On cleaning a toilet

“Nahi, nahi, chinta ki kya baat hai? Main kar dunga, koi pareshani nahi hogi…”

Cleaning a toilet is one of the most liberating experiences ever. It’s a dirty job, yes, but nonetheless an ordeal out of which one emerges cleaner in more than one sense.

Obviously, my Dadi doesn’t share these sentiments. Cleaning toilets is for the low caste: achuts, Dalits and SCs. Even if not, even then it’s for the maidservants or, at the very least, for the sarkari jamadar – not, certainly not, for her dear pampered grandson.

Yet, there was no one else to do it and so the lot fell on these shoulders. Why not too? What is in cleaning a toilet?

Something poignant as I see it.

Disgusting and filthy, yes, but poignant still, reflective of the unacknowledged labour of numberless multitudes who worked behind scenes to make those scenes what they are, presentable thus – does not history rest on the shoulders of those who lived and died in poop, pee and puke? A historic act? Certainly…

“Arre kahan phas gaye beta! Rehne do, ek haath maar ke hi aa jao...pote se aisa kaam karvana parh raha hai…”

“Mein theek hun Dadi.”

“Theek toh tum ho hi, par bas ab nibta ke aa jao. Aao aur nahao…”

But history still isn’t without the stigma of pollution, ne? What, what but a string of fables commonly agreed upon? History, indeed; the weight of history rather, imagined as much as real – more imagined perhaps than real. To clean a toilet? Pollution, inescapable pollution! Caste redeems, yes, but then such a caste too! An outcast caste, half here and half there: still, history weighs us down.

“Dadi, mann mein ek khayal aaya hai, kuch vachan dimaag mein ghum rahe hain.”

“Kaise vachan? Kam hua? Jaldi aao bhai!”

“Haan, haan…par sochiye, Gandhiji ne bhi toh aisa hi kuch kaha, kiya tha! Vaishnav jan toh ten ere kahiye, peer parai jaani re…”

Vaishnav Jan, Harijan. Harijan? Really? We who have the leisure to think, to consider our position in a wider order and the forces which bind that order, we make ourselves Harijans. Who else out of his/her own volition would be so? Still, in doing so, in such fashioning, one is that, one is so: peer parai jaani re…shit unites, shit holds what naught else can: everything said and done, we all carry shit within ourselves…

“Uhm!”

“Kya hua?”

“Honthon se chu lo toh, mera geet amar kar do: ek boond andar se chapak kar mere honthon ko chum gayi.”

“Hair ram, yeh larka! Bas ho gaya, aa jao! Hai ram!”

Whatever it might be, a job well done does give satisfaction. A toilet restored to its showroom shine does lighten the heart, bring a tune to the lips. Thank goodness for Harpic and the like too, for along with something noble cleaning the toilet is now also a sacred chore, a contributor to health and hygiene and the GDP in totality.

“Haan, kaam toh accha hi kiya hai tumne. Shahbash! Nahi, nahi, mujhe mat chuhiyo abhi! Ja naha ke aa, phir, phir!”

“Arre, toilet hi toh saaf kiya hai!”

“Haan, bas, toilet saaf kiya hai!”

Lines Composed upon Wazirabad Bridge

(to Lakshita; or the idea of her)

*

Tranquillity or not, recollecting emotion is no mean task. You sit back, relax and spend many ponderous hours mulling over what you saw and felt at such and such place and so and so time. Every few minutes you think you’ve got it and you jump up in excitement and then just as soon you feel a sharp pang of disappointment when a mean little devil in your head rakes up doubt and whispers this wasn’t really it, you’ve missed something, that you’ve lost what it was for good…

It happens so many times too! Of course, for day to day commonplaces you don’t mind it happening, and you pass over such everyday trivia eagerly without a care. But for those things or events or just, well, moments, for these, for those for which you feel a special pang, not being able to recollect them perfectly well can be pretty irritating – irritating as it can be beautiful, both at the same time.

Really! I mean, you think and think and get all the more irritated at the way it just eludes you try as much as you can, but then there is a certain quaintly quixotic charm in this game of cat and mouse, in trying to fix reality knowing full well you never really can fix it after it’s over and done with. Is it man’s will, aiming a la Mirandola and ye olde Humanists to reach out for perfection in thought, in achieving a unity of thought and action, all a harmonious, shining whole? Or is it just plain, ruddy perversity, this hankering after a few seconds, wasting hours for a few moments when there’s much else to do: duties to fulfil, tasks to complete, life to be made…

See how it goes! From one to the other the chain goes on and on and so by leaps and bounds transports you leagues from what you started with. Such if life, and such is the human mind!

Wazirabad. It enters the city there; not literally, no, not in the geographical sense of entering the city limits and coming under the jurisdiction of some of its multiple bodies. No, not like that; yet, in that sense, in sense of jurisdiction, control, this is where it first falls under our control, us as a city. That’s where the first of the many bridges and barrages which we have over it here is and so, in that sense, that’s where it enters the city.

Nothing special about that. Of course not: it’s just yet another bridge and barrage over the mighty river. Ha! Not even a might river; a nallah, rather, as many of us are wont to derisively call it most of the time, implicating in such ridicule our governance, the famed bodies, in the twin conspiracy of corruption and pollution which has for long characterised any effort to restore it to any semblance of a living river. The Yamuna; not a river, a nallah: the Yamuna nallah.

Not a nallah then.

Mighty, mighty river! Crashing, pounding, taking all in its path – forward on to doom! The meek shall inherit the earth, and so the docile, staid, everyday nallah rises up in froth and fury to submerge man and his kind, to take down whatever comes in its path, threaten his arrogance with heavy blows, rot and decay! Chastise him with a heavy, heavy hand, a resounding slap against the vanity of his dreams…

It’s such a pity it didn’t flood, that it didn’t really break down all those banks. It would’ve been spectacular had it, had it flooded that Village. Ha! That would’ve been divine retribution for the Abhiyaan, something to finally award their long, fruitless vigil for nature and man. Not that death is pretty, nor that loss of property or of a lifetime’s hard work desirable. But rather it would’ve broken into our monuments than the lowly hovels, rather it would’ve reclaimed its own there and not thus. The poor always suffer; is the river a capitalist too?

Pah! A river’s a river and that’s it! Not, of course, like an urn’s an urn, or a daffodil’s a daffodil and that’s it, but still, a river’s no more than just that, a dead, lifeless river!

Yet, what a river and what a sight!

Perhaps it’s inexperience. I’m sure it is. A nallah otherwise, just now in spate – what of that?

Yet, why not? Why not indeed? A narrow, two laned bridge laden with the filth of man, his wheels. In it’s centre, the river’s centre, the centre where the channel runs deep and eternal and where now the watery expanse flows the most disturbed, waves upon stormy, turbulent waves of muddy water. Mud of the hills, mud of life, the seed of all our joys and sorrows, this water and mud…small whirlpools, just along the tired pillars aching to give up, make way, the steel of the walls long drawn up in abject obeisance to the river’s will. The will of man? A grain of sand tossed in a stormy sea…

It shakes. The heavy weight of tired souls; hearts laden with dust and grief, with daily cares and joys – the bitter-sweet offices of life and love. It shakes to the core. The mighty sinews of mortar and steel, what might before mud and water? Round and round the muddy water, through the grill a force unknown beckoning, pulling in to its dark, suffocating, deathless womb. It shakes. So shakes man, shaken to the core, his core: a nallah in spate.

Yet, what of it? A week, two at the most and the walls come down: the plains re-appear, the devotees with their plastics come back, the squatters, humbled yet again for no fault of their own, try yet again to piece together the shadow of a life. Spirit? A great city’s spirit, to continue as if nothing happened, as if twas naught but just another blip on the nation’s, the economy’s heart? Very few casualties, just a few displaced – the circle of life? Games people play…

Wazirabad. The nallah enters here. Soon there’ll be a bigger, grander bridge in its place, a bridge to make the city proud, a monument to its power and glory. The nallah flows on…

On bonfires and the Quran

Notes on secularism and will
 

*

I don’t quite see why burning the Quran should be a problem.

I mean, of course, I can see how in the sense people made it out as: it’s not a particularly sensitive thing to do and none too sensible as well, displaying as it does a lack of tact and understanding which may be expected of all clear thinking, inclusive people. I can also see how it might’ve been a particularly inflammatory act given the volatile condition of the Islamic community the world over and everybody else’s relation to it. I can see all of that, yes, and understand it perfectly well.

What I don’t see is why this should be a problem.

After all, the Quran’s just a book. Of great value to billions around the globe, to Musalmans as well as others interested. But all things said and done, to other people, to atheists like me, just another book: of great cultural import, yes, but quite really another book on the shelf.

Also, by that very logic, by being a document of such great significance, something not likely to be diminished in importance by having a few of its countless copies burned – or shredded, or destroyed in any other manner. Islam’s not going to suffer even if thousands of the Quran are burned; I’m sure they make them at a much greater rate than they’re able to destroy them and so there’s not really going to be a paucity of them anytime soon. In any case, I’m sure this wasn’t quite the objection which so many other people had to the idea.

No, if I’m not wrong, what many people’s and States’ problem was that such an act would prove inflammatory and invite backlash in very many sundry ways from the Islamic community. The rhetoric, of course, was a bit different and couched quite often in what our comrades on the other side call the secularist jargon of the liberal democratic setup, of such a move being unacceptable within the secular ethos of modern society, but the import seems to be much the same all over: burning the Quran is dangerous, the mullahs might just burn some more things over.

Which is what my problem with it is.

First of all, it’s just stereotyping the Musalmans way too much as an overtly religious and touchy people bound to flare up at the slightest slight. Agreed, stereotypes are more or less based on factuality, but then to assume that burning the Quran would rock the heart of very Musalman is to force the point beyond belief. I mean, surely the Musalmans have better things to do that forth and fume and work themselves up to fury over a bunch of folk burning the text they venerate. Wouldn’t a majority of them be more concerned about making a living and fulfilling their needs and being tolerably good men and women? How does it really matter if a few of Qurans are burned? Allah’s word is going to remain just the same, a few paperbacks less or more!

That, and that burning things like the Quran might actually help. After all, good man Jones did have a point: the world’s not half as nice as it might’ve been because the Musalmans have very nicely bombed and gunned it up. Sitting there in the backwaters of Florida, there’s little the good Pastor can do anything about it – as little, perhaps, as any of us, us being everyday people more into food and love and exs than theology and restoring Eden on earth. He must’ve felt frustrated – and he has reason enough to – and so planned to do the only thing which could’ve taken his frustration out: burn the book which the Musalmans like the most. Splendidly cathartic idea as I see it: take the Quran, think it up as all of Islam rolled within its pages and then burn it away to glory! Wouldn’t he have felt good after it? Purged, as the word goes.

Is it right then to raise such a hullaballoo over a lone old man and some other friends burning a book which they consider emblematic of all the trouble in the world – and that, specially, when just another symbol, a mosque, was been concretised next to the site of which they most probably consider the greatest blow to their own idea of themselves as a nation by the self same community?

I think not.

I think Jones and Co. have as much a right to burn the Quran – or any other book for that matter – as anybody who buys a book, doesn’t like it and then proceeds to burn it in his/her own backyard. It’s juvenile of course: burning books doesn’t solve anything –indeed, if all of us started burning books as response to the various crises which beset us there wouldn’t be much literature left in any case – and it only adds on to pollution and creates an unnecessary fire hazard. Yet, it is undeniably cathartic and can help people channel their frustration to harmless little bonfires.

It’s only in the public eye, then, that such an act acquires greater weight than it merits. There’s only as much importance to a symbol as one attaches to it and given the paranoia against Islam, it’s but natural so much should’ve been attached to one small flare-up on the margins. Yet, that still doesn’t take away from the inexorable fact that a symbol’s a symbol and attaching too much importance to it unnecessarily and thus blowing things out of proportion only makes that same thing, that symbol, bigger than itself, an entity on its own. If this little would-be bonfire cum blackmail threatened became an international crisis of sorts with heads of various states and religious bodies expressing regret, then it’s more a reflection of the culpability of the general public in allowing itself to be misguided by a zealous media than of the addition of any new dimension to the problem at hand or, for that matter, its solution.

Of course, all that is well known in any case: the so-called general public usually gets misguided by the media, while so-called commentators sweat to expose this same. That isn’t the concern here. What to me is important right now is that while rightly condemning Jones’ plans, nobody on the public scene bothered to qualify their concern by acknowledging the difference between the extremist and everyday Musalman and that while condemning the plans nobody seemed to take cognizance of Jones’ right to a bonfire and, more importantly, to either propose a pro-active, holistic approach towards the alleviation of those conditions which first suggested a bonfire to a Jones and a plane crash to an Osama or at least initiate a sincere, all-party revaluation of existing strategies for the same.

Like good man Jones, I too have no real idea on how to go about doing this and while a part of me does idly itch for that tempting matchbox and those two hardbounds taking up space on my shelf, I cannot but desist. Not just because they cost good money and I wouldn’t want my mother to know I’ve been up to mischief again, but also because the way forward lies inescapably in – in spite of as well as along with bonfires – accepting various things, symbols, abstractions, peoples as they are and not in forging unity through fire and steel. If we are to be truly secular – and this is what I understand secular as, as accepting religion(s) though not necessarily conforming to it(them) – then one of the steps forward we need to take is this, to simultaneously release both publicly and privately peoples out of stereotypes and work towards negating the violent and violence inducing conditions which create those negative, negating stereotypes in the first place.

Which, to put it differently, is to say that we need to be able to come up to a situation where we would first be able to accept a bonfire of this sort as an expression of dissent and disapproval and then handle it without burning up anything else in the process.

-

In Memoriam, Us

*

“It’s nice, you know, it’s nice…”


“What?”


“You know, this…I mean, it just struck me we’re doing the Western consumeristic mumbo-jumbo, you know, and encouraging market capitalism, but still, it’s nice, this, this mall-hopping thing…”


“Uhn?”


“Yeah! It’s being together!”

*

“Oooh, oooh, oooooh! I want them, I want them, I want them!”


“What, where, how!”


“Those boots! See them, the big, black ones? I sooo want them!”


“But didn’t you already buy a pair before the Freshers’? Though they were sandals, but still, I don’t think your Pappa will be too happy about it…”


“True…but I want them so much! And, and I want the sandals too and those wedges!”


“Isn’t that a bit too much?”


“It is…but I sooo want to buy something!”


“Hmm…so buy one na.”


“But I dunna have money na! I’ll have to take it out and then…”


“Haan, who bhi hai…well, I can chip in! You have some, I’ll put in what I have and then you can buy at least one. Sounds good?”


“Good!”

*

“I think the wedges look super-duper cool on me!”


“Sure do, darl!”


“Yayie! Yayie, yayie, yayie! Me is happy!”


“Hehehe! So am I. What next now?”


“Do you wanna go to the bookstore?”


“Ah, well, no, I don’t think so…”


“Let’s just go and see, hmm? It’ll be nice, let’s go!”


“Okay, okay…”

*

“Am I mistaken or are we really in a bookstore?”


“We are. Why?”


“Well, what’s with all these CDs and accessories and stuff then?”


“Ah well, they cash in on everything, don’t they?”


“Yeah, and I can’t also find the book which Poppy was talking about. I think it was this…”


“Um, darling?”


“Yeah?”


“It’s really quite visible when you bend down like this.”


“Oh, um, yeah…thanks!”

*

“Oh god, there’re so many of them! Look at that entire pile, so friggin’ many of them!”


“Yes, isn’t it surprising? Almost as if there was a fever on with everybody wanting to write and be all so my-story-best-story about it.”


“Yeah, and most of it is bull!”


“Well, it at least makes you feel glad there’re people like V to champion literature’s hold on literature!”


“Oh, don’t be mean!”


“No, seriously, I think all of us have a noble duty towards literature; nay, not just to literature, but to culture, to humanity, to save it from the fell hands of scurvy hacks who do demean the beauty of art…”


“Anubhav?”


“Yeah?”


“Shut up.”

*

“Looks like it’s going to rain and rain very hard.”


“Hmmm…”


“What hmm? Jaldi karke finish this nahi toh we’ll get drenched with all the stuff!”


“Yes, Ma’am! We’ll do chattu-pana and go back and then come, right?”


“Yeah, I think so.”


“Hmm…”


“Hmm…today was nice, wasn’t it?”


“Lovely. Very, very good in fact!”


“Hmm…and the bookstore was nice too!”


“Yes, I think we should do more stuff like that, y’know, check out bookstores more often. It’s so much fun with you!”


“So is buying shoes with you! I like my wedges, I so like them!”


“Hehe! Yeah…we should do this sort of thing more, in spite of the capitalist claptrap.”


“Totally should!”


“Hmm…chalo, ho gayi khatam. Baarish bhi shuru ho gayi. Chalain?”


“Ji, chaliye.”

Yeh chiraag bujh rahe hain,

Mere saath jalte jalte…

On the Right to Education

The Government of India finally granted all Indians the right to be educated early this year. How charming! After sixty or so years of being so, the Indian people can finally demand to be educated: how perfectly charming!

What the heck are they going to do with it though?

Get educated, of course! Move on, move up in life; improve themselves by partaking of the fruit of knowledge and thus be part of India, India shining. Realise finally through learning, through the accumulated wisdom of ages institutionalised and discipline and hard work upheld the great middle class dream: roti-kapra-makaan finally in their jholi.

Or add on to the teeming ranks of the unemployed and underemployed educated.

What else? Employment opportunities have steadily increased in India, but not at such a rate as would keep pace with our population growth. If more of the people who’re born every day get greater access to education and manage to inch up towards matriculation and graduation do not at the same time get access to employment, leave alone fruitful employment, then one of the primary purposes of creating those opportunities would be defeated. Without employment that’d fulfil aspirations and enable those in whom these are generated to live the lifestyle which is held before them, education will only, as it continually has, become a contributor to social dissatisfaction and unrest, the first stepping stone to discontent with the way things are presently.

Of course, not to say that efforts are not being made to increase these, opportunities for employment i.e.: they are, and the expansion of industry in particularly the tertiary sector embodies this as nothing else; in the primary and secondary sector too industry is daily expanding and making more employment available. Yet, while the former caters largely to the urban and urbanising middle class and can offer on a scale of any size employment mostly in low to middle level jobs with few chances of promotion and fulfilment to all, the latter is, owing to increased mechanisation, actually taking away employment from hordes of the unskilled while creating a few jobs for the technically trained. With population growth showing no signs of stabilising and technological innovations changing the way we take to our environment and harness the resources therein, employment opportunities, at least in India, will not be able to keep pace with the demand for the same by the increasing numbers of low to medium level educated job seekers.

Education – education of any sort – in this case will not be able to ameliorate the situation. We train men and women to join the workforce; we train them professionally most of all, as experts in this field or that and expect them to add on to the economy’s growth as producers, processors or planners. We also train men and women as trainers, trainers not just of expertise but, more importantly, as educators, as trainers of the basics which would go on to necessitate training, professional or otherwise. Finally, educating people and then not having suitable jobs to employ them in incapacitates them for employment which they would’ve found otherwise: the great dream is to move up, move out from the hinterland to glittering urbanscapes and the chances of a farmer or farm hand’s college educated child voluntarily coming back to the family trade are rare.

The only way out in that case seems to be to not educate the masses. If we don’t want a social revolution of sorts add on to our miseries, then the best way to keep the status quo would be to do just that: not bring education to all.

Of course, there is another way: we, the so-called, supposed people, could all make a collective effort and channel development and economic growth more towards happiness and joy, towards containment rather than the attainment of particular GDP growth rates. We could innovate and create models of growth specific to our own socio-cultural environment and milieu, development which would not hanker for industry and technology just for their own sake; development which would recognise in entirety communality, the rights of people over resources not solely as private property but also as a common whole; development which would at least try to address the consumeristic market and defuse the inflation in demand brought about by it. We could do all this and much more, and so could we make work positively towards checking population growth and industrial development and affect a balance between these and with providing fulfilling employment in other sectors.

We could. Would we?

Much easier, I think, to promise the people education, to dangle before them shiny dreams and lull them on. Easier, I think, to give them some training, some learning, some knowledge: a hotchpotch, create a work force neither here nor there, leave it thus and then punish its deviance as betrayal.

Fulfilment is a birth right, something which cannot be dictated on by a State; education, certainly not higher, technical training, is not necessarily a prerequisite to it – even if it were to be couched so, then, again, it is a birth right, something whose bestowal by a State reeks only of a callous indifference which treats the interests of the State and of the people, the so-called masses at large, as separate and parallel. If we are to consider education as a right towards fulfilment, then we need to look beyond the myth of study as improvement and press for a holistic approach towards making it so.

The right will we quite wrong otherwise.