Bday Post...

To sum up 25 years of blissful Ignorance:

Greed:
On the eve of a first Bday celebration at school a really young boy looks at a box full of chocolates and decides to tell mummy dearest,” Amma no one knows it’s my Bday tomorrow—I will just wear normal clothes- no need to celebrate and all ok??”

Smart:
On the way to Tirupathi sometime in the 90s—a govt vehicle overtakes our bus on the inside on a hairpin bend almost toppling everyone in it including a to be young perverted but right now innocent brain into oblivion. The bus stops sometime later a tea station where the car in question is spotted. Everyone except Appa rushes to the driver of the govt vehicle screaming. The govt driver says.” This govt vehicle – we can do anything we want...” and laughs wickedly. Even though young observations are made as to why a generally impatient dad when mummy is involved is so calm and collected and even smiles at the then young impressionable mind. As the bus rolls out – everybody still frustrated with the govt driver in question- one is surprised as everybody starts laughing out loud- the young impressionable mind looks up to dad to see him holding something up- the keys to the govt car in question!!
The Bihari brought up tam bram dad had flicked the keys from the car as others had chosen to confront the driver!

Sentiment:
Big bro having left the house – finally one comes to believe that the title of undisputed king will no longer be questioned—so the king decides to take the brand new indica out for a spin. As he picks up his friend the king reverses the car without as much as looking behind smiling in ignorant confidence—Bang! He backs straight into a bamboo stock albeit moronically placed in the middle of the road… though till today it is highly questionable as to whom the moron can be directed at… as the king drives back he has a hundred things running through his mind- “how can I make this a convincing lie??? ---that moronic auto driver banged the back of the car and ran away!! It’s got to work” The story is repeated over and over so that the king could almost convince himself that it was true…
Enter Dad after a stressful day... the king goes up to him nervously… for some reason he finds himself saying...” appa I did something totally stupid—I backed the car into a bamboo... totally my fault appa..”Appa stares at the king and says sternly” who the hell allowed you to take the car!...”
Three more hours of silence later-- Appa” I am glad you had the courage to tell the truth… I must have done something right with you…”
Though Dad has fergotten over the years what transpired that day—in the kings mind those words at the end meant a lot more than anything else ever had…

Snubbed:
PTA meeting 5th grade- Amma to teacher,” I don’t know what I am going to do with him.. he watches TV all day” Teacher,” Oh really? That’s good- he is one of the brightest students in the class—obviously that’s working- encourage it more”… well over the years obviously what I heard the teacher say has been probably changed.. but truthfully in essence it meant that and Amma laughed with me on the way back as we got into the cycle rickshaw…

Failure:
A medium sized awkward kid of something like ten sits at his bench crying.. as everybody inquires he cries,” I have never failed an exam before in my life and I think I failed physics” and continues crying.. soon the physics teacher comes up and pulls him to his room corrects the paper in front of him and says “Arre why are you crying see you have passed you are getting 34 on 50”.. he smiles gets back to class and then starts thinking again” what just 34 everybody is going to get above 40 .. my rank is going to go down…..

Happiness:

UKG- As I get to the gate my auto driver is not there and the chowkidaar wouldn’t allow me out till he came. I decided to escape through the iron railings as he looks the other way and decide to walk 5 km back home. As I do so it starts to rain. I sing and dance in the rain and continue walking. I see our neighbor and wave at him and he in his own world just waves back at me ( Two older people who brought this kid up are still perplexed as to why that uncle did not catch and pull one with the help of a ear lobe) about an hour and a half later one reaches the street of home sweet home to find a mom standing at the head… one is supposed to have giggled to her,” ummmmm I escaped….”

Doctors are Perplexed:

At age three one would not eat unless on top of the bonnet of the ambassador. As amma goes to bring more food- one slides down onto a thick wall edge – 4 stitches on the forehead…
4 weeks later… the day the stitches are to be removed—one is sitting on a high ledge 3 feet above the ground level--- an hour later the doctor looks at the bleeding forehead and says after a while perplexed…” Do I remove the stitches from this side and put them onto the other side of his forehead???”
The incidents with the fore head being split open happened a couple more time btw- explains a lot doesn’t it??


That’s some of which that defined 25 to me today—I feel old and insignificant….

Ghandhigiri??

Asimov as a writer influenced my thinking at a poignant age towards the decadence of a society at the height of its progress. He taught of signs which definitely pointed towards decadence when a majority of the society where blissfully ignorant of such decadence and unwilling to change which is a sure sign of a peak of advancement as it is of a fall imminent. The scary thing is that all these signs can be seen with the Indian society that has survived generations past, of invasions and changes galore. Who would have thought that now we are looking to divide even past cast creed and religion and the anti social elements along with a scary mob culture that has developed can take control and divide as Marathi’s being different from North Indians? There have of course been similar movements in Tamil nadu since before I was born and developed in Bangalore in the past few years as well.

Three movies that I have watched in the recent past brought cohesion to my thought process on the nature of a revolution being- Charlie Wilson’s War, The Kite runner and Persepolis. They have a similar theme if you look at them as a whole. The first two talked of decadence in the Afghanistan region and the third extremely creatively of the same in Iran. They start off with the countries being on the brink of revolution where in the intelligentsia of the society meet consistently in a euphony that the revolution would bring the much needed change from a tyranny that was tying down the society. But in the wake of a bloody revolution the elements that come to power are the most tyrannical- the people as such who are willing to take blood rather than give for the revolution. And those are the elements that come to power!

That put in with some western capitalistic gain driven policies have driven the two countries into the so called dark ages. There are such stark similarities in the decadence that it pretty much scares me. The stark banality of thought process being that the state decides what women should wear, how they should behave in public and denying basic modern human rights such as education and a free thought flow process which scares the hell out of these tyrannical elements because of a basic fear of progress in the name of a vile “western” influence. These elements are not willing to adapt to a changing modern thought process on various issues that affect the society and are more involved in short term gains and a self pity rather than being a visionary for their fellow human beings.

All of this led me to see why Gandhi was such a visionary in his own time! Being born neither during the wake of pre or post independence but something like 40 years after I was exposed to two imposingly opposite thought processes on Gandhi- One being unrelenting hatred towards his policies that supposedly pushed back independence by twenty years and put the Nehru family at the forefront of policy making and the other that reveres his patience for the peaceful way always. But think about it. Would we have rather wanted a bloody revolution say in the 1920’s with the people who were willing to spill blood to be the very founders of the country? In that alone I could see what Gandhi was thinking some 50 years after independence. He was not thinking of just his generation but for generations’ way past his lifetime. He persisted with his main weapon of “Ghandhigiri” through times rough and then rougher and made sure that the anti social elements do not form the foundation of the society he envisioned. In this I am not trying to judge Bhagat Singh or Subhash Chandra Bose or their perseverance for independence. They were great men no doubt who were willing to give their lives as well for the cause. But not every Indian who followed their ideals would have been like them i.e, more willing to give their blood rather than spill blood with an emphasis on more.

Gandhi’s policies were patience driven with an emphasis on giving time for things to work out rather than be brash and look to gain on the short term. It was amazing the way he was able to mobilize and unite a country so different on so many levels and yet stick to his ideals. I was talking to a friend S along those lines and he pointed out some very poignant thoughts. Gandhi, he said, did not proclaim to be a saint who was trying to be a politician but a politician who was trying to be a saint!

It is sad that a country that was founded on such ideals now does not see much light in that. It absolutely saddens me the current state of affairs. In the last few weeks I have heard of a mob that doesn’t mind molesting women on weak pretenses, a mob motivated to violence against fellow Indians in the name of dominant regionalism, and the Tamil Nadu legislature discussing what dresses film actresses should wear! I ask a banal question in- is this what national policy makers be worried about? And how different are these thoughts from the radical thoughts that dominate the Taliban in Afghanistan or that in Iran? They are no different…