Have you ever been confronted by the specter of death? Not the painless, comforting blackness that drapes itself upon a person content in the happiness of a life well spent, but the sudden, vicious snatching away of an entity that has barely begun to assert itself. When something perishes before its time, it leaves behind a void that cannot be filled. It is a painful thing to behold.
I once had the misfortune of having to see a life getting extinguished violently before my very own eyes. Believe me when I say that nothing in my life has ever been the same since.
It was a rainy day in May about four years back. There still being two weeks left for my school to reopen, I had decided to visit my native place in Thiruvalla, Kerala. I had always been fascinated by the sort of laidback charm and commonsense approach to life the people there exhibited. It was always an idyllic Neverland as far as I was concerned, where one could get away from the suffocating confines of the city and breathe freely. But, all that warped sense of security and freedom was rudely snatched away from me on a single afternoon, and the tingling sense of shock and adrenaline that resulted, linger in my mind to this day.
It had been raining all day, and the downpour had only let up in the afternoon. The sun had come out; bringing with it the heady smell that arises from the earth soon after a rain. I was determined to make the most of the afternoon, and when my grandmother remarked that she needed groceries, I volunteered immediately. Soon, I set off to the grocery store, known as a “palacharakkukada”, with a shopping list and not a care in the world.
This particular grocery store was located smack in the middle of the market, in a position of great strategic importance business-wise. The owner was a jovial middle aged former police man, who had set up the store using his rather meager pension and his not so meager contacts. Personally I was fond of the fellow, and used to chat with him whenever the opportunity arose. That day, he had just begun to tell me about what he thought of the educational system nowadays, which seemed to be churning out a lot of youngsters with no inclination to work, when I noticed the girl for the first time.
She looked about ten years old, but it was hard to be sure. She could have been anywhere between eight and fifteen. Her face looked aged and weary, and her gait was a curious mix of waddling and scurrying, which made it look as if she was being dragged about intermittently by an invisible line. She moved from one mound of garbage to another, poking her waif like hands into the filth without any emotion whatsoever on her face. Her clothes seemed older than her, and were patched up in several places. Over her shoulder was slung a surprisingly new looking jute bag, which was half full of empty bottles and plastic. In fact, the bag seemed to be the only thing fresh about her.
“…… and look at that poor illiterate devil, works like an ant from dawn to dusk and what does she get in return? One meal a day, if she’s lucky. That Selvam takes away all she earns in return for keeping her in his group. Now that is the sort of child that should be given an education. She knows the value of hard work…..” I was surprised to realize that the shopkeeper was talking about the very girl I was looking at. I knew this man Selvam. He was the manager of a small scale smuggling operation across the border of Tamil Nadu and Kerala who specialized in human resources. Simply put, he loaded a lorry each day at dawn with about fifty rag pickers and beggars from Tamil Nadu, ferried them across the border into Kerala, and dispersed them throughout the Pathanamthitta district by noon. By night, he collected them from the various corners of the district, took a major share of their earnings and dropped them back in Tamil Nadu. His operation was planned and executed meticulously, with beggars operating in rotation and keeping in touch with each other by mobile phones. In short, a gifted entrepreneur.
“….. in my days with the force, I had booked him several times, but what to do? Never once could I get enough evidence…” the ex-policeman continued, but a sudden screeching noise jerked my attention away. The girl, attracted towards a discarded packet lying in the middle of the road had ventured out without enough caution, and the driver of a black Scorpio who had seen her too late, was trying to avoid the inevitable. I have read in books that such incidents always appear to occur in slow motion, but here everything was over in a second. There was a sickening thud, the girl was jerked off her feet and thrown into a heap a few meters away, and the Scorpio, after a few moments of indecision, lurched back onto the road and sped away. It all happened with surgical precision.
Of course, the first person to respond was the ex-policeman, his years of training kicking into action. He hurried out of the shop, cursing the errant driver. I followed him, too numb to realize that I had just witnessed manslaughter. As I was crossing the road, I stumbled upon the packet, which had been the object of the girl’s curiosity. Without thinking, I picked it up. It seemed very light. Not surprising, considering that it was filled with old receipts. Someone’s discarded backlog of bills had become instrumental in taking a human life.
The girl was lying where she had fallen, a broken neck having put her out of her misery. A tiny trickle of blood dripped out of her mouth, and her neck was bent at an unnatural angle. These two were the only indications of death. The shopkeeper had called for an ambulance, and the crowd was muttering sympathetically, alternately blaming the driver of the Scorpio and the vagaries of destiny, which had forced the girl onto the streets in the first place. I thought about Selvam, who might miss the girl when he came around in the evening to collect her. He had lost an investment that day. I wondered if such incidents happened often. If so, he might have calculated those losses into miscellaneous expenses.
For after all, that was all that had happened. I doubt that the girl had anyone who cared enough about her to feel pained at her gruesome end. Had she continued to live, all her existence would probably have been spent in begging for Selvam or else in prostitution. The options for a girl like her are painfully limited. In that sense, it was perhaps to her advantage that she died. Or is such a logic too cold blooded and ruthless? I don’t know. All I know is that life, in its entirety, has not meant the same to me after that incident. I have now learnt to appreciate the little joys of life, the same things that I often ignored, having taken them for granted. I understand now that life is not lived in the distant future, but in the present. Life, with all its glory, with all its pains, ecstasy, trials and tribulations exists here, now, in this very second.
Planning for the future and saving up for it are all well and good, but it should not be overdone. For who amongst us knows when our own black Scorpio may come looking for us?
I have not visited my native place since that vacation.
Monday, September 5, 2011
Horse sense
The verb manage comes from the Italian maneggiare (to handle — especially a horse), which in turn derives from the Latin manus (hand). The French word mesnagement (later ménagement) influenced the development in meaning of the English word management in the 17th and 18th centuries.
I lifted this etymology of the word management from Wikipedia. It interests me in more ways than one, not the least because I myself am going to attend a B school. The roots of the word management is strongly related to handling, especially the word manus(hand). It refers to hands on experience, the sort of "get your hands dirty" experience that comes only through the willingness to work.This quality was important in the 17th and 18th centuries, when formal training in management was unheard of. People started working at the grass root level and moved up the ranks through experience or dexterity. Compare this trait to the modern practice of seeing a business school degree as an extension of your UG education. Final year students seek to enter B schools directly from their colleges without having any real life work experience. Of course, in our modern world characterized by instant dissemination of information and knowledge, most intelligent students might be able to overcome this lacunae by building upon the experience of others. But the lack of personal experience will always remain a stumbling block for many management trainees.
It is also worth noting that the Italian word maneggiare was used to denote handling of horses. In the 17th and 18th centuries, in the absence of faster forms of transportation, horses formed the backbone of human traffic and logistics. The very fact that the word management derives from a word used to denote handling of horses shows the importance that people attached to management.
On a lighter note, the word sophomore, commonly used to denote a second year student in a university, is said to be derived from the Greek words "sopho" meaning "wise" and "moros", meaning "foolish". The assumption is that a second year student is wiser than a fresher, but not wise enough that he or she may be considered fit to graduate.Put simply,they are regarded as self-assured and opinionated but crude and immature. Now, most prestigious B school courses last only two years, meaning that the students graduate in their sophomore years (at least, what can be called a sophomore year from the perspective of the university). Think about it.....
I lifted this etymology of the word management from Wikipedia. It interests me in more ways than one, not the least because I myself am going to attend a B school. The roots of the word management is strongly related to handling, especially the word manus(hand). It refers to hands on experience, the sort of "get your hands dirty" experience that comes only through the willingness to work.This quality was important in the 17th and 18th centuries, when formal training in management was unheard of. People started working at the grass root level and moved up the ranks through experience or dexterity. Compare this trait to the modern practice of seeing a business school degree as an extension of your UG education. Final year students seek to enter B schools directly from their colleges without having any real life work experience. Of course, in our modern world characterized by instant dissemination of information and knowledge, most intelligent students might be able to overcome this lacunae by building upon the experience of others. But the lack of personal experience will always remain a stumbling block for many management trainees.
It is also worth noting that the Italian word maneggiare was used to denote handling of horses. In the 17th and 18th centuries, in the absence of faster forms of transportation, horses formed the backbone of human traffic and logistics. The very fact that the word management derives from a word used to denote handling of horses shows the importance that people attached to management.
On a lighter note, the word sophomore, commonly used to denote a second year student in a university, is said to be derived from the Greek words "sopho" meaning "wise" and "moros", meaning "foolish". The assumption is that a second year student is wiser than a fresher, but not wise enough that he or she may be considered fit to graduate.Put simply,they are regarded as self-assured and opinionated but crude and immature. Now, most prestigious B school courses last only two years, meaning that the students graduate in their sophomore years (at least, what can be called a sophomore year from the perspective of the university). Think about it.....
Last Leaf
This being my final year, I was under immense pressure from my sense of tradition to render the normal final year fare, an article encompassing my journey through the college, filled with nostalgic memories of my stay in the hostel, the first day of class, the first ragging session and everything else worth remembering. But then I thought that most of the readers must be terribly bored of wading through these final year memories each year….. C’mon, who in the world will be interested in reading about the first time I was ragged..? (For those sadists out there, it was not a pretty incident, and I am not going to tell you about it, so there!!)
Each year, true to tradition, half of the final years will write their mini autobiographies to be published in the college magazines, recounting their adventures and those of their friends, a few invented, a few embellished. But I think I will spare you people the adventures I have had; most of them cannot be published in good conscience anyway. Instead, I will tell you two stories. I do not lay claim to their originality, both are stories that I have heard from other sources.
Here’s the first one: In Austria, after the War, there lived a chemist who operated out of a small single storey building at the far end of a dead end street. His shop had no distinguishing features except for an old oak board that proclaimed to the world, in a timid fashion, that this here was a chemist. Nothing more, nothing less. He had a telephone, but the number was not listed. He did not advertise in the papers. The majority of his customers consisted of small children, offsprings of the poor and the poorest of the poor who inhabited that alley. They came into the shop occasionally to buy an everlasting toffee or some gum, depending on how much money they could lay their hands on. Rarely, some women also came, enquiring after the latest in face powder or peroxide. It is interesting how people care for their appearance even in poverty, because when you have nothing else, dignity is to be found in the smallest of luxuries.
However, the chemist did a thriving business, albeit in a slightly different line. Occasionally, upper class gentlemen and ladies could be seen hurrying out of his shop, furtively eyeing their surroundings. It was plain that they had not gone in to buy cosmetics or even everlasting toffee. The chemist was known in their circles as the man to go to whenever there was a problem to be solved, permanently. That day, the deputy mayor himself had come, seeking the chemist’s help over his wife, who was having some difficulty maintaining loyalty to her husband. He had requested for a box of chocolates to be delivered to his address, ostensibly from his wife’s lover, when he would be away from his house, conveniently nursing an alibi. The chocolates were to be flavoured with any obscure poison, leaving the husband free to order inquiries against the lover for murder. To be fair to the man, he was devoted to his wife and hadn’t even thought of taking a lover, even after he came to know about his wife’s adultery. His only vice was a glass of port wine which he sipped religiously before retiring each night.
The chemist duly noted down his complaint, received from him the box of chocolates, and, after he had left, spiked them with his own brand of deadly preservatives, and send them on their way. He then entered the deputy mayor’s number in his register, just below that of his wife. For, the good lady had dropped by in the morning, with a bottle of port wine to be specially aged and supplied to her husband for what would amount to be his last nightcap.
The second story is more famous, written by an embezzler and ex-con who also happens to be one of the world’s most famous story tellers, O. Henry. The story, named The Last Leaf, tells us of two young hard-up artists, Joanna and Sue, who share a flat in Greenwich Village. When Joanna catches pneumonia, Sue tries her best to nurse her back to health, but Joanna’s fatalistic attitude frustrates her efforts. Joanna believes, for better or for worse, that her last remaining hours on this planet are tied to the fate of an old creeper that grows on the brick wall of the building adjacent to their’s. The creeper had seen better days, and what with the autumn cold and the constant drizzles and heavy winds, was rapidly shedding its leaves. Joanna predicts that as the last leaf falls, she will die too.
But an old washed up painter, an irascible German, who lived on the flat beneath them, had other ideas. He was fond of the young girls, and often posed for them. He was always talking of painting his ultimate masterpiece, which would magically help solve all their problems. Hearing of Joanna’s fixation, he goes out in the night, and disregarding a heavy thunderstorm, paints a single leaf on the vine that was bereft of any.
The next day, Joanna sees the apparent resilience of the remaining leaf, and decides to fight back to life. The old painter, meanwhile, contracts pneumonia from his night out in the freezing rain, and passes away. O. Henry, in his indomitable style, thus tells a heart rending story with apparent indifference and flippancy.
If you have been with me till now, you might be slightly confused as to what exactly I am trying to convey. It is simple. The two stories, as far as I am concerned, show the multifaceted nature of the real world. The world into which we all are going to be thrown into in a short time. My final year brethren will understand me more readily. We have grown accustomed to the order and apparent discipline in our lives. One fine day, all this, as we know it, will change, and our lives will be shaken up, only to settle down somewhere else, in some other form. There will be very little that we can do to prepare for this change for there will be very little that we will be able to relate to. Where once we worried about having enough money to buy the next recharge coupon, we will be worrying about filing tax returns and stock options. Where once we were concerned about which movies to go to, we will now be concerned about fighting deadlines.
In this apparent chaos, one of our most important weapons will also be one of the most fragile. The one, whose two extreme features have been captured most sublimely in the two stories I mentioned above; the last thing to remain in Pandora’s jar, HOPE. The first story shows the result of a society living without hope, where any means to secure a better future is grasped desperately, while the second one shows the ultimate power of hope, to give life where it is all but lost.
I consider hope to be the most important tool that all young graduates take out of the college with them. The hope that he or she can change this world, the hope that no situation is beyond repair.... For decades, graduates have passed out from colleges all over the world, nurturing this fragile weapon in their minds. But the world they pass out into has been, and will be, exceptionally hard. To paraphrase Morpheus, the world is indeed a desert, bereft of most soft emotions. The young generation is rarely taught how to survive in this desert, centuries of pedagogic evolution choosing instead to let them learn on their own. They stumble often, some perish, some are left as wrecks of their former selves, but most survive, and a few even succeed and conquer life. But the casualty that often results is that of the hope that they can change the world. Instead, the world changes them, as they learn to adapt and blend in to survive.
I am not against adapting to changes, nor am I a die hard revolutionary bent on anarchy. I only hope that the quality of innocence, that of optimism, does not die out in our fresh batch of graduates. I believe there exists a buffer zone between the time a graduate passes out of college and the time his or her mindset becomes more or less fixed. The experience that they acquire, the situations that they face, and the hardships that they endure will play a major role in the formation of their character. If they are able to survive this buffer zone without losing their grip on optimism, then hope survives. But if all they can see in the world during the buffer zone is the sort of life our chemist and his friends lead, then cynicism sets in. This does not mean that hope doesn’t have a chance in the real world. If we are willing to consciously keep it alive in our hearts, it can draft the most miraculous success stories ever heard.
The current state of our educational system is partly responsible for the handicap that the students acquire even before they step out into the real world. As I mentioned before, very little real world skills are imparted to the students, the educational system instead choosing to rely on equipping each student with the same basic framework of knowledge before letting them loose into the world. But, each student approaches the world in a different way, and is in turn dealt with by the world in a unique manner. Ideally, we should have a customized teaching approach that focuses on each student separately, teaching him or her the unique set of tools that he or she will need to win. Most important of all, the system should ensure that the students are sufficiently trained to overcome cynicism and a negative attitude. They should be trained enough to recognize setbacks and failures (which everybody will face at some point or the other) as temporary, and prevent them from affecting their character. In short, the schools and colleges need to teach the students to hope.
My friends, as my batch passes out from VNIT, my only request to you all, including my batch mates, is this: Don’t ever lose hope. Retain that innocence, that optimism in your lives. We can change the world as much as it changes us. Don’t let the last leaf fall.
Each year, true to tradition, half of the final years will write their mini autobiographies to be published in the college magazines, recounting their adventures and those of their friends, a few invented, a few embellished. But I think I will spare you people the adventures I have had; most of them cannot be published in good conscience anyway. Instead, I will tell you two stories. I do not lay claim to their originality, both are stories that I have heard from other sources.
Here’s the first one: In Austria, after the War, there lived a chemist who operated out of a small single storey building at the far end of a dead end street. His shop had no distinguishing features except for an old oak board that proclaimed to the world, in a timid fashion, that this here was a chemist. Nothing more, nothing less. He had a telephone, but the number was not listed. He did not advertise in the papers. The majority of his customers consisted of small children, offsprings of the poor and the poorest of the poor who inhabited that alley. They came into the shop occasionally to buy an everlasting toffee or some gum, depending on how much money they could lay their hands on. Rarely, some women also came, enquiring after the latest in face powder or peroxide. It is interesting how people care for their appearance even in poverty, because when you have nothing else, dignity is to be found in the smallest of luxuries.
However, the chemist did a thriving business, albeit in a slightly different line. Occasionally, upper class gentlemen and ladies could be seen hurrying out of his shop, furtively eyeing their surroundings. It was plain that they had not gone in to buy cosmetics or even everlasting toffee. The chemist was known in their circles as the man to go to whenever there was a problem to be solved, permanently. That day, the deputy mayor himself had come, seeking the chemist’s help over his wife, who was having some difficulty maintaining loyalty to her husband. He had requested for a box of chocolates to be delivered to his address, ostensibly from his wife’s lover, when he would be away from his house, conveniently nursing an alibi. The chocolates were to be flavoured with any obscure poison, leaving the husband free to order inquiries against the lover for murder. To be fair to the man, he was devoted to his wife and hadn’t even thought of taking a lover, even after he came to know about his wife’s adultery. His only vice was a glass of port wine which he sipped religiously before retiring each night.
The chemist duly noted down his complaint, received from him the box of chocolates, and, after he had left, spiked them with his own brand of deadly preservatives, and send them on their way. He then entered the deputy mayor’s number in his register, just below that of his wife. For, the good lady had dropped by in the morning, with a bottle of port wine to be specially aged and supplied to her husband for what would amount to be his last nightcap.
The second story is more famous, written by an embezzler and ex-con who also happens to be one of the world’s most famous story tellers, O. Henry. The story, named The Last Leaf, tells us of two young hard-up artists, Joanna and Sue, who share a flat in Greenwich Village. When Joanna catches pneumonia, Sue tries her best to nurse her back to health, but Joanna’s fatalistic attitude frustrates her efforts. Joanna believes, for better or for worse, that her last remaining hours on this planet are tied to the fate of an old creeper that grows on the brick wall of the building adjacent to their’s. The creeper had seen better days, and what with the autumn cold and the constant drizzles and heavy winds, was rapidly shedding its leaves. Joanna predicts that as the last leaf falls, she will die too.
But an old washed up painter, an irascible German, who lived on the flat beneath them, had other ideas. He was fond of the young girls, and often posed for them. He was always talking of painting his ultimate masterpiece, which would magically help solve all their problems. Hearing of Joanna’s fixation, he goes out in the night, and disregarding a heavy thunderstorm, paints a single leaf on the vine that was bereft of any.
The next day, Joanna sees the apparent resilience of the remaining leaf, and decides to fight back to life. The old painter, meanwhile, contracts pneumonia from his night out in the freezing rain, and passes away. O. Henry, in his indomitable style, thus tells a heart rending story with apparent indifference and flippancy.
If you have been with me till now, you might be slightly confused as to what exactly I am trying to convey. It is simple. The two stories, as far as I am concerned, show the multifaceted nature of the real world. The world into which we all are going to be thrown into in a short time. My final year brethren will understand me more readily. We have grown accustomed to the order and apparent discipline in our lives. One fine day, all this, as we know it, will change, and our lives will be shaken up, only to settle down somewhere else, in some other form. There will be very little that we can do to prepare for this change for there will be very little that we will be able to relate to. Where once we worried about having enough money to buy the next recharge coupon, we will be worrying about filing tax returns and stock options. Where once we were concerned about which movies to go to, we will now be concerned about fighting deadlines.
In this apparent chaos, one of our most important weapons will also be one of the most fragile. The one, whose two extreme features have been captured most sublimely in the two stories I mentioned above; the last thing to remain in Pandora’s jar, HOPE. The first story shows the result of a society living without hope, where any means to secure a better future is grasped desperately, while the second one shows the ultimate power of hope, to give life where it is all but lost.
I consider hope to be the most important tool that all young graduates take out of the college with them. The hope that he or she can change this world, the hope that no situation is beyond repair.... For decades, graduates have passed out from colleges all over the world, nurturing this fragile weapon in their minds. But the world they pass out into has been, and will be, exceptionally hard. To paraphrase Morpheus, the world is indeed a desert, bereft of most soft emotions. The young generation is rarely taught how to survive in this desert, centuries of pedagogic evolution choosing instead to let them learn on their own. They stumble often, some perish, some are left as wrecks of their former selves, but most survive, and a few even succeed and conquer life. But the casualty that often results is that of the hope that they can change the world. Instead, the world changes them, as they learn to adapt and blend in to survive.
I am not against adapting to changes, nor am I a die hard revolutionary bent on anarchy. I only hope that the quality of innocence, that of optimism, does not die out in our fresh batch of graduates. I believe there exists a buffer zone between the time a graduate passes out of college and the time his or her mindset becomes more or less fixed. The experience that they acquire, the situations that they face, and the hardships that they endure will play a major role in the formation of their character. If they are able to survive this buffer zone without losing their grip on optimism, then hope survives. But if all they can see in the world during the buffer zone is the sort of life our chemist and his friends lead, then cynicism sets in. This does not mean that hope doesn’t have a chance in the real world. If we are willing to consciously keep it alive in our hearts, it can draft the most miraculous success stories ever heard.
The current state of our educational system is partly responsible for the handicap that the students acquire even before they step out into the real world. As I mentioned before, very little real world skills are imparted to the students, the educational system instead choosing to rely on equipping each student with the same basic framework of knowledge before letting them loose into the world. But, each student approaches the world in a different way, and is in turn dealt with by the world in a unique manner. Ideally, we should have a customized teaching approach that focuses on each student separately, teaching him or her the unique set of tools that he or she will need to win. Most important of all, the system should ensure that the students are sufficiently trained to overcome cynicism and a negative attitude. They should be trained enough to recognize setbacks and failures (which everybody will face at some point or the other) as temporary, and prevent them from affecting their character. In short, the schools and colleges need to teach the students to hope.
My friends, as my batch passes out from VNIT, my only request to you all, including my batch mates, is this: Don’t ever lose hope. Retain that innocence, that optimism in your lives. We can change the world as much as it changes us. Don’t let the last leaf fall.
Expiry Date of Leaders
Quite recently, news agencies were falling over themselves to broadcast the impending return of the patriarch of Kerala politics, K. Karunakaran, to active public life. It is rumoured that he shall be offered the post of Governor, possibly of Tamil Nadu. I watched a news feed in which Karunakaran was being interviewed by several reporters en route to a chair inside a posh building, presumably a party headquarters. It took the venerable old man nearly 5 minutes and the support of two people to walk the 10 feet from the entrance of the building to the chair that had been kept aside for him.He was panting the whole distance, and the two attendants were literally carrying him almost all the way. He was finding it hard to hear the reporters' questions, and had to rely on his retinue of supporters to repeat the questions loudly to him so that he could hear it properly. Of course, none of his old age seems to have affected his mind, which is still as sharp as ever. In fact, it sometimes seemed as if his difficulty in hearing the questions properly was nothing but a ploy just so he could get more time to reflect upon the answers before enunciating them.
All this got me thinking. The first and foremost thought of course was that politics in India seems to have degenerated into "Geria"tics. Ours has been a culture that has always laid emphasis on the importance of elders in making decisions that affect the entire family. When, after independence, we moved in to the Parliamentary system of democracy, we carried forward that mindset along with us. So now we have political leaders pushing 70 and 80 in our Parliament, who regularly doze off in the back benches, the unforgiving demands of governing a nation proving too much for them. We have a prime ministerial candidate, L.K.Advani, who is all of 84. There could only be two reasons for these individuals to put themselves to such trials at an age when they should have, by all rights, retired from active life.One, they might be labouring under the assumption that the nation could benefit from their experience and wisdom. Two, they might have got so used to the concept of power that they find it difficult, if not impossible, to renounce it. I personally suspect its the latter.
How else can one explain the fact that a 90 year old man is willing to make a public spectacle of himself in front of the media? How is it that the very leaders who promote the entry of youth into the governing bodies shoot down a tentative proposal put up by Rahul Gandhi of a 30% representation for young leaders in the Parliament? Why is that in a nation with more than a billion citizens, campus politics and youth leadership programmes are only seen as a tool to gain political mileage? Indeed, campus politics is nowadays a cheap excuse to furnish free muscle power for the older leaders to exploit during dharnas and hartals. I have been a card holding member, albeit an inactive one, of one of the more popular campus parties in Kerala. I have seen personally how students are exploited in the name of state politics. Campus politics should be focused towards improving the lot of students and bringing together faculty and students for the betterment of education. It should also be aimed at increasing the interaction of students with the outside world, so far as it facilitates them to contribute to the society in a constructive manner.
Let's have more youth participation in politics and social services. India is a young, vibrant and dynamic nation. If we are not to lose the momentum we have gained over the past decade, we need younger people at the helm of affairs. I don't know if you have seen the Mani Ratnam movie YUVA. If you haven't, go see it. It explains a lot of things.
PS. I am a firm supporter of retirement age in politics. There should be a fixed age beyond which it should be illegal for any public servant to pursue active politics, with or without monetary benefits. They can stay on in the role of consultants and advisers.
All this got me thinking. The first and foremost thought of course was that politics in India seems to have degenerated into "Geria"tics. Ours has been a culture that has always laid emphasis on the importance of elders in making decisions that affect the entire family. When, after independence, we moved in to the Parliamentary system of democracy, we carried forward that mindset along with us. So now we have political leaders pushing 70 and 80 in our Parliament, who regularly doze off in the back benches, the unforgiving demands of governing a nation proving too much for them. We have a prime ministerial candidate, L.K.Advani, who is all of 84. There could only be two reasons for these individuals to put themselves to such trials at an age when they should have, by all rights, retired from active life.One, they might be labouring under the assumption that the nation could benefit from their experience and wisdom. Two, they might have got so used to the concept of power that they find it difficult, if not impossible, to renounce it. I personally suspect its the latter.
How else can one explain the fact that a 90 year old man is willing to make a public spectacle of himself in front of the media? How is it that the very leaders who promote the entry of youth into the governing bodies shoot down a tentative proposal put up by Rahul Gandhi of a 30% representation for young leaders in the Parliament? Why is that in a nation with more than a billion citizens, campus politics and youth leadership programmes are only seen as a tool to gain political mileage? Indeed, campus politics is nowadays a cheap excuse to furnish free muscle power for the older leaders to exploit during dharnas and hartals. I have been a card holding member, albeit an inactive one, of one of the more popular campus parties in Kerala. I have seen personally how students are exploited in the name of state politics. Campus politics should be focused towards improving the lot of students and bringing together faculty and students for the betterment of education. It should also be aimed at increasing the interaction of students with the outside world, so far as it facilitates them to contribute to the society in a constructive manner.
Let's have more youth participation in politics and social services. India is a young, vibrant and dynamic nation. If we are not to lose the momentum we have gained over the past decade, we need younger people at the helm of affairs. I don't know if you have seen the Mani Ratnam movie YUVA. If you haven't, go see it. It explains a lot of things.
PS. I am a firm supporter of retirement age in politics. There should be a fixed age beyond which it should be illegal for any public servant to pursue active politics, with or without monetary benefits. They can stay on in the role of consultants and advisers.
Sunday, August 14, 2011
The wrong Train
Prologue
Every situation has some irony associated with it. The irony is either amusing or tragic. Since I travel by train a lot, I believe my responsibility to describe in detail the aspects of travel and the social ethos associated with it, is essential. As they say, ordinary situations create extraordinary circumstances. Again, I wonder whom are people referring to when they use “they”. I liberally assume that “they” refers to a group of cranky village philosophers sitting under a peepul tree delivering random statements with no particular significance. The best thing to do is not to mess with them as they may be wannabe motivational gurus desperate for recognition. My grandmother tells me that it may be their first step towards “shankaracharyadom” of some “new” ancient mutt which will be discovered later by carbon dating and the new TV serial on NBC. However, I should move on with my story about the passenger train “Gondwana express”.
Chapter 1: People
Getting inside a train is an easily forgettable experience. Because, by the time you reach your seat, devious railway agents may already have reserved that seat for three other gentlemen, who on confrontation show pale sweaty faces filled with remorse and exasperation. They realize very soon that until the TT arrives their travelling seat and bed would be the famed Indian railways toilet. After settling on my seat, I invariably look out for the most dangerous traveler – a travelling middle aged lady. The travelling lady usually occupies a lot of space, and it should be noted that I’m not simply trying to pour scorn on obese ladies. It is just that, irrespective of their size, volume, weight, area, and head weight, these ladies carry a great deal of baggage. They probably carry some of their housing bricks with them, just to avoid homesickness.
In fact, given a chance, the lady would hire a carpenter to construct an open wardrobe in the train and shed tears of joy watching her 150 pieces (!!!) of clothing dance with joy in the peaceful wind blowing through the train windows, while other harried passengers would haplessly dash for a place in the already overcrowded bogey, leaving the unluckiest ones to cling on to the ceiling fan like primates.
She would then pull out a mammoth sized lunch carrier from her mountain sized handbag and wait for the train to start. As soon as the train starts to move, she would execute her plan with skillful precision. Out of nowhere, the “she- Houdini” would produce 5 jars of pickles and hand it over to the nearby passengers who hold them with intense curiosity, peeking at the lifelessly floating pieces of vegetables in the sea of oil. Shortly afterwards, she would pass on some of the food to her daughter- in - law who would invariably seat herself at the end of some other coach. Assuming that she is bound by law to not get up from her seat, the travelling lady would play a game of “pass the parcel” with the passengers. By the time the container reaches her daughter – in - law, most of the food is already in the stomachs of vengeance seeking passengers (some of whom are genuinely hungry).
The train is however, not a platform for a one man/woman show. There are other interesting people who unknowingly make their presence obvious. There is always one old man removing his dentures before going to sleep. There is another fellow who would squat like a heron while his friend would lie down like Lord Venkateshwara in his heavenly abode “Vaikuntham”.
Then, there is a first time mother, holding a seemingly claustrophobic baby and adjacent to her seat an experienced mother instructs her confidently on bringing up children the right way, while her 15 year old son is busy gazing at the nonchalant European girl sitting in some other compartment and secretly picturing his own fantasy version of a transcontinental “Romeo and Juliet” with her. There are also some passengers who catch up on their extended afternoon siestas that generally last for days and nights.
Chapter 2: The Setting
This time my compartment had all these characters from the above described social ensemble. The incident I shall narrate involves three compartments in the bogey. In my compartment an old man, two afternoon siesta fellows and two newly met individuals were having a dull time. The two newly met individuals engaged themselves in a dry conversation and alternately assumed the heron and Lord Venkateshwara position, while I sat on the top berth with a magazine as the train chugged through stations. The old man was very particular that his dentures were safe and to ensure its safety he didn’t allow his to eyes wander. It is critical to note here that the two sleeping people made no significant contribution to this setting but I should include them for the sake of completeness and humanity.
The adjacent compartment consisted of the seemingly claustrophobic baby, its mother, the over confident experienced mother and the fantasy driven teenager, all of whom were deeply involved in their social engagements as described in the previous chapter.
The next compartment had the danger woman – the travelling middle aged lady, the European beauty and three disgruntled men.
Chapter 3: The Night
In my compartment the two newly met individuals talked for a long time, exchanging ideas, smiling at each other, posing arguments and twisting their moustaches. They were discussing the outcome of a cricket match between Muscat and Egypt. After a lot of head scratching and moustache twisting, they came to the conclusion that the argument had no significance as Muscat and Egypt probably don’t even have a cricket team (even if they had one, nobody cared as such). The short balding man wore a blue shirt while the other guy sported a French beard and wore horn rimmed glasses. For the sake of simplicity I shall refer to them as “Baldy” and “Frenchie”.
Baldy was a bit younger than frenchie, but frenchie was younger than the old man. As the night descended over the train, the old man made preparations for sleep. The lights were off and everyone assumed sleeping positions as darkness infiltrated the compartment through the windows. After a few moments I heard some strange noises and in moments someone turned on the lights. The old man was up on his feet and Frenchie and Baldy were looking at each other with anger and bewilderment. “Awwyooeh vooeuyyuu? Whaayaay doyeee?” said the old man. It took us time to understand that the incoherency in the old man’s speech was due to the absence of his dentures. After putting them on, he reiterated his words “What is this? What are you doing”? Immediately, both Baldy and Frenchie stood up and shouted “This man is a thief”.
Chapter 4: Confessions
After this development the characters in the train exhibited an unprecedented transformation in their behavior and eagerly took turns to interrogate Baldy and Frenchie separately. The travelling lady was visibly terrified that someone might steal her sandals, which would seem out of context here, but the thought process that goes inside the mind of a travelling woman is so complex that even experienced researchers have often found themselves at sea while analyzing this dangerous traveler. With utmost caution she put her sandals in her purse while people walked all over her luggage frantically, just to catch a glimpse of a thief. The real problem is that thieves usually do not look notorious nor do they have fungus infested faces expressing cruelty. They may even resemble your friendly neighbor- hood spider-man. In fact the spider-man outfit helps these burglars to hide their identities. The important issue at hand was that the thieves were deceptive and, after a lot of thought the old man ordered Baldy and Frenchie to give a brief account of the incident.
Frenchie was conspicuously calm and elegant during his disclosure. “I was reaching for my bag when this gentleman made a dash for my left back-pocket in which I had my black leather wallet.” Suddenly Baldy rose from his seat and exclaimed “Aha, your wallet is in your right back-pocket and your wallet is not black, but brown in color, you liar”. Frenchie gave him a wry smile and said “Oh yes sir, you must be correct; after all I couldn’t keep an eye on it all the time. However, it seems that you were responsible enough to look after it, for me, thank you.” With this he crossed his arms and looked at the confused audience flashing a victorious grin. By this time Baldy had realized that Frenchie had bamboozled him, triggering the sudden outburst of truth from him, which would eventually precipitate his downfall. Baldy nervously explained events which could never possible occur in a train and stuttered so many times that the crowd unanimously felt that Frenchie was a better speaker and had the potential to turn into a politician some day. It was evident that Baldy had technically hammered nails on his own coffin because everyone was convinced that Baldy had made a dash for Frenchie’s wallet. They chained baldy to the upper berth ladder and one exceptionally excited man rushed to the train guards. Soon, the gathering dispersed and people started losing interest in the thief. Slowly Frenchie approached Baldy and whispered to him with supreme confidence “I’m sorry mate, two thieves cannot loot the same train, it just shows that you are an amateur. If you were my apprentice I could have taught you backup measures in case you get caught. You see, the key to burglary is tact, and as you can see I’m a master of this art”.
Moments later, the railway policeman tapped on Frenchie’s shoulder and as Frenchie turned around; his expression underwent a sea of change. Frenchie’s shock revealed rivers of sweat on his face, as soon as he saw the policeman.
Chapter 5: The Culprit
“Mr. Patel, isn’t it? You were the one who stole my gold watch last week from this very train. We were having a wonderful conversation after which, you snatched my watch at night and vanished. That day I was off duty and probably you caught me off guard as well. But, I cannot believe that you would commit the classical mistake of boarding the same train the second time” said the policeman as Frenchie hung his face in shame and disgust. As everyone watched in silence, the policeman released Baldy and frisked Frenchie away to the police compartment. Baldy heaved a sigh of relief and wore a defiant smile accentuating his ultimate victory over Frenchie.
Two hours later we found out that Baldy had just disappeared and the travelling lady’s box of jewels was missing. It is very surprising why no one could point out to the policeman that even Baldy might be a thief. However, the only thing that ran in my mind was the one line Baldy would love to tell Frenchie if they ever met in future- “I may have touched the wrong wallet, but you boarded the wrong train.”
Every situation has some irony associated with it. The irony is either amusing or tragic. Since I travel by train a lot, I believe my responsibility to describe in detail the aspects of travel and the social ethos associated with it, is essential. As they say, ordinary situations create extraordinary circumstances. Again, I wonder whom are people referring to when they use “they”. I liberally assume that “they” refers to a group of cranky village philosophers sitting under a peepul tree delivering random statements with no particular significance. The best thing to do is not to mess with them as they may be wannabe motivational gurus desperate for recognition. My grandmother tells me that it may be their first step towards “shankaracharyadom” of some “new” ancient mutt which will be discovered later by carbon dating and the new TV serial on NBC. However, I should move on with my story about the passenger train “Gondwana express”.
Chapter 1: People
Getting inside a train is an easily forgettable experience. Because, by the time you reach your seat, devious railway agents may already have reserved that seat for three other gentlemen, who on confrontation show pale sweaty faces filled with remorse and exasperation. They realize very soon that until the TT arrives their travelling seat and bed would be the famed Indian railways toilet. After settling on my seat, I invariably look out for the most dangerous traveler – a travelling middle aged lady. The travelling lady usually occupies a lot of space, and it should be noted that I’m not simply trying to pour scorn on obese ladies. It is just that, irrespective of their size, volume, weight, area, and head weight, these ladies carry a great deal of baggage. They probably carry some of their housing bricks with them, just to avoid homesickness.
In fact, given a chance, the lady would hire a carpenter to construct an open wardrobe in the train and shed tears of joy watching her 150 pieces (!!!) of clothing dance with joy in the peaceful wind blowing through the train windows, while other harried passengers would haplessly dash for a place in the already overcrowded bogey, leaving the unluckiest ones to cling on to the ceiling fan like primates.
She would then pull out a mammoth sized lunch carrier from her mountain sized handbag and wait for the train to start. As soon as the train starts to move, she would execute her plan with skillful precision. Out of nowhere, the “she- Houdini” would produce 5 jars of pickles and hand it over to the nearby passengers who hold them with intense curiosity, peeking at the lifelessly floating pieces of vegetables in the sea of oil. Shortly afterwards, she would pass on some of the food to her daughter- in - law who would invariably seat herself at the end of some other coach. Assuming that she is bound by law to not get up from her seat, the travelling lady would play a game of “pass the parcel” with the passengers. By the time the container reaches her daughter – in - law, most of the food is already in the stomachs of vengeance seeking passengers (some of whom are genuinely hungry).
The train is however, not a platform for a one man/woman show. There are other interesting people who unknowingly make their presence obvious. There is always one old man removing his dentures before going to sleep. There is another fellow who would squat like a heron while his friend would lie down like Lord Venkateshwara in his heavenly abode “Vaikuntham”.
Then, there is a first time mother, holding a seemingly claustrophobic baby and adjacent to her seat an experienced mother instructs her confidently on bringing up children the right way, while her 15 year old son is busy gazing at the nonchalant European girl sitting in some other compartment and secretly picturing his own fantasy version of a transcontinental “Romeo and Juliet” with her. There are also some passengers who catch up on their extended afternoon siestas that generally last for days and nights.
Chapter 2: The Setting
This time my compartment had all these characters from the above described social ensemble. The incident I shall narrate involves three compartments in the bogey. In my compartment an old man, two afternoon siesta fellows and two newly met individuals were having a dull time. The two newly met individuals engaged themselves in a dry conversation and alternately assumed the heron and Lord Venkateshwara position, while I sat on the top berth with a magazine as the train chugged through stations. The old man was very particular that his dentures were safe and to ensure its safety he didn’t allow his to eyes wander. It is critical to note here that the two sleeping people made no significant contribution to this setting but I should include them for the sake of completeness and humanity.
The adjacent compartment consisted of the seemingly claustrophobic baby, its mother, the over confident experienced mother and the fantasy driven teenager, all of whom were deeply involved in their social engagements as described in the previous chapter.
The next compartment had the danger woman – the travelling middle aged lady, the European beauty and three disgruntled men.
Chapter 3: The Night
In my compartment the two newly met individuals talked for a long time, exchanging ideas, smiling at each other, posing arguments and twisting their moustaches. They were discussing the outcome of a cricket match between Muscat and Egypt. After a lot of head scratching and moustache twisting, they came to the conclusion that the argument had no significance as Muscat and Egypt probably don’t even have a cricket team (even if they had one, nobody cared as such). The short balding man wore a blue shirt while the other guy sported a French beard and wore horn rimmed glasses. For the sake of simplicity I shall refer to them as “Baldy” and “Frenchie”.
Baldy was a bit younger than frenchie, but frenchie was younger than the old man. As the night descended over the train, the old man made preparations for sleep. The lights were off and everyone assumed sleeping positions as darkness infiltrated the compartment through the windows. After a few moments I heard some strange noises and in moments someone turned on the lights. The old man was up on his feet and Frenchie and Baldy were looking at each other with anger and bewilderment. “Awwyooeh vooeuyyuu? Whaayaay doyeee?” said the old man. It took us time to understand that the incoherency in the old man’s speech was due to the absence of his dentures. After putting them on, he reiterated his words “What is this? What are you doing”? Immediately, both Baldy and Frenchie stood up and shouted “This man is a thief”.
Chapter 4: Confessions
After this development the characters in the train exhibited an unprecedented transformation in their behavior and eagerly took turns to interrogate Baldy and Frenchie separately. The travelling lady was visibly terrified that someone might steal her sandals, which would seem out of context here, but the thought process that goes inside the mind of a travelling woman is so complex that even experienced researchers have often found themselves at sea while analyzing this dangerous traveler. With utmost caution she put her sandals in her purse while people walked all over her luggage frantically, just to catch a glimpse of a thief. The real problem is that thieves usually do not look notorious nor do they have fungus infested faces expressing cruelty. They may even resemble your friendly neighbor- hood spider-man. In fact the spider-man outfit helps these burglars to hide their identities. The important issue at hand was that the thieves were deceptive and, after a lot of thought the old man ordered Baldy and Frenchie to give a brief account of the incident.
Frenchie was conspicuously calm and elegant during his disclosure. “I was reaching for my bag when this gentleman made a dash for my left back-pocket in which I had my black leather wallet.” Suddenly Baldy rose from his seat and exclaimed “Aha, your wallet is in your right back-pocket and your wallet is not black, but brown in color, you liar”. Frenchie gave him a wry smile and said “Oh yes sir, you must be correct; after all I couldn’t keep an eye on it all the time. However, it seems that you were responsible enough to look after it, for me, thank you.” With this he crossed his arms and looked at the confused audience flashing a victorious grin. By this time Baldy had realized that Frenchie had bamboozled him, triggering the sudden outburst of truth from him, which would eventually precipitate his downfall. Baldy nervously explained events which could never possible occur in a train and stuttered so many times that the crowd unanimously felt that Frenchie was a better speaker and had the potential to turn into a politician some day. It was evident that Baldy had technically hammered nails on his own coffin because everyone was convinced that Baldy had made a dash for Frenchie’s wallet. They chained baldy to the upper berth ladder and one exceptionally excited man rushed to the train guards. Soon, the gathering dispersed and people started losing interest in the thief. Slowly Frenchie approached Baldy and whispered to him with supreme confidence “I’m sorry mate, two thieves cannot loot the same train, it just shows that you are an amateur. If you were my apprentice I could have taught you backup measures in case you get caught. You see, the key to burglary is tact, and as you can see I’m a master of this art”.
Moments later, the railway policeman tapped on Frenchie’s shoulder and as Frenchie turned around; his expression underwent a sea of change. Frenchie’s shock revealed rivers of sweat on his face, as soon as he saw the policeman.
Chapter 5: The Culprit
“Mr. Patel, isn’t it? You were the one who stole my gold watch last week from this very train. We were having a wonderful conversation after which, you snatched my watch at night and vanished. That day I was off duty and probably you caught me off guard as well. But, I cannot believe that you would commit the classical mistake of boarding the same train the second time” said the policeman as Frenchie hung his face in shame and disgust. As everyone watched in silence, the policeman released Baldy and frisked Frenchie away to the police compartment. Baldy heaved a sigh of relief and wore a defiant smile accentuating his ultimate victory over Frenchie.
Two hours later we found out that Baldy had just disappeared and the travelling lady’s box of jewels was missing. It is very surprising why no one could point out to the policeman that even Baldy might be a thief. However, the only thing that ran in my mind was the one line Baldy would love to tell Frenchie if they ever met in future- “I may have touched the wrong wallet, but you boarded the wrong train.”
Glory
As long as mankind shall continue to bestow more liberal applause on their destroyers than on their benefactors, the thirst of military glory will ever be the vice of exalted characters. ~Edward Gibbon
Year: 2025
Location: No Man’s Land on the Indo-Pak border.
The sun rose in the sky driving away the cold of the night. The barrenness of the desert added to the horror. The silence of the desert can break the spirits of even the bravest. It was dead silent. As the sun’s rays struck his badge with menacing force, the name shined in the emptiness of the place. Vikram Singh Jaiswal. He tried to open his eyes but the left eye won’t open. The eyelid had been covered by dried out blood. He tried to get up but his legs gave away. His body pained as if it was about to explode. I must be already dead, he thought to himself. If not, he was convinced he would die here alone. Just then a voice threatened to shoot if he moved. Despite the threat, it had a reassuring effect on him as now he was not alone. He turned and saw a man sitting some feet from him pointing a gun straight at him. The badge read Joseph Turning.
Joseph: Don’t move or I’ll blast your head off.
Vikram: I can barely move, even if I could, I couldn’t hurt you.
Joseph kept the gun pointed at him. He was still shivering from the cold of the night. Vikram noticed his legs were badly injured too. So there was no way either of them could walk away from that place.
Vikram: Relax. Killing you isn’t the right choice for me now. Besides, we are not under the orders of a commander right now, so we don’t need to kill each other.
Joseph(reluctantly putting his gun down): Did our troops leave us here? Did they think we were dead?
Vikram(shrugging): I am sitting here with you. How can I know that? But that seems to be the case.
Joseph seemed to lose it. He looked around, shouted for help. But nobody appeared.
Vikram: Cool it you moron. They will find us. Stop shouting.
Joseph: Oh now!! Are you going to call help on your fucking mobile.
Vikram: I don’t have one. And if you shout again, I’ll blow your brains out.
They picked up their guns and pointed them at each other. They could have shot but they knew they couldn’t.
Joseph: You Indians dragged us to this war and now I have to die here with an Indian.
Vikram: We dragged you to war. You piece of shit!! Who occupied Pakistan? You or us?
Joseph: Shut the hell up.
They threw their guns to the ground and lay there staring at the sky. Nobody seemed to cross that place. Without food, they knew they would not last long. Vikram pulled out a jerkin from his jacket and drank some water. The English man stared at him.
Vikram: You want some?
Joseph(staring at him): Yeah.
Day 2
They had been there for a day and a third soul had not crossed that place. The sun glowed with all the fury. Occasional winds added to the misery and with dust settled inside the throat, the sensation of thirst became unbearable.
Joseph: We are going to die here, isn’t it?
Vikram kept quiet.
Joseph(shouting): Goddamnit, we are going to die here.
Vikram: Didn’t you choose this when you joined the army?
Joseph: I didn’t choose this.
Vikram: That’s the tragedy of our times. People grow up thinking all would end well even before they have ventured out. You would join the army and grow old retelling the tales of your bravery to your grand children. Isn’t it?
Joseph(irritated): Why not. I just don’t want to resign to my fate the way you have done,
Vikram: O Yeah !! What have I done? What can I do? Can you go and call help. No !!
Joseph: Don’t you want to get out of here?
Vikram: We are at war. We get out of here and one day we might be fighting again and one of us may kill the other.
Joseph: I would like that.
Vikram: So let me kill you now.
Joseph: You don’t see the difference in the two scenarios, do you?
Vikram(after a pause): Either way a life would be ended.
Joseph: That would be an honorable death. (sitting up) that’s the way I always wanted to die if I should, in a battlefield.
Vikram: What do you mean?
Joseph: When you joined the army, you wanted to serve your country and you were not afraid to lay down your life for it if the occasion arose. But isn’t there a way you would have liked to die?
Vikram: I don’t like to think about my death
Joseph: But you do realize that in the army it’s a possibility, always. Well, I do. And when the time came, I would have liked to die staring at the enemy in the eye with a rifle in my hand, pierced by a rain of bullets. Yes, a rain of bullets. That would establish the fact that I was a danger to an array of soldiers who wanted me out of the way. That I did my job well.
Vikram: Pass me the water.
Joseph(reluctantly passing it to him): Don’t drink it all.
Vikram(after gulping down some water): That’s the way all soldiers want to die. You are right. But you have to realize that in the present scenario that is almost an impossibility. We may die here out of starvation or eaten by some animal.
Joseph: I realize that but don’t want to accept it. I want to be found. Live to fight another day or may be live to die a better death.
Vikram(smiling): Amen!!
They lay there for some time. Time seemed to have stopped. They tried to crawl but their legs just didn’t have the strength.
Joseph: I am dying of starvation.
Vikram: Then talk less. A lot of energy is wasted when you keep on blabbering.
Joseph: I can’t even walk far to get some food.
Vikram: What would you find in this place that you can eat?
Joseph: Anything. A scorpion. A snake. Anything.
Vikram: Delicious. I am not that hungry. Not yet.
Joseph: I didn’t say I would share it with you.
Vikram: Then go eat.
They lay there with nowhere to go and nothing to do. It was dark now. The temperature began to drop. It was hard enough to sleep there but with the wounds, the cold seemed to creep into their bones.
Joseph: I‘ll try to sleep.
Vikram kept silent.
Joseph: Would you look out for me if some animal attacks.
Vikam(after a pause): Lets hope they don’t hunt in pairs.
Day 3
It had been two days. They were ready to eat anything that moved. Occasionally they felt someone was moving towards them, but it always turned out to be a mirage. Hope was fast diminishing now. In the high noon, they sat facing each other, trying to nibble at a scorpion’s legs.
Joseph(throwing it away): I can’t eat this shit.
Vikram(still chewing): How can you. You are the great western consumer.
Joseph: What?
Vikram: Dude, you live in a world where even dog food has to be branded. A world where people are told what to eat, what to wear and what to say, by the brands. Or lets say we live in such a world. But you guys started it.
Joseph: You want to justify eating this with that argument!!
Vikram: No, all I am saying is that we eating this here is a direct consequence of consumerism.
Joseph: How?
Vikram: Every action today is a consequence of people chasing a lifestyle, wanting to live a certain way, believing certain things.
Joseph: Like what.
Vikram: Everyday my son gets up, he wants to look like some Bollywood star. Everyday my wife gets up, she wants to wear diamonds. Everyday the Prime Minister gets up, he wants to be remembered as the man who changed to course of history. Same goes for every such person in the world. Your president also wants to go in the history books. Looking after their country’s normal issues doesn’t fit them into the image of a historically important man. So they want to win wars and dominate others so that history remembers them. That’s what they consume. An image obsession. An obsession to be counted as important and powerful.
Joseph: And that’s why there are wars, That’s why guys like us have to fight.
Vikram: We are expected to pay the ultimate price for consumerism. To keep the show going. And if we die here, we won’t ever be mentioned because we won’t matter enough. I won’t have died working for my prime minister’s consumerist desires and you wouldn’t have died working for your president’s. We would have just gone missing. People won’t love to hear our stories.
Joseph: Where does that leave the sense of duty towards our motherlands? If we are fighting for what you say we are fighting for, how do UK and India matter. Are we not fighting for them?
Vikram: We would have been fighting for them if we were real dangers to each other, not just perceived dangers. This is paranoia. Nations live in the fear of being attacked and when that fear gets overwhelming, they attack some other country just to let it out. We are led to believe that we are fighting for our country but in essence, we are just fighting against some country, that’s it.
Joseph: And our deaths? What about the death of soldiers?
Vikram: That is the only thing that gives us a sense of duty. Even if we are part of this huge game show, we have to play our parts well. And a brave death is a reward for doing your goddamn job well. That’s the only solace that lies in this.
Joseph: Like I said, that is what we are being robbed of by dying here.
Vikram: Yes. The rain of bullets is the ultimate prize.
They waited and waited and nobody showed up. Hunger was getting to them now.
Joseph: I can’t stay like this for long.
Vikram: Don’t worry. In some time you would die a totally inconsequential death.
Joseph(staring at him, then after sometime): We may not be found. In all probability, they won’t even search for us. For all you said about consumerism, I still wanted to go back have a Big Mac with my kids. Now that a good death seems impossible, that’s the only image I am clinging on to.
Vikram: I understand.
Joseph(with moist eyes): I would never see them, would I. Isn’t it hard to die when you have all the time in the world to think about it. If we are found, wouldn’t it be a shame that we were lying here all the while war was going on. We wouldn’t have played our parts.
Vikram: If my army finds us, you are doomed. If yours finds us, I am doomed. There’s no way both of us are going to be rescued. They won’t even kill. One of us would be a prisoner of war. I should have died in the war.
Joseph: Did you ever think you would crave for death like this. Its funny, the things war does to men, or the absence of it in our case. I have been robbed of my duty, I don’t want to be robbed of dignity.
Vikram: In that case, all the possibilities are unacceptable to us.
Joseph: This is the worst that can happen to a soldier and destiny picked the two of us.
Vikram(nodding): At least I like the last thing I would have done before I die.
Joseph: What?
Vikram: Make a good friend.
Joseph smiled and gradually they drifted off to sleep.
Day 4:
The end was near. As much as they could have hated it, they were helpless. The men who decide the fates of nations were not in control of their own fate anymore. Their faces had gone pale and death seemed imminent.
Joseph: If you die first, I would shoot myself. I don’t want to die lonely in this desert.
Vikram(thought for a while): Lets do that.
Joseph: Do what?
Vikram’s face had a new vigor. He seemed to have found something.
Vikram(getting up): We don’t have a lot of time at our disposal. There’s only one way we can make some sense out of this hopeless situation.
Joseph: I don’t get you.
Vikram: What were we supposed to do?
Joseph: What?
Vikram: Shoot each other. Lets do that.
Joseph: Are you kidding?
Vikram: We won’t shoot to kill. Shoot at the arm or at the leg. Towards your back lies India’s territory and to my back lies UK’s. We get shots at each other alternately. Keep moving towards my zone between shots and ill keep moving towards yours.
Joseph: Are you out of your mind. This is crazy.
Vikram(shouting): Yes it is. What else can you do? You’ll be dead before this day ends. At least die doing what you were supposed to do. Die doing your duty. This is not a time for reason. This is our only choice at redemption. This is the only way we can liberate ourselves.
Joseph(shouting): Goddamnit. I can’t shoot at you now. You know that.
Vikram: Then rot here to death. Do you have a better idea? Lets hear it, because we don’t have much time, you know.
They sat staring at the ground without a word. An hour passed by. Another hour passed by. Joseph realized there was no other way to avoid an embarrassing death
Joseph: OK lets do it.
Vikram nodded. They picked up their guns and moved back and faced each other. Desperate times need desperate measures. This was a desperate time.
Joseph: Who takes the first shot?
Vikram: You.
Joseph: No
Vikram shot at Joseph’s arm.
Vikram: Now shoot.
Joseph grimaced in pain while both of them crawled back towards their respective finishing lines.
Joseph turned and shot at Vikram’s foot.
Vikram turned over from the impact of the shot. They looked at each other with bloodshot eyes then picked up the guns and prepared to go again. Suddenly there was noise, a thudding noise which seemed to come closer. Figures appeared on the horizon. In a minute or two, they saw their troops running towards them. The troops reached the location and stood pointing their guns at each other with Vikram and Joseph in between them. The troops asked each other to let their beleaguered soldiers go so that there would be no bloodshed. Vikram rested on his knees facing the UK troops and Joseph facing the Indian troops.
They had come to the rescue. Now they can go back. Go back to the world where……A wave passed over Joseph and Vikram. They felt a sudden chill. How could they go back now? Things would never be the same again. Both of them knew it. Fate had been biased against them. Now they had their turn. As they half stood there, both of them realized one thing. Going back was not an option. But there was another option. God had granted them their wish. This was their shot at glory. Then they spoke.
Vikram: Lets play our parts.
Jospeh let out a feeble yes under his breath as both of them positioned their guns straight ahead and fired. They fired in a frenzy that felt so liberating. A smile crossed their face because they knew what was to follow.
And finally, it rained bullets.
Year: 2025
Location: No Man’s Land on the Indo-Pak border.
The sun rose in the sky driving away the cold of the night. The barrenness of the desert added to the horror. The silence of the desert can break the spirits of even the bravest. It was dead silent. As the sun’s rays struck his badge with menacing force, the name shined in the emptiness of the place. Vikram Singh Jaiswal. He tried to open his eyes but the left eye won’t open. The eyelid had been covered by dried out blood. He tried to get up but his legs gave away. His body pained as if it was about to explode. I must be already dead, he thought to himself. If not, he was convinced he would die here alone. Just then a voice threatened to shoot if he moved. Despite the threat, it had a reassuring effect on him as now he was not alone. He turned and saw a man sitting some feet from him pointing a gun straight at him. The badge read Joseph Turning.
Joseph: Don’t move or I’ll blast your head off.
Vikram: I can barely move, even if I could, I couldn’t hurt you.
Joseph kept the gun pointed at him. He was still shivering from the cold of the night. Vikram noticed his legs were badly injured too. So there was no way either of them could walk away from that place.
Vikram: Relax. Killing you isn’t the right choice for me now. Besides, we are not under the orders of a commander right now, so we don’t need to kill each other.
Joseph(reluctantly putting his gun down): Did our troops leave us here? Did they think we were dead?
Vikram(shrugging): I am sitting here with you. How can I know that? But that seems to be the case.
Joseph seemed to lose it. He looked around, shouted for help. But nobody appeared.
Vikram: Cool it you moron. They will find us. Stop shouting.
Joseph: Oh now!! Are you going to call help on your fucking mobile.
Vikram: I don’t have one. And if you shout again, I’ll blow your brains out.
They picked up their guns and pointed them at each other. They could have shot but they knew they couldn’t.
Joseph: You Indians dragged us to this war and now I have to die here with an Indian.
Vikram: We dragged you to war. You piece of shit!! Who occupied Pakistan? You or us?
Joseph: Shut the hell up.
They threw their guns to the ground and lay there staring at the sky. Nobody seemed to cross that place. Without food, they knew they would not last long. Vikram pulled out a jerkin from his jacket and drank some water. The English man stared at him.
Vikram: You want some?
Joseph(staring at him): Yeah.
Day 2
They had been there for a day and a third soul had not crossed that place. The sun glowed with all the fury. Occasional winds added to the misery and with dust settled inside the throat, the sensation of thirst became unbearable.
Joseph: We are going to die here, isn’t it?
Vikram kept quiet.
Joseph(shouting): Goddamnit, we are going to die here.
Vikram: Didn’t you choose this when you joined the army?
Joseph: I didn’t choose this.
Vikram: That’s the tragedy of our times. People grow up thinking all would end well even before they have ventured out. You would join the army and grow old retelling the tales of your bravery to your grand children. Isn’t it?
Joseph(irritated): Why not. I just don’t want to resign to my fate the way you have done,
Vikram: O Yeah !! What have I done? What can I do? Can you go and call help. No !!
Joseph: Don’t you want to get out of here?
Vikram: We are at war. We get out of here and one day we might be fighting again and one of us may kill the other.
Joseph: I would like that.
Vikram: So let me kill you now.
Joseph: You don’t see the difference in the two scenarios, do you?
Vikram(after a pause): Either way a life would be ended.
Joseph: That would be an honorable death. (sitting up) that’s the way I always wanted to die if I should, in a battlefield.
Vikram: What do you mean?
Joseph: When you joined the army, you wanted to serve your country and you were not afraid to lay down your life for it if the occasion arose. But isn’t there a way you would have liked to die?
Vikram: I don’t like to think about my death
Joseph: But you do realize that in the army it’s a possibility, always. Well, I do. And when the time came, I would have liked to die staring at the enemy in the eye with a rifle in my hand, pierced by a rain of bullets. Yes, a rain of bullets. That would establish the fact that I was a danger to an array of soldiers who wanted me out of the way. That I did my job well.
Vikram: Pass me the water.
Joseph(reluctantly passing it to him): Don’t drink it all.
Vikram(after gulping down some water): That’s the way all soldiers want to die. You are right. But you have to realize that in the present scenario that is almost an impossibility. We may die here out of starvation or eaten by some animal.
Joseph: I realize that but don’t want to accept it. I want to be found. Live to fight another day or may be live to die a better death.
Vikram(smiling): Amen!!
They lay there for some time. Time seemed to have stopped. They tried to crawl but their legs just didn’t have the strength.
Joseph: I am dying of starvation.
Vikram: Then talk less. A lot of energy is wasted when you keep on blabbering.
Joseph: I can’t even walk far to get some food.
Vikram: What would you find in this place that you can eat?
Joseph: Anything. A scorpion. A snake. Anything.
Vikram: Delicious. I am not that hungry. Not yet.
Joseph: I didn’t say I would share it with you.
Vikram: Then go eat.
They lay there with nowhere to go and nothing to do. It was dark now. The temperature began to drop. It was hard enough to sleep there but with the wounds, the cold seemed to creep into their bones.
Joseph: I‘ll try to sleep.
Vikram kept silent.
Joseph: Would you look out for me if some animal attacks.
Vikam(after a pause): Lets hope they don’t hunt in pairs.
Day 3
It had been two days. They were ready to eat anything that moved. Occasionally they felt someone was moving towards them, but it always turned out to be a mirage. Hope was fast diminishing now. In the high noon, they sat facing each other, trying to nibble at a scorpion’s legs.
Joseph(throwing it away): I can’t eat this shit.
Vikram(still chewing): How can you. You are the great western consumer.
Joseph: What?
Vikram: Dude, you live in a world where even dog food has to be branded. A world where people are told what to eat, what to wear and what to say, by the brands. Or lets say we live in such a world. But you guys started it.
Joseph: You want to justify eating this with that argument!!
Vikram: No, all I am saying is that we eating this here is a direct consequence of consumerism.
Joseph: How?
Vikram: Every action today is a consequence of people chasing a lifestyle, wanting to live a certain way, believing certain things.
Joseph: Like what.
Vikram: Everyday my son gets up, he wants to look like some Bollywood star. Everyday my wife gets up, she wants to wear diamonds. Everyday the Prime Minister gets up, he wants to be remembered as the man who changed to course of history. Same goes for every such person in the world. Your president also wants to go in the history books. Looking after their country’s normal issues doesn’t fit them into the image of a historically important man. So they want to win wars and dominate others so that history remembers them. That’s what they consume. An image obsession. An obsession to be counted as important and powerful.
Joseph: And that’s why there are wars, That’s why guys like us have to fight.
Vikram: We are expected to pay the ultimate price for consumerism. To keep the show going. And if we die here, we won’t ever be mentioned because we won’t matter enough. I won’t have died working for my prime minister’s consumerist desires and you wouldn’t have died working for your president’s. We would have just gone missing. People won’t love to hear our stories.
Joseph: Where does that leave the sense of duty towards our motherlands? If we are fighting for what you say we are fighting for, how do UK and India matter. Are we not fighting for them?
Vikram: We would have been fighting for them if we were real dangers to each other, not just perceived dangers. This is paranoia. Nations live in the fear of being attacked and when that fear gets overwhelming, they attack some other country just to let it out. We are led to believe that we are fighting for our country but in essence, we are just fighting against some country, that’s it.
Joseph: And our deaths? What about the death of soldiers?
Vikram: That is the only thing that gives us a sense of duty. Even if we are part of this huge game show, we have to play our parts well. And a brave death is a reward for doing your goddamn job well. That’s the only solace that lies in this.
Joseph: Like I said, that is what we are being robbed of by dying here.
Vikram: Yes. The rain of bullets is the ultimate prize.
They waited and waited and nobody showed up. Hunger was getting to them now.
Joseph: I can’t stay like this for long.
Vikram: Don’t worry. In some time you would die a totally inconsequential death.
Joseph(staring at him, then after sometime): We may not be found. In all probability, they won’t even search for us. For all you said about consumerism, I still wanted to go back have a Big Mac with my kids. Now that a good death seems impossible, that’s the only image I am clinging on to.
Vikram: I understand.
Joseph(with moist eyes): I would never see them, would I. Isn’t it hard to die when you have all the time in the world to think about it. If we are found, wouldn’t it be a shame that we were lying here all the while war was going on. We wouldn’t have played our parts.
Vikram: If my army finds us, you are doomed. If yours finds us, I am doomed. There’s no way both of us are going to be rescued. They won’t even kill. One of us would be a prisoner of war. I should have died in the war.
Joseph: Did you ever think you would crave for death like this. Its funny, the things war does to men, or the absence of it in our case. I have been robbed of my duty, I don’t want to be robbed of dignity.
Vikram: In that case, all the possibilities are unacceptable to us.
Joseph: This is the worst that can happen to a soldier and destiny picked the two of us.
Vikram(nodding): At least I like the last thing I would have done before I die.
Joseph: What?
Vikram: Make a good friend.
Joseph smiled and gradually they drifted off to sleep.
Day 4:
The end was near. As much as they could have hated it, they were helpless. The men who decide the fates of nations were not in control of their own fate anymore. Their faces had gone pale and death seemed imminent.
Joseph: If you die first, I would shoot myself. I don’t want to die lonely in this desert.
Vikram(thought for a while): Lets do that.
Joseph: Do what?
Vikram’s face had a new vigor. He seemed to have found something.
Vikram(getting up): We don’t have a lot of time at our disposal. There’s only one way we can make some sense out of this hopeless situation.
Joseph: I don’t get you.
Vikram: What were we supposed to do?
Joseph: What?
Vikram: Shoot each other. Lets do that.
Joseph: Are you kidding?
Vikram: We won’t shoot to kill. Shoot at the arm or at the leg. Towards your back lies India’s territory and to my back lies UK’s. We get shots at each other alternately. Keep moving towards my zone between shots and ill keep moving towards yours.
Joseph: Are you out of your mind. This is crazy.
Vikram(shouting): Yes it is. What else can you do? You’ll be dead before this day ends. At least die doing what you were supposed to do. Die doing your duty. This is not a time for reason. This is our only choice at redemption. This is the only way we can liberate ourselves.
Joseph(shouting): Goddamnit. I can’t shoot at you now. You know that.
Vikram: Then rot here to death. Do you have a better idea? Lets hear it, because we don’t have much time, you know.
They sat staring at the ground without a word. An hour passed by. Another hour passed by. Joseph realized there was no other way to avoid an embarrassing death
Joseph: OK lets do it.
Vikram nodded. They picked up their guns and moved back and faced each other. Desperate times need desperate measures. This was a desperate time.
Joseph: Who takes the first shot?
Vikram: You.
Joseph: No
Vikram shot at Joseph’s arm.
Vikram: Now shoot.
Joseph grimaced in pain while both of them crawled back towards their respective finishing lines.
Joseph turned and shot at Vikram’s foot.
Vikram turned over from the impact of the shot. They looked at each other with bloodshot eyes then picked up the guns and prepared to go again. Suddenly there was noise, a thudding noise which seemed to come closer. Figures appeared on the horizon. In a minute or two, they saw their troops running towards them. The troops reached the location and stood pointing their guns at each other with Vikram and Joseph in between them. The troops asked each other to let their beleaguered soldiers go so that there would be no bloodshed. Vikram rested on his knees facing the UK troops and Joseph facing the Indian troops.
They had come to the rescue. Now they can go back. Go back to the world where……A wave passed over Joseph and Vikram. They felt a sudden chill. How could they go back now? Things would never be the same again. Both of them knew it. Fate had been biased against them. Now they had their turn. As they half stood there, both of them realized one thing. Going back was not an option. But there was another option. God had granted them their wish. This was their shot at glory. Then they spoke.
Vikram: Lets play our parts.
Jospeh let out a feeble yes under his breath as both of them positioned their guns straight ahead and fired. They fired in a frenzy that felt so liberating. A smile crossed their face because they knew what was to follow.
And finally, it rained bullets.
21
The man walked into the room. They held their breath, waiting for him to speak.
He walked in, dark, and stout, wearing a green kurta. The shadows of the room cast themselves on him, making him look a lot more huge than he actually was. They looked nervously at each other, as he glared at them.
“So how did it go?”
“Success, bhaijaan. The three of them went off as planned.”
He looked at him, his face not moving, as if it was set in stone.
“How many people?”
“21, bhaijaan,” he said.
“How many?”, he asked, his face convulsing into an ugly frown.
The two of them remained quiet.
“Twenty One? You bastards! You stayed here for weeks, went to all the places, the locations were the same, and all you could manage was twenty one?”
“There weren’t as many people as we expected at the time, bhaijaan. We did our work whole-heartedly.”
The man said nothing. He moved his right hand, put it in his back pocket, removed a gun and pointed it at his forehead.
“If the whole of your heart could amount to that, a very small heart you have, indeed.” He pulled the trigger.
There was a ‘pfut’ noise, as the body crumbled to the floor as a lump of flesh. In a few seconds, nothing in the room moved, as a small pool of blood began to form near the body.
The other man was scared. He could smell blood, and sweat, and couldn’t bear to look at the man. He kept his eyes down, at the floor.
“You worthless sister-fuckers,” the man hissed, “do you know how much money was spent on you morons? And what am I supposed to tell the others when they ask me about it?”
He had to think fast. It was a matter of life and death. His mind raced, as the words struggled to come out of his mouth.
“We created quite an impact, bhaijaan. Over a hundred are injured. There is chaos, and the telephone lines have gotten jammed. Also, the rains will wash out the evidence from the sites.”
His reasoning had no effect on the huge man. “And what are you concerned about the evidence for? Do you have a fear of getting caught?”
The man froze. “No, bhaijaan. It’s not like that. I have given my life to Allah and death does not scare me.”
The huge man said nothing for a while. There was silence in the room, except for a few flies that were buzzing around the dead body lying on the floor.
“Did the government react?”
“Yes, bhaijaan. Within two hours of the attack, the MHA responded with a statement.”
“What?”
“That it was a terror attack.”
“Is this a fucking joke?” He was getting agitated again, and he needed to be calmed, otherwise he would raise his gun again.
“There is chaos on the streets, bhaijaan. The people on the streets are angry with the government. One of them even mouthed dialogues from ‘A Wednesday’ in front of the cameras and has become a celebrity of sorts.”
“What about the media?”
“The media is asking questions, bhaijaan. There is anger in the people. The media channels have trampled all over the evidence sites, interfering with the forensic investigation process. Like the last time, the channels are showing pictures of dead and wounded bodies, striking fear in the hearts of the people. It was a victory for us, bhaijaan.”
“And what does dhoti have to say about it?”
“The usual, bhaijaan. That all efforts will be made to nab the culprits, and that they have deployed all the forces to work on the case.”
“What about the bazaar? How many people over there?”
“About thirteen, bhaijaan.”
The man flew into a rage. “Motherfucker! Thirteen?? Months of training and you bastards manage 21 people?”
“But we have shown how easy it is, bhaijaan. And all the materials were bought off the market. It was done with minimum expenses and effort, bhaijaan.”
The man just glared at him. After a while, he said, “You know, there are 150 deaths a day simply on the train tracks. Everyday.”
He could sense things were getting out of hand. He wanted to say something. He wanted to tell him of the pain-staking efforts that had gone into the exercise, of the love and steadfastness that he had in his heart towards the cause. He wanted to speak, but felt his throat drying. The smell of blood filled his nose, and made him giddy.
“The bastards will never learn. Tomorrow, all of them will go to work, and they will boast about the ‘Spirit of Mumbai’. Media channels will move on to other issues in a few days, and the politicians will start fighting amongst themselves. And in a few days, there will be a cricket series, and the entire country will forget about it.”
He knew he had to speak. He knew he had to say something. Anything.
The man continued. “Have you seen what our brothers across the border are doing? Everyday, every week, every month. The work of God goes on uninterrupted. And you bastards, manage just 21 and have the guts to talk to me about steadfastness?”
His mouth was spewing spit, and his eyes had grown large in anger.
Inspite of the giddiness and the blurred vision, the man felt a strange calm. His vision blurred as he saw the huge man reach for his back pocket.
He held his breath, waiting.
The last thing he heard was the ‘pfut’ sound, and the sight of beautiful virgins waiting for him, swam in his head.
He walked in, dark, and stout, wearing a green kurta. The shadows of the room cast themselves on him, making him look a lot more huge than he actually was. They looked nervously at each other, as he glared at them.
“So how did it go?”
“Success, bhaijaan. The three of them went off as planned.”
He looked at him, his face not moving, as if it was set in stone.
“How many people?”
“21, bhaijaan,” he said.
“How many?”, he asked, his face convulsing into an ugly frown.
The two of them remained quiet.
“Twenty One? You bastards! You stayed here for weeks, went to all the places, the locations were the same, and all you could manage was twenty one?”
“There weren’t as many people as we expected at the time, bhaijaan. We did our work whole-heartedly.”
The man said nothing. He moved his right hand, put it in his back pocket, removed a gun and pointed it at his forehead.
“If the whole of your heart could amount to that, a very small heart you have, indeed.” He pulled the trigger.
There was a ‘pfut’ noise, as the body crumbled to the floor as a lump of flesh. In a few seconds, nothing in the room moved, as a small pool of blood began to form near the body.
The other man was scared. He could smell blood, and sweat, and couldn’t bear to look at the man. He kept his eyes down, at the floor.
“You worthless sister-fuckers,” the man hissed, “do you know how much money was spent on you morons? And what am I supposed to tell the others when they ask me about it?”
He had to think fast. It was a matter of life and death. His mind raced, as the words struggled to come out of his mouth.
“We created quite an impact, bhaijaan. Over a hundred are injured. There is chaos, and the telephone lines have gotten jammed. Also, the rains will wash out the evidence from the sites.”
His reasoning had no effect on the huge man. “And what are you concerned about the evidence for? Do you have a fear of getting caught?”
The man froze. “No, bhaijaan. It’s not like that. I have given my life to Allah and death does not scare me.”
The huge man said nothing for a while. There was silence in the room, except for a few flies that were buzzing around the dead body lying on the floor.
“Did the government react?”
“Yes, bhaijaan. Within two hours of the attack, the MHA responded with a statement.”
“What?”
“That it was a terror attack.”
“Is this a fucking joke?” He was getting agitated again, and he needed to be calmed, otherwise he would raise his gun again.
“There is chaos on the streets, bhaijaan. The people on the streets are angry with the government. One of them even mouthed dialogues from ‘A Wednesday’ in front of the cameras and has become a celebrity of sorts.”
“What about the media?”
“The media is asking questions, bhaijaan. There is anger in the people. The media channels have trampled all over the evidence sites, interfering with the forensic investigation process. Like the last time, the channels are showing pictures of dead and wounded bodies, striking fear in the hearts of the people. It was a victory for us, bhaijaan.”
“And what does dhoti have to say about it?”
“The usual, bhaijaan. That all efforts will be made to nab the culprits, and that they have deployed all the forces to work on the case.”
“What about the bazaar? How many people over there?”
“About thirteen, bhaijaan.”
The man flew into a rage. “Motherfucker! Thirteen?? Months of training and you bastards manage 21 people?”
“But we have shown how easy it is, bhaijaan. And all the materials were bought off the market. It was done with minimum expenses and effort, bhaijaan.”
The man just glared at him. After a while, he said, “You know, there are 150 deaths a day simply on the train tracks. Everyday.”
He could sense things were getting out of hand. He wanted to say something. He wanted to tell him of the pain-staking efforts that had gone into the exercise, of the love and steadfastness that he had in his heart towards the cause. He wanted to speak, but felt his throat drying. The smell of blood filled his nose, and made him giddy.
“The bastards will never learn. Tomorrow, all of them will go to work, and they will boast about the ‘Spirit of Mumbai’. Media channels will move on to other issues in a few days, and the politicians will start fighting amongst themselves. And in a few days, there will be a cricket series, and the entire country will forget about it.”
He knew he had to speak. He knew he had to say something. Anything.
The man continued. “Have you seen what our brothers across the border are doing? Everyday, every week, every month. The work of God goes on uninterrupted. And you bastards, manage just 21 and have the guts to talk to me about steadfastness?”
His mouth was spewing spit, and his eyes had grown large in anger.
Inspite of the giddiness and the blurred vision, the man felt a strange calm. His vision blurred as he saw the huge man reach for his back pocket.
He held his breath, waiting.
The last thing he heard was the ‘pfut’ sound, and the sight of beautiful virgins waiting for him, swam in his head.
Thursday, July 28, 2011
Mesmerize
TO BE OR NOT TO BE : A TRUE ENGINEER
Engineers are supposed to be the creators, inventors & designers of new and unthinkable wonders. An engineer is held with so much awe and admiration that the ones aspiring to “change the world “ are now thinking that only engineers can do it(at least I had something of that sort in my mind when I joined VNIT). If a plausible, near accurate picture had to be painted to describe the race for grabbing a good engineering seat, the image would resemble an active fish market in the streets of Kolkata.
But is it really worth all the trouble?
This question rang a sonorous bell in my mind when I faced a predicament, which initially seemed trivial, but eventually dragged me into the deep cavern of self doubt.
The incident marked my endeavor to unravel the secret of abstract knowledge. (Or something like that)
After appearing for my second semester examination in the college my holidays at home were harmonious and luxurious till I turned on the television.
The Idiot box was clearly in a state of disarray, for, the display resembled a paper run over by millions of ants. Obviously it was not a show in discovery channel because the sound coming from the set was disturbing and by any stretch of imagination or recognition I couldn’t dare to compare the screeching sounds with the sounds produced by the speech of a human, harried by a sickly throat problem, trying to explain what the million ants were up to. Even if the ants wanted to, they couldn’t produce such noise. To make sure that the ants were not capable of doing so, I switched over to the next channel and then the next and I had not rested until I had checked all the channels. All the channels had ants running all over the screen. Using my primitive knowledge in the area of television electronics I wisely surmised that even if ants did manage to enter the interiors of a TV, they would die an instant death. After making sure that the signal from the operator was not corrupted I diagnosed the problem successfully. There was a problem with the television!!!
Amazed with the fact that I was able to diagnose the problem accurately using my engineering and observational skills I geared up for tackling it professionally.
I went to my elder brother and presented the predicament in a genuine fashion. The fact that he was an electronics engineer came to my mind during my investigation and finding an opportunity to avail his invaluable professional services I went to him asking for the solution.
Clearly disturbed from the state of delirium he frowned at me acknowledging the disturbance. The description of the events that followed should be carefully noted as they describe the deliberate gestures and movements, carefully practiced and perfected, by an engineer before staging a deception.
He got up nonchalantly, wore his glasses, blinked like a damsel in distress and gave a look filled with an immiscible and antonymic mix of utter brilliance and sheer ignorance. Then he cleared his throat as if to deliver a statement which could force the world into accepting world peace. But nothing of that sort happened and he muttered helplessly, yet airily”I’m aware of the principles involved in its working and construction but I don’t know how the TV works “.
I was slightly taken aback but, needless to say, I felt enormously enlightened after hearing an excuse which could be used liberally when faced with a similar situation because even if anyone tried to highlight our incompetence we could always blame the ‘nasty old system’.
However, the task remained unaccomplished. Who should do it? No, not the electrician, a man with limited knowledge of the complex systems, he may repair the set but my quest for knowledge would be obstructed. An electrician works only according to set procedures taught to him mechanically by ITI (industrial training institute). To showcase the superiority of an engineer over a mere technician, I had to take the thing in my own hands (a screwdriver that is). Armed with the screwdriver in one hand and the power of inquisitiveness in the other, I walked like a gladiator ready to salvage some pride for my clan(engineers), after all it was only a mere television.
After opening the cabinet, I could only stare at the inconceivable collection of slabs with colorful small elements struck to them. As I searched for an hour to find at least some element of familiarity in this chaotic assembly of strange boards and elements, my patience was running away. Finally, my eye caught a board where I could recognize three elements placed on it. Even though I was skeptical about their condition (good or bad) I had no choice, other parts of the board were alien to me. I was like a man searching for treasure somewhere else just because the place where it lay buried had no light.
The elements were the most elementary elements of an electrical circuit- the capacitor, the resistor and the inductor. I just had to replace one of them.
The elimination process I adopted was painstakingly primitive, but nevertheless fundamental tools have carved a way for man’s success. The elimination process was one of those sequences we adopted before starting a game of hide and seek – “inky, pinky ponky, father had a donkey,…………….”. After two rounds of elimination the target was spotted. The resistor had to be replaced.
After soldering the new resistor (which I purchased from the market) in place of the original resistor I closed the cabinet and turned on the television. The picture was crystal clear.
(Rajnikant was performing his famous anti-gravity stunts. Hardly believable stunts I accept, but it satisfies me that at least someone can break the unquestionable and slavery inducing laws of physics, which dragged us through sleepless nights)
I was overjoyed to see that my totally outrageous fluke had struck gold. I then started to ponder over the secret behind the innocuous looking sequence of elimination, it now dawned upon me, that this was not a simple elimination algorithm but, a far more complex transcendental function based on complex laws of probability and permutations, which nobody had, till today, discovered. I was perhaps the first one to make this breakthrough.
I could see the red carpets unfurled before me, The Bharat Ratna badge pinned onto my shirt, my parents unable to control their tears of joy, the physics Nobel was being presented to me, for I had discovered the function which could solve disturbances in electronic circuits. The crowd was cheering me noisily, more noise, but the sound was much hashed, very corrupted. Wait! It wasn’t the type of noise a crowd could generate; it was …… coming from the TV!!
The sound was worse than before, obviously the resistor wasn’t bad. So I had been wrong about the stupid elimination sequence after all, to hell with inky pinky ponky. All my thoughts about the ceremony painfully vanished from my mind. Then with much deliberation I replaced the capacitor.
I sat down with my eyes closed and fingers crossed, and then turned on the TV. I waited with drawn breath. The noise had vanished and instead I could hear the voice of a human Delighted and ready to reconsider the elimination sequence from the human angle, that is, attributing the mistake to me and not the function, I opened my eyes to see ants running over the screen again. Now, the display was cocked! But the sound was perfect!
First, when I replaced the resistor with a new one the picture was perfect but the sound was repulsive, now when I replace the capacitor with a new one, the picture turns bad but the sound system works perfectly. Then definitely, if I replaced the inductor, everything would be normal. Using this common sense, I replaced the inductor with a new one.
Now, surprisingly both went bad. The picture was bad and the sound was intolerably hashed and corrupted.
After employing a series of permutations to replace each component, and getting equally ghastly and varied results I finally decided to end this cat and mouse game by calling in the real professional- the electrician.
He walked in with an air of nonchalance, as if he were performing a routine job. He saw all the elements strewn around and then without saying a word he opened the cabinet and resoldered the old components. Then he switched it on. The picture was still bad and the sound worse than before. Before I could say a word, he tapped the TV on its head lightly. The TV flickered for a second and then gave a clear image along with proper sound.
I could do nothing but gape at the TV for the next few minutes. He said that the problem was so minor that he would not embarrass himself by asking for fees…………….!!
How much do we know ‘practically’?
The same question applies to every stream in engineering. Before I end, I should turn my attention to my own stream – Meta (Metallurgy and Material Science Engineering).
When my friend’s grandpa asked him about his stream he was dumbstruck. Why? He himself had never thought about it. To hide his face he muttered a series of ‘errs’ and ‘umps’, kept beating around the bush, flaunted words like nanotechnology and smart materials and finally told his grandpa that he was too old and senile to understand all these technical things.
His grandfather nodded his head cynically and replied aptly “Son, you are right. I didn’t understand a bit of what you said. Perhaps that’s what engineering is about, understanding nothing.”
It has been observed that young minds join engineering colleges expecting a job to land on their laps as soon as they reach their final year in college. Many are also aware that a company seldom asks you questions from engineering curricula in their written exams or interviews (I am targeting IT giants), so any person having mediocre knowledge in computer programming can end up in an IT company. Why then, should we take the pains to study for engineering? Do we earnestly study the subject? Are we interested in it?
The story has no moral but it certainly raises the question we all fear to acknowledge.
The ultimate question.
Are we true engineers?
Engineers are supposed to be the creators, inventors & designers of new and unthinkable wonders. An engineer is held with so much awe and admiration that the ones aspiring to “change the world “ are now thinking that only engineers can do it(at least I had something of that sort in my mind when I joined VNIT). If a plausible, near accurate picture had to be painted to describe the race for grabbing a good engineering seat, the image would resemble an active fish market in the streets of Kolkata.
But is it really worth all the trouble?
This question rang a sonorous bell in my mind when I faced a predicament, which initially seemed trivial, but eventually dragged me into the deep cavern of self doubt.
The incident marked my endeavor to unravel the secret of abstract knowledge. (Or something like that)
After appearing for my second semester examination in the college my holidays at home were harmonious and luxurious till I turned on the television.
The Idiot box was clearly in a state of disarray, for, the display resembled a paper run over by millions of ants. Obviously it was not a show in discovery channel because the sound coming from the set was disturbing and by any stretch of imagination or recognition I couldn’t dare to compare the screeching sounds with the sounds produced by the speech of a human, harried by a sickly throat problem, trying to explain what the million ants were up to. Even if the ants wanted to, they couldn’t produce such noise. To make sure that the ants were not capable of doing so, I switched over to the next channel and then the next and I had not rested until I had checked all the channels. All the channels had ants running all over the screen. Using my primitive knowledge in the area of television electronics I wisely surmised that even if ants did manage to enter the interiors of a TV, they would die an instant death. After making sure that the signal from the operator was not corrupted I diagnosed the problem successfully. There was a problem with the television!!!
Amazed with the fact that I was able to diagnose the problem accurately using my engineering and observational skills I geared up for tackling it professionally.
I went to my elder brother and presented the predicament in a genuine fashion. The fact that he was an electronics engineer came to my mind during my investigation and finding an opportunity to avail his invaluable professional services I went to him asking for the solution.
Clearly disturbed from the state of delirium he frowned at me acknowledging the disturbance. The description of the events that followed should be carefully noted as they describe the deliberate gestures and movements, carefully practiced and perfected, by an engineer before staging a deception.
He got up nonchalantly, wore his glasses, blinked like a damsel in distress and gave a look filled with an immiscible and antonymic mix of utter brilliance and sheer ignorance. Then he cleared his throat as if to deliver a statement which could force the world into accepting world peace. But nothing of that sort happened and he muttered helplessly, yet airily”I’m aware of the principles involved in its working and construction but I don’t know how the TV works “.
I was slightly taken aback but, needless to say, I felt enormously enlightened after hearing an excuse which could be used liberally when faced with a similar situation because even if anyone tried to highlight our incompetence we could always blame the ‘nasty old system’.
However, the task remained unaccomplished. Who should do it? No, not the electrician, a man with limited knowledge of the complex systems, he may repair the set but my quest for knowledge would be obstructed. An electrician works only according to set procedures taught to him mechanically by ITI (industrial training institute). To showcase the superiority of an engineer over a mere technician, I had to take the thing in my own hands (a screwdriver that is). Armed with the screwdriver in one hand and the power of inquisitiveness in the other, I walked like a gladiator ready to salvage some pride for my clan(engineers), after all it was only a mere television.
After opening the cabinet, I could only stare at the inconceivable collection of slabs with colorful small elements struck to them. As I searched for an hour to find at least some element of familiarity in this chaotic assembly of strange boards and elements, my patience was running away. Finally, my eye caught a board where I could recognize three elements placed on it. Even though I was skeptical about their condition (good or bad) I had no choice, other parts of the board were alien to me. I was like a man searching for treasure somewhere else just because the place where it lay buried had no light.
The elements were the most elementary elements of an electrical circuit- the capacitor, the resistor and the inductor. I just had to replace one of them.
The elimination process I adopted was painstakingly primitive, but nevertheless fundamental tools have carved a way for man’s success. The elimination process was one of those sequences we adopted before starting a game of hide and seek – “inky, pinky ponky, father had a donkey,…………….”. After two rounds of elimination the target was spotted. The resistor had to be replaced.
After soldering the new resistor (which I purchased from the market) in place of the original resistor I closed the cabinet and turned on the television. The picture was crystal clear.
(Rajnikant was performing his famous anti-gravity stunts. Hardly believable stunts I accept, but it satisfies me that at least someone can break the unquestionable and slavery inducing laws of physics, which dragged us through sleepless nights)
I was overjoyed to see that my totally outrageous fluke had struck gold. I then started to ponder over the secret behind the innocuous looking sequence of elimination, it now dawned upon me, that this was not a simple elimination algorithm but, a far more complex transcendental function based on complex laws of probability and permutations, which nobody had, till today, discovered. I was perhaps the first one to make this breakthrough.
I could see the red carpets unfurled before me, The Bharat Ratna badge pinned onto my shirt, my parents unable to control their tears of joy, the physics Nobel was being presented to me, for I had discovered the function which could solve disturbances in electronic circuits. The crowd was cheering me noisily, more noise, but the sound was much hashed, very corrupted. Wait! It wasn’t the type of noise a crowd could generate; it was …… coming from the TV!!
The sound was worse than before, obviously the resistor wasn’t bad. So I had been wrong about the stupid elimination sequence after all, to hell with inky pinky ponky. All my thoughts about the ceremony painfully vanished from my mind. Then with much deliberation I replaced the capacitor.
I sat down with my eyes closed and fingers crossed, and then turned on the TV. I waited with drawn breath. The noise had vanished and instead I could hear the voice of a human Delighted and ready to reconsider the elimination sequence from the human angle, that is, attributing the mistake to me and not the function, I opened my eyes to see ants running over the screen again. Now, the display was cocked! But the sound was perfect!
First, when I replaced the resistor with a new one the picture was perfect but the sound was repulsive, now when I replace the capacitor with a new one, the picture turns bad but the sound system works perfectly. Then definitely, if I replaced the inductor, everything would be normal. Using this common sense, I replaced the inductor with a new one.
Now, surprisingly both went bad. The picture was bad and the sound was intolerably hashed and corrupted.
After employing a series of permutations to replace each component, and getting equally ghastly and varied results I finally decided to end this cat and mouse game by calling in the real professional- the electrician.
He walked in with an air of nonchalance, as if he were performing a routine job. He saw all the elements strewn around and then without saying a word he opened the cabinet and resoldered the old components. Then he switched it on. The picture was still bad and the sound worse than before. Before I could say a word, he tapped the TV on its head lightly. The TV flickered for a second and then gave a clear image along with proper sound.
I could do nothing but gape at the TV for the next few minutes. He said that the problem was so minor that he would not embarrass himself by asking for fees…………….!!
How much do we know ‘practically’?
The same question applies to every stream in engineering. Before I end, I should turn my attention to my own stream – Meta (Metallurgy and Material Science Engineering).
When my friend’s grandpa asked him about his stream he was dumbstruck. Why? He himself had never thought about it. To hide his face he muttered a series of ‘errs’ and ‘umps’, kept beating around the bush, flaunted words like nanotechnology and smart materials and finally told his grandpa that he was too old and senile to understand all these technical things.
His grandfather nodded his head cynically and replied aptly “Son, you are right. I didn’t understand a bit of what you said. Perhaps that’s what engineering is about, understanding nothing.”
It has been observed that young minds join engineering colleges expecting a job to land on their laps as soon as they reach their final year in college. Many are also aware that a company seldom asks you questions from engineering curricula in their written exams or interviews (I am targeting IT giants), so any person having mediocre knowledge in computer programming can end up in an IT company. Why then, should we take the pains to study for engineering? Do we earnestly study the subject? Are we interested in it?
The story has no moral but it certainly raises the question we all fear to acknowledge.
The ultimate question.
Are we true engineers?
Saturday, July 23, 2011
The Masterpiece
'Dedication and loyalty are virtues of the great'
Chapter 1: the day of placement
One couldn’t ask for a better day to retrospect. Sitting on the grass, waiting for the night to cover me with its shadow of peace, I felt a deep force running through me, the feeling of accomplishment. Placements had just started in our college and I had been quite lucky to land up with a job at the start itself. It was as if my college life was finally getting over. During such moments in life people look out for other people in trouble, which I believe is a sadistic impulse one gets. The touch of fur and hair would remind me of a long haired guy in college who would throw himself on me without provocation, but, unlike his brute touch it was extremely soft and momentary. With a swift turn of the head I could see him. His majesty had to be acknowledged. Silvery white hair, brooding jaws and two eyes which displayed grace were lost on me in an instant. The hair on his body was like grass on the meadow waiting for the wind to work itself through it, the wind, like a mermaid wading through the blue ocean with sheer joy. His domestication and age were apparent from his grace and sublime submission to the work of time. It was strange that a dog from the elegant and sophisticated breed of Pomeranians could be found wandering near a boy’s hostel.
Chapter 2: acquaintance
“Where is his rightful owner?” “What is this pet dog doing here?” “What about the hostel hygiene?” the student mess in-charge was in a foul mood and a fleeting look at the creature basking under the afternoon sun certainly aggravated his irritation. The authorities had handed out several memos to the members of the hostel committee and the content demanded specific budget cuts in the food supplies which were unreasonable at this point of time, since the cost of vegetables were scaling record heights. Some of the hostel mates were quick to notify him about the dog’s history and rendered a calculated narrative which could explain why the creature was enjoying its afternoon siesta out on the hostel lawn bench. The dog had been abandoned by the owner for some reason and ironically, he found some solace in the noisy environment of the hostel. The mess in-charge was able to direct his anger at something else and the dog was perhaps, able to brood over a lost bone. Evidently, his claws had worn out and his latency was quite a concern for many dog lovers in the hostel but there was nothing much they could do about it. His prior domestication and inoculation from the wild had made his body a slave to medicinal shots. Without veterinary facilities the dog was considered as a living host of diseases and some inmates kept a safe distance from him. Some youngsters pitied the mongrel and spared some food occasionally. “We should call him “Stalin”” remarked Basu. Basu was a music maniac and loved to flaunt words in his vocabulary and as any ardent follower of communism; he carried a volume of speeches delivered by Marx in Russia with him even to the rest-room. His belligerent response to everyone’s disgust was a simple statement delivered with conviction, “If Archimedes could frame a theorem in his bathtub, I am just seconds away from self discovery and enlightenment”. Despite Basu’s idiosyncrasies, his discussions were emphatic and engaging, forcing many inmates to believe that he was some kind of a ‘misplaced’ philosopher. However, everyone seemed to like the title he blessed the dog with and Stalin was now ‘unofficially’ the new resident of our hostel lawn.
Slowly, everyone got used to the presence of Stalin and any reference to him helped us distract ourselves from the usual arduous routine in the hostel.
Chapter 3: The incident
The sophistication involved in a dog’s life can be slowly understood by studying their general behavior. Stray dogs divide themselves into groups and clusters where each group understands their territorial limitations. The territories are usually divided according to the benefits in an area and some compromise is reached, which not only allows them to live in a chartered manner but also helps them to claim food in their zones. Any intruder in their zone is unwelcome barring human beings who are apparently their “perpetual masters”. It took only a week before Stalin had to face the native dogs and the incident remains etched in my mind.
It was a cold winter night, and all the hostel inmates were busy with assignments and reports they had to submit the following week. A packed hostel in the night is reminiscent of a busy office on the streets of Manhattan before the close of the stock exchange. The only difference lies in the nature of work and the type of noises that erupt infrequently. The night draped a blanket of darkness over the pavements and roads leading to the hostel. Stalin crouched on a bench in the lawn lazily drawing his eyes to close. Then out of instinct he opened his eyes to see a dozen glittering eyes advancing towards him. The stray dogs of this zone had decided to attack him and this had to be done to assert their authority and rights in the zone. Stalin stood his ground. He had none of the tenacity his opponents possessed and was clearly outnumbered. He had almost decided that it had to be his final stand before death when Basu and I walked out of the gate in the hostel. Basu was the first one to notice the standoff and in an effort to save Stalin, he picked up a rock and threw tentatively at one of the attackers. Following suit, I aimed at two other attackers and visibly stunned the stray animals ran for their lives. Satisfied with our effort we stepped on an old haggard motorbike and drove to the night canteen which was 4 Km from the campus.
We finally reached the gas station to refuel and searched our pockets for money. “Hey, somebody picked my wallet” remarked Basu. “How the hell can you be so careless?” my reprimand did not make any significant impact as our vehicle was comprehensively dry and we were stranded at the petrol pump without any cash at our disposal. “Eh, this is gonna be our longest night together, comrade” joked Basu. I was not in the mood for jokes as I had to forward an assignment next morning and the worst part was that I had no clue about the topic. “Guess what, Stalin followed us to the station” remarked Basu. As the exasperated animal came closer we were in for a special surprise. Stalin had picked up Basu’s wallet from the road, where he had carelessly dropped it, and ran all the way to pull us out of the mess.
Chapter 4: The Final Test
Keeping track of seasons and describing them with passion and panache is a hobby well suited for poets and great writers. However, such changes rarely make an impact on a superficial community which yearns for materialistic benefits just by joining pieces of metals and plastics to conjure a device used by a million lazy people to simplify their lives. The only thing which mattered to us was the mess timetable and whatever they had to offer during the recess.
In the evening, hostel inmates loved to squat on the lawn, making groups and explicitly narrating their chronicles of successes and failures which were inevitably spiced up with infectious laughter rendered by the audience. The clock of life had changed Basu, who by now had developed certain capitalistic inclinations after reading about the ideological shifts developing in socialistic nations. It was still hard to say whether he was an ardent follower of Marx or a Friedman enthusiast, but it did not matter much as nobody ever took his political views seriously. Stalin was an apathetic member of the confluence and he had developed no special interest in Basu’s theories and arguments.
Many people enjoyed their evening walk and some people walked their dogs in the college campus which included the hostel premises. Hostel lawns also served as grazing grounds for numerous cows and buffaloes and soon their open defecation in specific areas caused uproar amongst students who demanded the disposal of cow dung from the hostel. However, the authority thought it was best not to entertain such complaints as students may start demanding more luxuries. In fact, some wardens even publicly spoke in favor of the defecation, specifically relating their childhood accounts of playing with cow dung and slapping cakes on their walls, which were received with suppressed expressions of disgust and dissent. Fortunately, cows realized soon enough that their nature’s call was the topic of a public debate and wisely refrained from public excretion much to students’ delight. This kind gesture earned them the right to roam freely near the hostel premises and agitations were unanimously withdrawn by inmates.
Dusk was fast settling in when somehow, an evening dog walker unintentionally irked a bull and subsequently, the bull started charging at him with blood shot eyes and murderous intent. The dog walker went white with fear as blood drained from his face. The poodle accompanying him concealed itself behind the fellow’s legs and slightly raised his cowering eyes which betrayed a stifling feeling of helplessness. In a flash, something sprang up on the bull’s ear biting into the soft and hairy hide with aggression and skill. The bull was evidently surprised by Stalin’s move and temporarily lost control over its objective. The bull ran in various directions before deciding to shrug Stalin off its ear. The bull rammed him on the ground with a force apparently equal to ten times his body weight. Stalin’s bones would have been pulverized by the impact but he still held his jaws tightly on the bull’s ear. The bull rammed Stalin on the trunk of a nearby tree and unable to withstand further pummeling he broke free. The bull was still in frenzy as the shock of being attacked had almost driven him crazy. While we rushed to Stalin for help the bull swiftly disappeared into the thickets. Stalin wasn’t breathing. The dog walker wiped beads of perspiration from his forehead and stood awkwardly, struggling to maintain some form of composure. “Yeah, what a waste. He was no good anyway. He was more like a roaming box of fleas. I had to abandon this beast” retorted the dog walker. This ungrateful fellow was the erstwhile owner of Stalin. The whole gathering raised their heads in his direction and sensing resentment he hurried down the road without looking back. Everyone was silent. Stalin was lying tangled on the tall grass near the tree and yet, he looked calm. “Maybe this is what they call honor; saving people who no longer need you” said Basu silently. For the first time everyone agreed with him. Stalin had cleared the test; the final test of loyalty.
Touch me not
Does casteism still exist in our country? Most of us would say yes to that even if we haven't experienced it in person but believe me, most of us won’t recognize how crude it is unless we see it for ourselves.Well, it was my turn to be educated about this evil and as they say "Education begins at home".
I was visiting my grandfather's place in Jalaun(a small town near Jhansi(UP)). Its funny how you feel detached from the world in a place like this. Its quiet, the only sounds you hear in the morning are that of a Maulvi praying in a Masjid and that of chirping of birds. Frankly speaking, in a few days you begin to miss the polluted air of the cities!! But that day the calm was short lived.I woke up in the morning and to my utter disdain found my grandfather shouting at the top of his voice."The boy sleeps till 7'o clock. What is he going to do with his life", my grandfather shouted at me. He looked flabbergasted. Its a sin to sleep after sunrise in Jalaun and I didn't know that. He might as well have hit me for sleeping till 7 but something pulled him back ; may be he thought I was too old now to be beaten or may be he was waiting for the right time, right place. Whatever it was, I was thankful to have escaped my bed without a bump on my head.And so it began.After freshening up, I settled down to read the newspaper. They say lightening doesn't strike twice in the same place. Well, in my case, it did."Bring me the Karkatiya, hurry up.", my grandfather snarled at me.I got up to fetch it but stopped mid way. What was I supposed to get? Oh God!, I realized I didn't know what a Karkatiya is!!I went back to him and asked " Grandpa , I don’t know what a Karkatiya is . Can you please explain it to me?"I might as well have asked him to shoot me, it wouldn't have made a difference."You don't know what a Karkatiya is!! What good are you. What do they teach you in your college. Oh my God, this lad is as dumb as they can get.", he shouted.First things first . Of course, they don’t teach about a Karkatiya in an engineering course and if it was such a life altering thing , I should know about it!!As I later found out , he was asking for a screwdriver. OK, that was the news of the day.As the day passed, his anger subsided. I was able to survive the next few hours without being scolded. But that's more than you can as for, isn't it?In the afternoon, a man came to clean up our verandah and the sewage system of our house. His name was Ramlal. My grandparents had given him this job for which he got paid monthly.They also gave him to eat some leftover food on most days. Rest of the days, he got a cup of tea. That day, it was tea.After he was through with his job he asked my grandmother for a cup of tea. My grandmother took a cup which was especially separated from other cutlery items, kept in one corner of the kitchen."A separate cup for him Dadi?", I asked her."Of course, we are brahmins, beta.", she said.These people really think I am dumb enough not to know that."Ya, Dadi, but how does it matter. Wouldn't it be good if we treated him in a more humane way", I asked her."Beta, there are some things in life you should not question. If we are doing this, it is for a reason. Now go give him this tea.", she replied.So I took the cup and proceeded to make the biggest mistake of my life. Ramlal was sitting on the floor with a puppy by his side. I tried to hand him the cup but he insisted, "Sahabji, keep the cup on the floor and I will take it."Thats when it happened. I kept the cup on the floor and gave him a pat on his shoulder."Nahiiiiiiiiiiiii", shrieked my grandmother who was watching us from the door.The man stepped back, his eyes wild as if he had seen a ghost.”Nahi Sahab.”, he said with terror in his voice. Before I could understand anything or ask my grandmother, she ran back into the house.Hell, now even I was scared. Was there something scary that I was missing, c’mon tell me!!In a moment, she came running back with a bottle of water and hurriedly started spraying it all over me, mumbling something at the same time.Now this was embarrassing, contrary to popular belief I do take a bath everyday. By the time she stopped I was half drenched. I was shell shocked. Ramlal was still staring at me as if I was a ghost. The poor puppy had the shock of his life and tried to escape through the closed gate, but only managed to get its neck stuck in an opening."He is not to be touched. Don't you know that? This is gangajal to purify you. Never do this again.", she shouted at me. My grandfather, hearing all the noise, came outside. When he came to know what had happened all hell broke loose. "He is an Achhut. Why did you have to touch him. Are you an idiot? You have no commonsense for God's sake...." I stopped hearing after that.All the neighbors were looking at us in bewilderment. The fact that I had touched an Achhut didn't go down well with any of them. They were looking at me as if I had brought shame to all of them. Taunts and advices started flowing in from all the surrounding roofs.The fact is, I did feel embarrassed for Ramlal. How would have the man felt at that moment when everyone was scolding me for "touching him". Frankly, you cannot feel like a normal human being in such circumstances. After about ten minutes, when my grandfather was through with his harangue on untouchability and my lack of brains, we went in. Ramlal left without finishing his cup of tea and the poor puppy managed to run from the house too. So that left me alone. My grandfather’s reaction showed me how he counted this as a normal thing like waking up early in the morning or knowing about a karkatiya !! By the night, almost all my relatives knew of the incident (Frankly, I wouldn't have been surprised to read about it in the newspapers the next day.) As for me, I barely spoke after that. Once I tried to make my point but my grandfather looked at me with such fury that I almost fainted. After dinner, we had our customary stroll on the roof where he quietly(yes, quietly) explained to me the caste system and the grave sin that I had committed. I didn't dare interrupt him, not after the day that I had.Two days later I packed my bags and came back to Kanpur. But the memory of that incident still lingers on like a ghost. That day I came face to face with a gross reality of “our times”. There are places beyond the metros of our country where casteism and untouchability are still in practice. Small town India has still got a long way to go before it can count itself among developed societies. Nuke-deals and multi-billion dollar acquisitions are good but there are places in our country unaffected by all this hoopla where the basic equality of people is still an issue, of course accompanied by many such evils. Let us not forget that.
Walking the line
We build our lives on the foundations laid down in our childhood by our parents. As we grow, both physically and mentally, we are bound to build our own ideologies shaped by our encounters with the external world. Our preoccupation with our thoughts and comparison between different ideas is the most decisive factor which shapes our thinking. But what if our notions of ‘good’ and ‘bad’, ‘practical’ and ‘foolish’ clash with what we have been taught as kids.
THE BUILD-UP
Movies are our favorite pastime. Whenever a family outing is planned, a movie is an indispensible part of it. And why not? The phantasmagoric world of the movies does take away the drudgery of everyday life, if only for a short while. So last Sunday, as my father was free from work it was decided that we'll go to watch 'OSO'. The mere mention of a movie infuses enthusiasm and liveliness in an atmosphere otherwise clouded by the omnipresent “Saas-Bahu” sops in the home. It was a welcome break and so it was decided that we’ll got to watch the night show of the movie.
THE BEGINNING
As it came to pass, I had to go to book the tickets in advance for the night show. So, I rode my bike to the cinema hall, and not to my surprise, found that half the population of Kanpur wanted to se the movie that day!!
A long queue awaited me to join it as people literally battled for movie tickets. The bedlam was scary to say the least but since I had promised my movie maniac younger brother that I’ll get the tickets, I had no option but to stand at the end of the long serpentine queue. I knew I was in for a long wait and reluctantly joined the queue. Ten minutes passed and it hardly seemed to move. Ten more minutes and I had hardly shifted. What were they doing at the counter for God’s sake!! Just then a haggard old man came to me. He had weary eyes as if he hadn't slept for days, a long unshaven beard and the only thing that covered his body was a shirt in tatters and a loose pajama.
OLD MAN: Do you want the tickets?
What does he think, I am nuts standing in the queue for no purpose.
ME: Of course I do. Why do you think I am standing in this queue.
OLD MAN: Which show?
ME: The night show.
OLD MAN: Hmm....By the looks of it, you aren’t going to get to the counter. I have the some tickets. How many do you want?
ME: You mean you are "selling them in black".
OLD MAN: How does it matter? You want the tickets, I have them. As simple as that.
A faint smile crossed his face.
He was actually starting to convince me. But before I could but the tickets, my conscience( all that I had been taught from my childhood) took over.
DO NOT DO ANYTHING THAT IS ILLEGAL AND NEVER HELP SOMEONE WHO IS DOING AN ILLEGAL THING.
ME: Don't you know this is illegal. A policeman crosses by and you will spend the next week in jail.
OLD MAN: I know all that. But I have a wife who is really unwell. I need to.....
ME(Interrupting him): OK . That's it. I do not want to hear your story now. Just get off my face. I am not buying any tickets from you.
OLD MAN: Please. I will sell these to you at just hundred for one. That's just twenty more than the normal price. How long will you keep on standing in this line!
Well, his offer did seem to make sense.
WRONG THINGS WILL ALWAYS SEEM TEMPTING. DO NOT YIELD TO THEM.
ME: Look, I am not buying them. There are so many people here. May be some body else will. Now stop bothering me.
The old man finally gave up on me and walked away. I was nearing the ticket counter now. I looked back and saw a long queue behind me. That really cheered me up knowing all those people will have to wait for as long as I did. Yeah, sometimes the devil inside you does take over!!
THE CIGARETTE
It seems like he didn't find any likely takers for his offer. So he was back!!
OLD MAN: See, you are still in standing in the line. Take these tickets. It will help us both.
ME(smiling): Thank you for trying to put me out of my misery but I think I'll stick to my plan. Didn't you find anyone else.
OLD MAN: Most of them are here for tomorrow’s tickets. Look at it this way. You won't get any poorer by buying the tickets from me but I'll be able to feed myself and my wife for at least 3 days.
ME: If you have enough money to buy these tickets so that you can sell them in black, I don’t think you are in such dire-straits.
OLD MAN: This is all I have. I needed to get some medicines for my wife for which I need some extra money. That’s why I am doing this. I don’t even have a home to go to.
Was he telling the truth, or was it all made up. How do you decide? It’s the mother of all questions. Buy the tickets from him, a voice inside me pushed. Was it my conscience or was I being foolish. NO, what the hell am I thinking. These people will say anything to make you yield to them. Stay firm.
ME: Sorry, but for the last time I am telling you. I won’t buy the tickets from you.
Just then the man at the ticket counter announced that only six tickets of the night show were remaining. Six tickets and three people still ahead of me in the queue. OK, enough of morality, its time to listen to reason.
ME: OK. I'll but the tickets from you.
OLD MAN(cheering up): Four tickets, isn't it.
THERE’S NOTHING LIKE A FREE LUNCH. PEOPLE DON’T HELP YOU WITHOUT A REASON SO YOU DO THE SAME.
I probed my pockets and took out four one-rupee coins.
ME: Take these four rupees and get me a cigarette from that pan-shop. Then I'll buy your tickets.
OLD MAN(eagerly taking the coins): Sure. I'll be right back.
Well, as it turned out, the three man standing ahead of me had come to buy the tickets together. Someone called them up on the phone and they cancelled their plans to watch the movie. SO, it left me standing in front of the queue. The man at the ticket counter asked me how many tickets I wanted. I was almost going to answer him when I remembered about the old man. "How many tickets?”, the man asked me.
What should I do. Should I buy the tickets; they'll cost me lesser. Or should I wait for the old man. I told him that I'll buy the tickets from him. "You don't want the tickets then let others buy. Don't just keep standing there", the man barked at me. I looked back but couldn't spot the old man anywhere. May be he just escaped with my money. You know how these people are.
"Four tickets please", I said and bought the tickets from him. Just as I turned there was the old man standing there, out of his breath and with the cigarette.
OLD MAN: Here's your cigarette. How many tickets did you say. Four. Here are the.........
His face went pale as he saw the tickets in my hand. He looked crestfallen.
OLD MAN: You told me you'll but the tickets from me.
ME: I thought may be you...
OLD MAN(Interrupting me, agitated):If you didn’t have to buy the tickets from me , you shouldn’t have bothered me. Its not only my wife who is ill. I am not well either. And I know this is an illegal thing but what else can an old and poor man like me do.
Saying this, he walked away into distance. Was he able to sell the tickets? I don’t know.
THE END
A day later, I was passing through that road again when I saw a crowd gathered at a place.
Seeing the commotion, I stopped to see what was going on.
As it turned out, a man had died on the street. People said he died of the cold in the night. As I looked closer, a chill went through my spine. It was the same old man who had tried to sell me the movie tickets that night.
But the question was, what killed him? Was it the night cold or was it...me. May be, if I had bought the tickets from him, he would have had enough money to feed himself and his wife. May be, he would have survived had I bought the tickets from him. But wait, why was I holding myself responsible. I did as I was taught. I didn't do a wrong thing. I did a practical thing. Anybody else would have done the same. I followed what was taught to me. Or may be, the rules were laid right but I didn’t interpret them correctly. When I was at the ticket counter ready to but the tickets, when the man at the ticket counter had pushed me to buy the tickets, may be that was the TEMPTATION I SHOULD NOT HAVE YIELDED TO. Was I helping him by buying his tickets or was he helping me. Knowing the morally and practically right things isn’t enough. What matters is your ability to judge everyday situations and apply what you think is right. This was the difference between knowing the right path and walking the right path. Following the righteous path is as confusing as it is tough. Its a thin line to walk.
“Does anybody know him? Where did he live?”, a man in the crowd asked.
“I know him. He didn’t have a home”, I said silently.
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