BOOK REVIEW

RETHINKING 1857 Edited by Sabyasachi Bhattacharya

Indian Council of Historical Research

First published in 2007

When the 150^th Anniversary of the First War of Independence – Sepoy or military mutiny to the colonial rulers – was observed in 2007, one question which eluded the occasion was, How different was 1857 from 1947? Could the freedom fighters of 1857 have achieved something which the politicians of 1947 could not? Assuming for a moment that they achieved their immediate or short term aim of restoring Bahadur Shah Zafar to the throne of Delhi, would the leaders of 1857 have gone on to establish an egalitarian and a non-denominational society in the country? The biggest of all questions, would they have prevented the partition of India?

In an excellent introduction to the book, which is a collection of papers presented in a conference held in December, 2006 Prof. Sabyasachi Bhattacharya hints at the path the uprising would have taken while dealing with the social agenda of the rebellion as reflected in the proclamations of the leaders. These leaders perceived any infringement of caste hierarchy under British rule as part of the evils of British rule. The proclamation issued from the court of Birjees Qadr, Walee of Lucknow distinguishes “the persons of a lower order such as Sweeper, Chamar, Dhanuk, or Pasee” from the “persons of good descent.....Syed, Sheikh, Moghul or Pathan among Muhammedans or Brahmans, Chuttee, Bais or Kaith among the Hindoos.” The proclamation charges the British that they did not recognise the “honour and respectability of the higher orders” that under the instance of a chamar, “they force the attendance of a Nawab or a Rajah” whereas “under a Native government”, people of different castes “retain their respectability according to their respective ranks.” Certain other proclamations also oppose the legislation of the British to abolish the practice of Sati. Thus, the stress was on maintaining the status quo and, therefore, the ideal of social equality, which is one of the bedrocks of modernity, was not high on their agenda.

Other questions raised and answered in the introduction are, Was the outbreak of 1857 mainly Inspired by hurt religious sentiments activated by the composition of the grease on Enfield cartridges? Was it actually a Jihad? Was it correct to portray the rebellion as a ‘mutiny’ rather than as a rebellion with wider popular participation? In the opinion of Prof. Bhattacharya in the fluid situation of that turbulent year, many identities formed the bases of alliance and conflict such as regional and linguistic identities, interest groups – merchants, money lenders etc - occupational identities besides religious identities. Appeal to these groups was seen as the immediately unifying and effective way of mobilising people. Therefore, it is incorrect to privilege one particular identity over all others as the key to understand the events of 1857. In this context, Prof. Bhattacharya also points out an important distinction between the identities that are articulated in the public sphere in publicly proclaiming agendas of a political nature on the one hand, and identities which belong and usually remain the private sphere and find objectification in private practices and action of the individual and the family.

Was it Jihad? There were a number of proclamations and appeals which call for waging a Jihad and a war to save religion. Curiously enough, immediately afterwards, they also appeal to both Hindus and Muslims to fight the British unitedly, as for example in the following: “conjointly exert ourselves for the protection of lives, property and religion “(Muhammad Feroze Shah) and “All you Hindus are hereby solemny adjured by your faith in the Ganges, Tulsi and all you Mussulmans by your belief in God and the Koran “ (Maulvi Syed Kutb Shah). In Prof. Bhattacharya’s opinion the term Jihad was used by these leaders without religious connotation in a more general way meaning “a just war” or a “righteous war.” By all accounts, which includes British too, the Hindus and Muslims of the rebel forces fought unitedly and there was no rift between them. If Jihad had any religious meaning then this kind of unity would not have been possible. Similarly, the revolt was not confined to the soldiers as other classes such as religious leaders, traders, merchants and peasants participated in it. In fact, the revolt and the reprisal of the British resulted in the death of over a million people, which indicates the spread of the rebellion.

Prof. K.C. Yadav and William Dalrymple argue their case about the nature of the rebellion. Each has his own point of view and the evidence they marshal are noteworthy. In the end what goes against the religious interpretation was that the rebels fought together and there were hardly any instance of a fight between the Hindus and Muslims amongst them. Prof. Yadav draws attention to one pamphlets –that of Ernest Jones, a Chartist – amongst the many unfavourable accounts of the events of 1857 as described by various shades of opinion in London, which stands out for its sympathy for the rebels. The contents need to be quoted in full, not just for its brilliance but also for the moral courage of the author. Ernest Jones wrote in the pamphlet thus: “There ought to be but one opinion throughout Europe on the revolt of Hindustan. It is one of the most just, noble and necessary revolts ever attempted in the history of the world. Naples and France, Lombardy and Poland, Hungary and Rome present no tyranny so hideous as that enacted by the miscreants of Leadenhall Street and Whitehall in Hindustan. The wonder is, not that 170 million people should now rise – the wonder is that they should have every submitted at all. They would not, had they not been betrayed by their princes....a great cause is at issue – that cause is just, it is holy, it is glorious. Englishmen, Scotchmen, Irishmen, what would you say if a colony of Dutch Jews came here and asked permission to build a factory on Woolwich march; and if they, having gained time for strength and power, rushed upon you, unawares, sacked and burned your cities, outraged your women and murdered your population and thus, in the air of your surprise, dismay and weakness, subjugated you and your country – what would you say and do?.. What, we repeat, would you say and do? You would rise – rise in the holy right of insurrection and cry to Europe, and the World, to Heaven and earth, to bear witness to the justice of your cause.”

The three pieces on the uprisings in Jharkhand, Singhbhum and Chotanagpur chronicle the events in these regions. What comes out clearly from these writings are the constantly shifting alliances, the internecine quarrels between various factions and the completely lack of coordination between them. The British could re-establish their dominion over these wide territories with their characteristic doggedness helped by the poor coordination of their adversaries.

Tapti Roy returns to the question of the raison detre of the rebellion as reflected in the various rebel writings of 1857. The author emphasises that the soldiers were not fighting Christianity but the British State while at the same time giving a religious explanation to the uprising. The author relies on the Delhi Proclamation of 11 May 1857 which says that it was the British state which was guilty of mixing religion with politics by using the authority of State to spread Christianity and thus failing in its principal duty of protecting the interest of the people. Therefore, it was legitimate to rise against this perceived threat to the faith and beliefs of the community. In the author’s opinion, Deen and Dharma did not signify merely the religious beliefs of Muslims and Hindus, but rather their entire existence based on practised religious values, social conventions and cultural norms. The political objective of the Uprising was to overthrow British rule and replace it with an alternate order that would ensure the safety of people’s lives in this and the next world.

We need to return to the question raised at the beginning; whether the rebels had an alternative political vision for the country and its people? The cruel answer is ‘no’. The contra focal question: What course India would have taken had the rebels driven the British out of the country? Again, from whatever one gathers from this Book, the answer will be unflattering. We would have gone back to the safety of our castes and communities and left the larger question of nation building to the mercies of the Emperors, Feudatories, Zamindars and religious leaders. The inescapable conclusion is – in the words of Deep Kanta Lahiri Choudhury who writes about the communication crisis besetting the rebels – that 1857 represents the last of the medieval wars and was a part of the painful passage to the modern world. 1857 was not – again in the words of Prof. Sabyasachi Bhattacharya – an aborted harbinger of modernity.

BOOK REVIEW

Where will all this take us?

By

Arun Shourie

First published by Rupa & Co in 2008

Arun Shourie needs no introduction to the generation of Indians who acquired political awakening in the 1980s. More than anyone else, it was Mr. Shourie who, by his unique style of writing contributed to this awakening, especially amongst the English speaking, reading middle classes. His incisive analysis, complete dependence on facts and nothing else to make a point and his monumental skills in collecting and producing material in support of his line of argument have endeared him to the discerning public. Shekhar Gupta in his introduction to this volume rightly summarises the qualities of Arun Shourie as, “diligence and passion, professional and personal courage that is so inspirational, his intellect and quest for new knowledge, hunger for inquiry that is not dimmed by age or cynicism nor by accomplishment or ideology.”

All these admirable qualities are in evidence in this book – a collection of articles published in the Indian Express during the period from 2003 to 2008. Broadly, the issues discussed include, the internal security of India, our external relations with China, Pakistan and to an increasing extent, Bangladesh, the Indo-US Nuclear deal, the sorry state of our Public Undertakings and his attempt at disinvestment of some of these white elephants as a Minister in the Vajpayee Government. Apart from these, Mr. Shourie focuses upon the cynicism and apathy which characterises our political discourse and the incompetence of our politicians and the administrative apparatus and their collective failure to rise to the occasion when danger stalks them right in front.

In the first Section, Mr. Shourie brings to the fore three major problems which endangers our internal security, naxalism, mafia rule in large parts of UP and Bihar and the continuing influx of Bangladeshis into India and their silent enveloping of the borders districts of Assam, Bihar, U.P. and West Bengal. The Prime Minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh had long ago described naxalism as the biggest security threat facing the country. Contrary to the media diagnosis of the naxalism as the outcome of social deprivation of the poor and economic disparities, Arun Shourie has a different take on both naxalism and terrorism in general. In his view, terrorism thrives because of terrorist economy and terrorist economy has become self-financing. This is so because of the nexus between terrorist groups and the drug trade, with smugglers, extortion racketeers, real estate mafia, liquor mafia and even the government’s “developmental outlays” helping this terrorists economy to flourish. He cites the example of Punjab, where all economic indicators such as unemployment, population below poverty line, per capita income, infant mortality, life expectancy etc have been far better compared to all the other states in the country, yet terrorism using religion as a fuel, played havoc with the lives of the people of the State for close to two decades. More tellingly, Shourie poses an interesting question: Poverty and unemployment are not much less today in Punjab, but why is there no terrorism? Another question which begs an answer is: Districts most affected by naxal violence, Patna, Jehanabad, Nalanda, Aurangabad, Nawadah and Bhojpur have farm prosperity and literacy higher than the rest of the state, So what explains the entrenched naxalite presence in these districts, if poverty is an explanation for the emergence of naxalism?

Perhaps the anger of Shourie at the mainstream media mindlessly peddling poverty as the cause of naxalite violence, Islamic and other brands of terrorism is justified. But, need one tell Mr. Shourie that all kinds of rebellion in history, based both on real (1857 mutiny) and imaginary (Muslim separatism in 1947) grievances have been led by the wealthy and the middle classes and that left-wing militancy in India is no exception. This reason does not in any way belittle the enormity of the naxalite challenge. As Mr. L.K. Advani himself had admitted in the Parliament when he was the Home Minister, there is naxalite presence in roughly 180 districts of the country. In terms of size, the total area of these districts combined is even greater than the area of Pakistan! In other words, India has within its belly another Pakistan and it could come out any time, should things continue in the way they have been for the past 10 years. Shourie himself points out the example of Nepal, where from 4 districts in December, 2001, Maoists spread their influence to the entire country by 2008.

Another issue Shourie highlights is the continuing illegal immigration of people from Bangladesh into the borders districts of India, specially Assam, Bihar and West Bengal. He quotes extensively from the Task Force on Border Management and the Task Force on Internal Security to drive home the dimensions of the problem: Smuggling of arms, drugs through the border, the mushrooming madrassas and the silent invasion and occupation of large tracts of border lands by Bangladeshis. Shourie takes on the liberal intellectuals and locates our inability to move forward and confront all these problems in the disproportionate influence they wield in the corridors of power. His advice to the policy makers is, shun political correctness if you are to get anywhere close to the root of the problem.

Our “often on and often not” attempts at what we do comes out clearly in the economic arena, especially in comparison with China. While China has progressed in almost all fields because of its sustained efforts in reforming its economy, we have only made feeble efforts in this direction. The figures which Shourie quote tell their own story. At the time of independence, our economies were of the same size. Today, China’s per capita income is two and half to three times that of India. Its exports have grown to $ 850 billion, ours $ 155 billion. Our forex reserves are $ 160 billion, China’s $ 1000 billion. In 2008, China spent $ 201 billion on infrastructure development, we spent $ 28 billion and the divide widens when one moves to other fields such as education, health and so on. Shourie rightly predicted that this difference in economic indicators would ultimately reflect in the political and military fields. Two years after his writing, the dragon has wagged its tail and the result has been stapled visas to visitors from Kashmir, border incursions and an incredible “advice” to the Indian government to not include people from Kashmir and North Eastern states in delegations visiting China! This is the sad outcome of our underperformance combined with pusillanimity in dealing with rising china.

Shourie brings his amazing argumentative skills while putting forth his case against the Indo-US Nuclear deal. He quotes provisions from the Senate Bill, the Congress Bill, various statements of the senators, the then Secretary of State Condi Rice and others to nail the lie of the government that India’s hold over its strategic nuclear programme has not loosened because of the deal. After going through his argument, one feels how a determined government could fool the media, parliament and the people at large with its lies.

A delightful section of the book is the one dealing with his attempt at disinvestment of loss making public sector undertakings. The obstacles and road blocks, the parliamentary scrutiny and newspaper leakages and business rivalries which bedevilled his attempt at selling of PSUs are a revelation. Even when the extent of loss making is many times the paid up capital of these units, a whole lot of vested interest would not let these units be sold off because their politics would not let them do so. The country has paid dearly because of this politics of cronyism and these PSUs continue to bleed the exchequer even now.

Where Mr. Shourie goes over-board is in his diagnosis of the communal problem. In his opinion, the indic religions, Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism are peace loving, inward-looking and accommodative of other world views, whereas the Middle Eastern religions, Christianity, Islam and Judaism are inherently intolerant and dominating. The reasons adduced by Shourie for the intolerance of the followers of these religions is that they believe reality is simple; it is revealed to one man who has put it in one book; which is true for all times; one needs an intermediary to understand what is stated in the book; one needs to adhere to the prescriptions of the intermediary and more importantly, those who do not accept the message are thwarting the will of the messenger and therefore, should be vanquished by the collective action of the believers. Though his diagnosis is true to some extent, it does not entirely explain the world as it exists today or the historical events of the last century. Neither the Muslims nor the Christians – nor for that matter the Hindus – have been able to organise themselves as a Ummah or a collective. One needs to only look at the modern world to see how Muslims have divided themselves into 30 odd nations, often fighting amongst themselves rather than vanquishing the unbelievers! There are strong secular societies within purportedly Muslim countries, such as Turkey, Malaysia and Indonesia. Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim country had the world’s biggest communist party outside the communist bloc before the party was decimated by the Indonesian military in the 1970s with a huge dose of assistance from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). In Turkey, the presence of military looms large over the political system; it is always ready to intervene to prevent the religious parties assuming power. Even the religious right has toned down its stridency to suit the reality of the dominant presence of the military in the affairs of Turkey. The Palestinians were largely non-religious before Israel reduced them to the status of refugees in their own lands. As far Christian unity, suffice it say that the two world wars were fought by Christian nations amongst themselves.

These exceptions, one may say, do not make the rule. Most of the Muslim countries remain conservative, with religion holding a fierce grip over the lives and conduct of ordinary citizens. But there are voices of dissent seeking reform, not just in the political systems but also freedom in religious beliefs. There are voices seeking reform, reinterpretation of the Islam’s tenets by means of Ijtihad to suit modern times. While the fight against Islamic fundamentalism must be fought resolutely, one must not lose sight of the churning which is already taking place in Islamic societies. One hopes this churning would bring to the surface a liberal version of Islam which would be at peace with itself while carring forward the message of the Prophet, the message of social justice and brotherhood.

Book Review

Maximum City

Bombay Lost and Found

Suketu Mehta

Published by Penguin Books in 2004

This work of non-fiction had won huge praise from writers, novelists, critics and book reviewers. Maximum City also won the 2005 Kriyama Prize for Non-fiction, was short-listed for the BBC4 Samuel Johnson Book Prize for Non-fiction in 2005 and chosen as Book of the Year for 2004 by The Economist. Suketu Mehta was also a finalist for the 2005 Pulitzer.

The author is from a family of Jeweller-merchants; he calls them, “mercantile wanderers”. His grandfather left rural Gujarat to set up business in Calcutta and his father, an educated man, moved from Calcutta to Bombay to sell diamonds. As his father and uncle got established in diamond business, their families gained roots in the city. Like other sensitive writers, Mehta’s descriptions of his childhood moments spent in the city, are some of the most poignant and impressive pieces of writing in the entire book.

Suketu left Bombay for New York at a very young age and quite unlike the popular assumptions of an all-welcoming “melting pot”, America wasn’t all that inviting. The teachers and students at Queens were openly racial. As he says, “I existed in New York but lived in India.” One way of repelling the New York society (and it’s winter) was by roaring “Bhenchod, Bheyyyyan chod” when he walked his mile-long way to School, “sucking in the freezing winds as the good Irish, Italian and Polish senior citizens heard this word on very cold days mouthed by a brown boy dressed inappropriately for the weather.”

The personal geography of Mehta merges with that of the city in which he was born as he takes a look at the history of Bombay. We learn that it was called Hetanesia – the city of seven islands – by Ptolemy, Bom Babia and Boa Vida – island of good life - by the Portuguese, Manbeu, Mambai, Mambe, Mumbadevi and Bambai by the Hindus. Bombay from the beginning had its unique culture, which is of transaction – dhanda – appropriate for a city conceived as a trading city. When Mehta returns to the city of his birth, his experiences are less than enchanting; be it getting a rented house or a cooking gas cylinder. These are everyday problems for Indians, but the hearing the same being said by an Indian-born American is quite upsetting.

The civil disorder that has set in Bombay can be found in this description of a Jogeshwari slum: “Much of the slum is a garbage dump. The sewers, which are open, run right between the houses and children play and occasionally fall into them. They are full of a blue-black iridescent sledge. When the government sweepers come to clean the drains, they scoop it out and leave piles of it outside the latrines. I couldn’t use the public toilets. I tried, once. There were two rows of toilets. Each one of them had masses of shit, overflowing out of the toilets and spread liberally all around the cubicle. For the next few hours that image and that stench stayed with me. When I ate, when I drank. It is not merely an aesthetic discomfort; typhoid runs rampant through the slum and spreads through oral-faecal contact. Pools of stagnant water, which are everywhere, breed malaria. Many children also have jaundice. Animal carcasses are spread out on the counters of butchers’ shops, sprinkled with flies like a moving spice. The whole slum is pervaded by a stench that I stopped noticing after a while.” This should shock no one as more than two million people in the city do not have access to latrines!

Alongside, Mehta also chronicles the struggle of illiterate, slum women to set things right by getting together and agitating. Despite all the filth and dirt, these people have made it their home; they won’t move from the slums. Mehta’s explanation for their rootedness is simple, “Out of inhospitable surroundings, they form a community and they are as attached to its spatial geography, the social networks they have built for themselves.” His advice to urban planners is, “Any urban redevelopment plan has to take into account the curious desire of slum dwellers to live closely together”

The other phenomenon of slums, which has been romanticised in so many films, is crime. There is a lively description of the opportunities offered by the social geography of a city like Bombay to the social movement of criminals. Sunil, the Shiv Sena thug, who had burnt alive two Muslims in the riots of 1993, gets appointed as “Special Executive Officer” when the Sena forms a Government in Maharashtra. Even though the post does not give him a legitimate office, still makes him a person on whom public trust is reposed. Suketu Mehta believes that the fact of murderer like Sunil could become successful in Bombay through engagement in local politics is both a triumph and failure of democracy. A triumph because it indicates availability of an open space for social advancement and a failure because it is the worst – with passionate intensity, as W.B. Yeats had described men of this kind – who successfully traverse through this space.

Mehta visits the slum houses, eats, drinks and moves with the rioters, contract killers and gang lords and describes in great detail the psyche of these men and the political economy of crime. Similarly, he meets people on the other end of the spectrum, the ‘encounter specialists’, police officers and the politicians and again comes out with knowledge of the economy involved in fighting criminals. We have often been sympathetic to the criminals, given their social setting and the cruelty of the lives they lead. So it is shocking when we hear Ajay Lal, the Police Officer tell this story: “The franchise to make big chalk pictures of Jesus Christ on the footpath, on which passers-by throw coins, is sold for seventy five thousand rupees for six months by the toughs who control that section.” Mehta comes across a Rajan gang member, who shoots out three persons for 3500 rupees! As this incident is discussed while he was with Ajay, Mehta asks him what is the lowest price he heard about for a life in Bombay? Ajay tells him about a rag-picker, who helps a woman and her paramour to finish off her husband. The rag-picker, chips off the dead man’s limbs into pieces and distributes them in Deonar dump. The price paid to the rag picker for the job done was, hold your heart, just 50 rupees! The rag picker needed a gunny sack to put on the roof of his shack to prevent his house getting flooded and, therefore, took on the assignment! No better example could be cited for the savagery of life in Bombay.

Mehta places some of the blame afflicting urban living in a city like Bombay on popular democracy itself. One example is the notorious Rent Control Act, which prevents vacation of a flat rented out to a tenant and also enhancement of rent. As he puts it, the Rent Act is a case of institutionalised expropriation of private property! It is democracy which allows such laws to remain on Statute Books. As he correctly diagnoses, “Democracies have a weakness. If a bad law has enough money or people behind it, it stays on the books”

No book on Bombay could be complete without a portrayal of life in its sprawling slums. The following is one description of a street scene - no doubt, Mehta’s Jain upbringing repulses the images before him – on the occasion of Muharram, when animals are sacrificed: “Grinning children run barefoot through the blood-deep streets holding the freshly cut heads, all the eyes open. There are groups of municipal garbage collectors who take away the waste entrails, the dung-filled stomach sacs. Huge dumps are filled with these carcasses. A man stands inside a municipal garbage container, cutting a big animal’s insides, disposing of the remains right inside the container around his feet. Cats and dogs are having a feast on the leftovers.................... The narrow streets are slippery with blood and shit; the filthiest time of the year in the filthiest part of the city. On the road leading to the factory I notice a dead squashed rat covered with flies. An open manhole reveals huge red cockroaches ringing the tunnel. The animal hides are stacked and put in front of mosques for charity. Men walk about with reddened shirts; they look as if they’ve been playing Holi.”

At times, the description turns poetic, as this one: “As the fur and the skin and the flesh are cut away on layers, the animals’ bodies reveal treasures in multiple vivid colours: the brownish-red of the liver; the elegant white and red stripes of the inside of the rib cage; the brown, white and black of the fur; the crystal of the eyes; the pure cream of the intestines, unfurled. I see the marvellous arrangement of the bull’s body within and without, the complex cornucopia of its insides, the fine differentiation of the organs, each admirably suited to its purpose. All these had been working in tandem a minute before, and now each part is freed from the yoke of the mind and acts independently; twitching, pissing, growing, hardening. Now they will go their separate ways. After one bull is slaughtered, the children pull at the white fat inside its body; it stretches like a elastic sheet. A man pokes the open eye of the dead animal; its mouth suddenly opens in reflex, showing a line of teeth; The man repeats his gesture; the mouth opens again.”

“What are the killers and sharp-shooters fighting for?” is a question which comes to Mehta’s mind often. On the move with members of the D-Company, he finds that they speak of their criminal association with pride, the pride of an oppressed minority that fights back and ‘dares’ to venture in the ‘outline’ trades. There are also the embers of a global jihad being wages against infidels, when Mohsin advises Mehta to go to Palestine to see the real Mujahideen where even three year old boys carry AK-47s. This is matched by the sentiments of the ‘Sena boys’ who see themselves as protectors of the Hindu nation. To quote Mehta again, “Both sides see what is happening in Bombay today as only the latest in a long series of historical battles. Bombay is where worlds collide; it is their Tours, their Kosovo, their Panipet. Here the line will be drawn, in this Hindu nation ringed by Islamic countries.”

More dangerous than this assumption of being frontline soldiers of the global “War of Civilizations” is the completely unstructured lives that these ‘boys’ lead. “Under the looming shadow of death, they spend their days and, more important, their nights wandering, free-floating through the charms of the city, from the kebab joints and carom clubs of Madanpura, to the charas dens and brothels of Kamathipura where their anger can be stripped off. At any point in the day or night, there are these boys clustered around central Bombay, ever on the lookout for profitable strife. They watch the streets the way stockbrokers watch their computer screens or grain merchants watch the onset of the monsoon, looking for the slightest change in the market, the slightest sign of excitement.”

There is also a telling comment on the way the police functions in the Metropolitan city. A few months later Mohsin is arrested by the police. He is beaten to pulp for three days. The police try to convert him into a Police-informer. Mohsin refuses to be one. What do we expect the police to do? Produce the criminal before a court or kill him in a fake ‘encounter’. No, nothing of these sorts. The Police phone in Shakeel, the Pakistan-based D-Company Commander and demand money for the life of Mohsin! Shakeel pays three lakh and Mohsin is let off! With such a police force, it wasn’t entirely surprising that 26 / 11 happened a few years later!

Another question which Mehta tries to answer is, “Why is that the killers are so remorseless?”. He gives a near psychoanalytical answer to this question when he says, “When a man touches his killer’s feet and begs for his life, saying ‘Please don’t kill me. I have young children’, it is the worst argument he can offer. Thinking the killer will let you off because you have kids assumes that you can locate a hidden source of sympathy in your killer based on something shared, something in common. But very few killers are fathers. Very few of them have had good experiences with their own fathers. So that bond between father and son, which for you and me is the most convincing argument against your death – don’t kill me because it will break that sacred bond – means nothing to them. It is a bond, in fact, that the hit men have consciously been trying to break all their lives. As far as they’re concerned, ridding your children of a father is the greatest favour they can do them”(emphasis added).

Just as you begin to assume that Bombay is all about a city inhabited by gangsters, pimps, prostitutes, policemen, politicians, film-stars alone, Mehta introduces a charming story of Girish and his family, who live in a slum but somehow move away to a flat at the outskirts of the city. The family pools its little earnings and resources and buys the flat. And, there is another enchanting story about the renunciation of worldly life by a Jain family, of parents and their two young children.

So, where does redemption lie for the city that never sleeps? Mehta doesn’t offer one, Having lain bare the violence and corruption in their gory detail, he could not do so. But, he does indicate a few. It lies in the illiterate slum-women, who fight for basic needs such as water, sewage clearance, who try to maintain communal harmony by forming Peace Committees; in those train commuters, already drenching with sweat in crowded compartments, reaching out to that late-comer running frantically to get in and families such as those of Girish, which saves whatever little its members could earn and try to climb the social ladder.

Curiously enough, Mehta is fascinated by Seventibhai’s leap into monkhood. In his opinion, “Seventibhai has decisively rejected every value held dear by the middle classes; Western education, consumerism, nationalism and, most important, family.” Seventibhai has even triumphed over death, that in a city where death comes cheap. Remember, it costs only fifty rupees to kill and dump a person in dump-yard. “He has divested himself of everything – family, possessions, pleasure – that is death’s due. All that remains is his body, to which he has renounced title in advance and treats as a borrowed, soiled shirt. Seventibhai has beaten death to the end.”

We their fellow-countrymen only wish that Mumbaikers would choose the less enchanting example of Girish and his family rather than that of Seventibhai and his family!

Chetan Bhagat's Novels

Five Point Someone First published by Rupa & Co in 2004
One Night @ the Call Centre First published by Rupa & Co in 2005
The 3 mistakes of my life First published by Rupa & Co in 2008
2 States – The Story of My Marriage First published by Rupa & Co in 2009

Over the last couple of years, visiting our home town in Tamil Nadu – Kumbakonam in Thanjavur District – hadn’t been a very pleasant experience. When the kids were quite small, we skipped going home for three consecutive years as attending to their needs during a train journey from New Delhi to Chennai (roughly 2200 kms, 33 hours) and then from Chennai to Kumbakonam (275 kms, 7 hrs) was a quite a tedious affair. Feeding, changing clothes, making their visits to the train toilets safe and other attendant duties were Herculean tasks for us. They have grown up now and could take care of their needs themselves easily.

Still at the back of my mind, visiting home did not evoke the same kind of sentiment as it used to do in the past. Surely, it is a sign of getting old and the attendant illness of old age, cynicism. We have been used to a degree of comfort in Delhi which one cannot expect there at KMU, the least bearable being the 2-3 hours power cut. In the past, the Electricity Board in that state used to cut supply at any time during the day for two hours; nowadays, it is at specified hours, which is some improvement in the management of discomfort. One must be thankful for small mercies!

The other factor which has always worried me was the kind of climate which prevails at TN during June. It is hot, sultry and perspiring. No doubt, Delhi is hotter and more perspiring, but at least one has the comfort of one’s home. Again, one would not like to invite more discomfort on holidays, with two young ones in tow. All these considerations were dashed to the ground once my wife decided that we should go! All rational arguments against going home were shred to tatters by the force of pure emotion. Her argument is that a visit in a year to see parents, brothers and sisters – not in-laws of these species - is too great an accomplishment and could be traded against two hour power cuts and the sultry weather.

It was in this situation we set out on our rail yatra on the 2nd of June. I decided before hand not to tax my mind with heavy reading on journey. With all the controversies surrounding Chetan Bhagat after the release of 3 idiots, I thought it would be a good idea to read all 4 of his novels in one go, which had remained unread for the last 4-5 months. I started off with One Night @ the Call Centre rather than Chetan’s first novel 5 point someone. One could only explain this mishap in Chetan’s own words, “I was seriously messed up in the head and haven’t slept for fifty hours straight”. Only into the third chapter, Chetan proves right what he had said in his interviews, which is, give a good boot to Queen’s language and enter the brash, outlandish new world of Indian English. Through Shyam, the protagonist, he in fact, says clearly, “My English is not that great – actually nothing about me is great”. Another feature one can easily discern is how comfortably the story – which is true of other novels too – presents itself for Hindi film-making. In many ways, it even closely resembles Hindi films, which is one reason why two of Bhagat’s novels have been made into successful Hindi films.

One Night @ the Call Centre is a narration of all that happens at a call centre in a single night to two male and three female agents, Shyam, the narrator, his girlfriend Priyanka, Vroom, the brash lad who lives his life on the fast lane, Eisha, whose fascination for the fashion world ends in disaster and Radhika, the obedient daughter in law who is rewarded for her tireless service to her mother in law with migraine and betrayal by her husband. In some ways, Chetan is successful in capturing the fast paced life style of the young urban Indian in this novel. You have the lingo of the young India, liberal use of the f- and b- words, dating, even pre marital sex, complete irreverence towards the older generation, which borders on contempt and ridicule on many occasions and at last the problem common to all generations, namely, the disconnect between the what is desired in life and what life itself has got in store for them.

There are some features which repeat themselves throughout the novel, which could be categorised as under:

Anti-feminist

“Apart from cardamom, Priyanka’s favourite spice is gossip”

“Just that it is nice to have a girlfriend with half a brain”

“Women love to repair the injury – as long as it is not too gross”

“Girls’s handbags have enough to make a survival kit for Antartica”

“Girls and their coded communication”, “Women can ignore men for sexy shoes”

“Only women think there is a reason to thank people if they listen to them”

“I am constantly amazed at the ability of women to calm down. All they need to do is talk, hug and cry it out for ten minutes – and then they can face any of life’s crap”

Funny

“The ring-shapped earrings were so large, they could be bangles”

“I moved aside from the tornado to save another collision” (a kid with lollipop running towards Shyam while dating with Priyanka in rail museum, Chanakyapuri)

“Whoever starts crying first always has an advantage in an argument”

Stereotypes

“he did an MBA from some unpronounceable university in South India”

Slangs

it was a group thing,

less anti social,

you get that mental smirk,

I needed to de-stress,

Don’t take tension dude,

one of the thousands of Indian geeks coding away in Microsoft,

I don’t want some random people,

Don’t mess with me,

my life is screwed up,

Don’t be so high on America,

Smart observations

“The only thing better than watching beautiful people in a disc is watching a fight. A fight means the party is totally rocking”

“Sorting Americans’ oven and fridge problems was easier than solving life’s problems”

Pseudo-scientific

“Women playing with their hair while talking to a guy is an automatic female preening gesture”,

“Esha’s eyebrow rise in suspicion. The invisible female antennae were out and suggesting caution.”

Political Statement

“An entire generation up all night, providing crutches for the white morons to run their lives. And then big companies come and convince us with their advertising to value crap we don’t need, do jobs we hate so that we can buy stuff – junk food, colored fizzy water, dumbass credit cards and overpriced shoes. They call it youth culture. Is this what they think youth is about? Two generations ago, the youth got this country free. Now that was something meaningful. But what happened after that? We have just been reduced to a high-spending demographic. “

“We should be building roads, power plants, airports, phone networks and metro trains in every city like madness. And if the government moves it’s rear-end and does that the young people in this country will find jobs there. Hell, I would work days and nights for that – as long as I know that what I am doing is helping build something for my country, for its future. But the government doesn’t believe in doing any real work, so they allow these BPOs to be opened and think they have taken care of the youth. Just as this stupid MTV thinks showing a demented chick do a dance in her underwear will make the program a youth special.”

(This is another version of left-wing criticism of the leseez faire capitalism, which is always in search for new markets, often by dubious means and for dubious reasons).

At last, the story collapses into a filmi ending, with the agents frightening the Yankees with a virus hit to increase call rates and Priyanka choosing Shyam over a Microsoft NRI because of the much abused cliché, “love over money”. The most lovable and enjoyable aspect of this novel is how Bhagat could make even the dullest events funny. Chetan Bhagat may not be able to immerse deep into the cesspool that is life and pontificate on its immense problems to come out with workable solutions, but he has in his own way made a lot of us realise the complexities of modern life in this readable book.

Five Point Someone, on the other hand, had gained fame because of a successful film, which disclaimers from the Producer notwithstanding, is largely based on the novel. As Bhagat says at the beginning, the novel is an example of how screwed up your college years can get if you don’t think straight. Paradoxically, despite his first hand experience of life inside at IIT, the story sounds unreal even as a narrative with a slightly higher dose of classroom-bumping, drinking-binge and endless dating. Granting that getting into IIT requires a particular mindset, this book and indeed the film which was made out of it, gives an impression that getting into it is the harder part than getting out! One can understand a nuanced criticism of a herd mentality which is obsessed with obtaining good grades, but projecting life in IIT as one endless journey consisting of prank, eating “Parathas” at Sai’s dhaba and tasting “Vanilla” at the ice cream parlour is a little too unreal.

But the story is not entirely removed from reality. It does portray life and more importantly, learning inside an elite institution like an IIT. Excellence for the students was or perhaps still is, developing an obsession with higher and higher grades. Such an obsession could even get worse, as Bhagat says, “The Professors kept up the pressure and over worked students worked even harder to beat the average, thereby, pushing the average higher.” The witticism and brutally funny asides bordering sometimes on the heartless keep flowing from the pen of Bhagat in this story too. To give only a few examples, the following would suffice:

“he (Alok) was kind of poor, I mean not World Bank ads type starving poor or anything.”

“Famished UNICEF kid”

“How happy his mother and half a father were.”

“Given how much Fatso eats, he could probably build his bones back in a day.”

“No one talks for the next sixty minutes” he pronounced in a no-nonsense tone that would make Saddam Hussein shudder, it that clear?” Chalk dust formed a cloud as if Cherian had burst a grenade in the classroom”.

The other feature, anti-feminism, also keeps raising its head often. Again only two examples,

“Figuring out women is harder than topping a ManPro Quiz.”

“How girls cry for two different reasons at the same time”.

As far a political statement, there is only a faint hint of the author’s mind through the mouth of Ryan when he says, “And this IIT system is nothing but a mice race. It is not a rate race, mind you, as rats sound somewhat shrewd and clever. So it is not about that. It is about mindlessly running a race for four years, in every class, every assignment and every test. It is a race where profs judge you every ten steps, with a GPA stamped on you every semester. Profs who have no idea what science and learning are about. Yes, that is what I think of the profs I mean, what have IITs given to this country? Name one invention in the last three decades.”

3 mistakes of my life is, perhaps, the least acclaimed of his novels. It enters into the dangerous territory of political mobilisation, political organisations, their structure and functioning and that all enduring political theme, Hindu-Muslim relationship. Enacted against the backdrop of the Gujrat riots of 2002, one tends to expect a contestation of rival view-points in this novel, Hindu-Muslim, religious-secular, fanatic-tolerant, committed-liberal etc, but these expectations are belied as Chetan meanders through cricket, tuitions and marketing to tell a lifeless story. The portrayal of a Muslim character through a talented cricketer is new, but investing him with superhuman abilities at hitting sixes of every ball bowled at him is unbelievable. Still, Chetan is successful in describing the business acumen of the Gujaratis, through Govind’s attempt to establish himself in life. There is that start with a modest beginning and slowly accumulating capital and investing it in higher ventures. Bhagat’s background of Management Education coupled with his eye for details in observing the conduct of people in their daily lives brings to the fore some amazing nuggets of information such as how Govind’s mother optimises her talents and utilizes Govind to do the delivery. Unlike his pseudo-scientific quotes in his earlier novels, this sprinkling of management principles is tasteful and consumable, like the following, “My mother could delegate routinue tasks like delivery and focus on her core competence – cooking.”

Govind’s fixation with money making is also explained through management jargon. When her mother picks a ‘dhokla’ piece from an order prepared and gives it to him, Govind thinks it is bad business, sucking out something from a customer order. When the shop Govind runs turns from selling cricket goods alone to stationery, cricket coaching and Maths tuition, Chetan makes a telling remark, “I may not have diversified geographically, but I had diversified my product offering.” This is not a just a smart observation, but a practice adopted by every “dhukaanwallah” all over the country. The trade mark wise-cracks “Indian mothers have two tasks – to tell children to eat more or study more”, the wonderful rumination, “why do old people like news papers so much? They love reading the news, but what do they do about it?” a teasingly cheeky take, “Every girl has a wonderful small right after bath, I think they should bottle it and sell it.” and the philosophical one, “Life is an optimisation problem, with tonnes of variables and constraints.” are evidence of Bhagat’s keen eye for observing individual foibles.

In a novel purportedly political, there is very little of political ramblings from the mouths of the protagonists. Even this little one from Ali’s father sounds like a management principle:

“Yes take any husband and wife. They will fight, and hurt each other emotionally. However, later they will make up, with hugs, presents or kind understanding words. These reconciliatory mechanisms are essential. The problem in Indian Hindu-Muslim rivalry is not that that one is right and the other is wrong. It is that there are no reconciliatory mechanisms.’

Even granting that the end was predictably filimi, the lengths to which Govind & Ish go to save Ali’s life is not, because one sees examples of it all over the country, especially in small town India. At the end, the solution which Bhagat offers to the Hindu-Muslim problem is individual conduct to take care of the other rather than devising a social mechanism, going against the reconciliation mechanisms which Ali’s father hints at.

2 States – The Story of my Marriage is the wittiest and the most enjoyable of the four novels. As a Tamilian myself, I did not find the fun which Chetan makes of Tamilian way of life, their habits, food, their frugality and their language offensive at all! As he says in his acknowledgement itself, “You only make digs at people you care for.” The fun he makes of Tamilians is all the more enjoyable because of Chetan’s no-holds-barred approach. It is practically impossible to dish out examples of the wisecracks, asides and the heartless jokes as they are too innumerable to collate. The best one is of course, “You Tamilians have too much brain but too little heart.” Since this is 110 per cent fun, it is the serious stuff which needs to be fished out. One of this kind is when Guruji advises Krish to forgive his father for forgiving doesn’t make the person you hurt feel better, it makes you feel better! In fact the greater message comes at the end when Ananya’s father says, while delivering a speech at the Reception, “When your child decides to love a new person, you can either see it as a chance to hate some people – the person they choose and their families. However, you can also see it as a chance to love some more people. And since when did loving more people become a bad thing?” Ten points out of ten!

Chetan Bhagat's Novels

Book Review Globalization, Democracy and Terrorism by Eric Hobsbawm published in 2007 by Little, Brown

Eric Hobsbawm has been described as the greatest living historian in the world. An early convert to Marxism – he had participated in left wing socialist politics while still at School in Berlin – Eric Hobsbawm had been a card-holding member of the Communist Party of Great Briton (CPGB) till the party dissolved itself in the early 90s of the last century. Eric has been famous for the Quartet, The Age of Revolution, The Age of Capital, The Age of Empire and The Age of Extremes, his historical journey of 19^th and 20^th Century Europe.

This little volume is a collection of ten lectures delivered by Eric Hobsbawm on various occasions around the world. His erudition is revealed in the preface itself when he sums up the focus of these lectures as follows: the general question of war and peace in the 21^st century; the past and future of world empires; the nature and the changing context of nationalism; the prospects of liberal democracy; and the question of political violence and terror. He points out that no clear understanding of these problems is possible without understanding the contexts in which they take place, technological advancement and globalisation. While the first had been utilised mostly for maximising economic growth in a handful of countries without any effective steps being taken to tackle problems such as global warming, globalisation - engineered mostly by the United States – itself has had a profound political and cultural effect on the vast regions situated outside international and national elites. Contrary to the claims being made by its advocates, globalisation has not improved general levels of prosperity, but has only introduced heightened economic and social inequalities, both within states and between them in spite of general diminution of extreme poverty. Secondly, the impact of globalisation has been felt the most by those who benefit from it the least. Thirdly, as pointed out above, the enormous political and cultural impact on the vast regions despite the limited scale of globalisation. While the problem areas outlined by Eric Hobsbawm cannot be comprehended fully within the context of technological advancement and globalisation alone – questions of religious ideology and historical memory also matter to a great extent – they are, nevertheless useful starting points to dig deeper into these problems.

Of the ten lectures, on the whole, two each deal with the five problem areas outlined by Hobsbawm in his preface. “War, Peace and Hegemony at the beginning of the 21^st Century” is a logical corollary to the one on “War and Peace in the 20^th Century.” There are three lectures on empire and hegemony viz. “Why American Hegemony Differs from Britain’s Empire”, “On the end of empires” and “The Empire expands wider still and wider”, two on democracy, “The prospects of democracy” & “Spreading Democracy”, two on terrorism, “Terror” and “Public Order in an Age of Violence” and only one on Nationalism, “Nations and Nationalism in the New Century”.

The 20^th Century has been an almost unbroken century of wars, essentially comprising of two World Wars. The author says that the period from 1914 to 1945 could be termed as “Thirty Years War”. There was also another kind of war, Cold War between the two Super Powers between 1945 to 1989 which centred around global influence and global domination of US and USSR. Even though there was no direct confrontation between the two, they chose to fight through their proxies, one country against another, supporting factions within countries and fomenting civil wars within societies. Because of the two WWs and Cold War, the 20^th Century was the most murderous in recorded history with the number of dead in wars estimated to be around 187 million (18.7 crore). There were whole sale massacres and displacement of civilian population resulting in refugees, both internal and transnational. Even such colossal destruction has not made the contestants realise the futility of global domination. It is in this context that Eric laments the absence of any effective global institution to control and settle international disputes.

For Hobsbawm, the 21^st Century does not bring cheers as far as lessening the extent of war and violence, as he predicts, “War in the 21^st Century is not likely to be as murderous as it was in the 20^th. But armed violence, creating disproportionate suffering and loss will remain omnipresent and endemic – occasionally epidemic – in large parts of the world. The prospects of a century of peace is remote.” Much of what he states in the second chapter is not really new as others like Tariq Ali have spoken and written about foreign occupation of national territories and the opposition it generates. But, Eric brings to our attention a new danger, the manipulation of life forms, the attempt to create lives in laboratories and the inevitability of our loosening control over this attempt. In his view the actual danger to world stability from the sum total of all terrorists is minimal, unless these terrorists gain access to nuclear weapons. He points out how countries such as Briton, Spain, India and Columbia have learned to live with effectively indestructible bodies of armed militant groups. Therefore, his counsel to world governments in dealing with terrorism is cool heads, not war hysteria.

The most engrossing of these has been the Chapter titled, “Why American Hegemony Differs from Britain’s Empire?” As the author observes, US hegemony pre-9/11 was because of its wealth, industry and the liberal institutions. The size of its economy allowed it to play a big role in the international arena. The non-communist states saw the presence of US as a protector against the might of the USSR. However, its direct military intervention post 9/11 is informed by thoughts of the kind of hegemony exercised by Briton in the 20^th Century. Eric Hobsbawm extricates four developments which have fuelled US domination. Firstly, acceleration of globalisation with its economic, technological and social consequences which have spilled over into what Eric calls, “the one branch of human activity that has proved quite impermeable to it, namely politics”. This claim is not outrageous as it may sound at first, as countries which have been at the receiving end of US intervention have often followed free market economic policies encouraging import substitution instead of establishing domestic industries, foreign direct investment and so on. Successive US governments have flexed their muscles whenever they saw dangers, often imaginary, emanating from popular governments trying to set the balance right in favour of vast majority of people. The second was the collapse of the Soviet Union, which removed all of a sudden of the only countervailing force which acted as a check. The third has been the inability of a large number of countries to control what happened within their territories resulting in large chunks of territories gaining a semi-autonomous status beyond the reach of national governments. The fourth is the off-shoot of the third, namely the whole sale expulsion, killing and genocide by some governments of its own people on ethnic and racial grounds.

Along the way, Hobsbawm points out how Briton realised its limitations even at the heights of its hegemony over large territories of the globe and how quickly it adjusted to the loss of these territories. Unlike Briton, America never colonised any country – except perhaps Philippines in the 20^th Century. However for this reason alone, it has set up military bases all over the world. Again because of its revolutionary tradition, American hegemony – like the French and Russian - rests on the belief that anyone opposed to its way of life must be conquered.

An acclaimed expert on nations and nationalism, Eric is at ease while dealing with this subject. He had seen in his life time the collapse of two multinational and multicultural societies, namely, the Hapsburgs and the Soviet Union. Two major problems afflicting modern nations have been, again globalisation and mass migration of different nationalities into alien geographical locations. The third problem is concomitant to the second, that is the rise of xenophobia. Eric takes recourse to a study of football clubs to highlight the relations between globalisation, national identity and xenophobia. His study is not entirely new as issues such as weakening national identities of footballers playing for premier clubs in Europe and rising levels of intolerance of these foreigners by local supporters have been highlighted by others. But Eric comes to his original self when he dissects the nature of xenophobia, which must be quoted extensively, “Xenophobia also reflects the crisis of a culturally defined national identity in nation-states under conditions of universal education and access to the media and at a time when the politics of exclusive collective identity, whether ethnic, religious or of gender and lifestyle, seek a factitious regeneration of Gemeinschaft (community) in an increasingly remote Geselschaft (individuals). The process which turned peasants into Frenchmen and immigrants into American citizens is reversing and it crumbles larger nation-state identities into self-regarding group identities, or even into the a-national private identities of ubi bene ibi patria.” These words would sound familiar to a lot of modern Indians as they battle with linguistic, caste and communal identities.

Hobsbawm takes on the holy cow of liberalism, namely democracy. He recalls Churchill’s classical saying, “Democracy is the worst of all governments, except for all the others” (Churchill later on said more comprehensibly, “Democracy is not the best form of government, it is the least evil some!) and reminds us that this was more a call for improvement of democratic societies than wallowing in assumptions of superiority. Eric also questions whether democracy is really representative at all considering the diminishing voter turn-outs all over the liberal world. In his opinion, the major dilemma facing democracy is the replacement of popular sovereignty by market sovereignty. Market sovereignty denies the need for political decisions, promoting group welfare and places too much premium on individuals preferring private interests. It is this preference for “marketisation of politics” which is at the heart of the liberal dilemma in contemporary capitalist societies.

Lastly, to those enthusiasts who want to export democracy and “western values”, Hobsbawm, the historian sounds the following words of warning: “The 20^th century demonstrated that states could not simply remake the world or abbreviate historical transformations. Nor can they easily effect social change by transferring institutions across borders.” He enunciates the three basic requisites for democratic governance: an existing state enjoying legitimacy, consent, and the ability to mediate conflicts between domestic groups. Without such consent, mere arithmetical majorities carry no legitimacy.

These words must be taken as warning by the ruling elites in India who wallow in the curative potential of democracy, bestowing it with magical powers to solve many a problem which require targeted political action. No institution can stand the test of time – even if it is based on such an exalted idea as representative democracy – if it does not carry the consent of the people.

Be Courageous! Tell me are you human?

She stood in front of us without wearing an inch of cloth. Just as the doors bang and close after receiving a hurricane hit, my eye – lids closed. I looked heather and thither. It was early morning and the place was starting to hum with activity. A few youngsters were throwing a mischievous smile at her. These were the eyes of Indra, which gaze and savour the scenes of rape in a second rate film, the beauty of a mother feeding her child and the naked stillness of a dead corpse with the same voyeuristic pleasure.

The scene from an old English film came to mind. A hero, who was hit and downed, ploughs the earth and pours the sand over his body to cover its nakedness. A woman-beggar sitting opposite the Mariamman Koil rushed towards her and covered her with a smothered cloth. It proved to be an Herculean task for her.

She roared with laughter like a devil in the stories which grandmother used to narrate when I was young. She uttered something throwing her hands around. She walked this way and that. Suddenly, she started crying.

She sat on a wooden platform. She took a pocket of left-over food, thrown at her by a passenger travelling in a bus. She peered at it and then put it into her mouth. She licked the fingers to clean the food still sticking to it.

After finishing eating, she cried uproariously. All eyes converged on her. She stood up and walked towards us as we expectantly waited. She looked up at the arch and sang, “Be courageous to declare! Are you human?” at the top of her voice.

While singing the song, the nerves on her neck straightened and a degree of sadness enveloped her face. Even now, I could recall the flair, the weight of diction and the orchestral nicety which lay embedded in her voice.

She ran behind the policeman going on a by-cycle. “Discard the uniform! Why do you wear them! Look at the moustache! Chee! Thoo! She gathered saliva and jetted it out. She also murmured but they were not audible in the noise created by a passing tractor.

Again she sang the same song. “Be courageous to declare! Are you human?” You bitch!

My attention was totally on her now. When a man waving a black shirt passed in front of her, she asked in English, “Do you know the colour of my life? It is black!”

I looked at her now in wonder. There was some poetry in what she said.

Somehow, I took the bus and reached the bank and sat in front of the type writer. A draft letter was already waiting on the table. I inserted a rough paper and for a try wanted to type something. When I pressed the button, I wondered what is to be typed. Then the song came to mind ....... “Be courageous to declare! Are you human?”

The clatter of the type writer, the screeching sound of the tables and chairs being moved, rambunctious talk of the customers, the announcement of numbers in the cash counter; the rustle of counting the currency, the sound of the rotating fan overhead; the sound, ‘charak, charak’ coming from the pages of the ledger being turned; and the generator placed outside, beyond all these, the sweet voice of her.

“Be courageous to declare! Are you human?”

Even after returning home, the thought of her came to mind. For the next few days, I could not see her near the bus stand.

That was the last Sunday of the month. The usual ‘literary meet’ at the beach. Me, Manjulan and Annachi. Sometime, a couple more would join, but it is not a big literary forum.

We sit on the wet and worn out Catamaran, munching ‘Sundal’ and enjoying the breeze. It is in this salubrious circumstance that we enter into literary discussion. Poetry reading, criticism of modern drama and criticism of the latest films are some of the activities we indulge in.

When prodded by Annachi to read the poems that I have penned down, I said I have none to offer. The silence was broken by a voice, which seemed very familiar. She was there too! I narrated the day’s events to Annachi. He stared at me as if he was looking at an unknown creature.

I said, “No Annachi! There is some creative energy in her, but somehow I could not explore what it is! O.K. we shall go near her.”

While moving closer to her, Annachi recalled a proverb which meant, “There is a subtle line that divides a creative artist from a psychic patient”

Annachi continued, “Why you have become sullen all of a sudden. There is lot of poetry and story stored in ordinary people whom we meet daily. To a creative artist, it is visible. With a little effort, we could bring out the story which lies immersed in them.”

She had gathered a few grams lying on the floor and put them down in her mouth. To the vendor who sells fish fry, she uttered something. He waved her away by threatening to hit her.

Annachi and Manjulan took leave of me. I walked along the sea shore. I reached the entrance of the Velankanni Koil, where I saw her for the first time. How did she come here so fast? I wondered.

Sitting in front of the tea stall, I ordered one, expecting to see her.

There were four or five talking politics. I asked one of them, “Do you know anything about that girl?”

“She wanders around here and seems to be a mad one. She keeps singing that old song frequently, “Be courageous to declare! Are you human?”

Yet another declared, “One thing is sure. Whenever she sees a policeman, she lets out expletives. Probably she has been harmed by one of them....”

“Why not? Nowadays, policemen do all sorts of things.” Another said while seconding the first opinion.

“She talks a lot of English. Probably, she was well educated” This was from the tea vendor.

This talk continued but I got up and left the scene soon after.

She started singing that song again, “Be courageous to declare! Are you human? You Animal!”

The voice had that sharpness which went piercing straight to your heart.

That was Pensioner’s day. There was heavy rush in the office and I was busy with my work when the head clerk called me to attend a phone call.

In the midst of the conversation, my eyes deviated a little...Surprisingly, I say her in front of the cash counter. She threw the passbook in front of the cashier with ease.

I finished the talk in a hurry and rushed towards cashier Krishnamurthy.

I was at a loss for words and started floundering. Seeing the rush and Krishnamurthy in their midst, I decided to talk to him afterwards.

She counted the money and inserted it into the purse that she was keeping in her hip. I walked out of the office to follow her.

She gathered all the waste paper lying on the road and pushed them all into a bag she had with her. She was talking something to herself.

I wondered what she would do with all the money she had in her hands.

“What Thangamani. Am I a lunatic? You have all ganged to make me a lunatic. Suddenly, she turned around and blurted out, “You are following me to snatch the money from my hands! That would not happen” with a judicious mixture of expletives.

During the luncheon interval, Krishna came and asked, “Why did you come? Is it to enquire about Nirmala?”

“Nirmala”, I repeated instantly.

“Yes. The girl withdrawing money is half-lunatic. She is a pensioner too, do you know?” asked Krishna.

“What is her age?” puzzled at what Krishna had revealed.

“Not much! Probably she had rendered twenty years of service. When the report of her unsound mind reached her office, they had compulsorily retired her or she had herself sought voluntary retirement.”

I asked for more details. I looked at Page 75 of the Ledger that Krishna directed me to look. It contained more details.

Name: Nirmala, W/o Thiagarajan, Date of Birth: 16/7/1963

Address: 2/83, Kutram Poruthaanyiruppu

Bank A/c No. P.75/11698

I was eager to gather more details about her. I worked towards that end but to no avail. After sometime, I was lost in my routine activities.

That day my uncle had come home from another town. “How did you manage to come?” I asked him.

“What kind of place is yours? No bus to travel. I came walking across the river.” He replied in exasperation.

“The water level must have been higher in the river, today being Amavasai, the No-Moon day. Even Angadi Idumban supplied the vegetables yesterday fearing rise in water levels.”

“Yes. Water level was chest high. It would stay that way only for an hour, not more. We managed to cross before that!”

“O.K. Please rest yourself after dinner.”

“What kind of rest” Mama moved on after releasing a sigh indicative of his extreme tiredness.

“Yes. Look at this gem of a girl. I saw her near the arch. I felt why I saw her after all. My heart felt heavy after that.”

“Which girl, Mama?” I hurriedly asked.

“We six were working in that Secondary School at Marungoor Agraharam. Vajravelu was the head master. He had a bad reputation. There was an allegation of his having misbehaved with some grown-up girls, while he was working at Morathoor. It seems the villagers gathered and hounded him out of that place. He was for a time taken aback by the treatment he got at their hands. But it was only for a while. But he was back at his old habits soon. Even here, he had done some mischief. Rathnasamy had once slapped Vajravelu with his chapel. This incident had once again put a break on his familiar behaviour.”

It was at this moment that I joined the School as a B.T Assistant on promotion. Vajravelu was a cunning man. He pitted one teacher against another. Unless he creates problems for others, he won’t have a decent sleep.

After all these, he would show his teeth when he sees the bigwigs of the village. The District Education Officer, Gauthaman would always call him an “Actor’s Poet”.

He lent money on interest. He created groups among the teachers and would play one group against another. Though he earned more that 17,000 rupees per month, he would roam around for even 5 or 10 rupees. He earned additional income by admitting unqualified students into classes. He swindled money by collecting it for building purposes.

He would attend duty only for 10 to 15 days in a month. For the rest, he would be engaged in collecting interest money and looking after the textile shop. He had gathered the support of the high ups. In fact, he got into this position by spoiling the chances of Ramamurthy.

Of the other teachers, less said the better. There was this teacher by name Kumari. She was fond of gossiping. One can get information about the place where the softest “Bonda” was available from her. The second one, Manorama would fall asleep on her table daily as if all nights have been a “Sivarathri” for her. She was called the “Incubating Hen” for her habit of sleeping in the Staff Room all the time. She was adept at staging “Talk Shows”. She would exhibit a vibrant face on the salary day, but on other days her face would turn owl-like. She had this habit of beating students to her liking.

The third one was Shyamala. She would eat savouries made of groundnut and Jaggery and boiled peanuts mixed with pieces of mango and coconut at the expense of the students. Which demented person had chosen her, nobody knew! She had the coarsest voice imaginable. She failed at the secondary level, but probably studied for 3 to 6 months to obtain the Teacher Training Certificate and secured this job. She was very envious of prettier faces. Always on the look out to pick up quarrels with tall and fair complexioned women. She could be described as short, stout, dark complexioned with a widened nose. Hers’ was a case of a very high degree of inferiority complex! She would also question the authenticity of the higher qualifications obtained by others. For not performing an iota of work, she earned ten thousand rupees!

Shyamala had lived in the village for some time. But, soon thereafter she went on to live in the nearby town. She was assaulted in a local tussle. It was said that her husband, unable to bear her tantrums, used to torture her by piercing needle into her skin. If someone were to advice her to work for the money she earned, Shyamala would threaten to lodge a complaint of sexual harassment! There was another character by the name of Muthayyan, who would always cut a sleepy figure. He would also be aloof and would not mix with others. On a couple of occasions, Muthayyan had left his cup unwashed after consuming milk. When Shyamala chastised him for not keeping him clean, Muthayyan had turned the tables on her by calling her castiest!

This was the milieu in which I worked. None worked and they would not let even the honest few like us to work without hindrance. The condition of the School could rightly be compared to an abandoned well. If someone were to describe the community of teachers as holy ladders which helped the society climb upwards, I would imagine what would happen to the society which depended on a corroded ladder like this one!

On my face, they would pleasingly say, “Why do you strive hard at the time of your retirement?” but behind me, would taunt, “Possibly, working hard to earn the Best Teachers Award!”

I was dumb-founded on hearing all that my Uncle had to say!

Amongst this worthless gang, Nirmala was the one who worked honestly and sincerely. In the kind of situation which prevailed there, she was isolated. She was not just honest, but quite calm and patient.

Vajravelu, who longed after white skin, teased Nirmala repeatedly, knowing her family problems. She did not budge a bit. He started to trouble her.

We both set out to walk after dinner and my Uncle continued with the narration.

Vajravelu adopted a crude method to harass Nirmala. He had once come to the School early and wrote his name besides Nirmala’s on the wall. Nirmala was put into an embarrassing position. The students laughed when she went in to the class. She asked the students, “Why did you laugh?”

A student answered, “Madam, Bala Sundar says, you and the big Sir have become a pair!”

Her heart broke.

Another day, Nirmala had come before us and went to mark her attendance. The womaniser patted her from behind. She had blasted him to her heart’s contentment. Nirmala herself had narrated this incident to me. Nirmala said she considered me her father.

“You should have taken revenge on your husband, just as he had done!” saying this, Vajravelu had thrown a naughty look at Nirmala on another occasion.

“I will have to take revenge on you if you don’t behave well with me. You would lose all your honour, if you dare talk in this fashion again!” Nirmala came out hastily then.

Wounded, Vajravelu waited for an opportunity. It presented itself with the AEO’s visit to the School. Jayaraman, the AEO was a rascal too, just like Vajravelu.

On the first day, a sumptuous lunch of fish dropped in gravy and rice was being served to him.

Vajravelu called Nirmala and ordered her to remove the bones of the fishes and serve the same to Jayaraman.

Nirmala starred at him and replied, “The AEO is not a kid. I have been doing my work properly. So I need not go begging for favours. If you so desire, do it yourself!”

Waiting for such a moment, Vajravelu silently lighted fire by saying, “Sir, look at the way she talks. This is the way she behaves with elders. How do I manage the affairs of the School with teachers like this?”

After finishing his lunch, the AEO called Nirmala and asked her to take out the Notes of Lesson.

Nirmala readily presented the book. While glancing through it, the AEO turned his lips upside down and questioned, “Is it the honest work you are supposedly doing? You haven’t written the notes for a week.”

Nirmala was shattered. She noticed ten pages of the notes torn and lying in the dustbin. The AEO scolded her at the top of his voice in front of everybody and handed a “Memo”. Nirmala was completely shattered. Should a sincere worker like me be issued a memo? She wondered. I tried to pacify her.

There was another problem at the time of declaration of results. Shyamala wanted her son to be promoted. Nirmala pointed out that the boy had never attended classes regularly. Even the question papers were leaked by Shyamala to her son in advance but still the boy could not perform well to go to the next class. But Shyamala persisted, “My son has to go through. Otherwise, worse is in store for you all!”

The next day Vajravelu called Nirmala and said, “ Shyamala complained that a women without a husband like Nirmala is indulging in undesirable activities.” He also called Shyamala to tell her that Nirmala had threatened to file a report against Shyamala with the Office.

As is to be expected, a big fight ensued with Shyamala coming down heavily on Nirmala. “How dare you think of reporting to the office against me? Do you know about my experience? You may have the qualification of M.Sc., M.Ed. and I may only be a S.S.L.C. But I have thirty years of service. Keep this in mind. Don’t talk in an arrogant fashion”

“Talk with respect. There is a limit to everything” Nirmala said calmly.

“What respect? Did you respect my age?”

“Don’t Donkeys age too? Why should I give respect?”

“How dare you call me a donkey.”

Shyamala pulled down Nirmala’s hair and kicked her down. We were three men at the scene of the incident but could do little. Students ran around calling, “There is a fight going on between two teachers!”

“My teacher has won the fight!” called some excitedly.

The village elders intervened to set things right. Even they did not admonish Shyamala. It was a shameful moment for Nirmala. Immediately, she went on medical leave. She even thought of resigning, but I dissuaded her from taking this step.

It was hell on the domestic front too for her. Her husband was a scoundrel too! He would come visiting on her salary day to grab the money. He would go gambling to race course. She expended all her savings to send this man to Singapore for a job. After going there, he did not even drop a letter to her.

When she came back after ten years, it was with an attack of Paralysis. Still, she tendered him and helped him recover. Later on it came to light that he had lived with a women belonging to Tirunelveli, who had come to Singapore like him. When struck with the disease, he came begging for refuge in typical Tamil film style.

For six to seven months thereafter, life did proceed well for her. It appears that her husband had opened an account in his name at Tiruunelveli and deposited all his earnings there. He had even purchased an Estate there. The other woman had tried to grab this earning. There appears to be a tussle between these two women for possession of this money. On an occasion, an Inspector had visited Nirmala to question her. Nirmala seems to have become mentally disturbed after the policeman’s visit.

As my Uncle narrated the story, I was filled with anger, shock, rage and fury all rolled into one at the same time. At the end of the narration, we reached Velankanni.

We saw her again, laughing feverishly at herself. Am I mad? She asked no one in particular.

Two youngsters besides us talked to each other. “Do you know one thing? Pandi and Sivakumar had lured her with a Soap, bathed her at Raman’s lake and raped her behind the mutt.”

Hearing this, my Uncle had tears welling in his eyes.

We went to Muthu’s shop to leave the bicycles hired from him. When we returned, there was a crowd in front of the Mariamman temple. We peeped into see her standing in the middle. Someone said she had thrown a stone at a policeman and broke his spectacles. He was bleeding on his head too.

We say the policeman hitting her with a lathi. She screamed and cried repeatedly like a kid. My uncle tried to stop him, but returned in silence. He was profusely sweating too. We could not stand there any longer. As we left the scene, a bus came close by. We jumped into it. After a short interval, the song which she had sung so many times, kept resonating through that region.

“Be courageous to declare! Are you human?”