The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime

When we come out of our main gate of our residential complex in Bengaluru, a short private road leads us to the main road, on the right side of which is an imposing office building. On the left, on the ground floor of a less imposing structure, is an arcade with eateries and other stores. We call the arcade Arcade.

 As lots of tech workers are employed in the office building, at any time of the day in the arcade, one gets to see a crowd of young men and women with ID cards hanging from their necks having tea, tiffin, or lunch, standing or sitting on the arcade veranda. The youngsters are always cheerful, always in a group, and always chatting. A little of their joie de vivre gets rubbed onto me whenever I pass them.

 It seems owners of the arcade aren’t too fond of them. There are notices limiting the areas where they can eat. There were two concrete benches in front of the eateries on which they used to sit and have food. A few months ago, the benches were removed overnight. Why? The benches troubled nobody. I think they were removed only because the owners of the Arcade wanted to exhibit their meanness and power.

While the tech employees are seen only during the day, there is another group that lives in the arcade: a community of stray dogs. Animal lovers of the area feed them regularly, and the dog-lovers among the knowledge employees overfeed them irregularly. Consequently, the dogs are overweight and mostly sleepy. Contented with their lives, they harm nobody. In fact, they hardly move. Their protectors among my neighbours also get them vaccinated from time to time and get them treated when the need arises.

When I think of these people who do so much for something that has nothing to do with their self-interest, I feel not everything has been lost in our wretched country where reading a newspaper is a fraught exercise.

But the Arcade owners, if they don’t like harmless young people, how can they not hate harmless dogs? There is a history of animosity towards the arcade dogs. The latest act is the case of Bruce, a handsome nine-year old black-and-white male dog who was the quietest of the lot. He hasn’t been seen since 16 August.

When people from our housing complex approached the Arcade management to see their CCTV footage, they were rudely rebuffed. But from our housing complex’s footage, it was seen that at 2:33 AM of 16 August, at least two dog-catchers were trying to lure and catch dogs while they were running away. Our camera had limited reach, but it would be reasonable to infer that the two men abducted Bruce, the quietest, while the rest managed to escape.

When a complaint was lodged, the police came to Arcade, but the arcade management shouted at the people who had complained, while the police stood silently, like the good boys they are. An Arcade manager even went on photographing the protesters in the presence of the police, despite being asked to stop. It was an act of wanton intrusion of privacy and an implicit threat: We have noted who you are.

On 22 August, when eight of our people, including a senior citizen, went to the local police station, they were told there was no space for them to sit. They were made to stand and wait outside for four hours while it rained from time to time.

Let me jot down the central points.

·         Someone—possibly the Arcade management—paid private dog catchers to remove the arcade dogs, but they managed to catch only one.

·         The Arcade management, who are part of a big property developer of Bengaluru, seems to have a good rapport with the local police. This of course is expected. A construction firm would have good rapport with the police by default.

·         Deep pockets usually defeat good sense.

How much hate one must have to pay dog catchers and organise a midnight raid to remove absolutely harmless dogs! Is this a tiny part of the rising wave of hatred in the country in general?

 

Bengaluru

25 August 2026

 

This is a developing story. Please watch this space.

Bharat Jodo Yatra (BJY)—My first day

Last evening in about eight hours, we covered the distance of 311 kilometres from Bangaluru to Ballari, a mining town in western Karnataka that was earlier spelt as Bellary. The motley crowd of six yatris consisted of an exceedingly soft-spoken activist politician, an environmental activist and author, a tailor who's doing MA, an engineer, a young college prof, and me. Regarding the age profile, we were between in early twenties and early seventies. The six of us, who speak four different languages at home, have come to join the Bharat Jodo Yatra. As you might have guessed, a tiny bit of jodoing has already happened!

It was 10:30 PM when we reached the KRS Function Hall at one end of the town, our camp for the night Throughout South India, we have marriage / function halls which usually have three main sections: a big hall with a stage on one end, an equally big dining hall plus kitchen, and some bedrooms for people who would stay overnight. The main hall often seats 1000 or more people.

As we walked in, we found an empty ornate sofa on the stage at the far end of the main hall. More than 200 basic beds had been spread on the stage and the floor: cotton mattresses covered with garish bedsheets with designs in all the colours the human eye can see. Columns of plastic chairs were piled in a corner. At one end—somewhat unexpectedly—a large man in a dark T-shirt sat hunched before an equally large 24-inch computer screen, engrossed in work. Enormous fans fitted outside at the ground level blew in air through a grille. Although it was past 10:30, the lights were on. Few had slept. They were the yatris of the Bharat Jodo Yatra, the political Kumbh of our time. The men and women would have walked at least 30 kilometres during the day.

The adjacent dining hall had been divided into two parts. Half of it contained a similar array of beds, and the other half, two long rows of narrow dining tables covered with aluminium sheets. We quickly joined the few men and women who were eating. The simple vegetarian meal was piping hot and excellent.

As the halls had been full, we got a small room on the fourth floor. There were five of us in the two-bed airconditioned room with three beds on the floor. Enormously comfortable. 

The breakfast that I had next morning at 5:10 consisted of steaming upma, chatni, and kesar bath. A tall gentleman, who was possibly from the management of the function hall, was supervising the operations; he made us feel we were his personal guests. I silently saluted the famous Kannadiga hospitality and also, the Congress Party, which is organising the yatra. 

*

Inqilabs, that is, revolutions, are “the locomotives of history,” said Karl Marx. According to his most well-known follower Lenin, “Revolutions are the festivals of the oppressed and the exploited.” Nobody knows if the Bharat Jodo Yatra will turn into the locomotive that will ferry us from the present-day dystopia back to a civilised India, but when we were ferried in a van to the starting point of today’s yatra in the tenebrous light before sunrise, I did think I was witnessing a festival of the masses. 

The absolute exhilaration among people was to be seen to be believed. At the beginning of the long procession, local artistes in ceremonial attires—many of them wearing huge masks—presented a pageantry with the accompaniment of drums. They were followed by Congress Seva Dal Volunteers in white. Then came groups of yatris raising slogans. The slogans were surprisingly creative and nonviolent, like, Jodisi jodisi, Bharata jodisi in Kannada (Join, join, join India), or in Hindi: Hum Bhagat Singh ke diwane hai, hum nahi rukhne walle hai (We love Bhagat Singh, we aren't going to give up!) There were NO murdabads, hai hais, or down-downs. 

Except for the Seva Dal volunteers and the performing artistes, the rest of the participants didn’t form two neat columns, as if to highlight that their participation was spontaneous, voluntary, and free from regimentation. A festival, in short. 

My friends Kamlendra Pratap and Jeevan had warned me that when Rahul Gandhi arrived, he would be accompanied by a flood that would throw away anything in their path. The flood arrived soon. 

Rahul Gandhi, who walks really fast, sets the pace and the rest of the people walk / run with him. He has his security men in black safari suits around him and then an outer ring of close associates and registered yatris. Around all of them, state policemen in khaki made a moving cordon with a thick yellow rope and walked along. The mobile yellow ring was the nucleus of the yatra. Beside, in front of, and behind it, there were thousands more walking cheerfully, shouting slogans. 

Can you see Rahul Gandhi? If you can, you'll know how much risk he is taking.

Many of them were local people and curious onlookers. They were keen to get a good glimpse and maybe, a picture of Rahul Gandhi. Some went into the ring and close to Rahul Gandhi after getting a nod from the people in charge of security. Rahul smiled, shook hands, and spoke with each one of them, as people took selfies. But most of his fans were not so fortunate. They would walk as close to the yellow cordon as possible, and try go ahead of Rahul Gandhi to get a good look. 

As soon as the cordon approached where I was, a deluge of people threw me away from the road. And once the deluge went past, Jeevan and I fell back and followed the yatra at a relaxed pace, lending our voices to whoever was leading the slogan near us.  

I got a strong feeling that the yatris aren't going to give up even after the yatra ends. <>

15 October 2022

Bharat Jodo Yatra (BJY)—Day Zero

On the way to Bellary with a group of wonderful people. To walk in the Bharat Jodo Yatra.

My participation will mean little to the Yatra, but the yatra should make a world of difference to me. The picture below has been sent by a friend. It is a picture of the Yatra today somewhere in the remote Chitradurga District of Karnataka.

 Let the mainstream media ignore, let the ruling dispensation and their cohorts try to mass-produce hatred, Bharat is joining herself … and erasing ugly lines that have been dividing her children in the recent past.

 Love spreads, quietly, but unquestionably, just as the sapling grows in front of your eyes but without you noticing it. Away from TV studios and troll factories.

 Watch this space for updates.

 

14 October 2022

The Digital Divide

The graphic above is true and so sad! If anything shows our government’s complete indifference – if not disdain – for ordinary people, it is the COWIN app. Our rulers have made internet access almost a precondition for the life-saving vaccination against COVID-19. The poor in India don’t get anything easily, from ration card to medical aid. Now, a vast majority of them who don’t have internet access have an even bigger handicap vis-à-vis the vaccine.

However, India was not like this always. When I was a child, once a year, our whole family would visit a nearby corporation office for the small-pox vaccine to be administered with a bifurcated needle that would make two parallel punctures. It was open and free to all and the government advertised it widely to encourage people to get vaccinated. In fact, the efforts were much more than mere publicity. The University of Michigan Library website says:

“[In India in 1974] During a six-day period each month, health workers visited every one of the country’s 100 million households. Supervised by about fifty international advisors and an equal number of Indian officials, some thirty-three thousand district health personnel and more than 100,000 additional field workers conducted house-to-house searches in a total of 575,721 villages and 2,641 cities.”

Clearly, a much poorer India had wiser and better educated leadership that invested scarce resources into public health programmes thanks to which India has been able to kill to demons: small pox and polio. The second graphic has captured our past beautifully.

But today, we have a government run by idiots with phoney degrees and charlatans who promote unscientific, so-called ayurvedic cures so that fellow crooks can make a quick buck even in the middle of a devastating pandemic. More importantly, the government invested nothing except on the 3^rd stage clinical trial of the vaccine developed by the Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR) and Bharat Biotech. Even Covaxin, the vaccine jointly developed by ICMR, they didn’t license to other manufacturers. Contrarily, the Russian Sputnik-V vaccine is going to be manufactured by six companies in India. Why did the government restrict production of Covaxin to only a small Hyderabad-based private company? If you know the answer, please tell me. Questions galore. Why do the owners of the biggest vaccine manufacturer Serum Institute of India have to run away to England when they should try to augment their manufacturing capacity to help millions of Indians?

Since the middle of 2020 the USA (even under a madman president) and Europe have been investing heavily into private companies for researching vaccines; many governments bought millions of doses of vaccine much before they were tested or produced. But our government ignored warnings from the scientific community about an impending second wave and didn't pre-book a single dose of the vaccine. What were they doing with the thousands of crores reportedly received in the completely opaque PM Care Fund if they didn’t utilise it for vaccines?

Our government has messed up every aspect of the problem whether making digital access a priority or the pricing of the vaccine or the age-group to which it should be given first. It has come out with a series of seemingly random decisions which has helped none. But these acts of stupidity pale into insignificance when you consider that in the humongous machinery called government and its adjuncts like the Niti Ayog, there was nobody to compare the number of vaccines required and the available production capacity in the country. Did they actually forget to do this when they were gleefully celebrating their stupidity as late as in March 2021? Can anything be more bizarre?

*

I belong to the privileged minority that has much better access to scarce resources. I personally have access to most of the ladders shown in this graphic. Therefore, anything I write on ordinary people not getting the COVID-19 vaccination would amount to hypocrisy. I accept the charge, but that doesn’t alter facts. We have a bunch of moronic rulers who are destroying the country.

The PM must resign. If ever a national government was needed with the best talents available in the country, it is now.

 18 May 2021

 

The Corona Timeline, China, and WHO

[The information below has been collated from sources like the Wikipedia, BBC, Al Jazeera, ANI, and TOI]

1 December 2019: In the city of Wuhan in China’s Hubei province, symptoms of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) were first noticed in a man.

6 December: His 53-year-old wife showed similar symptoms; hospitalized.

25 December: Two more Chinese in Wuhan quarantined after they showed similar symptoms. Later that week, hospitals in Wuhan saw an exponential increase of comparable cases.

In the same week, Dr. Li Wenliang, a 33-year old ophthalmologist, informed a group of doctors about a new virus.

31 December: The Wuhan Municipal Health Commission declared that there was no clear human to human transmission of the virus. China got in touch with the World Health Organisation (WHO). They reprimanded Dr. Li Wenliang for spreading rumours.

1 January 2020: Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market was shut down as several of those infected had reportedly worked at the market.

3 January 2020: Li Wenliang had to sign a declaration to the police that he had been spreading ‘fake information’. Same day, the Hubei Provincial Health Commission asked doctors not to test for new cases. Doctors had to destroy the existing samples. The Wuhan Municipal Health Commission reiterated its position on no human to human infection, indicating collaboration in suppression of truth.

8 January: China claimed they had identified the virus and reiterated no human to human transmission.

11 January: The Wuhan Municipality published a report stating that the infected people had a history of contact with the wet market. It reiterated the absence of human transmission.

12 January: Li Wenliang was admitted to the hospital following severe breathing problems and was put in intensive care.

13 January: Thailand reported the first case of coronavirus outside China: a Chinese woman who had a travelled to Wuhan.

14 January: WHO issued a statement saying that the preliminary investigation conducted by China showed no trace of human to human infection.

15 January: Japan reported the first case of coronavirus. The patient had no history of visiting any wet market of China. After this, the Wuhan Health Commission admitted the possibility of human transmission.

21 January: The United States reported its first confirmed case of a patient who had returned from China six days earlier.

22 January: The WHO conducts a field visit to China and concludes that human to human transmission is taking place in Wuhan.

31 January: Speaking at a news conference in Geneva, the Chief of the WHO described the virus as an "unprecedented outbreak". But he praised the "extraordinary measures" the Chinese had taken, and said there was “no reason TO LIMIT TRADE OR TRAVEL TO CHINA”. (BBC, emphasis added)

7 February: Li Wenliang passed away in hospital. Wikipedia says “A subsequent Chinese official inquiry exonerated him and the Communist Party of China formally offered a "solemn apology" to his family and revoked its admonishment of him.”

11 March: World Health Organisation (WHO) declared the Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) as pandemic.

31 March: The virus has shut down the world, with 178 countries infected, more than 7,87,000 confirmed cases, and over 37,000 dead.

*

Five dates are crucial on the timeline:

1.       31 December, when China informed the WHO, but suppressed its severity.

2.       14 January, when the WHO downplayed the infectivity of the virus and misled the world community.

3.       22 January, when the WHO found out human to human transmission, but did nothing to warn the rest of the world.

4.       31 January, when the WHO refused to limit travel to and trade with China.

5.       11 March, when the WHO declared the disease as pandemic, A MONTH AND 20 DAYS LATER.

Will anyone be punished for this humongous criminal delay?

Photograph of Dr. Li Wenliang courtesy: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=63046734

Playback theatre, Bengaluru

Last night, I was at a performance by Playback Theatre, Bengaluru, and this morning, the omniscient Wikipedia told me what it means: “Playback Theatre is an original form of improvisational theatre in which audience or group members tell stories from their lives and watch them enacted on the spot.”

Turning back a few pages, it was possibly in the 1980s when I watched some of Badal Sarkar’s plays after he took theatre out of the proscenium. During those performances, the audience used to sit on the four sides of a bare hall with zero props, with their backs to the wall and the actors were in the middle. They would directly interact with the audience and often, different men and women would play out different parts of the same play at the same time on two or more parts of the hall. It was an experience.

I do not remember all the Badal Sarkar plays that I lived through on the first floor of the Theosophical Society premises off College Street in Kolkata. It was a fascinating combination, some guys reportedly got in touch with ghosts on the ground floor, even as Badal Sarkar’s ruthless realism played out on the first floor. I watched Michil (Procession) and Bhoma, and a few others there. But what I experienced last night was even more fascinating, and in a moment, I’ll explain why.

There were four actors, three girls and a boy in their twenties, two musicians, a boy who played different instruments and a girl who played the guitar and sang beautifully. The seventh member of the team, the anchor person, got the audience involved in the performance. Last night’s proceedings began with a simple question “How do you feel now?”

A young man sitting next to me said he had taken four Uber rides during the day, and all the four drivers had been Muslims. He said that he hadn’t interacted much with two of them, but with the other two, both driver and the passenger ended up crying together. The moment he stopped, a girl was driving a taxi and the four actors performed the narrator’s experience with an incredible degree of understanding and sophistication. I was dumbstruck. How did they work so well without any preparation? Could they read each other’s mind?

From there, the compere moved on to how the audience felt (after three days of pogrom in Delhi). From there, the discursive conversation moved on to “resistance” and how individual members of the audience was initiated to the idea of resistance. Someone got the idea from penny-less, cast-away former freedom fighter in his early childhood, someone when she studied the Jim Crow Laws at a university in the US and related the caste system she had lived through as a child without ever realising there was anything wrong about it.

The brilliant ensemble brought to life each one of those experiences.

It was so heartening to see these young men and women, who have such depth and who have to offer so much to us. Once again, I thought we must not lose hope. Our future is bright!

Thursday, 27 February 2020

Patriotism of the Insane

[Here is the English translation of a deeply moving anecdote written by my friend Bharatjyoti Roychowdhury, followed by my translation into English.

Before going into the brief piece, here’s an introduction to the author. Bharatjyoti was a district level leader in the Naxalbari Movement in Birbhum, West Bengal. He was in prison for many years and was brutally tortured in custody.

While Bhartjyoti was in active politics, that is during the 1970s, the Congress government of West Bengal through their police and henchmen murdered thousands of young men. Once, confronted with certain death in the hands of sarkari goons, Baratjyoti jumped off a running train under the cover of darkness and, though badly injured, saved his life miraculously. We are fortunate that he did. His three-volume opus সাতচল্লিশ থেকে সত্তর এবং আগে পরে (Forty-seven to Seventy and Before / After) is an insider’s account about the Naxalbari movement of the last century. It is also an authentic document based on painstakingly researched first-hand information and statistical charts. Bharatjyoti’s book shatters many a myth about the movement. No researcher on the Naxalbari movement can do without these three volumes.]

*

উন্মাদদের দেশপ্রেম

বেঙ্গালুরুতে গ্রেফতার হ'ল ১৯ বছরের মেয়েটি [অমুল্যা লিওনা] দেশদ্রোহিতার অপরাধে ১৯ ফেব্রুয়ারি সন্ধ্যায়। তার অপরাধ এই যে, তার অনেক কথার মধ্যে একটি স্লোগান ছিলো ঃ পাকিস্তান জিন্দাবাদ। এই স্লোগানের সঙ্গেই আরও অনেক কথা ছিলো তার ---হিন্দুস্থান জিন্দাবাদ ও ছিলো ; সেই কথাগুলি শুনতে দেওয়া হ'ল না। মাইক্রোফোন কেড়ে নেওয়া হ'ল। মেয়েটি দেশদ্রোহী এই সিদ্ধান্তে সুর মেলালো সবাই, ---সি এ এ, এন আর সি , এন পি আর বিরোধিতায় সামিল হওয়া হায়দারাবাদ এম পি আসাদুদ্দীন ওয়েসি (মজলিস ই ইত্তেহাদ মুসলিমীন এর প্রধান) থেকে কুর্ণাটকের মুখ্যমন্ত্রী এবং পুলিশ, --গদি মিডিয়া থেকে সোশ্যাল মিডিয়ার অনেকে এবং সেই কোরাসে গলা মেলালেন মেয়েটির বাবাও।

"মেয়েটি দেশদ্রোহী এবং মাওবাদী" ----বললেন কর্ণাটকের মুখ্যমন্ত্রী (যেখানে যা কিছু ঘটে অনিষ্টি, মূলে কে তার কমনিস্টি কমনিস্টি)। অনেকেই তাকে পাকিস্তানে পাঠিয়ে দেবার পরামর্শ দিয়ে দিয়েছেন।

বেশি কথা না বলে, আমার স্মৃতিতে উঠে আসা একটি দিনের কথা এখানে উল্লেখ করতে চাই। ১২ ডিসেম্বর ২০০৩ পাকিস্তান ইণ্ডিয়া পিপলস ফোরাম ফর পিস অ্যান্ড ডেমক্রেসি র পক্ষে প্রয়াত অধ্যাপক অশোক মিত্রের সভাপতিত্বে ভারতবর্ষের আরও প্রায় ২০০ জন প্রতিনিধির সঙ্গে আমি সকাল ৯-০ টায় করাচি রেল স্টেশনে নামি। ১২ -১৪ ডিসেম্বর, ২০০৩ করাচিতে অনুষ্ঠিত হয়েছিলো ষষ্ঠ যুগ্ম সম্মেলন।

ট্রেন থেকেই আমরা দেখতে পাচ্ছিলাম ভারতীয় প্রতিনিধিদের সম্বর্ধনা দেবার জন্য বিশাল মণ্ডপ এবং জমায়েত। সে সব কথা বিস্তারিতভাবে এখানে বলার সুযোগ নেই। ফিরে এসে আমি একটি ছোট বই প্রকাশ করি ক্যাম্প থেকে 'ওয়াগার ওপারে' নামে। সে সব কথা সেখানে বিস্তারিত ভাবেই বলা আছে। আমি শুধু একটি স্লোগান এখানে উল্লেখ করতে চাই, যে স্লোগান টি সেদিন পাকিস্তানের উপস্থিত জনগণ, পাকিস্তানের প্রতিনিধিরা এবং ভারতের প্রতিনিধিরা এক সাথে মুহুর্মুহু দিচ্ছিলেন, --আমিও ঃ

জীবি জীবি পাকিস্তান

জীবি জীবি হিন্দুস্থান।

*

Patriotism of the Insane

A nineteen-year-old girl, [Amulya Leona] was arrested and charged with treason in Bengaluru in the evening of 19 February. [She has been sent to 14 days’ judicial custody.] Her offence was that among other things she said, she chanted the slogan “Pakistan Zindabad!”

Amulya Leona said many other things besides those two words, including “Hindustan Zindabad!” But we were not allowed to hear the rest of her speech as the microphone was snatched away from her. Lots of people, from the crusader against CAA-NRC-NPR and Hyderabad MP, Asaduddin Owaisi to the BJP chief minister of Karnataka, quickly concluded that she was indeed a traitor. From Karnataka police to the lapdog media to many on the social media joined in the “traitor” chorus, including Amulya’s father. 

“The girl is a traitor and a Maoist,” proclaimed the Karnataka CM. (It reminds me of an old Bangla doggerel, which in a free translation into English could read, “Whether it’s an ulcer or a cyst, there has to be a communist.”) Many have suggested that she should be sent to Pakistan.

Without going too deep into the incident, I would like to share with you an occasion that floats to the surface of my memory. I, along with 200 delegates of Pakistan-India People’s Forum for Peace and Democracy under the leadership of our president, late Ashoke Mitra, got off the train at Karachi on 12 December, 2003 at 9 in the morning. The sixth joint conference of the forum was held between 12-14 December.

Even while we were on the train, we could see a huge gathering to welcome the Indian delegates and an impressive stage. Let’s not go into those details. After coming back, I published a short book titled “ওয়াগার ওপারে” (On the other side of Wagah). That book contains details about the conference. Here, I would just like to mention a slogan, which was repeatedly shouted by the Pakistani people present at the station, the Pakistani delegates, and every Indian delegate, including me:

Jeebi Jeebi Pakistan!

Jeebi Jeebi Hindustan!

[An endnote from the translator: When I began reading this, I considered another heading for the story “Welcome to Hindu Pakistan”. But when I reached the end, the thought comes to my mind that perhaps we are worse than Hindu Pakistan! Gentle Reader, what is your call?]

Of dreams and nightmares

My young friend Kirit (name changed) is one of the finest humans I have come across. He fits this description given in a Bangla poem by Jeebanananda Dash, a poem that I happened to translate yesterday. Kirit is one of

“Those who still have profound faith in humans,
Those who even now believe
In glorious truths, traditions, arts, and deep pursuits …”

In a moment I will come back to Kirit, but first, let me revisit a day that changed the course of our history: 6/12/1992, when Babri Majid was demolished and a process began to change the secular democratic structure of our country. The process is on, with ever gathering momentum. Yesterday, 4/8/2019 was another dark day in the history of modern India, when Jammu and Kashmir was bifurcated and its two parts were demoted to the status of Union Territories by using the brute force of a majority in the parliament, with complete disregard to the wishes of the people of the state, and after turning the entire Kashmir Valley into a jail for all practical purposes.

Yesterday, I happened to exchange notes with Kirit and he wrote to me, “… take a long view of the short and calm yourself.”

Please allow me to share with you my reply to him.

*

You have hit the nail on the head: “… take a long view of the short.”

I will try to, but before that, as I’ve found in you a sympathetic reader, I’ll let me hair down and share with you why I’ve been feeling so helpless and tormented today, although it’s perhaps an old man’s tale that could be understood by his generation alone.

When we were young, our nation was young too, beginning afresh after 190 years of life-sapping colonial rule. Almost everyone then believed that the future would offer a more just and at least a little more egalitarian world. There was a spring of hope everywhere: from the Prague Spring to the defeat of the US forces against tiny Vietnamese in the most asymmetric war in history, to the campus rebellions around the world …. We knew that the second law of thermodynamics couldn’t be altered, but we did believe that collectively, the human race would work towards a better, more civilized order, at the core of which would be two basic ideas: free thought and respect for every human being.

When I was 18, I never imagined that 50 years later India would have become a nakedly capitalist economy where income disparity would keep growing, with no one protesting. It didn’t even cross my mind that the Indian Hindus, tolerant to a fault and traditionally accommodating to other faiths through centuries, will suddenly become so intensely hateful towards Muslims and Christians and Dalits. We read in papers that in the Balkans, minorities were brutalised and put in concentration camps to die. We read about ethnic oppressions in China, Turkey, Iraq, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and so on. But we thought these could never happen in our country. We were wrong.

Suddenly, in India today, there is a systematic effort to push a third of the population into a corner. The next move by our ruling party will be to win West Bengal and go for NRC everywhere and put undocumented (non)citizens read Muslims in jail.

By denying Muslims, Dalits and Christians the right to live a decent life, by denying the space for unfettered intellectual enquiry at universities, by propagating atrocities in the name of science, by destroying every institution, they are actually destroying the dream of the post-independence generation.

It hurts. 

But in these days of atavistic faith towards aggressive gods, we must stoically remember that in the long run, every dictator is thrown to their disgraceful end. For example, the longest serving dictator of the twentieth century, General Franco, who ruled Spain from 1939 till his death in 1975. Dictatorship was overturned in Spain almost immediately after the dictator’s death. So much for his legacy! Sometime in the 1990s, a senior friend of mine visited Franco’s grave near Madrid. But he couldn’t go close to it because the entire place stank of urine. So, he happily contributed to the liquid offering to the dead dictator.

No dictator today will be dissuaded by the thought of the future peeing on his legacy, but it gives us courage. In his last speech in 1941, Rabindranath said, “I am struck by the changes that have taken place both in my own attitude and in the psychology of my countrymen – a change that carries within it a cause of profound tragedy.”

We did come out of the tragedy which manifested itself in the devastating riots before and after the Partition. And we started building a new India which offered women’s suffrage before Sweden did, which put a premium on education and research, and on agricultural technology that would create a famine-free India sooner than anyone could hope. I am not saying that despite these achievements the system was not highly imperfect. But there were always reasons to hope.

Now, the nation has taken an about turn, but I believe this too will pass. My only dream today is to live long enough to see the end of this nightmare.

06 August 2019

Curses & Blessings

Hemant Karkare, a senior police officer, was killed by the Ajmal Kasab gang in Mumbai on 26/11, 2008. Karkare died because he had rushed out to defend an injured colleague, and faced automatic assault rifles with just a service revolver and no bullet-proof jacket. He was awarded the highest peace-time gallantry award, Ashoka Chakra, posthumously.

Earlier, Karkare investigated the Malegaon blast case in which 10 lives were snuffed out and 80 were wounded. He sent a fake sadhvi called Pragya Thakur – a former ABVP leader – to jail as a principal accused who had given her own bike in which explosives were stored, to be detonated in Malegaon with lethal effect.

That Pragya Thakur is now out on bail in these happy days for Hindutwa terror. Curiously, she is also the BJP candidate for the Bhopal parliamentary seat. And she says,

"Hemant Karkare was killed because I cursed him."

Did this wretched female caricature of a sadhu mean she had blessed the Ajmal Kasab gang to murder Hemant Karkare? What dangerous beasts are trying to rule us for a second time?

20 April 2019

[Photo of Hemant Karkare courtesy: Wikimedia Commons]

Noor Mohammed and other Indian Muslims

I didn’t think there would be a direct bus from the Old Airport Road to my home. So, I boarded one for Marathalli, a junction on the way, where you could find a bus to anywhere in the world.

The conductor is a charming young woman in uniform: a khaki jacket over a khaki sari – only sarkari babus can have the imagination to contemplate a khaki sari! I am sure the girl hates it.

And why khaki for all so-called low level jobs? It’s a kind of apartheid, isn’t it? If I was the chairman of BMTC (Bengaluru Metropolitan Transport Corporation), I would introduce bright orange uniform with floral designs for women employees, and dark blue shirts with paisleys for men, like those my fashion icon Nelson Mandela used to wear.

My meditation is interrupted by the woman in khaki as she approaches me for ticket. She has a good look at my head and issues a senior citizen ticket for ₹14. It doesn’t matter these days, but even a few years ago, I would have been mildly irritated to have been bracketed with oldies. Alas! Time changes. And I guess I got a concession of 30%.

I secretly thanked BMTC (Bengaluru Metropolitan Transport Corporation) for the compassion, although, thanks to an accident of my birth in a certain social milieu, I belong to the microscopic minority of Indians for whom six rupees means nothing. But it does matter to most, particularly those who are on the outskirts of a physically active life.

Looking for an auto rickshaw, I met a fellow senior citizen who looked at least twenty years older than me. He asked me for a reasonable amount, but I haggled a bit out of sheer habit. And more importantly, because I think of senior-citizen concessions only when I am a potential beneficiary.

Noor Mohammed had completely gray hair and a seven-day stubble. He looked quite frail and I wondered how he managed to drive an auto rickshaw in the hot summer in Bangalore traffic. In India, it is politically correct to ask a man’s age, and so I asked, ‘How old are you, Noor Mohammed?’

‘Sixty-five.’

‘That means you are exactly my age!’, He didn’t notice the touch of surprise in my voice. And I continued with the small talk, ‘Where do you live in Bengaluru?’

‘I don’t live in Bengaluru, I am from Ramanagara, a distance of three-four hours.’

‘Ramanagara? Where Sholay was shot?’

‘Yes’, he replied tersely. He obviously didn’t care much for the fame conferred upon his hometown by Sholay, or for that matter, David Lean’s Passage to India.

‘Then how come you are here?’

‘I don’t have children. I have a foster daughter. She is 21. Bees aur ek.’ After a pause, he repeated as if from far away, ‘Bees aur ek. She has a hole in her heart. So, we brought her here and put her in a hospital. My wife too is in the hospital. The doctors are doing some tests. By this evening, they will tell us when the surgery will happen. She was an orphan. … My wife and I brought her up since she was this small’, he took his left hand off the clutch lever and put the straightened palm about six inches above the floor. ‘What can I do now? Throw her away?’

He seemed to read the unasked question in my mind, and continued, ‘We are staying with some distant relatives here. They have this auto rickshaw. They asked me to drive it and earn something. Bahut achche aadmi hai woh log.’

Of course, they are wonderful people. I ask, ‘How much will the surgery cost?’

‘A lakh and seventy-six thousand. I have a little bit. For the rest, I’ll take a loan. … maybe, I’ll ask the people with whom I'm staying. Udhar le lenge.’

I was not surprised. The poor in India have a unique social security network where they help each other to tide over crises. Only recently, our domestic help asked for a small loan as she had to send ₹30,000 (roughly her three months’ earnings) to her sister in Delhi. Her sister is taking a house on rent and needs the cash to pay security deposit.

The calm fortitude with which the poor in India faces financial turmoil is amazing. Noor Mohammed’s daughter is in hospital, she needs a life-saving surgery, he doesn’t have the money, and he isn’t sure who he can approach for a loan. But at least on the surface, he is completely unfazed. He hopes to get a loan. Period.

Noor Mohammed is not an exception. He is the rule. The poor slog it out to earn two meals a day and a roof over their head. The unique phase in life called retirement that some people have between work life and death doesn’t exist for them. They invariably age prematurely and die uncomplainingly when the time comes.

If a hole is discovered in the heart of a child, they will try their best to fill it. But if they can’t, so be it. They will accept it gracefully. I recall Ajijul, a mason in Kolkata, who told me – as if he was giving me information about a distant cousin – that his oldest son and principal assistant in work had died in an accident a few weeks ago. That boy too, incidentally, was 21. Bees aur ek.

*

Noor Mohammed’s daughter would have all the dreams that a girl like her would. A loving husband, children, a little less of drudgery and insecurity, and a little more comfort and stability.

Please join me in wishing her all the very best.




POSTSCRIPT:

In normal times, I wouldn't add this. But today, I feel compelled to.

Life is not easy for the poor in India. And countless authentic statistics tell us that a huge majority of the 17 crores (170 m) Indian Muslims are much more like Noor Mohammed and Ajijul, and much less like Mr. Azim Hashim Premji, an Indian industrialist near the top of the Forbes list of rich people. 

Let me also ask a question to some of my friends who are educated and compassionate and love the present BJP regime: How does it feel to be poor in India? And how does it feel, on top of it, to live in the fear that any day, protectors of cows might lynch you to avenge the death of a cow that never died?

Friday, April 7, 2017 

Still lower?

Saheel Mollah from the non-descript village of Hariharpur in South 24 Parganas is all of nine years. His sister Mahima says: “Bhai is always talking about kites and flying. He wants to be a pilot and he is fascinated by everything that flies — kites, birds and planes.”

His father, Moiuddin Mollah, 33, a mason, says his son is a bright student who always comes at the top of his class. Flying kites is one of Saheel’s few indulgences, which he couldn’t afford. “I can barely afford to put my children through school. Kites and toys are luxuries when you can’t be sure of two meals a day,” said he.

Every day, we read reports of gruesome violence by one political party or another. Every day we think, this must be the limit. They won’t be able to stoop lower.

Yet every day, a new story tells us that when human beings sell their souls to religious or political fanatics, no depth is beyond them. And this is what happened to saheel. 

It was a windy day and he badly wanted to fly a kite. It was also the end of the month, and he knew he couldn’t ask mother for the last scraps of his father’s earnings of ₹ 3,000. Then the nine-year-old’s eyes fell upon a flex poster fluttering in the wind, just the right size and material for a kite, he thought. Poor Saheel didn’t care that it was a poster of the Trinamool Congress (TMC), the ruling political party of the state. And he wouldn’t have known that it is a political party that represents all the goondas and sundry criminals in West Bengal today. He wouldn’t have known that the stupid, barely-educated chief minister of Bengal today does nothing to contain them. Rather, she pays them doles from government coffers so that they help her win elections after elections through shameless use of muscle power.

*

Saheel’s mother Sahana was home when his friends came rushing to tell her that six men had taken him away. She spent hours searching for him, going from house to house, before finding him in a ditch. “His head was swollen, his body black and blue all over. The doctors thought he might have (had) a serious head injury,”

When the TMC goons caught him Saheel committing the crime of tearing their poster, they grabbed him and started beating him. They took him to a local TMC leader’s home, tied up and gagged, and continued beating him mercilessly. Finally, they left an unconscious Saheel in a ditch near a field.

Will there be anything more gruesome in tomorrow's papers?

Kolkata || 03 May 2016

If you wish to read the entire story, please click here. Picture of Saheel and his grandfather - courtesy The Indian Express.

A fairy tale of our time

Mita, who came to meet us this afternoon after a long time, has changed a lot. If I had met her on the street, I wouldn’t have recognized her; I would have taken her as just another smart young girl in her early twenties in a red salwar suit. But actually, Mita is very special, because her story is very special. But before I tell you her story, I must tell you a little about her family.

Mita was born into a caste that used to carry other people’s shit on their head. The “tradition” continued well into the twentieth century India parallel to steel plants, airplanes, and televisions. The practice has been abolished, but it hasn’t improved the lot of Mita’s people much. They continue to be “untouchables”. More often than not, “they” wouldn’t be invited to sit alongside “us” in a community dinner. In the country, they still live in filthy unhygienic ghettos on the outskirts of villages. The so-called upper-caste has no physical contact with them except when the village gentry rape their women.

In cities, they live in equally filthy unhygienic slums. Mita’s family lived in one such not far away from our home when her mother Lilavati joined our condo as a sweeper. They still live there and her mother still cleans bathrooms and drains, besides sweeping. Twenty years ago, Lilavati was a stunningly beautiful young woman. Now, after six children, recurring ailments, relentless overwork and poverty, she is an old woman in her mid-forties. But for the sake of completeness, I must add here that in all these years of trials and vicissitudes, Lilavati has held her head high. She has borrowed regularly and always repaid her debts in time. But she has never ever begged. 

Her husband was a drunkard. He worked occasionally and beat her regularly. Fortunately, his liver couldn’t manage the amount of alcohol he had been consuming and he had to leave a crying Lilavati and a huge debt behind when he was in the prime of his abused youth.

Of Lilavati’s two sons, one makes an honest living as – what else – a sweeper and the other is a professional thief. Neither supports their mother. Mita is the oldest daughter, and the other three, much smaller, are triplets.

Lilavati put her children in school and struggled to pay tuition fees and buy books. She wanted her girls to live a decent life. However, Mita left school and started working as a domestic help with a family in our building. And soon, she became an expert cook. So, early in her life, Mita made a smart career move and broke the shackles that had tied her forefathers for two thousand years!

When her father died, they needed a lot of cash to repay the debt they had run up for his treatment. Needless to say, most of the money had been borrowed at usurious rates and the debtors were on their back. So Mita made the second smart move in her life – around five years ago, she managed to find a domestic’s job in Mumbai, a city that pays working people a lot better.

Now she is a happily married young woman brimming with pride for her prince charming. A housewife now, she even pays for her younger sisters’ education. Presently her husband is away at Bangalore on work for a week. And Mita has flown down to Kolkata to be with her family. I do not know if she ever dreamed of boarding a flight when she was a child, but it is a reality today and no wonder: her husband is a graduate engineer. He is planning to do masters and taking the GATE exam this year.

How did it happen? We didn’t ask her, but Mita was happy to tell her tale.

‘On the train to Mumbai, I was crying continuously. He was in the same coach. When no one was looking at us, he asked me surreptitiously, ‘Why are you crying? Are you being kidnapped? Have you been sold off?’

‘I told my story and told him I was scared to leave my family and home for the first time, that too for a distant city. ‘The family I am going to work for has promised to pick me up from the station. What if they don’t? I don’t know anyone there.’

‘He gave me his phone number and asked me to call him if I was in trouble. I didn’t trust him initially, but I did phone him after a few days. As luck would have it, he lived not far away from where I did. He even dropped in to meet me at my workplace. I was still not too sure about him, but the lady with whom I worked felt he was a good man.

‘From that family I moved to a women’s hostel where I cooked for forty inmates. It was tough. My day began with making tea and ended after everyone had had their supper. But the pay was good (12,000 rupees) and I could send money to ma regularly. Over time, we paid off all our debt.

‘And then we got married. Ma insisted on “legal marriage”. So we went to Alipur Court and got the papers.’

As Mita told us the story, time and again she told my wife, ‘Kakima, I haven’t met anyone else like him. He is wonderful!’

And every time she said this, her face lit up with happiness. My wife asked her if her husband’s family accepted her without any hassle. She said initially her mom-in-law in Begusarai wasn’t too happy, but after some time, things settled down.

As Mita left, I silently bowed to the ordinary small-town Indian who is her husband. If you didn’t know the Indian society intimately, you wouldn’t possibly know how deep-rooted the prejudice against people from Mita’s station in life is. Consequently, it would be difficult appreciate the significance of what this young man has done.

But let’s put sociology aside for the moment. Please join me in wishing Mita and her husband all the happiness in the world. May they live happily ever after.

[This is a true story. Except for changing names and some insignificant details, I haven't cooked the facts. I haven't even garnished the story.]

Kolkata / 4 Feb 2015