Little by little I am dying as we all do, but the difference is only a realization of it. Stop biting into my flesh; can't you see I am still alive? And I am writing too. I seek diversions and I ask for it with a pure diction. Will the meanderer be rewarded for his celibacy? Never mind if I bruise myself.
No doubt and second thought in banning the four accused in “Spot fixing” (a new phenomenon after match fixing; damn these Pakistanis are real inventors), but who will do it when the entire management made of retired ISI and Army junta, itself is neck deep in running this racket.
Captains are changed and inexperienced payers are asked to captain the team, why? Amswer: They are gullible and subdued and a perfect fit to carry the agenda of the management.
Some data to make Pakistan proud of where it has come today:
Google releases it's porn search list by nationalities, Pakistan tops it. Great searches, Probably the next popular after sex and nude babes, would be, “how to make a bomb and die a martyr to wash my terrible sins”.
UNHCR reports on South Asian sex rackets, and human trafficking, Pakistan defeats entire South Asia, even holds a ranking on the world forum. And we Indians continue to feel they are a closed country. Come on people we might see Karachi as the hub of sex tourism in a matter of some years.
Pakistan floods; a natural disaster of this proportion and yet countries do not open their pockets, why? Lack of trust if it really will go in the right pocket, after all they have a surety that 10% alone would be lost at the very first go; I don’t want to say it but hope you remember Mr. 10%, who is doing the best thing he can do in his entire career, “begging in World Forums”. His first stint was to beg with his better half in front of World Bank for development projects, and so it explains his fat greasy smile.
Why this sort of corruption in every walk of life? The answer is simple. Not to talk of any foreign investors, Pakistanis themselves have lost faith in their country, and therefore they want to loot as much as they can and as fast as they are able to.
When other South Asians are moving towards becoming export oriented economies, Pakistan can not even keep its stock market open regularly for a week, for the fear of rampant selling.
Nations throw their tyrants out forcibly, or by voting, or if they are dead then out of their minds, psyches, folklores. If Stalin can be defeated years after his death why can’t General Zia? But no. No one knows why.
If you are an alien then we have a lot to offer. This same spirit of Pakistan makes it the news everyday. I don’t care for what reason. The world was not able to come out of the spot fixing scandal when suddenly Pakistan suddenly came out with excellent fireworks on the street of one of it’s largest cities. Lot of dead bodies makes good news material.
National Geographic covers Pakistan, and the youch in Karachi and Islamabad have to prove they are tolerant by sipping booze and sniffing cocaine to show they are tolerant. What an irony. One side gun totters the other side cocaine snuffers and boozed generation. Where is the middle path? I remember reading in my history books that India won freedom because of a vibrant and upcoming middle class. Pakistan has none and if there is any, it is pale, dying or running out of the country. Rest is either drowning itself in some kind of after life which they believe won’t be messy as his one was, and rest trying to forget that they are living in that dirt hole, sniffing and sniffing again.
General Zia is smiling. His dream has come true
Congratulations Pakistan, you really have arrived on the world stage. Abbas Jalis Rizvi
Now GuantanamoBay again keeps it status as Yemen descends into a chaotic state. After all friends like Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt and Yemen need their subjects to be placed in hospitable conditions. They can not do so, like the cases of some released captives walking straight to the networks and joining them for all wide variety of reasons and christening it to be Global Jihad. So Gitmo needs to be alive at least for some time. (I believe that BSNL, should send a delegation to learn from Al Qaeda about proper upkeep and functioning of network). Ha ha ha.
The health reform has got into trouble with the Republicans getting their breathe back in the by-election. The portrayal of Obama as an inexperienced Leader is complete, with commoners themselves crying hoarse of the same, and many political analysts now dubbing his win as more of anti Bush wave. In fact that is my belief too, for if McCain would have been a democrat in those days he would also have won a sweeping margin, or for that matter Hillary would have done the same easily. (Forgive me if I am making too daring remarks).
Thirdly it is Iran. Ahmedinejad might not be the best of diplomat and would be lacking the suavity and smoothness required at the world stage, but he manages to steal the limelight all the time. Obama had put his hope firstly on Mousavi's win to get Iran on negotiating table, then after the elections he put his hopes on Mousavi to implode the establishment thus ending the Islamic Republic of 30 years. But his horse has lost, as he was not able to run on the Iranian turf. The Ayatollahs are very much there, and the calculation that they have started to speak against each other is the sign of decadence of the Revolution has proved faulty. (Being born a shiite myself I know that this is not new, because Shiite Ulemas have hated each other since time they invented their black cloaks, and they will continue to do so unabated).
And now Obama's words have started to shift the "Bushian" way. Georgia is back from the Orange Revolution, with Victor Yushchenko nowhere around, and Russia smiling, US has started talking of NATO aggressively again. China has refused to vote for sanctions on Iran and so the release of pending arms sales to Taiwan. On Iran it is all bowled over after the Persians first refused to part with the uranium and then after many months agreed to. Now no one knows how to react. Obama is still trying to understand what this means. So now it has released the Israelis to do what they do best, "wagging their hostile tongues" at Iran.
The words are the same that costed McCain a lot in his Presidential run, "Bomb, Bomb Bomb Iran". Though analysts disagree that Israel will do it at all in it's right senses. Iran is a wider area than Iraq, and it's military capabilities are far superior to any "friendly country". And it is not Gaza too. On the other hand it is the founder of Hezbollah, which still is thriving after Israel went after it in 2006.
I don't want to blame Obama for everything, as their are no constants in this game. The US influence is waning throughout the world and it's economic muscle needs a lot of workout after the last 2 bad years. No one could have imagined 20 years back of a Chavez just right next door, or negotiations with Latin American Leftist Guerrillas, just like today is being proposed of Taliban. The worst part to it is that Taliban has not requested for it; It's just some 100 countries coming together and suggesting it to each other.
Whether American think tanks agree to it or not, Iraq has settled down, but into the hands of very much pro Iranian politicians (in fact trained for the democratic process which US itself tried to introduce). Obama is not talking of democracy any more like Bush, which is the only change we can see. In fact this was the only silver lining of Bush's term that I can recollect.
So the way out of all the mess of the "American Century" is to borrow a leaf out of Bush's book of survival in American Politics, and that is to talk tough. Obama has done the same. A resurgence of troops in Afghanistan is not very encouraging if one sees the promise of "complete withdrawal with timetable" during the elections to White House. Resurgence is very much a McCain promise, which Obama is delivering now. Many critics of modern day democracy would smile at the very support of their notion that policies and state functioning do not change with the vote of the common man, but it continues to be the same regardless of whoever comes to power. But this is not about it; It is about the ever changing political dynamics which Obama is trying to adapt to. He would never have wanted himself to be accepting the Nobel for Peace within days of taking decisions of troop resurgence. But that is what modern politics is all about.
So Obama is speaking the Bush way now and that is more a confrontation note. Logic of proposing talks to Taliban and getting ahead with a military push at the same time signifies a desperate attempt to get a superior hand if in case any talks start in the near future. The ideas slowly have drifted towards flexing more of muscles and statements like “all options on table” except that the words are sugar coated and carefully drafted for a man who bears a burden of the past. In fact this is the only change which the world has seen till date.
I am back after a vacation. In order to get back to senses after missing so much of the world, I am trying to "pick up sticks". Doesn't it reminds you of "5, 6, pick up sticks". Exactly like Tasleema Nasreen's book "no country for women" reminds you of an Oscar winning Movie; you guessed it, I don't have to mention it's name. Iran celebrated it's day, I don't know what day to call it. In fact they celebrate everyday. Whenever a western politician makes a statement recommending sanctions, or strikes on it's nuclear stations, It knows it has succeeded in making them s**t in their pants, so it celebrates. It is indeed a revolution. The standard of politicians in the west has really adapted to the benchmark of politicians of UP. Amar Singh is out of news. This is a discovery I did after coming back yesterday. Thanks to Mr. Thackeray, whichever one. They are all the same brands. Lashkar e Toiba, Jaish e Mohammed, Sipah e Sahiba all the same, and so are, Bal Thackeray, Uddhav Thackeray and Raj Thackeray. Shahrukh Khan minted money out of this controversy for another, good for nothing film in which Shahrukh plays Shahrukh (after all the surname is common). My name is Khan. Karan Johar needed it desperately after Kurban. AAAAAAA................. I saw that movie. (I know my respect is receding in every one's eyes after I made this statement). Terrorists from Pakistan travels to india to chase a Hindu girl who will get a scholarship in US so that he can travel on a spouse visa with her and do bang bang (he was not able to do much bang bang in US, but surely he did a lot with that girl). WHAT A PLOT!!!!!!!!! And yes I missed hail stones in lot of places in UP, while I was enjoying snow in Mussorrie. And Jha ji, (see he is smiling) got engaged. All my good wishes to him. Maya Memsahab must have added some new elephants to the parks she is constructing in Lucknow. (I love the purse dangling from the hands in her statue; Social upliftment and renaissance at last). Gauri Khan could be seen on TV yesterday, as she saw My name is Khan, and some unemployed youths enjoyed a day's hospitality in lock ups of Bombay. (Sometimes it pays to be loyal to Shiv Sena). And rest was the same. Some woman threw her children in some river, before being saved herself. Some farmers committed suicide (I hope they had not seen My Name is Khan). And students are preparing for boards and other competitive exams in the same fashion as usual, under stress, because 3 Idiots is just good for seeing on the silver screen, it is not the reality in Indian Scenario (Let us see how long).
My exposure to "Thackeray" brand of politics happened in 1992, when one fine day. India started to burn. That was quite a winter. In December and that too in Dehradun (mind you not today's polluted Dehradun), December 6 would have been a day to sit outside and enjoy the sunshine. But the newspapers made us sit in.
Lots of copycats were suddenly unleashed. As if an astrologer wearing his paraphernalia studded with all colours, lots of known and unknown faces came out exercising their freedom of speech. Ritambhara, Uma Bharti and likes (May their political career's soul rest in eternal peace, and never rise again) were out denouncing the "muslim way of life". Right from how Muslims demean Indian culture, to the way they divorce (as if they had a lot of sympathies with divorced Muslim women whom they were salivating to rape, and kill), and even how they cook their bread. Coming generations would never be able to believe that an entire middle class of India some how went into a trance to these speeches, and called it "exemplary oratory skills". (I borrowed the start of this line from Einstein on Gandhi; never mind till it makes sense).
But amongst them all was a man who had a patent to it all, and he managed to make it the best ever show to watch. He spoke and Bombay (please don't kill me for not calling it Mumbai, I beg of you) burnt, and he went on speaking till more of it burnt and then a little more. He had mastered it in a dry run earlier on South Indians, chiding them to be “gangstas”, taking away jobs, spoiling marathi culture, overpopulating Bombay, living in slums, not worshipping Ganapati, eating through their mouth, having two hands, walking on legs, etc. (Last ones are actually the reasons why I hate them; Sorry).
I had never visited Bombay till then, I was just eleven and a sleepy Dehradun was enough for me to pursue my studies. The bigger goal of a “UP ka bhaiyya” (Uttaranchal, no no Uttarakhand; I am confused, which ever; was still part of UP) like me, that of depriving the "Marathi Manoos" of his daily bread was still years ahead. Can anyone imagine a lull in Bombay, with no man walking (My God, it’s an overpopulated city). Police Flag marches, curfew, dead bodies strewn all over. Yes this was Bombay of ’92.
Things went to normal after that, as we Indians can afford some thousands dead, millions orphans, same number of widows, rape and loot doesn’t even matter to us (till the time it is someone from a socially well to do strata, or a tourist). No, no, I am not going to add another line to it with all the blah, blah like ‘things went to normal at the exterior, but the nation’s soul was scarred”.
It was the birth of a national icon of “free speech”. One who could freely call any names to minorities and be free as ever, one who came to be talked on play fields amongst school children, youths, urban middle class as an answer to “Muslim” Dawood Ibrahim. Long after wards the tirade continued, with defiance to SriKrishna commission, and other calls, till the time the division happened within the family. Between Uddhav and Raj who is the heir to the legacy of the “Tiger”, mandated with the well being of the ordinary Indian, became the question to the syndicate. The mafia family had in all the years understood that riding the tide with BJP was over and the divisive temple politics days were over, not because the average Indian became very clever (because we saw a similar scenario coming back after 10 years in Gujarat, but it started arousing suspicion at least when the issue was raised by the frontrunners, the BJP. With the syndicate already loosing grip within Bombay the speakers for the rights of the “oppressed class” in this case the majority community according to them, turned their guns against them, and bifurcated the entire community into Marathi and non Marathi. Raj departed and carried the legacy better in some way. He could take up cheeky, sometimes non existent, sometimes cheeky issues, and was crafty enough to get the faces of cameras to himself. Who cares if the autowallah you cut the hands of is a Hindu, let him go to hell if this act fetches enough votes for survival of the mafia syndicate. Then train your guns on some candidates for railway entrance exams, after which some billboard burning, and if you have nothing to do then at least to be in exercise slap an MP for taking oath in Hindi. (I had learnt Hindi was our national language; Oh yes! We don’t care about anything that has a national thing attached to it, e.g. Tigers just above 1400 left now, is our national animal, if you have forgotten).
Why I said earlier that I don’t want to talk of national soul, because conscience is something we lack, or then why did MNS and Shiv Sena for all these years was able to even get representatives in elected places. The answer is simple, “we love anyone who preaches hate till the time we are spared. I remember somewhere in ’94 I was in the 9th standard; Too young to get into politics, but old enough to have an observation, and I walked with some of my class mates during the recess. Temple issue was still very much around and BJP had not even come once in power to get people disillusioned, and fed up with the patented politics of the “Thackeray” kind. Liberalization also was not in full swing so that the average emotional Indian would have been busy making money. We were bhaiyyas till that time. Some of them came up with the idea suggesting that minority appeasement was happening and how Christians and Muslims were up to overflow the Indian land with conversions, and their swine like capabilities to reproduce respectively, forgetting that we were ourselves part of an institution which was of the British era being managed by Irish Catholics. And after a long discussion in which I was vocal enough to compare the Shiv Sena with Nazis, with one or two very much with me strongly, and rest with vocal one or two to the extreme right, at last declaring Bal Thackeray as a man who can challenge the already existing bias in favour of politics and a champion of the Hindu cause.
That debate I lost, not because they had a lot of points to prove, but because some times it is better to leave for time to judge. I know it is time that make things happen, for who can look at Austria and Germany of today to think that these were the birth place of Nazism. Reading the newspapers these days with a lot of condemnation from politicians and public as a whole for these goons who perpetrate terror on the roads of metropolitans, and can sometimes siege entire state machinery in the name of honour, I miss my classmates. I want to restart the debate with them, I want to ask them of their feelings after being condemned by their champion and his successor from entering a part of this country, lately who have also started making speeches on secession from Indian state as a whole if the “Marathi Manoos” is not respected. I want to ask them how it feels being declared a non entity, not a “Manoos”at all, when simply you are entitled being cut into pieces if you are on “their land”.
If, and only if you had started speaking against them en masse twenty years ago, probably they would have become extinct by themselves. But as the story goes, we don’t care till they turn against us. Suddenly today it is a debate on India for all vs. Maharashtra for none other than one. (How wonderful it sounds, I came up with it).
The silver lining is that today the mafias have touched a raw nerve, and the time is wrong. Literacy is on rise in this country and people are hopeful of the future. I firmly believe that this time everyone will speak, and we should. I am writing as an obligation as this time India should speak together and bomb them with their words to the stone ages. (I took this one from Bush Junior as he was going to do to Afghanistan).
I am now battling summers. Mark my word summers, just not any ordinary summers but the heat of Indo Gangetic plains. Lucknow now; five years back it was Allahabad, where I was studying. Many Delhiites would swear by winters in Delhi and summers too. And when they describe the seasons in Delhi they do it with some arrogance in it, as if it was the worst place at that moment to live in. Actually by this they mean no disrespect to the place but an ego attached with it describing themselves to be battling against all odds, describing their struggle with faces twisted to the last stretching point according to Hooke’s law of elasticity, from where it can never return to it’s original shape.
For those who don’t remember their physics lessons well, Hooke's law states that
F = - kx
where
x is the displacement of the end of the spring from its equilibrium position;
F is the restoring force exerted by the material; and
k is the force constant (or spring constant).
That is the spirit of that place, and a person who has lived in that city starts speaking about the challenges he faces and difficulties he surmounts on a day to day basis, thereby glorifying it’s dwellers.
In Lucknow summers have arrived and people speak of coming sessions of siesta. Sorry I am not talking about unemployed (read unemployable) youngsters, but I am talking about working (read tortured and forced against their wishes), guys. It is the love of merry making that hangs, and this aroma of merry making and infinite joy doesn’t leave the Indo Gangetic plains ever. In monsoon they want to get wet, though they are wet somewhere within their pants always (read the rising population figures of this region). In summers they want to resume another season of mango reaping (read raping). And winter comes and then resumes the love making. Love making exists twelve months, whether they are sweating like pigs or are shivering like a squirrel in winter, which too without any precautionary services government is spending on through dispensers in public toilets.
But there is a calm which soothes the nerves. I have come to know that Maslow was wrong in his assessment of a pyramid. Here in these backyards of an emergent India, self actualization seeps in long before the need of basics arise. Contentment is what impresses any person who has ran across distances, six days a week to keep a steady flow of green bills in his awarded bank accounts. I have done that for five long years, to which when I look back I can only identify months with the organizations I was in and the professional happenings that surrounded me either elating or depressing me for months.
I am learning here and learning that human at the end of the day can also seek happiness just lying on a charpow under a mango tree, sometimes just waiting for the mango season to arrive.
My heart needs a little blabbering. I want to talk about the changes in my life. It can be about anything, right from a busy schedule which I was keeping some days ago, to a marriage in which I was the groom. But somewhere my words were lost, or may be I had become too verbose in front of mortals. I was at loss of words, and so the print inside my mind was getting dull day by day. How to pour it out? How to bring new thoughts?
I have started seeing hope even when I see pain everyday. Cruel inflictions and occurrence of most abhorrent nature, but I am still believing that something good will come out of it.
I saw a bitch giving birth to three puppies, less than the average size with which they would have been born. But I waited for them being healthy soon; I knew that some one will feed them. I could see the imminent death of that female with pale body and weak hind legs, but I was hopeful that the kids will be taken care of. She died and the litter was too weak to survive. Some days later I found them playing on the road and people feeding them and running after them to save them from being crushed under speeding vehicles. And when the white one amongst them got a leg crushed and bruised, it got a dressing of engine oil from a diesel generator vendor. The children are rolling and tumbling and playing. I am confused where is the pain to write about when there hope floating all over.
Yesterday was not a dark night, because at least it had the street light with all it’s yellowness around reflected by the cemented lane laid down some months back in front of the rented apartment that I live in.
It’s an advantage to be on a height if you are an observer and so I have it for myself. Like a cat purged on at a height I rested myself on the iron grill of my balcony and gasped for some air, after torturing myself with weights which I bought from somewhere, the place which I can not trace back now.
I could see the happiness on the face of some boys in their early teens playing in the lane, which obviously is safe as it ends within 50 meters at a gate of a school which I suppose to be haunted. And so were their macho games going on with everything ranging from pulling each other to running backwards. Every muscle movement is a show of strength in those early years when a man discovers his anatomy for the first time.
And with those boys I could see a little girl, may be less than a third of their age working hard to be a part of the group. I call her “little manga” as she always reminds of that funny but lovable Japanese style of cartoon sketching, or whatever you call it. In all these one and a half years that I have lived in this locality I have seen her journey from her father’s safe arms to running around in oversized slippers. And surely she recognizes me with a helmet over my face and never forgets to pass a smile; once I smiled at her without one and got a cold stare back from her. That is the fun of being an employed guy with late sittings in the office, where people only see you the time you are leaving, and the time when you come back with a roaring engine underneath you. She knows the working face of mine; the one which I leave with and I come back with, “a helmeted face”.
And suddenly my human knowledge of counting raised a red flag. There were three guys, in early teens and this little manga, with her elder brother who was doing anything and everything to please these young chaps who might have been a little more then double his age, to get an acceptance and be the fourth musketeer. I could see societies in making at the same place and humans repeating their tribal history generation after generation; though once they started in a cave and now they were repeating it under a lamp post. What went missing in the circle of friends was a young girl who once used to run around on a bicycle like a tom boy, and had the guts to challenge the guys in a game of cricket. The team was perfect and the circle was complete with all the likeminded people making a story to remember once they grow. And she was the most vocal and energetic of the lot. I could sense long back that she was unaware of herself yet though her presence always made the boys to behave. A battle with a shuttlecock would be a lost one if the racket instead of baton would have to be passed on, but as the manager of the team used to arrive the scenario would change with many a helping hands moved forward to pass their swords to the uncrowned princess of “Neverland”.
And that night she was just absent, nowhere to be seen amongst those whom she ruled, and they did not seem to mind it too.
It takes a change of posture sometimes to notice more than what is in the sight. Suddenly a cigarette got lit, and I started killing myself minute by minute. Moments ago I had gone back inside and groped for a matchbox in the dark. I keep the necessary things to myself and the rule makes it clear that the cigarette pack was in my pocket. With every breath of toxic fume the matchbox became redundant in my hand and so to make it useful I started tossing it in the air.
There was no electricity yet. And I did not mind it. As always I never mind most of the shortcomings in my life, and most of the shortcomings in me. The continuous movement of the matchbox had already become a habit and one had no need to focus on the movement. This happens often on a keyboard of a PC, or even a guitar while changing a chord.
The boys had started resting gasping for breath, and one of them ordered the Little Manga’s “Bhai!” to bring them water. And they broke into discussions of all kinds as per their limited understanding of the world, of science, of sports and what not. Who were they trying to impress, with their berserk philosophies and inflated statistics of world affairs?
And then I caught one glance, staring at the balcony above it. The first floor had a very familiar face looking down trading glances with one of the three musketeers. This was a start of realization and it had started to another generation as many years back it had dawned on me and may be all others who caught me in my involuntary act of stealing the view of what was around.
I immediately went back not to come back that night. Sometimes I think that the surroundings should be made free from external pressures and the mind be made open to judge for itself. And I look back to those lost years when the sweet charm of not knowing oneself and the other day waking with all the knowledge of the world seems somewhat empowering.
I don’t want to stand again in my balcony because I want them to have all the time. I am the facilitator of a beginning. I wish I had one for myself.
