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

Little boy with a young mother in burqa

 

Little boy with a young mother in burqa,

Please look at me, I want to talk to you.

You see, I’d be older than your grandpa—

Long ago, my eyes too had wonder

Just like yours, but

That’s not what I wanted to tell you.

Old men often lose their way,

You’ll soon find out.

 

I wanted to tell you that when I saw you,

A vague, overpowering fear gripped me

As I tried to see you ten years into the future.

Will you be in a school that teaches you

To love every human

And hate nothing, except

Selfishness, violence, and blind faith?

 

Will you be in a school

That teaches you to question

What everyone believes is true?

A school where you’ll learn

That humans, whales, and butterflies

Are all made of atoms,

In fact, particles even tinier

That might have been parts

Of stars and galaxies once?

That you and I are no different from

Moondust or the fiery sun?

That is a brief summary of human knowledge,

But please don’t take my words for it.

Read, think, and find out.

 

Fifteen years into the future,

Will you be in a college

Where fools won’t try to teach you

About borders, barbed wires,

And why you must build walls?

 

Fifteen years down the road,

Will you have lots of friends,

And maybe, a girlfriend too,

Whose religions or kinships won’t matter

In the relationships you make?

 

Will you grow up to live

In a middleclass mohalla where

Narayanans, Kalams, Mukherjees, and Murmus

Live side by side? And no college

Bars entry to your sister

Because of what she chooses to wear

On her head? Or maybe, she will

Choose not to cover her head?

 

Little boy with a young mother in hijab,

A vague, overpowering fear gripped me

When I looked into the future

And tried to find you.

In your journey through the years

Will you rediscover the land

Where your grandpa and I lived

Long, long ago?

It was

A highly flawed place even then,

But those days, hatred wasn’t state policy,

And nobody had to wear

An invisible yellow badge on their chest.

 

Krishnagiri, Tamil Nadu

15 September 2022

 

 

 

 

 

Swapan Sarkar >>>

Goodbye Swapan-da, my friend for over fifty years. 

I haven’t met anyone who was more handsome than you. If I had been a woman (or gay), I could have easily fallen in love with you. 

Neither have I met many people who have such intense passion for life. 

We hadn’t met over the last five years. I missed you then. I miss you now. I will keep missing you. 

*

Swapan Sarkar, who lived in Bolpur and Kolkata, set up a small-scale industry, Fresseynet Prefabs*, on (I think) a two-acre plot of barren land at a distant corner of West Bengal in 1974-75. The factory manufactures prestressed concrete poles and concrete pipes. 

He was a charming young man of our generation from a small town with ordinary college education, a few thousand rupees in his pocket, and NO godfather anywhere. Yet, he dreamed of setting up an industry in the moribund economy of West Bengal. He would go on to fulfil his dream. 

Although he came from one of the most illustrious families of the district, I have just come to know from an obituary written by Bharatjyoti Roychowdhury that his father Narayandas Sarkar had been a communist who used to sell Marxist literature on trains. So, it would be reasonable to say that Swapan-da didn't get any worldly wealth from his old man. His mother had passed long ago. Swapan Sarkar was a self-made man who had to make do without father’s support or mother’s love and nurturing. (Although he and I spent hundreds of hours together and talked about everything under the sky, he never mentioned his parents to me even once.) Incidentally, like his father, he too was a communist in his youth which showed—if Bernard Shaw is to be believed—he had a heart. After leaving the Communist Party of India (Marxist), he joined a group of communist revolutionaries. And that brought us together. 

I saw him from close quarters when, in 1973-74, he was trying to find his way in the killing mazes of government offices and banks to secure the necessary permits and funds to set up Fresseynet Prefabs. His grit and self-confidence were to be seen to be believed. (*If you are stumped by the name of his firm, Eugène Freyssinet was a French engineer who invented the technology of prestressed concrete, a process that uses much smaller quantity of steel to give equal or more strength compared to conventional concrete.) 

His passion for new technology wouldn’t ebb. Much later, he would set up a factory that manufacture bricks from fly ash, something that thermal power plants produce in thousands of tonnes and is a perennial environmental problem around thermal plants. It was possibly the first such unit in Bengal. 

Swapan-da went to China several times before importing the brick-manufacturing plant. Generally, he was fond of travelling and went to lots of places including to Siberia on the trans-Siberian train. One of his trips was to Venice when the (only) film produced by him (PAAR, directed by Gautam Ghose with Shabana Azmi and Nasiruddin Shah) was shown at the Venice Film Festival. Incidentally, Swapan-da’s finances bottomed out by making the film.

Just as time couldn’t wither Cleopatra’s beauty, it could do little to Swapan Sarkar’s handsomeness. Neither could wealth change his persona. He remained the same person, his warmth and wit undiminished. Always ready to share a drink till late into the night as a quiet music filled the background. (He was someone who frequently changed his caller tune with beautiful clips of Rabindrasangeet or Bengali folk songs.) The only difference that I saw in him over the years was that his circle of friends expanded manifold. He could make friends easily. Till the very end, he was filled with what the French call joie de vivre. 

On 29 August, some of us old friends were to meet Swapan-da and his second wife Nasreen at a common friend’s place. As I hadn’t met Nasreen, I was looking forward to the meeting for two good reasons. But they couldn’t come as Swapan-da’s condition turned for the worse.

Swapan Sarkar passed away in his sleep two days later, in the early morning of 1 September 2022. 

Bengaluru 05 

September 2022