Skip to main content

Paroxysms of Truth


Proceed at your own risk
“I contend that there are no whole truths, there are only pertinent truths – and pertinence, you must agree, is always a matter of perspective.”

The quote is from the arduous novel that won the Booker Prize last year, The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton.  The emphases are added by this author who is still plodding through the novel one week after he started reading it.

When Mr Narendra Modi, the Emperor of the South Asian Region, invited the whole Luminaries of the (defunct) SAARC continent to his coronation ceremony, truth began to wiggle and wriggle in my solar plexus until it became a paroxysm.   I had decided to ignore politics in my writing.  But my new Prime Minister won’t let me do it, it seems.  He is the actor par excellence.  Nobody in Indian politics will ever outshine him in histrionics, I am quite sure.

Robert Graves may be inspired to resurrect himself from his grave to write yet another sequel to his unparalleled novel, I, Claudius.

I, Tiberius Claudius Drusus Nero Germanicus This-that-and-the-other (for I shall not trouble you yet with all my titles) who was once, and not so long ago either, known to my friends and relatives and associates as "Claudius the Idiot", or "That Claudius", or "Claudius the Stammerer", or "Clau-Clau-Claudius" or at best as "Poor Uncle Claudius", am now about to write this strange history of my life; starting from my earliest childhood and continuing year by year until I reach the fateful point of change where, some eight years ago, at the age of fifty-one, I suddenly found myself caught in what I may call the "golden predicament" from which I have never since become disentangled.” 

Claudius the Emperor. Unhappy childhood.  Child marriage.  Marital longings.  Power unlimited working like a drug to counteract human longings.  Feeling pangs of love again and declaring it in some affidavit...

Mr Modi questioned the ruling party whenever it tried to engage Pakistan on friendly discussions.  As long as Pak-sponsored terrorism in India does not end, there must be no dialogue.  The docile Manmohan Singh buckled his boots and eventually hung them up.  The princely Gandhi buckled down under the pressure of the dying empire.  William Dalrymple is planning to write his next book titled The Last Gandhi.

Pakistan is still trying to come to terms with the new Indian Empire.  To attend the coronation or not to attend.  The Hamlet in Sharif is wondering whether he should be sharif with the Uncle on the Throne. 

Dravida Munnetra Kazhakam in a corner of India can scream itself as hoarse as it wants against the Sri Lankan President’s presence at the coronation of Modi on account of what that country did to the Tamils.  But the the Vindhyas will block all anti-Modi clouds and convert them into rains for the arid political landscapes in the lands where the wars that really mattered were fought.

China knows all the games that any Emperor anywhere in the world knows.  Opium still grows in Tibet.

Does any other nation in SAARC matter?  Does it matter whether any maidservant in the palace is alive or dead?  What matters is that they should pay homage to the crown in the manner that befits each one’s status.

“I have done many impious things--no great ruler can do otherwise. I have put the good of the Empire before all human considerations. To keep the Empire free from factions I have had to commit many crimes.”  Robert Graves is rising from his grave to write his sequel.

But Eleanor Catton tells him, “Come on, buddy, your time is over.  The century has changed.  We play a different set of games.  More dangerous games.  Funnier games.  The same old wine but the bottle matters.”

And Graves returns to his grave in spite of himself. 


The coronation takes place.  One empire dies and another takes birth.  As naturally as Nicholas bowed down to Stalin.

PS: I tried to be humorous and learnt that humour is meant for geniuses. 


Top post on IndiBlogger.in, the community of Indian Bloggers


Comments

  1. Hehe Sir This is your third Modi post, I would hardly say you stayed away from politics! I enjoyed reading each of them.
    Ps: subtle humour works here :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I'm sure Mr Modi won't let me leave politics :)
      'The Economist' has placed Mr Modi on the cover. The lead article is of the opinion that Mr Modi will take India to great heights. There's much I need to learn from this kind of politics. :)

      Delete
  2. The media is modified. No matter what he said in the past. Its all past. Now every media want to focus on the modified India. Otherwise they know that it affects their viewership.

    Thanks for all the Modi posts. Each one of them gave us some new insights. Hope you are not modified though ! :-)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I will remain a faithful critic of Mr Modi. He may find the going tougher than he had imagined. See the way the Tamils are opposing his decision to invite the Sri Lankan President. Some allies like the Shiv Sena are not happy with the Pak PM's visit either. If Mr Modi leaves Mr Advani and MM Joshi out of the cabinet, another problem will arise... Mr Modi will find in me a faithful friend :)

      Delete
  3. I found this post engrossing. Honestly, I had to google a couple of references. Looking forward to more Politics related posts from you :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I didn't want to make it so tough with so many literary allusions. But it happens sometimes. Some topics can't be made very simple. After all, Mr Modi is not a simple man. Thanks for the trouble you took to understand the post.

      Delete
  4. After I read your this post, I thought of saying...stop writing about politics so much. Reading your earlier posts made me feel you touch upon a lot of underlying things which are important. But then I figure politics and Mr. Modi is what interests you and your loyal readers the most (going by the comments section). So, I take your leave.

    P.S: Please dont get lost.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. We are all pilgrims who meet and depart. Glad if we can meet again. Glad otherwise too. Glad you were here.

      Delete
  5. because politics is such a haunting ghost that rises from its grave in all ages....

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Much as we may wish to ignore politics, we will be haunted by it, no doubt. All the more so in a democracy.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl

The Final Farewell

Book Review “ Death ends life, not a relationship ,” as Mitch Albom put it. That is why, we have so many rituals associated with death. Minakshi Dewan’s book, The Final Farewell [HarperCollins, 2023], is a well-researched book about those rituals. The book starts with an elaborate description of the Sikh rituals associated with death and cremation, before moving on to Islam, Zoroastrianism, Christianity, and finally Hinduism. After that, it’s all about the various traditions and related details of Hindu final rites. A few chapters are dedicated to the problems of widows in India, gender discrimination in the last rites, and the problem of unclaimed dead bodies. There is a chapter titled ‘Grieving Widows in Hindi Cinema’ too. Death and its rituals form an unusual theme for a book. Frankly, I don’t find the topic stimulating in any way. Obviously, I didn’t buy this book. It came to me as quite many other books do – for reasons of their own. I read the book finally, having shelv

Vultures and Religion

When vultures become extinct, why should a religion face a threat? “When the vultures died off, they stopped eating the bodies of Zoroastrians…” I was amused as I went on reading the book The Final Farewell by Minakshi Dewan. The book is about how the dead are dealt with by people of different religious persuasions. Dead people are quite useless, unless you love euphemism. Or, as they say, dead people tell no tales. In the end, we are all just stories made by people like the religious woman who wrote the epitaph for her atheist husband: “Here lies an atheist, all dressed up and no place to go.” Zoroastrianism is a religion which converts death into a sordid tale by throwing the corpses of its believers to vultures. Death makes one impure, according to that religion. Well, I always thought, and still do, that life makes one impure. I have the support of Lord Buddha on that. Life is dukkha , said the Enlightened. That is, suffering, dissatisfaction and unease. Death is liberation

Hate Politics

Illustration by Copilot Hatred is what dominates the social media in India. It has been going on for many years now. A lot of violence is perpetrated by the ruling party’s own men. One of the most recent instances of venom spewed out by none other than Mithun Chakraborty would shake any sensible person. But the right wing of India is celebrating it. Seventy-four-year-old Chakraborty threatened to chop the people of a particular minority community into pieces. The Home Minister Amit Shah was sitting on the stage with a smile when the threat was issued openly. A few days back, a video clip showing a right-winger denying food to a Muslim woman because she refused to chant ‘Jai Sri Ram’ dominated the social media. What kind of charity is it that is founded on hatred? If you go through the social media for a while, you will be astounded by the surfeit of hatred there. Why do a people who form the vast majority of a country hate a small minority so much? Hatred usually comes from some

Cats and Love

No less a psychologist than Freud said that the “time spent with cats is never wasted.” I find time to spend with cats precisely for that reason. They are not easy to love, particularly if they are the country variety which are not quite tameable, and mine are those. What makes my love affair with my cats special is precisely their unwillingness to befriend me. They’d rather be in their own company. “In ancient time, cats were worshipped as gods; they have not forgotten this,” Terry Pratchett says. My cats haven’t, I’m sure. Pratchett knew what he was speaking about because he loved cats which appear frequently in his works. Pratchett’s cats love independence, very unlike dogs. Dogs come when you call them; cats take a message and get back to you as and when they please. I don’t have dogs. But my brother’s dogs visit us – Maggie and me – every evening. We give them something to eat and they love that. They spend time with us after eating. My cats just go away without even a look af