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The old man who unleashed a madness

26/8/2011

When was the last time you saw a 20-year-old wave the Tricolour and shout Bharat Mata Ki Jai, wearing a determined look and a Gandhi topi on her head? Not in a period film but in real life. Isn’t the answer this week? And wasn’t it the first time in about 60 years? And doesn’t it bring a lump in the throat to see so many young people with their bright shining eyes, earnest faces and acid-washed jeans wearing khadi kurtas and standing under umbrellas in falling rain in Delhi’s Ramlila Maidan, in Mumbai’s Azad Maidan, in Bangalore’s Freedom Park, in places like Sangrur, Hissar and Sirsa: shouting slogans about the motherland that we thought they had forgotten a long time back.

From "Main bhi corrupt" (I am also corrupt) to "Main bhi Anna" (I am also Anna), India seems to have changed hats in the last fortnight. There might be pros and cons (you could even say Kiran Bedis and Arundhati Roys) to the Anna Hazare movement and intellectual murmurs of discontent but it does look like this 74-year-old has made a younger generation step out of Barista coffee bars, chuck their designer headgear, i pods and Ray Bans for Gandhi topis and National flags. The surprise element of the Anna Hazare drive to bring on a strong Jan Lokpal Bill has been the participation of youth – the Facebook and Twitter generation. Young boys with pony tails and electric guitars are strumming songs about India, girls with butterfly tattoos are taking out rallies in the heat, school children are waving paper flags in the crowd. The campaign seems to have taken the country back to pre-Independence India and introduced young India to a leader they have fallen in love with and a cause they want to fight for.

Young theatre actors in Hyderabad, school teachers in Muzzafarnagar, Air Force employees in Hyderabad, office assistants in Jammu: who don’t know each other but know the common pain they want to rid themselves of, are coming together in spirit inspired by an old man who seems to have unleashed a madness. Candlelight vigils, dharnas, demonstrations, shaved heads, sand sculptures with a dozen Annas rising up on sandy ocean banks are colouring our TV screens. School girls with fat pigtails and blue uniforms waving paper flags, college boys with the Tricolour painted on bare brown chests, young smiling volunteers dishing out dal and rice from Anna ki Rasoi at Ramlila Maidan, spikey-haired artists painting national flags on willing cheeks; these are the newly recruited soldiers of old man Anna. They are the ones standing vigil in the sun and rain; in sultry August evenings and dark fasting nights, not just in metros like Delhi and Mumbai but also places like Karad and Kotdwar, Moga and Manali.

We are a corrupt country. We are a corrupt people. How many of us can put a hand on the heart and say we never paid a bribe to get a driving license; or got a passport in an emergency by dishing out a few extra thousand bills; or used an office car for a private trip or an official phone for a personal call; or paid money in black besides white for a flat or a piece of land? Very few, if any. Not only have we done all this, we have also employed underage children for housework/looking after the baby/the shop; paid bare minimum wages to menial employees who need the job so desperately that they won’t protest. We have bribed traffic police, got train reservations on a discreet extra payment, managed postings by greasing palms. Corruption has become a way of life for us so completely that anyone who cannot or will not indulge in it is labelled a fool. It’s true that the Lokpal Bill cannot change this on its own or overnight. But Kisan Baburao Hazare, now of course Anna (elder brother) to the whole world, has taught young India to think (if only for a while) about issues other than a degree in a foreign university, a job with an MNC or a night at the pub. He seems to have introduced them to the country that belongs to them; to satyagrah and Gandhian means of protest ( something most of us had forgotten) and the passion of supporting a common social cause. He has got us Indians singing Vande Mataram again when we weren’t even sure we remembered the words. He has us waving the Tricolour (that used to come out of the cobwebs only on Independence Day) and shouting slogans about Bharat Mata (had't heard either of those two words in a long time) that must make the tears well up in our grand or great grandparents ’ eyes who saw this kind of passion only during the freedom movement.

From a nation that has celebrated corruption in all these years of independence (we boast about the black money we have, give each other tips of which palms to grease and with how much for a certain job, buy tickets in black for a super hit film about a corrupt and fearless cop) we seem to have once again become Mahatma Gandhi's country of people who want to participate in the change they want to bring about. Might not last, but feels good nevertheless.

The social media has played a very important part in getting a country of a billion plus together, particularly young college kids - the Facebook/Twitter generation - who were born long after Gandhi died and are getting a feel of what struggles and causes are all about. India’s so called second fight for freedom – freedom from corruption - is starting with elementary lessons. Naturally, there is a nursery rhyme for beginners. Twinkle twinkle little star; Anna is our rock star! that’s how it goes.

Bharat Mata: Mother India

This article was the cover story in Deccan Herald, Saturday magazine. You can look it up on http://www.deccanherald.com/content/186461/indias-pied-piper.html

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Professor Arora of 28 Regarpura (and other graffiti on the walls of time)

19/8/2011

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Something I found googling for Professor Arora's graffitti. Alas! he wasn't there

Once upon a time when there was no satellite television or glossy magazines with skimpily-clad size zero beauties causing the phenomenon of drooling in male buyers (only staid stuff like Saptahik Hindustan, Reader's Digest and Manohar Kahaniyan - OK this sometimes had skimpily clad beauties though more stout than size zero); there was Professor Arora. And there was wall graffitti.

If I got into a time capsule and went back 25 plus years I would reach a time zone when my favourite memories are of looking out through the rusty iron barred windows of a train swiftly uncoiling across sugarcane fields and mango orchards like a massive red serpent leaping to swallow its prey. Right through my growing years, every single summer holiday (barring one when we flew to Leh to meet my dad, who was posted there, and got to see Pangong Tso lake and the inside of an aeroplane) we would make a train journey from Agra to Delhi (with a break for moong dal pakodas at Mathura station) and then to Kotdwar. From there, a bus took us to Lansdowne where Nanaji waited on his favourite chair with a mocking smile and a general knowledge quiz (the reason why Kaun Banega Crorepati and Mr Bachchan make me go misty-eyed). We would board the Mussorie Express from Old Delhi Railway Station in the night where - if we reached in time/the train was late - we would get to dump home cooked food for hot puries that were being fried by a vendor on the platform and spicy alu ki sabzi that was eaten out of a bowl made of dry leaves stitched together by dry twigs. And then, my brother and I would fight for turns at sitting near the window to feel the wind on our noses and watch time whiz past.

On our way back from Kotdwar (depressed and gloomy since we had to get back to school, had done very poorly in Nanaji's GK tests and had also not completed our holiday homework) we would know we were approaching Delhi (and hence doom) from the writing on the wall. Professor Arora of 28 Regarpura, Karolbagh, was right there innovatively advertising his matrimonial services (at a time when - as far as I know, though more learned readers would know better - there was no advertising either) on the dirty brick walls near the jhuggi clusters that had come up on the outskirts of the city.

Between the silent camaraderie of entire rows of early morning trackside squatters (who my Japanese sister-in-law naively mistook for men doing yoga on her first India visit), fat black buffaloes wallowing in pools of stagnated water with birds taking free rides on their backs, and naked brown kids running around waving at train passengers; Professor Arora would be right there (in spirit) imploring parents of unmarried people to meet him just once. With his tempting offer of Rishtey hi Rishtey (roughly translated as matrimonial alliances and more matrimonial alliances) he would try and coax them with an endearing Bas ek baar mil to len (C'mon, let's meet at least once). His complete address and phone number would be scribbled right there in thick white paint but alas there was no portrait which always left me wondering what this marketing genius looked like. I always imagined him as a stately old man with back combed white hair and a French beard, dressed in an elegant brown bandgala suit with a red handkerchief peeping out of his pocket. But you never know. He may well have been a paan-chewing, zarda-spitting, pot-bellied dirty old man in an up-folded lungi and yellowing vest (depending upon just how well or badly business was doing). Whether he provided perfect marriage partners or not, I don’t know, but back then he certainly provided dignity to the fading red walls across the Yamuna with snatches of untidily slapped on cement binding bricks together and, much to the relief of my embarrassed mother, took the attention of her curious pre teen kids away from seedier advertisement screaming about strange weaknesses and secret diseases (kamzori and gupt rog) which were meant only to be discussed (if at all) in hushed whispers in civilized circles.

Much water (read polluted muck) has flown in the Yamuna since then and I have seen a bit of graffiti across a few other walls, notably London where I spent precious time ogling open mouthed at the unbelievable attractions and cell numbers of buxom blonde babes scribbed inside red phone booths and also Northern Ireland where angry walls bore the brunt of the Catholic Protestant divide and took nasty digs at George Bush. Some areas of South Delhi these days bear some beautiful graffiti left behind by anonymous artists who go around with their spray paint when the city sleeps. And off and on through these 40 plus years of existence I have been exposed to the most scientifically-labelled biology diagrams scratched cave man style (possibly with fingernails - you obviously can't stop an artist when the artistic urge urges) on dirty public toilet walls. But absolutely nothing compares to the mark Prof Arora has left on my mind in its impressionable days with his endless scrawls on approaching walls hitting me in exploding 4 D right inside my second class train compartment, with the stench of rotting carcasses and ..err other stuff floating in the air. Not even surrepticious invitations from vaidhs and hakims and Yunani dawakhanas offering treatment for phee-sirs (fissures), bawaseer (i confess i don't know what that is) and naamardgi (i can guess what that is but i bet so can you) by Ayurvedic means or medicines made from dubious animal parts (like sande ka tel - whatever that might be) come a patch on it.

And now that we have dug out this old skeleton for the sake of this blog I promise you that on one of my visits to Delhi (if i get time off from the malls and my 100 plus relatives and friends), I shall go looking for 28 Regarpura, Karolbagh, to see if I can locate Professor Arora or his junior business partners who might still be working hard at keeping business kicking. Afterall people are still getting married. Ek baar mil hi len!

Puri: fried bread; Alu ki sabzi: potato curry; Rishtey hi rishtey: Matches and more matches; Bas ek baar mil toh len: Let’s meet at least once; vaidhs and hakims: doctors (connotation is that they are quacks) naamardgi: impotence

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The physiology of pain

11/8/2011

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There are some things that you wish you could do a Ctrl Alt Del on. Unfortunately, you can’t. That’s life. Bit different from a laptop. Whatever happens gets stored in permanent undeletable memory. And flashes before your eyes at will (its, not yours). Like my friend Liz recently wondered: Do we forget anything, ever? No, I don’t think we do. We sometimes forget where we placed a memory, just like we forget where we put the car keys or that box of low fat wheat flakes. But its right there somewhere, wrapped in the cobwebs of time, pushed back by fresher experiences and shall pop up when we least expect it to. Sometimes, linked with a smell, sometimes a song, sometimes a person, sometimes an emotion, sometimes something someone’s said casually.

Sometimes, when a certain song plays on the taxi stereo on a winding road to a hill or a bell tolls from a temple far away at night, or you bend down to smell a jasmine that grew in your mom’s garden many years back; a memory it links up with will just fall off the top shelf, where it has been resting for who-knows-how-many years, and hit you on the head. If it’s a sad memory it will hurt you - strangely enough - not on the head where it hit you, but in the throat, in that tiny knot of muscles that are constricting with the effort of keeping the eyes dry. Weird! Isn’t it? But then that’s the beauty of life. It’s weird. Or unique, if you wish to be politically correct.

But why am I giving you this sentimental drivel on a perfectly nice morning when life is probably waiting to pounce on you with something weird, sorry unique, that will make you whistle and say “wow”? Because, it’s supposed to be therapy. Relive an experience that scares you (because it has the power to hurt you), bring it out in the open and get on with life unburdened by its choking presence. So says, my ex roomy Maa Anima (I think you know her from an earlier blog). My technique is a bit different. I push all pain to the back of the mind, tell myself it’s gone and then live in constant suffocating fear, because I haven’t fooled myself one bit and I know it will pop out again. And again. It will pop out every time I push it back, and hurt me so many times when I could have just let myself get hurt once and gotten on with life. Stupid thing to do. But I believe a lot of other people do it too (do you?) and so there is this sense of shared stupidity which makes it not so stupid in my warped reasoning.

It’s funny how smart these ugly emotions are. They hold hands and travel together – making them stronger than a single person’s resolve to push them away. Hurt, guilt, shame, anger, ego, jealousy, insecurity - these are some of the goons that usually stick together and get on with the mission of making lives miserable. They post stuff on your wall and send you messages when you like to believe you have unfriended them. So what do you do when pain comes your way. No, seriously. What do you do? I usually try to push it away, along with its ugly friends that have landed on my chest and are making it difficult for me to breathe. Never works. Then I start eating the bare minimum since everything is anyways turning to sawdust in my mouth (only metaphorically speaking – I’ve never tasted sawdust. Dust sometimes, while cleaning a dirty bookrack, never sawdust). My logic is that I might as well make Cecilia (my aerobics instructor) happy. Eat less. Crunch the stomach more. “Come on you can do it. I want all of you girls in halter tops with toned backs by New Year eve,” her husky voice rings out in my ear and I push my plate away, the roti lying untasted. “Breathe out when you come up. Go slow on your way back. Don’t make that crunch easy for yourself. Feel the pain.” Cecilia talks to me some more. I know, I know. That’s how Aamir got his eight packs for Gajini. That’s how Shahrukh got his six packs for Om Shanti Om. “And why do you think they got back to wearing shirts after those films. Because girls (her voice has risen a few decibels, she knows what she is talking about) those abs stay only as long as you eat high protein diets and crunch maximum. The moment you stop doing it they go.”

That’s right baby, I tell myself. (Baby! Now who knows where I picked that up from, probably some trashy Hollywood film on HBO). This grief, this pain, this tightness in the lower jaw, shall stay only till you keep avoiding the reason for it. “Push yourself. Get out of your comfort zone.” Why the hell is Cecilia talking in my ear all the time. I leave the room where I’ve been staring at the TV for the past 20 minutes. If you ask me what I’ve been watching, I wouldn’t know. If you ask me how I lived my life today, I wouldn’t know that either. What a waste. If I kick the bucket tonight, I would have spent the last day of my unique life with an ugly emotion.

I search for him - my deliverer from all unhappiness and guilt, my taker away of the sorrows of life, my savior from the wolves of this world. I let the glass of whiskey be but I take his new cell out of his fingers because I know he can never listen to me with that seductress in his hands. “Anything wrong?” he asks, looking a little worried. "Yes". (Get on with it; shouts Cecilia) and I say it, hoping desperately he can do what he promised me 15 years back – i.e. be there for me in happiness and, more importantly, in sorrow. He looks at me with the same brown eyes that my son sometimes looks at me with. They look lighter tonight. Or maybe it’s the light. “Anything is only as important as we make it,” he says finally, “Just forget it! Let it go.” Whoosh! The pain is gone - just like that. It’s a special effect second only to the Sandman dissolving in Spiderman III. Along with it have disappeared its half a dozen dirty pals, who had been hounding me through the day. “And now, can I please have my new cell back.” I pass back the shiny Android that he recently swapped his Blackberry, that he earlier swapped his I Phone, that he even earlier swapped his older Android for. Any other day, that would have made smoke curl out of my ears. But today, he’s a hero. And even Superman is entitled a weakness. Right? Especially when all this while you’ve been thinking you only lived with Clark Kent.

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Confessions of a Facebook junkie

5/8/2011

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It’s a lonely Saturday evening and I’m sitting with a glass of wine, feeling sorry for myself till Facebook’s bright blue bordered home page hits me head on. Right across, I see Prithvi from Boston with his story of El Grande the sentient Mexican fan palm tree that talks to people and to the birds. He has posted his blog which is waiting to be read. It’s competing for my attention along with Rashmi the wide-smiled Vasudeva from Swansea, who wants to tell me all about her shoes (or, at least, someone’s shoes – I haven’t figured it out completely yet) on her very own blog post. There’s Aaja Panchi akela hai, a sweet Rafi song from a Dev Anand film that Richa the Delhi-based artist has posted with the message “Yesterday once more”. As I wait for it to upload I notice that Jyoti has just returned from the film Delhi Belly with a migraine and a review and Dipti still seems lost in the world of extreme astrophysics and the importance of silence while seeking answers – whether outside (in outer space) or inside (I think, she means stuff like soul). She has posted a clip from an Anil Ananthaswamy lecture that I want to listen to right after I’m through with the Dev Anand song.

Elsewhere in the world, there’s Meg, Leicester-based Ros’ little puppy yelping and scampering naughtily around her green lawn getting her tummy tickled by the kids in a home video and hey! Sanjiv has been blessed with a baby. He has put up an album of the new arrival that I absolutely must see. When I saw him last in real life, Sanju himself was just a little older than the baby he is holding in the picture and that makes me sentimental. Now, of course, on his Facebook profile shot the proud papa is sporting a moustache a Rathore king in Rajasthan would be proud of. I hunt around for Noopur the diva, my cousin, who recently shifted from Ahmedabad to Kuala Lumpur. I know she’s alone too because PJ (Piyush Jeejs - the husband) is on a trip home. Ah! There she is spending a day with her gym girlfriends looking quite gorgeous in a new blue polka dotted dress that I immediately plan to flick when I meet her in Bali later this year. I miss Renee my vivacious pal from kindergarten days but it’s a weekend and she’s probably out socializing. No wait, there she is, making a cheeky comment on my status message. I type out a retort. There’s a quick ping and she has appeared on the chat window as if by magic with a “Hey! What are you doing on Facebook on a Saturday?”

It’s just another evening on Facebook and I wonder why they call them virtual friends. They tell you stories, they sing you songs, they miss you when you’re not around, they make you smile when you’re upset, they make you laugh when you want to cry. They even give you company when you are alone at home and the hubby’s gone gallavanting to some pub in Bangalore from where he has sent you a cheery message saying he is listening to Rod Stewart with a glass of beer in his hands. Can friendship get more real than that? Facebook has changed our lives beyond recognition and if we leave the party now it will only be for another social network (Yes, Google + is pulling up its socks from right behind). And only if all our hundred plus friends and relatives are migrating as well.

Facebook has redefined friendships. And no, it’s not taking families away from each other all the time; it’s also bringing them closer sometimes. Every afternoon, in a small town in Punjab, nine-year-old Saransh comes back from school, has a quick bath and lunch and then sits down for an hour of playtime on Farmville, where he grows strawberries, rice, cotton and a host of other vegetables. To help him around, water his plants and feed them fertilizers he has Bunty mama, who has a virtual farm next door. In real life, Bunty mama migrated to London long before Saransh was born but the two have bonded over Facebook games, in spite of having met each other only twice.

Noopur, the KL-based diva I mentioned earlier, often gets a cheeky wall post from her son Paper Bag (named thus because he once shamed himself and offered to wear a paper bag over his head), who is doing a media internship in South Korea. “Mom, need to talk to you; 9 pm tonight, Malaysia time?” “Sure” she types, adds a smiley as an afterthought and clicks the like icon on his post. Then closing the tab, she gets back to the stuffed capsicum dish she is baking for lunch. No, Facebook isn’t taking our kids away from us, its bringing them closer too. What is more, it is also making the warm embrace of the great Indian family a little warmer by bringing granddads, grannies, little kids, uncles, aunts, working sons and daughters who have migrated all over the world together in a tight group hug that keeps them in touch with what the others are upto.

Those breathless Facebook virgins who believe that frustrated middle aged people are only making indecent proposals there are mistaken. That might be happening too but only with mutual consent. which makes it none of your business. (Unless it is your husband or wife being naughty, in which case it is none of our business). There is an option to ignore, block or report unwanted attention so it’s not such a big deal. And except for the kids, nobody on Facebook is a kid anymore. We can all avoid unwanted attention anytime we want. A social network is just an excuse.

And now, if you’ll excuse me I have to get back from this reverse sermonizing to the video that Tina has posted of her belly dancing class; tell the beautiful Reema where she can pick up a long flowery skirt for the summer; decipher the cryptic message sent by mad skydiver Satyendra who likes playing mind games; post my reaction to my Kiwi pal Julie Middleton’s status update on the Murdoch mess and make a sad face on Col JB’s (Jai Bahadur Singh's) romantic video that says he’s missing his wife in his deserted post on the China border.

Did I say lonely Saturday evening? A mere slip of the typing fingers. Make that lovely Saturday evening. When you are between friends even an uncomfortable computer chair feels like a bean bag in a lounge bar.

No names have been changed to protect privacy. Any resemblance to people on Facebook is intentional. If it sounds like you, it's probably you.

This article has appeared in the Deccan Herald. http://www.deccanherald.com/content/181642/confessions-facebook-junkie.html

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Rachna Bisht Rawat is a full time mom and part time writer. She is married to an Army officer whose work takes the family to some of the most interesting corners of India.

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...it's only words

The old man who unleashed a madness

Professor Arora of 28 Regarpura (and other graffiti on the walls of time)

The physiology of pain

Confessions of a Facebook junkie

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