginning, that moment which is an instance of pre-sociality, the time before the hands of the clocks started moving. It is this moment that was a moment of exile for Camus, something he also called ‘an invincible summer’. It is what he always carried within as ‘the first man’. It is what I would always carry within me, the mark to which one must return in order to come back. Losing that mark is to lose oneself, one’s reference points. To be adequately social, one must retain this pre-sociality.

However, we must maintain the distinction that this silent encounter between the landscape and man is peculiar in many other ways. You can feel the landscape embrace your being. It approaches you softly as its arms curl around you , fingers running through the hair, at times it sits next to you and talks to you, even listens to you talk if you don’t make a noise. Unlike a lover, it gives itself to you completely, but takes nothing of yours. In that sense, it is an encounter like no other. When you walk away you retain your entire being, plus those kisses behind your neck, the strength of the invincible summer, and much more. But no part of you is left there, you cannot feel the sense of loss that a lover enforces upon you once estranged. While I sat there staring at a kite playing with strong humid winds, a boy interrupted me to ask about my vocation etc. On being told that I was not from around and had come there to visit, he recommended Gokarna, dismissed Kaup, and went on to add, “Yahan kya hai? Bas patthar hai..” I would imagine that the cruel remark on the apparent lifelessness of those stunning rocks is not as much about their inert nature as it is about the realization of one’ own inability to deal with the moment of ‘beginning’. The real shift is in the inability to lose a part of oneself only to later fondle with the cavity left within so as to get a grip on what one begins to think as oneself. The lack of that lack throws one down into the uncanny, therefore the discomfort.

As I returned from the blissful confines of a beautiful pre-sociality, everything around seemed infused with vitality. The taste of Rava Fried Bangda and Kingfish had so much more meaning thereafter. The aftertaste, specially that of Kingfish, would remain on the tongue for hours. Thankfully, not everything leaves a bitter aftertaste. And even if it does, the invincible summer can often help one come to terms with it.

 

*With due credit to the great Michael Holding.

** Preferably, to be read along with two of my previous posts.

 

Following ‘Following Fish’

As I write this, I struggle to keep the balance between giving expression (language, style, pace, drama) to a continuum of ideas, and filling with ideas a rhythmic continuity of what my brain comprehends as graceful sophisticated language worthy of written expression. Whichever way you may look at Indian writing in English, the latter seems to have almost decisively encroached upon the former. No wonder then, that Indian fiction writing standards in English language (barring only Arundhat Roy of course) are rather awful, characterized by what I would call a pornographic tendency – writing trying to stand in for something else but in the process, vulgarizing it further. Indeed the tendency cuts across a wide range and breaches the vast territory of non-fiction writing as well but at the same time, narrative journalistic writing has made drastic and delightful progress. This is indeed writing that has disciplined itself over time, started with ambitions loftier than journalism but later realized itself within the orbit of journalistic convictions through issue-based boundary conditions.

The book I just finished reading -  ‘Following Fish’ by Samanth Subramaniam – fits the above category, I reckon. It marks a young author’s attempt to come to terms with the coastal cultures and their various dependencies on the fish that come to represent, at different points of time, aspects such as food, trade, identity, industry, craft, taste, nativity, risk, and journey. It is remarkable how Samanth manages to evoke all of these within 150 odd pages of delightful prose that retains the joy of traveling, the discernment of a food enthusiast, the cautious sharpness of a social scientist, and the persuasive command of a curious journalist. His language is rich in precise metaphors, fluent across cultural distinctiveness, and inclusive of colloquial flavours as well as punctuated by dramatic pauses. His method is meticulous and patient, observant and committed, also expansive and cuts across infinite ways of approaching the fish in order to follow it.He makes regional comparisons come alive, communities’ investments in their past acquire a powerful meaning, and cultural analysis go beyond usual suspects such as nostalgia and loss. In one long journey through India’s coastline, he tells the story of our times, following several historical and emotional trajectories that lead towards mysteries of several disjointed pasts that were eventually forged together. Samanth opens up those few hidden cavities inside these forgings making us sit up and notice what still remains, and why, and where exactly.

His inspirational journeys do not make it a travel book even though they do inspire you to travel on your own, not retrace as much as re-search. He may be persuasive and thrilling like every writer must be, but he also inspires analytical critical approach to studying minds and opinions, ideas and passsions, by exposing their fragilities and idiosyncratic origins. As one tastes Hilsa in Calcutta, and Karimeen in Kerala, searches for authentic Mangalorean fish curry, and vital differences between Malawani and Gomantak cuisines, one realizes the meanings of one’s own identity and taste in comparison and contrast to others’, their impatience reminds us of our own, their assertions take us back to our own. Following fish is elemental in not only the sense that Samanth underlines, “an activity composed of water and air and light and space, all arranged in precarious balance around a central idea of a man in a boat, waiting for a bite,” but also in the sense that it exposes fundamentals of cultural transactions, identity conflicts, and true meanings of setting out in search of food, in search of what one really knows, yet what one really doesn’t know about what one knows. It speaks to us in the language of anxieties, legends, and the pleasure of seeking, which comes together in a journey into the sea. Thankfully, it is not a journey like Hemingway’s, arresting one’s identity from between individualism and temporally protected challenges; instead it acquires its meaning within a continuum, through endlessness of a Camusian journey into the sea like that of Sisyphus, absurd yet establishing a profound meaning which cannot be arrested but floats around oneself in the early morning air that wakes the man and invites him to follow the fish.

Strongly recommended to those who appreciate quality writing.

Notes from the Mountains – 2011

I’ve been going to the Himalayas regularly since around 2006. In the beginning, there was wonder and curiosity, a deep anxiety to know them better along with the people who inhabited them – in particular, how they responded to an entirely different scale of living. The sun and the cloud, the trees and the nature of mud – all of it did not mean very different up there as much as its meaning magnified itself. The shaodws impressed upon them by nature were darker and longer, I felt. Slowly, the wonder started melting, it changed form and led to relative familiarity with the unknowable. On subsequent trips, there was a lot that I could predict, sense, feel on my own but never without awe.

There was indeed a great amount of intimacy, but it was never without the hierarchy. Mountains taught me the importance of knowing one’s place within one’s own matrix. They taught me to prepare myself not on the time-space axis as much as on the mind-body axis. They inspired me to go deeper, acquaint myself with my limits yet acknowledge the importance of making the right choices within those limits. It may not mean much to be able to climb a few meters higher if one has to come down, it may not mean much to bear the cold when one knows one must go back to the plains, but it may be relevant to remember that what the body teaches the mind, the mind cannot teach the body. When in mountains as someone from the plains, we are never the native. We can always plead ignorance and unpreparedness. There is no absolute communion with the mountains. They’ve been there forever. We can never go high enough or stay there long enough. The challenges we set in front of ourselves are of our own making and must be revised. What matters is the dialogue one has with the mountains.

To know a mountain is to know the collective wisdom of humankind. To sit next to a river and see the dark clouds deposit fresh snow over a mountain only to see it disappear the next day when the sun shines bright, is to sit next to an old man and read the shadows between his wrinkles, to listen to the richness of his voice not the accuracy of his claims. That is why perhaps, there is a thing to be said about the old men in the mountains. The young may keep you engrossed for they often speak of the city, but the older men bore you more often than not. They repeat themselves endlessly, even supply the same answer to different questions. When they speak, they often cannot help but return to the same point. In their narratives, most trajectories return to the same old conclusions. Their wisdom is often uncomplicated, most importantly significantly lacks comparative, relative, differential thinking. I have often wondered why. The best reason I can come up with, however, is that the scale over which they operate is like a fretless instrument. They don’t stack up people, their possessions, and their achievements distributed over differential grades as we often do. The mountains take over their imagination of relative thiniking with the mountainous scale – of time, of space, of order, and of chaos.

The most important lesson one learns from a wrinkled old man, therefore, is not how to climb but how to think when one’s worldview stands disoriented and requires recalibration. It helps to observe the old man for he can teach you how  to measure oneself up against the monumental, when to believe in oneself and take the step forward and when to know one’s limits and retreat. Indeed, they teach you to be honest with oneself, to trust the ground beneath and the spirits around, but most importantly, to wait. One can sense the sounds time makes within their wrinkles, time they didn’t allow to be unleashed upon them. They waited till the next opportunity, till the next season, till help arrived, till dark clouds went away, till sun shone, till winters receded, till rain stopped, till cattle returned – events that never followed the clock.

When in the mountains, one learns how time heals, how one receives grace in the form of help. To see it as luck or coincidence would be missing the point. Every journey that takes you beyond the cozy but artificial confines of a hill station, requires a dialogue with the mysterious. I’ve been helped, protected, guided, and saved on innumerable occasions in the mountains, often by old men who seem to have the strength of the mountains in their arms and legs. And everytime I’ve felt slightly guilty for not being strong enough. As if one could be strong or smart enough! One becomes much more human everytime one waits without reason, everytime one seeks and finds a helping hand, much more than when one extends it. To seek and find is to shake hands with the mysterious, to reveal upon oneself that if you wait, there will be light… someone shall come along and show you the way, or take you where you never intended to go but where you shall find what you set out for, or to return to come again for something that is not destined for you yet.

Till the next journey into the mountains, till the next handshake with a wrinkled old man, till the next stretch of timelessness…I shall wait!

Rajneeti

Prakash Jha’s film, a curious blend of Godfather and Mahabharata, has just as much to do with Indian politics as Sholay had to do with life in an Indian village. The film borrows its visual imagination from the theatrics of north Indian politics in particular, but its narrative trajectory otherwise follows that of Godfather with the basic structuration coming clearly from Mahabharata, the epic. The blending of the two, however somewhat lacking in neatness, is not a particularly bad idea at attempting to articulate the grammar of Indian political arena.

However, the film loses track during the last half an hour and sacrifices logical coherence and thoughtful screenplay so as to overreach for a dramatic high. The moments lifted from Mahabharata are abruptly and explicitly thrown in at the deep end. It unnecessarily disrupts the imaginative and linguistic continuity of the film to achieve nothing of any significance. Aside from Ranbir Kapoor’s standout poor performance (amidst several below average ones) – shockingly poor dialogue delivery, stiff and over-economical approach to acting – the logical as well as emotional incoherence also leaves the viewer exhausted. How we are to believe that the political opponents cannot see through the rather unimaginative and sometimes inane traps that are set up by the supposedly shrewd politicians, I fail to understand.

The crowd is used as a mirror to the tacticians on the scripting side and they are to merely respond to various political moves so as to establish the co-ordinates of the two sides on the chessboard. The rich and powerful buy stake in the business of political influence but the ‘people’ remain a formless, infinite mass who are not to be seen and heard only in collectivity. The women, all of them, cannot handle desire – their own or others’, sexual in particular – within political arena, something men are able to negotiate quite smartly. Their route to the corridors of power must go through men and their desires, their crises. The centrality of Draupadi in the war of Mahabharata, something Shyam Benegal brought out beautifully in Kalyug, is reduced to her father’s political influence, however different in character.

However, the film does give us an outstandingly original perspective on Karna, even if somewhat unwittingly. Sooraj, rooted in his socio-political context as a Dalit leader, is not quite like the various cinematic fascinations with Karna.  As his politics leans heavily on the rhetoric of historical dialectic, the modern man’s orthogonal assertion on merit and modernity’s powerful assault on familial and casteist strongholds, have no place in it. Here, as a Dalit leader, Sooraj stands in opposition to the politics of meritocracy and invokes the history of Dalit oppression, something Karna, as he exists in popular imagination, would never do. The stark contrast is between Karna, the individual, and Sooraj, the community man. Which is why Sooraj has none of the charm Karna, the wronged true-hero has possessed for us. Karna was wronged because he was an upper-caste hero born before his time and thrown out of the margins. When he appears on the stage of the epic, he does not bring along his community, he walks alone riding on his ‘merit’, negotiating privileges among the upper-caste heroes. Sooraj, on the contrary, is tied to the interest of his community. That is his political strength too. None of his other talents, including Kabaddi, would take him as far. Hence, the loss of the heroic charm that all modern avatars of Karna have had!

If Mahabharata the epic is a study of the constant tussle between justice and power in a space marked with shifting faultlines of morality, Godfather the film, true to its times, marks the shift from a more public morality to a private, familial morality. As family is central to both texts, Rajneeti, by combining them, keeps the family as the centerpiece and tries to articulate the syntax as well as semantics of politics. As an ideal alone, there is a lot of merit in the conception of the film but the execution is rather shoddy. Prakash Jha’s latest offering is true to his regular stylistics as a loud cinematic venture but to treat the conscientious viewers the way he treats crowd in the film itself could not have taken him too far.  Top that with some poor performances, Ranbir Kapoor in particular, and you have the perfect recipe for an ambitiously conceived but terribly undercooked piece of cinema.

As an aside, while a comparison may not be necessary, Rajneeti is a far more sincere attempt at cinema than Mani Ratnam’s latest venture Raavan, another contemporary, stylized and ‘creative’ adaptation of an indian epic understood barely at the macro level. At best, bost films merely dispute the much disputed, only redefine what never was defined except in simplistic middle-class interpretations of the epics.

Open Spaces: Within and Without Civilization

As the sense of space reduces around us, we tend to feel increasingly insecure. What is solitude in an open space becomes loneliness in a busy, noisy surrounding. While in an open space one feels an extraordinary balance of sensory reception, the city streets tend to privilege the eye over the rest of senses. And the eye is aggressive, it is not content to sit passively and bear witness. It is socially trained to be ‘watchful’ for it is forever threatened, which is why the communication which has infinite possibilities in an open space is dominated helplessly by threat perception as one moves to spaces marked by high-rises and architectural monsters, machines running against time and men trying so hard to survive they don’t mind killing. Threat – that lies at the core of all that we perceive around us – is the magic wand that renders a labyrinthine quality to all matter; it turns each one of us into an abyss.

If there could be a definition of what an open space is, it must insist on complete absence of this labyrinthine attribute of matter that inhabits that space. Indeed, it should not be taken to mean that an open space has no character of its own. On the contrary, it derives its character from the elements it embraces at a certain point in time. It does not manipulate in a deterministic manner, the essence of what it includes. Perhaps we could say that an open space is like the language itself. It is a space full of possibilities. Like language, it is open to being rendered any meaning, open to ‘outside’ influences or encroachments, even transgressions. An open space is the most docile of all spaces, it does not know how to eject or reject. It accepts one and all, unconditionally. That, however, is both its merit and demerit, making and unmaking. Its definition and re-definition both emanate out of the above. Which goes on to show that an open space is never completely defined, never completely encroached upon, never entirely owned by any entity, living or dead. It is forever undefined, forever open to redefinition.

Defining, however, is also an act of organizing memory. And that fragile thing called memory through which we feel time, is forever busy struggling to survive, first against time itself, and then, more importantly, against forgetting. Yet, nothing but memory may arm us adequately against threat perception for memory alone may educate, condition or empathize the eye. Without the aid of memory, we are primitive, locked endlessly in the cloud of threat with nothing but survival at stake. Memory, hence, regulates our senses and contains our definitions, our familiarity with the world around. It is only when memory itself is destabilized that the very act of remembering is threatened. With that the threat penetrates our self-identification, our belief in self and all the rest.

The act of remembering, a merely utilitarian aspect of memory however, is the key to intelligibility, affect, even morality. All that we comprehend or communicate, with direct or indirect references, is based on remembering. All artistic pursuits are aimed primarily at nothing but remembering. All that is creative either reinforces or destabilizes the remembered. To the extent that the very idea of evolution is based on remembering across generations. Nothing of any worth can exist that does not depend on memory, individual or collective. It marks the most vital distance between madness and civilization. It goes without saying then, that memory is the cornerstone of the project of civilization.

As the idea of civilization, minus its spiritual ambitions, can be broadly divided into two broad spectrums – temporal and spatial – memory flags only the former. What then, holds the centre-stage within the spatial spectrum? The idea of ownership, I should think. Ownership is central to all that is spatial in the manner that memory is central to all that is temporal. We divide time through memory just as we may divide space through ownership. As time cannot be felt or marked without memory, space cannot be felt or depicted without markers of ownership. The project of civilization, although, does not lack in architectural unity. Both temporal and spatial spectrums, then, are tied on the other end. They are two ends of the same rope, if I may argue so. Which does not mean that one may be translated into another; yet, the possibility that one may compensate for another cannot be overlooked.

The above possibility cannot be overlooked for it is constantly worked over. When one end of the rope cannot be accessed, the other one is evidently pulled harder. What cannot be remembered can always be owned. What is lost from the memory can only be found through ownership. When memory fails to deliver, an obsession with ownership is bound to take root for no human project can be as ambitious as project civilization. What it cannot own physically or in its entirety can be owned as a copy, as a mere image. But own it must, for it can not remember! Having failed at defining the idea of open spaces repeatedly, perhaps we may define the project civilization in terms of its endless search for open spaces to take over for it has no memory – that marker between madness and civilization itself.

Having established earlier the character of open spaces, perhaps I may return to it armed with the idea of civilization which, by its very definition, can not affect the open spaces. Therefore, it may be argued that an open space is strictly beyond the scope of civilizational imagination and its temporal or spatial footprint. It is where the time can be felt without the aid of memory and space can be accessed without the intervention of ownership. Yet, it is what can neither be remembered nor owned. It is empty beyond description, so much so that it provides no handle to any kind of access, any attempt at comprehension. Yet, it accommodates all temporal or spatial lag that may be introduced into it. It is a space free of not only ideas and sentiments but also doubts. It is where absolutely no interaction is possible with anyone else, oneself or with divinity. It is where the essence of existence is indefinite and indeterminate, yet free of doubts. It is where nothing is certain, yet uncertainty can find no space. It is where all senses work to the best of their abilities without overstepping their limits or overshadowing the other senses.

As one can see clearly, an open space is the space of ultimate healing. That it cannot be defined in any other terms but spiritual is evident. However, it has to be a spirituality free of divinity as much as it should be free of religion or any other framework that makes a claim on elementary morality. An open space cannot suffocate itself with a strand of the same civilizational rope that it has decisively rejected. Who, then, is this space accessible to? Perhaps, the defiant seekers who wander without purpose, the artists who pursue an art that is perfectly useless and their like. An open space is what a seeker carries within himself, a chosen destination of voluntary exile as Camus called it. It is also not very different from the idea of home that we yearn for ceaselessly except that home is often understood in terms of memory and ownership, which is unfortunate. Perhaps, by reversing the above argument, we may say that if we did not connect to spaces through memory and ownership, all spaces would open up.

Freddie: Reluctant Predator, Helpless Hero

Barring Douglas Jardine, no cricketer from the bygone era has fascinated me as much as Fred Trueman. Peerless as he was in his times, he possessed that very rare quality:  menace. While Lillee-Thomson, Holding-Roberts and Wasim-Waqar chased like a pack of hounds, Trueman was a true Lion. Through him, I began to appreciate that beastly bit of the gentleman’s game: fast bowling. Cricket, they say, resembles life very closely. But could you define life without the shadow of death? However out-of-focus it may seem to be, that blurred bit of death far away in the lurking, is crucial to the discipline of what we call life.

Speaking of resemblance with life on the cricket field, those dark shades of death are provided by the predators who mix deadly speed with the mysteries of nature, such as humidity, wind and ball-type to cast spells of fear and hostility. Let it not fool you that they are dressed in all-whites, these men are entrusted with balancing the ecology of the cricket world. They threaten survival and are known to be unrelenting against anything casual. They believe in the form and appreciate the formal, cautious and alert; everything else is punished. They safeguard the natural selection process ‘testing’ one and all, zooming into sieve-like weaknesses and justifying the aura of the truly greats. Legendary Sydney Barnes picked Victor Trumper out of the ordinary whereas fearsome Malcolm Marshall held high regards for Boycott’s courage and technical proficiency.

Andrew Flintoff, about to play his last Test at Oval, was one of the very few predators of his times. He was no Trueman or Lillee, let’s face it, but a predator nonetheless. He shall be remembered for his spell at Edgbaston to Ricky Ponting which the aussie called ‘best sequence of deliveries I’ve ever faced’, and to Kallis on his return to Test Cricket after a long injury. They were two of the most fascinating spells of the modern times, delivered to two of the most accomplished batsmen. He shall be remembered for his 18 over spell at Oval 2005 and for his series leveling toils in Mumbai as a captain apart from his Ashes heroics that made him a local hero.

Anyone who has followed Fred’s Cricket closely and seen him bowl his heart out the world over knows how under-rewarded he has been. For every scalp of his he bowled a few exceptional overs. You may argue that it happens to every bowler in the game and it evens out over a long career but we know it hasn’t evened out for Freddie. Every time he held the red ball in his big hands, he pulled the people to the edge of their seats. They may not have been assured of a wicket but they knew Flintoff  would make them all sweat for their runs. In the decade when English Cricket was falling apart, Freddie meant hope. He tested one and all. Be it on dead pitches or the liveliest of them, he gave it his all. It’d be difficult to find a batsman of our times whom Flintoff didn’t give a working over. The most prolific and the most talented both were forced to admit the genius of Freddie. And what’s more, he made them enjoy it. He would beat the outside edge, stop and stare back. And then all of a sudden, he’d break into a smile, the most disarming of smiles from a fast bowler. He lacked neither belief, nor effort; yet he refused to misbehave. From a beer guzzling boy to the go-to Man of English attack, Flintoff’s was an inspirational march. He matured on responsibility, relished the improvements he made and pushed himself to go the extra yard.

Flintoff wasn’t a born wizard. He discovered the force of nature he was gifted with bit-by-bit and it spurred him on. Due to his hit-the-deck style as against England’s routine  big swinging new ball men, he remained their first change man. But his was the most welcome of changes. We waited for him to steam in with hope in his hands and he obliged with a wicket just to prove us right. He roared with arms spread and declared himself on the big stage match after match. It was the roar of a predator, the roar of a man who discovered himself on the pitch. While Freddie was still a reluctant fat boy, Test Cricket believed in him. The game entrusted him with responsibility and waited on the sidelines to let the magic of Freddie unravel itself. And Freddie reciprocated; he had to.

Ashes 2005 marked his completed transformation to an English Hero. It was an 80s style fast bowling all-rounder’s thunderous blow to the invincibility of Aussie dominance. He exposed the knights, ripped open the chinks in their armours and swatted like a revolving door whoever tried to stop him. That 18 over spell he bowled at Oval showed the world how badly he wanted the Ashes. By the time he finished, he had turned the clock back. Aussies were vulnerable, other teams the world over were licking their lips, and the crown lay rightfully on the head of a fast bowler. Trueman would’ve been happy.

But Flintoff was no Trueman. He was born in an era of Aussie dominance and being an Englishman, he couldn’t put so much premium on winning. Though he believed he was good enough for any challenge, failure wasn’t unacceptable to him. For him it was too integral a part of life to lose sleep over. Which is why, though he kept beating the outside edges and deceived one and all with his bouncers as well as yorkers, he never took as many wickets as he should have. Perhaps it was fitting for his attitude. Perhaps we’d have to concede he rarely wanted them so badly. Though he was still the man who troubled the batsmen of his era most, he didn’t get them out as often as someone else in his place would have. He relished the foreplay so much that, more often than not, the intercourse wouldn’t take place. Whatever Freddie did, that shadow of reluctance never left him.

However, that shadow rendered him an inexplicable aura, a depth of character, a certain kind of invincibility and an insane amount of affection from the world over. McGrath never had it though he had 500-plus wickets; Kallis never had it though he had more wickets and 10000-plus runs; his own teammate Pietersen never had it despite his excellent returns. Flintoff is an unlikely Hero for the numbers that show in front of his name. Which is why, hundreds have written about him trying to unravel his magic figure however unsubstantiated by his record. It is a case in point that records don’t make a legend, though they often try to defy one, without much success. They will try to erase Freddie’s too; and they shall fail. Every time a fast bowler bowls his heart out to play the predator, he performs a divine duty. He is bound to be blessed in return. Freddie’s legend is his blessing, it’s his gift. In his story, there lies the victory of Test Cricket and the victory of man, one inspiring another, back and forth. And in his smile, there’s always a bit of divine.

Tommorrow, Freddie shall play his last Test. He’ll make a few runs and take a few wickets, alright. He may or may not help England retain the Ashes, we know he’ll give it all he has. He shall struggle with injury and his own reluctance to come out on top. Then, it is upon the future to decide whether Oval 2009 shall mark the best of Freddie. We hope he will turn the clock back once again, we all hope so. Hope. With Flintoff, you always had hope, you always have hope. That’s what he meant to us; that’s what he means to us.

Blind But Seeing…

I woke up to the sound of heavy knocking on my door. I thought I had overslept and ran to the door. It was Mr. Lahkar, General Secretary, MASS. He smiled faintly at me and spoke softly, “Get ready in half an hour. Let’s go then!” I nodded before he could complete his sentence and he left right away. On another day in another place, I’d have taken the bed and forgotten about it. Not on my first day in Guwahati when it might have led to interesting things. I tried to recall where we were going but could not recollect having been informed the last night.

In less than half an hour, there was another knock. I was ready this time. I sat pillion on the bike and we slowly rode though the already busy streets. Within a while, we were away from the buzzing town and going towards the outskirts of the city. It was a good time to ask, “Where are we going Lahkar Sir?” He knew only Assamese and very little Hindi and I, Hindi and English. I spoke a mix of the languages I knew and he spoke a mix of what he knew. It was rather bizarre the way we conversed, struggling with vocabulary, diction and interpretations.

In reply to my question, I was informed of what a great man Mr. Mukul Mahanta, the man I was going to meet in a few minutes, was. Before the details could be finished, we were at his gate. A rather green and peaceful bungalow on the outskirts of the city, it could be safely branded as curiously charming. Mr Mahanta came to greet us at the door. The intellectual powerhouse behind MASS, he was dressed in an unmistakably RSS like dress. Blessed with a good physique, he seemed to be too agile and supple for a seventy-five year old.

The next one and a half-hour was one of the most thrilling of my life. I was sitting in front of a man whose opinion mattered. He had even mediated the talks between ULFA and Assam CM Tarun Gogoi about a year back. Mr Lahkar kept nodding to all that he said while I probed him, delicately. An IITian from Kharagpur, he put more force behind his grand ideas than required and gave impressions of being a hardliner. He didn’t think much of anyone and believed a solution to the problems of North-East could be engineered. He had worked for most of his life in America and after having returned, made bamboo-chairs, wonder-tables and wonder-beds. “The greatest failure of humanity has been that we haven’t yet been able to make a truly comfortable chair to sit on,” he declared. His extraordinary ability to analyze and engineer was trying to overpower the relatively invisible mesh of socio-political conflict. I thought he was oversimplifying things when he declared, “When a mother loses her first son to the conflict, she readies the second with even more eagerness.”

He relied too much on ULFA’s gun-power while constantly mentioning what ULFA said to India: ‘You liberate us. We shall liberate you.’ Clearly, he had little regard for softer methods or areas. Also, he gave a glimpse of his ideas by saying that only IITians should be allowed to contest elections in India. Having come from another IIT myself, I couldn’t disagree more. Just as mere bullets cannot win Freedom, mere intellect cannot guide a nation. He was wrong on both accounts, I thought. Yet, what surprised me the most was how he narrowed down the entire conflict of the North-East to Assam’s sovereignty. “You liberate us and we shall take care of our neighbours,” he shot back at the very mention of Manipur. The attitude, if not the opinion, was perfectly in sync with the perception of Assam being a hegemonic state in the North-East.

While on my way back, Mr Lahkar took me to the old office of MASS. The building was designed by Mr Mahant himself and was owned by Parag Das, an inspiring leader of MASS and a prominent journalist who was assassinated in broad daylight while at the peak of Army operation against the insurgency. Later, after his secret killing, his daughter-in-law asked for the house to be vacated and MASS was forced to move to another office. The sight of the building was eerie. The blades of grass had grown too tall. It had been abandoned for quite a while. We stared at the building for a few minutes as if waiting for something. Sound of a gunshot. Or that last shriek before his death. Perhaps, some blood sliding slowly against the walls. But, nothing happened. As we rode off in silence, a video footage of Parag Das’s assassination played in my head, many times over.

It was when we reached the new office that I noticed the photograph of Parag Das, right behind Mr Lahkar’s chair. The portrait that leaned forward was labeled neatly. From that moment on, I always felt Parag Das’s presence in the office. Even when I sat on the roof of the house, alone, to have a good look at the humid city of Guwahati, he seemed to be around, walking beside me, equally alone and equally sad. Yes, what always kept me company in that office was a deep sadness. To be frank, the entire city was sad; a comfortable sadness, however. Like a long time friend who visits you on a daily basis. His arrival doesn’t please anyone. It is too routine to even matter beyond the immediate.

The office comprised of three rooms on the first floor of a two-story house. In the first room was a computer table with only a monitor and keyboard on it. There was no CPU. Why, I asked. “Police confiscated it for their investigation against us,” I am told. There’s another long table on which there are a lot of documents. A few chairs, too. The second room was Mr Lahkar’s office. His table and chair, Parag Das’s photograph and a big banner of MASS behind him, another two chairs for the guests and some old reports and newspapers. In the third room was a library. Quite well maintained, I must say; covered with dust, too. A lady called Lolita had the keys. She gave me many reports and books to read. Also, there were many newsletters that MASS published regularly. Each of them looked, read just the same – in language, style, content, everything. Only, the names changed every time. There were books on North-East, Assam, conflict resolution, various tribes of North-East, their culture and values, and a whole lot of them mere opinion-books by bureaucrats or retired army officials giving simplistic solutions about how all the problems of North-East could be resolved. Interestingly, they always spoke of a one-man solution. A bureaucrat always thought one good bureaucrat could resolve it all. An army fellow would say his servicemen could do it. A committee here, a council there. There was no dearth of advices.

The adjacent room didn’t claim to be a part of the office. It comprised of a bed, a round table and a kitchen. It was the only part of the building that truly mattered though. We would have breakfast in the morning, then go off to sleep in different parts of the building, meet for lunch then, go sleep again to meet for dinner at nine. Not everybody slept exactly, but they did something equivalent.

One fine day, I decided to find things out. Dust the surface to look into the past, enquire about the future, and try to make sense of the present then, I resolved within. “Manab Adhikar Sangram Samiti (MASS) was a 200,000 men strong organization in the late eighties. We had our men engaging with human rights violations everywhere, in the remotest parts, most importantly in the rather inaccessible upper Assam. We had with us, the best of journalists and activists of Assam. We fought cases for those violated and made people aware of the changing times. ULFA was being chased down by the Army then and impunity was common. They didn’t spare us either. We lost our men, the best of them. Now, we are down to six and a half. Lochit Bordoloi, our leader, has been booked under National Securities Act. It was the last and final blow. Now we are merely trying to stay afloat. The scenario in Assam isn’t rosy just yet. You’d have to go to the villages in Upper Assam to know what it is like. Only, our hands, those that have not been cut, have been tied. How do you think we feel? I have lived through the stormiest of times in the history of this state; and survived, surprisingly. Make no mistake, I am under surveillance. My phone must be getting tapped. For every small gathering, I have to seek permissions. It’s not easy convincing them. They can finish me any time, or book me under some act. You have no idea what it is like here…” Mr. Lahkar was right. I had no idea what it was like there. To see all your men fall one by one cannot be easy on the eye, and heart. More importantly, to see a dream shattered must be tragic. That evening, I sat on the roof watching the sun set with a heavy heart. It was natural to wonder whether there’d ever be a sun rise again.

However, nature has its own uncompromising discipline. It overdoes the inspiration bit, I thought, and could leave you with a faint bitterness. Since then, every time I saw Mr Lahkar smile that tired smile of his, I could sense how much effort it took. Now, MASS for me, had zeroed down to that one man. I studied each layer of his character like a student of the conflict would read books after books. He feeling sorry for his weak English made my heart heavy. When he asked me apologetically at lunchtime whether mere dal-rice would be okay, I wanted to hug him. But I would only nod. He often spoke fondly of his family in the village. Those were few occasions when his smile carried more innocence than exhaustion, more affection than burden of loss. What turned him sad though were his wife’s worries about their future; and his concern for his children’s.

At times, activists and journalists do put their lives in the line of fire. But you rarely think of how their dependents – wives and children – cope with the struggle. We comfortably isolate them from the conflict and see the activists as children of ideology marching ahead for freedom. Interestingly, Mr Lahkar was too simple a man for any ideology. You wouldn’t imagine him speaking of Lenin or Marx. Often he spoke of Parag Das, whom he had known personally. He was a simple man from the village who thought it was his duty to speak out for the injustice meted out to his people. That made him more credible, unlike many others I met soon after. They would attend international conferences but could speak only in that language – of big words and big schemes. Their ideas had little space for a simple man like Mr Lahkar and his simple problems. They spoke of genocide and occupation instead. Not to forget, an indic civilization project and Hindu right-wing nationalism. Those trained in ideological blabber would theorize unnecessarily and refuse to see anything beyond conspiracies.

A conflict – any conflict – means various things to various people. For some it is an ideology put to test; for some it is a war to be clinched militarily; for many others it is an opportunity; for many more it is a study of human nature; for those who can afford it, it means searching for a home away from home; for the most it is an attack on the collective civilized morality and perhaps, a long exhausting march to peaceful times. Surely, not all of them survive. Few survive with dignity; fewer with self-respect; none without scars.

For me, as a student and an outsider, those days gave me a glimpse of the whole universe within a single drop. If you looked closely, you could see every blade of grass, every drop of the oceans, every tear in the eyes of humankind and every smile that appeared and faded; every drop of blood that dripped too, of course. If you looked closely, that is…

That drop was Parag Das’s photograph. That drop was also Mr Lahkar’s tired smile, and that old office of MASS. Even that firm and self-assured formula: ‘You liberate us. We shall liberate you.’ A year has gone by. Time, armed with three seasons, hasn’t been able to destroy it. Sitting on my table-top, it has maintained its surface tension and freshness. I can still see in it all that I saw then. Seeing is not the problem. It has never been the problem. Jose Saramago writes in Blindness, his classic, “I think we are blind, Blind but seeing, Blind people who can see, but do not see.”

Yet, not all of us are blind. Not all of us are equally blind, at least. Some of us actually see. It is always upon those lucky enough to see to keep up the sanity. The chaos and violence can always be smelled in the air of our civilization. Liberty and Fraternity are privileges that need looking after. We need those who like planting trees and are committed to watering them regularly, without much fuss. They can only be the ones who still see – for some inexplicable reason – who bother about our collective blindness.

However, what I found most tragic was that those who claimed to see – the sympathizers of the cause of the people of North-East – whether in or out of North-East, betrayed their own blind. They saw neither the agony of living nor the blood on the walls. Misuse of sight was common. And if there is one reason we can all put our fingers on with utmost surety, it is ambition.

Those who can see want to see afar. The immediate, that what can be smelled or touched by all, that what is right next to the people, doesn’t interest them. So they speak of conflict, occupation, liberation and self-determination. Big words go a long way in all ‘businesses’.

Mr Lahkar was special for he saw without ambition. In the middle of a blindness of epidemic order, he didn’t think his surviving eyesight a miracle worth going down straight to the epics. He was Camus’s Rebel – an ordinary man in an endless ordinary struggle with the extra-ordinary absurdity of the world around.

It was somewhat fitting that I couldn’t meet him when I left MASS office. He was in some other part of the city busy with preparations for a big event MASS was doing for the people from far and remote areas. I had to go to Imphal, on a short notice. It was an abrupt end, perhaps in line with the ways of this world.

Profiling Krati

Tarun Tejpal wrote about the first comprehensive Outlook survey on Sex in 1994, “It is a gauge of our—Indian—social insularity and insecurity that we baulk from facing up to this most central of issues—I can think of another equally important one that we duck: communalism—and generally spend our public lives brandishing the simplistic and faux morality of adolescents.” He discussed Sex there. Let us here take up this ‘another equally important one’: Communalism.

Faux morality is the key. Morality, however counterfeit, does not operate in isolation. It is an agreement that many sign together, for a variety of reasons. That is why, when a father who sympathizes with the right-wing nationalism cannot answer her rather rebellious daughter on the carnages against Muslims, fake encounters and their systematic demonization, he retorts, “Ab tumse kya behes Karen? Humko is samaaj mein rehna hai, tumko toh rehna nahi hai!” (What’s the point in debating with you? I have to live in this society, not you.)

One of these daughters is Krati who, with the support of Commutiny (www.commutiny.in), set out to group together a bunch of young men and women and encourage ideas of communal harmony. She is a short and plump lady in her mid-twenties with a lot of self-confidence. Her father did sign one such agreement some years ago, with none other than RSS. His friends are still khaki-wearing men who believe in historic injustice done to Hindus by the Muslim rulers and promote every move of national integration, religious purification and moral policing. It is this ‘samaaj’ that Krati’s father, like many others, has to live in.

Living in Gomti Nagar, a locality of Lucknow primarily inhabited by the political as well as economic elite of the UP state, she has seen how the insecurity of the wealthy prepares a solid ground for ideological hatred spread systematically. But she also knows that any change she can bring about shall be a product of negotiations with those like her father. So she begins with the children of Mahamana Malviya School, a school funded and ideologically controlled by the RSS. From then on, it is an all out war. However, they don’t really confront ideological brainwash directly. They can’t go and show the children films that openly accuse RSS and other right-wing outfits. Patience is the key; so is wisdom.

When I asked her where it all began, she takes a deep breath and tells me she is quite tired of telling this. Naturally, her earliest memories of a communally divided society go back to the demolition of Babri Masjid. Sweets were distributed all over Vishwas Khand, a locality within Gomti Nagar. People listened to LK Advani’s provocative speeches behind closed doors. Those were puzzling times for a child to grow up in. The elder generation talked as if a new history was being written. Hindutva was being talked about everywhere and Hinduism, in whatever form accessible, had little to offer to the act of growing up in a city. Interestingly, Krati studied in a muslim majority school in those days and most of her friends happened to be muslims naturally. Make no mistake, her parents wouldn’t have allowed it had they had a choice. They had moved to Lucknow in the middle of an academic year and that was the only school she could get an admission in. That is where it started. Later, while doing her MSW from the university, she worked in a muslim slum and realized no sweepers or ANMs bothered about those areas. Second class citizens prevailed through unhygienic conditions and hostile neighbourhood that demonized and terrorized them. On top of it sat the law that saw them as permanent defaulters. The rice, the spices, the meat and the blood too had been cooking for quite long, on a low heat burner. The biryani had to be perfect.

As it stands, home is where the process of change starts. Krati’s mother, not quite fond of her ideas, prepares food all the children who visit her. Teacups arrive every now and then. The food tastes good, honestly. Yet, she is often called in. Sometimes, they display their bitterness. Otherwise, a rejection to a certain fate they do not quite appreciate. Father shouts,”What do you think this is? It’s my house! Will you completely destroy my religion? How many of these people are muslims? How many?” Some times Krati answers; mostly, she does not. It doesn’t matter. Some plates and cups are marked with nail-polish for Krati’s group. Some are kept aside for puja and her parents’ needs. A tussle between religion and society goes on. There is a lot of gray area in the middle. There’s no guarantee that a cup that a Muslim boy drank tea out of shall never touch the lips of her mother. It does; and she knows it. Therein lies a moment of a quiet smile on Krati’s lips.

It is this smile that marks the success of all that Krati has been up to. Hers is not a battle of absolutes. She is not fighting for a place in the epics. Her target is short stories. And she has managed quite a few. Her father reads Ram Puniyani, though he dismissed him to begin with. Loads of kids from Dalit and Muslim bastis come into her house and they don’t remain confined to the drawing room. They enter the kitchen even. There, the story goes beyond the cups and plates, lest you overlook.

Perhaps they won’t admit it yet, but a significant change has come about. However, a belief one has always lived by cannot disappear one fine day. It cannot disappear for it falsifies your entire life and makes you look like an idiot. And of course, the ideas of national integration, moral policing and ethno-religious cleansing are so deep-rooted and well-networked in the Hindutva ideology that for many, it has already crushed Hinduism to the extent of abandoning it. Hindutva, the ideology of an angry middle-class urban Hindu, is the only claimant for Hinduism now in our cities, as Ashis Nandy argues. For the believers of this ideology, giving up on that anger means ceasing to be a Hindu, giving up their faith. So it wouldn’t happen so fast, not yet.

However, as Krati’s patience has deep roots in her own home, she doesn’t tire of taking it out on the streets. So she argues with those who think Sri Ram Sena’s goons in Mangalore are right in ‘protecting’ our culture, among them her own father. And with those who think Kashmir problem is yet another reflection of the Muslim mind which we can’t surrender to because if we give Kashmir today, Karnataka may stand up tomorrow – a view held by many. And with those whose imagination gets stuck into Pakistan regardless of the issue at hand. And with those who think speaking for a cause means being affected directly. When she did a candle light vigil with her group for the victims of Orissa violence, a certain gentleman asked her whether all of them came from Orissa. Her stories don’t exactly have a dramatic ending, but often they end as if many more stories were about to start from there.

In the drawing room of her own house – a rather ordinary single story house that gets overshadowed by the shiny multi-storied ones that surround it – she runs her small office. The group is called ‘The Wings’. They haven’t got their wings yet, but they want to fly. They are reasonably diverse and quite enthusiastic. When they are not discussing anything important, they take little digs at each other, look through the recent scraps from the opposite-sex in one-another’s ‘orkut’ scrapbook, and bet on the silliest of things so as to find a loser and hence, a treat for everybody. Most of them just out of their teens, are in the middle of the most crucial phases of their lives – a phase that’ll soon dictate their respective destinies even. But they are unaware of it while in that small room. Outside their only concern may be clearing CAT or passing the end-semester exam for engineering, inside that room their concerns cover a much wider spectrum. And they all have their own little stories of resistance to speak of:

Ajay is a soft-spoken lanky commerce undergraduate student. His father works for the Border Security Force (BSF). When we discuss the excesses of the armed forces committed in Kashmir and North-East, he doesn’t fail to mention having serious differences with his father on that account. On the other hand, Nilay, an engineering student, after arguing with me over ‘national integrity’ and ‘development’, admits to having widened the window of his mind. Though India and its territorial integrity is of primary importance to him, the fact that every people must be able to choose how they want to live makes an impact on him. Then there is Abhinav from Azamgarh – a part of his identity he often prefers to hide – an MBA aspirant and a commerce graduate with a significant stint under the RSS training. He shouts in the middle of a discussion, ”Mujhe history na batao! History mujhe tum sabse jyada malum hai (Don’t teach me History. I know more History than all of you).” He is rather difficult, they say. Clearly, not all of them pull in the same direction all the time, but that is what makes them an interesting bunch.

They do workshops with the school kids and discuss the politics around their respective identities. Interesting it is for many of the group members like Abhinav, who participate in the act most enthusiastically now, didn’t think much of it when they started. Many even joined it for there was a girl leading the group; not many of them stayed of course. They also work with dalit or muslim slums at the edge of the city. Small efforts at encouraging them to express themselves and understand the world around them somewhat better, is what they aim at. A candle light vigil for peace in Orissa here, an awareness campaign for women empowerment there. It is not entirely about communalism, but it’d be naïve to assume that communalism itself is entirely about communalism. It is important that they don’t tire themselves out. It’s important that nothing becomes a routine. Collective Imagination is the sole parameter a group’s future can be seen through.

There are problems, too. Taking permissions for every event is one big headache. The boys of the group are not entertained at all. Krati, being a woman, is treated somewhat better. Yet, soft mannerisms don’t exactly lead up to a soft ideology. A lean middle-aged constable confides in them dismissively, “These people you are going to rally for peace around with… They are the ones who’ll stab you from behind first thing! All we can do is gang them up together and shoot them.” Some respect for law and order! Later the CO rings them to ask, “Looks like a big event. There will be media…right?” He shall be there. Then, there are sponsors. A certain insurance company fellow – a clean shaved young man in his mid-twenties – wearing a crisp white shirt and a neat blue tie, remarks, “Actually we sponsor kitty parties. But there they have women who may buy our policies. What about your poor children? Anyway… I’ll talk to my superior.” Perhaps he will. Perhaps he won’t. There are others too. She won’t be defeated for the lack of trying.

Of course there are moments when things go beyond her tolerance. For example, someone argues, for the umpteenth time, that ‘all Muslims are fundamentalists and support Pakistan in all Indo-Pak cricket matches.’ A shake of head or closing of eyes cannot be ruled out. She does admit shyly smiling, “Kabhi kabhi toh man karta hai ki keh doon tum log kuchh nahi samajh sakte! Niklo yahan se saare ke saare!” (Sometimes I get so pissed off, I feel like saying you guys just won’t get it! Get lost all of you!) But before you charge her of dissent, there’ll be a smile followed by a patient effort at dialogue. Sometimes, it is all about hitting the top of the off-stump with a nagging consistency. About knowing that the inevitable shall happen – a wild cut or an ambitious drive to break the shackles. People listen eventually, to you and to the side they’ve simplistically branded as aggressors. There must be an honest effort, however. To nag, to surprise, to out-think, to exhaust; and to do it endlessly. Endlessly.

There are interesting times to look forward to. The group has achieved a critical mass. There’s a faint buzz locally about their work. Four schools are already co-operating with them. Within a few months, for the next academic year, there could be eight feathers in the hat. The group members are excited. They look up to her and see hope in their work. Many of them want to achieve some sort of economic stability and then return to continue the good work. There is a growing sense of camaraderie that you cannot possibly overlook. Soon enough, the office will move out of Krati’s parents’ house. A bit of them, though, shall always remain in that drawing room. What I find most endearing about them is that despite all sorts of differences of opinions and backgrounds, she has been able to create a sense of equality and openness within the group. However trivial it may sound, it is one of those battles most ambitious groups never win. Not to forget, the chief minister of her state could do well to take a leaf out of her book in this regard.

Her stories may be short and inconclusive, lacking in drama too if you expected that, yet there are connecting threads across all of them. Perhaps, later they could be turned into an inspirational anthology. There is hope. Where there are wings, there will be flight. As I am about to finish the story on this note while I watch India play Sri Lanka at Colombo, the match is halted for some spectator hurled a stone at the Indian fielders. While the security guards confront the situation, my aunt remarks, “It must be some musalmaan. There are many in Sri Lanka…” I am reminded of my own role, thus. This story is not finished yet.

Profiling Tarsh Thekaekara

A meeting had been set up inside Mudumalai with the Paniyas and Kattunayakans, two prominent forest dwelling tribes of Nilgiris. The Paniyas seemed willing to move out of the core zone of the Mudumalai Tiger Reserve. They were afraid that Tarsh, representing a pro-adivasi organization, would try to convince them against it as it’d hurt their culture, lifestyle and values. However, as he got an inkling of what was on their minds, he promptly told them he had no business objecting to that. His only concern was to ensure they knew exactly what the relocation package was, and were not signing anything without understanding the implications. The meeting was wrapped up and he was about to make a move when he overheard an old Kattunayakan man laughing it all off saying, “How can we move out of here? They’ll to arrange 4 buses just to move our dogs!” Tarsh was decidedly startled. He thought everyone was willing to move. He promptly asked the man, “You don’t want to move from here?” “No! We have always been here. They say Aiyankolly is not far, only 50 km from here, but anywhere that’s not walking distance is too far.” came the answer. It was a resounding negation that made a mockery of all his effort. So he asked, “Why didn’t you speak up then?” He casually replied, “What do we care? Over the last few years they have had hundreds of meeting. I don’t think anyone will ever move. We don’t bother with any of these meetings.” Concerned for their cause, Tarsh persuaded them with all his force to stay on for the meeting with the forest department and tell them they were not moving. None of the Kattunayakans attended the meeting. The forest department held that they had all agreed to move. Another round of negotiation and persuasion had to begin.

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It is difficult to find a beginning to Tarsh’s story, precisely because his story doesn’t begin with him. Life around him seems like a smooth continuum – of ideas, concerns and efforts – as if inspired by Biology. What was passed on to him has taken a respectable life of its own. He is an original, located in his own times and surroundings. And most importantly, he is not afraid to differ from anybody. Yet, his is not a story of landmark achievements or heroic feats. It is a story of a tireless negotiation, much like the one glimpsed above, where no answer and no position is final. That you keep your senses open to the changing equations is the only ask!

It didn’t start with Commutiny (www.commutiny.in) either. Tarsh had already set out for his journey, on foot. And then Commutiny van came and picked him. Then, the highly debated Forest Rights Act combined with the ‘Tiger Amendment’ (to the Wildlife Protection Act) arrived. It was an unprecedented legislation on wildlife conservation. If there was ever a chance for an activist to make a difference to the lives of indigenous people as well as wildlife conservation, it was here. Here was a legislation that didn’t pit the Adivasis against wildlife, sought to correct the historical injustice meted out to the Adivasis and saw them along with the forest department as an integral part of the conservation process. There was a crying need here to reach out to the Adivasis and listen to them, build an understanding between them and the forest department and help them decide what is best for both. That is the role Tarsh has been playing: discussing optional livelihoods, organizing Adivasis in the face of rising gram panchayats entirely represented by outsiders, dissecting the merits of moving to the buffer zone and having limited yet necessary engagement with the forest etc. Precisely, he is acting as a link between two historical enemies: a political Adivasi organisation and the forest department. Neither has been too willing to compromise on their respective historic positions. To work together under the new laws it needs someone in the middle. Someone, who is not going to give up.

As Tarsh himself says, there is nothing creative about it. One has to be ready to do some donkey-work, he has learnt. Evidently, working with Adivasis is pretty much devoid of any glamour. Theatrics – stylish, smart and loud – that we so often associate with leadership, are totally absent. You must talk plain and be willing to repeat yourself. To talk abstract, theorize or offer a conceptual understanding – things we condition ourselves to admire so much – turn out to be pointless. Also, you need to be rooted in the local context: this tree, this soil, this season, this insect…

Having been trained at IIT Kanpur as a technology graduate, it was a handy lesson for me. Nothing we were taught had any connection with the immediate surroundings. The aim of technology was always out there, somewhere in the future. Coming from there, to watch Tarsh explain how to use a GPS system to an Adivasi lad was truly heartening. The boy would get readings for a few villages daily and so would Tarsh, so that those villages that didn’t exist on government records could be plotted on the map and claimed rights for.

However, the grand scheme hasn’t crushed the little joys either. While at School for Adivasi children that his parent’s friends set up many years ago, Tarsh is in his element. Having been a student of the same school till eighth standard, he doesn’t want to lose touch with the children he taught physics regularly till a few months back. “That’s my classroom,” he pointed out towards a tree under whose shade he taught children. “How were your exam results?” he asks the children who passed out of the school after eighth standard and just got the results for their ninth standard exams, dressed up in colourful clothes for Pongal celebrations. Most don’t want to discuss the results and merely smile back or run away. To one bunch of girls, he gives his laptop so they could watch an animal documentary and submit an essay on it later. To another kid, he asks to submit an essay on honey collection. These are innocent kids, so unlike their urban counterparts. Their smiles are pure and they have little else to say. They neither wear confidence on their sleeve nor give firm answers. Another boy Tarsh met while riding towards the office and enquired about his recent absence from the school had only this to say in reply: “simply!”

What must be admired is that his engagement with Adivasi children is not entirely about teaching them Science on the lines of modern education. His concerns are much more deep rooted. Unlike many others around him, he thinks indigenous culture and values must be preserved and one important step for that would be to not run them over with our standard education, hence values too. An otherwise aggressive Tarsh is a changed man when asking the kids about what they are learning and requesting them to write essays. It doesn’t take much to see that while on this journey, he has been learning a few lessons for himself.

Of course it helps that his parents set up ACCORD (Action for community Organisation Rehabilitaion and Development) and the Adivasi Munnetra Sangam (AMS). Good doctors joined them and  set up a hospital exclusively for Adivasis which is also now managed by Adivasis. A few other young people who turn up to gather some experience often become collaborators in the cause. In the absence of a hierarchy and boss, they have a tradition of doing peer review on each other to monitor and fine-tune each other’s progress. Of course it also helps that he works with WWF India, and has the support of the Coordinator of the Nilgiri Eastern Ghat Landscape, Mohanraj; and the Conservator of Forests and Field Director of the Mudumalai Tiger Reserve, Rajiv Srivastava. Both are not only able administrators, also accessible men willing to contribute to the cause of conservation without impinging upon the rights of Adivasis. Also, the fact that District administration and Forest Department is quite decent and much less corrupt as compared to some of its northern counterparts cannot be ignored. In fact, the Kerala govt. is often seen to be more progressive on adivasi rights than any other. For Gudalur, a town right next to Kerala border, where Tarsh is located, source of inspiration is not very far.

Through FRA and Tiger Amendment, the government is trying to set right many of its previous wrongs. The multitudes of wrongs have copulated to produce enough offsprings in the meanwhile for none to know too accurately the state of affairs. Add to that, the ambitious nature of science and its ruinous relationship with natural ecological balance over all these years. Inside the maze that there is, there are no easy answers anymore. If the Adivasis are to reduce their dependency on firewood from the forest, should they use induction heaters or LPG? Should honey collection, abandoning which is unthinkable to the forest dwellers, be allowed despite the core zone being in theory an inviolate space? Each of these small questions needs an elaborate process to be answered. So much so that two factors matter more than any agreement reached – first, that the people should feel they have had a say in the decision; and second, that no agreement should be taken to be final.

Here is a glimpse into how a routine negotiation would unfold:

In a meeting with the Field Director on the Tiger Reserve, the idea of stopping honey collection from the core zone to keep it inviolate, got some of the adivasi leaders rather worked up. As they’ve been doing that for ages and it is too central to their economics as well as religious belief system, the idea of not being allowed to enter the forest even for honey collection was totally unacceptable to them. They wanted an assurance right there from the FD that they would be allowed to continue this practise. Tarsh calmed their nerves and tried to explain to them that they’ll have to find a way out together over a period of time. As the FD, even he was bound by rules, and did not have the authority to overide the Wildlife protection Act and grant them rights. Some Range Officers suggested that the tribals all take up bee keeping (in wooden boxes),  and promised to get an experts to conduct ‘trainings’. Immediately, one of the Adivasis replied, “What do you know about honey? You will waste a lot of money, we know some good NGOs working on honey, and we’ll arrange the training ourselves!”

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Close to Masinagudi, Adivasis of the Irula tribe live in the buffer zone of the MTR. The forest department wanted to reduce their dependency on the forest and so was suggesting agriculture as an alternative  livelihood.Promptly, they did all they could to make it possible for the Irulas to start on agriculture. The Irulas were reported later as saying, “They say they have spent 7 lakhs on our village. They ploughed the land, built a check dam for water, and even gave us the seed, but we never wanted to do agriculture in the first place.” So nothing grew, and now the range officers complain that the adivasis don’t listen to anyone and can never ‘improve’.

When the traditions and beliefs of the peripherals are up against a central law, there is bound to be dissent. For our modern world that is running out of dignified dreams, not trampling over the indigenous values is a challenge that can only be met collectively. Also, being a true leader is about knowing when to come to the fore and when to step back and be ordinary. The inspirational bit in Tarsh’s story is that he is content being a mere link as long as it connects in the right direction; but never fails to ask the right questions.

We walked into Chembakolli, a village at the edge of Core Zone and quite far from Gudalur, where an Adivasi told Tarsh that Church had offered the adivasi kids, free of cost, a hostel in Gudalur town so that they could attend high school regularly. He sought advice from Tarsh who promptly responded, “The problem with free favours is that they take away from you the right to question how things function. Perhaps you should insist on paying a small fee and keep a stake in the way they look after your kids.” Yes, it is not easy to take positions on such matters. And that’s why even being an ordinary link to the right questions is so important.

Right questions. Tarsh tells me an old story when one day, walking along the road close to his house early morning, he found a dead leopard. Promptly, he passed on the information to the forest guards. In the evening, he enquired them about the post-mortem report. They exclaimed, “So it was you who found it in the morning! See, don’t tell anyone else now.  Otherwise we have to file a long report and answer a lot of stupid questions about how it died. It’s already dead. What’s the point? Who wants to know about the dead leopard anyway? We quietly buried it.” We have a bit of a laugh. The next day, he gets to know of another dead leopard. This time, many have seen it already. Injury, suffered in a fight with another leopard, is found to be the cause. We try to get permissions to take the school kids for the post-mortem, but fail.

The forest is full of stories. I tried to get close to as many as possible. Tarsh’s story is just one of those many. It has been inspired from many and even inspires some. We, at Commutiny, are blessed to have someone as committed as him among us. Together, we must ensure that what didn’t start with him should also not end with him.