My Bookish Woes (2)

I often tell myself that one day, when I grow up, I will read non-fiction too. But for now I am content with my world of fiction. Such a confession often invites judgemental looks. ‘So you don’t want to broaden the scope of your reading? You don’t want to be informed? Don’t you want to grow (and sound) wiser?’ These are the implied questions that are raised along with the eyebrows. The underlying assumption being: fiction is not brain-nourishing, to put it mildly, or that it is juvenile, to put it bluntly.

In the last post I talked about how while growing up I was never introduced to classics. So I was untouched by the art of the Tolstoys, Austens, Brontes, Prousts or Twains. By the time I came to realise the importance and necessity of reading classics, it had been too late. After a point you just have too much on your plate. It becomes difficult, if not impossible, to take time out for such pastimes or to make up for what you had missed out in your childhood. And thus you want to make the most out of whatever little you get of this precious reading time. However, for a reader like me this situation presents a new dilemma. Should one read things that one would like to read or one ought to have read by now? Or should one read stuff that’s supposed to make one wiser and more informed (or at least make one sound wiser and more informed)? Of course, I mean non-fiction. 

Whenever I sit to read fiction something in me feels a bit uneasy. Or perhaps guilty. Guilty of not devoting this time to sharpen my wits by reading non-fiction. Does reading Pride and Prejudice not befit me, for it could be written off as nothing more than glorified chic-let romance from the Victorian era? Does reading Madam Bovary (or Lady Chatterley’s Lover) not become me, for it can be scoffed at as nothing but litany of woes of an ingénue who asked for all the trouble? And, of course, won’t my reading Harry Potter, at this age, make no-one want to take me seriously? (Yes, I haven’t read that either; don’t abandon me now please!)

Although people like me would want to believe that reading fiction makes you smarter, there’s not enough credible and concrete proof to suggest so. Thus we still can’t conclusively say that fiction indeed makes us smarter and nicer. 

One may argue that reading fiction comes with its own benefits. The staple ones being: facility with the language, enriched vocabulary, development of the organ of empathy, escape from grim reality, awareness of and exposure to other cultures than your own etc. But are these enough? 

Firstly, it must be stated that fiction is not entirely untruth. It’s not falsified reality; but it is reality ordered and arranged in a certain fashion so as to make it more lucid and tangible. There are indeed additions and subtractions done by a writer to dramatise and to intensify the reality, but the base is, mostly, the lived experience (of the writer’s or of the people they’ve known). Not even wildest of fantastic fiction is without modicum of reality. 

Good fiction can go beyond the aforesaid perks, I feel. It could help you crystallise sentiments that are otherwise amorphous. It breaks down, in words, what you may be feeling at any given point in time, or that you may have felt at a certain point in time in the past. The joy of stumbling upon sentences that capture ever so precisely what you’re feeling is incredible; it makes you want to thank the writer heartily. It could also make you wonder if the writer was snooping upon you, or if the writer is endowed with uncanny prescience. Emerson had once remarked that, “in work of a writer of genius we rediscover our own neglected thoughts”. That’s the beauty of art: it helps you find yourself by losing yourself in it.

  Good fiction can even induce new epiphanies. It holds your hand and leads your way to the threshold of the sanctum of realisation; and then it withdraws its steps as you enter the sanctum, while it stands at the threshold with its arms crossed, smiling, contented in the knowledge that within you’re revelling in the glow of that realisation. Thus in a way good fiction has the potential of not only informing your outlook (‘inlook’ too), but also rendering it anew. Like any other form of art, good fiction could be both informative and transformative.

Another thing that draws me to fiction is that it gives you an impression, even if false, that you can control time. Of all things that are disobedient, time is most annoyingly so. But when you immerse yourself in a good book, time does slow down. You get to observe and dissect those micro-expressions, micro-thoughts, micro-moments that elude us in our high-paced lives. The consciousness of a (good) writer can push itself betwixt two closely overlapping, infinitesimal moments, and then wring out the very essence of all that is felt by us in those fleeting moments, such that the consciousness of the reader can then soak up that distilled essence.

“We can learn more about human life and personality from novels than from scientific psychology,” Noam Chomsky had once said.

Even if not brain-nourishing, fiction could very well be soul-nourishing. Then, how could a reader, who has already missed out a lot of these wonderful gems in his growing up years, not feel compelled chose fiction over non-fiction? And even while I choose to read fiction, I am torn between the urge to read those classics and the stunning works of contemporary literature. As I read one book I feel tempted to pick another, echoing the perpetual complain of every reader: so many books; so little time! So apparently, my bookish woes aren’t coming to an end anytime soon.

My Bookish Woes (1)

I am writing this sitting in a train and next to me sits an elderly couple. The gentleman is easily in his mid-sixties and is reading a book. Curious to know what book he’s reading I tilt my head at a certain angle, imagining that I am doing so imperceptibly. But it is not so. His wife notices me and asks her husband to show me the book he’s reading. Embarrassed, I smile and thank him.

‘Oh, it’s just a novel! Tell me son does it suit him to be reading such novels at this age? Now at his age he should be reading Gita, but your uncle keeps reading these novels,’ the lady tells me and then chortles. The gentleman stares at her, then at me and goes back to reading his book.
This made me interrupt my own reading and reflect on this incident a bit.

 I was raised in a conservative vaishnav household, wherein reading any kind of secular literature, unless it was academic, was seen to be a form of dawdling. While reading non-fiction still qualified as quality reading, reading fiction (novels particularly) would attract disdainful looks from the elderly. ‘Human form is too precious to be wasted on these fabrications!’ their looks said. Reading novels was for idlers. My grandmother would tell us the story of some distant aunt of ours who’d earned a bad name for herself because she read too many novels; or maybe because all she did was to read novels. We were told that it was difficult finding a match for her. ‘Which saas would want a bahu that just drinks tea and read novels all day?’ my grandmother would say shrugging.

 As a result of this wariness that my folks had vis-a-vis novels, as children we were never exposed to classics; I had not heard of Jane Austen or the Bronte sisters until after I finished college. There was hardly anyone around us who read fiction, which obviously meant there were no works of fiction in the house on which we could lay our hands. This is not to say that there was aversion to books or to reading. In fact while my SoBo peers were reading Austen, Dickens, Twain et al., I was reading Meera, Jaydev, Soordas et al.

Now in retrospect when I analyse the situation, I find it very amusing. In one sense this practice could be seen to be very restrictive and orthodox, depriving a child of the pleasure and treasure of world of fiction. Yet in another sense it could be seen as an exercise in decolonisation, even if inadvertently so. We were not disallowed per se to read these classics, but we were never encouraged either. And even when we did read them (thanks to the school library), we were completely oblivious to the canonical status that these books enjoyed. For us it was just another novel, and for my folks, perhaps just a waste of time (and of the precious human form). We would have never gotten around to appreciating the indigenous literatures, if we were distracted, or even possibly consumed, by the glamour of the English classics or novels in general.

However, this ostensibly decolonising practice could have also taken a perilous turn: it could have made us myopic and parochial, and worse still, chauvinistic. We too could have turned into narrow-minded nincompoops, who are so blinded by the almost mythical glory of the past that they fail to realise its goriness. But we were salvaged. And like it is almost every other time, this time too it was mummy dearest to our rescue.

My mother had been a reader in her childhood. And I can safely assume that she must have been a secret reader. I don’t know how and when she lost touch with this side of hers; but during our late-night conversations with her, I distinctly remember, she would often tell us how as a child she was fascinated by the world that Enid Blyton would create in her popular series. She would get us Chandamama (in English) to read and would also often read it to us also. So she was the one who had introduced to the world of fiction.  More importantly, she had also passed on to us her love for languages and reading.

But perhaps it was a little too late. A considerable span of my childhood had already passed without reading fiction, and whatever little I read would not qualify to be called refined literature. Still, the seeds that mother had sown did not go waste.

Much later in my life I decided to study literature formally. And my introduction to literature, and by extension humanities, as an academic discipline prevented my falling prey to chauvinism. (Though I must confess I was almost there. Almost!) It taught me that genius does not belong exclusively to one country, one race, or one community. And, interestingly, my being rooted in the indigenous culture in my growing up years also prevented me from blindly holding the western canon in reverentially high esteem. It taught me that imperfection also doesn’t belong exclusively to one country, one race or one community. So, in a way, it did solve its purpose of decolonisation. To put it simply, I realised: to err is human, and to think that we (the Orient) have never erred or that they(the Occident) cannot err, is bovine!


What I still could not fully shake off was this deeply ingrained guilt I feel while reading novels. Even today, I feel some sense of scruple if I sit to read a novel first thing in the day (no matter however desperately I want to). A couple of years ago an relative of mine had come to visit us. I was in the first year of my master’s and was trying to penetrate Conrad’s Heart Of Darkness. He walked in to my room and upon finding me reading, he asked me hesitantly: ‘beta, is this your course book or just a novel?’ For him a book that was not a course book (prescribed in the curriculum) and was fiction, was still just a novel. Just a(nother) novel. What a waste of the precious human form!

But my bookish woes aren’t confined to just this culturally conditioned guilt. Books now present me with a new and a different set of dilemma. I should try to write about those the next time though. For now I have a book to return to. 

PS. The elderly gent sitting next to me is reading Half Girlfriend

Hopelessly Hopeful

It's that time of the night when I sit to unload the squalor of my thoughts on to a pristine paper, thereby tainting it. Must the paper not resent me? There are better things that could have been scribbled on it.

The promise of a better tomorrow, better still, the illusion of it is what drives one today. This tomorrow feeds off the hopes one raises today. Every evening the sun hides, unable to bear upon itself all the burden of hopes one invests it with as it rises. Then the night falls. Enough time for one to recover from the momentary realisation that the perishing of those promises is as inevitable as the rising of the sun the following morning. Also, enough time for one to weave a new tapestry of hopes that one expects life will fulfil. 

One adds a dash of that hope into tea one brews in the morning. One slathers some of that hope with butter on a piece of bread. One pours some of that hope with hot milk into a bowl of porridge. And one opens the newspaper with the hope of finding a possibility of that promise, pressed neatly between the folds of those pages, resembling tiny ants fighting for space, materialising. The newspapers have enough material to demolish all the hopes of having such hopes; and yet one, incurably and hopelessly bitten by the bug of hopefulness keeps hoping.  With the pages of that newspaper the hope gets recycled too. It’s presented to one afresh the next day in a new form, new variety. 

They don’t make a big crashing sound as they perish, these promises. They don’t go all BOOM and BAAM! They just fade away. And fizzle out without much fanfare. A silent death mostly. And then, even before one is done mourning for the lost hopes, new ones start budding and replace the former. And one begins to chase the newly arisen hopes. One knows it’s a bait. Yet one is drawn to it guilelessly and helplessly. Just a certain GPA , a certain degree, a certain job, an apartment with a certain number of rooms in a certain neighbourhood, citizenship of a certain country, a certain person…just this one thing, or that….just this one. And then will commence the gilded age. Does it though? Even if one gets all of these and maybe more?

It’s a Sisyphean task: one tries to claw their way out of this pit, a hopeless pit made of hope, and having come out of it somehow, one finds themselves in an even deeper pit. The pit only multiplies, and one is plunged further into multiple pits simultaneously. Hopeless pits made of hopes.

All of life is this: digging new pits, trying to get out of them, only to envy the pits of the others and wanting to dive into them right away, or to pity the pits of others hoping to never get pushed in those. But a pit is a pit. Hopeless pits made of hopes.

It's that time of the night when I sit to unload the squalor of my thoughts on to a pristine paper, thereby tainting it. Must the paper not resent me? There are better things that could have been scribbled on it.

The AIB Roast: Content Vs Intent

Prudery actually draws attention to the vice it is supposed to (i) ______; the very act that prohibits sight and forbids speech (ii) ________ what is hidden.

a) repress b) condemn c) extol

d) conceals e) dramatizes f) vexes

If you chose to fill the gaps with ‘repress’ and ‘dramatizes’ then you get full marks. This is a question that I usually discuss with my trainees in the GRE class. While I was discussing this question in one of my recent classes, the matter of the (in)famous AIB Roast video sprang up. I asked them how they felt about the whole episode. They are the target audience after all—the “impressionable youth of the nation”. Surprisingly, most of them found it distasteful. I am not sure whether that was how they genuinely felt or were they trying to be politically correct publically. But because most of them did not take kindly to the Roast, I decided to play the devil’s advocate.

Here I shall try to outline some of the key points I had put forth to them.

Firstly, I made them realise how true the question that triggered the discussion is. Many of them conceded that they watched the Roast only after it became a matter of controversy.

The popular and critical opinion is sharply divided on this subject. There are many conservative friends of mine who found the Roast really funny, whereas there are some liberal friends of mine who found it utterly vulgar. From Amir Khan to my neighbour Sharma aunty (oh, yes, she saw the Roast), everybody has expressed their opinion on the matter.

While I am not hailing the Roast as the funniest thing ever that happened to Indian comic scene after News Hour debate on Times Now, I do have a problem with demonising it or calling it most derogatory content ever put up on YouTube. The Roast has to be seen in perspective. Yes, it is cheap, obscene, vulgar, and all that it has been called. But that is the very format. In a singing competition one is supposed to sing. In a dancing competition one is supposed to dance. And in a Roast one is supposed to be vulgar and offensive.

Then, of course, there comes the ever-elusive question of how offensive is too offensive. I feel consent is the keyword here. If the degree of offensiveness is mutually agreed upon by consenting adults then, other than the participants themselves, others have little business getting offended.  

Did I find all the jokes funny? No. I found many of them to be distasteful and I found some to be really funny. But then that’s my assessment. And it’s highly subjective. The same joke I found funny could be seen as revolting by someone else and vice versa. So how does the comedian decide? It’s an assorted mix. You chose what you like and discard what you don’t.

As a person who gets a boner when someone uses a delicious word (Please don’t get offended!), I am also tempted to take a logo-centric (word-centric) view of this episode. So what hurt you? Those words. The C-word, the B-word, L-word? The problem with words is that, especially when used in such delicate contexts, the intent becomes more significant than the content. Was the intent of the participants to offend Gay community, women, people of colour, Catholics? 

Anyone who’s been following the AIB and its members would say no. You will recall that Rohan Joshi (one of the AIB members) had come out with this piece deriding the Supreme Court’s verdict that (re)criminalised homosexuality. The AIB guys were the people who in collaboration with Imran Khan came up with this interesting video to bust some of the most common myths about homosexuality or ‘gay-giri’ (for those of you who think those questions are purely imaginary, trust me, they are not). I am sure you also remember this one wherein the AIB hit out at the TOI over focussing on Deepika’s cleavage. Or this one wherein the gang teamed up with Alia Bhatt who was being made the butt of the Blonde jokes for what could have genuinely been a slip of the tongue.

Are they really misogynistic and homophobic? I don’t think so, and it doesn’t take a genius to figure that. The sad part of the story is that no one files FIRs against Subramanian Swamy when he says that gay people are mentally unstable, or against Kamal R Khan who on his Twitter says things such as...well, let’s not even go there. And the problem is that they’re not even trying to be funny. These people actually mean what they say. Do the AIB Roast participants mean what they say? I leave that judgement up to you.

At the risk of being called a hypocrite, I confess that I found certain cartoons by Charlie Hebdo rather unsavoury. The objective of satire is not purely entertainment. It is deeply social and political too. It is aimed at exposing the follies of the society. Now, I don’t understand why you cannot expose the follies of religion without depicting Christ, the Prophet and Ganesh with their genitals jutting out and participating in an orgy.  Also, one sees in their cartoons a trend. I think the real problem is the ossification of this tendency to be perversely provocative.

Let me explain: I don’t have a problem with the Roast so long as it happens to be an aberration and a norm of the comic discourse. My fear is its becoming mainstream. And the popularity of the AIB may prompt others to replicate it—it should not become a formula.

Those who have attended any haasya-kavi-sammelan (poetry recitals) that are organised on Holi would know how some poems could be seen as offensive in a regular context. But Holi itself is an occasion to subvert the norm. In some Vaishnavite sects the devotees even use abusive words for the Lord when they sing Holi songs. And some of them are really abusive. Holi is carnivalesque. It can be seen as a close cousin of the Dionysian festival held annually in the Greece of antiquity. Chaos is asserted upon; it becomes the dominant theme. The idea is to do the very thing that is disallowed or forbidden in the regular course of things. And as soon as the festival ends, order is restored; people go back to being their usual well-behaved selves. My point is: if the Roast is an annual carnivalesque event wherein the participants and the audience walks in with full awareness of what they will be subjected and exposed to, then it should not be seen as big a threat as it is being made out to be.

I again stress on the keywords: consent and exception. The jokes should be seen as an aberration. They should not be normalised and bandied about casually. Just because Karan Johar was okay being mocked for his being gay, you cannot turn around and expect me to be okay with your derision under the grab of humour, unless, you and I share the same camaraderie that Karan and Ranveer share and your intent is not offensive even if the content is apparently so. 

Delhi Literature Festival 2014: Experiences and Reflections

After a lazy and a late start, I decided to give the last Sunday a literary twist. I reached the venue of the second Delhi Literature festival at around 3 pm. It was a fairly warm afternoon—the jacket felt rather uncomfortable. I was just in time for the session on 'Erotica In Literature'. The panel comprised Rosalyn D'Mello, Sreemoyee Piu Kundu, Ira Trivedi, and was moderated by Girija Kumar. All three women writers have books lined up for releases. The discussion passed through familiar contours any discussion on the said subject is likely to pass through: tabooed nature of erotic writing, orthodox backlash faced by and belittling of writers of erotica—more so when they're women—etc. The discussion somehow sounded contrived, and sounded more like a manoeuver by the writers, especially Sreemoyee, to promote their respective upcoming books. The very chic Ira Trivedi commended the progress that our society has seen in whatever little measure insofar as that she was able to discuss "such issues" openly with a man her grandfather's age (the moderator, Mr Girija Kumar).  

The other major session was on the 'art of playwriting'. There were figures as tall as Mohan Maharishi from the world of theatre, among others such as Jaidev Taneja, Mariam Karim Ahlawat, Diwan Singh Bajeli and Bernardo Carvalho. Mr. Bajeli expressed categorical regret on the lack of any "great" work of drama in Hindi, post-independence. Mr Maharishi, however, disagreed squarely, and posited that there have been a considerable number of plays that are significant and that the definition of "greatness" is rather subjective. The panellists briefly touched upon subjects such as street-plays, importance of music in plays, and the state of Brazilian theatre (Bernardo is a Brazilian writer). Mariam, in her very demure voice, pointed out that a written play is the property of the writer so long as it is with him/her; the moment the written play is passed on to the other team members who collaborate in the process of stage-craft—production team, directors, actors etc.—the play ceases to be solely the property of the writer, and becomes an object of interpretation, more of an abstract entity. And, therefore, she insisted, that we must have more plays published, so that over the period of time a new set of people may interpret the same play in a totally different manner from what the writer had originally conceived.  Mr. Jaidev Taneja shared a few nuggets of his experience as a performer with the Jan-natya manch.

 The penultimate session was about the 'Craft of Poetry'. This was one session that I personally felt was enriching and entertaining at once. It had an eclectic mix of panellists, ranging from such stalwarts of contemporary Hindi and Malayalam poetry as Ashok Chakradhar and K. Satchidanadan respectively, to the likes of Dr. Bina Biswas, Rana Safvi, and Dr. Vanita from the realm of English, Urdu and Punjabi poetry respectively.

Mr. Satchidanandan who has translated several English poems including those of Pablo Neruda into his mother tongue Malayalam  so as to make the poetry of the west accessible to his Malayalam speaking brethren spoke with a flourish. He has also translated several ancient and contemporary Malayalam poems, including some of his own into English, too. He gave us a sample of his creative genius by reciting his poem titled ‘Stammer’, which likens the act of stammering to poesy.  He recited in Malayalam four lines from one of his poems. I must confess that till then I had thought Malayalam was a slightly harsh language in terms of its phonology, but his recitation forced me to reconsider my position. It sounded so enchanting, each word so crystalline, that Mr. Chakradhar also could not stop himself from applauding it, though he, like most of us, could not understand the meaning of those lines.

I shall describe the inputs of Mr Chakradhar in the following lines, but I choose to do so in Hindi—a small ode to the beautiful language.  

चक्रधरजी ने अपने काव्य-कौशल और अपनी वाक् पटुता से अनूठा समां बाँधा। उनके वक्तव्य को सुन मुझे  अपने एक मित्र कि  हिंदी भाषा के संदर्भ में  एक कही गई एक टिप्प्णी याद आ गई : " हिंदी एक बहुत ही कुरकुरी भाषा है"। आपने बतलाया कि कैसे एक कवि के ह्रदय में किसी एक क्षण में सौंदर्य एवं कल्पना कि कौंध  उठती है, जो उस कवि को उस सौंदर्य को, उस विचार को, उस परिकल्पना को शब्द-बद्ध  करने पर  उतारू कर देती है। किन्तु कभी कभी इस कल्पना का ज्वार इतना वेग-शाली होता है कि शब्दों के बाँध उसे रोकने में सक्षम नहीं होते। सच्चिदानंदनजी कि कविता (जिसका शीर्षक "stammer"  अर्थात "हक़लाना " था) को भी चक्रधजी ने इस ही असक्षमता से जोड़ा। आपने तो यहाँ तक कहा कि हक़लाना एक प्रकार से भाषा से अपना  हक़ लाना है, चूँकि बहुत से भाव हैं  जिनका भाषा के शब्दों में समावेश करना अति ही दुष्कर है।

आपने फिर कविता के पुस्तकीय स्वरुप एवं भाव स्वरुप कि भी विवेचना करी। उनका कहना था कि काव्य-सम्मेलनों में जो आम तौर पर कविता का स्वरूप  है उसमे गहराई कि कमी  होती  है। उस कविता को कवि उपस्थति श्रोताओं को प्रस्सन करने के हेतु से पढता है। कुछ वाह-वाही मिलने पर फिर दोबारा पढ़ देता है। परन्तु ऐसी कविता सीमित हो कर रह जाती है। ऐसी कविता को आपने "पुस्तक " कि कविता बतलाया। इसके विपरीत जो कविता कवि के ह्रदय से स्फुरित होती है, और जो प्रशंसा-प्राप्ति के उद्देश्य से नहीं लिखी जाती, वह "उस तक" कि कविता बन जाती है। चक्रधरजी के मुख से हिंदी भाषा के कुछ शब्दों को सुन कर ऐसा लगा मानो जैसे किसी पुराने संगी से मिलना हो गया हो। आम बोल-चाल में ये शब्द कहीं लुप्त से ही हो कर रह गए हैं। हिंदी भाषा के माधुर्य को हमने सरहाना ही छोड़ दिया है। ( यह कुछ पंक्तिया हिंदी में लिखने के पीछे का मेरा उद्देश्य यादों के उन्ही पुराने  तारों को छेड़ना था। कोई त्रुटि हो तो अनदेखा कर दें।)

Dr. Biswas commented upon the changing forms and nature of English poetry. She pointed out that since the advent of Modernism the focus has nearly completely shifted from form to content. As a matter of fact, she added, that formlessness has now become the new form, and that now economy is valued much more over volubility. She also talked about how poetry is engaging with newer media to engender avant-garde forms such as Video poetry. 

Rana Safvi attempted to briefly trace the genealogy of Urdu poetry. She remarked that at its nativity in around the 17^th century, Urdu poetry was a mixture of Arabic, Hindustani, and Dakhhini. She pointed how in the beginning the Urdu poets largely concerned themselves with the laments of a jilted and forlorn lover (quite similar to the Petrarchan modality of chivalrous appeasement of the mistress).

Next in turn was Dr. Vanita who was to speak on Punjabi poetry. But by the time she began speaking the audience was under the spell of a strange kind of anticipation. There were a lot of murmurs, and the auditorium had started feeling more and more stuffy. All I could gather was that she was speaking on how Punjabi poetry was also instrumental in the Freedom struggle or something to that effect. A lot of people had been queuing up in the gallery behind the last row of auditorium in which I was sitting. This commotion was due to the finale. The final session was to feature the Chief Minister of Delhi, Arvind Kejriwal, and an eminent journalist, Barkha Dutt. An army of videographers and volunteers took over the stage and started setting up their equipments.

Amid the organisers of the event frantically running up and down the galleries of the auditorium procuring bouquets and mementos, everybody’s gaze suddenly shifted to the entry door. A puny man with his head wrapped in a navy blue muffler surrounded by a phalanx of people, who were apparently guarding him, made an entry. Who else? Mr. Arvind Kejriwal. Barkha was to speak to the Magsaysay award winner, CM about his book, Swaraj: Power to the people.

I was a bit upset about the fact that the literary forum was in some sense hijacked by a political deity. It appeared as if Lord Indra had suddenly descended from the heavens. While I was feeling sorry for Dr. Vanita whose voice was drowned in the entire adulatory brouhaha, I turned my head left to find a familiar face sitting next to me. No sooner I attempted to figure out where I had seen this gentleman, than a group of volunteers walked up to him looking as apologetic as they could asking the gentleman to move to the front most “reserved row”.  The gentleman humbly resisted saying that he was fine where he was. Nevertheless, he had to relent to the requests. The man was the Education minister of Delhi, Mr Manish Sisodhia.

The finale soon commenced. What followed next is for everyone to see on T.V. and elsewhere.

What I found worth remarking was the ease with which the CM handled all the questions. Not for a moment he seemed nervous or ill at ease. (Thankfully he had removed his signature style muffler before the conversation began.) He took every question smilingly and cracked a couple of jokes here and there.

I’ve always had a lot of apprehensions about the model of participatory democracy (“moholla sabha”) that he and his party espouse, for the fear of majority dictating terms to minority, in other words the fear of ‘mobocracy’. Barkha echoed my reservation when she asked the CM about a situation in which a group of people from the moholla sabha may decide against subletting property to people from North east, gay people, or Muslims. The CM clarified that any act or decision taken by the Moholla sabha that violates the right to equality or any other fundamental right granted by the constitution will be deemed null and void, and that the people participating in any such violation will be liable to be prosecuted under IPC.

He clarified that it will not be the place of the Moholla sabha to pass moral judgements or any extra-constitutional judgements; the sabhas will only be allowed to take decisions related to the maintenance and the basic amenities of the concerned locality. He admitted that we need to have a lot of checks and balances in place to remedy any social prejudices that are prevalent in our society in order for this model to be successful. He also argued that the menace of Khap will not be redressed by banning them, but by prosecuting the ones which indulge in unconstitutional acts. One tough precedent and they will all toe the line, he said.

Theoretically speaking, his answers did assuage my reservations to a great degree, but I am yet not very sure how effective this model would be when it comes to executing it. The audience in the hall seemed to cheer and applaud the CM at almost every answer he gave; I refuse to believe they were all AAP loyalists or “AAP-tards” as they’re called. The loophole, though, came to surface as soon as a woman (who was also cheering for him at his responses) from the audience stood up to (respectfully) criticise the CM’s move of sitting on the dharna. A handful of people started booing her. The check in this case came from the moderator, Ms Dutt, who insisted that the girl be allowed to complete her comment without having been shouted down.

From what I gather the success of this model of governance will greatly depend on the efficacy of the ombudsman and his/her officers to see that even the last and weakest voice is heard without the fear of being muted.

The Beast Within...

The hideous incidents that have surfaced in the recent past have, apart from supplying the desperately needed fodder to keep the 24X7 media up and running, forced us to re-examine and re-assess, our estimation of the importance of morality and education in particular, and, our idea of civilisation in general. 

Talwars, a dentist couple, Mr. Tejpal, an editor-in-chief of an eminent national magazine, Justice Ganguly, head of the Human rights commission (and Asharam Bapu, a so-called God-man): people from different walks of life with only one thing common—besides their renown, respectability, and competence in their respective fields— their alleged involvement in some of the basest crimes known to man.

In all fairness, almost all the cases are sub judice, and therefore it’d be a little too early to pass a judgement on any of these matters; my point, however, of writing this is not to pillory any of these individuals. I think the media have done their job well to that end. One of my intentions of penning this piece is to actually reflect on this rather entrenched propensity of ours to pass judgements at others so impetuously. 

All of these are people belong to the upper crust of humanity in terms of their financial and social standing. These are people in whom hundreds of people have in the past reposed their faith. They are doctors, top-notch journalists, former judges, and (self-claimed) paragons of all that is holy. We look up to them, or their likes, in our daily lives. We seek solace in their counsel in times of physical or emotional distress. Some of us have taken their words as final words on matters secular or divine. And yet, now we have been forced to come face to face with a nightmarish dimension of their personalities.

I should reiterate that I refer to these people only as prototypes of a larger problem. As I said, since most of the cases are sub judice one should refrain from jumping to conclusions too soon. However, that caution does not omit the possibility of their, or people of their stature, having perpetrated the alleged crimes. There are far too many examples in the history to show that. And that to my mind is the larger tragedy. 

That infallibles exist only in mythology (do they? More on that soon) is an unsettling thought. What perturbs us more when we read/hear such news? Is it the occurrences/presence of such malice in our society? Or that in these cases in particular, the malice can be traced to people who themselves were apparently torch-bearers of humanity and crusaders of human-rights, quite literally in one case. I think it’s the latter which is more unhinging and comes as a sort of a blow. 

Believe it or not we have a tendency to push and displace depravity to the margins, away from the seemingly safe cocoons we’ve spun about ourselves. We imagine knaves and rogues to come from the other class, community, caste, country even. That the educated, civilised, and righteous mind can also breed the basest of thoughts comes as such a shock to us.

But as the recent events have shown, we seem to place undue importance in our idea of education, morality, urbanity;  for the aforesaid are assumed to be the foundation of the edifice of civilisation. And these incidents have once again showed us how that foundation is shaky.    

Is it, then, only a complacent illusion that civilisation has managed to temper and curtail the beast that lurks within each of one of us? Or is this behaviour only human and a proof of our helplessness and impotence to fight that beastly instinct despite being conditioned and trained to do so?

No, I am not for a moment condoning what these people have allegedly done. They must be tried lawfully and must face the consequences of their actions. My concern is not to vilify, justify or condone their actions. My concern here is more selfish than that. 

Imagine these people in their day to day lives. How many times must have Mrs Talwar winced when she must have seen some gory visuals of a murdered body on her television screen or in a newspaper report, and must have pitied the unknown victim. The Supreme Court judge in question must have censured so many people who must have transgressed legally and socially. The said God-man must delivered so many sermons warning his followers against the sins he himself has allegedly committed. The editor must have churned out so many stories lashing out against people who must be guilty of committing crimes similar to the one he himself is alleged (and admitted) to have done.

Will it be wise and correct to write off all of their above stated behaviour as phony and contrived? Is it is safe to assume that none of their pity, censure, sermons, indignation had even a whiff of genuineness?  I doubt it.

And this doubt haunts me. Doesn’t that mean that we who fume and fret over such matters, and take not even a moment’s time to express our vexation through social-media, are not exempt from such follies? We are as vulnerable to that beastly side of us overpowering all the mental conditioning, and drawing out from within us the kind of behaviour we ourselves would have never imagined.

One moment of indiscretion induced by agents external (say, alcohol) or internal (say, anger, lust, or greed) is all it may take to eject me from the high horse of civility, and make me stand in line with people whom I was chastising and fuming over minutes, days or months ago; and I may end up being the object of others vexation and ridicule. But, again, are these ‘others’ immune to the malice that they are fuming over is my larger concern, a deep-seated fear more so. Can a person be defined in totality by a vice he/she gives into or a virtue he/she upholds?

“Give me that man,

That is not passion's slave, and I will wear him

In my heart's core, ay, in my heart of heart.”

~ Hamlet  (3.2)