Education

Isn’t is shameful that I, Siddharth Tyebji, son of a Muslim father and a Hindu Bengali mother, neither can speak Urdu nor Bengali?

- Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi

Though it’s hard to define the primary goal of education, the result of education should ideally lead to an enlightenment of the student towards the world outside, to provide him with a better understanding of things within him and without, so that he could use those skills in their betterment in some way or the other.

What shouldn’t it be? Most importantly, education should not solely be a means to livelihood, it should not only be the process one has to undergo to earn a living in this world, it should not only mean the passing of an exam or the stamp of a degree.

Unfortunately, it has become to mean exactly that. The idea of a holistic education meant to broaden the mind is almost non-existent today. We live in an era of ‘specialisation’, and it, by definition, demands a narrowing down of interests, a sort of isolation. Where the proliferation of choice is seen as the biggest positive development, it is not a surprise that the belief has percolated to the field of education as well. Education is the ice-cream parlour, the subjects are the various flavours on display. Take the one you like. No one’s better than the other. The vendor has no suggestions to make.

School

Take, for example, the schools under the Central Board for Secondary Education (CBSE). As early as Standard IX, students are required to select their ‘Second Language’ (it is named so as studying English is, of course, mandatory). The options available in my school were Sanskrit, Hindi, French and German.

While Sanskrit might look like a welcome inclusion in this list, anyone who has been at school knows that the picture isn’t so beautiful when it comes to its application. There are a very few students who take Sanskrit out of natural interest. Instead, most of the people who do are the ones who want to have it easy in their 10th Standard Board Exams. The fact that Sanskrit is a ‘scoring’ subject in which not too much hard work is necessary to get you a 95 out of 100 is known to all.

This has perverted the whole intention behind imparting knowledge about one of India’s ancient languages. A historically rich and beautiful form of communication has been reduced to becoming a way of acquiring numbers on a sheet of paper. A subject that can potentially open up one’s mind to a universe of knowledge is being mugged up mechanically by students, just as they had done for the multiplication tables in preparatory school.

On top of that, the options given to them are French and German. Now, for a child who has been familiar with phrases such as ‘the big, mean world’ and the ‘cut-throat competition’ outside, it is fairly easy to guess what language he or she will choose. In the new globalised India, where one might be involved in workforces constantly in interaction with foreign clients, a little knowledge of French or German is seen as an added ‘asset’. For the urban middle class India today, Sanskrit and elements such as that are part of the old India, the India gone by, and empowered by the chance at financial success and a superior quality of life 1991 has provided them, they are firm in their rejection for everything old. As if we there was actually a demarcation like such, where the old died and the new was born. But in their minds, it is clear.

I would like to iterate here that I have nothing against the teaching of foreign languages. The more appropriate way would to give students an option between Hindi and Sanskrit (and the local language of the place, if different from Hindi) and in addition, provide an optional Third Language option which facilitates the leaning of French, German and the like. The obvious argument to this would be that it’ll further increase the already immense workload the average school-goer suffers from. The obvious reply to this would be that perhaps languages are the only definable entity by which we stay connected to our culture, to the past. To subvert the study of the same for the sake of more ‘scientific’ education can be disastrous. In short, the study of history and culture, or in other words, what connects us to the past is of prime importance. The marginalisation of this defeats the very aim of education.

The underlying belief behind the existing state of affairs, though it might not be stated explicitly, is that education’s primary responsibility is to make products out of human beings. The phrase ‘duniya ke liye tayyar karna’ has taken a wholly absolute meaning today. Children have become raw materials, who are then processed with education, after which they are let out into the big, wide world as finished products. The system of examination prevalent today only furthers the extent and impact of the above style of thinking. We rely primarily on memory-based questioning which encourages students to stack up as much as they can within a period of time, just to vomit it all out on the day of the examination. There is very little emphasis given to imaginative or divergent learning, or to anything that falls beyond the scope of the textbooks.

All this is a result of a society which demands only concrete results. What you know and what you feel is immaterial to them. What matters is only the final number on your grade sheet. This is also a society that doesn’t permit failures. The emotional ostracisation that one has to undergo in case of the same is enormous. The numerous cases of suicides by students unsatisfied with their 10th and 12th grades are a big example of that. If that is not a cause of worry for us today, and if it doesn’t lead to radical change, it’s hard to say what will. The recent measures taken by the government to make the 10th board exams optional is a long-awaited step in the right direction.

Note: As I was writing this part of the piece, Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal also came up with a proposal making the teaching of Hindi compulsory across all schools in the country. This, however, is ridiculous as imposing Hindi on a Tamilian is as unjust as imposing Tamil on someone from the Hindi belt.

Universities

Albeit, it is heartening to see Kapil Sibal eager to implement the suggestions made by the committee headed by the 82-year old Prof. Yash Pal (a full copy of the report can be found here). This report on higher education in India spells out the problems it is suffering from and also suggests policies and concrete steps the government should take to overcome the same.

As Mr. Sibal puts it, higher education today has become ‘compartmentalised’. That is not only to say that streams operate independently of each other, but also that research and education, which need to go hand in hand in order to produce quality teachers, are also seen as separate entities. Quoting the report:

It should be necessary for all research bodies to connect with universities in their vicinity and create teaching opportunities for their researchers and for all universities to be teaching and research universities.

While the report acknowledges the importance of imparting knowledge about a varied set of disciplines at least at the undergraduate level, it adds that there already are some current universities that offer such opportunities. For example, there are some engineering colleges today which offer courses on subjects such as history and philosophy. But even at those centres, they are very rarely taken seriously by the students. The report’s suggestion to counter this shortcoming:

One way of improving the quality of teaching of these additional disciplines and stimulating students’ interest is to allow students for whom a subject is additional to study along with those for whom the same subject is primary. For instance, a mathematics student should study and undergo evaluation in philosophy as an optional subject along with students for whom philosophy constitutes the primary subject.

The whole idea behind the report is to make education more inclusive by way of integration, be it in terms of disciplines such as science and humanities or fields such research and education itself. Should only a part of the suggestions mentioned in the report be implemented, it will lead to a significant positive change in the way education is perceived today.

The currently fashionable idea of ‘specialisation’ has taken a totally different form when it comes to universities. While schools, through electives, deprive the child of essential basic knowledge, universities, which are the last step for a student before starting on a job, work in near complete isolation with each other. The many engineering, management and medical colleges around the country have been lacking in this regard, and this does not exclude the much-aspired-for IITs and IIMs. An student who has taken admission into an engineering college is delivered education pertinent to his field of specialisation only; there are but very few colleges in India which encourage the study of subjects beyond its principal scope, depriving the student of exposure to innumerable possibilities where different fields of study interact and co-produce, leading to over-all, all-inclusive development. Development – this is one aspect of education very conveniently forgotten today. The Constitution is unclear about its regard for education as an agent of transformation or change. This spirit is lost when education starts to be seen as something that only ‘adds value’. The proliferation of private educational institutes offering higher education is a prime example of such change in view. Most of these institutions are nothing but money-minting ventures which take no responsibility for what their duty is towards the society at large. Rather than looking at the multi-national firms which recruit people from such places and the fat pay packages they give as criteria for judgement, universities should be judged by how much they have done to reduce disparities such as gender, class and caste.

Talking Contradictions

On a summer afternoon in the capital, the Young Urban Indian happened to be in the company of the Young Jhola Krantikari, at perhaps the only place this could actually happen.

On a DTC bus. Their destinations are same, and for a change, they have taken the same path too.

Excerpts from an unlikely conversation:

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YJK: Do you think we’re shining?

YUI: We?

YJK: Indians. India.

YUI: Well…that’s a good question. On the face of it, we are, aren’t we? In the space of the last sixty years or so, we’ve improved on a lot of our shortcomings. The economy is doing a lot better and is continually on the way up, we have the resources to make ourselves stronger internally and the defence to give ourselves protection from external elements. India, which was yesterday a minnow Asian country, is today all set to become a global powerhouse. In that sense, I would say that we aren’t really shining yet, but are on the right path to do exactly that very soon.

YJK: Stronger internally? The whole country is in deep strife, my friend! There are so many of it parts, be it Kashmir, the North-East or so many others, which want secession, dissatisfied with the power at the centre as well as the state. Ah, and not to mention the menace being caused by the Tamils in the south and the Naxalites in Andhra. You call it strength?

Our defence which you refer to so handsomely also has been proved to be inadequate on many an occasion now. In the last few years, almost every big city here has been the target of Islamic extremism. Delhi, Jaipur, Ahmedabad, Bombay. You call this security?

YUI: You are right in what you say, no doubt. There is a lot going wrong, yes, but there’s a lot going right too. Is any country in the world today free from the threat of terrorism? America isn’t, Britain isn’t. Does that mean that they don’t have it in them to protect themselves properly? Somehow, people like you never seem to look at the positive side of things. Tell me, has India ever been as conspicuous on the global stage as it is now? Leave that aside. Let’s talk about our oldest of all problems. Education. Hasn’t something like the literacy rate risen to almost 3/4ths and is on the way up?

YJK: You talk of education and give me literacy as an example.

YUI: Well, ok, even if you talk about education in the strictest sense, we boast of some of the best schools and universities around the world today. The IIT’s and IIM’s are only examples. As Indians today, we have the power to take our own decisions, to study with, succeed and beat the best in the world. Is that not true?

YJK: Ha! I find your optimism infinitely amusing, I must say. Are you aware that 70% of India still lives in the villages and a greater part of that chunk feels lucky if they complete high school, leave alone ‘competing with the best in the world’.

And yes, by the way, the education you people are receiving, the one which helps you beat the best in the world, isn’t that beautiful a thing, either.

YUI: What do you mean?

YJK: What sort of education is it? What sort of lifestyle is it encouraging? What are the IIT’s and IIM’s, which you speak so highly of, producing? At the end of the day, they all are money-making machines - they take you in as raw material, brainwash and modify you according to their paradigms, stamp their brand name on your foreheads and then let you out in the open to mint money. The primary aim of education, in my view, is to instill in the students the sense of social responsibility. Where is it to be found in today’s urban youth?

YUI: That is just not true. Many of the people I know have made use of whatever skills they have acquired to serve the society in the way best suited to them.

YJK: Yes, they are a few. But how many? Or rather, what percentage does possess this sense of social belonging?

YUI: Well, you can’t have everyone thinking along those lines. Is it necessary for everyone to see himself and society that way?

YJK: I’m not sure whether it’s practically possible but that should at least be the constant effort of education. At present, the people who engage themselves in such activities do so from the weight of their own conscience. At present, the education system does nothing to instill that feeling from the very beginning in every citizen.

YUI: Instill? That’s a strong word, you know. Wouldn’t that be akin to brainwashing – children being told how to think towards the world from day one?

YJK: Maybe, but it would surely help.

YUI: Well, I’m sorry but here, I disagree. The basic aim of education, according to me, is to provide the individual with choice, to give him the opportunity to decide for his own self. Tell me, aren’t engineers, doctors, lawyers, designers servants of society in their own right?

YJK: They are. Very much so. I don’t mean to say everyone has to become a selfless social activist, but that everyone has to give something back, eventually.

YUI: Well, these people do, don’t they?

YJK: Yes, they do. But look at the IIT’s and IIM’s that you just mentioned - the most popularly sought-after institutions in our country, the ones which produce the so-called ‘cream’. Would I be wrong to say that a majority of those who come out of these institutions live a life of social oblivion, perpetually filling their already overflowing pockets, living their executive life with a wife and two children, totally unconcerned with how they could be more helpful? What do they produce at the end of the day – laptops and cell phones? Who uses them? The elite. So you have it here. The elite making products for the elite, in turn making themselves even more elitist! No accountability to the people who are below them, none at all.

YUI: That is what I’m saying. You’re too judgemental. Why can’t you just let them be? That’s the life they choose. What’s wrong what it? And besides, many of the ‘cell phone and laptop’ producing men are students of science, of technology. They are the agents of industrialization. Wasn’t that the ultimate dream of our first prime minister? It is their job to work in its cause. How are they to blame?

And tell me, isn’t science and technology hugely responsible for what we are today? Look at it broadly, look at what it has given us. Without these men you demean, would it be possible to realize all the innumerous possibilities of energy we have today, would it be possible to stay connected with this ever-so-small globalised world that we inhabit, would it be possible to reach out to the remote parts of this huge country that we live in?

Science and Technology are two of the most uncomplicated things on this planet, in the sense that they are unencumbered by opinion, irrationality or politics. They don’t have any scope for such entities. They are truly free and so are their practitioners. If mankind is to progress, they alone provide the right path.

YJK: Well put. But would you be saying that Science and Technology for its own sake is good?

YUI: It has to be, yes. It cannot be fettered. As a corollary to the point I just made, to inhibit their growth is to inhibit the progress of mankind itself.

YJK: It is precisely this kind of capitalist thinking that’s eating away the whole of civilization today, not just our country. Anything working for its own sake is doomed. If human progress is indeed our aim, everything has to work so as to help us attain this goal better.

YUI: But it is! Can’t you see?

YJK: I can. But who are the ones progressing? It is the elitist again. These cell phones and laptops you make in the name of Science and Technology – whom does it benefit? Not the 27-odd percent that still lives below the poverty line. Instead of using your acquired skills to help them get up, you help the ones who are already so better-off. You further increase the ever-growing disparity, in a country where the top ten percent earns ten times more than the bottom ten percent. You breed discontent. You inspire rebellions. And then when they fight back, like the Naxalites did, you call them terrorists.

YUI: Heh. What else would you call men who engage in the indiscriminate killing of women and children? God’s angels?

YJK: Well yes, their methods have been quite disturbing in the past few years and it’s not that I necessarily have sympathy for them, but what I’m saying is that we need to understand the reasons which inspire such outrage. The more you ignore the common man, the more he’ll make his presence felt, and sometimes in the most violent ways.

YUI: So what do you suggest? We stop all technological research?

YJK: No. Don’t stop it. But make it work in a direction where it takes everyone along with it. Make technology help the illiterate get education, provide the poor with the latest health-care facilities, give the economically backward ways in which they can pull themselves out of the rut.

YUI: Sure, why not? But then, all other forms of technological research are useless? Is it?

YJK: Yes, without a doubt. You tell me what all wonders industrialization has provided us with. For a moment, think about the damage it has done too. The ‘progress’ it has brought about – has it made us any happier than we were earlier? Is your Happiness Quotient better than your grandfather’s? Not that such things are measurable, but they are surely quantifiable.

YUI: You aren’t implying that just because humans would remain in the same state of mind irrespective of the luxuries that are at their disposal, we should stop wanting to achieve higher standards of living, are you?

YJK: Why not? If it ain’t broke, why change it? It is change for the sake of change that I protest.

YUI: That’s just stupid. The way you propose wouldn’t see any human development at all. It is the curious in us that drives us to innovate and invent. If we humans just sit around and don’t attempt to see ourselves getting better, it would kill us for sure. Practically, it’s impossible. To stifle the curious in us is to negate the sheer essence of the human spirit, and this, if anything, would inspire unprecedented rebellions. Of an even graver nature than the ones we today have.

YJK: Maybe. But if you think about it, this is the only way we can survive.

YUI: We shall see.

YJK: So we shall.

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They had arrived. And as they now bid goodbye to each other, they knew that they would meet again for many such conversations.

Conversations. Clashes. Collaborations?

The Wrong in Being Correct

Let me take the liberty of making a distinction here, a dividing line between the ways in which we react to situations, between the decisions we might make. The reader will forgive me in my choice of words for the same, if they don’t appear to be completely dichotomous to him/her.

There are two ways of responding to a given situation. One is the right thing to do – the easy, obvious way out, the way which appeals straight to common sense, and one which doesn’t take too much mental effort. The other is the correct thing to do – this is the more difficult path; one which doesn’t come naturally but with some deliberation, one which requires an amount of sustained courage and sacrifice, and one which might also amount to self-deception in certain cases, albeit superior in moral terms.

If one goes by the above definition, then India and Indians have always (well, almost) opted for the correct option, rather than the one which is right.

Had the revolutionary movements caught on and had Gandhi not returned from South Africa as he did, we would have ousted the British by force anyway. Post the partition of Bengal and then Jallianwala, the British had themselves put a time limit on their stay in this country. India wanted to be free and Gandhi or no Gandhi, it would be so. Whether sooner or later is a matter of speculation. But the revolutionaries never found enough ground to make a serious impact here. The common Indian did the correct thing – of resorting to peaceful methods of protest, of hartals and fasts instead of murders or assassinations or guerilla fights.

During the partition of the country and the birth of Pakistan, we had an option (maybe unlikely, but an option nonetheless) of declaring ourselves a Hindu state, to say that Pakistan has been created specifically for the Muslims, let India be only for the Hindus. But we didn’t. We did the correct thing – of declaring ourselves secular; India, which since time immemorial has kept as its own and assimilated numerous cultures and identities shall not divide itself on the basis of religion.

Post independence, when the Cold War was gaining momentum, we had the choice of pledging our loyalty to the Soviets - our close friends and a country for which our then Prime Minister had a soft corner. But we didn’t. When everyone in the world was taking sides, wondering what the less harmful option was, we joined hands with certain other countries to form the Non-Aligned Movement. Again, we did the correct, honourable thing.

The correct thing. That has almost always been India’s choice. Needless to say, this choice has been fraught with much struggle and sacrifice, but it has also given us something to be proud of, of making us believe that we are indeed special. We are proud of the fact that our independence struggle was a lot less bloody than others around the world. We are proud of the fact that we are secular, that it doesn’t matter here whether one is Hindu, Muslim or Christian. We are proud that we have a mixed economy, that we are not slaves to any other nation, that we are truly sovereign.

None of the above decisions or any other has hurt us more than our choice to proclaim ourselves secular. These years have seen the Hindu majority clash with every single sizeable minority; the extent of the Hindu-Muslim clash need not be elaborated upon, then we had the Sikhs massacred in ’84, and now, the historically harmonious relationship between the Hindus and the Christians has received a serious battering post the anti-Christian violence in Karnataka and Orissa. Time and again after independence, India has had to pay the price for doing the correct thing. It has had to bear the consequences of upholding its ethical values. And to its credit, never has it deterred from its belief in the principle of secularism and how essential it is for a nation such as this.

But more than sixty years on, there seems to be no end or even the possibility of an end to the issue of religion. The past few years have seen unprecedented attacks on civilians by religious fundamentalists. And it’s not only the Muslims; Malegaon has come as a blow to several self-righteous Hindus as well. But more disturbing than the actual violence has been the people’s reaction to it. Suddenly, it seems that our unshakeable faith in people of all faiths has been replaced by a visible tentativeness. Hindu socialites appear on television acting all pally with their Muslim friends, as if that alone is the proof of their belief in the concept of secularism. Simultaneously, Muslim leaders and elite are being told that it is their responsibility to keep the sentiments of their community in check and stars like Shah Rukh Khan and Salman Khan appear on news channels speaking on Islam and terrorism, reiterating again and again how one doesn’t stand for the other, as if they were expected or required to do so.

Are we really secular as we think we are? If yes, then what indeed does one mean by being secular? Does just having friends of different religions qualify? Or sharing your bus seat with a Muslim? Or having your food with him? Yes, perhaps, if these above actions are done with zero mental effort or thought, then we are genuinely secular. But do we? Do we not feel uncomfortable when passing through a Muslim-dominated area in the city? Do we still not discourage our Hindu son or daughter from having a Muslim spouse? In other words, do we not treat the Muslims as our paying guests – ‘We’ve given you space here, consider this as your own home, but do maintain a certain distance from us, please.’?

At times, the pretence or self-deception being indulged in by the average Indian comes shamelessly to the fore. Take, for example, the film Chak De! India. A story of a Muslim hockey player who is branded a gaddar or traitor just because he misses a crucial penalty kick. He then goes on to coach the women’s Hockey team to World Cup glory. Thus, he proves his loyalty in the most spectacular way and all is forgiven. What people fail to notice and what’s rather unsettling is the fact that he does have to prove that he is loyal to his motherland, that he is not a Pakistani in his heart. Would the same treatment be given to a Hindu if he happened to make the same mistake? I doubt it. But the predominantly Hindu audience sees nothing wrong. I wonder how the intelligent Muslim would have taken this implicit insult.

If this is indeed the case, if we are not genuinely secular, then we can be sure that there will be no end to communal hatred and violence here. What has been going on for more than sixty years now might just go on till eternity. It is all very well doing the correct thing, but it is also very important to be authentic about it, to believe it inside. Otherwise, all of one’s actions add up to a detailed, elaborate charade, and when practiced on such a large scale, it can prove to be the country’s nemesis. For once, we need to rethink and ascertain the responsibilities that come along with being correct rather than right.

The Booker, eh?

Chetan Bhagat must wonder why any of his novels – Five Point Someone and the other two, whatever their name was - haven’t won the Booker yet. For if a heavily clichéd take on modern Indian civilization by a first-time amateurish writer can bag the prize, surely Mr. Bhagat deserves it too. His efforts if not purely authentic, were at least not cynical or judgemental in any way. At least, they made for good time pass.

Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger leaves you with no such hope. The plot itself is one that’s bound to make you roll your eyes. The protagonist, a sweet-seller-turned-driver, son of a rickshaw puller, recounts the story of his rise to entrepreneurial success to none less than the Chinese Premier, letting him see and making him familiar with the face of the ‘true’ India in the process. Sounds quite exciting, doesn’t it? Yes, that’s the bait.

What follows is one cliché piled upon another. Almost every page in this book contains some witty remark by the author; you haven’t yet got over the last fantastic conclusive comment when you encounter the next. Very early in the novel, the narrator, Balram (the protagonist himself) divides India into two parts – Light and Darkness. According to him (and this theory takes some gulping down), all the places in the country which lie on the banks of the Ganges (called the ‘black river’ by him) fall in the Darkness. All other places fall in the Light. The Darkness, as its name unmistakably suggests, is an area of utter desolation, where rich and oppressive landlords rule over the poor working class, where no one is ever pleased with his life and hopes to, someday, move to the big cities of Delhi or Bombay i.e. the Light. This ambitious demarcation is not just mentioned cursorily; it is repeated throughout the novel; for example, a fellow member of the working class from Bihar is described as ‘belonging to the Darkness’.

Firstly, what the author fails to realize is that the area he has called the ‘Darkness’, which includes states like U.P., Bihar and Bengal have produced some of the greatest minds of the country. For decades before and after independence, this area has often been the centre of Indian thought. To call it by this preposterous title is nothing but a travesty. Secondly, they might not be in the fittest condition at present, but not all is dark there really. Yes, many people in most of these parts do aspire to move to the bigger cities in search for a better life, but that is only because of the pressures of globalization, the advantages of which haven’t yet reached them in its entirety. Nevertheless, like everywhere else, most of the people do manage to live a content life, and not everyone is as close to destitution and total dissatisfaction as Adiga paints them to be. In his world, every man in these parts is a bitter man, frustrated yet subdued by an overbearing social system, where nothing happens except daughter-in-laws being killed for dowry or husbands being milked for money, treated worse than animals by their wives.

Everything reminds you of some early 90’s melodramatic extravaganza. The villains are the politicians and the landlords, conspiring to keep the poor beneath their feet, adept at murder, rape, bribe-taking and all other possible crimes. When the rich appear, they do like over-savvy maniacs, who are obsessed with wearing designer clothes, going to the malls every second day, who love sending SMSs to their friends in the U.S.A. Generalization upon generalization, so much that it makes you wonder whether all the talk about India’s multi-faceted personality, its diversity, its dynamics is but a myth, whether in reality everything here can be painted in the twin shades of black and white.

But unlike the films, the poor are not really good people either – deeply wounded by being treated like animals, they themselves have become animal-like – excessively bitter, revengeful and ready to play along. They curse the rich behind their backs, leave no chance of pinching money from them, even conspire to murder them. In Adiga’s world, everyone is a negative character, with no scope for human dignity, pity or kindness. You have it in writing here. India is a living hell and all its inhabitants are monsters.

Every great novel, however morose or melancholic, treats its characters and the world around with compassion. Be it Rushdie’s Bombay, Naipaul’s Trinidad or Bellow’s Chicago, even the worst of men in these great cities are portrayed as human beings capable of thought and feeling. And even when the world around is in tatters, there is always the glimmer of hope, the anticipation that things can be set right, that life, however ghastly it may seem at the moment, is better than death. This is where Adiga fails completely. In this novel, which is in the form of a letter, the protagonist finds nothing remotely good about the country to say to the Chinese Premier, nothing that could point towards a possible solution, of a way out of the mess he has taken so much pain to elaborate on.

Adiga gets the Booker. And perhaps it is not that surprising that he did. For to the ignorant foreigner eager to know about India, this book can be very easily assimilated. It doesn’t even attempt to get into the complexities of the new India, the whys and hows, and the foreigner, who has never seen the ‘Light’ or the ‘Darkness’ with his own eyes will take the author’s word for it. A friend told me that Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh is believed to be selling more copies in India than this more recent award-winning novel. And that too is not surprising. For the Indians of the ‘true’ India know better.

Perfect Imperfections

Bombay is a mad city, and that is probably why, despite its thousand troubles and limitations, it is very easy to fall in love with it, to lose yourself in the madness, become one with it. And perhaps, that is also why someone who’s spent even a little amount of time there finds it so hard to leave it, feeling incapacitated everywhere else. The city, through its imperfections, sucks you in. And if it doesn’t drive you insane, it’ll fascinate you like very few other places ever will.

For example:

• Refer to the last post, third segment. There was a snake sighted in the locality I was staying in, and rather than actively taking measures to look for it and possibly save lives, the apartment management just put up a hardly noticeable notice on the walls, saying that if anyone did spot it, he or she was to contact the watchman, who would then see where the snake moves. I doubt if any more sightings of the snake or even casualties would have made a difference to the urgency shown.
  
  
  
  Meanwhile, remarkably co-incident with the snake sighting, the front door of my cousin’s flat broke, leaving a small gaping hole at the bottom. When I asked him whether we should get it repaired lest the snake sneaked in at night, he just shrugged and changed the subject.
  

• Given that the city was devastated by blasts very recently, on my way to Colaba by the local train, I expected to be frisked all over. Nothing of the sort happened.
  
  I could have been carrying a live bomb. It was Diwali night. On this day of celebration, the city was one man’s will away from being blown to pieces. Yet again.
  

• During a three-day stay, I came across two instances of people lighting crackers on the road, that too in full, evening, Diwali traffic. In the latter case, the man was setting fire to chakris and throwing them on the main road, while auto-rickshaws, cars and buses turned and swayed and evaded them without complaint, as if it was all a harmless video game where nothing really valuable was at stake.
  
  The man kept laughing all along, his joy multiplied manifold when the cracker flinging sparks in all directions made another man on a bicycle almost lose his balance. He kept laughing even when a rocket launched by him boomeranged onto his own chest, before he frantically pushed it away to avoid harm.
  

Whichever way one would like to put it, this kind of indifference to adversity, or the confidence of the people in their ability to handle it, is baffling. But that’s how most things in Bombay are. In a city where the cost of living is very high, the cost of life, on the other hand, is very low.

Angrez Chale Gaye...

On my way to Delhi a few days ago, while I waited to get my boarding pass at the airline counter, it was rather hard not to observe and not be amused by the man just ahead of me in the queue. He seemed like one around forty years of age, clean shaven, wearing an impeccable suit and tie, looking all prim and proper like all these senior company executives do. He was talking to the girl at the counter.

‘I would like an aisle seat. Just see if one’s available’, he declared to her, his voice and tone heavy and commanding, which took the girl by surprise a little.

‘Just a moment, Sir. I’ll just check if one is’, she replied quickly, getting on the keyboard.

‘Yeah. If you don’t have that, give me a window seat. But not one in the middle in any case’, out came the second declaration, by which time the lady was jumping frantically on the keys.

Her hurried behaviour seemed rather odd at first; she would be used to hearing a hundred such requests in a day. But what was special about this one was that it wasn’t really a request, it was a declaration, almost an order. It wasn’t its nature but the tone with which it was delivered was what took her aback that little bit.

The man was an executive, a confident, self-assured executive, who knew where he stood, who knew what the pomp and exuding self-belief in his deliverance of the English language meant and signified, that it would impress and rattle the young, naïve-looking female airline employee, and that it would definitely be enough to get him the best seat possible. He knew everything, at the back of his mind at least, if not entirely consciously. He never as much looked at her in the eye, looking hither and thither all throughout. That was part of the game, the performance.

A few moments later, in the flight, having got an undesired middle seat for myself, I started with the novel I was wisely carrying. On my right, by the window, was a middle-aged, mustached man with a rather healthy paunch. One look at his face suggested that he was either very upset or very angry with something. He kept looking at the air-hostesses that passed by, shifting nervously in his seat throughout, as if not sure what posture would look most respectable, and would also be most comfortable at the same time.

Now, it happened that by the time they reached our row for serving dinner, all the non-vegetarian meals they had were finished. In crisp, air-hostessque English, one of the girls explained to him that as they had run short of the non-vegetarian meals, to take the vegetarian one was the only option he had. At this, the man’s already unpleasant expression turned even more so. He looked offended, as if being subjected to a gross injustice.

‘Non-veg nahi hai aapke paas? Yeh kaise ho sakta hai?’, he barked at her, more of an outburst than a question.

‘Sorry Sir. Lekin kuchh problem ho gayi hai. Galti se vegetarian khana zyada aa gaya, aur non-veg kam.’

This apology was all he needed. He didn’t really abhor vegetarian food, after all. Now sated, he murmured something incoherently, to which the girl didn’t reply and handed him the food plate quietly.

After she had left, he laughed and murmured something more to me. I couldn’t get anything of what it was, and only nodded slightly in return, thinking it would be enough to quieten him down. It was. Having embarrassed the hostess as he intended to, and visibly pleased with his performance, he now started with the food in front.

He had surely needed this little tantrum, without which his feeling of dislocation would only have been accentuated. To have this brief argument with the hostess, and that too in the language he was most comfortable in, was his way of getting level with the people around him, all of whom, as he must have noticed, were looking much more ‘sophisticated’ then he, and therefore superior in his eyes.

The English language is, as they say, the best thing the British ever gave us, and in that, I would agree with them. But on occasions (which, by the way, are not rare), it acts as a sheer monstrosity. One that cannot just be ignored.

Suit & Tie

The malls. A showroom. A mirror.

I look into it, trying to judge whether the dark black trousers suit me, whether they produce awkward creases, whether the sleeves of the shirt I have on are too long, whether the shiny, black shoes I intend to buy would go well with the entire outfit.

I’m tense, a little irritated and very tired. And in between all the noise around and inside me at that moment, I stop and it occurs to me that this is the way it has always been.

And will be.

Where's the face, you ask?
Oh never mind, that hardly matters!

Your life is lost in this perpetual charade of trying to look like someone else, so much so that sometimes, you get scared of just being yourself. Trying to look like the well-dressed schoolboy when you are only a kid, being told to wear T-shirts more often when kurtas suit you fine, and now – trying to look like a prim-and-proper executive when you are at least a good one year away from actually being one.

And they do in the name of discipline. Even if one agrees to dress codes in schools and institutions, to ask someone to appear in suit and tie for an interview is totally preposterous. For once in the institution, the powers that be have the right to dictate how they want you to appear, and as a member, it is only correct that you follow the rules. But to do so when you are only applying for admission into the same is something that I don’t understand.

Isn’t it true that they are conducting the interview just to know you better, what you are and of what use you can be to their company? If the answer is yes, won’t it be more helpful for them and easier for you if you appear as you really are, be it unshaven, dirty or haggard? Doesn’t it harm the ‘selection’ process if everyone appears as if in uniform, with the same fake ‘confident’ smile, giving the same prototype ‘smart’ answers? Won’t it make things simpler for everyone involved if they decide to see each person in his own mould, his individuality shining through, and isn’t that what they are actually here for?

The whole exercise, as it stands, is a sham. It is, and excuse me if the phrase sounds a bit exaggerated to you, a perfect example of identity assassination.

But oh well, if you think I’m going to have my own way in this and play the harbinger of change, you can’t be further from the truth. The companies arrive in ten days time and you can be sure to find me all nicely dressed up in suit and tie, wearing the ‘confident’ smile, giving the ‘smart’ answers.

P & P

We’ll talk about lovers tonight.

We’ll talk about a couple, but not about Laila-Majnu, not Soni-Mahiwal, not Heer-Ranjha, not Chirkut Lady-Kekda Man, but about a pair whose relationship has transcended the concept of time, a love that can actually boast of being truly, singularly eternal.

We’ll talk about Poetry & Prose.

Yes, we’ll talk about P & P, two entities who differ as matter of principle, by the way of definition, who are said to be two opposite sides of the coin, but who, as a matter of truth, are linked to each other as two inseparable souls, their destinies so intricately intertwined, that, at times, it takes an effort to recognise who’s who, both working for the same purpose, the same end, but through varied means.

Maybe as they are, after all, when one thinks about it, two opposite sides of the same coin.

And why should we talk about them tonight?

Because reality, as they say, is stranger than fiction. Reality, as the name itself declares, is real, and when the real gets into its own, the two lovers cease to exist as two different entities, they cease to exist as two opposites, they combine and mix into each other to an extent that its impossible to determine what is Poetry and what is Prose, everything taking the shape of Poetic Prose or, alternatively, Prosaic Poetry. Call it PP, the order of occurrence of the lovers’ names depending on the observer’s choice.

Because when reality hits you, it hits you in the form of PP, not as the demarcations of Poetry & Prose, which are just, when one thinks about it, products of man’s passion of convenience.

Hmmm. Done. We’ll talk about Poetry & Prose tonight.

Bapu

What does one think when he or she says the name ‘Gandhi’ in his mind? How does one see him - as a man, a phenomenon or a myth? Whatever you suppose him to be, how do you approach the entity, how do you make sense of him and his legacy, how do you understand what to do with it, how to put all of it together and even sum it up, if possible?

It is far from easy. Not just for an inexperienced, relatively uneducated youth like me but also, it seems, for people who have spent a lifetime ruminating over him.

The Gandhi Ashram today was not quite its normal, serene self. There was an air of activity around, more people than usual to be seen in the museum, around and inside Gandhi’s kutir, and on the edge of the Sabarmati River, admiring the view.

It was his 60th death anniversary, and there were to be a series of events taking place in his memory, from the morning Prayer to talks by eminent sociologists and Gandhians during the day. I reached the place at around one (thanks to three silly lectures in the morning), long after the Prayer and the first round of talks, missing the opportunity to listen to none other than Ashis Nandy speaking.

Anyway, I was fortunate enough to listen to some other esteemed speakers, including our own professors Tridip Suhrud and Ganesh Devy. Some talked of his relationship with religion and secularism, some of his take on nation-building, and some on counterfactual questions such as how different history would have been, if he had lived 125 years, as he jokingly (or maybe not) said he wanted to. I listened with unwavering attention, trying to grasp and understand as much as I could. And I daresay I followed much of the discussion.

But now, as I try to think of what I learnt from the day, how much it helped me to understand the man, his life and thought, I find myself at loss yet again. As before, when I try to gather my thoughts on him, to sum him up, there is nothing that comes to mind.

All blank.

And why is it so? Perhaps, the biggest reason why he eludes all reason is because Gandhi simply could not be classified. Humans rely on classifications for their understanding. We find it convenient and surer about a person once we see him as a part of something bigger. For example, the labels we put on the friends around us (like ‘Oh he’s a politician’ or ‘Saala nerd hai’) ease our mind, helping us to understand the person, seeing him as what we have defined him as.

In this sense, it is impossible to classify or label Gandhi. What would you call him – a religious thinker, a politician, a social worker, a designer, an educationist? What, if anything, defines him? This is almost beyond me to determine. And until I’ve decided on that, the approach, the man will continue to escape my understanding.

For some time to come anyway!

An Evaluation?

This is a ‘personal’ post. So, kindly bear with me.

When you’re 21, you are used to changing your views as frequently as your clothes. Views about everything, be it people, places, or events are under constant scrutiny sub-consciously, if not consciously. Things that you absolutely deplored as a teenager can be the very things you follow earnestly now, and needless to say, the reverse is also true.

Now that I find my self quite deeply engrossed in the phenomenon of Gandhi, courtesy the course I’ve been offered at my college on his ‘life and thought’, it was rather amusing to go through an article I wrote for the college magazine about two and a half years ago.

Two and a half years is a pretty long time. And for someone as philosophically inconsistent as I regard myself to be, it sure is a pretty long time! Anyway, the article was interestingly titled ‘Gandhi-An Evaluation’ and without being too boastful, I would like to say that I found myself more-or-less correct in my convictions even then.

I’ll leave the reader to make a better judgement.

Gandhi – An Evaluation

Gandhi – never has a name in history evoked so much admiration, yet so much disdain, so much faith, yet so much disbelief, so much love, yet so much hatred ! It is undoubtedly the most researched name in Indian history, yet the man and his thought process to this day remain enigmatic to his own countrymen.

No one would argue about Gandhi’s contribution to the Indian national movement, of which he was undeniably an integral part. His twin ideals of ‘Ahimsa’ and ‘Satyagraha’ formed the pillars of India’s struggle for independence. Gandhi, a man for whom public behaviour was simply an extension of the self can be credited with playing a leading role in the birth and realisation of that something we today call ‘Indian Nationalism’.

Then why, one asks, does he receive so much indignation at the hands of his own folk ? Why does a man who is generally accepted abroad as one of the greatest man to have set foot on this earth get so much disgust in the very own land he served ? Why doesn’t the “Father of the Nation” appeal to India’s youth, as India enters the new millennium?

The answers are quite hard to find. After all, Gandhi was the man who urged people to think about “India’s starving millions”, who gave Harijans their name, who stood for the emancipation of women, who dreamt of a proud and independent India, who in earnest, dedicated his life to public duty and sacrifice.

But Gandhi’s biggest flaw was a product of his ultimate source of inner power – his ego. Gandhi’s tendency to see public life as an extension of his inner self, his inability or simply the disinclination to keep those two separate was his biggest shortcoming.

One can cite various instances to provide proof of his self-obsession. His decision to call off the Non-cooperation movement after the incident in Chauri-Chaura, despite huge protests by the men who had wholeheartedly chosen to support him, gave way to the belief that he placed his own thoughts and beliefs above everyone else. Another example would be his refusal to keep away Bhagat Singh and co. from the gallows, when he was in a strong-enough position with the British to do so. The martyrs could have been saved, but unfortunately, they stood for principles Gandhi fundamentally opposed.

But his detractors often get tempted in taking criticism too far. Gandhi has often been indirectly held responsible for something as gory as the partition. The Muslims claim that Gandhi had a soft corner for Pandit Nehru and wouldn’t let Jinnah, the Muslim representative assume the highest political post in independent India. That, they say, was one of the biggest reasons behind the division which took the lives of millions. Interestingly enough, the Hindus on the other hand feel that he appeased the Muslims too much and often gave in to their “unreasonable demands”. It is not merely a co-incidence that Gandhi was murdered by one of his own religion.

But to understand Gandhi, to admire him, one needs to go beyond these actions to the underlying philosophy. It would be unfair to see him only as the architect of the Indian freedom struggle, as its greatest leader. The real greatness of Gandhi lies in his simplicity of thought, in his application of his “Experiments with Truth”, in his vision of India. Gandhi fought for an India independent, politically and economically. He dreamt of an India free from unemployment, illiteracy and fundamentalism. He envisioned a state without violence and terrorism of any kind. This unshakeable belief that violence bred more violence and it eventually led to the complete moral decay of the society was the foundation his thoughts and actions stood on.

Today, when the world is caught in a grip of hatred and violence, in a world where terrorism has become bigger and better than ever before, can we afford to forget that “half-naked fakir” ? His message, due to its simplicity and straightforward logic is ever-relevant, something that needs to be remembered if the human race hopes to avoid eventual doom.

As General Douglas MacArthur once said, and I quote him – “In the evolution of civilization, if it is to survive, all men cannot fail eventually to adopt his beliefs.”

And let us all hope that we don’t.

Denver Paaji !

I walked into Music Station, a place selling music and film CD’s and DVD’s. I was there to return the Bhool Bhulaiyya CD I had rented the day before. There were two people already at the counter, and I waited for my turn, looking at the various shelves having a host of movie discs on show.

On the other side of the shop, standing aside the pair of headphones and the couple of music CD’s you can listen to for trial, were two typical Haryanvi Jats – tall, burly and with an air of unmistakable menace around them. One of them had the headphones to his ears, while the other was going through the adjoining shelf.

“Paaji! Aap yeh gaana suno….paagal ho jayoge aap!”, cried the first one, suddenly.

“Achha ji? Lao!”, replied the other, and took over the headphones.

A few moments later, he handed them back.

“Denver hai na yeh?”

“Haan ji…aapne suna hoga yeh gaana pehle…”

“Haan suna hai….teri gaadi mein hi kaafi baar”

“Magical voice hai ji, is bande ki….”

“Hmmm.”

The man on the headphones now went on to listen to the song with sheer delight on his face, almost dancing along with the tune. He was singing as well, and his voice was as horrible as horrible could be, but I got enough words from them to recognise the song –

“Country roaaaaaaaaaaaadddds, take me hommmmmmmmmme
To the plaaaaaaaaace, I beloooooooooooong
West virginiaaaaaaaaaa, mountain mommmmmmmaaaaaaaa
Take me hommmmmmmmmme, country roaaaaaaaaaaaaaaadddds !”

“What a voice, yaar, what a voice!”, he finally concluded, putting the headphones down.

It was amazing, to see two of these so-typical desi Haryanvis, whom I had seen previously only as local kirana shop owners, traffic policeman or bus drivers (and found it hard to associate them with anything else), to be discussing John Denver at a posh music store.

And then when I thought about it, I discovered that this is exactly what Gurgaon has to offer, which is different from all other places in India.

Here, you have desi Jats enjoying Denver and other western artists, big, over-sized aunties going about in fashionable, obscene-looking, designer trousers, and teenagers, ‘cool dudes and dudettes’, all dressed to kill, enjoying their evening out at expensive coffee parlours.

It is fascinating, when not slightly irritating.

Simple Things

Sid dear had been very kind to tag me in his last post. And as I’ve nothing better to write on right now (going through a dearth of ideas, as the sophisticated novelist would put it), I choose to elaborate on his crappy topic. I choose to make it even crappier.

Be sure to refer to his piece before you have a look at mine.

http://sleepingtablets.blogspot.com/2007/10/you-got-tagged.html

If you don’t do so, you might end up taking me for a bored, sadistic idiot, something that I might actually be but something I would rather not confide to you.

So here it is!

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At the age of 21, you are neither a kid nor a man. You are somewhere in between those two states, unsure about yourself, about what you must retain and what you must change. Self-obsessively lost in your endeavour to make this transition peaceful and coherent, you forget the little things that you used to do earlier, things that gave you great joy in the past and those which you might be embarrassed to execute now. Now, that you are unsure.

Well ‘Keep It Simple’, as the old clichéd saying goes. In an attempt to do the same, I shall now make a list of small things that you might have loved doing in the past and which you must try doing from here on -

1) Fight with your kid sister – Ah! Remember the last time your sister and you tried pulling each other’s hair out, and having been frustrated doubly by your eventual inability to do so, satisfied your desire to inflict pain with a big thump or two on the back? Deeply satisfying, wasn’t it? You’d never realise how much so it was, but once you start doing it again, you’ll relive the same boundless joy you felt the first time. After all, this was your personal home version of the Fight Club!

By the way, you can fight with your kid brother as well, if you don’t have a sister. The joytitude would be almost the same, I presume.

2) The Knock-knock bluff – This is something I used to do a lot as a kid. On days when we friends didn’t get the bat and ball to play with, to pass time, we rang the bell of any house in our locality and then disappeared into some nook or corner waiting for the response of the person who opened the door. More often than not, the flat chosen was of the Uncle or Aunty who was the most khadoos (the ones who scolded us before giving the ball back when a sixer reached their terrace) and it was immensely satisfying watching him/her annoyed at finding no one at the door. Also, if the person was someone who had actually never returned a ball that had reached his/her terrace, we rang the bell multiple times till each one of us was convinced that that particular ball-eater had been given ample punishment.

3) Mixing colours in the water tanker – This is something you can attempt during Holi. After four or five hours of mutual decoration, when the people in your apartment have retired to their bathrooms to wash their vividly colourful selves, you and your friend can go to the terrace and pour colours into the water tanker. People dying to get the much needed bath would be aghast to find red, blue and green coming out of the taps. I’m sure that would annoy the Uncles and Aunties no limit, which is again something that is sure to give you stupendous joy and satisfaction.

That’s just three. The Dearth of Ideas Syndrome again. Well anyway, you can add an idea or two of your own here. The rule is simple and easy to remember: Anything that gives others agony will give you joy! Do such simple things and you would find yourself becoming a child again, happier and less caught-up.

Mr. India

What if when on a walk down the street, you were to meet India - the man? How would you recognize him? What will he look like and what sort of person will he be?

Let’s see.

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Without the shadow of a doubt, he would be a man of huge build, roundabout seven feet tall, conspicuously rising above every other person around. But even for a man so tall, he would look rather smallish, as if the lord above had tried to put too much into that seven feet frame. The muscles on his body would bulge rather awkwardly, almost as if it wasn’t being able to hold them intact anymore, as if the flesh would tear the skin and come out anytime now, as if it was too heavily packed.

The body would not make any sense at all as a whole. It’ll look as if different parts of it had been taken from totally different individuals, and then put together to make one continuous piece. The left hand might be shorter than the right, one part of the body might have a lot more hair than the others, and the legs might be too thin for a man with such bulky arms. To put it in a nutshell, the body would give a rather incongruous look.

Several parts of his body would give the appearance that they don’t actually belong there, that they were striving to cut off from the main, that they wished to be independent. One of the arms or legs might just be hanging precariously, as if it was almost ready to fall off, as if Mr. India was just barely managing to hold on to it. Such complexities would of course be a cause of great worry and even pain for the man. There would a constant wince on his face, he would always look to be in great distress.

As far as his mental framework is concerned, he could be called A Psychiatrist’s Delight. A one-in-a-trillion sort of man. Quite obviously, a person with such unique physical characteristics wouldn’t be completely relaxed in the head. In fact, with such remarkable variety inherent, he would be someone totally confused about his identity, about what he really is. As mentioned before, his mind and body would make no sense as a whole and he would spend hours, days, months, years, and decades trying to give some meaning to it, to find his ‘identity’.

He would also be a man totally clueless about his past. He’ll remember the events alright, and he might take great pride in the victories he’s had over other individuals and feel deep shame over his innumerable defeats, but would not able to pinpoint why things happened as they did. In fact, a closer look would tell you that he is not even interested in learning about that, that he is close to being completely ignorant about himself. Whatever conceptions he has about the past might just be nonsense, something just jumped to without proper thought or reasoning. He might even tell you that he was once called the The Golden Boy by his friends at school, but that might actually be something only his mother called him to make him feel happy. On the other hand, there might be truth in his claim but you would find it rather hard to believe seeing his present state.

As far as the present and future go, he would tell you that his condition is far better than what it was some time ago. He would say that things are getting better for him by the day and people in his neighbourhood have started acknowledging his presence around the place. He would tell you that his financial condition might not be fantastic as of now, but his business is moving in the right direction and things are bound to get rosier. The only thing bothering him is his health, he would say, the unique assortment of body parts, the various components always threatening to slide away.

All in all, he would be a man like no other. One thing that you could say with sureness about him is that he’ll be a singularly kind man, the sort anyone would like to become friends with. He might not be the strongest, or the largest, or the most intelligent person around and he certainly won’t be the richest of them, but he’ll be unique, a subject of envy to his neighbours and of great awe and wonder to everyone else.

As said before, Mr. India would be A Psychiatrist’s Delight. A one-in-a-trillion sort of man.

A Bird's Eye View

There is something common about all contemporary Indian authors in the English language, be it Vikram Seth, Jhumpa Lahiri, Kiran Desai or Raj Kamal Jha, and that is that they have all spent a substantial amount of time outside India. Some have stayed there for education, some for work and some have made it their home, peeking in on India when they so desire. If you loosen the argument just the little bit, you can even include writers like V.S. Naipaul, Salman Rushdie and Rohinton Mistry. They’re of course not Indian, like some of us do claim, but are of Indian ancestry nevertheless.

Some pretty big names, aren’t they?

The startling fact is that the above is true for most acclaimed Indian authors. There are very few who have spent their entire lives here and have still been able to come up with writing that is comparable to some of the masterpieces by the names taken above. Arundhati Roy and Pankaj Mishra, to name a couple. But there are too few, and why is that?

Living abroad didn’t necessarily improve their style of writing; I doubt if anyone else could ever produce a novel as powerful as Roy’s The God of Small Things. And also, it wasn’t that the years away from India helped them gain insights into the world inside and outside in ways they had never been aware of before.

Maybe, and I think I might be right here, those years in the West gave them that much-needed privilege, which is something we all wish we had, that is of being able to observe and understand something so personal to oneself from a distance. Maybe, this place is too complex and confusing to fully understand when you are living in it, as one of its countless little parts. Maybe, one needs a bird’s eye view, the chance to lose oneself in the maze completely, and yet not be overwhelmed by wild, uncontrollable emotion, the type which is bound to come when you think about this great country.

Bom Bom !

I hail from the capital, New Delhi as we all know it, the NCR as I sometimes call it (with one eyebrow slightly raised above the other). And I don’t claim that it’s something I’m ‘proud’ of, as that doesn’t make much sense. I moved to the place when I was six and a half years old, my father took up a job there, and coming to the big city was hardly a conscious decision on my part.

But having spent more than twelve adolescent years in and around the place, I have obviously developed feelings for it which can be labelled loosely as affection. I would be the first to concede that it has no inherent culture, not much greenery and natural beauty to boast of, and that it’s the country’s most unsafe city with its alarming crime rate, but it’s where I grew up and each joint and locality has memories attached to it, holds special significance.

So when I, a staunch ‘Delhi-ite’(don’t ask me to pronounce it !), hear someone go ga-ga over Bombay, ‘the financial capital of India’, the land of Bollywood, of the beautiful Nariman Point and Juhu Beach, my first reaction is to give him the I-couldn’t-care-less look, make a few nervous movements here and there and move out of the room saying that whatever it is, however grand the ‘necklace’ might be, it may have a thousand Hanging Gardens, but Bombay can never be what Delhi is, what the NCR is(the eyebrow is in action again).

But, as it turned out to be, when I went to the port city for the first time two years ago, to that ‘great, ruined metropolis’, I found my baseless defence melting away. For there in front of my eyes was a city which offered everything, which was a world to itself, a world of the beautiful and the ugly, of fire and ice, of the rich and the poor, and of everything that lies in between.

In Bombay, just as you get out of the air-conditioned comforts of the airport, you are confronted suddenly with something totally different. There are no towers, no buildings, nothing to suggest that you are now in one of India’s metropolitan cities. Just small, dirty-looking houses and slums, people sleeping on the pavements, some even on the road, inside temporary roadside tents and below the flyovers. People everywhere; much more than the city can afford. You are reminded suddenly of all you have read and seen in movies about Bombay over the years. Bombay is the city to which more and more people flock in every year, in search of a job, of food, shelter and security. They come from everywhere: some with hopes of getting into the film industry and many others with no clear objective at all. They live on the footpath, struggling to make ends meet, because even if the city wishes to, it can’t adopt them. Not anymore. The contrast is startling; on the right are high-rise apartments, on the left you have people sleeping amidst their own shit and piss.

The same contrast is written all over the city. For every Malabar Hill, there are a hundred Jogeshwaris, for every Infinity, there are a hundred Crawford Markets, for every Amitabh Bachchan, there are a million wanna-bes who keep trying unsuccessfully every day, settle down on the sidewalks, or in the slums. This violent collage of modern existence is exhilarating, when not disturbing. Bombay is, as Suketu Mehta describes it, the ‘Maximum City’.

And tell me, which city could present you with such amazing sights, as the one I witnessed sitting at the Hilton, of the people below walking along the seacoast, of families with the children holding colourful balloons, of couples strolling hand in hand, admiring the water, of old men, out for their evening walk, gossiping away like teenagers. That view, I remember distinctly, developed a sudden, violent urge within me to leave the air-conditioned restaurant, to leave my five-star coffee half-drunk, to get up from the heavily cushioned chair I was sitting on, to run down and do what those people were doing, talk and watch the sea.

All very romantic, you say, what about the problems, the horror of living in a city like Bombay? What about the floods you have there every monsoon, when the city breaks down, submerged up to the neck? What about the problem of living space, Abhinav? Have you forgotten how you and your cousin went running around Bombay looking for a flat to take shelter in, when you had given the poor chap a sudden visit last year? And have you also forgotten how wretched you felt at Crawford Market that day, with the rain belting down, and a million stall-keepers shouting in your ear? Remember how you swore that you’ll never set foot on this blasted piece of land again?

And I will nod, I will say yes, and then I will tell you that it is not the only thing that matters, that there is a certain kind of beauty the eyes cannot see, which only the heart can feel, that there is something beyond logic, something about the city which sucks you in, however clichéd it might sound, it is the city’s history, its dynamics, its spirit.

So would you be surprised, if I tell you that given the chance, when I grow up and have a job to call my own, I would like to have an apartment flat near Nariman Point, facing the sea, and that I would love to make weekend trips into the old city, uncovering secrets yet hidden about the ‘great, ruined metropolis’?

P.S. :

I call it Bombay, not Mumbai, and I have my reasons:

1) First and foremost, I am not a Shiv Sainik, nor wish to become one in the coming time.

2) Naming the city on the basis of it being a port, or a bay, sounds more logical than naming it after some goddess called Mumba Devi.

3) And yes, to bring out the hidden sentimentalist in me, Bombay sounds romantic; has been its name for quite a long period of time. Names, like places and people, have histories behind them, and the past cannot be erased all of a sudden by a bill passed in the parliament.