Beside Arundhati Roy

Sunday musings

Arundhati Roy on my bookshelf

A friend forwarded Arundhati Roy’s latest lament about India’s pathetic condition. I love Ms Roy’s passionate probity. I have admired her ever since I came to know her political writings about two decades back. I have personal collections of most her writings. My continuing admiration for her notwithstanding, I now feel more like Estragon standing beside Vladimir in Samuel Beckett’s inimitable play, Waiting for Godot. “Don’t touch me! Don’t question me! Don’t speak to me! Stay with me!” I feel like telling her in frustration.

India is frustrating. But I don’t feel like shouting in indignation anymore. It’s futile, I begin to despair. Two thugs are ruling us and we have no way forward. We are condemned to be stuck in the filthy alleys beyond Lok Kalyan Marg holding motley flags and shouting dissonant slogans. Forever. Or at least until the goons of the thugs will come and ram nationalism down our throats. I feel weary to hold flags and shout slogans anymore. I feel hopeless.

That’s why Arundhati Roy doesn’t rouse my indignation anymore. I know she is right. I know her passion coupled with her probity are infinitely more appropriate today than my Beckettian lassitude.

Actually I have reasons to feel invigorated rather than enervated. Of late, my blog is catching more attention. It has just crossed 7 lakh views with a quantum leap in readership this month. Good reason to be on top of the clouds raising a toast to angels.

My blog stats this morning

But no. I’m very much here in one of those filthy alleys far away from Lok Kalyan Marg. Hardly anyone seems to be willing to stay by my side holding a motley flag and shouting a dissonant slogan. I sense fear in you. If I say, ‘Our country makes sounds as of sighs and the last drops fell long ago from the emptied cloudless sky,’ you’ll respond, ‘Fuck off!’

Nevertheless I’m here. I may bother to raise my motley flag once in a while and shout a couple of slogans too. I’m there beside you, Ms Roy, like Beckett’s Estragon beside Vladimir.

Comments

Country where humour died

Humour died a thousand deaths in India after May 2014. The reason – let me put it as someone put it on X. The stand-up comedian Kunal Kamra called a politician some names like ‘traitor’ which made his audience laugh because they misunderstood it as a joke. Kunal Kamra has to explain the joke now in a court of justice. I hope his judge won’t be caught with crores of rupees of black money in his store room . India itself is the biggest joke now. Our courts of justice are huge jokes. Our universities are. Our temples, our textbooks, even our markets. Let alone our Parliament. I’m studying the Ramayana these days in detail because I’ve joined an A-to-Z blog challenge and my theme is Ramayana, as I wrote already in an earlier post . In order to understand the culture behind Ramayana, I even took the trouble to brush up my little knowledge of Sanskrit by attending a brief course. For proof, here’s part of a lesson in my handwriting. The last day taught me some subhashit...

Lucifer and some reflections

Let me start with a disclaimer: this is not a review of the Malayalam movie, Lucifer . These are some thoughts that came to my mind as I watched the movie today. However, just to give an idea about the movie: it’s a good entertainer with an engaging plot, Bollywood style settings, superman type violence in which the hero decimates the villains with pomp and show, and a spicy dance that is neatly tucked into the terribly orgasmic climax of the plot. The theme is highly relevant and that is what engaged me more. The role of certain mafia gangs in political governance is a theme that deserves to be examined in a good movie. In the movie, the mafia-politician nexus is busted and, like in our great myths, virtue triumphs over vice. Such a triumph is an artistic requirement. Real life, however, follows the principle of entropy: chaos flourishes with vengeance. Lucifer is the real winner in real life. The title of the movie as well as a final dialogue from the eponymous hero sugg...

Abdullah’s Religion

O Abdulla Renowned Malayalam movie actor Mohanlal recently offered special prayers for Mammootty, another equally renowned actor of Kerala. The ritual was performed at Sabarimala temple, one of the supreme Hindu pilgrimage centres in Kerala. No one in Kerala found anything wrong in Mohanlal, a Hindu, praying for Mammootty, a Muslim, to a Hindu deity. Malayalis were concerned about Mammootty’s wellbeing and were relieved to know that the actor wasn’t suffering from anything as serious as it appeared. Except O Abdulla. Who is this Abdulla? I had never heard of him until he created an unsavoury controversy about a Hindu praying for a Muslim. This man’s Facebook profile describes him as: “Former Professor Islahiaya, Media Critic, Ex-Interpreter of Indian Ambassador, Founder Member MADHYAMAM.” He has 108K followers on FB. As I was reading Malayalam weekly this morning, I came to know that this Abdulla is a former member of Jamaat-e-Islami Hind Kerala , a fundamentalist organisation. ...

56-Inch Self-Image

The cover story of the latest issue of The Caravan [March 2025] is titled The Balakot Misdirection: How the Modi government drew political mileage out of military failure . The essay that runs to over 20 pages is a bold slap on the glowing cheek of India’s Prime Minister. The entire series of military actions taken by Narendra Modi against Pakistan, right from the surgical strike of 2016, turns out to be mere sham in this essay. War was used by all inefficient kings in the past in order to augment the patriotism of the citizens, particularly in times of trouble. For example, the Controller of the Exchequer taxed the citizens as much as he thought they could bear without violent protest and when he was wrong the King declared a war against a neighbouring country. Patriotism, nationalism, and religion – the best thing about these is that a king can use them all very effectively to control the citizens’ sentiments. Nowadays a lot of leaders emulate the ancient kings’ examples enviabl...

Violence and Leaders

The latest issue of India Today magazine studies what it calls India’s Gross Domestic Behaviour (GDB). India is all poised to be an economic superpower. But what about its civic sense? Very poor, that’s what the study has found. Can GDP numbers and infrastructure projects alone determine a country’s development? Obviously, no. Will India be a really ‘developed’ country by 2030 although it may be $7-trillion economy by then? Again, no is the answer. India’s civic behaviour leaves a lot, lot to be desired. Ironically, the brand ambassador state of the country, Uttar Pradesh, is the worst on most parameters: civic behaviour, public safety, gender attitudes, and discrimination of various types. And UP is governed by a monk! India Today Is there any correlation between the behaviour of a people and the values and principles displayed by their leaders? This is the question that arose in my mind as I read the India Today story. I put the question to ChatGPT. “Yes,” pat came the ...

Tomichan Matheikal's blog

Search This Blog