Jai Hind

This has been posted by my brother-in-law Haider Ali Amir who may soon become an op-ed page regular like his sister

The reason we give credit to Gandhi for our independence is because he was a man of principles, a man of simple, solid and great principles. He was not the only one with such principles. There were many others with the same principles, most of them gave into Gandhi calling him ‘bapu’; the others were hanged until dead. I am not saying Gandhi was not a good man, he was, but was he not a man who submitted to perhaps the biggest blunder leaders of our country could have made, yes I am talking about the partition. He is the same Gandhi who fought for independence but also was a part of the education system that made him the barrister he was, people change so do the times and so do the consequences. Freedom is either earned or fought for. We earned our freedom by the Gandhi way of principles way and we still keep fighting for all the other (correct or incorrect) reasons. In most common of these reasons for fighting is religion, caste, money, la, la, la, la.(This statement is of no social or political importance).

My second point here to make is that thy great father of the nation did not realize that after the cult following of a man there are the aftereffects. There might have been a time in Gandhi’s head where he might have gotten immune to the “Mahatma Gandhi zindabad” shouts and accepted saying, “What the fuck I am a mahatma, let the people shout, till the time they are shouting my name, it cannot be a sign for violence.” In fact he got so immune to hearing his name loudly cheered for that the next shouting voices he heard were the killings of Hindu - Muslim riots during our greatly earned independence. Getting back to the point about the aftereffects of great people our Gandhi was no Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara that; other than a handful who know what ‘Che’ has achieved, only remember him while rolling a joint or when they feel like rebellions try to change the world. Our ‘bapu’ left his aftereffects on the great democratic system of the country, in short the politics. Our government takes time to do everything they initiate just like the way when our independence could have come in the early thirties we get in the late forties. But nevertheless we could not have taken the World War II on by our own selves.

Gandhi was an ingeniously influenced character. He was so influenced by the queen’s rule on India that he ingeniously went after them for freedom. You see we are bunch of confused people, ‘we’ here refers not only to us Indians but to the 7 billion living on this planet. It is okay to say that there are two sides to coin for every debatable topic in this world, but in today’s world the coin is hexagonal. That is why I say confused, I am not trying to be khushwant Singh here and preach you on being not confused because I am a confused guy myself. It is okay to have Kurt cobain say “it is better to burnout than to fade away” one side of the world and on the other side having Roger Federer thinking that he can still be number one. But to have a genre in music called as stoner rock is the hexagonal coin I am talking about. To have to choose between BJP and Congress is one but to have to go to vote on four different levels is for forty same sounding different beliefs, kind of parties is shit. That is why I like Gandhi, and that is why I call him ingeniously influenced. He never cursed the British for giving us the railways but he always had an issue with class of traveling in the train. He always had a problem with violence but he did not utter a word when the British gave us the capability to create the second largest army in the world.

61 years since independence of which I have lived an odd 21 we still have some unanswered questions. But we live with it and we are doing pretty well(fuck that we are in debt to half the world). Gandhi is dead and so is Nehru’s tryst with destiny and an offer to redeem it. All you can now redeem is your credit card points.

Show me your race card

We, Indians, are racists to the core. With a shocking history of casteism, where a minuscule population has lorded over a majority by mouthing Manu, Indians should not be pointing fingers at others. If the monkey word was used, Harbhajan Singh should have been pulled up. But when jingoism is mistaken for patriotism, good sense is an early victim. Someone needed to write on that. Someone has.

'Monkey? Not at all. I said simian'

There is a sordid history to Symonds anger, if Harbhajan did use the word. I am done with waiting for someone more learned to say it. I have to say this myself before I burst a brain vessel, I have to: calling a person of African origin 'monkey', is not the same as calling him 'donkey' or 'elephant' or 'idiot'. Why is everyone suddenly acting so damn ingenuous, as if butter wouldn't melt in their mouths? Perhaps because, in our heart of hearts, we all know that it is a hit way below the belt.
One of the dubious advantages of being an Indian is, I suppose, the fact that when it suits us, we can claim 3,000 years of unbroken memory, or, if the occasion demands it, pretend complete innocence. What else can explain the sheer ignorance of statements like: "Bhajji called him a monkey, he should call Bhajji a donkey, and be done with it." Or, "What's so bad about calling him a monkey – he called Bhajji a bastard!" The word bastard is just another swear word. But is everyone really unaware of the hugely contentious association of the words ape and monkey with people of African origin?
Right through history, people of African origin have had to wage a very real war: to be accepted as human beings by non-Africans. Forget about being accepted as equals, or equally endowed human beings. Just human beings, plain and simple. The European scholars of the Enlightenment constructed their theories of racial hierarchies, with the 'Negroes' just above the apes, the Whites at the top and Indians and Chinese, amongst others, somewhere in between. Darwin was used and abused. They measured the projection of the jaw and the facial line in Africans and Apes, and searched for the Missing link, debating which defective human line had mated with which apes to produce the African race. Constantly, the effort was to bolster the claim that Africans were subhumans, closer to the apes than to Europeans. So influential were these theories that Campier's images of the progressively receding jaws, from ape to 'Negro' to European became an icon of so much subsequent racism, right up to the Nazi eraand we all know what their take on race was.
Let's go back to 1906: A huge crowd turns up at the Bronx Zoo in New York to see a new exhibit in the Monkey House. A new simian? Well, almost, according to the zoo officials. The new exhibit was Ota Benga, a captive from the Congo, what those schoolbooks of ours called (and do, to this day) a Pygmy. He shared his cage with an Orang Utan, a chimpanzee and parrot.
The Black American com munity was outraged and, eventually, Ota was let out of his cage and made to parade around the zoo in a white suit, only to return to it to sleep at night. The zoo director said that he hoped to use Ota to further research on the Miss ing Link. "Their heads are much alike," wrote one jour nalist, comparing the Orang Utan to Ota Benga. "And both grin in the same way when pleased." (One wonders what this white American would say if a picture of a certain President was placed next to one of a Rhesus monkey, a striking similarity that has not escaped comment).
Being allowed to roam around the zoo made life hard er for Ota. He was chased all day long by jeering crowds, who poked and kicked him, much as Indian crowds do the monkeys and apes in our zoos, until in desperation, he made himself a bow and arrow and began to shoot at them. He was then removed from dis play Ota borrowed a gun and shot himself in the heart in 1916.
Back in his country of origin, Ota's compatriots were being colonised by French speaking white skinned people who called them Macaca, a word derived from the local word for monkey, and treated them with all the violence and derision that monkeys were felt to deserve in those (prePETA) days.
A blog that I happened to read said words to this effect: If you haven't been chased, if you haven't been jeered at, don't you dare me tell me that "it isn't really racist." I think what the writer meant was that, apart from direct experience, every community has a pool of cultural memory to which he is a party and which helps to form his consciousness. Calling a person of Indian origin anywhere in the world a coolie will instinctively raise hackles. Similarly, calling a person of African origin a monkey will draw blood from a wound that has not yet healed.

Ujwala Samarth is a writer based in Pune

We, the bloggers

Why do I blog? Simple. Because I am bored. Because they don’t publish me anymore. Because some of what I think and write is too subversive to be published anyways. Because the stray thought is sometimes a line, often a para and is best posted in a blog. But why do others blog? Why do some of them put out their innermost thoughts in public domain? Why do female bloggers write about their sexual yearning? How they would want a man to do shake up their insides or the therapeutic powers of giving head. The reasons are best known to them. But a blog can be an online diary with a secret craving that interesting people read and discover you….sexually. The Barkha Dutt-powered We the people had a session on blogging. Sadly it focussed mostly on female bloggers washing their panties in public. There was also a gay copywriter who writes a gay blog for gay men. More power to him. But their yak was somewhat yawn-inducing. The one that made sense in the show was a certain Ravish Kumar from NDTV India. He blogs in Hindi, writes about pre-liberalisation India, when a new fridge would indeed be the neighbour’s envy, about how life and lifestyle changed over the years. Ravish says blogs can bring writing back. With so much to pack in such little time, blogging can keep the writer in you alive. From Faiz to feng shui, blog on wherever the mind wanders. Ravish made sense. Blogging indeed keeps the writer alive. Sometimes it’s difficult to get published. Blogging is the next best thing. “The writer has a new competitor, the blogger,” Ravish said. I agree.

Wifey on the shore

Wifey can’t finish Murakami. She has become too much of a home-bird. But I loved Kafka on the shore. Mother-love, sister-love, murdering dad, bonding with old dames, befriending homos. Kafka is as subversive as they come. Yet, it’s as if such is natural. The journey of a troubled boy, through space and mind, opens doors that have remained closed through civilisations. Subversion is not a bad distraction. Wifey might disagree.

I caught that half-smile

Breaking news. Benazir assassinated. Shock, awe, frowns, half-smiles, smirks. “Let them Mozzies finish off each other,” came a muffled voice. Few faces turned. Few nodded. “The Pakis deserve violent deaths,” another not-so-muffled opinion aired. Commotion at the Page 1 desk. Change of plans. New layout. Calm at the nation desk. No change in page plans. Back to work.

Modi jitle tor baper ki?

Wifey says she can’t rejoice at Modi’s victory. Says it’s difficult for her to negate his negatives and harp on the positives (if any!). Wifey always makes me come around to her point of view….is it too much love or is she too smart? But what she said today got me thinking. Is it possible really to compartmentalise? To judge a mass murderer on developmental indices. Modi the Muslim hater and Modi the administrator: Forget the former and highlight the latter? I have been flirting with the idea for a while. If you forget for a minute Godhra and the Muslim cleansing afterwards, you have to agree with some of what his spin doctors say. The man is an able administrator, is not known to be shamelessly corrupt, is bothered about Gujarati ashmita (whatever that is) and is the tallest leader Gujarat has had for sometime. To the majoritarian votebank, he’s the dude. He’s good for Gujarat and so more power to him. But can the pogrom be left unpunished? Can you really forgive a mass murderer because he’s done well in other aspects? Wifey says it depends on who you are. If you are a Muslim, not just in Gujarat but anywhere in India, Modi’s victory will touch a raw nerve, no matter how forward thinking you are. Yes, the Congress is perhaps as bad, so is the Samajwadi party or any political formation that pander to the Muslim votebank. Yes, the Congress’ brand of what Advani calls pseudo-secularism created the political space for the BJP to occupy. Yes, a lot goes in the name of secularism that is outright anti-national. Yet, there is something spine chilling about what Modi did…what he stands for. For all his achievements, the very idea of Modi is a hard knock on the idea of India. It is easy for someone like me, selfish, shallow, short-sighted, too caught up with the idea of a shining India to forget the Modi of 2002, if not forgive him altogether, but for every Muslim and perhaps every Hindu that values the idea of a secular state, Modi will always be what India should never become. So what am I rejoicing for?

More power to dog haters

Hang me for this, but I hate dogs. I hate them like I hate no one else. My worst nightmares always have dogs. Dogs chasing me, clawing me, chewing me. Yuks! Irony is I write on underdogs. What are dalits and muslims in the Indian context if not societal underdogs. But why can’t they be undercats for a change! For a people looking for respectability, cats are better creatures to get tagged with. Why can’t Manoranjan Byapari be a black cat named Kafka and not an underdog?
Now there’s news that PETA has filed a police complaint objecting to certain “cruel” messages posted on a dog-hater Orkut community. Communities like I Hate Dogs on Orkut are dedicated to people like me who hate dogs. Some of the communities go to the extent of graphically describing dog torture and even how to kill dogs. Now, that is so Murakami!

Here’s a hash job from the archives. I almost lost my job with The Pioneer for publishing this gem.

The dog lover

Ronnie has his ways of making me mad. Last Sunday, I woke up with a killer headache to find him wrapped in my table-cloth. He crawled at me all fours and barked, doglike. “What’s wrong with you dick-head?” I kicked him, pulling myself up from the floor. “Grrrrrrr....,” he growled, pawing me between the legs, tongue out. I moved away.
The room was a mess. Empty beer bottles rolled on the floor, my china-glass ashtray lay neatly broken in two pieces, Ronnie’s shirt hung from the book rack like a Dali painting. I stepped on an old issue of Fantasy. The doe-eyed centrespread’s breasts looked discoloured. I brought it closer to my eyes. The stench filled my lungs. “You horrible kink, you had to relieve yourself on this!” I threw a piece of the broken ashtray at Ronnie. He ducked. “Sorry, mate. Narrating the Roshni story to you last night got me rock hard!”
I reached the bathroom. The ice-cold water jarred me back my senses; midnight’s memories came flooding back.
It had been a long, wasted night. I don’t know why I keep inviting Ronnie to my place. Perhaps because in my two years in Delhi, I haven’t met another bum like him. It takes genius to drink day and night (mostly at others’ expense), to go uninvited to parties, try sex with underage girls, to borrow and never pay back and be hated by all. That’s Ronnie. My friend. And Roshni’s.
Roshni Sengupta from Chittaranjan Park, Delhi’s mini Kolkata. Ronnie’s next door neighbour. The girl with those deep brown eyes. Very deep, very inviting.
It was exactly a year back that I met Roshni at Ronnie’s party. She was in a corner with a glass of wine, alone. Ronnie watched me watch her. “Take your chance, man. She’s fresh. Your type. Go taste the dew.” “What’s her name?” I asked. “Roshni Sengupta.”
I didn’t approach her. Not that evening. Nor in the evenings that followed at Ronnie’s place. She was there every time. At a quiet corner, unattended, unaffected, unattached.
Roshni had one friend at those parties. Ronnie. He was the only one she talked to, when she talked to that is. Which was rare. The others didn’t exist for her. For them, she didn’t. “I am not the only one she’s got. Her best pal’s Donjo. Her pet. Labrador, pure breed. Spends all her time with it.” “But why is she so quiet? I haven’t seen her talk to anyone ever.” “Kinda weird, that’s how she is. Too much pressure from home I guess. Mom’s a gynae, dad a civil servant. You know how things can get. Study. Study harder. Perform!”
Four months and more ‘meetings’ later, I finally decided to say hi. “All luck to you man. I’ll make sure she comes,” Ronnie cheered. Roshni didn’t come. Not that evening. Never. “They sent her abroad to study,” Ronnie told me. “All of a sudden? When is she coming back?” I demanded. Ronnie shook his head. “Don’t know man.” That was a year back.
Ronnie bought her back to me. Last Saturday night. At my place. Guess it was the hash. Spilled the beans. “I lied to you man. Didn’t want to break your heart. They put her in an asylum.” “But why? What happened?” I screamed.
“She used to love her dog, man. Don’t ask why? Loneliness. Frustration. Kink. Don’t know. They found out one day. Caught her with pants down. Doing doggie with the dog. Must have been a sight man. What say?” Ronnie slurped.
…..I looked at the mirror. A pair of eyes looked back. Brown. Deep. Roshni’s. “Hey, man. I’m starving,” Ronnie asked. “Got something? Even dog meat will do.” I closed my eyes.

Hindu hubby to muslim wife

Back to office. The de-stress tour was well worth the silly excuses. They work every time. Now that I look back, what was it like to be a hindu husband to a muslim wife in a muslim-majority state? ‘I’ would be displeased at this line of thought, but I simply can’t get it out of my system. Not that it was always in your face. In fact, people were mostly sugary sweet, sometimes irritatingly so. But from the boatman’s frown to the front desk executive’s disapproving nod when we signed the hotel register, it was there. Always. “YOU, HINDU BIGOT, HAVE TAKEN ONE OF OUR OWN WITHOUT FOREGOING THE FORESKIN!!!” Did ‘I’ feel the same when she went to Kolkata? Can’t say. Anyways, most of the times she doesn’t give a damn. One more thing that I should pick from her. Her ‘I care two hoots for you, therefore I am’ attitude. That’s what makes ‘I’ score over me. I have ‘I’ with me, therefore I am. Thank god for that!