People learn from life’s experiences and apply them to the stock markets and to their investments. I have all the time learnt from the stock markets and applied the experiences to life itself.
I still remember the last general elections quite vividly. The NDA seemed to be in an unassailable position. Not because of its own strengths but by default because of others’ weaknesses. There were those opinion polls carried out by experienced psephologists. There was the “Shining India” campaign. There was the economy doing rather well for itself and cheery balloons everywhere in the stock markets. There was the charisma of Atal Behari Vajpayee which in itself was quite significant. All opinion polls predicted reduced number of seats for the NDA but still gave it a comfortable lead to emerge as the party of governance. Even the exit polls predicted more or less the same. And there were my friends in the stock markets and outside it thinking the same conclusion and putting their money by their conclusion. And all the while I was thinking……
“So, Papa, what do you think? How many seats for NDA?” my daughter asks, knowing fully well my interest in politics. At that stage even she must have become interested owing to the heat and dust the Indian election always generates.
We are sitting in an out-of-town, open-air dining place and I am in a pleasant mood having imbibed 60 ml of the cardioprotective brownish liquid that I call rum. There is more pleasantness in the thought that in a short while I will be protecting my heart even more.
“120,” I say, raising the glass and enjoying myself at the splash I have made in her mind.
“120? 120? But even the opinion polls are giving almost double. You are joking, right?”
With my son it is different. If Papa has spoken, it must be the truth! He gives up more easily. My daughter is a kitten, she would fight.
“But why do you think 120?” whines my son not liking the prospect. He likes Vajpayee and would not want to see him lose.
“It’s not like that,” my daughter looks at her brother. “He is pulling our leg. Don’t you remember how he gets when he drinks?”
“I am not pulling your leg. I am serious. I think it will be 120, if that.”
I am serious. I remember all previous stock market crashes and all previous beginnings of the bull markets. I remember the suddenness of the busts and the hesitant beginnings of the upsurge. But I remember something else. I remember a phrase that is oft repeated in the stock markets (which nobody pays attention to) and which must have been crafted by a person with a gift of language. I also remember a more crudely put observation by my own stockbroker who does not have the gift of the language.
“All bear phases are prophesied in exultation and all bull markets live off pessimism,” is the phrase.
“When everyone thinks that this will happen, that will happen,” is how my stockbroker puts it.
“When everyone (or almost everyone) shares the same opinion, the opposite will happen,” is how this all translates in my brain.
Or, to put it mathematically, the load of an opinion increases in inverse proportion to the likelihood of it becoming a reality.
My entire estimate of the seats for NDA was based on the fact that practically everyone thought that they were coming back. So, I thought that would not happen.
I have applied that rule to almost everything in life and have found it to come true almost every time.
____________________________________________
My stockbroker is a bit philosophical. He goes even further and then he sounds absurd. However, I really do not know whether what he says is so absurd.
When there is a crash, people find reasons for the crash because everything must have a reason. The political situation is rotten and the stink has spread to the stock markets. The GDP is coming down and that is the reason for the crash. The major companies have come out with results below expectations and their weight has crushed the markets. The tap of reasons keeps spouting…..
My broker says, “There are no reasons at all for the markets to fall. They fall, that’s it. Reasons are excuses, justifications that people find after the fall. Ditto for the rise – justifications for something that would have happened anyway.”
We like to think of the reasons for the fall or rise as the causes of the action that follows. But if you believe my broker, the action or the effect is all that is there. The causes are secondary, the causes are excuses, and the causes come after the effect!
Absurd?
I thought so when he ventilated his thoughts for the first time. Having grown more grey hair on my scalp since then, I am not so sure. And my broker? Well, he has a head full of just grey.
Sunday, October 7, 2007
Wednesday, October 3, 2007
LINCOLN MEMORIAL
When you go sightseeing, you go sightseeing. I mean you do not think that you may become a sight yourself! But believe me it happens sometimes. As it happened to me when I went to see the Lincoln Memorial in Washington. It sure will count in my mind as one of the most embarrassing moments of my life. The only good thing about it is that only one person was there to embarrass me when it happened.
____________________________________________
After the conference at Raleigh got over, I had a few days of leave remaining. So I went over to Kamlesh Patel, a friend from my college days who had married and settled in the United States. I thought a few days of rest and home cooked food at his place would work miracles for my upset tummy. But I have never been wise.
The moment I set foot in his house, there was a twinkle in Kamlesh’s eyes. I could see I was more than welcome and was glad for it. He introduced me to his wife. She proved to be so talkative that I felt completely at home within a few minutes of setting luggage in the guest room.
After a small visit to the toilet as I emerged out of my room, Kamlesh asked, “You have not stopped drinking, have you?”
“No. Why should I?” I shot back.
“No, no. Just thought I should buy a six-pack for the evening,” he said by way of explanation.
I remembered my upset tummy and began saying, “No. Kamlesh, in fact it is not necessary and besides, I have this upset……” At this point of time I heard footsteps of his wife approaching. Kamlesh immediately cut me of and in an inordinately loud voice started, “Yeah…… yeah …. I remember….. How can I forget that…? You were so upset that evening … it was a dry day back in India … and you did not have any liquor at home…..there aren’t any dry days in USA. So let’s go and fetch a six-pack.”
I could see that the whole speech was for his wife’s benefit especially because the incident where I became upset because of a dry day had never happened. The whole talk was actually a camouflage for the word ‘upset’ that I had uttered.
“Devika, we will go out and fetch a six-pack,” Kamlesh announced. It actually came out like a question, and simultaneously a request.
Devika nodded. She looked at me and gave me a smile.
Once out of the house, Kamlesh slapped me on my back and carped, “Ssalle, eik chance mila hai, who bhi khatam kar dena chahta hai kya?” (I get this one chance of drinking in a while and you want to put paid even to that?)
Gradually it came out that his wife did not approve of drinking and so the poor fellow never got to drink. The only exceptions were when his friends (only old ones, from India) came calling. That explained the twinkle in his eyes. I mean, I may have been really welcome, but the chance to drink was the reason for the twinkle!
In the store, the guy selected some Irish brew. The bottle was ominously dark, but the liquid inside seemed even more ominous, actually evil. Well, to be fair to Kamlesh, he did ask me about the choice. But when you are a guest at somebody’s place and you see how eagerly his hand moves to this particular concoction, you would be cruel to disregard what his heart desires. And that too a person’s whose wife does not allow him to drink and who just may be getting his elixir, god knows, after a year .. 2 years … he did not have many close friends back in India.
I had the liquid poured into a glass before I drank it. My suspicions were right – it was not the bottle that was dark, it was the beer that imparted the threatening color. It was dense and tasted strictly ruthlessly harsh. Instantly I was reminded of chiraita. When I was a child, my mother sometimes used to make me drink water that had sat on chiraita sticks overnight. That water also used to be equally dark in the morning. And the taste? Ugh! My taste buds used to be dead to everything for hours after and I positively hated my mother, her mother, her mother’s mother and the entire lineage till it reached whatever chimpanzee gave birth to that line. The way this concoction tasted, Kamlesh’s ancestors could stretch back to macaques and langurs. And to think that I had to consume three bottles of this positively malevolent stuff. The only positive in the whole setup was the pizza that kamlesh had ordered. I tried to drown, not with much success, the bitter taste of the sinister liquid in the sting of the pizza toppings.
Kamlesh went to sleep happily humming under his breath an old Hindi song I couldn’t decipher. In words that wobbled in his mouth before coming out, he reminded me that tomorrow morning we were going sightseeing to Washington D.C.
I tried to sleep. But the remarks that my stomach made about the ordeal it had to suffer were positively acerbic. When did sleep drown the acidity I do not know, but I did sleep for sometime. As I woke up, there was just a bit of dis-ease in my stomach and when I belched, a bitter liquid reminder of last night came out with the rumbling nothingness of gas. I brushed, gargled, shaved, bathed and made myself a gentleman and felt far better for the effort.
We got into the car – Kamlesh, Devika, Devika’s brother and sister-in-law, and I. In the boot were kept a 24 pack of coke and a pack of what I heard called “Theplas”. After we were out of the city, Devika offered me a thepla and a coke. I started eating. My god, my mouth was positively on fire which I quickly doused with the cold coke. But I loved the feeling and even the taste! I have already said before that I am not wise. I asked for another thepla which really pleased Devika – that told me who had cooked those spiky-spicy things. Barely had I finished the second thepla when I was offered another and yet another. The drive lasted 4 hours. In those 4 hours I must have downed about 10 theplas and about 4 cans of coke.
Kamlesh stopped the car on a flat grassy ground and about half a kilometer away rose the Lincoln memorial. Everyone got down. When I did, I found that I had a nail boring its way into the region where my esophagus ended and my stomach began. The pain was excruciating and pointed at that region. But worse, I had a tummy that would put to shame a full-term pregnant woman and walking around was rather difficult with my tummy wanting to go everywhere before the rest of the body reached there. I fell behind the group and stealthily stole away.
Once a safe distance from the rest, I tried spotting a toilet (restroom in American lingo). I couldn’t. By then it had become obligatory that I find one and find rather quickly. I spotted something in the distance that was a circular building and I thought had a chance of being a restroom. I walked there and, to my utter relief, found that it indeed was one.
Once inside I looked around. This part of the building described a semicircle. On one side were the commodes behind half doors that you could latch from inside but which were such that you could see the occupants’ legs from beneath. On the other side were wash basins in equal numbers.
This presented a problem. Having till then lived in India and having been practically born and brought up on the Indian style latrines, I just could not sit western style on western style seats. So, in the year that I had spent there, I had mastered the fine art of sitting Indian style on western commodes! But with these half-open doors, it was a bad pose to adopt. Outsiders did not see legs touching base besides the pot and took the stall to be vacant. Soon they found out that it was, contrary to their logical deductions, occupied. This made other logical deductions and foreboding cloud their minds. However, I was in luck – there was absolutely nobody inside the restroom at that time. I quickly mounted one of the pots that were shaped like a magnified version of the lamp that you light in the temples.
No sooner had I so ascended the pot, than a storm got unleashed. A succession of short bursts, like the staccato from a machine gun were let lose from the muzzle. It was just unsubstantiated sounds and they lasted for – may be a full minute or more. At the end of it, delivered of the onus, I rose, zipped my pants and came out. Mightily relieved and having regained the flatness of my stomach, I must say.
As I came out, I saw that there was a man in front of one of the wash basins washing his face. As he heard the door of the stall close, he turned towards me, looked me in the eye, and gave me a smile that I will not forget in a hurry.
____________________________________________
After the conference at Raleigh got over, I had a few days of leave remaining. So I went over to Kamlesh Patel, a friend from my college days who had married and settled in the United States. I thought a few days of rest and home cooked food at his place would work miracles for my upset tummy. But I have never been wise.
The moment I set foot in his house, there was a twinkle in Kamlesh’s eyes. I could see I was more than welcome and was glad for it. He introduced me to his wife. She proved to be so talkative that I felt completely at home within a few minutes of setting luggage in the guest room.
After a small visit to the toilet as I emerged out of my room, Kamlesh asked, “You have not stopped drinking, have you?”
“No. Why should I?” I shot back.
“No, no. Just thought I should buy a six-pack for the evening,” he said by way of explanation.
I remembered my upset tummy and began saying, “No. Kamlesh, in fact it is not necessary and besides, I have this upset……” At this point of time I heard footsteps of his wife approaching. Kamlesh immediately cut me of and in an inordinately loud voice started, “Yeah…… yeah …. I remember….. How can I forget that…? You were so upset that evening … it was a dry day back in India … and you did not have any liquor at home…..there aren’t any dry days in USA. So let’s go and fetch a six-pack.”
I could see that the whole speech was for his wife’s benefit especially because the incident where I became upset because of a dry day had never happened. The whole talk was actually a camouflage for the word ‘upset’ that I had uttered.
“Devika, we will go out and fetch a six-pack,” Kamlesh announced. It actually came out like a question, and simultaneously a request.
Devika nodded. She looked at me and gave me a smile.
Once out of the house, Kamlesh slapped me on my back and carped, “Ssalle, eik chance mila hai, who bhi khatam kar dena chahta hai kya?” (I get this one chance of drinking in a while and you want to put paid even to that?)
Gradually it came out that his wife did not approve of drinking and so the poor fellow never got to drink. The only exceptions were when his friends (only old ones, from India) came calling. That explained the twinkle in his eyes. I mean, I may have been really welcome, but the chance to drink was the reason for the twinkle!
In the store, the guy selected some Irish brew. The bottle was ominously dark, but the liquid inside seemed even more ominous, actually evil. Well, to be fair to Kamlesh, he did ask me about the choice. But when you are a guest at somebody’s place and you see how eagerly his hand moves to this particular concoction, you would be cruel to disregard what his heart desires. And that too a person’s whose wife does not allow him to drink and who just may be getting his elixir, god knows, after a year .. 2 years … he did not have many close friends back in India.
I had the liquid poured into a glass before I drank it. My suspicions were right – it was not the bottle that was dark, it was the beer that imparted the threatening color. It was dense and tasted strictly ruthlessly harsh. Instantly I was reminded of chiraita. When I was a child, my mother sometimes used to make me drink water that had sat on chiraita sticks overnight. That water also used to be equally dark in the morning. And the taste? Ugh! My taste buds used to be dead to everything for hours after and I positively hated my mother, her mother, her mother’s mother and the entire lineage till it reached whatever chimpanzee gave birth to that line. The way this concoction tasted, Kamlesh’s ancestors could stretch back to macaques and langurs. And to think that I had to consume three bottles of this positively malevolent stuff. The only positive in the whole setup was the pizza that kamlesh had ordered. I tried to drown, not with much success, the bitter taste of the sinister liquid in the sting of the pizza toppings.
Kamlesh went to sleep happily humming under his breath an old Hindi song I couldn’t decipher. In words that wobbled in his mouth before coming out, he reminded me that tomorrow morning we were going sightseeing to Washington D.C.
I tried to sleep. But the remarks that my stomach made about the ordeal it had to suffer were positively acerbic. When did sleep drown the acidity I do not know, but I did sleep for sometime. As I woke up, there was just a bit of dis-ease in my stomach and when I belched, a bitter liquid reminder of last night came out with the rumbling nothingness of gas. I brushed, gargled, shaved, bathed and made myself a gentleman and felt far better for the effort.
We got into the car – Kamlesh, Devika, Devika’s brother and sister-in-law, and I. In the boot were kept a 24 pack of coke and a pack of what I heard called “Theplas”. After we were out of the city, Devika offered me a thepla and a coke. I started eating. My god, my mouth was positively on fire which I quickly doused with the cold coke. But I loved the feeling and even the taste! I have already said before that I am not wise. I asked for another thepla which really pleased Devika – that told me who had cooked those spiky-spicy things. Barely had I finished the second thepla when I was offered another and yet another. The drive lasted 4 hours. In those 4 hours I must have downed about 10 theplas and about 4 cans of coke.
Kamlesh stopped the car on a flat grassy ground and about half a kilometer away rose the Lincoln memorial. Everyone got down. When I did, I found that I had a nail boring its way into the region where my esophagus ended and my stomach began. The pain was excruciating and pointed at that region. But worse, I had a tummy that would put to shame a full-term pregnant woman and walking around was rather difficult with my tummy wanting to go everywhere before the rest of the body reached there. I fell behind the group and stealthily stole away.
Once a safe distance from the rest, I tried spotting a toilet (restroom in American lingo). I couldn’t. By then it had become obligatory that I find one and find rather quickly. I spotted something in the distance that was a circular building and I thought had a chance of being a restroom. I walked there and, to my utter relief, found that it indeed was one.
Once inside I looked around. This part of the building described a semicircle. On one side were the commodes behind half doors that you could latch from inside but which were such that you could see the occupants’ legs from beneath. On the other side were wash basins in equal numbers.
This presented a problem. Having till then lived in India and having been practically born and brought up on the Indian style latrines, I just could not sit western style on western style seats. So, in the year that I had spent there, I had mastered the fine art of sitting Indian style on western commodes! But with these half-open doors, it was a bad pose to adopt. Outsiders did not see legs touching base besides the pot and took the stall to be vacant. Soon they found out that it was, contrary to their logical deductions, occupied. This made other logical deductions and foreboding cloud their minds. However, I was in luck – there was absolutely nobody inside the restroom at that time. I quickly mounted one of the pots that were shaped like a magnified version of the lamp that you light in the temples.
No sooner had I so ascended the pot, than a storm got unleashed. A succession of short bursts, like the staccato from a machine gun were let lose from the muzzle. It was just unsubstantiated sounds and they lasted for – may be a full minute or more. At the end of it, delivered of the onus, I rose, zipped my pants and came out. Mightily relieved and having regained the flatness of my stomach, I must say.
As I came out, I saw that there was a man in front of one of the wash basins washing his face. As he heard the door of the stall close, he turned towards me, looked me in the eye, and gave me a smile that I will not forget in a hurry.
ASHA BHONSLE LIVE AND DEAD RATS
I do not like what Maneka Gandhi has done to science labs in the name of animal rights. I do not see eye to eye with animal rights activists who think that in the name of science, scientists torture animals. I believe that these people have just no idea how much of their own health is indebted to past research on animal systems – most medicines that each one of us takes have been developed primarily in animal labs. Much of our knowledge about the way our physiology works is derived from research on animals. Without this research on animals the life expectancy of human beings would not have been what it is today.
Be that as it may, I have once been guilty of a crime in the animal lab that I could have avoided entirely.
The Salk Institute for Biological Research in La Jolla, California, has a vast animal facility in the basement. I was involved in breast cancer research in this institute. I had to first of all produce cancer in the rodents and then see which genes were mutated in the cancer tissue. This also involved removing ovaries of female rats so that their bodies did not produce estrogen, a hormone that can promote breast cancer.
Initially ovariectomy (removal of ovaries) appeared to be a difficult task to me. The rats had to properly anesthetized and precise incisions were to be made for pulling the ovaries out. I was taught the art by a lab technician called Barbara. She always carried a severe expression on her face whether she was teaching me or drinking beer. It did not help at all. I soon started having all kinds of accidents. Once an improperly anesthetized rat started walking all over the place with its innards hanging out! I was so shocked at the sight that I did not even pick it up to be re-anesthetized. Barbara picked it up for me and made it smell ether. It should have been the rat with an expression of severe reproach on its face. But in this case it was Barbara who displayed that expression.
However, practice made it easy and eventually I became very adept at it. So much so that I could have done the whole thing blindfolded. The drill went something like this:
Put some cotton at the base of a broad mouthed tube and pour some ether into it. Ether is a good anesthetizing agent. Put this tube inside a sterile hood which has a table too for you to work. Pick up a female rat from the cage and make it breathe the ether fumes. Once it is unconscious, pick it up, put it squarely on the table and with a scissor give a cut on both sides of the backbone between the backbone and the hind legs. Poke a scalpel into the opening thus created and pull out the innards. The ovary will look like a flower. Hold it properly at the base and cut it off. With the help of a hot coil cauterizer, cauterize the area so that the blood flow stops. Stuff the innards back into the opening and then clip the opening closed. Do the same procedure on both the sides and cut off both ovaries. Put the animal back in its cage which is maintained at 37 C temperature. Take another rat and repeat the procedure. It got so that I normally had one rat exposed to ether while I was operating on the other. Also, when I pulled out the innards, the ovary would be the one organ I would be holding between my scalpels and not any other part of the anatomy. I worked very fast and everybody knew that if someone could take out an ovary faster than it could make estrogen, it was I. I must admit that I was also quite complacent about the fact.
On a particular day, as I was setting an electrophoretic gel, Saraswati came and sat besides me. Saraswati was the head of the lab and a highly accomplished scientist. She was also one of the best human beings I have ever encountered in my entire life.
“I don’t know how I am going to do all the things slated for today,” was how she began the conversation.
“Why? What happened?” I asked, still working on my gel.
“I have to write this report and get it done today itself. That itself will take me to 11 AM. I then have to make this presentation, that cannot be put off at all. That should take me to lunch. Post lunch, I have to be at the President’s office and answer his queries about future plans. God knows how long that will take. Then I have to ovariectomize 120 rats. I cannot put this off either. I don’t think I will be able to reach home till well past midnight if I start now.”
“Shall I make some coffee for you?” was my response to that.
“What? What has coffee got to do with this?”
“Coffee will get your mind off this for some time. Besides, over coffee I can tell you that I will do the ovariectomy for you.”
“Why will you do that for me? You have your own work to think of. Besides, these are 120 rats. No, no. I will see what I can do about this.”
I eventually persuaded her. Later I asked Ingo, my German friend to look after my gels while I went down to the animal lab.
My calculations were that at 5 minutes per rat, I would require about 10 hours to ovariectomize 120 rats. That would take me up to 5 in the evening.
I began in right earnest. Each cage contained 10 rats. I timed myself that each cage should take just about 55 minutes and no more.
At 3 in the afternoon, the phone rang. I picked it up. It was Vineet. This guy worked at Genentech and was a music and liquor buff.
“Hey, Avinash. You coming to the programme?” he asked without any preamble.
“Which programme?” I asked still working. I hooked the thing between my shoulder and ear and continued to handle the rats.
“Don’t tell me you have not heard about Asha Bhonsle performing live today evening at LA?”
“Oh, is she? Well, I can’t come. There is a bit of work and I won’t be free before 5.”
“That’s not a problem. I can’t be free either before 4.30. But tell you what, I will wait outside the gates just about 5. You show up and we will go together. Otherwise I will push off alone. Too good to miss.”
“Alright. That’s fine by me. If I don’t show up, you push off.” I told him and hung up.
I worked faster now. Who wants to miss Asha? I looked at the state of things. There were two cages remaining and I was onto the last rat in the cage that I was presently handling. The next hour was a blur. I strained at it and took less time than usual. When I got the last cage down, it was just past 4. Just time enough for me to complete the job, go upstairs, wash my face, have a quick coffee and run for the gates.
I put the first rat down onto the table. It was breathing nicely and had gone to sleep from ether. I gave it two quick cuts on the back. Poked my scalpel inside and pulled the innards out and was going to give a quick cut when I noticed that between my scalpels was not the ovary but a piece of the intestine. Shit! I searched for the ovary. There wasn’t one to be found. I pulled more material out and looked. No ovary! Then I found it. It still did not look like an ovary but I thought that it was one. I gave a cut. I poked on the other side and came up with the same predicament – no ovary. I repeated the same thing here too.
On to the next rat and to the same predicament. What’s wrong? I thought. This never happens. Ovaries love me. The moment they know that it is Avinash holding the scalpel, the jump squarely into the scalpel! And now when I am rushed for time, the gland is playing a trick. One after the other, to all the 10 rats I gave the same treatment. I cut what seemed most like an ovary. I pushed the cage back into its place, dashed upstairs, washed myself, got a cup of coffee, ran out while still drinking it. I was just in the nick of the time.
Asha regaled us till well past midnight. We came back almost by 4 in the morning. I lay down on the cot without sleep, just to get my back straight.
At 7 I was back in the lab. When Saraswati arrived I told her that her rats waited for her downstairs. She thanked me and said she would go down around noon.
I went to the basements to look at the rats. That was standard procedure. Part of post-operative care. You look at the rats. See whether they are behaving properly, whether there is any bleeding, is the wound healing nicely etc. etc.
One look at the last cage and I found out what had happened last evening. These were male rats! In my hurry I had picked up the wrong cage and tried to find ovaries in the males. God knows what I had removed in the name of the ovaries.
This presented a dire problem. Saraswati would come down in a few hours. If she found out that I had ovariectomized male rats, she would be suspicious of every single thing I had done thus far. What to do? I decided on the only course of action that seemed to drive away all problems.
I killed all the male rats by suffocating them on carbon dioxide. Deposited them in the cold storage for dead bodies. Picked up another cage and made sure these were female rats. Ovariectomized these rats. Put them at 37 degrees for an extended time so that the healing would be quicker. Then deposited them back where they belonged and dashed upstairs.
Saraswati did not notice any wrong doing on my part. I do know though that those 10 male rats lost there lives entirely due to my desire to hear Asha Bhonsle live.
Be that as it may, I have once been guilty of a crime in the animal lab that I could have avoided entirely.
The Salk Institute for Biological Research in La Jolla, California, has a vast animal facility in the basement. I was involved in breast cancer research in this institute. I had to first of all produce cancer in the rodents and then see which genes were mutated in the cancer tissue. This also involved removing ovaries of female rats so that their bodies did not produce estrogen, a hormone that can promote breast cancer.
Initially ovariectomy (removal of ovaries) appeared to be a difficult task to me. The rats had to properly anesthetized and precise incisions were to be made for pulling the ovaries out. I was taught the art by a lab technician called Barbara. She always carried a severe expression on her face whether she was teaching me or drinking beer. It did not help at all. I soon started having all kinds of accidents. Once an improperly anesthetized rat started walking all over the place with its innards hanging out! I was so shocked at the sight that I did not even pick it up to be re-anesthetized. Barbara picked it up for me and made it smell ether. It should have been the rat with an expression of severe reproach on its face. But in this case it was Barbara who displayed that expression.
However, practice made it easy and eventually I became very adept at it. So much so that I could have done the whole thing blindfolded. The drill went something like this:
Put some cotton at the base of a broad mouthed tube and pour some ether into it. Ether is a good anesthetizing agent. Put this tube inside a sterile hood which has a table too for you to work. Pick up a female rat from the cage and make it breathe the ether fumes. Once it is unconscious, pick it up, put it squarely on the table and with a scissor give a cut on both sides of the backbone between the backbone and the hind legs. Poke a scalpel into the opening thus created and pull out the innards. The ovary will look like a flower. Hold it properly at the base and cut it off. With the help of a hot coil cauterizer, cauterize the area so that the blood flow stops. Stuff the innards back into the opening and then clip the opening closed. Do the same procedure on both the sides and cut off both ovaries. Put the animal back in its cage which is maintained at 37 C temperature. Take another rat and repeat the procedure. It got so that I normally had one rat exposed to ether while I was operating on the other. Also, when I pulled out the innards, the ovary would be the one organ I would be holding between my scalpels and not any other part of the anatomy. I worked very fast and everybody knew that if someone could take out an ovary faster than it could make estrogen, it was I. I must admit that I was also quite complacent about the fact.
On a particular day, as I was setting an electrophoretic gel, Saraswati came and sat besides me. Saraswati was the head of the lab and a highly accomplished scientist. She was also one of the best human beings I have ever encountered in my entire life.
“I don’t know how I am going to do all the things slated for today,” was how she began the conversation.
“Why? What happened?” I asked, still working on my gel.
“I have to write this report and get it done today itself. That itself will take me to 11 AM. I then have to make this presentation, that cannot be put off at all. That should take me to lunch. Post lunch, I have to be at the President’s office and answer his queries about future plans. God knows how long that will take. Then I have to ovariectomize 120 rats. I cannot put this off either. I don’t think I will be able to reach home till well past midnight if I start now.”
“Shall I make some coffee for you?” was my response to that.
“What? What has coffee got to do with this?”
“Coffee will get your mind off this for some time. Besides, over coffee I can tell you that I will do the ovariectomy for you.”
“Why will you do that for me? You have your own work to think of. Besides, these are 120 rats. No, no. I will see what I can do about this.”
I eventually persuaded her. Later I asked Ingo, my German friend to look after my gels while I went down to the animal lab.
My calculations were that at 5 minutes per rat, I would require about 10 hours to ovariectomize 120 rats. That would take me up to 5 in the evening.
I began in right earnest. Each cage contained 10 rats. I timed myself that each cage should take just about 55 minutes and no more.
At 3 in the afternoon, the phone rang. I picked it up. It was Vineet. This guy worked at Genentech and was a music and liquor buff.
“Hey, Avinash. You coming to the programme?” he asked without any preamble.
“Which programme?” I asked still working. I hooked the thing between my shoulder and ear and continued to handle the rats.
“Don’t tell me you have not heard about Asha Bhonsle performing live today evening at LA?”
“Oh, is she? Well, I can’t come. There is a bit of work and I won’t be free before 5.”
“That’s not a problem. I can’t be free either before 4.30. But tell you what, I will wait outside the gates just about 5. You show up and we will go together. Otherwise I will push off alone. Too good to miss.”
“Alright. That’s fine by me. If I don’t show up, you push off.” I told him and hung up.
I worked faster now. Who wants to miss Asha? I looked at the state of things. There were two cages remaining and I was onto the last rat in the cage that I was presently handling. The next hour was a blur. I strained at it and took less time than usual. When I got the last cage down, it was just past 4. Just time enough for me to complete the job, go upstairs, wash my face, have a quick coffee and run for the gates.
I put the first rat down onto the table. It was breathing nicely and had gone to sleep from ether. I gave it two quick cuts on the back. Poked my scalpel inside and pulled the innards out and was going to give a quick cut when I noticed that between my scalpels was not the ovary but a piece of the intestine. Shit! I searched for the ovary. There wasn’t one to be found. I pulled more material out and looked. No ovary! Then I found it. It still did not look like an ovary but I thought that it was one. I gave a cut. I poked on the other side and came up with the same predicament – no ovary. I repeated the same thing here too.
On to the next rat and to the same predicament. What’s wrong? I thought. This never happens. Ovaries love me. The moment they know that it is Avinash holding the scalpel, the jump squarely into the scalpel! And now when I am rushed for time, the gland is playing a trick. One after the other, to all the 10 rats I gave the same treatment. I cut what seemed most like an ovary. I pushed the cage back into its place, dashed upstairs, washed myself, got a cup of coffee, ran out while still drinking it. I was just in the nick of the time.
Asha regaled us till well past midnight. We came back almost by 4 in the morning. I lay down on the cot without sleep, just to get my back straight.
At 7 I was back in the lab. When Saraswati arrived I told her that her rats waited for her downstairs. She thanked me and said she would go down around noon.
I went to the basements to look at the rats. That was standard procedure. Part of post-operative care. You look at the rats. See whether they are behaving properly, whether there is any bleeding, is the wound healing nicely etc. etc.
One look at the last cage and I found out what had happened last evening. These were male rats! In my hurry I had picked up the wrong cage and tried to find ovaries in the males. God knows what I had removed in the name of the ovaries.
This presented a dire problem. Saraswati would come down in a few hours. If she found out that I had ovariectomized male rats, she would be suspicious of every single thing I had done thus far. What to do? I decided on the only course of action that seemed to drive away all problems.
I killed all the male rats by suffocating them on carbon dioxide. Deposited them in the cold storage for dead bodies. Picked up another cage and made sure these were female rats. Ovariectomized these rats. Put them at 37 degrees for an extended time so that the healing would be quicker. Then deposited them back where they belonged and dashed upstairs.
Saraswati did not notice any wrong doing on my part. I do know though that those 10 male rats lost there lives entirely due to my desire to hear Asha Bhonsle live.
Saturday, September 29, 2007
LOST CHANCE TO TEACH
He was sitting there on the dining table wearing his green woolen shirt when I reached home from the college in the afternoon.
Father was to come back from Delhi by the morning flight which reaches here at 9. But the flight got delayed. I had to go to the college. When I came back having finished teaching, I found him sitting on the dining table, brooding. He looked darker somehow. His face lit up upon seeing me. But the joy that was always there on his face when he came back home was absent. I sat opposite him, started eating my lunch, and we got talking.
“So, how was the conference?” I asked.
He was a numismatist (someone who divines history by reading coins), an epigraphist (one who reads inscriptions), a Sanskritist, and a historian dealing with ancient India. One of his pet problems – one that had received his attention for decades – was that of the Aryans. How does one view Aryans? Did they come from outside to India? Or were they basically from India and diverged out from here? Or were they everywhere and so neither did they come from anywhere or go anywhere? Or, is it that ‘Arya’ was a cultural title and no implications of a race should be read in it? Splendid problem to think about.
“Was good.” Was his succinct and subdued reply and I immediately understood that something was wrong. This is not like him, I thought. Normally, you just have to ask about the conference and his exuberance propels a torrent of words out of his mouth. Whether you understand or not, whether you care or not, he is not going to stop till he has dried up all the thoughts that have been welling up inside his mind. He was passionate about his subject you see. He was single minded and right from his waking moment of the day till he lay down to sleep, research problems were the only thing occupying his mind. I suspect that the night brought more coins and more inscriptions in his dreams.
I eat lunch silently waiting for him to tell me more. He does not. Instead, he just tells me about which other people he met while in Delhi. He tells me that there was a lot of fog out there in Delhi and that was the reason his flight got delayed. He also tells me that he is tired. Tired! In the afternoon? That is not my father. He is never tired. He may be 67, but tiredness is something that he has never expressed, not in the afternoon at least. There is definitely something off beam here. I decide to probe and probe directly.
“So what discussions took place in the conference?’ I ask. This is a more involved question – I am asking now about the details. And he comes out clean.
“I think I should quit this subject. It is now out of my range. I have suddenly no locus standi here.” He says and he is very sad in saying this. It is as if a dear relationship has broken and he has to move out of the house when he has no desire to.
“Quit?” I ask and my incredulity must have shown. “I mean I don’t understand. After a lifetime of reading and researching and writing and lecturing on the subject, you think you have no locus standi in the subject.”
“Yeah,” he says. It has all been hijacked by the geneticists now. The geneticists called the shots in this conference. And that is right too. They say that they can compare genes of the bones that we have dug up, compare the genes in them to the present day population in India and abroad and find out just who were these Aryans. Our theories have no meaning for them. They come from an alien discipline and make all our efforts of decades look utterly meaningless. They have no knowledge of the intricacies of history and yet they think they can tell us just who the Aryans were.
“I mean, I have no complaints. This is natural and genetics has power where Archaeology does not. What was galling was that I did not understand their arguments at all. I have no knowledge of genetics. If only I could understand the basics of this, I would have no cause of quitting. I can then combine my knowledge of history and the understanding of genetics and move on. But I think it’s too late for that now. And, anyhow, genetics is science and I am not a science man. So……” His voice trails. His face becomes darker. So that is what it is, I thought. Now I am a person who understands genetics. If I teach him, will he be able to pick it up? He has no background of science. He is old. But on the other hand, he is sharp, he can grasp things well. May be he will be able to pick up the things quicker than I think.
“Why don’t I teach you enough genetics for you to understand the drift of the geneticists in the conferences?” I volunteer. And I am pleased by the effect that this one sentence has. His face lights up suddenly, the excited man is back. The shoulders are no longer drooping.
“You think it is possible? You think I will be able to pick that stuff up fast enough? It is science after all.” He asks. But there is more hope in the questions than anxiety or doubt.
“I think so. I think if we sit down together a few hours a day, a week will see you understanding most of the stuff that you need. And then, if there is something that you need on top of that from time to time, you can fall back on me and I will explain that.” I say, taking the classical teacher approach – encourage, motivate, even when you may have doubt yourself. It is astounding how often and how quickly miracles are achieved by this approach.
“I think I would like to have some tea,” is what he says in reply to this. That means that he is happy and would like to converse more now. Tea is the liquid around which we have always talked, argued, sparred with our ideas.
I know things are back to normal.
But then right after the tea, he says he feels sleepy. Must be the tiredness owing to lack of sleep yesterday night and the delay at the airport in the morning and all of that. He goes over to the bedroom and sleeps. I go upstairs to my study.
I cannot shake the feeling that something else is wrong too.
X X X
At the dining table for the dinner, he is radiant. Ecstatically he announces to all, “Avinash is going to teach me genetics!”
The fare before him is something that he can drool over. Parathas stuffed with bathua (Pigweed or lamb’s quarters, cooked like spinach and tasting similar to it). He loves them. I hate them. But today I do not protest. I have seen him in a pensive mood before. This mood actually takes him over quite often. He is most chirpy and happy in the morning just after he wakes up. We are opposites in this matter. I am like my mouth is still sleepy though I may have woken up. I am like my words are cold blooded and need warming before they can get out of my mouth. He is like everything wakes up when he does. I remember my irritation with him in the morning. He would like to chat me up and I would like to have him shut up. And since you don’t tell your father that, I am irritated. Then he sits down at the dining table for the tea and opens up the newspaper and the pensive mood starts to spread over him. Sometimes the things darken beyond just being pensive. He loves to read of politics. Politics is never positive in our nation. The news therefore darkens his mood. It is better when he comes out with an acid comment. If he does not, the thing clouds his mind. Then you see him as pensive but he is actually going cold inside with pessimism. I have seen him pensive with a coin in his hands. His eyesight is not good. So often he calls me or my mother and asks, “Do you thing this drawing is of an elephant or is it a horse?” Not that he cannot make a difference between the two animals. It is just that the ancient Indian coin makers often did not bother about the shapes of animals and so one thing looked like other. I have seen him pensive with a book in his hands, his tongue touching the upper palate of his mouth, his hand busy with the big toe of his foot that he has pulled up on the sofa. But today’s pensive mood was different. It was tinged with an unfathomable sadness – something that I have never observed in all the years I have lived with him, not even when I flunked one of the most crucial exams, not even when my grandfather died, not even when my grandmother died, not when he underwent a retina operation which threatened to steal his eyesight, not even when he suffered a bad paralytic stroke and took a whole year recovering the full function of his limbs and there was the specter that he would never be able to use his hand to write his books.
I have also never seen him so tired in the afternoon that he would wish to go to sleep.
So I do not protest.
I gulp down the bathua parathas to quench the hunger. He eats them slowly with evident relish and quenches the taste buds. He talks about the Arya problem now. He gradually reveals what happened in the conference that he could understand. He talks about his own speech. He is now relieved – he knows that he will be taught genetics and so he does not have to think of quitting the field that has become so dear to him.
“Shall we begin tomorrow?” he asks.
“Yes, why not?” I reflect his eagerness.
We talk awhile and he says he wants to go to bed a bit early. He says that it is better to do so since he would want to be fresh and receptive tomorrow for the genetics lesson. But that cannot be the case. I know him more than that. Happiness would make him read more, talk more. He is really tired.
One more thing that I have been noticing for almost a year now. He is still wearing his woolen shirt. Agreed that he really likes this shirt. Agreed that it is winter. But in Nagpur, and that too so early in winter, the temperatures rarely plummet so much that you have to wear warm clothing. And then all his life he has been a person who has weathered winters wearing just a vest. He has always found it strange that people find it cold in Nagpur during winters when the temperature hardly dips below 13o C. Lately however, the things have changed. The neighbor’s young son wears a vest even in the winters and works in the garden. He finds that strange now. “Only when he catches a cold will he understand,” is what he says when he looks at him.
X X X
“Avi!”
This one word, a loving diminutive of my own name, uttered sharply with more stress on “A”, is the scar that so many of my childhood dreams bear. He woke me up at 4.30 sharp in the morning. All his childhood he had studied in a Gurukul where you wake up at 4 in the morning and start with your morning chores and then spend the “Brahma Muhurta” (the hour of Brahma, the best time to study as per Hindu culture) studying. He liked the discipline of that system and wanted me to abide by the same. Agreed that he made that concession of a half hour. But it was not enough for me. So, get up I would, take up a book I would, but lapse into sleep with the book on the table. Eventually, after many of the dreams died premature death, it was mutually agreed that I should wake up at least at 6. This has become a habit and I get up at 6 always no matter how late or early I sleep.
So, when in the morning, this same diminutive is uttered at 5 by my wife, I wake up all groggy, confused and angry. My wife is standing besides the bed, still in her nightwear.
“The bell,” is all she says. In an instant I know something is wrong.
My wife and I stay on the first floor while my parents occupy the ground floor. Over the years an arrangement has been perfected – whenever they need us, they just have to ring a bell which sounds upstairs. One bell for myself and two bells for my wife. A bell so early in the morning only announces trouble.
I throw off the sheets and go downstairs. My mother is at the door and her eyes tell me that there is something wrong.
“Your father,” she says. “Just take a look. He came back earlier than usual from his morning walk and is not feeling well.”
He is lying on the drawing room divan. And although there is a bit of morning chill, he is bathed in sweat. The green woolen shirt is still on his torso. Even at this time I have not the slightest of the inkling what is to happen to this green shirt. On his face you can read the spelling of pain and the alphabets are in the upper case. To my queries, he tells me that he has pain in the chest and that too to the left. I then ask him the most important question I can think of.
“Are you feeling breathless,” I ask.
Years ago, just after marriage, I had started feeling pain in my chest on the left hand side. I was mortally afraid that my heart had gone weak at this early stage in life. So, one day I asked a physician whom I knew very well to take an ECG. The guy told me that there was no need. However, I insisted and told him about the pain. He had a good laugh at my expense, told me that if I could not find a better use for my money, he would oblige. He took an ECG, showed the result to me and told me that you have spondilitis. Later, he confirmed the diagnosis. Once this was done, he told me, “If you are going to have a heart attack, it is not just the pain you will feel. You will be breathless too.” This is exactly what I remember and ask.
He nods. He does not speak because even speaking makes him breathless. I take instant decision. No ambulance. That will be too late in arriving. I take the car out. I make him sit in a chair and then slide the chair out to the car. I make him sit inside. My mother sits at the back and we move without wasting time. I decide to take him to a physician who has been treating him and knows his case history. My mother has brought a homeopathic medicine with her and she gives it to him. It is the homeopathic version of nitroglycerine. We are merely five minutes out of our house when he tells me, “Why do we not just go back? I am feeling quite right now. Besides, I have to complete the Presidential Address that I have been writing for the last two days. There are several important things that I want to mention in this. Precious time will be lost in the hospital.”
I am firm and tell him that he has to see a doctor.
“But yesterday too at the airport I had the same feeling. I became okay in just about 10 minutes. It is the same thing again. I think it is indigestion. Why don’t we turn back?”
I continue driving and he continues to fret over his Presidential Address. So he had a mild heart attack at the airport yesterday morning too is all I think. We arrive at the doctor. I find immediately that I have brought him to the wrong place by the inefficiency that I see. But it is too late. The doctor has arrived, has checked his blood pressure, has moved on to take his ECG. After the whole thing is over, he says, “It is heart. His BP is low, just 100 by 50. But at the most it will develop into an angina. No need to worry. We will admit him now for observation. He should be able to go back by the evening.” Whether he is telling me this just to sort of pacify me I do not know. If he is doing that, he does not need to. I am quite hard at these things.
He is admitted. He is on his bed with strict instructions to lie down and not to speak. But he is telling my mother how important his presidential address is! All his life he has been an academic and on his sick bed too he cannot stop being one, incorrigibly being one. I cannot describe my emotions about this. I am concerned, yes. But I am proud too – what a father to have. When ordinary people would be concerned about what will happen to them, he is concerned about his presidential address and the new things he is going to present and about his thoughts regarding certain coins that surfaced just some days before! I want to tell him to stop talking. But the other part of me is too weak to say this, too glad to have a father who can be so obsessed with his work.
I ask my mother to go home and bathe and then come again at a later time. I tell her that the doctor himself does not think that this can turn out to be any serious. She does not want to go. But she yields to my practicality.
X X X
In the afternoon, his dead body is brought home. I bring my mother home in my car.
The body is made to lie in the drawing room. It has to be prepared for cremation. My friends, colleagues, the priest, his students, his colleagues, everyone who is connected in whichever way to him, arrive. I have to bathe him and then give him new clothes. But the green woolen shirt won’t come off his body. There is a slight swelling around the torso and it is difficult to get the shirt open. I have half a desire to tell the priest to leave it be – he so loved this short, it will not be wrong if he takes it away with him. But I bring a pair of scissors and cut the shirt open. Other preparations are done and the body is cremated in the evening.
When I come back home, things are silent. I do not know how to console my mother. Oh there are other people around. But there presence is a blur behind which her tears only wait. I cannot weep because I have to support her and console her.
Since then, I have never wept – the moment has passed. I have only thought and thought.
The man was greedy for knowledge. He hated death. But not because he would die. The problem was like this:
“What is the meaning of learning so much, hoarding so much in your mind, and then dying off? I mean, it would be okay if you died provided that in the next birth you start from where you ended the last time around. That does not happen and it is cruel.”
The man was greedy for knowledge. He would read practically everything. At the age of 63, when most people have already quit most of their activities, he learnt computers and then learnt how to go online and read up things in his subject that were available. All his papers after that were submitted to journals electronically and online. This also meant irritation for me. Every 10-15 minutes the bell would go and I had to rush downstairs.
“I don’t know what happened to the file I was writing. I had saved it but I cannot find now.”
Suppressing my irritation from being interrupted in my own work, I would search for the file. “What was the name of the file?” I would ask. “I have forgotten,” was quite often the reply. Now, I mean, can you beat that? He does not remember the name of the file and he wants me to find that! So I would ask what the contents were and then mount a search based on content. Often I would find the file in an unrelated folder.
“What is this file doing here?” You think I asked this question? You are wrong. He would be the one asking it of me. I mean, come on, I should have been the one asking it.
Sometimes files went entirely missing – no trace at all. And he would not agree that he had failed to save them. It was always the computer that was playing some mischief. So, two bit “experts” were very often called to set the computer right.
At other times it would be some problem with the internet. Some other time about diacritical marks – Sanskrit words creep in when you are writing about history. So he got installed a special software that allowed him to work more easily. When troubles with the use of this software arose, it was double trouble for me. I knew nothing about this software and was supposed to troubleshoot whenever he landed himself into a soup!
All through I troubleshooted for him, taught him a few things about computers and working online, using a word file, other programmes that make life easy. But most of the time I did this with irritation at the back of my mind from having been interrupted in my own work.
There was only one time that I agreed to teach him with a lot of pleasure. I loved him you see and could not see him down like that just because genetics was intruding upon his own area.
But that chance was lost so quickly and so suddenly.
May be, just because it was such an ardent desire in him, he will be born again with all the knowledge intact in his mind and will start from there. If so, he will have to learn genetics all by himself.
I lost the chance to teach him genetics and send him prepared to the next birth.
Father was to come back from Delhi by the morning flight which reaches here at 9. But the flight got delayed. I had to go to the college. When I came back having finished teaching, I found him sitting on the dining table, brooding. He looked darker somehow. His face lit up upon seeing me. But the joy that was always there on his face when he came back home was absent. I sat opposite him, started eating my lunch, and we got talking.
“So, how was the conference?” I asked.
He was a numismatist (someone who divines history by reading coins), an epigraphist (one who reads inscriptions), a Sanskritist, and a historian dealing with ancient India. One of his pet problems – one that had received his attention for decades – was that of the Aryans. How does one view Aryans? Did they come from outside to India? Or were they basically from India and diverged out from here? Or were they everywhere and so neither did they come from anywhere or go anywhere? Or, is it that ‘Arya’ was a cultural title and no implications of a race should be read in it? Splendid problem to think about.
“Was good.” Was his succinct and subdued reply and I immediately understood that something was wrong. This is not like him, I thought. Normally, you just have to ask about the conference and his exuberance propels a torrent of words out of his mouth. Whether you understand or not, whether you care or not, he is not going to stop till he has dried up all the thoughts that have been welling up inside his mind. He was passionate about his subject you see. He was single minded and right from his waking moment of the day till he lay down to sleep, research problems were the only thing occupying his mind. I suspect that the night brought more coins and more inscriptions in his dreams.
I eat lunch silently waiting for him to tell me more. He does not. Instead, he just tells me about which other people he met while in Delhi. He tells me that there was a lot of fog out there in Delhi and that was the reason his flight got delayed. He also tells me that he is tired. Tired! In the afternoon? That is not my father. He is never tired. He may be 67, but tiredness is something that he has never expressed, not in the afternoon at least. There is definitely something off beam here. I decide to probe and probe directly.
“So what discussions took place in the conference?’ I ask. This is a more involved question – I am asking now about the details. And he comes out clean.
“I think I should quit this subject. It is now out of my range. I have suddenly no locus standi here.” He says and he is very sad in saying this. It is as if a dear relationship has broken and he has to move out of the house when he has no desire to.
“Quit?” I ask and my incredulity must have shown. “I mean I don’t understand. After a lifetime of reading and researching and writing and lecturing on the subject, you think you have no locus standi in the subject.”
“Yeah,” he says. It has all been hijacked by the geneticists now. The geneticists called the shots in this conference. And that is right too. They say that they can compare genes of the bones that we have dug up, compare the genes in them to the present day population in India and abroad and find out just who were these Aryans. Our theories have no meaning for them. They come from an alien discipline and make all our efforts of decades look utterly meaningless. They have no knowledge of the intricacies of history and yet they think they can tell us just who the Aryans were.
“I mean, I have no complaints. This is natural and genetics has power where Archaeology does not. What was galling was that I did not understand their arguments at all. I have no knowledge of genetics. If only I could understand the basics of this, I would have no cause of quitting. I can then combine my knowledge of history and the understanding of genetics and move on. But I think it’s too late for that now. And, anyhow, genetics is science and I am not a science man. So……” His voice trails. His face becomes darker. So that is what it is, I thought. Now I am a person who understands genetics. If I teach him, will he be able to pick it up? He has no background of science. He is old. But on the other hand, he is sharp, he can grasp things well. May be he will be able to pick up the things quicker than I think.
“Why don’t I teach you enough genetics for you to understand the drift of the geneticists in the conferences?” I volunteer. And I am pleased by the effect that this one sentence has. His face lights up suddenly, the excited man is back. The shoulders are no longer drooping.
“You think it is possible? You think I will be able to pick that stuff up fast enough? It is science after all.” He asks. But there is more hope in the questions than anxiety or doubt.
“I think so. I think if we sit down together a few hours a day, a week will see you understanding most of the stuff that you need. And then, if there is something that you need on top of that from time to time, you can fall back on me and I will explain that.” I say, taking the classical teacher approach – encourage, motivate, even when you may have doubt yourself. It is astounding how often and how quickly miracles are achieved by this approach.
“I think I would like to have some tea,” is what he says in reply to this. That means that he is happy and would like to converse more now. Tea is the liquid around which we have always talked, argued, sparred with our ideas.
I know things are back to normal.
But then right after the tea, he says he feels sleepy. Must be the tiredness owing to lack of sleep yesterday night and the delay at the airport in the morning and all of that. He goes over to the bedroom and sleeps. I go upstairs to my study.
I cannot shake the feeling that something else is wrong too.
X X X
At the dining table for the dinner, he is radiant. Ecstatically he announces to all, “Avinash is going to teach me genetics!”
The fare before him is something that he can drool over. Parathas stuffed with bathua (Pigweed or lamb’s quarters, cooked like spinach and tasting similar to it). He loves them. I hate them. But today I do not protest. I have seen him in a pensive mood before. This mood actually takes him over quite often. He is most chirpy and happy in the morning just after he wakes up. We are opposites in this matter. I am like my mouth is still sleepy though I may have woken up. I am like my words are cold blooded and need warming before they can get out of my mouth. He is like everything wakes up when he does. I remember my irritation with him in the morning. He would like to chat me up and I would like to have him shut up. And since you don’t tell your father that, I am irritated. Then he sits down at the dining table for the tea and opens up the newspaper and the pensive mood starts to spread over him. Sometimes the things darken beyond just being pensive. He loves to read of politics. Politics is never positive in our nation. The news therefore darkens his mood. It is better when he comes out with an acid comment. If he does not, the thing clouds his mind. Then you see him as pensive but he is actually going cold inside with pessimism. I have seen him pensive with a coin in his hands. His eyesight is not good. So often he calls me or my mother and asks, “Do you thing this drawing is of an elephant or is it a horse?” Not that he cannot make a difference between the two animals. It is just that the ancient Indian coin makers often did not bother about the shapes of animals and so one thing looked like other. I have seen him pensive with a book in his hands, his tongue touching the upper palate of his mouth, his hand busy with the big toe of his foot that he has pulled up on the sofa. But today’s pensive mood was different. It was tinged with an unfathomable sadness – something that I have never observed in all the years I have lived with him, not even when I flunked one of the most crucial exams, not even when my grandfather died, not even when my grandmother died, not when he underwent a retina operation which threatened to steal his eyesight, not even when he suffered a bad paralytic stroke and took a whole year recovering the full function of his limbs and there was the specter that he would never be able to use his hand to write his books.
I have also never seen him so tired in the afternoon that he would wish to go to sleep.
So I do not protest.
I gulp down the bathua parathas to quench the hunger. He eats them slowly with evident relish and quenches the taste buds. He talks about the Arya problem now. He gradually reveals what happened in the conference that he could understand. He talks about his own speech. He is now relieved – he knows that he will be taught genetics and so he does not have to think of quitting the field that has become so dear to him.
“Shall we begin tomorrow?” he asks.
“Yes, why not?” I reflect his eagerness.
We talk awhile and he says he wants to go to bed a bit early. He says that it is better to do so since he would want to be fresh and receptive tomorrow for the genetics lesson. But that cannot be the case. I know him more than that. Happiness would make him read more, talk more. He is really tired.
One more thing that I have been noticing for almost a year now. He is still wearing his woolen shirt. Agreed that he really likes this shirt. Agreed that it is winter. But in Nagpur, and that too so early in winter, the temperatures rarely plummet so much that you have to wear warm clothing. And then all his life he has been a person who has weathered winters wearing just a vest. He has always found it strange that people find it cold in Nagpur during winters when the temperature hardly dips below 13o C. Lately however, the things have changed. The neighbor’s young son wears a vest even in the winters and works in the garden. He finds that strange now. “Only when he catches a cold will he understand,” is what he says when he looks at him.
X X X
“Avi!”
This one word, a loving diminutive of my own name, uttered sharply with more stress on “A”, is the scar that so many of my childhood dreams bear. He woke me up at 4.30 sharp in the morning. All his childhood he had studied in a Gurukul where you wake up at 4 in the morning and start with your morning chores and then spend the “Brahma Muhurta” (the hour of Brahma, the best time to study as per Hindu culture) studying. He liked the discipline of that system and wanted me to abide by the same. Agreed that he made that concession of a half hour. But it was not enough for me. So, get up I would, take up a book I would, but lapse into sleep with the book on the table. Eventually, after many of the dreams died premature death, it was mutually agreed that I should wake up at least at 6. This has become a habit and I get up at 6 always no matter how late or early I sleep.
So, when in the morning, this same diminutive is uttered at 5 by my wife, I wake up all groggy, confused and angry. My wife is standing besides the bed, still in her nightwear.
“The bell,” is all she says. In an instant I know something is wrong.
My wife and I stay on the first floor while my parents occupy the ground floor. Over the years an arrangement has been perfected – whenever they need us, they just have to ring a bell which sounds upstairs. One bell for myself and two bells for my wife. A bell so early in the morning only announces trouble.
I throw off the sheets and go downstairs. My mother is at the door and her eyes tell me that there is something wrong.
“Your father,” she says. “Just take a look. He came back earlier than usual from his morning walk and is not feeling well.”
He is lying on the drawing room divan. And although there is a bit of morning chill, he is bathed in sweat. The green woolen shirt is still on his torso. Even at this time I have not the slightest of the inkling what is to happen to this green shirt. On his face you can read the spelling of pain and the alphabets are in the upper case. To my queries, he tells me that he has pain in the chest and that too to the left. I then ask him the most important question I can think of.
“Are you feeling breathless,” I ask.
Years ago, just after marriage, I had started feeling pain in my chest on the left hand side. I was mortally afraid that my heart had gone weak at this early stage in life. So, one day I asked a physician whom I knew very well to take an ECG. The guy told me that there was no need. However, I insisted and told him about the pain. He had a good laugh at my expense, told me that if I could not find a better use for my money, he would oblige. He took an ECG, showed the result to me and told me that you have spondilitis. Later, he confirmed the diagnosis. Once this was done, he told me, “If you are going to have a heart attack, it is not just the pain you will feel. You will be breathless too.” This is exactly what I remember and ask.
He nods. He does not speak because even speaking makes him breathless. I take instant decision. No ambulance. That will be too late in arriving. I take the car out. I make him sit in a chair and then slide the chair out to the car. I make him sit inside. My mother sits at the back and we move without wasting time. I decide to take him to a physician who has been treating him and knows his case history. My mother has brought a homeopathic medicine with her and she gives it to him. It is the homeopathic version of nitroglycerine. We are merely five minutes out of our house when he tells me, “Why do we not just go back? I am feeling quite right now. Besides, I have to complete the Presidential Address that I have been writing for the last two days. There are several important things that I want to mention in this. Precious time will be lost in the hospital.”
I am firm and tell him that he has to see a doctor.
“But yesterday too at the airport I had the same feeling. I became okay in just about 10 minutes. It is the same thing again. I think it is indigestion. Why don’t we turn back?”
I continue driving and he continues to fret over his Presidential Address. So he had a mild heart attack at the airport yesterday morning too is all I think. We arrive at the doctor. I find immediately that I have brought him to the wrong place by the inefficiency that I see. But it is too late. The doctor has arrived, has checked his blood pressure, has moved on to take his ECG. After the whole thing is over, he says, “It is heart. His BP is low, just 100 by 50. But at the most it will develop into an angina. No need to worry. We will admit him now for observation. He should be able to go back by the evening.” Whether he is telling me this just to sort of pacify me I do not know. If he is doing that, he does not need to. I am quite hard at these things.
He is admitted. He is on his bed with strict instructions to lie down and not to speak. But he is telling my mother how important his presidential address is! All his life he has been an academic and on his sick bed too he cannot stop being one, incorrigibly being one. I cannot describe my emotions about this. I am concerned, yes. But I am proud too – what a father to have. When ordinary people would be concerned about what will happen to them, he is concerned about his presidential address and the new things he is going to present and about his thoughts regarding certain coins that surfaced just some days before! I want to tell him to stop talking. But the other part of me is too weak to say this, too glad to have a father who can be so obsessed with his work.
I ask my mother to go home and bathe and then come again at a later time. I tell her that the doctor himself does not think that this can turn out to be any serious. She does not want to go. But she yields to my practicality.
X X X
In the afternoon, his dead body is brought home. I bring my mother home in my car.
The body is made to lie in the drawing room. It has to be prepared for cremation. My friends, colleagues, the priest, his students, his colleagues, everyone who is connected in whichever way to him, arrive. I have to bathe him and then give him new clothes. But the green woolen shirt won’t come off his body. There is a slight swelling around the torso and it is difficult to get the shirt open. I have half a desire to tell the priest to leave it be – he so loved this short, it will not be wrong if he takes it away with him. But I bring a pair of scissors and cut the shirt open. Other preparations are done and the body is cremated in the evening.
When I come back home, things are silent. I do not know how to console my mother. Oh there are other people around. But there presence is a blur behind which her tears only wait. I cannot weep because I have to support her and console her.
Since then, I have never wept – the moment has passed. I have only thought and thought.
The man was greedy for knowledge. He hated death. But not because he would die. The problem was like this:
“What is the meaning of learning so much, hoarding so much in your mind, and then dying off? I mean, it would be okay if you died provided that in the next birth you start from where you ended the last time around. That does not happen and it is cruel.”
The man was greedy for knowledge. He would read practically everything. At the age of 63, when most people have already quit most of their activities, he learnt computers and then learnt how to go online and read up things in his subject that were available. All his papers after that were submitted to journals electronically and online. This also meant irritation for me. Every 10-15 minutes the bell would go and I had to rush downstairs.
“I don’t know what happened to the file I was writing. I had saved it but I cannot find now.”
Suppressing my irritation from being interrupted in my own work, I would search for the file. “What was the name of the file?” I would ask. “I have forgotten,” was quite often the reply. Now, I mean, can you beat that? He does not remember the name of the file and he wants me to find that! So I would ask what the contents were and then mount a search based on content. Often I would find the file in an unrelated folder.
“What is this file doing here?” You think I asked this question? You are wrong. He would be the one asking it of me. I mean, come on, I should have been the one asking it.
Sometimes files went entirely missing – no trace at all. And he would not agree that he had failed to save them. It was always the computer that was playing some mischief. So, two bit “experts” were very often called to set the computer right.
At other times it would be some problem with the internet. Some other time about diacritical marks – Sanskrit words creep in when you are writing about history. So he got installed a special software that allowed him to work more easily. When troubles with the use of this software arose, it was double trouble for me. I knew nothing about this software and was supposed to troubleshoot whenever he landed himself into a soup!
All through I troubleshooted for him, taught him a few things about computers and working online, using a word file, other programmes that make life easy. But most of the time I did this with irritation at the back of my mind from having been interrupted in my own work.
There was only one time that I agreed to teach him with a lot of pleasure. I loved him you see and could not see him down like that just because genetics was intruding upon his own area.
But that chance was lost so quickly and so suddenly.
May be, just because it was such an ardent desire in him, he will be born again with all the knowledge intact in his mind and will start from there. If so, he will have to learn genetics all by himself.
I lost the chance to teach him genetics and send him prepared to the next birth.
Friday, September 21, 2007
AN OPEN LETTER TO KARUNANIDHI
You are an atheist sir. I am not an atheist. I am an agnostic. I am also a teacher and a scientist. Having seen even the scientific concepts crumbling and newer concepts taking their place, the best course for a scientist is to be open even about the accepted hypotheses – you never know which of the hypotheses by which you currently lay stock will crumble tomorrow all of a sudden and an entirely new hypothesis which now seems correct will seamlessly take its place. If this is the state in science which concerns itself with fact, it is better that we leave God alone. We can neither prove nor disprove the existence of God. I believe that it is better to be ambivalent about the existence of God. It is also good to not to scoff at people who believe in such an existence and to not to scoff at people such as you who do not believe.
The uncertainty is not just limited to the field of science. It is there in the field of History also. Till Heinrich Schliemann dug Troy up exactly where Homer had suggested it is, everyone thought that Troy was a mythical city concocted for literary purposes by Homer. Closer to home, everyone had written off Dwarka as a mythical city and the flood that sunk it to be as mythical till S. R. Rao found Dwarka exactly where it was supposed to be, sunk under the sea. Saraswati was an equally mythical river till scientists provided definite proofs for its actual existence.
You talk of any field of human enquiry, and the uncertainties are there. You talk of economics, you talk of the direction that economies of different countries will take in future, you talk about where the terrorists will strike tomorrow or will not strike, you talk about what course will politics take tomorrow, you talk about whether you yourselves will be alive tomorrow or not, there are uncertainties.
In the face of such glorious uncertainties, first of all how can any one be an atheist? Is it not better to be an agnostic? But let me not talk of that – that is your considered position having hardened from years of practice and adherence to it. Let me talk of Rama and his being a character imagined by Valmiki. You have imagined many characters in your novels. You say that they are totally imaginary. On the testimony of many writers more and less accomplished than you, on reading autobiographies of numerous such writers, I know that every single character they painted in their writings had a root in some real person somewhere. Only the name was changed or the character was lifted from one scenario and planted in another or the characteristics of the character were changed slightly. As philosophers say, we can only copy and not create – every character you describe in your novels is an altered image of some real character that you have come across in life or have heard about. In the face of this – you yourself being a writer – how can you say that even if Rama as a character was imagined by Valmiki, it was not an image, true or altered, of some real life person? Also, there is this chance that Valmiki wrote as Homer wrote, describing what he actually saw. Can you deny it?
You are not just an atheist. You are a politician too. You change your stance about issues at the drop of a hat when it suits you and gives you political advantage. You change your coalition partners when it suits you to do that. You are a politician and you know that you have to give in to public demand at times – when the tensions run high, when a thing becomes emotional, to douse the fires, you have to do this. You do not apply your rigid position as an atheist in these times.
My request to you is to look at the uncertainties all around you and reconsider your position as an atheist. My request to you is to convert yourself into an agnostic – that I think is the only thing a human being humbled by these uncertainties can be. But, as I said earlier, that may be your considered position having hardened from years of practice and adherence to it. My request to you is to at least reconsider your position on this one matter of Rama.
I am not asking you to reconsider your position that Rama is imaginary. All I am asking you is to keep silent on the matter.
Is it too much to ask?
Or is it that it currently suits you to wax eloquent on the issue?
The uncertainty is not just limited to the field of science. It is there in the field of History also. Till Heinrich Schliemann dug Troy up exactly where Homer had suggested it is, everyone thought that Troy was a mythical city concocted for literary purposes by Homer. Closer to home, everyone had written off Dwarka as a mythical city and the flood that sunk it to be as mythical till S. R. Rao found Dwarka exactly where it was supposed to be, sunk under the sea. Saraswati was an equally mythical river till scientists provided definite proofs for its actual existence.
You talk of any field of human enquiry, and the uncertainties are there. You talk of economics, you talk of the direction that economies of different countries will take in future, you talk about where the terrorists will strike tomorrow or will not strike, you talk about what course will politics take tomorrow, you talk about whether you yourselves will be alive tomorrow or not, there are uncertainties.
In the face of such glorious uncertainties, first of all how can any one be an atheist? Is it not better to be an agnostic? But let me not talk of that – that is your considered position having hardened from years of practice and adherence to it. Let me talk of Rama and his being a character imagined by Valmiki. You have imagined many characters in your novels. You say that they are totally imaginary. On the testimony of many writers more and less accomplished than you, on reading autobiographies of numerous such writers, I know that every single character they painted in their writings had a root in some real person somewhere. Only the name was changed or the character was lifted from one scenario and planted in another or the characteristics of the character were changed slightly. As philosophers say, we can only copy and not create – every character you describe in your novels is an altered image of some real character that you have come across in life or have heard about. In the face of this – you yourself being a writer – how can you say that even if Rama as a character was imagined by Valmiki, it was not an image, true or altered, of some real life person? Also, there is this chance that Valmiki wrote as Homer wrote, describing what he actually saw. Can you deny it?
You are not just an atheist. You are a politician too. You change your stance about issues at the drop of a hat when it suits you and gives you political advantage. You change your coalition partners when it suits you to do that. You are a politician and you know that you have to give in to public demand at times – when the tensions run high, when a thing becomes emotional, to douse the fires, you have to do this. You do not apply your rigid position as an atheist in these times.
My request to you is to look at the uncertainties all around you and reconsider your position as an atheist. My request to you is to convert yourself into an agnostic – that I think is the only thing a human being humbled by these uncertainties can be. But, as I said earlier, that may be your considered position having hardened from years of practice and adherence to it. My request to you is to at least reconsider your position on this one matter of Rama.
I am not asking you to reconsider your position that Rama is imaginary. All I am asking you is to keep silent on the matter.
Is it too much to ask?
Or is it that it currently suits you to wax eloquent on the issue?
TIGER ON FOOT! WELL, ALMOST
We have been very very lucky as far as sighting tigers is concerned. The first trip we take into any jungle, we know that we will be face to face with royalty any moment – so far this record has been unbroken; we have always seen a tiger/tigress in the very first trip to any jungle. Also, normally this is a close encounter. The tiger is just a meter or two from our jeep and is in no hurry to dart away. We can watch it ambling along or standing there wagging its tail or sitting down and licking its paws or in various other poses that it can strike.
But seeing a tiger from inside a jeep is one thing and seeing it standing in front of you while you are walking in the jungle is quite another. The tigers, so say the guides, take the whole jeep as one single organism. That is exactly why you are told not to move in a manner that a limb or head pokes out of the jeep. And since the jeep is quite big, the tiger rarely attacks it. So, no danger even if the tiger is just a meter or so away from you and happens to look into your eye while your nostrils pick up its rank smell.
But what if you are on foot, walking in deep jungle and the tiger comes in front of you? Well that is totally different, unnerving, has an element of danger and, therefore, thrilling. Rules in the National Parks in India (at least in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan) forbid you from walking. So this situation is almost impossible. But there is a place inside the core area of a National Park in Madhya Pradesh where you can walk for miles and miles without bending the rule and where the tigers come everyday. This National Park is Bandhavgarh and the following is an account of what happened when we were last there in the month of March.
In this park, atop a hill is a fort. Just about half way to the fort is a statue of Vishnu reclining on his snake-bed or, what in Sanskrit or Hindi is called the Shesh Shayya. The statue is just besides the wall of the hill and natural streams coming down from the hill make a pond of fresh water just in front of this statue. The place is cool and beautiful. This is also the point up to which the jeeps can travel. From here on you have to climb on foot if you want to visit the fort. Once you reach the summit, you can walk on flat ground and take a stroll besides the numerous huge manmade ponds and a natural lake. Opposite the lake is the temple which is raised slightly above the ground and you have to climb a few stairs before you reach it. The temple has a priest who lives in the temple and is witness to goings and comings of tigers everyday. The tigers walk up to the temple quite often and at times swim in the lake and lie in its cool water at length.
Strewn all over are ruins of ancient structures. Trees, grass, shrubs grow both outside and inside these ruins. The guide takes you up to the ruins, waits outside, makes sure that no tiger is lurking inside and then takes you in. This he does with every single structure. He is not making it up to make it more thrilling for you. Once inside, you can see tiger droppings which have gone all silvery with age. Tiger droppings contain a lot of calcium and thus, as time passes, the white of calcium shows on the surface and gives it an almost silvery hue. All over the flat ground are pug marks recent and old, body marks where the tigers had lain down, claw marks on the trees showing their efforts at marking territory, bones of sambhar, deer, wild boars, and other animals that became food long back. A pug mark is so fresh that you know that a tiger has just preceded you. Your blood curdles just at the thought that you may be walking just behind a tiger or, worse, a tiger may be walking behind you. You look back.
That day, as we started to climb, it was 11 in the morning and it was still cool despite it being summer. The climb is not steep except at a few places. Still you sweat and breath heavily because the path steadily rises up. There are alternate places of sunshine and shade. You can stop and rest in the shade and look around. The scenery is breathtaking. Along the route are hairpin bends. These bends are potential thrill spots for the man who thinks – what if there is a tiger lurking just along the bend? It is not an empty thought either. From our previous visits to the fort we know that there are tigers here and they love to be here. Just along one such bend is an entire skull of a Sambhar that probably found the tiger lurking as it was going up or down. Or probably it was killed elsewhere and the tiger brought it to this place to eat in peace.
By and by we almost make it up to the summit. As we are walking a comparatively flat and straight path, a foreigner couple is coming from the opposite direction. There is something in their walk that is not quite right. They are slightly more hurried than normal. Yet, you do not see much urgency or fear on their faces. The female has something like a smile on her face and both faces show something almost like satisfaction. Their guide is walking slightly behind them. As we come abreast, the guides stop and talk in whispers. When we start walking again, our guide whispers to us, “There is a tiger ahead!” This news makes electric current flow through our bodies. “These foreigners have just seen it and if we do not make much noise, we too will see it. They saw it lying down just besides the road itself. So, lets move and lets not talk.”
My children are excited. Right from their childhood they have been seeing tigers at close quarters, but from inside the open jeep. Their excitement is misinterpreted by the guide. He stops us. “When you see the tiger, stay where you are. Don’t run. Promise me, you won’t panic.” We tell him that we are not likely to do any such thing. My daughter clutches my hand. But that is not in fear, it is just excitement. My son whispers, “It should not go away by the time we reach.”
We walk on. We are slower now. We watch where we put our foot. There is burnt grass and dried up leaves on the path. The grass on the path and on the sides of the path is periodically burnt. This is done just before the summer arrives to stop jungle fires from spreading. We avoid putting our foot on the dried leaves or on the burnt grass to avoid making any sound. We hope that the tiger cannot hear our hearts thumping in excitement. And while I say there is no fear, I am exaggerating. There is fear, but it has become a part of our excitement. Without fear, there wouldn’t be excitement either.
We turn a bend and are extra careful while we do. The path stretches beyond us straight and flat – there is no tiger to be seen for as far as we can see. The path turns again and in front of us is an ancient structure. This is a square room atop a platform with a flat roof on top of it. The guide says that this was used as a classroom till a few years back. I cannot believe him. The reason is a banyan tree that is growing out of one of its walls with its primary roots going deep into the plinth of the structure and secondary roots falling from its great branches and embedding themselves into the structure and beyond it into the open ground. The tree is huge and has obviously taken some decades to grow to this size and maturity. As we hop on to the plinth, the guide asks us to be careful on two counts. The structure is weak and, more importantly, the tiger can be inside this structure. He says he has witnessed a tiger inside this structure once. Our advance comes to a quick halt. I move around the room doing a full parikrama watching ahead of me and inside the room all the time. There is no tiger here.
And then it happens. There is a sudden alarm call. A macaque is calling some distance away. The macaque alarm call is quite distinct – the closest analogy I can give is a man coughing spasmodically and loudly. In the direction that the call is coming from is a vast open, depressed ground that is completely green with grass. Circumscribing the ground are trees in the distance. Between this ground and us are several rocks big and small. We start climbing these rocks to move toward the ground.
We now know that there is a tiger somewhere nearby. The excitement in us has reached a peak and we do not want to miss the chance to see the striped one. My son moves ahead of me. I am directly behind him. Some distance away is my wife and the one to bring the rear is my daughter. We walk quite some distance but fail to see the tiger. The alarm calls have also subsided and we decide to sink to the ground. We sit for a while. Our guide says we should go see the temple and then somewhere under a tree, eat our lunch.
The temple is at the peak of the hill. It is a wonderful thing. The wind blows here all the time. Our sweaty bodies are chilled immediately. We climb the few stairs it takes to reach the temple and sit there on the platform with our feet stretched. I go into the sanctum and offer prayers to the resident deity. The priest is pleased and anoints my forehead with vermillion. He comes out with me. When I inquire about the tiger he tells me that it has not arrived so far. But he is certain it will as it does everyday. It had called an hour or so before and must have been climbing then.
In front of us is the lake. After some time we climb down from the temple and select a tree for its shade. Before eating the lunch, we go down to the lake to wash our hands, feet and faces. We climb up, eat lunch, rest a while under the shade and then start our descent towards Shesh Shayya and the jeep waiting for us. The time is 1.30 PM.
We have missed seeing the tiger on foot.
In the evening over dinner the guests on a table nearby tell us, “We were at the fort at around 3 PM. While we were sitting outside the temple, two tigers came and entered the lake and swam for almost half an hour before getting out and walking away. We have the whole scene on our video camera.”
But seeing a tiger from inside a jeep is one thing and seeing it standing in front of you while you are walking in the jungle is quite another. The tigers, so say the guides, take the whole jeep as one single organism. That is exactly why you are told not to move in a manner that a limb or head pokes out of the jeep. And since the jeep is quite big, the tiger rarely attacks it. So, no danger even if the tiger is just a meter or so away from you and happens to look into your eye while your nostrils pick up its rank smell.
But what if you are on foot, walking in deep jungle and the tiger comes in front of you? Well that is totally different, unnerving, has an element of danger and, therefore, thrilling. Rules in the National Parks in India (at least in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan) forbid you from walking. So this situation is almost impossible. But there is a place inside the core area of a National Park in Madhya Pradesh where you can walk for miles and miles without bending the rule and where the tigers come everyday. This National Park is Bandhavgarh and the following is an account of what happened when we were last there in the month of March.
In this park, atop a hill is a fort. Just about half way to the fort is a statue of Vishnu reclining on his snake-bed or, what in Sanskrit or Hindi is called the Shesh Shayya. The statue is just besides the wall of the hill and natural streams coming down from the hill make a pond of fresh water just in front of this statue. The place is cool and beautiful. This is also the point up to which the jeeps can travel. From here on you have to climb on foot if you want to visit the fort. Once you reach the summit, you can walk on flat ground and take a stroll besides the numerous huge manmade ponds and a natural lake. Opposite the lake is the temple which is raised slightly above the ground and you have to climb a few stairs before you reach it. The temple has a priest who lives in the temple and is witness to goings and comings of tigers everyday. The tigers walk up to the temple quite often and at times swim in the lake and lie in its cool water at length.
Strewn all over are ruins of ancient structures. Trees, grass, shrubs grow both outside and inside these ruins. The guide takes you up to the ruins, waits outside, makes sure that no tiger is lurking inside and then takes you in. This he does with every single structure. He is not making it up to make it more thrilling for you. Once inside, you can see tiger droppings which have gone all silvery with age. Tiger droppings contain a lot of calcium and thus, as time passes, the white of calcium shows on the surface and gives it an almost silvery hue. All over the flat ground are pug marks recent and old, body marks where the tigers had lain down, claw marks on the trees showing their efforts at marking territory, bones of sambhar, deer, wild boars, and other animals that became food long back. A pug mark is so fresh that you know that a tiger has just preceded you. Your blood curdles just at the thought that you may be walking just behind a tiger or, worse, a tiger may be walking behind you. You look back.
That day, as we started to climb, it was 11 in the morning and it was still cool despite it being summer. The climb is not steep except at a few places. Still you sweat and breath heavily because the path steadily rises up. There are alternate places of sunshine and shade. You can stop and rest in the shade and look around. The scenery is breathtaking. Along the route are hairpin bends. These bends are potential thrill spots for the man who thinks – what if there is a tiger lurking just along the bend? It is not an empty thought either. From our previous visits to the fort we know that there are tigers here and they love to be here. Just along one such bend is an entire skull of a Sambhar that probably found the tiger lurking as it was going up or down. Or probably it was killed elsewhere and the tiger brought it to this place to eat in peace.
By and by we almost make it up to the summit. As we are walking a comparatively flat and straight path, a foreigner couple is coming from the opposite direction. There is something in their walk that is not quite right. They are slightly more hurried than normal. Yet, you do not see much urgency or fear on their faces. The female has something like a smile on her face and both faces show something almost like satisfaction. Their guide is walking slightly behind them. As we come abreast, the guides stop and talk in whispers. When we start walking again, our guide whispers to us, “There is a tiger ahead!” This news makes electric current flow through our bodies. “These foreigners have just seen it and if we do not make much noise, we too will see it. They saw it lying down just besides the road itself. So, lets move and lets not talk.”
My children are excited. Right from their childhood they have been seeing tigers at close quarters, but from inside the open jeep. Their excitement is misinterpreted by the guide. He stops us. “When you see the tiger, stay where you are. Don’t run. Promise me, you won’t panic.” We tell him that we are not likely to do any such thing. My daughter clutches my hand. But that is not in fear, it is just excitement. My son whispers, “It should not go away by the time we reach.”
We walk on. We are slower now. We watch where we put our foot. There is burnt grass and dried up leaves on the path. The grass on the path and on the sides of the path is periodically burnt. This is done just before the summer arrives to stop jungle fires from spreading. We avoid putting our foot on the dried leaves or on the burnt grass to avoid making any sound. We hope that the tiger cannot hear our hearts thumping in excitement. And while I say there is no fear, I am exaggerating. There is fear, but it has become a part of our excitement. Without fear, there wouldn’t be excitement either.
We turn a bend and are extra careful while we do. The path stretches beyond us straight and flat – there is no tiger to be seen for as far as we can see. The path turns again and in front of us is an ancient structure. This is a square room atop a platform with a flat roof on top of it. The guide says that this was used as a classroom till a few years back. I cannot believe him. The reason is a banyan tree that is growing out of one of its walls with its primary roots going deep into the plinth of the structure and secondary roots falling from its great branches and embedding themselves into the structure and beyond it into the open ground. The tree is huge and has obviously taken some decades to grow to this size and maturity. As we hop on to the plinth, the guide asks us to be careful on two counts. The structure is weak and, more importantly, the tiger can be inside this structure. He says he has witnessed a tiger inside this structure once. Our advance comes to a quick halt. I move around the room doing a full parikrama watching ahead of me and inside the room all the time. There is no tiger here.
And then it happens. There is a sudden alarm call. A macaque is calling some distance away. The macaque alarm call is quite distinct – the closest analogy I can give is a man coughing spasmodically and loudly. In the direction that the call is coming from is a vast open, depressed ground that is completely green with grass. Circumscribing the ground are trees in the distance. Between this ground and us are several rocks big and small. We start climbing these rocks to move toward the ground.
We now know that there is a tiger somewhere nearby. The excitement in us has reached a peak and we do not want to miss the chance to see the striped one. My son moves ahead of me. I am directly behind him. Some distance away is my wife and the one to bring the rear is my daughter. We walk quite some distance but fail to see the tiger. The alarm calls have also subsided and we decide to sink to the ground. We sit for a while. Our guide says we should go see the temple and then somewhere under a tree, eat our lunch.
The temple is at the peak of the hill. It is a wonderful thing. The wind blows here all the time. Our sweaty bodies are chilled immediately. We climb the few stairs it takes to reach the temple and sit there on the platform with our feet stretched. I go into the sanctum and offer prayers to the resident deity. The priest is pleased and anoints my forehead with vermillion. He comes out with me. When I inquire about the tiger he tells me that it has not arrived so far. But he is certain it will as it does everyday. It had called an hour or so before and must have been climbing then.
In front of us is the lake. After some time we climb down from the temple and select a tree for its shade. Before eating the lunch, we go down to the lake to wash our hands, feet and faces. We climb up, eat lunch, rest a while under the shade and then start our descent towards Shesh Shayya and the jeep waiting for us. The time is 1.30 PM.
We have missed seeing the tiger on foot.
In the evening over dinner the guests on a table nearby tell us, “We were at the fort at around 3 PM. While we were sitting outside the temple, two tigers came and entered the lake and swam for almost half an hour before getting out and walking away. We have the whole scene on our video camera.”
HUNDRED
As the race started and as several cars began vying with each other for supremacy, my four year old son exclaimed, “Look papa, Hundred cars!”
Hundred, for him, is a wondrous word. It is not merely a figure – as a figure though, it is truly astronomical. It is the most expressive word in his dictionary. He loves his parents hundred! He plans to do many things when he is hundred years old! When he is injured, his foot hurts, you guessed it, hundred! The word has a magical, indefinable taste – I know, I have seen him rolling his tongue along its delectable contours. It also has many more colors than a rainbow can even begin to imagine – I am positive, I have seen all those colors in his eyes. Hundred, probably, is the greatest thing in the world. Greater even than God. Or, probably, it is the God.
For my daughter also hundred used to be all great things under the sky. She is two years older than my son and already the word has lost its grip over her. Yesterday I overheard a conversation between the two siblings.
“Akash’s father possesses hundred rupees,” my temporarily owl-eyed son revealed to his unimpressed sister. “He also has a car. You know how much did the car cost? Hundred rupees!”
“Akash’s father must be a poor man then,” the know-all elder sister replied. “Why, it’s Shruti who is rich. Her father has thousand rupees. You know how much is thousand?”
No, he has no idea as yet about what thousand is. But within a year or so the word would become installed in his mind. May be temporarily again, but firmly. Hundred, naturally, would be dumped unceremoniously as something pedestrian, utterly devoid of any alchemic charm.
Don’t we all grow up that way? Updating our Gods at each stage of our life? Given the facility of searching the debris of my years as a kid, I am sure, I will find hundred to be my primitive God too. I too must have dethroned Him as I grew up. As a student, I remember, to have made a hundred thousand my God. That I have discarded recently and now a million seems to be more Godly. An year later probably, ten million will be the new God.
For my son, however, hundred can be non-numerical; it is mutable into something occult, something supernatural. Down the road somewhere, my hundreds, thousands, millions, have lost this capacity to be non-numerical. They have become hard, obvious, plain numbers about which there is nothing arcane, nothing recondite. Surely, it does take away some charm from these numbers. When my son says, “I love you hundred!” he is being sincere. I won’t feel sincere if I say the same.
Hundred, for him, is a wondrous word. It is not merely a figure – as a figure though, it is truly astronomical. It is the most expressive word in his dictionary. He loves his parents hundred! He plans to do many things when he is hundred years old! When he is injured, his foot hurts, you guessed it, hundred! The word has a magical, indefinable taste – I know, I have seen him rolling his tongue along its delectable contours. It also has many more colors than a rainbow can even begin to imagine – I am positive, I have seen all those colors in his eyes. Hundred, probably, is the greatest thing in the world. Greater even than God. Or, probably, it is the God.
For my daughter also hundred used to be all great things under the sky. She is two years older than my son and already the word has lost its grip over her. Yesterday I overheard a conversation between the two siblings.
“Akash’s father possesses hundred rupees,” my temporarily owl-eyed son revealed to his unimpressed sister. “He also has a car. You know how much did the car cost? Hundred rupees!”
“Akash’s father must be a poor man then,” the know-all elder sister replied. “Why, it’s Shruti who is rich. Her father has thousand rupees. You know how much is thousand?”
No, he has no idea as yet about what thousand is. But within a year or so the word would become installed in his mind. May be temporarily again, but firmly. Hundred, naturally, would be dumped unceremoniously as something pedestrian, utterly devoid of any alchemic charm.
Don’t we all grow up that way? Updating our Gods at each stage of our life? Given the facility of searching the debris of my years as a kid, I am sure, I will find hundred to be my primitive God too. I too must have dethroned Him as I grew up. As a student, I remember, to have made a hundred thousand my God. That I have discarded recently and now a million seems to be more Godly. An year later probably, ten million will be the new God.
For my son, however, hundred can be non-numerical; it is mutable into something occult, something supernatural. Down the road somewhere, my hundreds, thousands, millions, have lost this capacity to be non-numerical. They have become hard, obvious, plain numbers about which there is nothing arcane, nothing recondite. Surely, it does take away some charm from these numbers. When my son says, “I love you hundred!” he is being sincere. I won’t feel sincere if I say the same.
Saturday, September 15, 2007
TECHNOLOGICAL BLINDNESS
My grandmother used to spend her entire afternoon sitting at the doorstep and staring outside. Most of the time, even a word did not spill out of her mouth. Yet, sometimes she would get up suddenly from her perch and declare that it was going to rain. This, when there wasn’t a speck in the sky that could be construed as a cloud. But rain it did, most of the time.
I asked her once the basis of her prediction. “The ants,” she said. “When the ants come out by the scores, carrying their eggs in their mouths, it is sure to rain.” On another occasion she told me, “When birds wallow in the dust, it rains.” I know it doesn’t make any meteorological sense, but she sure was more successful than the city meteorologists.
She also did not need a watch to tell what time of the day it was. Our family got together at five in the evening for tea. Without ever seeing a clock, without ever asking anyone what time it was, she kept the tea ready at the appointed hour. “The length of the shadows.” She said by way of explanation of her ability to tell time. In the night, it were the stars and their position which told her how far insomnia had caught up with her.
Towards the fag end of my stay in the USA, I fell ill. While the illness did not incapacitate me, it was excruciating enough to consume all my rational interest during the daytime and leave me with irrational fears once the night fell.
The learned doctor, after giving me a clinical check, asked me to present myself again for further checks. “On the surface everything looks okay,” he said. “Yet more sophisticated checks might reveal something else. I advise we do a bit of endoscopy and another test to check the status of the biliary tree as well as the health of your colon.” I felt scared enough to not to show him my face again.
Back in India, I went to our family doctor, who patted my stomach, prodded my viscera with his fingers, told me to take deep breaths while this was going on. Then, examining my fingernails, he passed the verdict, “Acid peptic disease. Not to worry, though this disease might itself be a symptom of your worrying disposition. Just take these tablets, laugh a bit more often, and you should be alright.”
I asked him how he could reach a diagnosis while his counterpart in US required a bevy of tests. His answer I will never forget.
“As technology progresses, my two eyes and ten fingers become progressively blind. Even I don’t observe as much as I used to when I practiced in the rural area. My son is bestowed with practically blind fingers.”
Compared to my grandmother, I am a pygmy in the matters of observation. But the chances are bright that my grandson will write a piece eulogizing my observational prowess.
I asked her once the basis of her prediction. “The ants,” she said. “When the ants come out by the scores, carrying their eggs in their mouths, it is sure to rain.” On another occasion she told me, “When birds wallow in the dust, it rains.” I know it doesn’t make any meteorological sense, but she sure was more successful than the city meteorologists.
She also did not need a watch to tell what time of the day it was. Our family got together at five in the evening for tea. Without ever seeing a clock, without ever asking anyone what time it was, she kept the tea ready at the appointed hour. “The length of the shadows.” She said by way of explanation of her ability to tell time. In the night, it were the stars and their position which told her how far insomnia had caught up with her.
Towards the fag end of my stay in the USA, I fell ill. While the illness did not incapacitate me, it was excruciating enough to consume all my rational interest during the daytime and leave me with irrational fears once the night fell.
The learned doctor, after giving me a clinical check, asked me to present myself again for further checks. “On the surface everything looks okay,” he said. “Yet more sophisticated checks might reveal something else. I advise we do a bit of endoscopy and another test to check the status of the biliary tree as well as the health of your colon.” I felt scared enough to not to show him my face again.
Back in India, I went to our family doctor, who patted my stomach, prodded my viscera with his fingers, told me to take deep breaths while this was going on. Then, examining my fingernails, he passed the verdict, “Acid peptic disease. Not to worry, though this disease might itself be a symptom of your worrying disposition. Just take these tablets, laugh a bit more often, and you should be alright.”
I asked him how he could reach a diagnosis while his counterpart in US required a bevy of tests. His answer I will never forget.
“As technology progresses, my two eyes and ten fingers become progressively blind. Even I don’t observe as much as I used to when I practiced in the rural area. My son is bestowed with practically blind fingers.”
Compared to my grandmother, I am a pygmy in the matters of observation. But the chances are bright that my grandson will write a piece eulogizing my observational prowess.
Friday, September 14, 2007
VOTING IN INDIAN IDOL: DOES IT REFLECT UPON INDIAN DEMOCRACY?
The “Indian Idol” and “Saregama” have both become democratic singing competitions. The judges and their judgment are indeed important but the vote of the audience is even more so and final.
In one of the previous contests that I happen to remember, a contestant from North East won the competition on the basis of votes. The judges’ decision was contrary to what emerged out of voting. The anchor kept on stressing the fact that an overwhelming majority of votes have come from the North East and do not represent the entire India. The other contestant, supposed to be better if you believe the judges, received less votes and lost out.
This is not an isolated instance. Every time these contests take place, the voting goes on the lines of caste, religion, region, language.
The voters forget that the issue at hand is singing. That they are expected to vote for the better singer – the one who has more capability. In fact, from what I have so far seen, the main issue becomes completely buried under other, extraneous considerations.
The Indian media makes much of the Indian Janata in every election analysis. When we vote out a government or vote another in, the refrain is always “Wow! Even if most of the voters be illiterate, see how intelligently they have voted!” Immortalized in the Hindi songs and movies and channels is the axiom “Yeh to public hai, yeh sab janti hai.”
But think again. Do you think that a public which cannot vote straight even when the issue is simple like singing prowess of a singer will be able to vote on the basis of issues in the general elections? If they cannot see a singer of another region/religion/caste/language win a mere singing competition, how can they see someone heterogeneous to them winning an election to become an MP/MLA for the next five years and affecting their lives directly and indirectly?
The famed Indian Janata votes every time only on parochial lines and tries to elect people who belong to them. Rationales and issues actually do not count.
And if we select incompetent singers, we also select incompetent people to govern us. That is the sole reason why we do not move ahead. That is the sole reason why decisions of national importance get blocked by extraneous considerations on the part of every party. That is the sole reason why criminals can cock a snook not only at law but also actually become lawmakers. That is the reason why nuclear deals become confused with Muslim votes. That is the reason why Sachar Committees are set up. That is the reason that a foreigner can occupy a post that is greater than that of Indian Prime Minister and President combined and dictate terms to both of them and everyone in a completely unconstitutional manner. And that is the reason that the Indian voter will vote back complete mediocrity and actually love it.
In one of the previous contests that I happen to remember, a contestant from North East won the competition on the basis of votes. The judges’ decision was contrary to what emerged out of voting. The anchor kept on stressing the fact that an overwhelming majority of votes have come from the North East and do not represent the entire India. The other contestant, supposed to be better if you believe the judges, received less votes and lost out.
This is not an isolated instance. Every time these contests take place, the voting goes on the lines of caste, religion, region, language.
The voters forget that the issue at hand is singing. That they are expected to vote for the better singer – the one who has more capability. In fact, from what I have so far seen, the main issue becomes completely buried under other, extraneous considerations.
The Indian media makes much of the Indian Janata in every election analysis. When we vote out a government or vote another in, the refrain is always “Wow! Even if most of the voters be illiterate, see how intelligently they have voted!” Immortalized in the Hindi songs and movies and channels is the axiom “Yeh to public hai, yeh sab janti hai.”
But think again. Do you think that a public which cannot vote straight even when the issue is simple like singing prowess of a singer will be able to vote on the basis of issues in the general elections? If they cannot see a singer of another region/religion/caste/language win a mere singing competition, how can they see someone heterogeneous to them winning an election to become an MP/MLA for the next five years and affecting their lives directly and indirectly?
The famed Indian Janata votes every time only on parochial lines and tries to elect people who belong to them. Rationales and issues actually do not count.
And if we select incompetent singers, we also select incompetent people to govern us. That is the sole reason why we do not move ahead. That is the sole reason why decisions of national importance get blocked by extraneous considerations on the part of every party. That is the sole reason why criminals can cock a snook not only at law but also actually become lawmakers. That is the reason why nuclear deals become confused with Muslim votes. That is the reason why Sachar Committees are set up. That is the reason that a foreigner can occupy a post that is greater than that of Indian Prime Minister and President combined and dictate terms to both of them and everyone in a completely unconstitutional manner. And that is the reason that the Indian voter will vote back complete mediocrity and actually love it.
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
EXISTENCE OF RAMA AND HENRY SCHLEIMANN
The Congress party is obviously gleeful (as the left will be) over the ASI contention that there is no proof for the existence of Rama. This is indeed wonderful. But let us look at certain things before we write off Rama.
There was a similar view about Troy and the Illiad of Homer. All archaeologists were unanimous that the whole epic was a figment of imagination of Homer and that neither Troy nor Helen, not any other character ever existed. But like typical scholars, these archaeologists searched everywhere for Troy except where Homer said it existed. And since they did not find Troy there, they assumed, and worse, asserted that Troy was imaginary and fictitious.
It just took one man and his belief to change this completely. The man was Henry Schleimann. He heard this assertion in his childhood. It became a passion for him to find Troy. In his adulthood he devoted his personal money to the search for Troy. His plan was simple - dig where Homer said Troy was. And Bingo! He found Troy sitting exactly where Homer had said it would be sitting and exactly where he dug.
Indian Archaeologists too have dug everywhere except where Valmiki says Rama was and where he went. So you have greats like H. D. Sankalia and B. B. Laal and others putting Ayodhya everywhere except where valmiki said it is.
The point is, why not dig where Valmiki says you should? Does this country of a billion and more not have a single person willing to do that and put his own finances at stake? better still, it fits Congress to say and do what it says and does. It shouldn't really; because even if you disregard the fact that the Hindus make the majority of this country, you cannot deny that they indeed are citizens of this country and have feelings and emotions for their religion too. Rama is an integral part of their religion. If you do not utter a single word when other religions are concerned and call other people communal even if an objective point is being raised, you should do the same when it is a matter concerned with hinduism.
The point is that that it still fits the Congress to say and do what it says and does. Is there no one in the VHP who can think and obtain necessary permission to dig where Valmiki says we should dig?
Also, if Babri masjid was such a holy grail that it could not be demolished and its demolition raised such a hue and cry, should the same criterion not be valid for for the Setu? After all the Setu is dear to a particular religion and its feelings are going to hurt.
There was a similar view about Troy and the Illiad of Homer. All archaeologists were unanimous that the whole epic was a figment of imagination of Homer and that neither Troy nor Helen, not any other character ever existed. But like typical scholars, these archaeologists searched everywhere for Troy except where Homer said it existed. And since they did not find Troy there, they assumed, and worse, asserted that Troy was imaginary and fictitious.
It just took one man and his belief to change this completely. The man was Henry Schleimann. He heard this assertion in his childhood. It became a passion for him to find Troy. In his adulthood he devoted his personal money to the search for Troy. His plan was simple - dig where Homer said Troy was. And Bingo! He found Troy sitting exactly where Homer had said it would be sitting and exactly where he dug.
Indian Archaeologists too have dug everywhere except where Valmiki says Rama was and where he went. So you have greats like H. D. Sankalia and B. B. Laal and others putting Ayodhya everywhere except where valmiki said it is.
The point is, why not dig where Valmiki says you should? Does this country of a billion and more not have a single person willing to do that and put his own finances at stake? better still, it fits Congress to say and do what it says and does. It shouldn't really; because even if you disregard the fact that the Hindus make the majority of this country, you cannot deny that they indeed are citizens of this country and have feelings and emotions for their religion too. Rama is an integral part of their religion. If you do not utter a single word when other religions are concerned and call other people communal even if an objective point is being raised, you should do the same when it is a matter concerned with hinduism.
The point is that that it still fits the Congress to say and do what it says and does. Is there no one in the VHP who can think and obtain necessary permission to dig where Valmiki says we should dig?
Also, if Babri masjid was such a holy grail that it could not be demolished and its demolition raised such a hue and cry, should the same criterion not be valid for for the Setu? After all the Setu is dear to a particular religion and its feelings are going to hurt.
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
WHO IS THE BEST PRIME MINISTER WE HAVE HAD?
I just wondered who has been the best prime minister we have had in the history of independent India. If you ask this question generally, the name which will be thrown up immediately and spontaneously will be that of Jawaharlal Nehru. Some may say Indira Gandhi. A few BJP diehards may say Atal Behari Vajpayee. But when I began introspecting, believe me, the choice was not simple.
So here goes….
Jawaharlal Nehru
The first Prime Minster of independent India. Installed at the behest of Mahatma Gandhi when the Congress organization really wanted Sardar Patel. But whoever said Gandhi was democratic? As demonstrated in the case of Pattabhi Sitaramaiah vs. Subhash Bose during elections to the post of President of Congress during the English rule, Gandhi wanted his writ to prevail. He did pretty much the same after independence. So the first prime Minister of India was installed through an undemocratic act by the father of the nation.
Wow! What a Prime Minister to have nevertheless. A man who was erudite. A man who was an author. A man who knew, or thought he knew the history of India. A man who could give a speech like few others could. A man who was a dreamer.
A man who could charm Edwina Mountbatten, the Viceroyani as we would love to say. Wonderful. If you can get the wife of the last Viceroy to India to fall in love with you, a politician of a slave nation, you indeed get full marks as a man!
The man was a dreamer.
But the man was without the wherewithal to bring those dreams to fruition. His muddy thinking got us the middle path – the so called socialistic policy which was a cross between communism and capitalism. But often when you cross two different organisms, you get a mule – something which is barren, infertile, a beast of burden. And so the Indian economy rotted. Everything gradually became State controlled. Competition was never there and so efficiency was never a necessity.
The man had a deep mistrust of businessmen. So even those businessmen that had aided the struggle for independence had to eat the crow and the humble pie.
When everything becomes State controlled, corruption takes roots. When everything needs a license bribery is the via media. So, in more ways than one, Nehru installed the roots of corruption in the independent country.
The man was a dreamer.
In the dreams, everything is possible. It is also possible to forget reality so completely that you invite and show your military installations to Chinese. You dream of being seen as a messiah of peace. So you believe in Panchasheel. You are blind to the reality that is evolving in China behind the veil of Panchasheel. For all your erudition, you cannot think that where panchatantra is needed, you are putting in Panchasheel. So China attacks and knows even before attacking what the result is going to be. The nation is shamed.
But you don’t want to own up the responsibility especially when you have been pampered all along as someone great. So you do not admit any guilt. To a question in parliament from you own son in law, you give funny replies. This debate is parliament is famous and I recreate it below.
“Mr. Prime Minister, what about Aksai Chin? Are there any plans to take back the Indian land that has been annexed by China?” Asks Feroze Gandhi, Nehru’s own, but possibly hated, son-in-law.
After talking about here and there, Nehru manages the funny defense, “But not a blade of grass grows there. The land is completely barren. It is useless” Thereby he makes clear that he is not interested in taking it back. Pride, he can swallow and all Indians should too.
Feroze Gandhi comes back with the barbed witticism, “In that case Mr. prime Minister, not a blade of grass grows on your head too. Shall we take it as useless then?”
Nepal wanted to merge with India. Just think. Today ISI operates through that country too. Strategically it would have been wonderful if India had allowed its wish. But Nehru worried about his international image more than the benefit the country could derive. Nehru thought it would be seen as an imperialistic action and would rob him of the ‘messiah of peace image’. So, he declined!
USA wanted that we should acquire nuclear capability ahead of China and it would help us doing so. Ditto for that too – image of the messiah of peace will go out the window! So lose out on that opportunity too.
Nehru wanted universal franchise for our first general election. Others, Patel included wanted limited franchise for only those who were literate and later on a general franchise when literacy had spread. Nehru prevailed. Do you not think that the criminalization of politics today has some roots here? I believe that Nehru laid the foundations of criminalization of politics in India.
But let us end on a better note. He was the one who felt the need for IITs. He was the one allocated budget for these institutions and several others. He got all those huge dams made and called them the “temples of modern India.”
But just that much.
My vote: Nyet. I don’t want this Prime Minister today. It would simply kill India.
Your vote?
Lal Bahadur Shastri
Didn’t have a tenure where he could make a difference. Within this short tenure too he had to face a war. He acquitted himself more or less ok given the state of affairs that were handed over to him.
Jai jawan jai kisan. Beyond this slogan, nothing else survives of his legacy today. The man was obviously incorruptible. The man had good intentions at heart. Whether he would have been able to convert those intentions into reality is a matter that cannot be known.
My vote: Cannot judge. So, NO.
Your vote?
Indira Gandhi
Iron Lady! The lady who either had the guts that her to take many bold steps, or was insecure enough to take those steps to show her opponents that she was not insecure. But not all the bold steps benefited India.
Also, for me the most hated, single person responsible to dismantling all major institutions of India!
I do not want to speak about the Emergency. Much has been written about it and everyone knows of the things. So, let’s speak of other things.
Took the steps for India’s first atomic explosion. But stopped dead after that she should have gone ahead while there was still time. But alright, that was one big positive.
The space programme developed mainly during her time. She had the energy, the vision, and the will to pursue the costly programme even while others, lesser people, could have thought that the resources were well spent in feeding the masses. A leader does not look at just one thing in the present to make decisions. The true leader has a vision about the future and what all things the country will need, will be known for, and will reap the rewards of. Indira had this vision and relentlessly pursued the space programme.
She saved the Indian tiger from the brink. Project tiger was her baby and she spared nothing to achieve the target. In her times, the tiger got back from the precipice and the numbers grew till it was completely out of danger. Contrast this with what the present Prime Minister is doing when the danger is greater. You will understand the difference between a strong and a weak prime minister immediately.
But she single handedly destroyed the institution of the President of India. We got a Jhaduwala President called Zail Singh because of her. The man had no spine and he verbally demonstrated it. Only he had spinal trouble so he couldn’t bend. Otherwise ….
Even before Zail Singh, she had defiled that office. The media says that the election of Pratibha Patil was the first to have been politicized like that. They are wrong. Just go back and see what happened in the contest of Neelam Sanjeeva Reddy vs. V. V. Giri. Reddy was the official Congress candidate. Mrs. Gandhi played politics to the extent that she made the official candidate lose and V. V. Giri win on, hold your breath, “Vote of conscience!” This is exactly what the opposition tried this time round and lost badly. They didn’t have the political savvy she had.
Political savvy she had in abundance. See what she did with the slogan Garibi Hatao. Go back and see what wonderful use she made of the elephant on which she rode to Belchchi where a few dalits had been massacred. That gave her high visibility and brought her back to power.
The other institution she destroyed was the Judiciary. She meddled everywhere – in the appointments of the judges, in their transfer etc. The final straw was the answer she gave to the Allahabad court verdict that went against her. She got the constitution amended to save her skin and declared Emergency.
She muzzled the press. Only very few journalists had the courage to stand upto the tortures that she through her Goonda son, Sanjay, had fixed for them.
She was the one who was responsible for the Sikh terrorism. Jarnail Bhindranwale was her creation. This is something that is actually well known.
All in all, a lady with iron in her. But also a lady with dictatorial ambitions, with a love for her sons that was greater than her love for the nation, with a vision that few leaders have, but with a feeling of insecurity that laid these visions and quite a lot of good work that she did to waste.
My vote: NYET! I do not want her to be the Prime Minister again. MAY BE IN HER NEXT AVATAR SHE WILL MUZZLE US BLOGGERS TOO IN THE NEXT EDITION OF EMERGENCY.
Your vote?
Morarjee Desai
The guy who drank his own urine and wanted all us citizens to do the same. Highly disciplined but actually quite rigidly so. Therefore useless as a disciplinarian. Conjured an image of an irate teacher with a cane in hand to beat the impish student.
Myopic. Sold gold so that the prices depressed. Reverse happened. People bought and hoarded gold and the prices went up. Also, even with the stick in his hand, could not discipline his own cabinet members. These guys spread a stink that got his government down.
My vote: Pathetic. Good that the term ended sooner than later. Saved the PMO from donning the smell that all public latrines in India do.
(And I do not want Modi to read this blog. If he thinks I have hurt the Gujarati pride, I will be Best baked!)
Your vote?
Choudhary Charan Singh
The only image I have of him is this: One night I was walking just near the road that laid to Nagpur airport. Suddenly a jeep with a blaring siren and a voice blaring over that din goes along the road announcing for all the people “The Prime Minister of the country, Chaudhary Charan Singh has arrived. Kindly be on the sides of the road to get a darshan.”
ONLY NO ONE IS ON THE ROAD TO HAVE THAT DARSHAN!
WHEN INDIRA GANDHI USED TO ARRIVE, THERE NEVER WAS AN ANNOUNCEMENT AND THE ROAD USED TO BE TTEMING WITH PEOPLE TRYING TO GET A DEKKO.
My vote: Who cares!
Your vote? I don’t care what it is! So don’t bother.
Chandrashekhar
The great man actually became a puppet to get to the chair. Couldn’t do anything and cut a very sorry figure.
The less said the better. There is nothing to say either.
No need to vote. Sad that I write this after his death.
Rajiv Gandhi
The man who brought computers to India! You think so? Balls. The man was a comedy item. Hamein dekhna hai; Hum dekhengey; Hum Dekh rahe hain. GOD, and in the upper case!
For all his dekhna hai, dekhenge etc., the man was completely blind! He did not see the reality. Also the man, the only Prime Minister with that brute majority, who could not do anything.
I think that the man was the king of all foolish people who ever occupied that post. Let us see why he earns the title of the King of Fools.
The man first opposed the tamilians and favoured sinhalas in Sri Lanka. Then he sends Indian Peace Keeping Force to the island nation to see to the well being of Tamils. This was not the only time that he tried to play on both sides. There will be other examples I will recount. But here, it got our forces into a tizzy. They did not understand why they were there in that Nation, what they had to do, what exactly was their role. Many got killed, many wounded, and almost all utterly demoralized. And India won brickbats from both Sinhalas and Tamils. Mr. Gandhi also earned the bomb that took his life later. I THINK THERE CANNOT BE A BETTER EXAMPLE OF UTTERLY MUDDY THINKING.
But look at what he said in the parliament immediately after the Bofors controversy broke. The statement was to the effect that neither he nor any member of his family had received kickbacks in the deal! There was no need of this statement and the spotlight fixed on him automatically after this statement. Even before this he had told the parliament that there was no middleman in the deal. Later when it was proved that there indeed was a middleman, he was made to look like a liar. One after another, he used his own statements to hang himself.
Then look at the Shah Bano case and judge for yourself. The divorced lady was demanding subsistence (alimony? My memory regarding this is a bit hazy) and the Muslim clergy was opposing this. The court ruled in favour of the lady. Rajiv got this decision overturned in parliament to win the Muslim votes. This was bad as it is. You play the Muslim card inspite of talking about secularism. But the foolishness came after this.
Someone must have told him that his handling of Shah Bano case would lose him Hindu votes. So the guy now played the Hindu card and got the doors of the ram Lala Temple at Ayodhya opened and allowed shilanyas. He thought he had votes from both the communities now. He thought he was being very smart.
Dono thaur say gaye Pande
Na halwa mila na mande
(you get worst of both the worlds)
You go out to get the best of both the worlds, you must remember that you can get off getting the worst!
But that was not all. He also gave the memorable “Naani Yaad Dila Doonga” speech. He became the most loved subject of the cartoonists after this speech and a spate of bollywood and other street comedians used this line to extract unlimited laughter from the audience.
I mean, the man was an idiot. He was such a big idiot that with the biggest majority in the history of Indian Parliament, he could do nothing.
My vote: GOD, I will somehow make do with the likes of indira Gandhi, even Morarjee Desai and his cane, even Chaudhary Charan Singh, and may even considering drinking my own urine, but don’t get me Rajiv Gandhi again. Please…. Please….. Please…..
V. P. Singh
The man who divided the nation on caste lines. The man who otherwise achieved nothing in his short tenure. The man who was a sore loser – because his government was going to go, he hoisted Mandal Commission on a haless nation.
Also, this man is still a burden on the nation. His daily dialysis and blood transfusion bill has to be paid from my pocket – I pay the taxes and they go to make this man live longer than he deserves.
My vote: Let him pay for his own dialysis and blood transfusions.
Your vote: Even if you say something positive, you think I am going to listen?
Narasimha Rao
Famous in the media as India’s only pouting Prime Minister. He spoke nothing and yet got on the nerves of the media. The media loved Rajiv Gandhi because he spoke, a little too often actually. The media hated Rao because he never ever opened his mouth.
His was a minority government. Dependent for life on the crutches willingly provided by the BJP. But look at what good he did with even the minority government and contrast it with what Rajiv lost with even the brute majority.
The India that you see today, the India that is vibrant with its largely open economy and 9% GDP growth is the India that this pouting man launched. He had the savvy and the guts to give India a Finance Minister like Manmohan Singh. Media says Mr. Singh is architect. I think it was Narasimha Rao. He was the Prime Minister and he had the sense to put him up as Finance Minister and let him have a long rope inspite of protests that were vociferous and inspite of the fact that the government was in minority.
If Mr. Manmohan Singh were really the architect, he would have done much better in his innings as Indian Prime Minister. But look where is Mr. Singh headed currently. Nowhere. Mr. Rao had the political savvy and the guts and the stoicism that should be there in a leader to make a nation move forward even if the others do not share the vision.
The blot on him is that he did not do anything to save the Babri Masjid from being demolished. But I think no one could have prevented that. If BJP leaders themselves could not prevent that symbol which was essential for their future el;ectoral victories, nobody else could have either.
The actual blot is his bribing of the JMM MPs to vote in favour of his government during the no-confidence motion. He saved the government but those were not the means he should have used. Makes him seem perverted.
Also, one of the most erudite Prime Ministers we have had in this country where it is not necessary that the Prime Ministers are educated. He even wrote books. A novel, wow!
My vote: Right up there. May be one of the best we have had. But let us go further before we finally decide.
Your vote?
Deve Gowda
The guy was a compromise. The only thing he could really achieve was that last speech in the Parliament just before he got the boot – the “Old man in a hurry” speech. I am sure all of you must have heard it live. This most insipid of the Prime Ministers suddenly made me sit up with that speech and take notice. He made me laugh. He put egg all over Sitaram Kesri’s face and on the faces of all the Congress men too. Wow! What a performance.
But that is all.
My vote: Not necessary.
Your vote? Not necessary even if you do.
Indra Kumar Gujaral
His brother, the painter, was deaf. I have half a feeling that he went deaf trying to decipher what Indra Kumar Gujaral was saying. I could never understand one word he spoke. Probably no one did either. And that is how he probably stayed as Prime Minister over a year.
Vote? Nah. Don’t see the need. And you don’t bother either.
Atal Behari Vajpayee
The poet. The man who probably was the ultimate speech giver of Indian politics. Also, a Prime Minister of the first truly opposition Government of India – till his time all others were some time or other members of the Congress.
If Narasimha Rao laid down the policies that changed the nation, Vajpayee was the one who accelerated the change. He was also the one who had the guts to explode a nuclear device and declare India a Nuclear weapons capable state. He withstood the sanctions and got India through the turmoil into a state that led directly to prosperity and confidence. It was during his time that the Indian pride rode really high.
I do not want to count the economic reforms that were made during his regime. They are literally too many.
But the political savvy was in running a coalition Government of 23 parties (some of which of the likes of Mamata Banerjee) and yet giving a wonderful governance.
Blots? Exchanging the hijacked passengers with terrorists and in what obscene manner?
Gujarat riots and the non-handling of Modi.
Allowing Kargil to happen.
My vote: Right up there. But let us wait till the end for the final word.
Your vote?
Manmohan Singh
When he came to power, I felt happy. I wrote in a magazine “Stars must be shining upon India. Even when a good man like Atal Behari Vajpayee lost, and even when jokers like Laloo were around, India gets another good man as Prime Minister. It does not matter which party lost and which came to power. It is actually India which has won.”
I do not feel so happy now. I feel that I had overrated this man.
First things first. He learnt nothing from Narasimha Rao. He is the most spineless 70+ man I have seen. Even Chandrashekhar had more spine than him. This man is obsequious and for God knopws what reason. He has no thunder. His voice is a sqeak, only marginally better than Gujral. All his policy announcements are really pathetic whines because he cannot get them carried past either Sonia Gandhi or the left.
How many reforms has this economist been able to do? Zilch in his entire tenure. Moreover, he has clearly lied in case of the Jharkhand imbroglio. He also is the person who leveled the laughable allegation of BJP hiring tantriks to have him killed. Is he mad? If BJP does so, it will be for Sonia, not him. He is not important enough to waste tantriks upon.
To me the guy seems to be the Sikh avatar of Rajiv Gandhi. After him, this is the only guy who knows really well how to lose goodwill once earned.
My vote: He should go back to London School of Economics and make them hear his whiny voice.
Your vote?
Final Verdict
• To me, Narasimha Rao has been the best Prime Minister India has ever got.
• Mr. Atal Behari Vajpayee is a close second.
• The worst that we have had are Rajiv Gandhi and Manmohan Singh in that order.
• For most of the others, who wants to waste words.
• For Indira Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, better luck next time!
So here goes….
Jawaharlal Nehru
The first Prime Minster of independent India. Installed at the behest of Mahatma Gandhi when the Congress organization really wanted Sardar Patel. But whoever said Gandhi was democratic? As demonstrated in the case of Pattabhi Sitaramaiah vs. Subhash Bose during elections to the post of President of Congress during the English rule, Gandhi wanted his writ to prevail. He did pretty much the same after independence. So the first prime Minister of India was installed through an undemocratic act by the father of the nation.
Wow! What a Prime Minister to have nevertheless. A man who was erudite. A man who was an author. A man who knew, or thought he knew the history of India. A man who could give a speech like few others could. A man who was a dreamer.
A man who could charm Edwina Mountbatten, the Viceroyani as we would love to say. Wonderful. If you can get the wife of the last Viceroy to India to fall in love with you, a politician of a slave nation, you indeed get full marks as a man!
The man was a dreamer.
But the man was without the wherewithal to bring those dreams to fruition. His muddy thinking got us the middle path – the so called socialistic policy which was a cross between communism and capitalism. But often when you cross two different organisms, you get a mule – something which is barren, infertile, a beast of burden. And so the Indian economy rotted. Everything gradually became State controlled. Competition was never there and so efficiency was never a necessity.
The man had a deep mistrust of businessmen. So even those businessmen that had aided the struggle for independence had to eat the crow and the humble pie.
When everything becomes State controlled, corruption takes roots. When everything needs a license bribery is the via media. So, in more ways than one, Nehru installed the roots of corruption in the independent country.
The man was a dreamer.
In the dreams, everything is possible. It is also possible to forget reality so completely that you invite and show your military installations to Chinese. You dream of being seen as a messiah of peace. So you believe in Panchasheel. You are blind to the reality that is evolving in China behind the veil of Panchasheel. For all your erudition, you cannot think that where panchatantra is needed, you are putting in Panchasheel. So China attacks and knows even before attacking what the result is going to be. The nation is shamed.
But you don’t want to own up the responsibility especially when you have been pampered all along as someone great. So you do not admit any guilt. To a question in parliament from you own son in law, you give funny replies. This debate is parliament is famous and I recreate it below.
“Mr. Prime Minister, what about Aksai Chin? Are there any plans to take back the Indian land that has been annexed by China?” Asks Feroze Gandhi, Nehru’s own, but possibly hated, son-in-law.
After talking about here and there, Nehru manages the funny defense, “But not a blade of grass grows there. The land is completely barren. It is useless” Thereby he makes clear that he is not interested in taking it back. Pride, he can swallow and all Indians should too.
Feroze Gandhi comes back with the barbed witticism, “In that case Mr. prime Minister, not a blade of grass grows on your head too. Shall we take it as useless then?”
Nepal wanted to merge with India. Just think. Today ISI operates through that country too. Strategically it would have been wonderful if India had allowed its wish. But Nehru worried about his international image more than the benefit the country could derive. Nehru thought it would be seen as an imperialistic action and would rob him of the ‘messiah of peace image’. So, he declined!
USA wanted that we should acquire nuclear capability ahead of China and it would help us doing so. Ditto for that too – image of the messiah of peace will go out the window! So lose out on that opportunity too.
Nehru wanted universal franchise for our first general election. Others, Patel included wanted limited franchise for only those who were literate and later on a general franchise when literacy had spread. Nehru prevailed. Do you not think that the criminalization of politics today has some roots here? I believe that Nehru laid the foundations of criminalization of politics in India.
But let us end on a better note. He was the one who felt the need for IITs. He was the one allocated budget for these institutions and several others. He got all those huge dams made and called them the “temples of modern India.”
But just that much.
My vote: Nyet. I don’t want this Prime Minister today. It would simply kill India.
Your vote?
Lal Bahadur Shastri
Didn’t have a tenure where he could make a difference. Within this short tenure too he had to face a war. He acquitted himself more or less ok given the state of affairs that were handed over to him.
Jai jawan jai kisan. Beyond this slogan, nothing else survives of his legacy today. The man was obviously incorruptible. The man had good intentions at heart. Whether he would have been able to convert those intentions into reality is a matter that cannot be known.
My vote: Cannot judge. So, NO.
Your vote?
Indira Gandhi
Iron Lady! The lady who either had the guts that her to take many bold steps, or was insecure enough to take those steps to show her opponents that she was not insecure. But not all the bold steps benefited India.
Also, for me the most hated, single person responsible to dismantling all major institutions of India!
I do not want to speak about the Emergency. Much has been written about it and everyone knows of the things. So, let’s speak of other things.
Took the steps for India’s first atomic explosion. But stopped dead after that she should have gone ahead while there was still time. But alright, that was one big positive.
The space programme developed mainly during her time. She had the energy, the vision, and the will to pursue the costly programme even while others, lesser people, could have thought that the resources were well spent in feeding the masses. A leader does not look at just one thing in the present to make decisions. The true leader has a vision about the future and what all things the country will need, will be known for, and will reap the rewards of. Indira had this vision and relentlessly pursued the space programme.
She saved the Indian tiger from the brink. Project tiger was her baby and she spared nothing to achieve the target. In her times, the tiger got back from the precipice and the numbers grew till it was completely out of danger. Contrast this with what the present Prime Minister is doing when the danger is greater. You will understand the difference between a strong and a weak prime minister immediately.
But she single handedly destroyed the institution of the President of India. We got a Jhaduwala President called Zail Singh because of her. The man had no spine and he verbally demonstrated it. Only he had spinal trouble so he couldn’t bend. Otherwise ….
Even before Zail Singh, she had defiled that office. The media says that the election of Pratibha Patil was the first to have been politicized like that. They are wrong. Just go back and see what happened in the contest of Neelam Sanjeeva Reddy vs. V. V. Giri. Reddy was the official Congress candidate. Mrs. Gandhi played politics to the extent that she made the official candidate lose and V. V. Giri win on, hold your breath, “Vote of conscience!” This is exactly what the opposition tried this time round and lost badly. They didn’t have the political savvy she had.
Political savvy she had in abundance. See what she did with the slogan Garibi Hatao. Go back and see what wonderful use she made of the elephant on which she rode to Belchchi where a few dalits had been massacred. That gave her high visibility and brought her back to power.
The other institution she destroyed was the Judiciary. She meddled everywhere – in the appointments of the judges, in their transfer etc. The final straw was the answer she gave to the Allahabad court verdict that went against her. She got the constitution amended to save her skin and declared Emergency.
She muzzled the press. Only very few journalists had the courage to stand upto the tortures that she through her Goonda son, Sanjay, had fixed for them.
She was the one who was responsible for the Sikh terrorism. Jarnail Bhindranwale was her creation. This is something that is actually well known.
All in all, a lady with iron in her. But also a lady with dictatorial ambitions, with a love for her sons that was greater than her love for the nation, with a vision that few leaders have, but with a feeling of insecurity that laid these visions and quite a lot of good work that she did to waste.
My vote: NYET! I do not want her to be the Prime Minister again. MAY BE IN HER NEXT AVATAR SHE WILL MUZZLE US BLOGGERS TOO IN THE NEXT EDITION OF EMERGENCY.
Your vote?
Morarjee Desai
The guy who drank his own urine and wanted all us citizens to do the same. Highly disciplined but actually quite rigidly so. Therefore useless as a disciplinarian. Conjured an image of an irate teacher with a cane in hand to beat the impish student.
Myopic. Sold gold so that the prices depressed. Reverse happened. People bought and hoarded gold and the prices went up. Also, even with the stick in his hand, could not discipline his own cabinet members. These guys spread a stink that got his government down.
My vote: Pathetic. Good that the term ended sooner than later. Saved the PMO from donning the smell that all public latrines in India do.
(And I do not want Modi to read this blog. If he thinks I have hurt the Gujarati pride, I will be Best baked!)
Your vote?
Choudhary Charan Singh
The only image I have of him is this: One night I was walking just near the road that laid to Nagpur airport. Suddenly a jeep with a blaring siren and a voice blaring over that din goes along the road announcing for all the people “The Prime Minister of the country, Chaudhary Charan Singh has arrived. Kindly be on the sides of the road to get a darshan.”
ONLY NO ONE IS ON THE ROAD TO HAVE THAT DARSHAN!
WHEN INDIRA GANDHI USED TO ARRIVE, THERE NEVER WAS AN ANNOUNCEMENT AND THE ROAD USED TO BE TTEMING WITH PEOPLE TRYING TO GET A DEKKO.
My vote: Who cares!
Your vote? I don’t care what it is! So don’t bother.
Chandrashekhar
The great man actually became a puppet to get to the chair. Couldn’t do anything and cut a very sorry figure.
The less said the better. There is nothing to say either.
No need to vote. Sad that I write this after his death.
Rajiv Gandhi
The man who brought computers to India! You think so? Balls. The man was a comedy item. Hamein dekhna hai; Hum dekhengey; Hum Dekh rahe hain. GOD, and in the upper case!
For all his dekhna hai, dekhenge etc., the man was completely blind! He did not see the reality. Also the man, the only Prime Minister with that brute majority, who could not do anything.
I think that the man was the king of all foolish people who ever occupied that post. Let us see why he earns the title of the King of Fools.
The man first opposed the tamilians and favoured sinhalas in Sri Lanka. Then he sends Indian Peace Keeping Force to the island nation to see to the well being of Tamils. This was not the only time that he tried to play on both sides. There will be other examples I will recount. But here, it got our forces into a tizzy. They did not understand why they were there in that Nation, what they had to do, what exactly was their role. Many got killed, many wounded, and almost all utterly demoralized. And India won brickbats from both Sinhalas and Tamils. Mr. Gandhi also earned the bomb that took his life later. I THINK THERE CANNOT BE A BETTER EXAMPLE OF UTTERLY MUDDY THINKING.
But look at what he said in the parliament immediately after the Bofors controversy broke. The statement was to the effect that neither he nor any member of his family had received kickbacks in the deal! There was no need of this statement and the spotlight fixed on him automatically after this statement. Even before this he had told the parliament that there was no middleman in the deal. Later when it was proved that there indeed was a middleman, he was made to look like a liar. One after another, he used his own statements to hang himself.
Then look at the Shah Bano case and judge for yourself. The divorced lady was demanding subsistence (alimony? My memory regarding this is a bit hazy) and the Muslim clergy was opposing this. The court ruled in favour of the lady. Rajiv got this decision overturned in parliament to win the Muslim votes. This was bad as it is. You play the Muslim card inspite of talking about secularism. But the foolishness came after this.
Someone must have told him that his handling of Shah Bano case would lose him Hindu votes. So the guy now played the Hindu card and got the doors of the ram Lala Temple at Ayodhya opened and allowed shilanyas. He thought he had votes from both the communities now. He thought he was being very smart.
Dono thaur say gaye Pande
Na halwa mila na mande
(you get worst of both the worlds)
You go out to get the best of both the worlds, you must remember that you can get off getting the worst!
But that was not all. He also gave the memorable “Naani Yaad Dila Doonga” speech. He became the most loved subject of the cartoonists after this speech and a spate of bollywood and other street comedians used this line to extract unlimited laughter from the audience.
I mean, the man was an idiot. He was such a big idiot that with the biggest majority in the history of Indian Parliament, he could do nothing.
My vote: GOD, I will somehow make do with the likes of indira Gandhi, even Morarjee Desai and his cane, even Chaudhary Charan Singh, and may even considering drinking my own urine, but don’t get me Rajiv Gandhi again. Please…. Please….. Please…..
V. P. Singh
The man who divided the nation on caste lines. The man who otherwise achieved nothing in his short tenure. The man who was a sore loser – because his government was going to go, he hoisted Mandal Commission on a haless nation.
Also, this man is still a burden on the nation. His daily dialysis and blood transfusion bill has to be paid from my pocket – I pay the taxes and they go to make this man live longer than he deserves.
My vote: Let him pay for his own dialysis and blood transfusions.
Your vote: Even if you say something positive, you think I am going to listen?
Narasimha Rao
Famous in the media as India’s only pouting Prime Minister. He spoke nothing and yet got on the nerves of the media. The media loved Rajiv Gandhi because he spoke, a little too often actually. The media hated Rao because he never ever opened his mouth.
His was a minority government. Dependent for life on the crutches willingly provided by the BJP. But look at what good he did with even the minority government and contrast it with what Rajiv lost with even the brute majority.
The India that you see today, the India that is vibrant with its largely open economy and 9% GDP growth is the India that this pouting man launched. He had the savvy and the guts to give India a Finance Minister like Manmohan Singh. Media says Mr. Singh is architect. I think it was Narasimha Rao. He was the Prime Minister and he had the sense to put him up as Finance Minister and let him have a long rope inspite of protests that were vociferous and inspite of the fact that the government was in minority.
If Mr. Manmohan Singh were really the architect, he would have done much better in his innings as Indian Prime Minister. But look where is Mr. Singh headed currently. Nowhere. Mr. Rao had the political savvy and the guts and the stoicism that should be there in a leader to make a nation move forward even if the others do not share the vision.
The blot on him is that he did not do anything to save the Babri Masjid from being demolished. But I think no one could have prevented that. If BJP leaders themselves could not prevent that symbol which was essential for their future el;ectoral victories, nobody else could have either.
The actual blot is his bribing of the JMM MPs to vote in favour of his government during the no-confidence motion. He saved the government but those were not the means he should have used. Makes him seem perverted.
Also, one of the most erudite Prime Ministers we have had in this country where it is not necessary that the Prime Ministers are educated. He even wrote books. A novel, wow!
My vote: Right up there. May be one of the best we have had. But let us go further before we finally decide.
Your vote?
Deve Gowda
The guy was a compromise. The only thing he could really achieve was that last speech in the Parliament just before he got the boot – the “Old man in a hurry” speech. I am sure all of you must have heard it live. This most insipid of the Prime Ministers suddenly made me sit up with that speech and take notice. He made me laugh. He put egg all over Sitaram Kesri’s face and on the faces of all the Congress men too. Wow! What a performance.
But that is all.
My vote: Not necessary.
Your vote? Not necessary even if you do.
Indra Kumar Gujaral
His brother, the painter, was deaf. I have half a feeling that he went deaf trying to decipher what Indra Kumar Gujaral was saying. I could never understand one word he spoke. Probably no one did either. And that is how he probably stayed as Prime Minister over a year.
Vote? Nah. Don’t see the need. And you don’t bother either.
Atal Behari Vajpayee
The poet. The man who probably was the ultimate speech giver of Indian politics. Also, a Prime Minister of the first truly opposition Government of India – till his time all others were some time or other members of the Congress.
If Narasimha Rao laid down the policies that changed the nation, Vajpayee was the one who accelerated the change. He was also the one who had the guts to explode a nuclear device and declare India a Nuclear weapons capable state. He withstood the sanctions and got India through the turmoil into a state that led directly to prosperity and confidence. It was during his time that the Indian pride rode really high.
I do not want to count the economic reforms that were made during his regime. They are literally too many.
But the political savvy was in running a coalition Government of 23 parties (some of which of the likes of Mamata Banerjee) and yet giving a wonderful governance.
Blots? Exchanging the hijacked passengers with terrorists and in what obscene manner?
Gujarat riots and the non-handling of Modi.
Allowing Kargil to happen.
My vote: Right up there. But let us wait till the end for the final word.
Your vote?
Manmohan Singh
When he came to power, I felt happy. I wrote in a magazine “Stars must be shining upon India. Even when a good man like Atal Behari Vajpayee lost, and even when jokers like Laloo were around, India gets another good man as Prime Minister. It does not matter which party lost and which came to power. It is actually India which has won.”
I do not feel so happy now. I feel that I had overrated this man.
First things first. He learnt nothing from Narasimha Rao. He is the most spineless 70+ man I have seen. Even Chandrashekhar had more spine than him. This man is obsequious and for God knopws what reason. He has no thunder. His voice is a sqeak, only marginally better than Gujral. All his policy announcements are really pathetic whines because he cannot get them carried past either Sonia Gandhi or the left.
How many reforms has this economist been able to do? Zilch in his entire tenure. Moreover, he has clearly lied in case of the Jharkhand imbroglio. He also is the person who leveled the laughable allegation of BJP hiring tantriks to have him killed. Is he mad? If BJP does so, it will be for Sonia, not him. He is not important enough to waste tantriks upon.
To me the guy seems to be the Sikh avatar of Rajiv Gandhi. After him, this is the only guy who knows really well how to lose goodwill once earned.
My vote: He should go back to London School of Economics and make them hear his whiny voice.
Your vote?
Final Verdict
• To me, Narasimha Rao has been the best Prime Minister India has ever got.
• Mr. Atal Behari Vajpayee is a close second.
• The worst that we have had are Rajiv Gandhi and Manmohan Singh in that order.
• For most of the others, who wants to waste words.
• For Indira Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, better luck next time!
Thursday, September 6, 2007
HAIR: A post by Ruta Dharmadhikari
For the first time I am putting a piece written by another author on this blog. The piece is written by Mrs. Ruta Dharmadhikari. I met Ruta for the first time as one of the participants of an orientation course conducted by Nagpur University for young lecturers. As fellow participants, we interacted for a whole month. I do not respect many people; in fact I can count such people on the fingers of my two hands. No. Don’t get me wrong. I do not respect Ruta; for that she will have to slog hard, very hard at something she is actually good at – writing. The evidence of this was obvious even at the course that I have talked about above. A small piece had to be written by the participants on a series of photographs. Her piece was commendable and indeed the best. The piece that follows below is very well woven too.
Incidentally, Ruta is a Reader(?) in the Department of English, LAD College, Nagpur.
HAIR
My mother- in -law’s lovely long tresses depleted to a shadow of their former selves on account of the radiation and chemotherapy treatment she underwent for cancer. Her mother’s hair had maintained its growth and length and thickness (not its jet black colour, though) even at the ripe old age of 91.
As a young bride, I spent a lot of time with her and one of my daily tasks was to groom that Grande dame’s hair. Such a mass of long hair on an age- ripened head never ceased to daily astonish me. I would lovingly run a comb through the salt and pepper fall and untangle it gently; all the while listening to the answers to the leading questions I put to her about her family-and now mine.
She was my guidebook to Ashu as a young prankster, to Justice Saheb as a dashing upcoming lawyer and later well-known judge. As I oiled her scalp and massaged it vigorously, she introduced me to my beautiful, versatile and accomplished mother-in-law: dutiful daughter- in- law, caring wife and mother, gracious hostess and a career woman to boot, all rolled in one.
With each brush of the comb through the now well-oiled hair, my acquaintance with my extended family grew. My grandmother-in-law, widowed at age 30, had lived most her life with her illustrious son- in- law. Carefully parting her hair into three, I slowly learnt of each aunt, uncle and cousin. Every twist of each part, the fashioning of all three into a thick plait, wove me into a vibrant and energetic family. Midway through, a strand would slip through my nervous, awestruck fingers as I heard of her own experiences of raising three daughters alone, after facing endless death—a husband and seven children.
I would continue to plait those strands right till the very end … till there was not even a wisp left to plait. And then coil that thick-to-thin plait carefully into a bun, round and round and round at the back of her head. Positioning it exactly where she wanted it.
Hair. A woman’s source of beauty and pride: the loss of which is like the wrenching of heartstrings. Renowned feminist, Germaine Greer’s exposition- in her book The Whole Woman- on every womanly physical feature, needs an inclusion on hair.
Now, as I groom my mother-in-law’s hair in the same room, I try not to let her know what I know about her hair. But my mother- in- law is a wise woman. One of the wisest I know.
She knows.
Incidentally, Ruta is a Reader(?) in the Department of English, LAD College, Nagpur.
HAIR
My mother- in -law’s lovely long tresses depleted to a shadow of their former selves on account of the radiation and chemotherapy treatment she underwent for cancer. Her mother’s hair had maintained its growth and length and thickness (not its jet black colour, though) even at the ripe old age of 91.
As a young bride, I spent a lot of time with her and one of my daily tasks was to groom that Grande dame’s hair. Such a mass of long hair on an age- ripened head never ceased to daily astonish me. I would lovingly run a comb through the salt and pepper fall and untangle it gently; all the while listening to the answers to the leading questions I put to her about her family-and now mine.
She was my guidebook to Ashu as a young prankster, to Justice Saheb as a dashing upcoming lawyer and later well-known judge. As I oiled her scalp and massaged it vigorously, she introduced me to my beautiful, versatile and accomplished mother-in-law: dutiful daughter- in- law, caring wife and mother, gracious hostess and a career woman to boot, all rolled in one.
With each brush of the comb through the now well-oiled hair, my acquaintance with my extended family grew. My grandmother-in-law, widowed at age 30, had lived most her life with her illustrious son- in- law. Carefully parting her hair into three, I slowly learnt of each aunt, uncle and cousin. Every twist of each part, the fashioning of all three into a thick plait, wove me into a vibrant and energetic family. Midway through, a strand would slip through my nervous, awestruck fingers as I heard of her own experiences of raising three daughters alone, after facing endless death—a husband and seven children.
I would continue to plait those strands right till the very end … till there was not even a wisp left to plait. And then coil that thick-to-thin plait carefully into a bun, round and round and round at the back of her head. Positioning it exactly where she wanted it.
Hair. A woman’s source of beauty and pride: the loss of which is like the wrenching of heartstrings. Renowned feminist, Germaine Greer’s exposition- in her book The Whole Woman- on every womanly physical feature, needs an inclusion on hair.
Now, as I groom my mother-in-law’s hair in the same room, I try not to let her know what I know about her hair. But my mother- in- law is a wise woman. One of the wisest I know.
She knows.
WHERE IS THE BJP GOING WRONG
Where is the BJP going wrong? From all the news that you read in the print media and watch on the idiot box you would believe that the worst problem that the BJP faces today is the infighting in its ranks. I beg to differ.
Let us look at what happened just before BJP came to power. Let’s look at how BJP behaved just before it came to power.
The stage is just before 1989. Rajiv Gandhi commits the ultimate foolishness of his career (not that this was the only one; the man must have been the king of all foolish people ever to have come to power in India. Look at IPKF – what can be a bigger blunder and a product of utterly muddy thinking. Look at what he said in Parliament when the Bofors issue first broke, MY GOD! Look at the Shah Bano case and judge for yourself. Look at his dolphin saving show – I mean the man may have had completely noble intentions in his heart but do you completely forget, even after being a politician for some time, how it would be looked back at home? Or just hear back in your years his classic “Nani Yaad Dila Doonga” speech! That was just wonderful. It made you laugh outright and brought home the point that the man was basically foolish). He allows the gates of Ram Lala Temple to be opened for offering prayers. He thinks he is being smart. He thinks that having played the Muslim card in the guise of the Shah Bano case, he is now playing the Hindu card and will get votes from both the sides. He probably had never heard of the old Hindi couplet (not that anyone in the Gandhi family, save Nehru, can ever be accused of being a bibliophile)
Dono thaur say gaye Pande
Na halwa mila na mande
(you get worst of both the worlds)
You go out to get the best of both the worlds, you must remember that you can get off getting the worst!
The BJP capitalized on this immediately. It set the agenda right then and there. The cry was “Mandir wahin banayenge.” I do not like temple building etc. It is a retrogressive agenda. You can make far better things with the same money and that makes economic sense too. But in politics often what makes good economic sense does not make political sense. And in a completely emotionalized politics that we have in India, rational issues never make any sense (otherwise how would have the NDA lost the last election after the nation made all round progress under the regime?). BJP realized the emotional power of the issue that Rajiv Gandhi had handed over to it on a platter. BJP SET THE AGENDA THEN.
When Bofors came, the BJP combined corruption with the Hindu card that it has a copyright on. VP Singh walked out. BJP made him play in its lap. When Rajiv Gandhi lost the elections, it may have come as a surprise to some, but it was actually a foregone conclusion. The two emotive issues – corruption and temple – could never have made him come even to smelling distance of victory.
Then Advani came up with the biggest flash he has had in his life – the Rathyatra. That firmly put BJP in the position of agenda maker. It was this party that made the agenda and it was the other parties that reacted to the agenda. It was for other parties to be increasingly shrill in branding BJP communal. It was for BJP to go ahead with what it was doing and keep making the others dance to the agenda it set.
Till 2004, till it lost power, BJP had the savvy to be the maker of the agenda of Indian Politics. After 2004, it has utterly lost it.
People stick to magic. If you have magic in you, they will stick to you. Fissiparous tendencies grow when the magic ceases. You try finding magic elsewhere and you fall apart gradually and then increasingly. In politics the magic is agenda. You know how to set it, you will keep your people together. Not just that, your allies will stick to you. You have the magic. You cannot set the agenda, your allies leave first and then your own people start rebelling.
The infighting that you see is not a disease. It is a symptom. It is a symptom of the disease that is called loss of agenda making ability.
What is BJP doing today? It is dancing to whatever agenda is there. No. Other parties still do not have the ability to set any agenda. Congress is just pathetic. It is the governing party and it still does not know how to set the agenda. The other parties too are the same. The agendas are not really agendas. They are events that are taking place. But since the events are controlled by the ruling combination most of the time, by dancing to events, reacting to events, BJP is dancing to their tunes. This is what has principally gone wrong with BJP. This is the reason why there is infighting. This is the reason why its allies are increasingly belligerent and are deserting it either overtly or covertly.
Till the day BJP gets back its ability to set the agenda once again, it will remain in the doghouse. Look at the situation. The Congress is back to its foolish behaviour. The Left has always been made entirely of strident negative and persistently coughing gents who are even otherwise on the verge of extinction (only they don’t know it and their success in the past election makes them conveniently blind to their future). There is a situation which is tailor made for opposition that is BJP. But will BJP wake up? Will it get back its ability to set the agenda?
It is just this. Everything else is secondary and rides on this central aspect. So. Do you see BJP getting back its ability of setting an agenda? Or do you think it has lost it permanently like the Congress has? On this question rides the fate of the Indian parliament and who will form the nest government.
Let us look at what happened just before BJP came to power. Let’s look at how BJP behaved just before it came to power.
The stage is just before 1989. Rajiv Gandhi commits the ultimate foolishness of his career (not that this was the only one; the man must have been the king of all foolish people ever to have come to power in India. Look at IPKF – what can be a bigger blunder and a product of utterly muddy thinking. Look at what he said in Parliament when the Bofors issue first broke, MY GOD! Look at the Shah Bano case and judge for yourself. Look at his dolphin saving show – I mean the man may have had completely noble intentions in his heart but do you completely forget, even after being a politician for some time, how it would be looked back at home? Or just hear back in your years his classic “Nani Yaad Dila Doonga” speech! That was just wonderful. It made you laugh outright and brought home the point that the man was basically foolish). He allows the gates of Ram Lala Temple to be opened for offering prayers. He thinks he is being smart. He thinks that having played the Muslim card in the guise of the Shah Bano case, he is now playing the Hindu card and will get votes from both the sides. He probably had never heard of the old Hindi couplet (not that anyone in the Gandhi family, save Nehru, can ever be accused of being a bibliophile)
Dono thaur say gaye Pande
Na halwa mila na mande
(you get worst of both the worlds)
You go out to get the best of both the worlds, you must remember that you can get off getting the worst!
The BJP capitalized on this immediately. It set the agenda right then and there. The cry was “Mandir wahin banayenge.” I do not like temple building etc. It is a retrogressive agenda. You can make far better things with the same money and that makes economic sense too. But in politics often what makes good economic sense does not make political sense. And in a completely emotionalized politics that we have in India, rational issues never make any sense (otherwise how would have the NDA lost the last election after the nation made all round progress under the regime?). BJP realized the emotional power of the issue that Rajiv Gandhi had handed over to it on a platter. BJP SET THE AGENDA THEN.
When Bofors came, the BJP combined corruption with the Hindu card that it has a copyright on. VP Singh walked out. BJP made him play in its lap. When Rajiv Gandhi lost the elections, it may have come as a surprise to some, but it was actually a foregone conclusion. The two emotive issues – corruption and temple – could never have made him come even to smelling distance of victory.
Then Advani came up with the biggest flash he has had in his life – the Rathyatra. That firmly put BJP in the position of agenda maker. It was this party that made the agenda and it was the other parties that reacted to the agenda. It was for other parties to be increasingly shrill in branding BJP communal. It was for BJP to go ahead with what it was doing and keep making the others dance to the agenda it set.
Till 2004, till it lost power, BJP had the savvy to be the maker of the agenda of Indian Politics. After 2004, it has utterly lost it.
People stick to magic. If you have magic in you, they will stick to you. Fissiparous tendencies grow when the magic ceases. You try finding magic elsewhere and you fall apart gradually and then increasingly. In politics the magic is agenda. You know how to set it, you will keep your people together. Not just that, your allies will stick to you. You have the magic. You cannot set the agenda, your allies leave first and then your own people start rebelling.
The infighting that you see is not a disease. It is a symptom. It is a symptom of the disease that is called loss of agenda making ability.
What is BJP doing today? It is dancing to whatever agenda is there. No. Other parties still do not have the ability to set any agenda. Congress is just pathetic. It is the governing party and it still does not know how to set the agenda. The other parties too are the same. The agendas are not really agendas. They are events that are taking place. But since the events are controlled by the ruling combination most of the time, by dancing to events, reacting to events, BJP is dancing to their tunes. This is what has principally gone wrong with BJP. This is the reason why there is infighting. This is the reason why its allies are increasingly belligerent and are deserting it either overtly or covertly.
Till the day BJP gets back its ability to set the agenda once again, it will remain in the doghouse. Look at the situation. The Congress is back to its foolish behaviour. The Left has always been made entirely of strident negative and persistently coughing gents who are even otherwise on the verge of extinction (only they don’t know it and their success in the past election makes them conveniently blind to their future). There is a situation which is tailor made for opposition that is BJP. But will BJP wake up? Will it get back its ability to set the agenda?
It is just this. Everything else is secondary and rides on this central aspect. So. Do you see BJP getting back its ability of setting an agenda? Or do you think it has lost it permanently like the Congress has? On this question rides the fate of the Indian parliament and who will form the nest government.
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