Sun sets and flowers bloom

The sun has set in Tamil Nadu and the twin flowers bloomed in West Bengal. Both made possible by two women, high on whims and tantrums. But the similarity ends there. One is a political widow (well almost), groomed to perfection by her mentor, former Tamil Nadu chief minister M.G. Ramachandran; while the other is a rebel who rose from playing street politics, unnerving the urban, elite Calcuttans, and rode roughshod into the rural red fort of Bengal.
One has had two stints as chief minister; she has a polished demeanour with a ruthless streak; while the other has to test her skill as an administrator, but has a raw appeal. One oscillates between her castles in high-profile addresses of Kodai and Chennai, and is most certainly inaccessible; the other lives in her only address: a humble home in a middle class south Calcutta locality. One is revered, worshipped, and feared. The other is admired and even loved for being the lone face of change in the 34-year-old red bastion. While one had power handed to her on a platter by her political mentor and co-star of zillion films, MGR, the other fought her way to power from the streets of Calcutta to the lush agricultural fields of rural Bengal, with no one behind her but herself and her rebellious streak. One has faced charges of corruption, having dipped her rather large hand into the state treasury’s luscious pie; the other is fiercely honest. One is Amma, and the other is Didi. That’s Jayalaitha and Mamata for us, who are set to rule the states of Tamil Nadu and West Bengal respectively. Will they deliver?
Jayalalitha will have the state machinery and her own experience to count on. Besides, she has to simply restructure the industrial map of Tamil Nadu to attract investments and take the state forward.
But for Mamata, she has to remove the bright red hue of the state machinery, which it must have acquired after having been associated with the Left for 34 years. Then she will have to begin her green campaign. The balance of agricultural-industrial development is delicate in the state, especially after the Left’s Singur and Nandigram experiments. The corporates sense an unfavourable investment climate in the state. Moreover, she has to handle the Gorkha issue that comes to a boil one in a while.
Didi’s crown of thorns will make it uneasy for her. Amma, on the other hand, got her diamond-studded crown on a platter from the polity, frustrated with the scam-tainted DMK government. While one worked very hard for her crown, almost living off the kutcha and pucca streets of Bengal; the other won it rather easily without having to work too hard for it. The DMK First Family made it easy for her to get it.
Hail democracy.

Hazare khwaishen aisi!

There have been a surfeit of columns branding the Lok Pal committee as anti-democratic as it will be peopled by civil activists other than our elected leaders; that the movement had been fed and fuelled by “Left” sympathisers as if they were to be avoided like plague; that it had gained momentum following the West Asia crisis or revolution (depending on the side of coin you wish to see); that Anna Hazare had to be blamed for having blackmailed the government into setting up such a watchdog as it will comprise civilians apart from elected politicians. One column said Mahatma Gandhi used Satyagraha to humble the despotic/autocratic colonial rule, and Anna Hazare should not have approached our democratically elected government with this approach.
The movement has indeed inspired the tweeting-texting middle class Indians to rally behind Hazare, apart from the Bollywood brigade. I choose to toss the Bollywood support out of the multiplex’ revolving glass doors because I do not think I want to take their multiple roles too seriously. They are certainly not our role models; they can remain in the reels.
Columnists have doled out solutions like cleaning up our system; the fact is we have three democratic sensors: the Executive, Legislature and Judiciary, and a fourth conscientious one: the Press. We have seen how our Parliament and Assemblies function. Chairs are hurled, paper rockets fly across; ministers almost come to blows, and finally, wad of notes makes a mockery of the electoral process. Precious work hours are lost, and policy decisions take a back seat. The less said the better about the media screaming for attention with its innovative (read business savvy) ways of catching the eyeballs. So when Hazare went on fast, the channels began an SMS campaign. The great Indian middle class fell into the trap, hook, line and sinker, texting messages of solidarity from their touch screen mobiles or newly-acquired i-pads. The biggest gainers were the mobile service providers and the news channels, who share the spoils of the message revenue. The immaturity of the India electronic media is so stark; we have news anchors spilling out emotions, rather than acting objectively.
In India, a cleaning up of a system has not been possible so far. We have stepped into the sixth decade, and the system only stinks. The income gaps have widened, corporate-politician nexus has strengthened; elections have become an over-the-counter service with take television sets/sarees and stamp on symbol in return; poll alliances have become a joke, making strange bedfellows and sleeping partners. No one seems to be awake in this system, except a few consciences in the judiciary; I repeat only a few of them. Everything and everyone is up for sale, up for grabs..from the traffic policemen to those in the portals of power.
We needed this mass hysteria to at least shake off the lethargy, and transform drawing room frustrations into candle light vigils. Anna Hazare did not do this to end corruption; he merely stirred us out of our slumber, or of helplessness.
India is a land of icon-lovers. We need an icon to worship and that explains why we have made our cricket players and filmstars gods. That explains the statue culture or statue diplomacy of our politicians, whether it is a Mayawati or a Shivaji, a Netaji or a Basava. Or the cut-out culture of the south, where endless litres of milk are poured on the larger-than-life canvas images of Rajnikath.
Then why is a Tamil filmstar, whether it is MGR or Rajnikanth, elevated to that super-human status by their supporters, despite growing under the shadow of an iconoclast like Periyar of the Dravidian movement? The reason is simple: we Indians cutting across linguistic state boundaries are used to worshipping an entity. So when Periyar destroyed the idea of idol-worship, they resorted to worshipping human beings, elevating them to the status of Gods.
Let us admit, we Indians are yet to mature into a powerful democratic force powered by intellectual exposure. We are immature, illiterate, in awe of public figures, and therefore, needed an Anna Hazare as our conscience-keeper to tell us not to take corruption lying down.
Hazare only won a minor skirmish for us. The war still remains to be fought.

Blue bleeding the tax-payers?

The euphoric last ball six will be MS Dhoni’s most beautiful return gift for all the adulation his countrymen and women have given him, sealing once and for all the cruel memory of Javed Miandad’s last-ball six off Chetan Sharma at Sharjah. My sister had snapped ties with me for 24 hours that Friday because I had predicted Miandad would hit big.
Back to World Cup 2011, 48 hours have lapsed, and the booze has lost its fizz, the media has finished interviewing anyone and everyone within the champions’ radar: friends, relatives, temple priests, astrologers, gardeners, maids and drivers. The news pages and channels have gone berserk with the celebration blitzkrieg, with champagne and rewards raining heavily on willing players’ heads. The moment the ecstatic men in blue touched the Cup, the BCCI promised a few more crores into the players’ kitty. What has followed is a tsunami of rewards by the not-to-be-left-behind governments (Centre and state) that is going to leave the middle class tax-payers devastated. And this is not a silly point, mind you.
The players are anyway on a fascinating financial wicket, with more bounce added to those gorgeous millions, apart from the ICC’s 13.8 crore prize money and the BCCI monetary gift to each of the champions. Fair enough! BCCI is a cricket board, after all.
Take a look at the unrestrictive, commercial power-play: just imagine the brand endorsements these players indulge in. No problems. They are celebrities and have earned this position. So apart from the cola they push (that has incidentally also taught them to change the gentleman’s game and go for the upar cuts and pallu-helicopter shots against opponents), these players are asking us to watch Sony television, use Karbon mobiles, wear reebok gear, apply male fairness cream, fill car tanks with Speed fuel and insure ourselves with Aviva, to name a few. This is taking care of adding more millions into their large piggy bank.
Now the “men and women in white” have stepped in to distribute the largesse in cash and kind. First, the Delhi government’s Sheila Dikshit offered cash rewards. Mamata Banerjee announced free railway passes to the champions. She had the time to make such announcements despite the elections in West Bengal. She anyway need not write fresh hate-Left speeches; even Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya knows it by heart. Bangalore’s Yeddyurappa government quickly announced plots of land for the players. Soon, other the state governments followed suit, and will follow suit with their cricket charity.
Why? Why is it that governments are joining this bandwagon when their respective states are in a shambles? Corruption has failed to become an election issue because it seems to have become an accepted or even an acceptable fact. Governance remains a fancy democratic term. Why are the men in white so unaffected by the country, infected by the dangerous bugs of illiteracy, inflation, unemployment and poverty? Why do our men in white choose to drive past hungry shanties in their white convoys? Why do our men in white want to use tax payers’ money to fill the over-flowing coffers of the men in blue?
So the ICC pays them, BCCI pays them, corporates pay them, sponsors pay them, bookies pays them (I couldn't resist this temptation). Then why are the tax payers being wrung out to carry coal to New Castle (to use a cliché)?

‘Ode’ one out

It was a wonder in red. As I went past the dry, dusty terrain and entered a mammoth gate into the complex, a lump formed in my throat. I could see the huge complex comprising myriad structures from the locally quarried red sandstone. Fatehpur Sikri, Akbar’s dream city replete with a dargah of Salim Chisti, is a poetry written with honesty and sincerity. It was an encounter with the great Mughal emperor. I could feel the vibrations when my hands felt the pristine red walls and my feet explored the spacious terraces defining the edifices. As my eyes browsed the façade and the sober interiors, I could feel the emperor’s presence, led by him through his creation and being at the receiving end of his hospitality. It was like interacting with the statesman on the ideals of secularism. Fatehpur Sikri is imbued with Akbar’s persona, pulling me into the past. My pulse went racing as I stroked the pillars of his values and ideals which slowly but surely got absorbed into every pore of my being, sending a delightful chill down my spine.
Exactly 45 km away, the other Mughal poem, this time written for love and beauty, stood the Taj. Its sheer opulence is overbearing, sometimes even intimidating. The Taj Mahal, a love story engraved in cold marble and precious stones (now in glass cases in the British museum) is awe-inspiring. This romantic verse was Shah Jahan’s epic tribute to his young wife, Mumtaz, who died in child birth. The king’s begum before death had extracted a promise of getting a magnificent mausoleum built in her memory. But isn’t love a spontaneous and unconditional emotion? The fact that the Taj was a love-on-demand made me distance myself from it. The cold, overwhelming marble structure made the unfriendliness of the Taj complete for me.
The grandeur in marble is opulent, dressy, beautiful, but it remains just that. It did not pull me into its past, like Fatehpur Sikri did. It left me admiring it for its workmanship and beauty; for its sheer size and planning; for its exquisite and delicate beauty. But Shah Jahan’s sentimental ode lacked the heart and soul of Akbar’s vision, his dream of a unified religion; of a cohesive nation. Taj lacked the warmth of Fatehpur Sikri’s simplicity and pragmatism. It only reflected the selfishness of Shah Jahan giving in to his dying wife’s irrational demand, and not the sensibility and benevolence of Akbar.
The gorgeousness and perfectness of the Taj is no patch on the honesty and friendliness of Fatehpur Sikri.
Indeed, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

A scummy India

Her hair was shabby, unkempt. She wore an ill-fitting dress that almost reached her ankle. The string of colourful beads in different shapes that she wore around her neck revealed more of the red discoloured string. I could hear a faint jingle of coins in her tightly closed fist as she was loitering around the biscuit counter in a supermarket, her tiny frame barely reaching till the beginning of the second lower shelf.
I was contemplating whether to stock more of those low-calorie oats crackers, of which I already had two packets in my grocery shelf when I saw this little girl looking blankly at the variety of biscuits. Do I help her out? I asked myself, but somehow restrained myself as I did not want to scare her away. She might want to check out for herself, rather than be treated patronisingly. I hesitated again. I wanted to help her, lost as she was craning her neck to see the stack of biscuits kept on top.
“Ei, kya chahiye (what do you want)?” the somewhat suspicious employee of the supermarket hollered down the narrow corridor amid the shelves stacked with biscuits on one side and high-calorie snacks on the opposite side. The little girl, who might not have crossed eight years, dropped the two two-rupee coins in fright. She scampered under the shelves for her two coins and fished them out. She then dusted the two coins on her dirty frock and held them into her tight fist. I later saw her near the counter nervously waiting in the side for her small packet of the four-rupee biscuit to be billed.
So she finally managed to find the biscuit, I thought.
She was not in the queue; she did not know she had to be in queue. Just then a woman walked in from the other side and tried elbowing me out to get her two-litre Bisleri water bottle to be billed. I politely asked her to follow the queue and went closer to the counter. The little girl still patiently waited near the counter, clasping her biscuit in one hand and her coins in her right fist. It seemed the man behind the counter, too, pretended he had not seen the little girl. When my turn came, I requested him to get the little girl’s bill done. She looked at me, her blank eyes not conveying anything, but just happy that she would finally get her biscuit billed. She could now settle for what could be her evening snack, or even dinner. I realised she might have been checking out the biscuit that would suit her budget.
“Here take,” the man behind the counter almost flung the bill at her. Her eyes sparkled as she held on to the tiny glucose biscuit packet and ran down the steps, as if celebrating her victory.
The man then billed all that I had placed in my shopping basket and handed me the bill in my hand with a polite “Thank you”.
I walked down the same flight of steps that the girl had just danced down a few minutes back, but there was a difference: there was no spring in my strides. I walked down, deep in thought, about this India, about this little girl’s India, about the people who are part of this India, and about the people who treat this India. The same man behind the counter had shown two distinctly different ways of handing over the bills; his conditioned politeness obviously tilting towards the credit card holders, and a natural disdain for shabbily dressed people with loose change.
I looked into my grocery bag filled with so-called “healthy” cookies, slim milk tetra packs, the rather expensive red and yellow bell peppers, Haldiram’s oil-soaked chota samosas, Amul butter and what I believed was whole wheat bread. The little girl’s eyes disturbed me; it haunted me throughout my walk back home. I kept peeping into my grocery bag. Do I really need all this? Or was it just a passing fancy of buying the sundries attractively stocked in supermarket shelves? A want fuelled by the fact that I could afford it, that I had a credit card that could take care in case I fell short of liquid cash.
I have still not found an answer to that.

Ma(u)lling the planet

The environment ministry has finally banned gutka and tobacco in plastic sachets. Hope it does the same with shampoo sachets. Though the shampoo sachet revolution took place in small towns and villages to attract consumers, the impact it has had on the environment is devastating.
The order also bans provision of free plastic bags by shopkeepers. This looks great on paper. But just how many of us are going to take it seriously?
Whenever I go to buy fruits and vegetables, I have to insist that my purchases are stacked into my cloth bag because the moment I have asked for a kg of peas, like an automated machine, the vegetable vendor’s hand reaches for that horrible, transparent, hazardous, perilous, menacing thing called plastic bag. When I asked my neighbourhood fruit seller why his hand, again like an automated machine, heads for a plastic bag the moment I have asked for half a kg of grapes, he smiled sheepishly. I tried reasoning with him, asking him to stop giving plastic bags, and insist that his customers get their own bags. Before I finished my line, a stylish couple got down from a Pajero and bought a kg each of Washington apples and Nagpur oranges, and a dozen of Kiwis. “Keep the fruits in two separate plastic bags. Do not mix the Kiwis with the other two fruits,” the "madam" ordered as she handed him a 1000-rupee note.
“This is why I keep them, madam,” he answered after handing her the change and ensuring that the couple got into the rear seat of the car and out of his earshot. “I will lose customers if I do not stock plastic.”
“Fair enough,” I sighed. It was obvious that these Pajero and Merc owners, zipping past in their fuel-guzzlers, will certainly not care to choke our planet with plastic.
That was the local shopkeeper. But the endless flow of plastic bags in supermarkets and malls is appalling. First, I have to deposit my jute bag, in which I intend putting my purchases, in the front counter. Fair enough. These malls have to beware of shoplifters, especially during the mad clearance sale rush. But whenever I have gone to the cash counter for payment and then refused those humongous, gory plastic bags with the store names embossed in multi-colour, I am looked at with surprise, even disbelief. And then, when I go to the front counter to collect my jute bag and tuck in my purchases, the entrance security guards look at me as if I am a criminal. So I keep my bill in hand, flaunt it as if assuring them that I am no crook and that I have paid my Rs 499 or Rs 599 for the kurti that I just bought.
It is the same in an upmarket grocery store in Pune called Dorabjee’s. This place has a great brand value for Puneites (sorry Raj Thakeray, for Punekars). It stocks every item under the sun, desi and videsi. There, too, the use of your own bags is discouraged as the baggage counter in very far from the cash counter. I tried telling the cash counter helper to just bill for the items and that I would fill these up in my own bag. He glared at me, and said that I would have to show the bill at the counter and get the number of items I have bought approved by him again. The sheer logistics of having the front counter helper checking all that I have bought all over again just to save the planet from choking a little did not put me off that day. I stopped going to that store after that. But if I did, would I be able to sustain this logistical nightmare?
Why can’t these malls/supermarkets just keep the baggage counter closer to the cash counter and save those concerned about the planet the trouble of being looked at suspiciously? This will save us the trouble of actually feeling apologetic for saying no to plastic. It might, in the long run, save our planet too.

Are we different from Egypt?

So how are we different from Egypt? Is it by just being a democracy?
Our country is a democracy, world’s largest one at that. But we have people’s representatives stashing loads of money in foreign banks. We are a democracy where corruption begins at traffic signals and ends in the highest portals of power.
We are a democracy, but still have to beware of making statements about human rights violations in the garb of Armed Forces Special Power’s Act. We are a democracy, where supporting any group of displaced tribals will invite sedition charges against us. We are a democracy, where social activists have all come under the scanner. We are a democracy, where People’s Union of Civil Liberties has suddenly become a suspicious organisation. We are a democracy where we have to watch our precious land earmarked for Army widows being devoured by land sharks. We are democracy where we have to silently watch our treasury being emptied to fill private coffers in the wake of high-profile sporting events. We are a democracy, where we are helpless seeing tonnes of foodgrains rotting in granaries, while millions are dying of malnutrition and hunger. We are democracy where medical tourism is touted as top revenue grosser, while millions again are denied basic medical facilities. We are a democracy, where the media is gagged by corporate and political vested interests. We are a democracy, where defence deals are struck accompanied by kickbacks. We are a democracy where lush, fertile agricultural land is gifted away almost for free in the name of creating special economic zones. We are a democracy, where high-profile, billion-dollar projects that are certain to rape our environment and displace tribals from their native areas are given go-aheads by a proactive green ministry working under pressure from a government aiming for an investment-friendly climate. We are democracy unshaken by multiple scams.
But when we raise our voices, we are called woolly-headed.
We are a democracy in shackles: corporate shackles, political shackles and real estate shackles.
So are we really different from Egypt?