Vandals chasing Vande Mataram

 

Old men start it, young men fight and everyone dies in between…. One dialogue…. just one dialogue caught my fancy from the movie Rambo. Yeah Stalone has grown old but what the heck he is still Stalone.

I still remember the craze for his postcards, posters and pictures. There were still more of such icons that most boys worshiped. I don't know if using the word worship as a replacement of adulation can cause hurt but a whole bunch of vandals making vicious agenda out of beautiful poetry certainly hurts. I really don't subscribe to Gandhi's idea of fighting with non violence and as he says it will hurt too like all fighting hurts.

In recent Indian political history and the now continuing aftermath everyone seems to be chasing a song called Vande Mataram. I still don't know who composed music and the tune for it but this is in my native Bengali .We have grown up on a healthy diet of native literature unlike any other found in the face of this planet. Native chauvinism which smacks of ethnic populism but always immersed in love and never boastful. The very idea of creating a National song and a National anthem is a western produce and we quite appreciate the idea for we can flaunt our identity at important public functions and most of my native brethren simply swell their hearts with pride for getting our number chosen as fit for representing the national ethos.

Well the first instinctive reaction when we hear that some people call upon to ban it is simply blood boiling. I will be honest in saying that it is even more so when some people who have absolutely no clue of anything other than theology sporting some kind of a bra on their head show the audacity to forbid common people from singing this song. On the hind sight I also think that people who propagate the idea of making it compulsory as a matter of state policy have not the slightest of idea about the heart of the author who penned this song and the whole emotion this song brings up.

Most Indians know Vande Mataram as just a song but I doubt anyone quite gets the grip of it for most Indians see it as some kind of prayer rendition to mother India… Oh gosh another prayer. There it goes …. go through the regulation. In reality this phenomenon reflects the most hideously unpatriotic, illiterate and ignorant side of my countrymen.

Bankim Chandra Chattopadhya was one of the first of the Indian origin Magistrates to join the British civil admin system in India. His stories and novels are all inspired by Hindu mythology and he somehow had a love for borrowing into dark, blood letting pagan superstitions. His stories and the much talked about national song of India itself has a very dark quality. Most Indians have only heard the first paragraph of Vande Mataram. The remaining stanzas are full of feverish invocation referring to the Nation as mother with endless hands to caress and calling upon her sons to raise the battle cry and lift the sword from the sheath to create a terribly sounding revengeful roar. He also says that we are so much in love with you that we will install your form in temple after temple in the land of endless temples.

No one actually grasps the innocence of those days for what Bankim is trying to say is only human emotion. It is only an emotional being that hero worships. In the modern ways of this world view, buying a Michael Jackson poster or a Bruce Lee and doting your walls is this same very emotion that Bankim speaks of.

Now the question is- in this land of the young should we decry it??

Money is funny

 

So much about chasing money, the behind of it or its ass is what we always see while on pursuit.

No other commodity makes such a difference as much as money does when we seek material fulfillment. Well I have come to realize that other than material fulfillment we also most desire good food. And it is precisely one such moment while having food that I saw people look down upon money.

Having picked up the habit of donating generous sums to my neighborhood street food vendor, I have managed to keep this Indian tradition alive since school. Awesome amount of money spent on junk food and alcohol. Alcohol entered life much later but Junk food always reigns supreme for being the supplier of good hormones to my craving heart. Never calculated, yet my rough estimate puts the figure at some 1-2 lakhs till now. Always had the desire to eat out and spend money. Its a lifestyle need and money feeds it. I don't require much funding to keep my panipuri and corn habit alive. I almost always have saved some change to give the vendor his due for keeping my taste buds happy.

One such occasion when a usual crowd surrounded the bhaiya we waited for our chance one by one as he poured the paani filled puris on our plates. It just so happened that the bhaiya while giving chillar change to one of the customers by mistake dropped the five rupee coin inside the vessel full of the masala water. To my amazement people who were till then not so hygiene conscious had expressions of disgust as everyone realized that serving hence forth will be from that contaminated water. I never quite realized that people perceive money as something so dirty. At that moment I thought oh yes one never knows this coin would have changed several hands and then reached here. Probably some beggar had this coin. That yuck just stayed as the moment failed to pass when everyone could still see that coin at the bottom of that vessel. With every passing paani puri going into my mouth that feeling of disgust subsided with the crunching and munching sound that stays in you ear (every pani puri lover can vouch for that).

There was a discussion that I was a part of. Whether we live to eat or whether we eat to live. I have to choose one so I said fuck the topic as in both the cases life just seems to be the face of money or earnings. Never mind life or economics as for me money will always be funny.

For as long as food is fun and my mother is besides me, fun will never elude me.

Primal Dilemma

 

Bare naked truth. Yeah we are born naked. Without any sense of any sort of inhibition. We just stare. Sorry…. we cry first and then we stare.

Always been intrigued by the process of mammals and birds raising their young ones. Including us humans almost all mammals take good care while growing of their kin but it is only our kind who train. Yes that madness called good parenting is what flashes in front of our eyes. An argument I had sometime back where mom exclaimed that except for human babies, in almost all other animals, as soon as the baby is born it is put to hardships. Its only in case of humans that we have to really really take care of the baby.

But I also saw an interesting documentary on how a tiger, a mother, not only protects which is instinctive bye the way but also teaches to swim and hunt and survive. What a master…  with magnificent practical lessons in mother natures witness. These cubs are actually made to train… yeah the commando training by Captain mother and thereafter they survive or they don't but they definitely train hard. In sharp contrast the human baby is initially taken very good care off but gradually the grind is left to self learning and the system. I mean who the hell wrote that book called the Art of War, definitely didn't pen his moms thoughts. The art of manipulation, smart maneuvering, diplomatic stealth and sustenance and survival in the face of competition from fellow humans. Its sex and the city and then follows self pity. But the way out is through the pantomime of emotions in this puzzle called humanity.

We are constant sailors… sailing, sailing and constantly getting marooned in the islands of our difficulties and constantly coming out of it. No one can buy the logic that its mothers love that pulls people out of trouble. Its rather our instinct and decisions which the society hones for us, makes us think cause its essential. Yes I do require my mothers veil to hide myself once in a while. Behind her love I still prepare to train on my own to survive.

Don't you??

Toast to the past

Snip…. snip…. snip….. My scissors have been running for as long as I remember. Or no… it actually started with my developing the habit of newspaper reading.

Considering myself lucky to be born in 81, a year many consider as the beginning of change. A change that has seen us transcend from a socialist past to a more capitalist future. I have never questioned change but always felt lucky to have experienced the transition of an entire humanity.

Gas cylinders, phone connections, flyovers, TV, cable, music, books, media, computers, fashion and most of all our newspapers and the new age of dignity in India's evolving work culture. I picked up my first newspaper to read when I was 12. Fascinated by history, political differences in between groups and Geography as well as the very need for something called as national borders, the combined aspirations and national policy of this country daunted my thoughts. In a country fiercely competitive as is still, I never felt comfortable in the educational setup as I grew detached more and more and started dreaming more and more.

There were so many new things that were flooding the newspapers. I felt the need to capture this and hence I cut all that was relatively new to the conscience of this country. I remember that not so long ago our news papers used to be completely black and white. Then one fine day there was a colour edition on a Saturday of the Times of India. I started calling it the coloured paper as the world used to know it as coloured pages. Now it is impossible to imagine even because even the main paper has lots of colour with advertisements. It was just brought to my notice as I asked mom for the coloured paper for which ma shouted out that everything is coloured now and its the past that has quietly stayed on with me.

I was forced to think how many of such things still linger on as it is in our blood to preserve our thoughts as well. That's the way Indians are. We dont throw away things and certainly not the words that we speak. For as long as I know bottled water is called bislery, photo coping is called xerox. Even if Chinese food in India is very Indian but we have always preferred to call it otherwise. Parents still talk about their children choosing a certain line or field. Weird! what the fuck is a field anyways.

Grand ma tells me that when in California she never threw the cases, boxes and bottles that used to come from their walmarts. They would have thought that she is crazy or something.

Old habits die hard, our evolution grows young. The past is a witch and her broom is like a comet leaving its trail and leaving us enchanted. But life is a circle and we keep coming back to the witch, to turn the crystal ball and tell us what the future beholds. Truly! the past is a witch and our life is a bitch.