Welcoming chaos

"As a general rule, democracies don't work well if voters do not hold political parties accountable for failure." Francis Fukuyama

The article posted on my blog on 3 May, "... voting for West Bengal" was published by the Statesman on 8 May. So far, 24 friends / acquaintances have rung up or sent mails to say they have read the article. Of them, 20 have broadly concurred with my views. An elderly gentleman even said, 'I was confused about what to do. Your article has helped me make up my mind.' Three close friends strongly disagree with me and say everyone ought to vote for the Left. A friend, Uma Sankar has a different take. He says:

Though I agree with what all you said about the elections and the parties, your voting for the Trinamul somehow creates a very repulsive feeling in my stomach. You probably have no third choice as we have in AP.

Lok Satta, a new party led by one Jayaprakash Narayan, offers us an alternative to traditional politics; his is the only sane voice in the insane political scene of our state. He may not win many seats but he did make his presence felt and he kindled a ray of hope in us that politics could be different, decent and honest - and one doesn't have to have tons of money or muscle power or loud/vulgar throat to enter the political scene. In WB, you don't have such choice.

Yes indeed, we don't have a choice!

This sample survey of 24 readers, if one may call it so, is grossly inaccurate. I am sure there is a much higher percentage of people who, like Uma Sankar, think that West Bengal needs a change, but the alternative is unacceptable. (Earlier, Tanmoy and Anirban expressed the same opinion.) They cannot root for either team in this morbid game.

This article is an attempt to address their concerns. Given below are the perceived problems about the alternative in italics, followed by my comments.

I. The charges against Mamata Banerjee and her team

1. Either she doesn't have a cogent set of policies or she deliberately acts for political expediency without any scruples. For example, she competes with the Left in cheap populism, be it pandering to the "Muslim vote bank", or the unbridled menace of auto-rickshaws, or hawkers taking over the footpaths of Kolkata. "To this day, we have not heard one intelligent word from her on how she would want the country, leave alone West Bengal, run" - Ravindra Kumar in the Statesman, 10 May 2009.

2. She is a megalomaniac; her politics pivots around herself. That is perhaps the reason why no senior leader has ever stuck with her. She hasn't been able to build a party. Her choice of candidates (and cronies) has mostly been terrible.

3. TMC is a political outfit of undisciplined individuals. Their leaders themselves - and not their followers - broke furniture in West Bengal Assembley.

4. As an MP or central minister, her record is poor.

5. She is opportunistic; has switched between NDA and UPA for short-term gains. She might do so again and bring the BJP into West Bengal.

I agree. The charges stick. There is not a murmur of doubt about it.

However, I would like to ask ourselves, that is, the Net-savvy, English speaking people, is our opposition only because of her political shortcomings? Would we damn her so emphatically if she were "from a higher social station", studied at Miranda House or JNU, and spoke impeccable English like Mr. Prakash Karat? Isn't our opposition to Mamata similar to the English language press's damnation of Mayavati? (The last point has been argued beautifully by Mr. Suvro Chatterjee on his blog.)

If high-class, "cultured" leaders like Indira and Rajiv Gandhi, Vishwanath Pratap Singh, Atal Behari Vajpayee, and Jyoti Basu have brought us to this pass, no one has any right to sneer at Mamata or Mayavati. On the contrary, in a way, we should hail their ascent as a triumph of our democracy.

As regards bringing the BJP into West Bengal, in a liberal democracy, everyone has a right to propagate their ideology. If an ideology is accepted by the masses, one can only fight against it politically. (I personally think the BJP is unlikely to succeed in WB, but that is a different matter.)

II. The alternative is unacceptable

The Left has harmed us immensely. But the concern is who we are going to hand over the reign. Are they suited for the job? Is this the alternative we are all looking for? We need change, but the alternative is unacceptable.

In an article in the Ananda Bazar Patrika on 5 May 2009, Kalyan Sanyal says:

"In the Lok Sabha election of 1977, the common people of India voted silently to overturn the all-powerful emergency-raj. That day, all over the world, people who believed in democracy saluted them. What were the issues in that election? Were they economics or foreign policy? No, the people voted against the suffocating two-and-a-half year regime of terror and humiliation. They brought to power Jansangh and the Syndicate Congress masquerading as the Janata Party. At times, history comes to a crossroad where the question of how acceptable the alternative is becomes irrelevant. The ambivalence "we don't want the ruling party, but the alternative is unacceptable" has kept this aggressive, hegemonic ruling party in power for 30 years." (Translation mine.)

If we continue to live in that ambivalent state, they will remain in power for another 30 years. Can you imagine what will happen if this metastasis continues for another 30 years?

III. A weak party and its incompetent leaders

If a party is not strong, how can we hope they would work for our benefit? Isn't that the reason we don't vote for independent candidates? If the undisciplined and incompetent opposition is voted in, we will have jumped from frying pan to fire.

I think there is a big fallacy in this argument.

If the CPI M has ruined West Bengal so successfully, it is precisely because of their strong organization. This party depends on its huge army of workers and supporters to win elections. In turn, they have to be kept happy, wined and dined. Therefore, party members and their friends get precedence over others for jobs and anything that generates income: from cold stores to ration shops to supplying mid-day meals to school children. They also control the organizations of lawyers, doctors, teachers, and policemen.

This pernicious infiltration into all the organs of the state has had three effects: (a) A vast majority of the people are excluded, (b) mediocre people call the shots and competent individuals migrate outside the state to earn a living, and (c) "the party" becomes a parallel power structure that systematically undermines the state.

Besides, the Left has made our people lazy, arrogant and foul-mouthed. At every turn, we come across people who are rude and unnecessarily aggressive. It was bound to happen under leaders whose motto is: "Ladai, ladai, ladai chai, ladai kore banchte chai." (We want to go on fighting; we want to live by fighting.) It might take more than a generation to restore decency in our everyday transactions.

For this reason alone, cadre-based parties like the CPI M and the BJP are a threat to our democracy. A friend of mine, Samiran Mazumdar sums it up beautifully: Incompetent rule is much better than organized misrule.

As regards the frying pan to fire transition, peace and prosperity don't follow automatically when an oppressive ruler is shown the door. The French Revolution triggered much bloodshed, chaos, and a series of European wars. Despite all that, 1789 was a giant step for civilization along a confusing and uneven road called progress.

Closer home, after the communist rule ended in East Europe, much of the population was pauperized. There was tremendous hardship and lawlessness particularly in Russia. One of the largest exports from East Europe to the rest of the continent was prostitutes. The six former Yugoslav republics fought several bloody wars between 1991 and 2001. But in less than two decades, East Europe has reclaimed much of its lost ground.

Let us throw out the Left and welcome chaos for some time. Let us have faith in ourselves. The land of Ram Mohan Roy, Bankim Chandra, Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar, Rabindranath Tagore and Swami Vivekananda cannot have become so barren that we will not find a way to reclaim our rightful place on the map.

Voting for West Bengal

For about 45 minutes yesterday, I heard Ms. Mamata Banerjee deliver an election speech. I had no choice. The meeting was held at less than 100 metres from my flat and amplifiers were blaring out her speech.

Although she was here for the Lok Sabha elections, Ms. Banerjee began by recalling what the previous municipal corporation headed by her party had done to beautify the park and lake in our area. I thought, like any consummate speaker, she was building a rapport with her audience, and would soon tackle issues weightier than beautification of a park. But I was mistaken. She didn’t even mention the global economic crisis and its impact upon us, nor the threat of terrorism, nor the runaway increase in prices of essential things. She offered no glimpse into her plans for the coming Lok Sabha (if there be any), or why her alliance, the UPA, is the best candidate to form the next government. She took potshots at the left in West Bengal for their failures and fascist tendencies, but didn’t offer a cogent criticism. Throughout her speech, she raised and lowered her volume and pitch like a third-rate actor, cracked cheap jokes and recited cheaper doggerels. Except for her seemingly genuine empathy for the victims of the left misrule, there was nothing worth noting in her speech. Another positive about the evening was that Ms. Banerjee was speaking from her heart. Even the worst speech writer would not be able to write such an inane speech.

Yet, on the 13th of March 2009, I am going to vote for her party. Not only that, I am voluntarily telling everyone that would care to listen, why they should vote out the left. I am doing such a thing for the first time in my ordinary, run-of-the-mill life. Why?

The charges against the LF government are many and well documented. Let me mention a few. Since making significant contribution by way of land reform and panchayet raj system in their early days, the LF has done nothing for West Bengal. The state ranks first in seasonal starvation and trafficking of women. It is third from the top in the school drop-out rate (80% compared to the national average of 52%, as reported by the government in parliament in 2006). The overall situation is pathetic, to put it mildly.

In state run universities, everyone, from the vice chancellor to the sweeper, is appointed on the recommendation of the ruling party. Naturally, merit has become a casualty. There is hardly any name from West Bengal on the list of successful IAS / IPS candidates. Little teaching takes place in government and government aided schools and colleges. According to a survey done by the Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata in 2006, in a particular year, 86% of the students taking the Secondary exam in West Bengal depended on private tutors.

The public health system is a shame. None, other than the absolute destitute, go to a government hospital. There, they often have to pay touts to get the privilege of being treated shabbily as in-patients. The majority, including many poor people, are forced to pay astronomical sums to buy healthcare from the pitiless and ever-hungry
mercenaries who run private hospitals. The more enterprising go to CMC Vellore and other hospitals in South India. The Coromandal Express from Kolkata to Chennai is called the “Hospital Express”.

The National Rural Employment Guarantee (NREG) Act passed in September 2005 is a watershed because it gives our rural people the legal right to employment. Although the right is partial, it is a beginning nonetheless. Under the NREG Programme, every able-bodied person in our villages can demand manual labour for 100 days every year. The local authorities have to provide such work within 15 days at a wage fixed by the respective states. If they can’t, they have to pay an unemployment allowance. Ninety percent of the expenses under the scheme is borne by the Central Government and a mere 10 percent by the states.

Properly implemented, this scheme should go a long way in reducing seasonal starvation and migration. But until February 2007, on an average, only 37.50 man-days of work was created under the scheme per person all over the country, as against a target of 100 days per year. Rajasthan (72.68 days), MP (61.61 days) and Chattisgarh (44.71 days) performed relatively better. Jharkhand (36.41) and Bihar (33.51) were among the laggards.

One would expect that the self-appointed messiahs of the poor, the left, would grab such a scheme with both hands. But the number of work-days created in West Bengal in 2007-08 was, hold your breath, 18 days.

The reason is not far to seek, the landed gentry of West Bengal, who traditionally supported the Congress earlier, has switched almost entirely to the left. In fact they are the left in our countryside and control most of the panchayets. If land-less labourers get the taste of a daily wage of 80 rupees under the NREGP, these land owners wouldn’t find firm hands at the much lower rates they pay now.

But statistics can never tell you what has been happening in West Bengal. To explain the situation, let me recall Shyam Benegal’s first film, Ankur. It begins with a shot where two rowdies come on a motorbike and pick up some vegetables from the village market without bothering to pay. They, brothers of the local landlord, are not challenged. After some days, one of them takes a fancy in a school teacher’s wife, picks her up and keeps her as a sex-slave in his house.

There is no attempt to hide the fact.

The message is clear. In a feudal society, the king has the first charge over everything, be it vegetables or women. Whatever the royal family doesn’t need is there for the rest of the people.

West Bengal today, in that restricted sense, is a feudal society. But the king is not one person here: he is a collection of 2.5 to 3 lakh members of the CPI M and their cronies. The total number might be around 15 lakh or thereabout, no one knows for sure. You can get a job if none of them need that particular job (which is unlikely), you can build your house if you buy building materials from one of them at exorbitant prices, you’ll find a hospital bed if you know one of them.

These 15 lakh who rule us cannot do so unless the rest of the 8 crore are terrified of them. So terror is an essential tool in their hands. For a starter, they had to make the police subservient to the party. They have done so with total success. Cases against their comrades seldom come to conclusion. Whether it is burning to death 17 Ananda Margis on the streets of Kolkata, or the brutal killing of 11 farmers in Suchpur, Nanur in Birbhum, no one has been convicted so far, although everyone knows the killers and their names are openly mentioned in newspapers. In the second case, the OC of the Nanur police station, Mr. Sufal Ray Ghatwal, who was close to filing the charge-sheet, was transferred out. He was mysteriously murdered some time later. On the other hand, police routinely put political opponents behind bars by filing false cases.

The CPI M has been using rape and murder in Nandigram systematically to intimidate the local people into submission. Some of the goons were caught by the CBI with irrefutable evidence, but were let off by the state police. Even as I type this, today’s lead headline in the Statesman says: Trinamul leader killed, mother gangraped in Khejuri.

This wholesale abrogation of the rule of law churns one’s stomach. But the terrorisation doesn’t stop there. The party interferes in family disputes too. Village councils try and punish inconvenient people in total disregard of the judicial process. West Bengal today is in George Orwell’s 1984. The big brother is watching.

The people of West Bengal must get out of this stifling situation. It doesn’t matter whether our next government will be more efficient or less. Even if a change of government leads to some instability and disorder, so be it. As Rolland said, “If the order is unjust, disorder is the beginning of justice.” No fascist has ever changed his ways. No fascist has ever walked out of office and taken a train to his retirement. He has to be thrown out.

Fortunately, democracy offers us a non-violent tool to get rid of the red fascists. If they have only a handful of MPs in the Lok Sabha, they will not be able to blackmail the next central government. In that case there is chance of emancipation for West Bengal in 2011. Our problems will not be solved by mere change of government. But as one of my friends put it, we need a change that is changeable!

And there is no reason to believe that a really good leadership will never emerge here. If Bihar can have a tryst with Mr. Nitish Kumar, another visionary will surely emerge in West Bengal.

But if we can’t get out of the present rut, we don’t stand a chance. We will continue to live in this cesspool of mediocrity and totalitarian rule. We must give ourselves a chance!

Have I justified my decision to vote for Ms. Mamata Banerjee? If you think I haven’t, please read these lines written by an infinitely wiser man:

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;
Where words come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the
dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought and action –
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.

Amma

The folding umbrella was yet to appear in Indian markets. Umbrellas were long, slim and sexy. And I had grown up in a place where people held closed umbrellas by their handles, that is, upside up. But I never stopped to think about it until arriving in Kerala.

If technology has given us conveniences like collapsible brollies, it has taken away some too. One of them is the low flying commercial aircraft. In a bright December morning, I changed plane at Chennai and boarded a made-in-India Avro. There were no hatches above the seats, our hand luggage was dumped at a corner of the cabin and secured with a net. In Kerala, our plane flew low over a lush green sea, barely metres above the serrated fronds of millions of coconut palms. Through occasional gaps in the foliage, you could also see meandering rivulets, tiled roofs, churches-mosques-temples with glistening sandy compounds, schools, and children cheering lustily at the aircraft.

It was a time when I still smelt of college. Back home, when I had landed myself a job in Thiruvananthapuram, the capital city of Kerala, I took out an atlas. Putting one prong of a compass on my hometown, Kolkata and the other on Thiruvananthapuram, I drew a circle with Kolkata at the centre. The circle included Lahore, the Yangtze River, Nom Pen and Hanoi.

It was to be my first day in office and I left my hotel nattily dressed, in a grey business suit. As I walked out into the road, I realized it had been a mistake; I stood out like a joker in a stream of men and women in sparkling white dhotis and saris. Not a pair of trousers to be seen anywhere …. People around watched me with bemusement, and the local mongrels, with suspicion. There were a lot more office-going women on the streets than one would find in North India. The men invariably had pencil thin moustaches and the women, shocks of beautiful long jet black hair.

It was a pleasantly sunny morning but both men and women, each one of them, carried an umbrella, holding them – for some curious reason – upside down.

My office-to-be was in a quiet corner of the town – a small branch office of a bank with a few people behind a counter – none in front – and a lonesome man sitting in a glass cabin, the door to which proclaimed in three languages that its occupant was the manager. My future boss: an old man slouching behind a pile of registers, smoking a poor man’s bidi, and observing me with a glint in his eyes. A three-piece suit obviously makes a different impression upon a banker compared to what it does on the common man or mongrel. He stubbed out his bidi quickly, stood up and offered me a seat. Then he lit a long cigarette with flourish and asked me what he could do for me. When I said what he could, his face fell. Without more ado, he put out his cigarette, put it in his drawer carefully, and fished out the half-burnt bidi from the ashtray to light it again.

Exchange of pleasantries with the boss was followed by an introduction to my would-be colleagues. I was taken around as someone who had come all the way from the North-east to join the bank. The men were friendly and enthusiastic; they shook my hand firmly. When it was the turn to meet the only girl who worked there, I committed a second, and a rather serious faux pas. As she was shaping up to do a namaste, I grabbed her right hand and shook it vigorously as if I felt obliged to return the warmth conveyed by her male colleagues. A hushed silence descended on the premises, the girl blushed violently and I was politely escorted away.

I didn’t know that let alone shaking hands, you were not even expected to sit next to a member of the opposite sex on a public bus in Kerala. The neighbouring state of Tamilnadu had stricter rules. Seats on one side of public buses were reserved for women, deferentially called ladies’ seats, like anywhere else in India. But unlike elsewhere, a low railing ran along the centre, enclosing an area, which for want of a better word, I would call the ladies’ stand! A man sitting on a ladies seat or standing in the area reserved for women would be penalized. However, I am not sure if there was any penalty for violating the ladies’ airspace.

My ignorance of the cultural nuances of my hosts cost me dearly. In office, I was marked as the guy who shook hands with Rani Joseph! Yet, the gravity of my crime didn’t quite sink in until much later. By then, I had become chummy with my boss and the rest of the crowd, including the girl under reference. One evening, while my boss and I were sharing a drink, he told me, ‘Forgive me for asking this question – you seem to be a normal fellow – tell me, how on earth you could shake hands with a girl? I can even try to understand the psychology of a rapist, but what kind of perversion is that?’

People from some other countries might consider the phrase elected communist government an oxymoron, but it is a political reality in India. Kerala was the first state to have elected a communist government in 1957. It was a watershed in modern history: for the first time anywhere in the world, communists came to power through the ballot. It was a working class government headed by a man from the upper crust of the social elite, who had personally fought many battles against the caste system. But communism hadn’t apparently impacted upon the people’s behaviour very deeply. A rather high barrier between the genders was just one aspect. Often, on meeting a new person, the first question that I would be asked was, ‘Which caste do you belong to?’ And the second: ‘How much is your salary?’

The second of course is a pan-Indian query; in some places, people might even ask you how much you made under the table! But one facet that bore an unquestionable imprint of communism was the political rallies and processions that were, and still is, an integral part of life in Kerala.

I stayed in a hotel and was looking for a house, which was not easy to come by. The community of landlords there firmly believed that every bachelor was a philanderer. One afternoon, as I was about to cross MG Road, the main thoroughfare, I was stopped by a procession. I was hungry and eagerly waited for the jatha to end as my destination on the other side was the Indian Coffee House, where I would snatch a quick bite during lunch break.

Suddenly, a fight broke out between the men in the procession and their unseen political rivals. Both sides started pelting brickbats and soda-water bottles. The passers by vanished in a trice and the shops downed their shutters. I took shelter at a corner created by a building jutting out into the road. Not a safe haven, but the best available under the circs. Not one non-combatant was on the road, except for me and a stately woman in her late-fifties. She was standing beside me and surveying the situation with obvious disdain and unconcern. She was beautiful, tall, dark and in a white sari. After some time, there was a lull on the street and a far-away siren signalled the advent of police vehicles.

My companion told me something, not a word of which I could understand, except “police”. But I could notice a trace of anxiety in that remarkably calm person. In a flash, I understood what she meant, ‘Brickbats might have missed you, but the police lathis won’t.’

I was still wondering what to do when she caught hold of my arm and pulled. She walked remarkably fast for a woman of her age and led me along some roads and narrow alleys to her house.

That is how I met Saraswati Amma, an extraordinary materfamilias, and found a roof over my head in Thiruvananthapuram.

Before going to office the next day, as I dumped my backpack and suitcase in a small spare cottage in Saraswati Amma’s compound, I saw a big moustachioed man vigorously washing clothes in the open. He was Manian, Saraswati Amma’s son-in-law. As Manian was washing, his wife Savitri left for office. Quite a few of the household chores were his responsibility. Besides washing clothes, he would wash their three-year-old son, Kuttan. Every morning during my stay in the house, Kuttan would run around the compound shouting “Kulikkyaenda!” on his tiny but athletic legs. Papa would run after him. Manian was rather stocky, and his son would often outwit him with sudden turns and deft dives.

Of the few Malayalam expressions that I somehow picked up, “I don’t want to take bath” was the first. Saraswati Amma’s elder son, Govindankutty lived with his in-laws, which was referred to as his wife-house, in a literal translation from Malayalam.

She served me a steaming cup of frothy tea and a boiled plantain. The curious combination came as another minor culture shock.

Originally, the Nairs (or Nāyars) were a martial community, who were feudal lords, land officials and members of the militias that protected the tiny Kerala kingdoms before the British conquest in 1792. Later, they did exceedingly well in education and have become successful in all the vocations that educated Indians normally take up. Earlier, the community was matrilineal. A Nair family owned property jointly and included brothers and sisters, the sisters’ children, and their daughter’s children. As property passed by inheritance to the female offspring, Nair women had an important position in the family. But the legal head of the family was the oldest man, traditionally known as the Karnavar. Interestingly, neither the Karnavar nor the senior-most woman wielded absolute power. Rather, they were two fulcrums in the family power structure.

This system has been abandoned over time and Nairs have switched over to the patriarchal structure of kinship and inheritance. This story is about a time when the past overflowed into the present. Saraswati Amma, whom I started calling just Amma, was the undisputed mistress of what she surveyed.

Her husband, Kunjukrishna Kaimal was a happy-go-lucky fellow who was contented to play the second fiddle to his wife. His face, criss-crossed with innumerable lines, was always smiling. A former serviceman, he had seen action in North Africa and the Middle East. He had walked down so many roads that you could safely call him a man. And as it often happens, varied and trying experience invested him with a calmness and self-assurance that nothing could upset. He had accepted with quiet dignity the fact that his second son was physically and mentally challenged.

He soon became a friend and guide. Those days, I would sleep early, 10 PM used to be midnight for me. Once, Kunjukrishna Kaimal pulled me out of the bed and took me to a Kathakali performance, which ended at sunrise the next day. On Sundays, he would sometimes take me out to see Kalarippayattu, a martial art form practised in Kerala. The performances used to be brilliant exhibitions of power and agility, where two lithe contestants dressed only in dhotis would jump high in the air and perform stunning acrobatics with a sword and a shield. Incidentally, Kalarippayattu had been almost an exclusive domain of the Nairs, a part of their martial traditions.

The four walls of my room were decorated with 43 framed photographs of Saraswati Amma’s forebears and members of her extended family. Being from a nuclear family, I initially felt the somewhat atavistic exhibition was ridiculous. But later, I realized that, as someone from a family that had been displaced during the Partition of India, and that had later splintered into many tiny units, I didn’t know what words like family meant to an archetypal Indian. Perhaps, in a desolate village in what is now another country which I have never seen, there was a house with similar snapshots of people with some of whom I bear a striking resemblance.

Although it was not part of the deal, the morning cuppa started coming to my room every day. Then the breakfast. Occasionally, Amma would call me for dinner too. Human relationships develop in imperceptible silence, like dewdrops falling on a meadow. One evening on returning from office, I found the forty-fourth framed photograph on the wall: yours truly flanked by a beaming Kunjukrishna and a stiff Amma.

Next year, the monsoon hit the Kerala coast punctually on the 1st of June with a deluge. And then it rained continuously for sixty days.

There is much similarity among the modern Sanskrit-based North Indian languages. The Dravidian languages, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam have a different origin. As a Bengali, although I can make some sense when Assamese, Oriya, Marathi or Gujarati is spoken, I couldn’t understand a word of Malayalam. In Amma’s family, everyone except her spoke some English. Being an ex-serviceman, Kunjukrishna spoke better Hindi than I. Only Amma, her youngest offspring and I didn’t have a common language to share.

Towards the beginning of the sixty-day rain, one evening, as I was leaving for supper, Amma stopped me. I didn’t follow a word she spoke, but I could understand her as lucidly as I did on the first day, ‘You shouldn’t go out in this rain. Come in and join us for dinner.’

I, in Bengali: ‘No Amma, I have been taking advantage of your hospitality. Let me go.’

She smiled, ‘You shouldn’t defy elders. Come in.’

It was a command.

Such bilingual, or rather, non-lingual conversations became routine over time. Despite her total ignorance of Bengali, she began to understand me perfectly. And I tried to reciprocate.

The fact that her last child had been born with congenital problems cast a shadow of perpetual sadness on Amma’s beautiful face. Gopalan was around twenty. He could move around with difficulty and had the mind of a three-year-old. As he had been born with a cleft palate, his speech was garbled. His parents and siblings alone could understand what he said. And he painted beautifully, mostly with bare fingers.

One day, when no one was around, Amma called me. She put her hand on Gopalan’s shoulder and said something about him. The only other words that I clearly understood were Kamakhya and Guwahati: ‘I want to share something with you in confidence. Please don’t discuss this with anyone. Manian told me there is a god-man in Kamakhya who has done many miracles. He lives near Guwahati. Can you take Gopalan, his father and me to Guwahati?’

I didn’t have the heart to tell her that it would be pointless to take the sick child and the old man to the other end of the country looking for a fraud. So I said, ‘Yes, of course, I can.’ After some thought, I added, ‘Why don’t we organize an exhibition of Gopalan’s paintings?’

Neither the trip nor the exhibition ever materialized. A week later, my father died at the age of 57 after a massive heart attack. After years of struggle and many bitter failures, he had been able to set up a fairly successful business venture. It was not grandiose, but neither was it small enough to be abandoned. Besides, we had to think of his twenty employees. As the only offspring, I had to step into his shoes.

The day I left Thiruvananthapuram, Amma said nothing. Perhaps she wanted to tell me that her relationship with me was beyond words.

Let them play now

Azharuddin Mohammed Ismail, the child star of Slumdog Millionaire, was slapped by his father for refusing to give interview to media. “The 10-year old child, who was plucked from a Mumbai slum to play the young Salim in the multiple Oscar winning movie, has been living amid constant media scrutiny since his return home from Los Angeles. Tired after a long flight, Azhar wanted to go to sleep and refused to oblige the media. His father, Mohammed Ismail … got infuriated and slapped him. "I was being naughty. I did not want to give the interview as I was tired so he slapped me but he loves me,” said Azhar." (The Statesman, 1 March, 2009)

Azhar’s father’s reaction deserves scrutiny, but before that, one must say that the child’s response was amazing. If indeed this was not a tutored statement, the boy exhibited extraordinary poise, maturity, and self-control.

Obviously, the same cannot be said about his old man. He behaved boorishly, but from whatever little has been reported, it would be unfair to judge him. He may or may not be one of those numerous parents who want their offspring to go for the moon, and if an exceptional one does reach there, are too eager to cash their success.

You see these parents – mostly mothers – taking their sons to cricket “academies” on Sunday mornings. I have observed these boys’ faces closely. Very often, joy and anticipation are missing on them. Maybe, for them, it is just another round of “private tuition”, a few more hours of drudgery. It cannot be otherwise if it’s thrust upon them. And sadly, most of them will disappoint their parents. After all, there isn’t room for so many Tendulkars and Gangulis. And in the process, they miss out on enjoying sports, a primary source of happiness in our childhood.

You also see these parents on reality TV contests. They show real people all right, but these gaudy shows reflect only a sad kind of reality, the reality of our greed. These parents pressurize their kids to win at any cost. Some of them even fight with the judges if their children’s results aren’t satisfactory. In these shows, children are publicly abused and humiliated by some stupid judges, for no fault except not reaching the ethereal standards arbitrarily set for them. That most of these judges are leading lights of our cultural establishment is perhaps the best proof of the poverty of what goes on in the name of culture in our society. It is also possible that the show organizers deliberately encourage vicious criticism in order to spice up the show, in absolute, appalling disregard for the young participants.

In a more perverted form of these competitions, there was one where the judges didn’t select a winner, but at every round, threw out the participant that scored the lowest marks. In that contest for the loser’s crown, no one seemed to care how much damage was done to the psyche of a small child when his or her failure was telecast to millions of homes. I have used the past tense in expressing my opinion here because I stopped watching televised contests in early 2008, after suffering a particularly disgusting episode. But I guess they haven’t changed for the better. What has?

Critics and other experts often botch up while assessing creative art. Everyone knows that Van Gogh sold only one picture and got hardly any recognition while he was alive. But the case of Henry Rousseau (1844-1910), a French artist, is less well-known. For some critics, Rousseau was the annual laughingstock at Paris art exhibitions. Yet, he was later admired by leading lights like Paul Gauguin, Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque. You can see his works in famous museums; some of his paintings such as The Sleeping Gypsy and The Dream (the one somewhat incongruously at the head of this post) are widely recognized as masterpieces. Despite belated recognition, Rousseau died in grinding poverty.

We will never know how many musical talents the omniscient experts have managed to destroy. But that number would be relatively small. A much greater number are irrevocably damaged by parents who try to undo their own failures by burdening their children with absurd weights of expectations.

Once there was a controversy in England about what should be taught to children of different age groups. Experts offered conflicting opinions and a storm raged for months. Joining the debate, D. H. Lawrence wrote a letter to the editor of possibly The Times. The subject was: About the nine-year-old. The two-line letter said: Let them play now. Life will teach them what to learn, later. (I am quoting from memory; the words used by Lawrence might have been slightly different, but the message was the same.)

It’s time our parents let their children be children. Nothing helps a child better than a healthy and happy childhood.

And that doesn’t mean children shouldn’t be encouraged to work hard and excel. After all, it is because of the training to work hard that our professionals are making a mark all over the world. (This is true for Chinese expatriates too.) The point is: Shouldn’t children have the freedom to choose their calling? Parents only need to educate them about the available options and provide the infrastructure. It could be gilli danda for one and chess for another, and photography or literature for someone else. There are infinite ways in which children can make their lives enjoyable and fulfilling at the same time. Why only cricket, or vocal music?

And should parents turn a child’s hobby into a pitiless machine that produces champions but destroys childhood in the process?

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Postscript: There are sensible parents too, although apparently they are a small minority. It is possible that Azhar’s father is generally sensible. Perhaps he was dazzled by the unfamiliar glare of the limelight. And he is unlikely to know how tiring a flight from Los Angeles to Mumbai could be. (Did he accompany Azhar to Los Angeles? The report is silent on that.) But what can be said about the journalists who pestered the little child for an interview when he was tired, sleepy and jet-lagged? In the cut-throat competition to increase readership / audience, journalists are quite capable of bypassing normal human decency. The Times of India even published a photograph of a crying Azharuddin. Should they have intruded into the child’s private space at such an hour of misery? Should anyone treat human suffering as saleable commodity?


Kolkata, March 2009