Skip to main content

Posts

Democracy wins in Delhi

The victory of Mr Arvind Kejriwal and his party in Delhi shows that democracy is not only vibrant in India but also is politically aware and socially responsible.  The people of Delhi rejected Mr Narendra Modi and his kind of politics which benefit only the rich and the powerful or a particular religious community.  A peon in my school told me on the day of the election, “Don’t vote for Modi’s party.”  I asked why.  “It’s the party of people like the Ambanis and the Tatas,” he said.  “Mukesh Ambani bought 4 TV channels after NaMo became the PM.”  He named the channels to me.  He knew that Mr Mukesh Ambani virtually owned 27 TV channels in India.  The Delhi Assembly election shows that Indians are able to see through the colourful masks worn by their leaders.    Mr Modi’s personalised Republic Day suit which reportedly cost Rs10 lakh and other similarly blatant displays of puerile narcissism must have grated on the nerves of a nation which has thousands of people who die of cold

Ghar Vapsi

“... Give us our daily peg and forgive us our hangovers as we forgive those who hang over us...” Moopan had just finished his prayer before decanting his daily quota of Scotch on the rocks as I entered his house.  Moopan is my great grandfather, holder of the wisdom (and vicedom, as he acknowledges) of generations. A Malayalam TV channel was showing a documentary on the Ghar Vapsi being conducted among the poor tribal people in Chhattisgarh.     “It’s always the poor,” said Moopan with his mischievous smile, “who have to keep changing their identity like the chameleon according to the given situation.  Thank god, there is no vapazi in life,” he laughed in his mirthful way.  “Otherwise we would have to return to Mesopotamia or Harappa.” That’s Moopan’s wisdom just for which I visit him every now and then.  He started with Manu himself.  A flood and a god.  Myths begin there.  Myths have to begin somewhere and a flood is an ideal place.  A fish comes to rescue Manu. 

A Voter’s Trek

Road to my booth I chose to be a responsible citizen and voted today in the Delhi Assembly Elections.  At the back of my mind I could sense the smirk of George Orwell’s character in the Animal Farm , Benjamin the Donkey.  “Whoever wins, the lot of the aam animal will remain the same.”  That’s what he would say.  My polling station was a government primary school in a village called Bhatti close to the Haryana border of Delhi.  The road offered my scooter quite a trekking experience.  Some stretches of the road looked like a paddy field recently ploughed and waiting for saplings.  Both the Congress and the BJP were elected from my constituency in the past democratic exercises.  Nothing much has changed in the rural areas over the years except that a few more private houses have come up making the village look more like an urban slum.  That’s development for the rural folk, I guess. Outside the booth The election process itself might bring some temporary benefits

Rhapsody on a Delhi Road

Source: Reuters A winter morning. Sentiments burn the road awoken by the gentle sun, The cathedral spires poking the heaven behind. What have you lost that you cry for? The King was reciting the Bhagavad Gita Ensconced on the throne of Indraprastha. What belongs to you today, belonged to someone yesterday and will be someone else’s tomorrow. The beggars’ kids in tatters With bones gnawed by the fangs of winter Nagged the developed citizens in cars at the lal batti With roses, teddy bears, airplane models, All made in India with Make in India’s plastic. Whose India is it?  Wondered the journo As the King’s police arrived in vans And heckled people who claimed insecurity Not being the King’s own clans. Children bearing placards shouted slogans whose Meanings or future courses were drowned in winter haze. The present, the present is what is yours , Whether you be King on the throne, or beggar on the street, Or a citizen seeking

India and Hypocrisy

In 1999, Thomas L Friedman argued (in his book, Lexus and the Olive Tree ) that no two countries that both had a McDonald’s had ever fought a war against each other since it got its McDonald’s.  The decade that followed disproved Friedman.  However, the point he was trying to make was valid.  He was using McDonald’s as a symbol of the middle class.  The presence of McDonald’s in a country indicated the rise of the middle class.  And the middle class is not interested in violence and war.  The middle class would rather relish a chicken burger than feel patriotism flowing through their veins when some semi-literate sadhu demands that the women give birth to ten children so that the population of a particular religion rises.    The middle class is essentially hypocritical.  Its religion is not about spirituality at all; it is about social encounters, social niceties and mutual utilisation of social connections. The middle class is interested in improving their social and economic

Acts of Faith

Religion serves various purposes for believers.  For some, it is a source of identity.  Some seek in it community and socialisation.  Quite many use it as a political tool for gaining and wielding power over others.  Those who treat it as the ultimate source of truth are not few. What is religion, in fact?  Rather, what should it be?  This is the question that Eric Segal’s novel, Acts of Faith , seeks to probe.  Daniel and Deborah are the children of an extremely orthodox Jewish rabbi while Timothy is the illegitimate son of a woman who claims none less than the Holy Spirit as the father of her child.  Segal uses 545 pages to tell how these three characters struggle with their religions until they break themselves free of the absurd straitjackets imposed by the religion and realise the true meaning of religion. The central message of the novel may be summarised in the words of one of the characters: “You mean you hate Deborah because your father was a Christian?  Dividing

Inextricably interlinked

I wrote last month in a blog post that some of our (Indian) staple foods originated in alien lands.  Yesterday’s Hindu newspaper informed me that even idli, the quintessential South Indian food, probably had its origin in the Arab lands . The Right Wing ideologues in India like Mohan Bhagwat are still harping on the same old worn-out string of Hindu Rashtra though the more practical people like our beloved Prime Minister and his right hand man, Amit Shah , are choosing to keep mum on the issue at least for the time being.  Why should India be a Hindu Rashtra when the whole world is becoming a global village, countries are opening up their borders and people are moving across the borders with increasing frequency?  There are millions of Indians living in other countries, practising their religion without interference from the indigenous people of those countries.  Why should India turn parochial when the world (leaving aside a few theocratic countries which are strugglin