CONFUSING INDIA IN 2019

The year ends. It has been dramatic all over the world. The world gets more and more dramatic because we have our phone in our right hand and the computer before us.

And India got dramatically confused.

I am still confused

if the state of Kashmir was much better off with all the terrorist activities in the past many years and with Kashmiri Pandits being mistreated and forced to run away or

better off with the removal of Section 370 removing special status to the state of Jammu and Kashmir with its current leaders under house arrest.

I am still confused

Whether we need those 2000 trees at Aarey Milk Colony or whether we need a lifelong metro for Mumbai city.

That confused me further on 

Why Mumbai citizens were quite when the Aarey colony over the years reduced to two-thirds of its 3,262-acre space due to land allotment to the Zoo, Film City and Housing projects. Where did its original vision of supplying good quality and affordable milk to Mumbai citizens disappear?  We missed the wood for the trees!

I am still confused

How the current government is responsible for the all-time low GDP growth and unemployment when the previous government left a mess of the banking sector which is the lifeline for the economy and poured black money into the real-estate sector which then became a big contributor to the GDP.

I am still confused

Whether a corrupt leader is better for our country or a so called Hinduvta/dictatorial leader? But we have to make hard choices. 

But most of all I am confused on

Whether India has learnt a new word secular or was it already there in its dictionary?

I, a Hindu, grew up in the 80s, studying in a convent school, reciting the phrase “name of the father, the son and the Holy spirit” every morning and we children and our parents never had to be throttled with the word secular. In around 2010, my driver who stayed in the slum Dharavi, told me that for years Hindus and Muslims lived there in harmony but not anymore. Ditto for the state of Kerala where so many communities lived together in harmony for years.

I am thoroughly confused on

How come the youth of India who earlier never looked up from their gadgets and had not a care in the world with parents rolling on the red carpet and mostly never bothered who ruled us and what they did, suddenly woke up to Citizen Amendment Bill protests. Did the teachers teach them a new meaning of the word secular?

As I was ending the article, I just read what a foreign journalist wrote on 

Twitter

Terrifying video of India's fascist Hindutva paramilitary group the RSS holding a massive march in the southern state of Telangana. The world's largest fascist movement is in India. It is ideologically very extreme; RSS founders were influenced by Nazism. One of the early leaders of India's fascist RSS paramilitary, MS Golwalkar, wrote a book in 1939 praising Hitler and saying Nazi Germany's "purity" by "purging the country of Semitic races" was a "good lesson for us in Hindustan to learn and profit by"

Now I am thoroughly confused. I am wondering if we will soon see concentration camps? I am wondering how is it that somebody who says something 80 years back holds true even today?

So I wonder and wonder who has made India unsecular, fascist and dictatorial.

I go into 2020 quite confused.

Happy New Year

Sukh Ke Sab Saathi Dukh Mein Na Koi

Everyone is a friend in happy times, no one is there in sad moments

 

Today I am remembering this beautiful song rendered by Mohammad Rafi in the film Gopi released in 1970. Sukh Ke Sab Saathi Dukh Mein Na Koi. I don’t remember the movie or the context in which the song is played. But the words have a great resonance for me today.

We all go through our moments or rather years of hardship and sorrows. Many a times in those periods we are alone to face them. Our friends and relatives may sympathise, may at times not even be aware or the reverse - they could be of great help too.

 

But we are many a times angry or depressed or sad that whom we looked at as close friends or childhood mates or dear relatives are not there during those times. We even tend to distance them later on that account.

 

I take my own account of how my close college friend, who stays 10 km away, never came and visited me when my father passed away. I was angry as she knew my father well too. But I let that anger go away after a few years and said well its ok, why take that seriously. Last year when my mother passed away, she again never came for condolences, leave that, she did not even call but messaged me asking how I am. This time I refused to forgive her whatever her reason may be. She has no reason to have any reason. I have disconnected from her completely.

 

Some other friends did not get my reasoning but for me it was very clear that if you don’t even have time for this, what is the point.

 

Last few days I was mulling over this and another incident of my close friend. Her daughter was in deep trouble one day and she saw these many whatsapp messages in the school group. She got completely disillusioned. More than 50 people in this group but nobody can help me or knows what I am going through she thought. She sent a nasty message to the effect that such groups are a waste of time and quit the group. She regretted it later and she did not understand why she did it.

 

So I am thinking that why do we expect friends and blood to be there during our difficulties or sorrow. Each one goes through his or her own and then they cannot partake in everyone’s perhaps? Or is it not hard that when I have gone through my phase of difficulty and I am happy and joyful at this moment, I need to come in to your sorrows?

 

At the same time we need all of them in our joyful periods of birthdays, marriages and so many occasions of happy get-together. Why bother if they are not there for our sorrows? Why use that as a yardstick for closeness?

 

I myself did it. I was in my late twenties when my father passed away. Many  relatives from my father’s side never called later to ask how we are doing, are we okay. They did not come to meet my mother later on. Yes most of them live outside Mumbai but they could have called. Fortunately we didn’t really need them as we were emotionally and financially great. But I refused to attend many functions on this account. What’s the point I told myself. They don’t care. Why should I go and laugh with them.

 

I ask myself today why not laugh with them? Why expect them to partake in our sorrow? Why? Or must they?

 

Its similar now when so many school friends and childhood mates connect, more so because of whatsapp. We don’t even know each others lives and problems and sorrows of the past, maybe even the present ones. But we recollect the fun times we have had together over several years and it is good to have that social and community feeling back again.

 

Well Sukh Ke Sab Saathi Dukh Mein Na Koi.

Operation Kashmir

I landed in Jammu on July 11 and was lucky to have completed the Amarnath Yatra just before the government announced Operation Kashmir - the repealing of Article 370.

It was coincidental that while I was travelling, so many truths of that land came before me, which made it easy to comprehend what the Modi government announced a week later on Operation Kashmir.

During my journey back home, I met a local Jammu in the train who got talking a lot about the the many years of J&K strife, all praise for the central government for the strict actions they were taking over the past several months. He told me few rich people control Kashmir. They want Hindus out, they give money to the stone pelters and troublemakers, who are the poor people, while their own children study abroad. That was an eye-opener for me. 

Before that, interestingly my flight co-passenger from Dehradun to Srinagar was a Kashmiri Pandit. She told me to be careful in Srinagar. I asked her where she lives. She said she now lives in Rishikesh but she was born, did her schooling and her higher education in Kashmir. 

She said one evening, all of a sudden, the whole family was forced to flee. She said she never had the courage to go back, though her parents do visit their homeland. She needn’t describe the reasons why the family had to leave their ancestral home and their belongings. We know them from so many articles stating how Kashmiri Pandits were forced to flee from their own land.

These were ground realities speaking to me. 

Today, when I heard a seasoned politician like Yashwant Sinha talking on Modi's Operation Kashmir  “Will of the people of rest of India cannot supersede will of the people of J&K”  I wonder who are the people and whose will he is actually talking of? And what was being done by his government over all these decades?

Returning last month from this beautiful land called Kashmir, the time indeed has come to find a solution.

From Table Fan to Ceiling Fan to Air-Conditioning - Global Warming?

This pedestal fan fascinates me today. It is telling me a story of 10 years ahead and 10 years before.

What does it mean for us Indians to move from this table fan to a ceiling fan and then to air-conditioning. I presume those movements are not defined by prosperity. Because if the weather is cool throughout the year, even a rich man has no use of the air-conditioner. It is defined by climatic changes.

What are driving these thoughts today? Me using this pedestal fan for the night at my friend’s place at Dehradun for the first time in the 10 years that I have been visiting her.

Dehradun is a valley, surrounded by hill stations like Mussoorie, lying around 200 kms north of Delhi city, at the foothills of the Himalayas, providing a beautiful getaway for the Northern cities.

A separate room is always reserved for me. On the bed is kept a quilt to keep me warm in the nights. Whichever time of the year I came, I had a good sleep amidst the fresh mountain air seeping through the windows. 

Her home is a home built during the British days. Like most European homes there is no provision for a ceiling fan in the rooms. Ceiling fans came into fashion more in the USA and then India. In any case those days most of the homes at an altitude never kept any provision for cooling as they never needed it. My friend, over the years installed a ceiling fan in her bedroom and the dining hall. The main hall and the inner bedroom still do not have a ceiling fan.

Over all these years I slept in her home in that inner room I have never needed any fan. Now sleeping in the same room, even during the night, I have begun carrying this fan from the hall to my room. Earlier the fan was put to use only on those rare hot afternoons.

That means, not only cities, but such places too will move from table/pedestal fans to ceiling fans and then to air-conditioners? I assume that if I visit her after 10 years, her home will need air-conditioning? The ceiling fan too will not be enough?

How do we view all of this? A once upon a time cool climate regions getting hotter.

Yawn. Yawn. Are we not all talking of global warming? I sound like I am discovering something new today. 

But when you experience this kind of global warming at places that are meant to be our getaways for vacations and for fresh air, our respite from hot cities, you wonder what will happen to us humans.

Add to that the cost of power and the usage of water to wipe off our sweat several times during the day.