Skip to main content

My scepticism is still chaste



“Skepticism, like chastity, should not be relinquished too readily,” ordained American philosopher George Santayana.  Santayana being a Catholic atheist, his obsession with chastity is understandable.  I relinquished my chastity one evening with the ease with which I had the first taste of whisky.  But scepticism has continued to be a loyal companion till date. Not even litres of whisky could defrost my scepticism which is more deep-rooted than a contemporary right winger’s bhakti.

Source: Newsclick
Right from venerable Advani ji’s Ram Rath Yatra in 1990 to the present day clandestine yatras made by cash from Indian public sector banks to foreign countries, almost everything that the right wing of my country has achieved made my eyebrows arch though without drawing attention like Priya Prakash Varrier’s arches.

From the time the right wing ascended the throne in Indraprastha four years ago, my scepticism is longing for relinquishment.  Catholic atheists find it difficult to let certain things go, however. 

The amount of money that a few capable Indians looted from the nation’s public sector banks before finding their safe heavens abroad is beyond my understanding though I am quite good at mathematics.  How many zeroes are there, for example, in the amount that Nirav Modi alone looted?  I can’t count when you say ₹12700 crore.  Then there are the others like Vikram Kothari.  Who can ignore the classical Vijay Mallya who pioneered the way?

The non-performing assets (NPA) of the country’s public sector banks rose from ₹2.3 lakh crore in 2014 to ₹6.8 lakh crore in 2017 and it keeps rising.  Lakh crore.  Do you know how many zeroes are there?  I don’t. The figure is beyond my imagination.

All that money with countless zeroes was given to just a few individuals in the country.  The Ambanis, Adani and the Vedanta guy, whose plants and factories were set up by grabbing thousands of acres of land belonging to farmers and tribal people, were the chief beneficiaries.  The people whose names appear in the Forbes list of the richest persons of the world owe the largest amounts to Indian banks.  And what do the banks do to recover their debts?

The banks impose fine on the poorest people in the name of minimum balance, ATM charges, non-payment of agricultural loan instalments, and so on.  Then there are the ever escalating prices of essential commodities and the hydra-headed taxes.

Maybe, we will see more and more rich people leaving the country soon to settle down comfortably abroad.  I hope our politicians also will do the same.  Will the country be able to begin anew then from the scratch, even with ‘cleaned up’ banks, after all the vanishing acts perpetrated by our prestidigitators?

The questions keep rising irresistibly. That’s why I wish my scepticism had given way to bhakti.  Without blind bhakti you can’t survive tough times.




Comments

  1. जितेन्द्र माथुरMarch 1, 2018 at 8:22 AM

    Said right. That's why the BHAKTs (either blind or pretending to be blind to suit their own interests) are surviving these times (as well as inspiring us to survive like them).

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Pranita a perverted genius

Bulldozer begins its work at Sawan Pranita was a perverted genius. She had Machiavelli’s brain, Octavian’s relentlessness, and Levin’s intellectual calibre. She could have worked wonders if she wanted. She could have created a beautiful world around her. She had the potential. Yet she chose to be a ruthless exterminator. She came to Sawan Public School just to kill it. A religious cult called Radha Soami Satsang Beas [RSSB] had taken over the school from its owner who had never visited the school for over 20 years. This owner, a prominent entrepreneur with a gargantuan ego, had come to the conclusion that the morality of the school’s staff was deviating from the wavelengths determined by him. Moreover, his one foot was inching towards the grave. I was also told that there were some domestic noises which were grating against his patriarchal sensibilities. One holy solution for all these was to hand over the school and its enormous campus (nearly 20 acres of land on the outskirts
8 comments
Read more

Machiavelli the Reverend

Let us go today , you and I, through certain miasmic streets. Nothing will be quite clear along our way because this journey is through some delusions and illusions. You will meet people wearing holy robes and talking about morality and virtues. Some of them will claim to be god’s men and some will make taller claims. Some of them are just amorphous. Invisible. But omnipotent. You can feel their power around you. On you. Oppressing you. Stifling you. Reverend Machiavelli is one such oppressive power. You will meet Franz Kafka somewhere along the way. Joseph K’s ghost will pass by. Remember Joseph K who was arrested one fine morning for a crime that nobody knew anything about? Neither Joseph nor the men who arrest him know why Joseph K is arrested. The power that keeps Joseph K under arrest is invisible. He cannot get answers to his valid questions from the visible agents of that power. He cannot explain himself to that power. Finally, he is taken to a quarry outside the town wher
19 comments
Read more

Levin the good shepherd

AI-generated image The lost sheep and its redeemer form a pet motif in Christianity. Jesus portrayed himself as a good shepherd many times. He said that the good shepherd will leave his 99 sheep in order to bring the lost sheep back to the fold. When he finds the lost sheep, the shepherd is happier about that one sheep than about the 99, Jesus claimed. He was speaking metaphorically. The lost sheep is the sinner in Jesus’ parable. Sin is a departure from the ‘right’ way. Angels raise a toast in heaven whenever a sinner returns to the ‘right’ path [Luke 15:10]. A lot of Catholic priests I know carry some sort of a Redeemer complex in their souls. They love the sinner so much that they cannot rest until they make the angels of God run for their cups of joy. I have also been fortunate to have one such priest-friend whom I shall call Levin in this post. He has befriended me right from the year 1976 when I was a blundering adolescent and he was just one year older than me. He possesse
8 comments
Read more

Kailasnath the Paradox

AI-generated illustration It wasn’t easy to discern whether he was a friend or merely an amused onlooker. He was my colleague at the college, though from another department. When my life had entered a slippery slope because of certain unresolved psychological problems, he didn’t choose to shun me as most others did. However, when he did condescend to join me in the college canteen sipping tea and smoking a cigarette, I wasn’t ever sure whether he was befriending me or mocking me. Kailasnath was a bundle of paradoxes. He appeared to be an alpha male, so self-assured and lord of all that he surveyed. Yet if you cared to observe deeply, you would find too many chinks in his armour. Beneath all those domineering words and gestures lay ample signs of frailty. The tall, elegantly slim and precisely erect stature would draw anyone’s attention quickly. Kailasnath was always attractively dressed though never unduly stylish. Everything about him exuded an air of chic confidence. But the wa
9 comments
Read more

Nakulan the Outcast

Nakulan was one of the many tenants of Hevendrea . A professor in the botany department of the North Eastern Hill University, he was a very lovable person. Some sense of inferiority complex that came from his caste status made him scoff the very idea of his lovability. He lived with his wife and three children in one of Heavendrea’s many cottages. When he wanted to have a drink, he would walk over to my hut. We sipped our whiskies and discussed Shillong’s intriguing politics or something of the sort while my cassette player crooned gently in the background. Nakulan was more than ten years my senior by age. He taught a subject which had never aroused my interest at any stage of my life. It made no difference to me whether a leaf was pinnately compound or palmately compound. You don’t need to know about anther and stigma in order to understand a flower. My friend Levin would have ascribed my lack of interest in Nakulan’s subject to my egomania. I always thought that Nakulan lived
16 comments
Read more