The butchers of secularism
Valmiki wrote Ramayana during 4th century BC with Rama as the main character which portrays an ideal man and the perfect human. People consider this fictional character larger than life and pushed him up to a God like status. What Valmiki wanted to say through Ramayana are the duties of relationships, portraying ideal characters like the ideal servant, the ideal brother, the ideal wife and the ideal king and how a man should live his life. But people are more interested in masala rather than the main course. Chanting Rama Rama wil not make them in to Rama.
Let us consider the myth that once upon a time there was a temple ( even ASI is not sure ) before the construction of mosque and it was demolished by Mir Baki Khan on the commands of Babar. So our great Hindus have taken revenge by demolishing the mosque. The court of law in this land has favoured these butchers by saying that the idols of Rama lalla ( infant Rama ) where people have kept is the exact place where Rama was born. (Bollywood people should take a note of this.) Disputed land where a complete mosque once stood at around 2.77 acres is cut in to three pieces. One for Nirmohi Akara just for filing a case and one each for hindus and muslims. Now owners of the mosque will get one third of the land while hindus will get two third. If three more suits are filed, I really doubt what would have happened.
So, now the demolition of mosque and its aftermath has been justified by the educated lawyers and justices of this country. Ambedhkar has rightly said that for namesake, India is secular, but communal riots were happening for centuries and it will happen for centuries to come. But when a court of law justifies this communalism, hopes of forward thinking secular people have been butchered.
Banyan Tree
There is a huge banyan tree in my neighbour’s home,
which I am not supposed to climb,
but I have enjoyed it shade on all the sunny days
stamped the dry leaves to hear the crushing sound eagerly
For a cuckoo its a palace.
they make their nest here and leave their offspring while they search for food.
early morning sleeps are sweetly disturbed by cuckoos sound
straight from my bed, I used to go there
and look which cuckoo has disturbed my sleep.
Table, chair, pen, paper - under its shade.
I taught this tree maths, science, history when I was small.
and as I grew, he himself has learnt literature, socialism and communism with me.
Sometimes he will correct my mistakes,
A sharp ray of glint fell on the page as I was pouring my thoughts once
to show the blunder mistake I have made,
As time went on, I travelled length and breath of the country,
met as many good and bad people as I can,
lived my life to make the ends meet,
finally the ends met, so I returned to my banyan tree.
for days I just spent sitting under its shade.
and once I took a pen an d paper,
but the pen refused to move.
paper was empty.
a glint of ray fell on the empty ruled sheet,
lines where shining bright.
I jus looked up. I couldn’t get any answer,
ask my banyan tree, may be you will get an answer.
EQ vs CQ
Why we like something so much, like a song or music or a movie or a book or a painting, etc. why we get emotionally bonded to a creative work. Is it because of its creative value or its emotional content.Since Raavan is around the corner, I was searching some film videos by Mani Ratnam in youtube. In between I came across ‘Mouna Raagam’ bgm which is very close to my heart for a long time. Some sort of strange feeling which keeps you hunting for days together. What Mozart and Bach have done for the west, Ilayaraja has done it. So, there was other video which caught my attention. It was by an unknown band of some four members who have composed a song which starts and ends with this theme music. Clearly they are very much inspired by this thirty second music. Though it’s a mediocre attempt, their creative and emotional outburst has to be lauded. I couldn’t understand what actually made them to do that song with this BGM. Is it purely an emotional outburst or result of the creativeness which the bgm has or a combination of both.
Let’s assume that the theme music is purely a creative work while there’s no emotional quotient in it. Pure creative in the sense completely new. Which has not been done before. Which might have been ridiculous and stupid. But it will be done in such a way that it grabs our attention for a second. The best examples are the television commercials. Within seconds they have to attract the customers. Make people understand what the product is all about, who the target customers are, show their brand value and most importantly is to attract the viewer. So, in this case the marketing skills depend on how inventive you are. The best example is Vodafone’s Zoozoos. Voted as the best commercial last year. It is creatively made. There’s no doubt in it. But it doesn’t touch you emotionally. Signboards are the other example where a photograph is beautifully manipulated in a photoshop – some trimming and cropping, some colour tone adjustment will give the best result.
Not all the commercials follow the same rule. There are some which kindles your creative as well as emotional quotient. Airtel started their campaign with A R Rahman’s tune which became their signature tune for all their other ads. My favourite was their three word campaign, for example ‘confess, confide, convey’. Small kids are used accordingly for the three words with the Rahman’s tune has moved me. General motors launched their Chevrolet brand in India with the ad which features some Indian festivals. It was like an international brand has come much closer to us.
So what’s the other thing that has caught our emotional quotient? Television soap operas. Serials have moved our Indian ladies to tears. These serials have changed the definition of television and rewrote the history with their never ending episodes running for years and years. All the satellite televisions are racing against each other with their emotionally charged sans-bahu, father-daughter themed serials. These serials are so successful that they are able to bring out all the possible emotions a human being can feel – happiness, sadness, anger, humour, frustration, sympathy, empathy, etc. our emotional quotient is really checked. But do they leave a lasting impact. We don’t long to see the same episode twice. We may not want to have the same emotions all the time but we will be rather interested to have different emotions randomly. So why is that when we hear a joke for the first time we burst in to laughter and the same joke next time doesn’t seem to be a joke. Why our emotional quotient doesn’t seem to work for the second time.
The same can be applied to creative quotient. When we see something new, something creative, we feel surprised. But the same surprise may not be there for the second time. Because what was new for the first time will become old by the second, third and fourth time. Now, why our creative quotient has stopped working.
The only possibility is that when both the quotients get proper attention, we feel a sense of satisfaction. If we talk about senses, food is the only thing that can satisfy most of our senses. We can see, smell, touch, feel, taste. So when most of our senses gets proper attention, we are able to make a decision. What we feel tasty remains tasty for the rest of our lives. Emotional and creative quotients are just like twins. When something satisfies the both, we feel a lasting impact. When something is creatively engaging and emotionally charged, we feel a complete sense of satisfaction.
Harkrishan.M.A.,
Outside the city limits where no serious activity ever happens, is an arts college. Its afternoon first hour. Students had their lunch and are ready to doze off. Heat waves sweeps the classroom and fan helps it any way. Some students are grouped under the fan, some have already started to sleep with head hidden inside their folded hands on the bench. This is the situation when lecturer Harkrishan M.A., enters the class. Front benchers get up to show some respect and back benchers continue with their work. With just a year experience, he takes a look at the class. Every face is motionless, dead and without any expression. He gets on to the Dias and thinks what to speak. Nothing is in his mind. As usual, he questions the frontbenchers about the previous days lecture. Ready to take an unprepared class, he flips around his non-detail. And finally gets a new story to read aloud.
As he reaches second page, all the students were exhausted, with Harkrishan's monotonous reading to himself. Surprisingly, he raises his voice which results in complete silence. Then a student puts a doubt. Harkrishnan never knew any answer. The student has completed his question. Now its his turn to speak something thats relevant to that. And gives an answer which if by-chance is understood will not be understandable. Yes. Satisfied. The student thinks that their sir has given the correct answer. He takes his seat. Then another student gets up. Thank god, this time its an easy one.
As he proceeds, he hears a giggling sound. Irritated. He takes a serious look at the class and goes through the class in order to avoid the center stage. Eagerly awaiting for the bell to ring, he any how manages with his non-detail. After the bell, runs straight to the library. Because library is the place whrere no one will question him. He takes some three magazines, occupies a corner chair and flips around the colourful advertisements. Finally gets an interesting topic to read. As he continues, his eyes start drooping. Before falling a sleep completely, he heads straight to his department. Arranges his things on the table and keeps his shoulder bag ready for the clock to struck five.
And finally at five, he leaves to his room. Its just 10 mins walk from his college. He walks alone daily, looking around the trees and setting sun. he enjoys walking around this road. Autumn is his favourite month because of falling leaves which gets crushed under his feet as he does it enthusiastically.
As he enters his room, throws his bag away and falls on the bed. Looking at the roof, he thinks something. After few minutes, gets up to change his dress, hangs it properly, washes his face and have tea in the nearby tea stall. Again returns back to his room, takes his chair and rests his legs on the table. This is his evening position. till supper, he will sit in this position, thinking about something. After taking food, he came to his room and again continued with the same position. Then he takes a look at the neatly covered bedspread and pillow. Now he changes his position from the chair to bed and starts to think again about something. Within few minutes he has slept without closing the door or switching off the lights. Chilling wind at midnight wakes him up. Then he closes the door and switches the lights off.
The next day he gets up around 6:30 and is ready to leave his room by 8, half-an hour before the college time. Again the same college, same students and same non-detail. While he is slowly on his way, he thinks how his life would have been if he was working for a newspaper as a journalist, reporting from the close encounter of curfew hit areas as tv journalist used to do. Good. He has reached his college.
The following weekend, he leaves to his home which is around three hours journey. Son of a middle class father and household mother with an elder brother who is working as a manager in a bank. Darkness sets in and mother is alone when he reaches his home. Finally a smile on his mothers face bring a bit of happiness. His father was away, busy with the marriage work for his brother. After few words with his mother, he gets glued to the tv.
The next day he gets up to find his father has woken up before him and left the house. He brushes his teeth and is ready for his coffee. He takes the chair to backside of their house places it on the veranda which is the usual place in their family for coffee in the morining and evening. This place has a neem tree which harkirshan and his brother with their friends used to climb after their school when they were kids. There is also a tulsi plant, which his mother waters daily during her puja. There is also a jasmine plant which has filled the entire place with such a beautiful smell during early mornings, that the entire family enjoyed it daily with their coffee. Sometimes his father will pluck the flowers and give it to his mother. He will not leave her untill she ties it in to a garland and pins it to her combed and braided hair. Whether she is busy or not, she has to ask her husband how she is looking and he will give a smile.
So, finally he starts to think something with coffee in his hand. All his friends are working in nearby towns and he was left alone that weekend. The least thing he can do is to take a walk around his old antique like house. Almost all the items are inherited from his grandfather - the huge clock, table, chair, furniture, etc.
After breakfast, he takes bath and power goes off, shattering his dream of watching tv. As it was hot, he decides to stay inside. Roams around the house in his white lungi and bare chest and explores the things brought during his absence. Without having anything to do he arranges his old books in order. Lunch was ready by noon and after that he takes a long nap.
Wakes up in the evening to find his father in the veranda with a newspaper. Finally enquires how the marriage work was going on. His father asks him how his work was going on. That’s it. No expression on his face. then his father hands him a recruitment test for lecturer in govt. college in their hometown. Somewhat excited, he fills the application, thinking that atleat he can stay in his home town.
Its Sunday evening and he has to leave. Even though he will be retuning back the next weekend, he leaves as if months together he has to stay in desert without food and water. And he finally prepares for his test during the free hours in the library. Very enthusiastically he will start with the book open from the first page with a fresh foolscap paper to work out problems and within minutes he starts to think something.
Finally he takes the test and does the maximum he can and the results are out within a week. His father calls in to the staff room in the college to say that his number was not in the selected list of candidates. Upset. Heart broken. He prepares to leave at the end of the day. He walks to his room, thinking something. Dry leaves are crushed under his feet. He walks slowly to his room.
Originally written on 14th july’ 2005.
The alchemy of desire by Tarun Tejpal.
Extracts from the book – The alchemy of desire by Tarun Tejpal.
‘
Like the earlier one, this manuscript too began well. The opening sentence had floated serenely like a drifting kite into my mind the night of my resignation as we drove up and down Chandigarh’s roads, her hands moving inside my shirt: Each time Abhay rode his throbbing motorcycle through Chandni Chowk’s rustling-bustling streets he felt the entire weight of Indian history riding pillion behind him. He felt everyone from Shahjehan to Queen Victoria to Ghandhi-Nehru-Patel-Azad clinging to him and choking him and demanding him and no matter how nuch he zigged and zagged and swerved and sped he just could not shake them off.
Few thing match the high of quitting a job. To reclaim your life, howsoever briefly. To be – if only for a time – your own master. We rode up and down, letting our hands do what they could, and only when there was nothing more our hands could do, we needed our home to finish what our hands had started, did we turn back.’
These few lines are enough to explain the sheer pleasure of this 500odd page novel. Each and every page flows with lyrical love. Desire – how beautiful is the word desire. Complete yet not complete. Satisfied yet not satisfied. Simple but very complex word. Strands and strands of story with in story weaved together brilliantly, this will leave us in awe, pleasure, nostalgic feel to read it again.
He, She.
He pressed the button and was waiting for the lift at the fourteenth floor. He was looking at the number. It changed as it wished. Sometimes three, then ground and finally it was towards him. When the door opened, everybody emptied the lift, as it was the last floor in the building. He got in to it. Pressed G. And saw her coming. He wished that the door should close, that she will run towards the lift, that he will catch her and pull her inside and take her in to his arms and look at each other face to face as the lift moves down in slow motion. But she got in to it comfortably.
It was moving down. They both were alone and he was behind her. Standing straight, he was looking at her. Neatly combed hair, beautiful salwar with a leather bag under her arms and white sandals without heels. He was trying to look at her face. He moved side by side. But, unable to. Then he decided to hum a song and got an old one in his mind. As he was about to start, the song got struck in his throat and he was unable to pull it out. His legs were trembling. Frustrated. He hit his back of his head to the steal face of the lift and leaned towards it. She moved a step forward after hearing the sound. Finally they reached the ground floor. The door opened. She rushed out as if left out of a vacuum. He was looking at her. Seconds before they both were standing so close to each other. But now she started moving away.
Suddenly, he thought that he should do something. He raced towards her and gathered all his energy in a raised voice, ‘Excuse me’.
She guessed that it was him and turned as if to see that she might have missed something in the lift and he was running behind her to give it.
‘Hai’. He said. Still trembling.
‘Did you called me’. She asked.
‘Yes. Actually I don’t want to know anything about yourself and I will not tell anything about myself. Lets us not tell any personal thing about ourselves’.
‘what……….’ She was confused.
‘Would you like to have a cup of coffee with me’.
‘Oh’. Now she got the point. She was trying to control her laugh because of his stupidity.
‘Sorry. I don’t have time’. She turned and was about to leave.
‘sorry if you have mistaken me’. He said.
She stopped and was standing a few yards away from him. She turned back. Towards her left there was a coffee shop. She looked at it. He got it.
‘Its nice. I have tried it many times’. He was happy.
They both took a corner table. Newspaper was neatly folded and kept on the side of the table. Tissues on the other side with a single rose in a flower vase. Café was very silent. They both had a comfortable seat. He got a good view of outside through the glass and she was facing him.
‘So, how do you feel?’. He asked.
She did want to answer how she was feeling, but ‘nothing. Fine’.
‘You know, I read in a magazine survey which has found that when unknown people have coffee together, they can know each other easily’. He said.
‘Obviously. When they sit and talk about themselves, they have to know about each other’. She replied.
‘But that’s not what the survey says. Just think that if I am any one of your friend’s friend, we know each other just by our names that you are her friend and I am his friend and we both meet somewhere like this and if I invite you to a cup of coffee, you will be obliged to come. But now you have a choice. You have a choice to know an unknown person. You will have the curiosity to know what this man is doing in his life and for his living. How his life is different from mine. And much more’.
The waiter was standing there.
They both had menu cards in their hands. He first gave the order.
‘One café latte with more sugar’.
She went through the menu. ‘one American cappuccino – small’.
‘Oh. American’. He exclaimed.
‘Not like that. Just I wanted to try’.
‘Then, what are you doing here?’ he asked.
‘You said – no personal questions’.
‘ I am sorry’. He said and took the newspaper. ‘Do you read newspaper’, he asked.
‘sometimes’ she said.
‘you know when a man and women are sitting alone, it’s the most stupid thing to talk about politics’. He said.
She was a bit angry. ‘why, we are also interested in politics. We do vote. We do select our prime minister’.
‘No. I didn’t doubt your political knowledge. Its true that every individual will have their own principles which will coincide with the ethics of a political party. But there is more than politics’.
‘And what is that’, she asked.
‘Okay. Just answer my question. What will you do when you are you are alone in your home, means you have got nothing to do – no power, no tv, no internet, no music, nothing is there. How will you pass your time’.
‘I will call my friends and we will go for a movie’. She replied very easily.
‘So, what type of movies do you see’. He tried to continue.
‘Any new weekend release. That should have beautiful songs and everything. That we should not feel bored. That’s all’. She replied very beautifully, he thought.
‘So, just to pass your time, you are going for movies’.
‘Your question was how will I pass my time, when I have got nothing to do’. She was a bit intelligent. This time he accepted his defeat. But he thought that why do people just watch movies to pass the time. They should have many other things to pass three hours rather than sitting and watching something which they force themselves.
She asked about what kind of movies does he likes.
‘I am a bit reserved. My favorites are Guru dutt, Raj kapoor and many like that and pyassa is the best I have ever seen’. He replied.
‘why such an old film. Any particular reason for that’
‘old in the sense, yes its black and white. But even today, I can find things that are relevant to this day’.
‘what has attracted you so much’.
Everything. It’s a masterpiece. you should see how the relation between hero and heroine. And the duet song. My god. They both will be standing twenty feet away, but it’s the passionate song that I have ever seen’.
Now she understood what he was trying to say. That they too were standing alone in the lift and now he fell in love with her. Her tone changed. She tried to change the topic.
‘What else do you do’.
This time he tried, thinking more intelligently.
‘Another survey has found that when men and women are alone and if they share their intimate secrets, they will become much closer to each other’.
She kept her cup down with all her force. Coffee spilled. She got up, pushing the chair behind her.
‘Now I came to know who you are……. Such a cheap character ………dressing neatly doesn’t make everything…………show it in your attitude………….
How stupid I am that I came along with a person like you to have coffee’.
She didn’t gave a second for him to speak. She took her hand bag as quick as she can and turned to leave the place instantly. As she turned so fast, the whiff of air fell on him like a slap on his face. He was looking at her as she left the café and he was looking at her through the glass.
After few days, he was coming out of his office in the evening. She was coming in front of him. She walked as if she has not noticed him. He went to her.
‘excuse me’
She just stopped.
‘ I am not going to invite you for coffee again. I just wanted to say sorry. I didn’t mean in that way.
Sorry again. Bye’.
As he was about to turn, he got the smile on her face.
He was looking at her. She dropped her head down while the smile was still on her face.
‘baba black sheep'
Manthan wanted to write. Not his home work or assignment or imposition. but he wanted to write. not a story or a song or poem. but he just wanted to write. just for the shear pleasure of writing. To see how his hand flows with the elegant pencil that is in his hand. To see how his hand writing has become. So he started very slowly otherwise very carefully.
‘baba black sheep, have you any wool,
yes sir, yes sir, three bags full’.
He repeated these two lines again and again. His speed increased. Slowly the lines started to drift away from his regular previous lines. Still he kept on writing as fast as he could. Alphabets started running from north to south and flowed in all the direction. He was completely bend towards his book and his pencil was hitting his forehead. He scribbled and scribbled and stopped when he was unable to understand what he was writing.
He stood up and moved to the window. He was looking through the window by holding the grill. Children of his age were playing under the trees. It has been months since manthan has stepped outside. He looked as far as he could in to the trees and tried to concentrate on a particular tree. After making sure of his eye sight, he turned to see what he has wrote.
‘baba black sheep, have you any wool,
yes sir, yes sir, three bags full’.
It was a hot Saturday afternoon. His room was closed and fan was switched off. He was perspiring, but still refused to switch on his fan. The dead silence of the room was broken by the sudden sound of unlatching his door from outside which scared him very much. He was breathless for a second with his mouth open. His mother came in. he was holding his book. She walked towards him and snatched his book. She read the first page.
‘baba black sheep, have you any wool’
His legs were trembling. She closed the book and shouted at him ‘ where is the imposition’. Manthan looked at her terrified.
