31 March 2008

The Times Are Changing...

“You mark my words! The times are changing from bad to worse…its God’s will- the end of the world is near!”


I was having a slightly heated discussion with Mrs.N, mother of a good friend of mine, on that favourite lamentation of the old and the middle aged alike- the changing times. For the space of a quarter of an hour or so we duelled, each presenting one case after the other. As the argument picked up speed, her points started becoming stronger and stronger until she pronounced the said words with such a vehement air of finality that I was forced to concede defeat. I had lost.

However, now that I think of it, are the times really changing for the worse?

Utilitarianism has reached unprecedented levels- the bonds that hold human beings to the bigger superstructure, society, have become narrow and fragile. In this day and age of ‘me and mine’, corruption and all sort of criminal activities have become multi headed hydra like problems which no single Hercules can club down to death. Competition, nay, unbridled and unchecked competition has lent to every human being’s public and private existence an element of the ‘cut throat’ that, to use a simile employed often for this purpose, makes the everyday life of everyday people worse than a “dog’s life”. Global warming, hunger, poverty, AIDS, jihad- all of these threaten the very existence of this most marvellous race.

So perhaps Mrs. N is right when she declares that the times are changing for the worse. Perhaps the end of the world is near. Perhaps…

Perhaps no.

Yes, perhaps no. What right, what moral and historical right does a middle-aged housewife, or for that matter, any ‘we-know-what’s right’ sort of a patronizing, condescending middle-aged person has to pass a judgement against the ‘times’?

He/she is, after all, alive.

I mean had the times been changing for the worse, then would life expectancy have increased? Let’s see, what was the average life expectancy in India a hundred years ago? Um, about thirty-five, wasn’t it? Thirty-five years just a century ago and undoubtedly not more than that in the preceding centuries.

So, to be alive at the age of around fifty is in itself a huge, huge indicator of how things have taken a turn for the good. And it’s not just life expectancy, it’s almost each and every aspect of modern life- electricity, cars, airplanes, Rajdhanis, houses, electric stoves, mixers, grinders, taps, municipal water supply, hospitals, public transport, T.V., radio, internet, shoes, nail cutters, combs, face creams, electric shavers, tables, chairs, pencils, lead, paper, pens, pins, clips- everything! Where would we have been had it not been for all this and infinitely more? Most probably, people like you and me, normal, everyday people with no royal blood and no great aristocratic lineage to boast of, would, even two hundred years ago in this city of Delhi, have been living in one room houses or perhaps straw shanties outside the walls of Shahjahanabad…

People say that crime is on the rise today- the rate of murders, rapes, burglaries is rising at an unchecked pace. Look back into the squalor of Delhi’s, India’s past-were there not rapes, murders, arsons, pillages? Did they not occur on a larger, more organised scale? Delhi has been looted, its men beheaded, its woman raped and its children carried away as slaves not once or twice but countless times, most notably and most horrendously by the Timur Lang, Nadir Shah and the British of the East India Company.

To say that all this happened in the times of the Mussalmans and that the Age of the Hindus was a much better one is nothing but an elaborate bogey, a hoax. Did not the princes of medieval, post-Gupta age raid each other’s lands for treasure and ‘bounty’? Was not ancient India, the India of the Mauryas, the Cholas marked by savagery and violence of the most barbaric and inhuman kind? Is not war a ‘dharma’ of the Kshetriyas, the rulers of the age of Hindu hegemony and did not war remain a never ending, never ceasing process all through the history of India, especially in the Age of the Empire, the Mauryas, Guptas and, more recently, Mughals, all of whom had large standing armies which, according to one expert, “fed on war”?...

Some people would say that all this lies in the realm of politics, that feuds of kings and rulers had little effect on the lives of common people, who, to these doom day sayers, lived simple and down to earth lives?

To these people, I say yes and no.

Yes, for I acknowledge that simplicity was and, decreasingly so, still is a virtue that characterises the rural man’s/woman’s life. Essentially a country of innumerable villages, many of them not more than a hundred houses strong, the Indian rural landscape was and still is of closely knit communities that share each other’s joys and sorrow’s. Slow moving, almost fixed, this ‘quasi-static’ way of life was more or less self sufficient and independent of outside interference, except, of course, in times of emergencies.

Which, considering the long history of fighting and warfare in India, were not all that rare. This, and some other arguments, lead me to ‘no’.

Agreed rural Indian lifestyle, the lifestyle of the masses, was simple. Simply horrendous in fact, for there is no better example of organised, officially sanctioned and justified slavery in the world than the one afforded by the caste system of ancient and, more so, medieval India. True life was ‘peaceful’, but yet that peace was naught but a floating castle suspended in mid air without any real foundation. The bubble was bound to burst and it did burst, sporadically at the time of the Muslim invasion when the condition of all castes except the Brahman and the Kshetriya was as pitiable, beggarly and appalling as possible and fully and completely in recent memory. If caste based politics and caste inspired violence have become blots on the history of democratic India, we have only our forefathers, our castist forefathers, followers of that disgusting demagogue Manu, to blame.

Talking of democracy, is not the creation of a democratic nation-a nation where there is ‘freedom, justice and liberty’ for all-in a land where political entities have always been forged by the might of the sword and the shedding of blood in itself a wonder and so, a sure-shot indicator of better things to come?...

Taking sides is always a tricky affair. What is needed, therefore, is, as (perhaps?) Buddha called it, a middle path-a place from where can balance both the optimist and the pessimist. For while it would be naivety to suggest that things are on a roll, it would also be stupidity to announce the Day of Judgement to be nigh. Human life has always been, is and will always be too complex to be defined and its one course predicted by sticking to just one extreme and ignoring the merits of the other. We, the members of this race, have an infinite capacity and potential for not just good but also evil and the cultural progress from barbarism to modernity has only helped in making the inner and, consequently, outer tussle between the two more pronounced. So while it must be accepted that there are many, if not some, very glaring aberrations and very cancerous abnormalities in modern life, it must also be acknowledged that all never was, never is and never will be lost and that even the realisation of the presence of these aberrations and abnormalities is in itself a step in the positive direction towards their final elimination.

This is surely not utopia.

But the times are changing…

16 March 2008

So Long, Farewell!

School is one of the most important part of a human’s life, for not only does school prepare one for the challenges that lie ahead and moulds a child’s personality, but also gives to a person what he/she will always look back upon as his/her golden years and whose memories he/she will always cherish.

I had joined this school in 1993 as a chubby cheeked, 2 foot 8 inches boy. Much has changed in my appearance (I still retain a little of that chubbiness), but one thing, one over-powering emotion has always stayed with me for all these years- my great love for this school, for what it was, what it is and what it will be. The 14 years of my life that I spent in this school are very dear to me; they are the golden years that I will always cherish.

Like every other student, I too have had my share of ups and downs and my life has been extremely eventful. From peeing in my pants in Montessori 1 (I still remember that horrible day-I wasn’t able to get to the loo in time!) to puking on my class teacher in 4th (she was standing in front of the door and wouldn’t let me out because I didn’t say where I was going, so I vomited on her); from starting a Society for ‘Sober Students’ in 8th (its another matter that it was closed down in just 2 months- the members just wouldn’t pay their weekly share!) to leading the Editorial Board as the Chief Editor in 11th and 12th, I have thoroughly enjoyed my time in this school. Yes, there have been times when I felt like locking all the teachers in the staff room, or slapping some very pesky girls, or even proposing to a good looking one, but thankfully, I have managed to steer away from all such ‘extra-curricular’ activities.

But now, it is the end. Even as I write this article, it is, as Churchill famously said, the beginning of the end. In less than 4 months, I will cease to be a school student. While Vijay Malaya may claim Kingfisher to be the ‘King of Good Times’, for me (and I’m sure for many others around me), Bal Bharati has been the best of and has brought out the best in all our lives. So as I bid adieu to this wonderful place called school, the words of an unforgettable Rogers and Hammerstein haunt me again and again- “So long, farewell, we hate to say goodbye!!!”…

Things Lost and Found


"This is not school guys, this is college!"...

The beginning of college is regarded, rightly perhaps, as the commencement of a new era, a new chapter in a person's life, for then he/she not only moves one notch up on the ladder of his/her ambition, but also comes, quite literally, into a bigger, wider world. The kind of exposure that you get, that I got and still am getting as a University student is rivalled by nothing else in the world.

For starters, there's this huge change, this, as professors of English Literature (which, coincidentally, is also what I am doing) will; call it, tremendous shift from uniformity (and associated vices like "dehumanisation" and "curbing of free will") to individuality (and hence the promotion of all things nice and wonderful). But before you rake your brain to guess what great and noble virtue I just expounded, then I am referring not to zombies of a mechanised, unnatural world rising to a day and age of natural freedom, but boys and girls of 18 years of age (or, as is the case here, 17 and a half) shedding their school uniforms to don 'new robes' of their choice. Great as it sounds to be able to break free from the same ol' uniform, believe me, there are not too infrequent days when the dilemma of to wear or not to wear forces you to wish for the good old days (inspite of the dehumanisation and curbing of free will..) to come back...

With individuality comes, as professors declaim time and again from their lofty pulpits, freedom. And oh boy, freedom it is! I mean, I was never a stickler for rules and regulations in school and neither was Bal Bharati the 'how can you have your pudding if you don't eat your meat' sort of an institution and so, even if there arose issues which had the potential to have too much of a "dehumanising effect" on our poor, innocent minds, we always manaed to circumvent them. This, and the fact that compared to various other 'public' schools in Delhi (where the pudding is seldom to be had even after eating the meat) always betrayed it in a gentler, kinder light, had convinced me that more freedom than this could never be enjoyed in any academic institution.

Illusions, however, are meant to be broken.

For apart from the radically fundamental freedom to make your own style statement (Hail individuality!), one has the freedom to walk out of classes if "free will" so dictates (though there is a 5 mark bonus for 85% and above attendance to prevent too much exercise of "free will"), to lounge all day long in the canteen (though that exposes you to the fatal 'canteen-o-philia'), to participate in any extra curricular activity without teachers poking in their noses and (this is most important because this is what I do the most) to sit for hours at end under the shade of a magnificent tree and read to one's heart's delight as well as to get not physically but mentally lost in the cavernous library and explore shelf upon shelf of cerebral delights...

Of course, there are times when the freedom becomes too much, times when the professors too exercise their freedom by abstaining from taking classes, times when you (and this is the most frustrating thing) brave the hostile battlefield of Delhi's bluelines to come helter-skelter to college to only discover all classes cancelled for some bally talent show...

Talking of buses, I think it wouldn't do any justice to my 'anubhav' of them if I were not to present an eulogy on the marvellously unique distinction of Delhi's buses in transforming, within the span of a few measly kilometres, a well dressed, amiable person at peace with the world into a completely disgruntled, disgusted individual. Truly, when my feet are stomped upon by the entire standing populace of a bus, when I get squeezed and sandwiched in between two incorrigible 'Jatta ka Choras' as if I were not a creature equipped with that blessed structural entity called the backbone, when I get cursed and shouted upon by an impatient horde of typical fire breathing Punjabis to jump out of a moving bus and when other people's private parts (unintentionally I hope!) touch and brush my shoulder, then I most ardently wish for the peace and comfort of the private school bus...

To revert back to my original theme, i.e. exposure, I really can't help writing about the kind of exposure that one gets of society, and of problematic societal issues in college. Therefore, while it is true that as a school going baccha I read newspapers and kept myself abreast of current affairs, it is also undeniable that I saw the world at large as the Lady of Shallot saw Camelot from her Ivory Tower; being twice removed from reality gave to me also a gaze of aloofness and indifference. However, college, with its protest marches and dharnas, has added an all new dimension to my social consciousness, a dimension which has brought me face to face with the harsh realities of a world which, when stripped naked of its artifice and duplicity, is as barbaric and brutal as ever...

They say life is like a river, a river that goes forever on and on- impetuous and full of energy at the beginning, slow and steady halfway down the mark and dull and dreary at the end. It goes various places and sees a great many things; what remains with it of that which it leaves behind are fragments, little bits here and there which finally settle down on the bed of unconsciousness...


"The road goes forever on and on
Down from the door where it began
And I must follow it if I can..."


-J.R.R. Tolkein
as 'Gandalf the Grey' in
his 'Fellowship of the Ring'