Introspection...

Seldom can you call a work of non-fiction ‘unputdownable’. The later phrase is reserved for the Dan Browns and the Forsyths. Coming from a historian, a non-fiction, which Ramachandra Guha’s latest offering Patriots and Partisans (2012) is, the phrase ‘unputdownable’ might appear to be an exaggeration for many. But after reading 334 pages, without taking recourse to any in-between fiction to keep the monotony of a non-fictional work at bay, I would say that my using of that phrase ‘unputdownable’ is apt and justified. 

Ramachandra Guha needs no introduction. He can easily be called the country’s leading contemporary historian. Guha has taken historical scholarship to a new height. He is one of those few modern day writers who tickle my grey cells. Although I would not claim to have read every article that he has written so far, yet I would dare say I have read him quite extensively. This is not a book review, let me assure you. Interestingly, what made me optimistic about both Guha and his book was the thought that the liberal voice is still alive and quite hopefully healthy in this country, though not very high in terms of its numerical value, otherwise, I was under the impression that the moderate-liberal has faded into wilderness with the death of Nehru. 

As I devoured his book, introspection stopped the pace of my exercise. I was wondering where do I stand on the issue of 'caste' per se? The introspection was called for, as in one of his Chapters titled 'Hindutva Hate Mail', Guha wrote about the kind of hate mails that he regularly gets from the self-proclaimed champions of the Hindu religion. Guha writes, "Notably all my correspondents were all male, with the exception of one woman. Along with the gender bias is a caste bias. Srivastava, Sharma, Shukla, Rao, Iyer, Gupta-these kinds of surnames recur with regularity in my Inbox" (Guha 2012: 64). What Guha intended to convey is that the upper-caste typically wield the sword of their diatribe against Guha's contestation of Hindu fundamentalism. I pondered over it for long. I realized how four years of stay in JNU oriented my understanding of caste. When I did my Post Graduation from Kolkata, we hardly spared any thought as to which of our class-mates belonged to which caste. It was immaterial and it never mattered who got admitted through a so-called 'quota'. I myself did not know the caste distinctions among the Bengalis. My knowledge was restricted to the fact that the Chatterjees, Banerjees, Mukherjees were Brahmins and I was not a Brahmin, because I was told Ghoshs are 'Kayasth' (never even had any inclination to know what or who is a Kayastha.)

 It was after coming to JNU that I came to know about the many castes and sub-castes in North India. I employed a policy of giving only my name (sans the surname) to the unknown. But that led to queries after queries until finally you satisfied them with an answer which revealed your caste. I have been part of umpteen conversations where if a surname was unconventional, it instantaneously provoked discussions on the various possible options. Here, if one says one has a boy friend, the next reaction is not necessarily "what does your boy friend do?" but quite starkly is - "ek hi caste ke ho na?" What bemused me is the near encyclopaedic knowledge of an average North Indian in JNU on which surname belongs to which caste ! I fail to fathom, how many years have they been tutored to achieve such remarkable proficiency in their caste-analysis exercise ! At the cost of sounding biased, I would dare say that in North India this phenomenon is deeply ingrained. Casteism runs deep here. It would take another 50 years if not 100 for such feudal mindsets to purge itself of its feudal overtones. I feel good each time I think that I was born in a much liberal environment, where I was not taught to differentiate between castes, I feel good that it was not imperative for me to know which caste did a Mitra, Bose, Sen or Sarkar belonged to. However, it is an irony that now I know which surname falls in the 'reserved category'.

Discrimination and differentiation does not bring a befuddled expression in me now. I have become ambivalent to the 'caste paradigm'. But what makes me happy is the very thought that I would not pass this pool of knowledge which restricts the identity of an individual to his caste, to my kids.

Lets talk about love

Love is around the corner once again. Cometh February and cometh the hour. I have had endless and some really prosaic discussions and even read reams of articles on why we should or should not celebrate Valentine’s day. People have scorned off at the idea of accommodating something that’s out and out western into our long cherished cultural idiosyncrasies that is so typically branded as Indian. One thing I have observed (strangely though !) that each time we loose our forte in a debate we never loose time in falling back to the time tested law of harping on the finesse of Indian culture. What is Indian culture per se for that matter ? We can have a separate debate someday on Indian culture and its value laden ambiguities which nobody really can fathom out. At least I could not.

However, not divulging from the topic on Valentine’s Day, I have always wondered what is the harm in celebrating it? People have come out with the logic that you can’t have one specially sanctioned day for love. They argue (and often boisterously!), does it mean that you don’t love the remaining 364 days? I humbly get into the tenacity to question that logic. We do celebrate Mother’s day, Father’s day or for that matter Independence day. My inbox gets flooded with messages on “Bharat mata ki Jai” and “Jai Hind” on Independence day. So does it mean that you remember and pay your obeisance to your country only on 15th August and the rest of the days you don’t even give a damn about her? Or is 15th August the only day ordained by law, where you have the license to be zealously patriotic? It is not like that. It is just that on that special one day, you show how “specially important” is your motherland to you ? That, you take time off atleast, when you turn on your TV early in the morning, to hear the PM speak from the ramparts of the Red Fort, to say that you remember its 15th August, even though you forget which year of independence you were celebrating ! We still love to buy a small replica of our national flag on the eve of 15th August, which the street children sell at the traffic signals and still love to wave it like a kid, even though we have long crossed that age when we were kids and ran from one room to another with that flag held in our little palms. So what is the harm on 14th Feb to show that special someone that you love them, may be a bit more than yesterday ? And by no stretch of imagination I hereby say that Valentine’s Day is just a day of showing love to your girl friend/boy friend. Love and patriotism are nothing but emotions. And when it comes to emotions why tuck its leash ?

Love is not easy to define. It is even harder to express. But it is perhaps most necessary to unmoor it. If you cannot define it, cannot express it in words, you should figure a way out to show that you care. For every relationship it is very important.

I have very seldom seen someone buying those silly hearts made of those red roses, but honestly speaking there is no escape or immunity from the expectations that is generated on Valentine’s Day. This is what a Sunday magazine wrote about the significance of 14th Feb:

“The news is about Valentine’s Day protests, the food section is about aphrodisiacs, the travel section about romantic getaways, the books section about love and poetry. You have, absorbed so many words and images about love, in so many direct and oblique ways, that you are pushed to pay some thought to your own love life.”

In school, once I read a piece by William Somerset Maugham, titled ‘On my Seventieth Birthday’. The line that I still remember the most, from that piece is- “Old age hath its compensations.” What now I understand the most from that line is that every age has its own compensations. But every age has its own meaning too. There was a time when the tinkering of the bell in the hot summer afternoon by the local kulfi wala meant a straight jump out of your afternoon sleep into the sultry street. There was a time when just a look at your crush would make your heart jump a beat. There would also be a time when Valentine’s day would loose its sheen, when you would just not find anyone to wish you happy Valentine’s day and give you a warm hug. May be its then you would understand how special it feels to be loved on the day when the whole world revels in love. It has always been that way. We never care about the things we have. It is only when you are left to moan about a thing you don’t have, that you realize how important it was to you.

I know you cannot have a specific day for love. But you can always have a perfect alibi to do that. Archies gives you that leeway. Don't buy that extra expensive soft teddy from the nearby Archies gallery. Shun that on 14th Feb ! Atleast can buy a rose from the roadside flower vendor. That would be much ‘Indianized’ way to profess love. There is no denying the fact that we all love to be made to feel special and that is true irrespective of the gender. This is not an article to show how hopelessly romantic I am trying to be. This is just an effort to tell that not every day you become the reason for somebody else’s smile (whoever that is). But when given a chance that you can be on one day, don’t miss the opportunity in trying to be stoic to score some brownie points and guffaw at the idea of how some people love to be emotional fools on this day. Mark my words- there is no joy as serene in this world than to be the reason for somebody’s smile.

HAPPY VALENTINE’S DAY !

“With malice towards none…”

If in the past all my blog posts were well accepted, one thing for sure, till you finish this post, I will be chastised and loathed for my audacity to be honest. But I don’t mind if obituaries are written for me for being honest. Thank God that I don’t have a Publisher to please; otherwise if writing was my means of livelihood, for this article I would have had to sacrifice my job. But this is my blog and so I have the luxury to have the liberty to give vent to my ideas, uncensored!

Few days back a friend’s status message on Gtalk read like this: “Does setting up attractive status message shows someone's character in any sense OR people try to attain faaltu ka attention!!!” I kept on pondering on those lines. The word that struck me was “ATTENTION”. Was questioning myself, how many of us would really not like to have attention? This ‘attention deficit syndrome’ or ‘hyper attention disorder’ (these are terms coined by me and I am not aware whether such terms trace its origin to Psychology or Sociology) is the most common ailment human beings suffer from. And with the coming of the new age concept of ‘social-networking’ I think this ailment is finding its most visible manifestation.

I always consider this idea of social-networking as ‘self-networking’. It is the most appropriate platform for self-eulogy and self glorification. Truth is we all are narcissists. Only the extent differs. And social networking today is the most visible reflection of this narcissism. Mark Zuckerberg (for the uninitiated, he is the founder of Facebook) is the most intelligent man on earth today. He understood this logic of narcissism so well. And as a reward for this understanding and intelligence, Facebook today has over 500 million active users as of July 2010 (Source: Wikipedia). For that matter other social networking sites like Orkut and Twitter are also cashing on this logic of narcissism.

Day after day as I log in and scan through the pages of my account in Orkut/Facebook/Twitter what I come across is some unnecessary information that makes no difference in my life. But it does make a difference to other people, because it gives them publicity and helps them acquire a cult-status (of course not according to me, but its self-professed). What I fail to reason is how is buying a ‘X’ TB Hard disk drive going to help the people in your friend list ? And surprisingly this has been a status update. I have even seen status updates that say “bought a new blah blah phone with blah blah GB space and blah blah Mega pixel camera!!” Can anyone enlighten me as to what will I do with all these useless information?? The only idea that this kind of updates convey to me is that ‘look my phone/HDD/camera is new and swanky and comes for a hefty price and you don’t have one!” What would you call it then? Isn’t it narcissism? (Otherwise I don’t find any logic behind that update. Pardon my naivety in that regard.)

Let me share with you yet another instance of narcissism galore. There are people I know who the first thing they do when they are transferred to a foreign country (for any reason-job, marriage, project, education) is update the ‘Current City’ option of their accounts. For example, if someone is transferred to say New York or London or Paris, they would immediately update their “current city” option even before their flight takes them to their current city! But strikingly the same pace is not followed when some one is transferred from say Bangalore to Delhi or for that matter from New Jersey to New Delhi! I am not conjuring up stories from thin air. I have made these observations and I am writing it from my own experiences in this unreal world of social networking.

My innocent querry is that what are we trying to prove out of this silly publicity? I know and most of us know that all of us love attention. But what is the rationale behind such blatant narcissism? I have seen people upload bizarre pictures in their albums. Pictures which convey nothing but yet are fashion statements. What is the logic of having a profile picture where you are grabbing your husband or your husband is grabbing you until you or your husband choke of asphyxiation? Does that convey your love which is immeasurable or the lack of it in which case the picture bears testimony to that realization? Have we all lost our private world? Is this unreal world of social-networking everything? Does everything that happens to us need to be made public EXPLICITLY? Do we really do things keeping in mind what others would think about it or do we still do things using our own heads?

May be I am a misfit in this strange world of self-marketing. But I am happy that I have a world of my own with my loved ones where I share my dreams with them. That is all mine. I have established a ‘Firewall security’ for that world. Interestingly some of my closest friends are not even in my friends list in Orkut/Facebook. I don’t want to be known by how many followers/ friends I have. It conveys nothing to me. And I don’t experience any joy or pride in bragging that “I have bought a phone” or “going for a holiday in Singapore” or “I have completed my so and so degree.”

When I joined Twitter I had X number of followers and today I might be having X+X number of followers, but how does it matter to me ? My world does not revolve around these ‘Virtual Friends’. Tweets mentioning going for blah blah meeting, shooting for blah blah movie, gave a blah blah speech or inaugurated a blah blah auditorium are nothing but mindless mementoes of trying to rise from mediocrity. I used to follow Tharoor, Shahrukh and many such stars. But eventually I lost interest in their tweets because it has nothing but information about their daily schedules and LOVE YOU ALL, HUGS TO ALL-type messages. I want to learn and status messages like these portray nothing but insensible narcissism.

So readers (both friends and anonymous) bash me, hate me or criticize me after reading this post, cause I know for a post like this more brickbats would be laid than bouquets ( because if not all, there would be some who would fall in any one of the above mentioned categories of narcissists !). But I am not a ‘please all’ type of a character.Social networking can and should be used for connecting with the society.Explicit narcissism would defeat the entire idea behind 'networking' and would eclipse the essence of the word 'social'.

A Route to Life...

Amidst the hullabaloo of the soccer mania that has swept us in the past one month, a recurring theme occupied my mind and at times went to the extent of intriguing whatever logical scaffoldings my brain could construct all these years. A very good friend of mine who time and again tickles my brain cells with his logical reasoning on a wide gamut of issues, on this particular occasion supplied the food for thought. He kept on asking me what keeps us so excited about the FIFA World Cup, when our own country was not participating.

I am a cricket enthusiast like any other ordinary Indian. Although I won’t say that I don’t understand football, but given a choice between cricket and football, I would go for cricket any day. So what makes India predominantly a cricket loving and cricketer worshiping nation loose sleep over the FIFA World cup? How does one explain the phenomenon of Indians being so much engrossed in a World Cup where India is not a participating nation?

I tried hard to fathom out the reasons behind such a craze. For once it appeared that the idea of nation and nationalism is passé now. Scratching my head, I thought that Benedict Anderson was right when he said that nations are nothing but ‘imagined communities’. So it does not matter whether you are an Indian working in USA, or a Pakistani studying in UK, you still have something to cheer for, as you became a Brazilian or for that matter an Argentine for this World Cup. It was as if globalization had erased the idea of nationalism from our memories. But that argument does not hold forte because the boundaries are still clearly chalked out on maps and border issues still happen to be one of the pertinent causes of inter-state conflicts and a strong sense of nationalism still pervade among the countries that are fighting it out in the football field there in South Africa. Glimpses of historical rivalries come to the fore when one thinks of a Germany Vs England match or for that matter an Indo-Pak hockey or cricket match.

Next argument that I tried to eke out was that Indians love to have an opinion on every issue under the sun. So be it football World Cup, or Wimbledon or for that matter F1 racing, we love to have ‘our team’ and fight it out with fellow Indians on the strength or weaknesess of our favourite team and try and snub the other out with stats as to how a particular player scored a goal from a particular angle on a particular match, or how Sharapova has a better back-hand or how Lewis Hamilton won pole position in the Spanish Grand Prix ! That argument made some sense but I was still not fully satisfied that it was ‘the reason’ beyond the hightened enthusiasm of the maddening Indian crowd towards the football fever.

It was only yesterday while watching the Germans loose the semi-final match against Spain, it struck me as to why were we so frenzied about the World Cup where there was no team representing India, my country. It is not about the spirit of nationalism, or enthusiasm about sports (Of course, for the numerous football enthusiasts this football World Cup is an event extraordinaire. And I am not speaking for them. My arguments are for the masses for whom football means only World Cup Football). It is about finding a way out of the monotonous life where your mornings begin with the dreadful thought of meeting a client, or meeting a deadline to submit a project report or for students to appear for the weekly tests. Such small little events makes us laugh, cry, fight and the feeling that sweeps us all through this phase is one of enjoyment. Forgetting the mundane mechanized moribund life for a moment we try to escape to a place where thrill and excitement awaits us. After all what is life without thrill! So in the past one month we got up in the morning thinking how the Brazilian side would thrash its opponents or how Germany would annihilate Argentina. And trust me these feelings made the days more exciting and the wait more fulfilling. Every time ‘your side’ won, the sleep at night after 2 am was so peaceful !

Interestingly I too allowed myself to get inundated with the football mania. My profile on Orkut and Facebook bore a German jersey all the while. The intense rivalry on the various social networking sites was only pointers to the fact that the excitement was palpable and it gave the Indians a chance to sneak a welcome break from their tight schedules. While hedging bets on the prospect of his/her team for a particular match, the first thing that came to people’s mind was that what should be an apt update for his/her Facebook account today? Or each time our team lost, the initial reaction was how people would make a fun on Facebook ! And all these, did precipitate some fervor of excitement in our routinized life. So, whether David Villa wins a Golden Boot or not on 12th July, we already had some golden moments all the while. Moments that made us revel in glory or regret in defeat and that too not for the Indian team but ‘our team’. That’s our own world where we live for ourselves all within us. I think now I have an answer. Its not escapism, it’s a route to enjoy and live life. All of us have one life, my advice is, rediscover that forgotten path time an again, that will make you smile and forget for a moment that life is nothing but a long arduous walk. Live life and not let life leave you…

Too many Indias in my India …

For a change I thought lets write on something that is not hardcore political commentary ( pick up The Hindu for that matter!).Was whacking my head as to what should be the ideal topic which will attract readership and visitors to my blog. One of the followers of my blog suggested a good topic, that on Obama and ‘his albatross’ (of course pun intended ! I mean his Peace Prize, is no less than an albatross that has been hung around his neck by the Nobel Committee as a reminder to the promises he made, because those promises need to be kept also. And that medal, whenever he gets it will remind him of the tasks that are still unfulfilled.) But good sense prevailed as I thought that Nobel Peace Prize had become a saturated topic, with opinions pouring in from a tea-stall owner to all the Twitteratis ! Then I picked up ‘2 States : The Story of my Marriage’ the latest book by Chetan Bhagat ( those who do not know about Chetan Bhagat, well for them, he is the writer of bestsellers like ‘Five Point someone : What not to do at the IITs’, which is soon going to be released into a movie titled ‘Three Idiots’ starring Aamir Khan, Kareena Kapoor and other books like ‘One Night at the Call centre’.) His last book ‘The 3 Mistakes of my Life’ disappointed me, so I was not quite inclined to grab ‘2 States’ the moment it was published. Toying with the idea I finally gave in to my temptations to unravel what lay in store inside the red colored book. But I did do some research before buying the book ( thanks to Twitter and other sites ). What attracted me was the back cover of the book. It reads:

Love marriages around the world are simple:
Boy loves girl. Girl loves boy. They get married.
In India, there are a few more steps:
Boy loves girl. Girl loves boy.
Girl’s family has to love boy. Boy’s family has to love girl.
Girl’s family has to love boy’s family. Boy’s family has to love girl’s family…

I found it so true. Such a profound truth yet so simply put. Then there was no stopping me. I swallowed the book in 24 hrs. When I finished the book the only thing that struck me was that we have too many Indias living in India. We say India is an emerging super power, has made stupendous strides economically,and we brag about the 'Unity in Diversity' concept, but behind this statistical and emotionally charged well worded façade lie the real India, where to which caste and region you belong still determines your matrimonial potential. Where it doesnot matter whether you are from IIT or IIM or IISC, but what matters most is whether you are a Tamil Brahmin or Marathi or Bengali that will make you a good match for a girl/boy. So even if we have achieved economic footprints, culturally and socially we are still taking a step backward. What it matters most to an average Indian is ones’s prestige in one’s own community. If you marry your son and daughter to someone who is not of your own caste, you yourself become an outcaste and it doesnot matter whether your would be son-in-law or for that matter your daughter-in-law has an academic record that most people in your community can just dream of but can never achieve. So what ? At the end of the day, what you need is someone who can speak your language, eat your kind of food and be a part of your own festivals ! I thought it was necessary to marry someone whom you love and who loves you. That’s it ! But no, there are a whole lot of people you should satisfy and impress and endless conditions that you should fulfill to settle down. Like you will have to be a Bengali first, then a Brahmin or a kayastha then within that your gotra and then some more blah blah…n if all is well you might get a B- grade after all such ordeal !

To all of you who will read this article I have an innocent query-Is it possible to love someone if and only if these caste and sub-caste factors are met ? I feel then its not love but bargain ! I sometimes feel that Indian parents might well settle for a foreigner bride or groom but not an Indian who is not of their own community, caste or region. But it was to drive out these foreigners that we the Indians once fought unitedly for 200 years!

Chetan wrote it well, that we have a national anthem, a national symbol, a national bird, but we have many nations within a nation. To account for it I just cannot help recalling what once a very good and learned friend of mine said, that we never had a Renaissance in India. That was so badly needed. A cricket match can unite the many Indias within India but love cannot. Outside the cricket field, we are a Bengali first then an Indian, or a Punjabi first then an Indian. That is why only in India we have the phenomenon of honour killings. I think it has more to do with a South Asian mentality. I can bet even in Pak and in Bangladesh we have this menace.

I think it is but natural. A country that saw the pangs of partition during its independence can only reverberate with the sounds of division even after partition. Because even though we have made economic progress yet we are still to grow culturally and change the age old stereotypes. But for a cultural renaissance to happen it will still take another long and arduous struggle.That is because any struggle to change mindset is more difficult than a political struggle to change the seat of authority.

P.S: Read ‘2 States’ if you have a girl friend/boy friend who is not of your own caste or community and whom you want to seriously get married to.

THE MYSTERY THAT I COULD NEVER UNDERSTAND

I have been struggling for the past few weeks to write,but I was fumbling for words and there was a paralysis of ideas in my brain.Hours together,i would be sitting with a blank page.Kept on thinking why is it that sometimes in life we come across a phase when we keep on pondering about something and that thought process appears never ending.It is as if u are walking through a tunnel and you donot know if at all an exit exists ! Recently,i read a book called The Empire of Knowledge by Vinay Lal.There I came across a line that made me understand why is it that we never understand why we behave the way we do sometimes,and in retrospection we find it totally illogical and naive.It was a line by Benjamin Walter,which read, "...we, the thoughtful atleast are in a perpetual state of crisis." I lay blank after reading it.Kept on reading it and then re-read it.

Life is full of contradictions,that was something i grew up learning.But i could never fathom out its underlying essence until now.What is it that we want ? Does it actually matter what we want ? Can confusions end ? Why are we always enslaved by circumstances ? If man is so powerful,why cant he break free from this labyrinth ? Confusions are like evergreen forests ! No matter which season it is they are omnipresent.Nw,i sound like i m really confused! The more we try hard to understand a thing, another front opens up, adding more to the confusion and then the battle becomes more intense.Because fighting on several fronts isnt easy.Atleast i am not so adept on that count. I know what am writing is not making any sense,considering the fact that this blog has been about making posts on realistic issues.But perhaps,what is more realistic is the necessity to address confusions.Atleast,that is what one of my very good friends say. And for the past few days thats what i have been engaging myself into.Yet...i am struggling.I would like to hear from you,one who reads this post, why is it that when you find life is within your grasp,it simply slips ??? Confusions exist,or we create them or make them appear like the statue of THE CHRIST -THE REDEEMER ??? Try and look at that statue, i m sure no one can resist its mysticism !!! And in life confusions are also like that ! It has a magnetic charm,so difficult to unshackle.May be I am lost today...But i am searching for some answers...