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.

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