Was making India "secular" a big mistake?

 If you are remotely connected to India and even very casually interested in general affairs, someone that only glances at news pop-ups while shoe shopping on the internet, you already know what the latest pet discussion in that part of the world is.

Shah Rukh Khan and his recent interview, which has done more good to him publicity-wise than his last elaborate catastrophe on screen did.

  Let's not have the discussion about whether what he said was really what he thought or was a smart ploy to get him back on headlines. Almost five years of journalism has made me cynical enough to not discard the possibility of the latter, and SRK's star, after all, is on the decline.

    Whether you support SRK or don't, one thing you cannot deny in this hoopla is that modern India, for all her various examples of secularism (of which SRK himself is a shining example: his wife is Hindu and he tells anyone ready to listen that he celebrates both Eid and Diwali with equal gusto) is yet to really accept the concept in its totality.

    Indians have made gods of the Khans that have ruled Bollywood for years and years, we have head-banged till the wee hours of the morning when Rupam Islam has strummed his guitar, our hearts have swelled with pride when Abdul Kalam or AR Rahman have been felicitated by the world and yet, deep in our hearts, we've always somehow fostered the feeling of "they are different".

    Depending on who you are and where you've grown up, that difference could become immaterial when we talk about really famous or really rich people, but that's only because a lot of money and success creates a class of its own. It's not fair to compare, say, Aamir Khan, with my friend Aftab.

    To say India is a complex society is a gross understatement. There are so many shades to her cultural tapestry that it is overwhelming to sit and take stock of the situation. This is what makes this country a very difficult work field for foreigners. They tend to vacillate between the "good" India and the "bad" India at alarming rates or with equally scary one-track minds and almost always end up missing the point.

    I know, I know, some of the best works on the country have come from non Indian authors but my blog is about what I generally see everywhere-- anyone or anything that is an exception to a rule is by default not the topic of conversation here.

    The point is, despite all the love, success, fame and popularity that even SRK gets in the country, he can still claim to feel victimized.

    It is somewhat similar to how many people in the United States treat Black Americans and vice versa, but because the US has a much longer history of being free and has a much better economic grounding that India does, maybe it is not a fair comparison.

    Justified or not, SRK's claim touches chords among some and rubs others the wrong way, to the extent that the man now has an open invitation to live in Pakistan if he feels "threatened" in India. (By the way, SRK, the only thing I read from you in response to that invitation was a mumbling "I'm offended" or some such. How about chinning up and saying "I don't want to leave my country you idiots, I'm Indian and this isn't even an option”? Apparently, claims to patriotism can only be made when it is for complaining about our troubles. Or did you decide you've had publicity enough? Why stir up trouble if you're not ready to see it through to the end?)

    There, that bit out of my system now, let's get back to my main point. Which is that, despite the average middle class in India growing up in reasonably secular surroundings (non Indians, trust me here. We do not chase each other with knives every time we meet around the corner, no more than all of us are snake charmers), we are yet to really accept secularism on the whole.

    One of my closest and best friends, the kind that knows your deepest, darkest secrets and loves you nevertheless, is Muslim. I've been born in a Hindu Brahmin family. My family knows of our closeness and I've never heard anyone ever mention anything that can remotely be translated as "but he's not Hindu". Yet, I wonder: If instead of being friends, say we were lovers and wanted to marry each other, would the family still be so Zen about it?

    I understand the practicalities that account for this apprehension. It's two different ways of life. If you think about it, the Hindu-Muslim violent history aside, most people would treat any intercaste/class interaction with the same apprehension. We are similarly skeptical about Malayali/Punjabi weddings, Bengali and Marwari tie-ups. One of my Assamese friends once told me he had a standing request from his parents to "marry anyone but not a Bengali." Lots of baggage there too, but you see the point?

    It really is simple if one thinks about it. How long do you think can a Malayali, fed on a daily diet of academics and comparatively simplistic living adjust to the innate "pomp and show" that comes with being a Punjabi? And god forbid if that Punjabi is also from Delhi. Or say, how long can a Bengali, born and bred on fish and Tagore, live and adjust with Marwari vegetarianism?

    You think it is a trivial non-issue? Hah, say I.  Of course, in today’s set up, it does not matter as much. We’re all eating instant noodles anyway. But the people that have a problem and worry about these things are generally not the live-on-frozen food-in-extremely-nuclear-setup types.

    Does that mean Punjabis and Marwaris are inferior in their choice of lives? Most definitely not. It is not even about superior or inferior; it is about different ways of live. Now throw religious difference in the mix and I think I can begin to understand why people get on their haunches.

   Plus, unlike say Christians and Hindus, Hindus and Muslims have been fighting very violently since the beginning of time and people in power have always swung rules in their favor.

    So, was making India a secular democracy a mistake that goes against the basic grain of human nature?

    The BIG thing to not ignore being: the majority of a country’s, any country’s, people choose not to think at all. Of this I am convinced. Even of those that do, very very few have the courage to actually stand up and go against the tide and face the repercussions.    

     When they inserted the term "secular" in the Preamble to the Constitution, it was already late 70s. Sure, the "feel" was always present, but making it official is a big thing. It usually means we've given this some thought and are ready to shoulder the responsibilities that come with it.

    When a constitution says its land is secular, it means we, the people (and hence, the Government) should not discriminate on the basis of religion at all. That "at all" should ideally be non-negotiable. It should also mean every man of the land is and will be treated equal and be subjected to the same set of rules.

    Yet, we have a separate set of rules for Muslims in India that they can choose to follow and are acceptable in a court of law. The Uniform Civil Code is still a Directive Principle, but if we are a secular nation, it should have been legally enforceable.

    We are supposed to be a  "Sovereign Socialist, Secular, Democratic Republic." Given how complex India's history and culture is, I'd have said we've done a good enough job of upholding those tenets if a Godhra and the entire circus related to it had not happened. If only we could blot that entire sequence out! People often say it was "unavoidable" and yet I hear a similar situation was much more effectively resolved by that patron of modern Kathak and last of Awadhi Nawabs, Wazir Ali Shah, a long time ago.

    Not only do we not learn from our past mistakes or from past successes, we consistently lack the political motivation and/or courage to stand up to people who keep flouting those guiding principles on a regular basis.

    Sure, the powerful will always abuse. But the problem here is, we are a democracy. We choose to elect these people who then go about their crazy carnage.

   Twenty years after Babri Masjid and some ten odd years after Godhra, my friend is still rejected housing in Bombay because he is Muslim.

   Does make me wonder—did the architects of our free nation enforce a feeling of secularism in a country where there never was any?

    I don’t come from an overtly religious family; my brother and I were taught to be decent, rather than devout. (I try.)

    The quintessentially middle class Indian neighbourhood that I still call home has never been touched by communal violence. Most of its residents are striving for decency and are largely peace loving. I’m not counting spiteful neighbourhood gossips because they, well, don’t count.

But in this flat, boring middle class society, I've heard modern families sit with coffee cups in their well decorated living rooms and talk about how it was “right that the Hindus burnt a few of their houses down. They need to know who is in charge,” when the newspaper lying in front of them tells them what happened to the Best Bakery.

  It will be unfair to throw this out there without a little bit of background.  Issues mainly stemming from minority appeasement for vote bank politics have come to such a head that the non-rich non-minority feel threatened and frustrated all the time. Hence the “in charge” line of thought.

    But dangerously, they do not realize what is wrong in thinking that way, and worse, everyone in that sitting room agrees. Including the woman who had tears in her eyes that morning while reading that article about the bakery.

    One can point out stupidity and callousness and can try to show people why they are wrong, but it is very difficult to change personal opinion. Shaming people into silence is one thing, really really making them change their views is another. 

   I know putting a few words in a book will not change the vast population of India. I also know a thousand wrongs do not make a right and that is why I keep repeating, no matter how good a businessman you are and no matter how much money you bring in, a murderer is a murderer and in my books, it is extremely irresponsible and callous to go about saying we can forgive one mistake and focus on other “better” things.

   You see, there are mistakes and then there are crimes. Kissing your husband’s colleague could be a mistake. Categorically planning the execution of hundreds of people or not stopping it while you could is a crime. Yet, ask around and you'll be surprised how many categorize the two in the exact opposite order. 

   If this be the real pulse of a nation, would it have saved us all a lot of heartache if we were not made secular in the first place?
No luck there. Like a friend pointed out, communal tension, specially of the Godhra kind, is not generally the doing of commoners like you and me. The architects of these are people who chalk out such madness for different ends altogether. So if they didn't have the easy topic of Hindu vs Muslims, they would find something else. Every society has problems that could and often have resulted in deplorable violence. India is more or less surrounded by countries that are not secular, and no one can say they are doing any better.

    Plus, if we were an all Hindu state, I would not have met my friend and would be hobbling in life without one of my rocks. There would be no SRK to pine over and no Eid ka biryani or Christmas caroling to look forward to. Upsetting, isn't it?

    Secular, you win. We'll deal with the rest :)

   

PS: After I posted this, King Khan held a presser and had this to say:  “I am an Indian and am extremely proud of it. I feel extremely safe in India. My safety is not a concern to me and not for someone else either.”  See how I have gone back to calling him "King" Khan? :D 

Matru Ki Bijlee Ka Mandola

Quite a few people said my page of rant does not go well with Bollywood reviews. I agreed, and decided to make another blog for the song and dance chats. Here you go, have fun!

http://nivisbollywoodblog.blogspot.com/

Shifting parameters: the standards of “acceptable”

I am very fond of social networks.  I have already said why in an earlier blog, but apart from how it helps my work, there’s another, more voyeuristic reason why I like them. I find it interesting and entertaining to see what other people are reading, thinking, saying and count as important, and compare their preferences with mine. Not that it matters much, but it can be very educational.

For example, a teenager from the town I grew up in recently posted an open invitation to her friends, asking “who all want to bunk class tomorrow”? Many responses and comments followed.

I know times are changing and I also know some tuition classes can be mind-numbingly boring and that because sending kids to classes for extra help is like a contagious disease where I come from, students are often forced to attend. Parents, peer pressure, and a bunch of the usual issues.

 I too was at a place once where I had taken to giving a particular teacher’s classes the miss pretty regularly, because spending an hour in the same room as this man who thought everything else in a student’s life that wasn’t Chemistry was automatically useless annoyed me. And because he was extremely boring and I never had much patience for Carbon and its many avatars anyway.  I learnt more Physics and Chemistry from my Biology teacher, I swear. Mostly because she had a magical way of making equations and refraction interesting even to me. And I now suspect,  also because she would offer me samosas, my favorite Indian snack, when I would have to attend her classes directly from my dance practice and also allow me 5 minute breaks when I complained about having to solve too many Physics problems in a day.

 Eventually, thankfully, I saw good sense and officially stopped wasting time and money at the Chemistry teacher’s class. And I passed both Chemistry and Physics, thank god.  My best friend from school can take some credit for that.

Apart from my English tutor, who and whose classes were by far the best thing that happened to me while growing up (and here we are moving very far from the realms of just learning about Shakespeare), I think my Biology teacher’s was the only other class that actually made me want to attend.

Diversions aside, I have no complaints or judgment against this young girl at all.

But the fact that she can plan bunking classes so openly on a network that her elder brother also uses actively did make me wonder: would I have done the same if these networks had been invented while I was in high school? No one knows for sure, but I think not.

I also wonder, did her brother, who is a grown, married adult, notice this? If he did, why is the post still up?  

In my late twenties, I’ve been called “quaint” and more recently, "a vestige of a long-ago time" by friends, who insist they mean them as compliments. Frankly, because I know these people are fond of me in varying degrees, I quite like it. Plus, late twenties is old. Anyhow, despite my very strong resolutions about accepting things as they come, sometimes I am amazed by what we have come to accept as acceptable and how we react to the constant lowering of expectations.

The other day, I sent my girlfriends an article in the NYT that talked about how dating as a ritual was vanishing from the world because of online dating sites. You can look it up; it isn’t ahead of the curve in terms of trend-spotting, but like all things NYT, is written very well and makes some very valid points.

The point here being that because there are online dating sites,  young and single men (and women) know they have many options and hence they put in less effort when they’re asking people out. I’m not an active member of the dating club but my friends are, and I thought it would be interesting to know what they think. 

My pet peeve in here was/is that very few men actually know how to decently ask a girl out (ok, I’m not an active member, but I do have a social life. What, you thought I sit in front of my computer and rant all day?). Random, haphazard invites of “let me know if you are free sometime this week” do not make the cut, and I’ll never be free for you, even if I am. It’s not just about a boy asking a girl, I would think it is basic decency. Even when I ask my girlfriends out, the least I would do is pick a time/day. “Are you free Wednesday” is so much more compelling than “let me know if you are free at some vague time during the course of the week or month, for I don’t really care.”

What my very active-in-the-dating-club friend had to tell me, however, made me feel like a Victorian prude. Here’s what I learnt: texting last minute and open ended invitations that mean mostly nothing is de rigueur and perfectly acceptable.  I also had a sneaking suspicion the people I talked to have no idea they could ask for more. I’m going to make a broad generalization here and say I think my single and dating friends in India have it better than those here: there is still some flowers and dinner prevalent there. But we also rape, kill and harass our women a lot and brand people sluts if they sleep with more than one person, so it’s a tough call.

 But to each her own, and as a non-active member of the community, I don’t really have much say. I don’t have much say anywhere anyway, which is why I blog.

By the way, if you’re still with me through all the rambling, here’s a heartfelt thank you. 

I was in a bus some time ago, travelling from my parents’ house to Calcutta. Now due to some unfathomable reason, buses (at least in India) insist on screening movies that a) have a lot of raunchy humour that does not make me laugh at all (Victorian prude, I accept it) b) have what I think are sleazy songs with starlets shaking their booty in front of the camera . I love dancing and am a trained Indian classical dancer. I appreciate that Helen’s movements to “Yeh Mera Dil” and Katrina’s movements to “Mashallah” are very difficult feats to achieve. But there is a difference between dancing and randomly shaking your booty in front of the camera, please accept it.

There was this other family- mom, dad and kid – who were travelling with me. The bus screened “Rowdy Rathore”, which fits the play-on-the-bus bill perfectly and has a song that goes “Pallu ke neechey daba ke rakhkha hain utha doon to hungama ho.”  (I have a problem with this movie. If you’ve watched it, you’ll know why.)

While I could feel my ears turn red as I shifted a little uncomfortably as the song played on, kiddo stood up on his seat and started singing and dancing to the song with total abandon.  Mom seemed embarrassed; dad was not, or was making a good show of not being embarrassed and none of them were able to hush up the little boy. He knew the lyrics by heart, so it clearly wasn't the first time he was listening to it.

Other co passengers laughed, some even encouragingly. How did it become acceptable for a 10 (my random guess, he looked about 9-10) year old to sing these songs? But then fully grown men apparently blast “Aaja Teri Ch##t Maru” from their car stereos in Delhi, so who can blame a 10 year old? Women allegedly have come to accept it, they pretend they don’t hear. Because know what? If you react, you could get killed. Or if you are Sushma Swaraj, you’d say worse, raped.

It is also acceptable for the upwardly mobile and rich women and men to mistreat their partners openly at parties, even hit each other. For the gentleman to beat his wife because he’s “had a difficult day at work and just snapped”, for intelligent and smart young women living in the emancipated first world to accept that men can “rate” them at a club or call them “fat” and other names when they feel like it. For people to “go along” with relationships they know are dead just because they don’t want to tackle the entire world and their questions.

All acceptable. Even murder or shooting people randomly is. But if you’re in India, kiss in public, and watch the fun. If you’re in the US, you’re probably still wading through various versions of “let’s meet up…at some point”. More on that later.

The price of being free

As law enforcement officers still find more dead bodies in a small town primary school in Connecticut, there is the usual and expected debate on gun control raging online, across cubicles and on the phone.

It makes me wonder, what is wrong with having some control, checks and balances, if you will, within a free society?

I grew up in a free, democratic country and now live in another. And in both, I have seen how easy it is to abuse that powerful concept, and not just while using guns.

A few months ago, the vast majority of urban and educated India revolted en masse when there was talk of possible Governmental regulations on the internet. Of course, that never happened and yesterday the deputy general of India’s telecom department said use of internet should be self regulated. Then he compared it to the solar system and said something about how nobody regulates day and night and how it comes “automatically.”

While I understand the bigger idea here, I also believe he is missing out on one major point: day and night, while not being controlled by any a person or group of people (let’s keep God away from this debate), is not at the mercy of human fallibility. The solar system has been following a strictly regulated pattern for years now and it cannot be disrupted on a whim. For example, night won’t turn into day one day just because. There is a term for when that happens and even that is a regulated pattern. It is called an eclipse.

On the other hand, education, the internet and guns are things that have come as blessings to us as society, science and men have grown. Like everything man–made, they run an extremely high risk of being misused.

So then, why not have some control? I am not advocating blanket censorship and if you are among those who feel their blood boil at the very mention of “rules”, here’s my suggestion. Calm down, count till 5 and then read this again.

I am all for the freedom of expression. What I am not for, however, is abuse, misuse and crassness.

Who am I to decide what is what?

Ok, let us talk about the hullabaloo about internet censorship in India (or anywhere else in the world). A minister reportedly found cartoons of leading politicians on social media websites and that riled him up. The entire internet using population in the country went up in arms against him when he said this was disrespectful and should be controlled.

I don’t know what cartoons he saw, but I have seen some on Facebook. And freedom of expression or not, I have to say they were downright silly and in bad taste.  

If I made a cartoon of your dad in very little clothes, holding his lady boss in an equally ridiculously skimpy dress, would you let it slide, saying “that is freedom of expression”?

I bet not. I bet you would say it was “uncalled for” and “insulting”. So, if it is not OK to do that to your dad, who is a regular ordinary citizen whom no one knows beyond his immediate friends, family and colleagues, how is it OK to do that to the Prime Minister of your country?  If one is an insult and disrespectful, how is the other not?

This isn’t about censoring political cartoons, this is about regulating unnecessary incidences of violence or even death till we as a people are at the point where we can truly self regulate ourselves. Because there is a limit to how much “chalta hain.”

 Because if someone does not tell 10 year olds today that there is satire and there is crudity, they will never know the difference between the two and will grow up into adults who don’t know any better either.

And don’t tell me in a free society; adults know what is good for them. I was once a teenager who championed that cause. I have, thankfully, long grown out of that phase.

If people knew what was good for them and were always in control, 5-10 year old primary school children would not die in an open fire in a random incident. A twenty something year old would not have done it to them, for much as modern society wants to negate it and stay teenagers forever, 20 year olds are adults.

It is not a question of one man tainting the entire population, oh no. For it is not one man. The misuse of the gun and the misuse of the internet are not sporadic incidents. I don’t want to waste my breath trying to convince you of that: just use Google.

Caveat: I am only sticking to the internet and guns because well, the “sun and moon” speech happened yesterday and the shooting today.

 So, in effect, what if there was a measure to take down particularly incendiary cartoons of famous people from the net?  And when I say incendiary, I do not mean the smart ones that the New Yorker or even the Simpsons portray.  I know a lot of people reading this right now will think, “Fine, Yes Minister and the Simpsons make you laugh, the FB ones make me laugh.” But seriously, do you really believe guffawing at this is the same as laughing at this?

Rules are not bad, it is only when we have no control over or clue about how to enjoy what and when that we find them oppressing. In an ideal world, every single person would have enough self control and sense of judgment to ensure proper use of our resources. But till that happens, it might not be a very bad idea to keep a stricter check on who you allow to own a gun and what you say in a public forum.

Of course, the danger here is that in a bid to “check”, the government goes to the other extreme and does things like arrest people for putting up FB posts. 

 But the good news is, every single time any ruling body/person has overstepped the mark, people have rebelled.  They have made sure the “rulers” do not get away with it.

Democracy is a powerful tool. It is of, by and for the people, but when 10 year olds die because a deranged man opens fire at them while they are in school, one is bound to ask if we really know what is good for us.

And if we are not collectively in a place where we can say that without a shred of doubt in our minds, would it hurt to have the same government that we elected to impose some rules on us so as to take a step towards reducing such atrocious behavior?

 Because, I believe those that are truly self regulated would not even feel the change.

For example, say FB sys your account will be frozen if you post derogatory remarks about President Obama or PM Singh (random examples, substitute it with anyone you like).

 By “derogatory”, I mean you say inane things like “he is a d@@#head”. Would that affect any sensible user at all? Will any sensible user say such things in the first place? To my original point, I am not advocating censorship as we understand in Bollywood.  I have read enough scathing reviews of people, books and movies to know that criticism can exist and is often more effective when coherent and articulate.

 By that, I mean say you disagree with every bit of this blog and to show your anger, you write “you are an A###ole”. Another person disagrees but explains in lucid, printable language, why. Who do you think will I take more seriously? So in turn, who is more effective?

 Say there is a rule that says citizens owning guns will have to go through psychological checks at regular intervals to make sure they are, in fact, capable of handling guns. Would that affect a sane person not contemplating murdering movie goers or kids?

 We all submit to security checks and even frisking at airports, do we not?

 But then again, my favorite living author once said that “the idea that any kind of free society can be constructed in which people will never be offended or insulted is absurd. So too is the notion that people should have the right to call on the law to defend them against being offended or insulted.”

 And this is a man that has seen his books been burnt by protesters across the world and has had a bounty placed on his head for writing a book that those that called for his head self admittedly never even read.

If anyone had a right to call on the law to be defended from insult and offence, he did.

That makes it a difficult call, does it not? The gun is easier, of course.

Hardliners, Thackeray, and a common outsider's brush with his "legacy"

    This post will be repetitive if you've been reading about it already, and also very long. But I was taught as a kid that the pen (or keyboard) is mightier than the sword and there is something about the overwhelming outpouring of "love and respect" for Mumbai's Bal Thackeray that has been bothering me for days, so here goes :
    I am no Mumbaikar but Mumbai most definitely ranks as my most favorite city in India. I am definitely not Marathi and my only connection with Maharastra stems from the little over two years I lived, studied and worked in Pune and Bombay.
    As a Bengali brought up in Bengal in the late 80s and 90s, my association and acquaintance with Thackeray and Shiv Sena started late in life, mostly when they began ravaging cities, towns and youngsters who, egged on by love and loyalty for Shahrukh Khan and Archies Gallery "dared" to celebrate Valentine's Day. If they found a Feb 14 that was also a full moon night I do not know, but if they were unlucky enough to find rallying Shiv Sainiks while romancing their partners, I am sure no amount of films or Archies or Hallmark could get them back the next year. Love? Only if we live, no?
     The "protests" were all over the papers-- and I remember heated discussions in faraway Calcutta (yessir, I still can't do "Kolkata" unless I'm speaking in Bengali. We all have our own colonial hangovers to deal with, you see)about the ridiculousness of it all. We're bongs, we're intellectual, we are open minded and we turn up our noses in disdain at the conservative till our professors get arrested for drawing cartoons.
    Which, incidentally, was Bal Thackeray's profession. If you hear the man talk and follow closely, you can still see that edge of wit that is necessary for someone in that profession to have. But to what end?
    For, for me, and many others like me that I know, wit is not what comes to mind when you say Shiv Sena. What comes to mind is ethnic chauvinism, Hindu hardliners and mass upsetting of daily lives for reasons that to my teenage mind were non issues. I am not sure I've moved much from my stance on the non-issues bit, but I am definitely in a better place to exercise Voltaire's wisdom. I do not agree with what you have to say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it.
    Which no one seems to care for anymore nowadays, since Facebook posts and cartoons can warrant arrests, so we'll let that slide. And here, I realise as I type, this post stops being just about this one man. It is more about the ideas he propagated, and the bunch of clones they spawned.
    My first real brush with the zeal of Shiv Sainiks was in Pune, again on Valentine's day. It is a VERY important day when you are 18, you see. Our's was among the rich, yuppie colleges in town, but its day to day running was under the charge of a man who had his priorities set largely in the right places. And the grapevine said he came from Bihar. I do not know whether it was the first or the second that make him stick to his guns, but while  most other colleges shut down for fear of violence on V day, we went to school.
    And sure enough, mid way through the lectures there came the slogan raising Sainks, creating a great deal of commotion in the grounds. No one was hurt and nothing was broken (except maybe a part of the main gate. I am not sure). But there, sitting inside the classroom of one of India's more tony universities, I realised how true that fear of being roughed up, mobbed or threatened could get for other people who were not under the safety net of a well known institute in a prominent city in India.
    The next brush that left a bitter aftertaste was when a PG mate started voicing her feelings against "outsider encroachers" very vocally one night, while a debate on the same topic was on on TV. In the presence of four other girls who were all "outsiders". There, in the middle of the heat of it all, this girl, who had moved from Thane to further her education, said "that is why my family and I support the Shiv Sena. They protect our culture...all you outsiders just spoil it." Ok, I am not  quoting her, it happened some six years ago and I don't remember her exact choice of words, but I remember enough to know the gist. You can understand if I did not form a very warm opinion of her, her family or the Sainiks after that outburst.
    I moved houses soon (not because of the girl but because the college moved to a bigger campus) and found myself in the more Marathi neighbourhood of Viman Nagar than the ultra cosmopolitan settings of Senapati Bapat Road and FC Road. Barring about four students, everyone else in my class was an immigrant like me, which basically means we were from other states. If there's one thing that my Masters degree taught me in life, it is the art of living closely with, appreciating and getting along with people from various regions and of different cultures. It is also where I heard a classmate from Chennai classify Bombay as "North India", but that is another story.
    After my flatmates and I had overcome challenges of budget, security, convenience and singlehood, we were finally staring at the outsider challenge.
    The bhaji-wallah would cater to the Marathi speaking customer before you even if you've been patiently waiting for a long time, the autowallah would be especially ready to fleece you since you are an outsider and can't shout back in Marathi.
    I now know this exists everywhere but when you are a student on a budget you interact more with the local people because you are cutting costs. Read: take the public transport as opposed to cabs, shop at the local kirana shop as opposed to expensive malls. Hence, you are more exposed to the local culture: its warmth and its hostility all come in a package.
    I must not and will not ever say all my interaction with local residents were bitter, no way. My PG owner in the first year went out of her way to make the "bahar ki bachchi" feel at home, I was even invited to their household Lakshmi Puja. Our neighbours in the other place treated me to many a breakfast of pohas and their kids, on more than one occasion, turned our living room into a ball practice arena. But this was not our daily living. Interacting with the bhaji wallah and the auto wallah was our daily living.
    It was here that I started appreciating how hard line groups like the Shiv Sena, MNS and others in other parts of the country survive and grow, feeding on a misdirected sence of local patriotism. I had no such close experience of regional communalism but this is where I made friends from Ahmedabad, who had seen the riots rape their city and watched as their neighbours' houses burnt to the ground. And this is also where I started appreciating why local residents would resent their city being "taken over" by raving, suddenly-taken-to-drinking-and-cannot-hold-their-alcohol teenagers.
    I see that. What I do not see is what gives a local resident the right to refuse housing to a boy just because he is "not from here". I do not see how a group that backs the local auto union can give drivers so much authority so as to have one of them slap a young girl across the face because she was calling out to a guy friend to hurry up and join her, while threatening "I'm a local person, I'll see what you can do."
    I know it is a huge leap and borderline wrong to say all of this is the result or even the heritage of one man and his ideologies. It probably is not. I'll never be entirely sure if popular demand spawned it or it was the other way round. And being a non Marathi, I understand that I may be missing out on a whole lot of local sentiments that spur these outbursts.
    But I do know I have a right, backed by the constitution of our country, to move freely with the land and call any part home (except for Kashmir) without constantly battling charges of "you don't speak our language, you are not from here, you are Bengali and eat fish so we can't house you". Yes, I've heard that last bit too.
    And so, when a Bal Thackeray dies and the entire nation, barring a few, joins forces to sing paeans for him, it scares me. This is a man that proudly said he admired Hitler. I would be apprehensive of any man that says that, for leadership qualities or not, business acumen notwithstanding, a mass murderer is a mass murderer. This is a man that was responsible for the killings of many; who in 2002 and in 2008 asked Hindus to form suicide squads to attack Muslims. While living in a nation that calls itself a "sovereign, socialist  secular, democratic, republic."
    I know enough of India and its politics to not expect him to be taken to task for any of it when he lived. What rattles me is the en masse bending over of the Indian media when they put up his obits. Everyone spoke of how he changed the face of politics in Maharastra. That change was triggered by the killing of Krishna Desai, and if that is someone's legacy, I am not sure it's much to deify anyone for.  One prominent news anchor pulled a suitably sombre expression and went on about how "well managed" the funeral was and "how you cannot prompt 2 million people to attend." I agree, surely most of those people were there of their own accord, but I have learnt enough to know not to mix up the multitude's curiosity and fear of missing out for love and loyalty.
    And I am not sure if any of those on that TV panel who went on about mass popularity have read Julius Caesar closely, but if they have, they would know it is terribly easy to lead the multitude and sway its loyalty if one caters to populism and has the gift of the gab. And with 75 drachmas.
    The same crowd that exalted Brutus went after him after Anthony asked his friends, Romans  countrymen to lend him their ears. For we, the people, do not think. We fit in and follow.
    As for the well managed funeral, all I can understand is we are so used to have a certain sect of people disrupt our daily lives with that an act of normal consideration does not stay that, but gets promoted to an act of greatness.
    For WE have a misplaced sense of greatness. For Brutus was an honorable man.

It isn't "the times". It is us

Some time back, I was asked what age I would like to be born in, if I could choose. I picked the Renaissance, or India around the 1940s if I were to be bound by geographical limitations.

Yes, I’m the incurable romantic. My choices would have told you that. People like me, who some mistake to be naïve, tend to be swayed by quaint traits and things like “courage”, “chivalry”, “love” and “honour” more than others are. Such people are few to begin with in the first place, and convert rapidly as they hit their 20s and go beyond.

 Which is a good thing, for it won’t do at all to have a world full of romantics tripping over each other, especially as we balance grocery bags up the apartment stairs, or walk on super high heels to get strangers to pick up our tabs. (And yet they often don’t, these strangers!)

And while the world goes round in its rigmarole, the closest we get to any amount of greatness is when we manage to find some time to talk to our grandparents or other elders who have fought a war or survived a communal riot, or talk to the odd friend that chose to stay away from the lure of corporate jobs to work full time with a non-profit organization.

Only the truth is, we don’t “manage to find time”, we deign to. We are busy, you see; mostly working away at jobs that we don't even like.

So, we definitely don’t want more complications in our lives: having to decide what to wear to work or where to get lunch every day is annoying enough. And yes, we will sympathize and be sufficiently respectful when we meet “great men and women”, but that’s all we can do, thank you very much. Truly speaking, by the time the work day ends, we are so drained we can’t even find it in us to click on a link and make a donation towards a worthy cause. Where is the time?

We don’t want goodness; we will not even strive for it, not even give it a tiny shot. Greatness? What is that?

We will not teach our children the importance of being good and doing right by others. We are happy to not interfere, because if no one else is making an issue out of it, why should I? We will not help, love, be friends, just because we can. And honestly, why should we? Have you seen what happens to those that do that kind of stuff? They get passed over for promotions, cheated by friends and are made fun of behind their backs.

Why? Because everyone knows we can’t be good in this day and age. We have to earn money, be petty and manipulative, play power games and generally be dissatisfied in life because at the end of the day, we don’t have one thing that we are genuinely proud of to show. What, didn't you go to college? These just aren't the times!

No, giving away your bus seat to the older woman does not count.  Plus, do we do that regularly out of habit or only when we know we’ll get off in a couple of minutes and don’t care anyway?

But you see, it isn't the times, it is us. While we were busy window shopping or planning our next vacations or debating between the sparkling or still, a young girl of 14 was shot in the head for fighting for her and her friends’ rights to go to school.

She was 11 when the Taliban decided to stop girls in her locality from going to school. Instead of blaming the times and "adjusting" to her new fate, she wrote a blog for the BBC speaking about her life under the new regime, and was eventually shot at as she was returning home after a taking a test.

That happened this week, in these very times, which are not supposed to be meant to produce great or brave men and women.

In another instance, a fragile woman fought for a shot to bring in Democracy in her country, living under house arrest for 15 long years before she could walk freely. That change happened. The Arab Spring also happened.

And for every story we get to know about, there are many others that we don’t, shining examples of doing good in our own neighbourhood or among our friends, who we write off as “idealists”.

Know what? Standing for some ideals isn't that bad a thing. Not everyone can be a Suu Kyi, nor do we even need to be. But I can bet you anything you want (and I have) that none of us are too busy to make a little more effort, be a little more passionate, concerned, involved.

Do we really need to?

That is not for me to answer, for remember, I’m the romantic that still believes in rights and wrongs.

And listens to ghazals and reads shayari with alarming levels of interest.

“Kaise aakash mein suraag nahi ho sakta,
Ek paththar toh tabiyat se uchchalo yaron.”

(Roughly: You say the skies won't part, but have you tried hard enough?)

The place of pride.

   Pride goes before a fall. People love humble men, the gods always do good to them. And the world is the moral science studies version of utopia where the cheat is always punished and the honest boy given top marks.
   I know a lot of young people that are in that important cusp of life where they have to make career choices, and horror of horrors, get enrolled into choice colleges. So much of my conversation in the past couple of months have been about interviews, CV writing and the paraphernalia that go with it.
    And through those conversations, I realized how Indians have an inherent manner of discrediting themselves, or, at least downplaying their achievements (yours truly not exempt from the allegation). It stems from very old traditions and cultural practices that teach how it is not for men to tell others what their achievements are, it is for others to notice. Clearly, they hadn't yet dealt with private firms and bad bosses.
    The premise of those teachings, like all things old and Indian, are very correct, based on the notion that if you do good work, people are bound to take note. But like all things old and Indian, no one has bothered to adapt them to fit into today's life, leaving a generation that either suffers from internal conflict and lose out on jobs because they can't sell themselves right, or go the absolute other way and turn into wind bags that could cause the equivalent of atomic explosions.
    Pride, for most Indians, comes mixed with negativity, often confused with snootiness, disdain or worse, rudeness.
    Pride, if looked upon as a quality in itself, is not necessarily any of those, and when exercised in the right way has the magical way of boosting people's moral and even uplifting careers. I am a wordly girl, and I'm not going to go all esoteric on you. Boosting. Career. You read it right.
    The Oxford English describes pride as "a feeling of deep pleasure or satisfaction derived from one’s own achievements, the achievements of one’s close associates, or from qualities or possessions that are widely admired." Also a pack of lions, but that is not what this post is about.
   I hear the phrase "xyz makes America a great country" thrown into so many daily conversations in real life or on TV, see so many houses proudly host the national flag in their yards, so many bikini clad women wear the stars and stripes happily on the beach it is difficult not be effected by the enthusiasm. I'm not saying hot Indian women should start parading the beach in the Indian tricolor, there is a cultural roadblock to it that does not need to be altered at all.
    But in my years of living in various Indian cities and towns, I have not seen one private residence that has a regular fixture for the national flag. Now that I think about it, I can't even recall any big mounting or presence of the tricolor in even the new, jazzy, international airport at New Delhi. That airport also does not have a bookstore, though it has a Chanel store I think. It naturally devastated me and upset my travel plans a bit, mostly because I can't afford to buy Chanel off the cuff, but then to be fair, when did the world promise me no devastation or upsets?
    In retrospect, for every genuine "I love my country and I am proud of its rich and varied heritage" I've heard, the sarcasm and belittling has exceeded it by ten fold, with the intellenstia having sought refuge to the all encompassing "what can we do? This decline can't be helped." Of course it can't, because no one, including you, is doing anything about it. And when I say you, I mean you, unless you are doing something about it. Which I very much doubt.
    We love to live in a bubble of inverted understanding  where not reading or knowing about the Mahabharata or Gita is decidedly cool, though one can read the Iliad or Odyssey. Or wait, not read at all. Who needs books when you can buy clothes, right?
    We will not learn about politics or economics from Chanakya, but we will pay a lot of money for subscriptions to the Wall Street Journal or The Economist, we will not practice or experiment with sex like they did in the days of  Vyasdev or Kalidas, but we will watch Sunny Leone and Kim Kardashian on T.V.
     And lotus eaters that we are, not knowing the gayatri mantra or the national pledge is totally ok with us, though we can recognise strains of the "The star spangled banner" from 50 feet away. The star what, did you ask? Oh well.
 Also, I am not ready to tow your line if you say "but I am proud, I just don't show it."
 Here's why.  Once upon a time, a diffident young girl had asked the monk who frequented her house why it was necessary to worship god at all if He was everywhere anyway. The monk asked her if she had a boyfriend or had a crush. The wise man then said, like all relationships we build with other men, the relationship we build with god is also a two way traffic. It needs nurturing, and it needs some external manifestation to let the other party know you are interested. "If you just keep the fact that you like this guy to yourself, will you ever have a relationship?  How will he ever know, and how will he ever get a chance to reciprocate? We all need to express ourselves, more for our sakes than for others."
 I've never forgotten that reply, and though  I won't claim to have followed it to the T always, I know from personal experience that I've been better off when I have. God, country, boyfriend, teacher, friend, spouse: all relationships and bonds need attention and  some outward show of affection at some point. Unless you are Bruce Almighty and can communicate directly with the powers that be. But look how that turned out!
    Moral fibre, that will-o-the wispy stuff that differentiates real men from the multitude, often goes hand in hand with a sense of knowing and being comfortable with  oneself, which in turn comes from a sense of pride in one's achievements. Or so one hopes. If you are a latent wife beater/rapist/cheat/murderer, none of this applies to you. (I am hoping no active any of those mentioned is reading this post).
    One does not really need to compare countries and continents to see the difference.
    I felt it the most when I was graduating. I can proudly say the college I attended is still counted (like it has been for the past 100 years I think) among the 10 best colleges in India. Note: there is justification that goes along with pride. In India, where millions graduate each year, it is not an easy job finding a place in the college of your choice. Or finding a place at all, for that matter, unless you can buy your way in, of course.
    I've been to three different educational institutions, but till this day, when someone asks me "where did you study", I say I graduated from this college. One reason for that is that graduation is the most relevant while judging a person's education in India; anything you did before that is too insignificant and anything beyond too erudite.
    But I suspect the real reson is that that was the one instutute which drilled into me a sense of pride of being associated with it. I can see that pattern repeated in countless other students from other similar esteemed schools and colleges. There is often resulting cockiness; the by-product that makes it a dangerous proposition, but the confidence does the kids a world of good. It is a deciding factor in many a group discussion and interview where these "smart" kids talk their way to the coveted colleges or jobs, while others flounder.
    I now see the same pattern repeated later in life, where "docile Asians" have complained about being pushed over by "more aggressive Americans". Asians (I can and do vouch for Indians at least) can and often are as aggresive and volatile as Americans if need be . But Indians are yet to shake off their colonial hangover entirely-- everyone from Gandhi to Mark Tully will side with me on this-- so we lose half the battle in our minds because we are yet to feel decidedly confident about who we are and what we can achieve. Nevermind countless examples to prove the fact. And till we do that, we will never be truly proud of who we are. Not the MBA'd executive, not the H1B visa holder, nor the server at Cafe Mondegar who will categorically give you the cold shoulder till his white guests have been tended to.
    Those of who are,  face no trouble in navigating colleagues and others in any part of the world at any time.
I'm no big fan of her works,  but Jane Austen, that self styled feminist that made so many of us drool over a certain Darcy, has a very lucid explanation of what consists pride and what does not. Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonymously. A person may be proud without being vain. Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves; vanity, to what we would have others think of us," she says through the otherwise uninspiring character of Mary.
    Be proud, not vain.  Or if you are, be sure not to use this blog as an excuse.