Minimum City

(Courtesy - Mario Miranda)
I keep telling myself that I will not rail against the city that has accompanied me for a greater part of my career but don’t blame me if I need to react after dear Devika goes on and on boisterously about Chicago. C’mon, isn’t it embarrassing that despite tall claims of being one among the fast growing economies in the world, we can’t even provide a decent infrastructure to the people who struggle to make it happen?

One of the first places that I saw when I landed in Mumbai (in 2004) was the Borivilli Railway Station. Now, feeling like a stranger in a new city can be expected but this was like the height of everything that I had seen in my life till that time-an avalanche of human flesh leeching the platform and storming every train that came by till I realized that if I had to reach office every day, I’d have to accept that if you were to live in Mumbai, you had to live this way.

Struggle is a way of life in these trains and I became a victim of self-pity for those 2 years when I used the Central Railway, in my daily sojourns from Powai to Lower Parel. My knees bore a major brunt of the stress that was imposed by scores of plebeians, who seemed to find some sadistic pleasure in venting their pressure on this hapless passenger, while the rest of the body went through such myriad convolutions that it substituted my need for exercise everyday (Of course, PP and I called the experience equivalent to jackivekkan every day in the train).

My next peak of pleasure was experiencing the turbulence of that wonderful station-Kurla –the Central-Harbour meeting point. God knows, how I have felt so small by this creation of HIS – a place so spectacularly unkempt and dirty that all my benchmarks of cleanliness were swept singularly off my table.

One day, when I was trying to get off the train while returning from Nerul, I could not do so and lo behold, some kind Samaritan decided to help me in no uncertain terms by giving me a nice little kick and I found myself lying flat on my stomach, parallel to the platform face and observing it at a very close range. But the humble man in me thanked HIM that no one had actually trampled me in this ocean of humanity – a Mumbai learning, be grateful and find happiness from such simple pleasures in life.

Till I witnessed this city at the age of 23, I was in awe about Mumbai. Danny Boyle had not made an entrance till then and the Internet revolution was slowly making its presence felt and I remained a youngster as exposed to the cleanliness of Mumbai as Indian batsmen to the swinging ball overseas.

Having come from a small and non-descript village in Kerala, where real estate prices are just as steep as the rising ball in Indian pitches and lived in a big Central Government accommodation all my life, I was suddenly thrown into the big, bad world of Mumbai’s housing scene. So, you had flats with sizes less than the size of the drawing room of my house but twice the rental – Christ, can there be a greater puncturing of one’s ego than living in such a place. But then, you take heart from the fact that you are the not the only one – just so many d***heads living together and sharing accommodation in each square tract of land.

So, with a decent regular bank account and savings, I struggle to find myself a good housing in Mumbai, while my family and peers in the rest of the World live dreams bigger than my flat. DJ arrives from Pondicherry and his first comment when he enters the flat is – Entha de, veedu thodangiya munpe thanne kazhinno?? (The house is finished before it even started). I feel small that I live in such a cramped place but at a healthy rent of 11,000, all I can manage is a 400 sq feet house (or it lesser?).

My brother in Bangalore pays a lesser rent and lives in a flat 3 times larger than this humble abode but when I cry hoarse lamenting for a 2 BHK or more space, fellow Mumbaikars wonder what’s wrong with me. They take a stroll into the house and congratulate for me for managing to get such a house (furnished accommodation) at such a price, in the heart of the city.

They just can’t figure what I would do with so much extra space – they’d rather believe that anything more than this can be made into another room. I have calculated that I am paying about Rs 27 per square feet here while bro pays about Rs 8.50 – wipes out all the differential income that my MBA is supposed to generate for me. But can’t blame them; Space is such a premium object here that if you find a house, especially, close to the office, then you are in the so-called lucky group – the group whose traveling time is less than an hour.

But what about my fundamental Right to Breathe? Colleagues have a smirk on their face when I talk about luxuries in life like Oxygen; probably, why actually businesses like Oxygen bars actually flourish. I am kind of scared at how the world actually would be for the Next Generation – breathing derivatives, maybe!!!

I remember Vir Sanghvi, in an article in the SUNDAY, saying how having lived in Mumbai and Kolkatta, he missed the happening feeling and crowds of Mumbai. Sorry, mate, I am not able to relate to this sense of nostalgia, where I am inundated by teaming millions from all places and if I dare to complain, my boss (I assume he is joking) remarks that half the credit for this population explosion is due to Non-Marathis like me who have taken away the opportunities of the poor Marathis..Tch..Tch…

Angst and gratitude lessons from Mumbai to be continued in future posts….

Passenger - A Review

After about 75 days of its release, Ranjith Shankar’s taut thriller Passenger finally made its away to the shores of Mumbai, as it thirsts for the song of monsoon. My friend wanted to go for Shortkut but I convinced him to watch Passenger and in hindsight, he agrees that it is a wise decision.

Ranjith Shankar, an IT professional, finally does justice to a genre hitherto untouched by Malayalam cinema for reasons beyond my comprehension – the thriller genre. This is a slick socio-political thriller, without the silly trappings of either the Amal Neerad School of Technology or the Shaji Kailash School of Dramatics. It is a simple, well-told thriller that brings a set of performers on the platform of the Southern Railways and skillfully weaves a plot, without a second of unnecessary drama.

The film begins on a slow note and runs parallel on 2 tracks – one chronicling Satyanathan’s (Sreenivasan) life as he goes through his daily journey from Nellayi to Ernakulam and back, with his friends while the other takes a peep into the lives of a socially sensitive lawyer-journalist couple as they take on the might of the Home Minister. But this slow note helps in building the momentum as it sets into motion rhythmically the characters of the various individuals in the film – the protagonists as well as the others like Satya’s friends and family.

One eventful day, destiny suddenly conspires to throw the three central characters together and their lives suddenly change. Sathyanathan is a daily train commuter, who having fallen asleep one late night misses his home town station. Waking up, he meets Advocate Nandan Menon (Dileep), who is heading to a hotel room where he would be alone for the night, since his wife Anuradha (Mamta Mohandas) is away on an assignment, covering a news story. This forms the turning point for the story as it suddenly throttles forward, altering forever the path of their lives.

Story wise, what is told is nothing new – corruption in the higher echelons and the hero exposing this malaise has been beaten to pulp by the likes of Ranjith, Shaji Kailash, Madhu and the rest of their ilk. But what differentiates Passenger is the script which sticks to the plot faithfully linearly, hinting at issues like corruption, terrorism and harassment of women . There are no songs and the mandatory sidekicks are thankfully absent, but the movie manages to keep you riveted to the screen and interest never lags. Even the ending is minus any usual pyrotechnics and the ordinary man returns to where it all began - his train journey.

Sreenivasan and Dilip play their characters with restraint, giving them a quite sense of dignity. The Common Man (portrayed in a totally different but equally effective role by Naseruddin Shah in “A Wednesday”) has his moments and it is these moments which carry the movie. Mamta Mohandas is gladly underplayed and she works her way well in the movie. Nedumudi Venu is sufficient as the taxi driver while Satyanathan’s friends do not have much to do but help in propelling the story with their lively banter. The train itself plays an important character in the movie - Bollywood films have paid homage to the local train as the lifeline of the city, but it hasn’t happened in Malayalam.

But my vote for the best performance in the movie is Jagathy, who plays the scheming Thomas Chacko, the corrupt Home Minister. We all know that Jagathy is a brilliant actor but haven’t we lost count of the number of times he has played silly sidekicks in movies and done roles that are best consigned to the dustbin? Here, he emerges tall as a corrupt Minister who talks smoothly – there is a calmness in the way he talks which adds an extra dimension to the role of the villain who has been played to death by Janardhanan, Siddique (with his innumerable make ups), Narendra Prasad etc.

There are many moments in the film which capture the mood of the State and gives that feeling of déjà vu – Sathyanathan’s mother interrupts his daily TV watching in time to watch ‘Devi Mahathmyam’, she keeps sending SMSs to the Idea Star Singer. At regular intervals, his wife reminds to buy a packet of tea and berates him on his inability to go beyond the rigmarole of his normal routine; while he enjoys the quite life around temple festivals and Ulsavams.

While the movie talks to the Common Man, it also rightfully raises questions on the role of the media in the affairs of the State. As Thankamma Rajan points out in the movie, for years there have been agitations against the quarrying and sand mining but the media never bothered but the moment there is a sexual harassment allegation, the story became hot news – so much for the bravery of the New Age Media. Indeed, it reflects poorly on a State where the biggest news stories have been sex scandals like the Suryanelli case, Vithura case and the Kozhikode “ice-cream parlour case”.

There are certain loose ends in the movie but trust me; you’d like to forget them because the movie brings in a whiff of fresh air in an ailing Malayalam film industry that is going through its worst periods of identity crisis. Passenger shows a way out of this rut – bring in a fresh script, inject in credible characters and lo behold, you have a recipe to bring back the bored audience back to the theatres.

I just hope that Ranjith Shankar does not go the K Madhu way (after a CBI Diarykurippu and a Jagratha, he lost his way and become a clone of Shaji and Ranjith) or even the Amal Neerad way if SAJ is any indicator – let us keep our fingers crossed and hope that he continues on this path.

Behind the Burqa

The French President Sarkozy says “In our country, we cannot accept that women be prisoners behind a screen, cut off from all social life, deprived of all identity. The burqa is not a religious sign; it’s a sign of subservience, a sign of debasement. It will not be welcome on the territory of the French republic.”

Is the burqa a sign of subservience as Sarkozy says or this is a typical Western cliche which derides the understanding of other religions, without understanding their cultural subtleties? The burqa has become a symbol of oppression (rightly or wrongly) and we are appalled at the Burqa culture being carried out by the Taliban and the rest of extremist Islam, in the name of safeguarding their religion. But the very presence of a burqa does not make a nation backward or its women subservient.

The very principle of freedom of expression that Sarkozy and the West invokes while outlawing the burqa is violated by this ban. If the burqa is a forced wear, as in some nations, it definitely needs to be condemned but when people wear it out of their own accord as in many parts of the world, including the liberal West, it is undemocratic for the State to step in and ban it. For every woman who has the right not to wear a burqa, every woman also has the right to wear the burqa.

There is a difference between a secular state and an irreligious one and what Sarkozy is doing is moving away from the principle of equal respect to all religions and enforcing the might of the State. The threat of radical Islam and terrorism is scaring Europe leading to such “popular” actions as seen in France and Turkey. The melting pot culture of US provides freedom to religions to practice freely without getting into the debate of State Vs Religion while what Europe is trying to do is essentially force a spirit of Europeanism on its people, fearing an invasion of its culture (assuming that something called homogeneous European culture actually exists).

While Sarkozy has gone public with his remarks and set up a Commission to look into the burqa laws, France’s reaction is not an isolated one. For the past 80 years, Turks have lived in a secular state founded by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, who rejected headscarves as backward-looking in his campaign to secularise Turkish society. (Even so, it is estimated that as many as 65% of Turkish women cover their heads with a scarf).

The city council in Maaseik, Belgium on December 27, 2004 criminalized the wearing of the burqa and the niqab in its public places. The Dutch Government has been debating a law to say ‘no’ to the burqa in public spaces, claiming that it disturbed public order, citizens and safety. In July 05 the Italian parliament approved anti-terrorist laws which make hiding one's features from the public - including through wearing the burqa - an offence.

There are cultural differences among various nationalities and religions, which Sarkozy has not attempted to understand. What exhibits itself as subservience to one culture probably reflects the urge of the other to assert oneself using one’s religious identity, here clearly, a frontal expression of Islamic identity. When the State tries to crush such symbolism, it invites trouble for itself and makes it difficult for it to reach out to its own people. Coercing someone not to wear something in the name of freedom does not make you very different from the perpetrators of the original threat.

As Amit Varma also points out, wearing a burqa may be a rational decision taken by an individual to handle societal and family cultures to adhere one’s traditions. While this may not be a perfect situation, it does not give the State the freedom to impose its ideas of mistaken freedom on people, who are happy with their freedom.

Also, Sarkozy needs to realize that irrespective of the symbolic nature of the burqa in the Western Eye, not every woman wears it out a sense of coercion and that there are many who like to wear it either due to a personal liking or because it presents them with an opportunity to associate themselves with their identity of being a Muslim.

Thomas Jefferson said we can use our laws to coerce the acts of the body, but not the operations of the mind. People should be free to worship their god freely, so long as other laws, neutral laws of general applicability, are not violated. Coercive attitudes towards any direction can be counter-productive and banning the burqa may only push the liberal Muslim more towards radicalism as he fears his culture being trampled by a majoritarian culture.

In the same vein, if burqa represents an ugly side of Islam, what stops Governments from looking at Sikhs with turbans and bearded Muslims as militants ? Who determines what constitutes the dress of a fundamentalist vis-a-vis that of a liberal. Should the State get involved in personal matters and dilute its rule in administration by bringing in regulations in areas where it has no business to be in?

Nothing symbolizes the rift between Islam and the West so non-violently but pungently as the burqa, which Westerners find especially offensive when located on their own streets. The real issue of security and religious freedom is being drowned by focusing attention on symbols which are merely periphery items on the war on global terrorism. But then banning a headscarf is so much easier to do than trying to make an effort to dig and sort out the larger brewing problem of religious fundamentalism.

Emergency Sex (And Other Desperate Measures)

Blame the authors of this brilliant book for giving it such a cheesy title that readers may dismiss as some wannabe silly book written by a set of junkies or at best, a medical book. Emergency Sex is anything but that; it is a brilliant thrilling narrative told through the eyes of three UN Officials as they navigate through some of the world’s most horrendous war zones and see violence which is shocking even when read on print.

Heidi Postlewait joins the UN after leaving her husband, in search of adventure and a meaning in life. Kenneth Cain is a Harvard Law School graduate who decides to chuck a corporate career and make a difference by being a human rights lawyer for the UN. Dr. Andrew Thomson is a New Zealand-born doctor who goes to work at a Red Cross hospital in Phnom Penh and then moves into the UN.

The trio meet in Cambodia in the early '90s, as part of a team that is monitoring the elections there. Their task is to ensure a free and fair poll and export democracy (in Ken’s language) to the country, which is slowly recovering from the atrocities of the Khmer Rouge. The experience of running a successful election emboldens them on the path of changing the world wherever they go. (It is later revealed that the elections do not make much of a difference and it takes five more years to bring a semblance of peace to the country).

Heidi and Ken are then assigned to Somalia while Andrew goes to Haiti. After the Cold War, the Somalian government collapses and the US, in concert with the UN, steps in to impose a full-scale ‘humanitarian intervention’ to impose peace and rebuild the nation; something not accepted by one of the warlords Mohammed Aidid, leading to a prolonged conflict. In Haiti, Jean Bertrand Aristide, a former priest, wins the first elections but is overthrown in a bloody coup. The UN then steps in to deploy an ambitious civilian human rights observer mission to document the torture and violence, hoping to pressurize the return of the Aristide Government.

But unlike the peaceful Cambodian peninsula, Somalia and Haiti present violent conflicts which expose the soft stance of the UN in these areas. After a bout of violence, the troops slowly withdraw and the same Aidid who is a war criminal before the conflict is treated as a tribal leader to do negotiations. Aidid’s success against the UN leads to a similar counter-attack in Haiti, forcing the US and subsequently, the UN to withdraw its personnel from there.

Andrew wonders how a group of tiny personnel with allegiance to a local gang in a small country like Haiti can force the mighty Clinton administration to withdraw its forces. He realises that the effort taken in documenting the rights violations is a waste and that they have let down all the people who have come forward to help them, against all odds.

While Heidi is later on sent to Haiti once peace returns, Andrew and Ken are assigned to Rwanda where more than 800,000 members of the Tutsi tribe are massacred by the Hutus in retaliation to the assassination of the Hutu President. The Tutsis, led by the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) defeat the rebels and take over the country but by that time, the massacre is already done. Though the news of the massacre is known, the UN officials step back, allowing the country to explode in flames. Having failed to intervene in the genocide, the UN steps in later to setup an International Tribunal to prosecute the perpetrators of the horrific crimes- another case of too little, too late.

Andrew and Ken wonder at the almost inanity of their operations. When the massacres in Haiti, Bosnia and Rwanda could have been stopped, the UN bureaucracy holds back and once the vultures have wiped out all the carcasses, they step in trying to count the dead and use the courts and judiciary to bring the criminals to justice.

In Bosnia, the UN enables genocide by declaring Srebrenica a "safe zone" for Bosnian Muslims and then refusing to defend the city. Andrew is sent as a forensic expert to Bosnia to excavate bodies and bring in forensic evidence of a massacre that the Serbs, under Milosevic, refused to acknowledge. In what is probably the most openly damning indictment of the UN, Andrew says:

One day someone at UNHQ will commission an official report about this disaster, replete with mea culpas and lessons learned. But for me there's only one lesson and it's staring right at me every day as I eat lunch: If blue-helmeted UN peacekeepers show up in your town or village and offer to protect you, run. Or else get weapons. Your lives are worth so much less than theirs. I learned that the day we were evacuated from Haiti.

The UN and the West’s double standards in addressing conflicts is reflected by Ken when he says - One hundred and fifty thousand humans died from war crimes in Yugoslavia, in the middle of Europe, and 150,000 died from exactly the same war crimes here, in West Africa. For Yugoslavia, the UN created the first formal war crimes tribunal since Nuremberg and is deploying batteries of human rights officers, forensic pathologists, lawyers, and investigator. For war crimes in Liberia, the UN sent, well me…Liberia has no oil, no strategic relevance, and the airport, hotels and beaches offer neither rest nor recreation. No one comes, no one cares. During the Liberian conflict, the UN and West are reluctant to send forces and so they send unarmed observers to monitor the Nigerian forces who act as peacekeepers but who probably are worse than the fighters of the place.

But the book is not just a political journey and takes us through the everyday lives of the UN and its administration. For a global organisation like UN, it is difficult to isolate itself from politics and play a truly non-partisan role in all conflicts. There are young men and women who have been led on the path of idealism, which forces them to embrace a life of hardships in areas far away from their daily existence.

Witnessing such extreme acts of violence (the book narrates gut wrenching stories of mutilations, rapes and extreme tortures) is tough for anyone and one wonders whether these youngsters are ready to face such crises in their lives which threaten their very foundations. I guess I could not find a more apt sense of distress which caught my attention than when Ken says - If there is a God, Doctor, I want him prosecuted for crimes against humanity – after the Rwanda Genocide.

In the end, all three return to private life, all with mixed emotions about how they spent their youths. Andrew gets married, returns to Cambodia and builds a home on the Mekong River; Heidi takes an office job at the UN headquarters; and Cain is now a writer / scholar. All of them take a more pragmatic view towards life and realize that good intentions are not enough to change the world; this is a sign of maturity but also a mild sense of defeat after living (rather surviving) through horrific times.

While the indictment of the UN is primarily for its role or rather lack of it in conflict resolution in these places, the book also highlights many other things. Peacekeeping troops" sent by Bulgaria to Cambodia were not military personnel but prison inmates and the patients of psychiatric wards--even though they arrived in military uniform to become UN Blue Helmets!!! There was mass booth capturing and ballot burning in Haiti elections held under the aegis of the UN, but the UN remains silent and it allows the government to conjure an imaginary winning percentage. The UNs total incompetency in safeguarding its personnel in several war zones (In Somalia, one of its men is killed by carelessness and an inquiry hushes it up) is exposed, so is its complicity in worsening the crises through corruption and mismanagement.

It seems that the grumpy old men and holier-than-thous running the UN, who have made their diplomatic careers on saving the wicked world, were really scared of this book and so Kofi Annan and Co, actually tried to have the book suppressed. But anyone, who reads this book, will realize that it does not tell anything more about the UN than is known but then the powers-to-be are always jittery, aren’t they? As you read the book, you tend to agree with this assessment by an editorial in the Sydney Morning Herald - The United Nations does some good but too often it is just a lie or a fig leaf or even a cause of evil itself. Over a long period it's proved incapable of significant reform. Maybe it's time to abolish it and start again.

The story is told in first person and the authors take turns telling the narrative, but the different story lines which run parallel never put you off the track. Emergency Sex is a funny, sincere, and devastatingly honest account of life in the War Zones from an insider’s perspective, which forces you to gallop through the pages, despite the discomfort of its many tragedies.

P.S. I’d like to confess that I am fascinated by the thought of young men and women giving up the idea of a comfortable life and heading into the unknown in search of life – the idea never ceases to amaze me and the banker within me wants to rebel against this artificial life…

A Letter to Advaniji

Dear Advaniji,

At the outset, I offer my sympathies at the performance of the BJP lead NDA in the 2009 General Elections. We all saw it coming but not to the extent that it decimated the pride of the party to such an extent that you had to tender your resignation. Sir, it is a courageous decision to put in your papers and I strongly believe that this is the right step ahead for the party.

Atalji and you have presided over the fortunes of the BJP from the days of the Jan Sangh and taken it to new heights and acted as the only national party that could challenge the hegemony of the Congress. As an Opposition party, you can take pride in the spirited and decisive stands taken by the BJP for many years. But there comes a time, when the top brass has to make way for a new leadership – somebody who can steer the party in the new millennium.

You took it to the top; now let someone take the responsibility to take it ahead and challenge the resurgent Congress. Don’t get conned by Rajnath and the rest when they say that they need you to stay back; they are just too scared to elect a new leader, in the midst of the expected infighting (sycophancy is also no longer only a Congress prerogative). Fortunately, like Mr. Rahul and Priyanka, you have not warmed the seat for Jayant or Pratibha to take over the mantle – democracy is still an integral component of the Left and the Right in India.

In 1996, when the youth and the middle class started believing and looking at the BJP as a credible National Alternative, they saw the party as a party with a difference. Leaders like Pramod Mahajan, Sushma Swaraj and a large number of leaders in their prime constituted the second rung of the party and initiated a wave of popularity for the party among people, who were tired of being ruled by a family that considered itself the natural family for governance in India.

However, now when I look at the party, I ask myself where is the leadership? Where is the second rung? Scores of septa and octogenarians preside over the party and this is the party that is supposed to represent the youth???? Demagogues like Arun Shourie and Arun Jaitley are intellectuals but they do not have any electoral presence – a mass leader like Atalji acted as that bridge between the public and your various think tanks.

For a media savvy party like the BJP, it seemed incomprehensible that your strategy has backfired twice in a row. Campaigning as a strong leader and Loh Purush may be fine but pitting yourself against a non-electoral entity like Manmohan Singh as an election strategy was probably not such a bright idea (in hindsight, I must admit). Manmohanji is only a professional CEO who is running the company that has been given to him by the owners of the company and one fine day, he will be asked to step down so that the younger Gandhi takes over (The Congress would like to call it the ‘natural transition’).

Did people vote for development as most analysts claim? Maybe many just were tired of the Third/Fourth/Fifth….Nth party props who were working for their own interests and wanted a stable single party at the top. So, all the nth party losses were absorbed by the Congress while you stood helplessly at the deck seeing the NDA sinking gradually and then, so much more rapidly later on.

Your future candidate for PM is supposedly Narendra Modi – a man whose ability to polarize votes is probably greater than his ability to bring in votes (something tells me that people like you and Atalji are yourselves not too comfortable with the Modi brand of politics). In an era of coalitions, it will be difficult for you to sell this man as your unanimous leader; after all, even your close friends are a bit wary of him.

The Congress made significant gains in West Bengal and the South and the anti-Congress votes went to other splintered groups and you made practically no headway there despite the people voting to give a mandate to a National Party. For a National Party, you need to figure out how you can break through the Southern regional citadels – something that you did in Karnataka, surprising many. It is still a surprise to me why the BJP is non-existent in a state like Kerala, where the RSS has such a strong presence?

TN and AP represent huge electoral blocks where the BJP has no sway at all – not something that a party which strives to win Delhi can afford to do. People junked the Commies in WB and Kerala and voted for what they believed was the next option and you do not feature in even the Top-3 of that list. Time to think about that.

Hope you stand by your decision to quit the scene and spend quality time with your family that has been with you throughout many such difficult periods. You could still be the Chief Mentor like NRN is in Infosys- but give the reins of the party to a new and younger group that has a Vision – India needs not just a strong government but a robust constructive Opposition too.

Thanking you.

Your well-wisher.

P.S. The 2009 Election was a watershed because of the kind of results it threw in, surprising pollsters and psephologists. Possibly, no one understood the ground realities and did not realize what was happening; but this is also because of simplistic general assumptions made by most analysts. Voters do not vote en masse – please stop looking at us like a homogeneous group that votes for a party on grounds of regional/caste/religious considerations only.

Jaagore… Aur Phir Kya???

(Original Source: http://electioncartoons09.blogspot.com/2009/03/cartoon-by-manoj-chopra_29.html)

When the Election Commission mandated that the indelible ink in Maharashtra was to be put in the middle finger instead of the forefinger, it did not quite realize the irony of the situation. The Mumbaikars also responded by showing their middle fingers –no better symbol to demonstrate what you always felt!!!

Circa Oct 30th 2009 – the day of the elections in Mumbai ; after all the hype created by the Jaago re campaign, the exhortations by the media and celebrities; it turned out to be quite a damp squib, even worse than the Knight Riders cacophony. The final city turnout was a pathetic 41% -the majority showed their middle finger to the Great Indian Election. The way the English press was gung ho about the entire event, you realize how much out of touch they are with the mood of the millions of people who felt – Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.

There were other reasons too for the low turnout here – the simmering heat, the long weekend (4 days from Thursday to Sunday) and the standard problem of missing names in electoral rolls. But whether you choose to call it voter apathy, voter fatigue or indifference, you cannot ignore the role it plays in an electoral poll. In the initial enthusiasm, you vote for a party and if you are dissatisfied, you give another party a chance and then the ring-a-ring-a-roses goes on and on till you give up on this Divine Thought of making a difference.

When you try to sell a product and do a marketing overkill, sometimes it falls flat and makes it more repulsive. Let me be honest – I did feel a bit cheesed off at being told to Shut Up and Vote and being repeatedly told by the media and country loving celebrities that I need to contribute and make a difference. See, SRK came all the way down from South Africa just to cast a vote – I wish he’d fund my trip to Hyderabad; I’d love to visit my parents and make a difference.

Don’t get me wrong; I am a strong votary of the right to universal adult franchise – after all, that’s the only thing I can do which can, at least theoretically, make a difference to the polity running this place. We all agree that as a functioning democracy, the Right to Vote is a fundamental right that has been bestowed on us by the governing fathers of this nation and the Election Commission, under T N Seshan and his successors, has actually done its best to ensure that the polls are as free as they can be.

In the late 70s, buoyed by the call for Sampurna Kranti Aandolan by Jayaprakash Narayan against the regime of Indira Gandhi, people voted, rather revolted, in large numbers and overthrew the perpetrators of the Emergency. But what did they get –a ragtag group of Janata Party jokers, who made such a fool of themselves that it took just 3 years for Mrs. Gandhi to come back to power with a thumping majority. What we witnessed was truly the victory of adult franchise, when the voters brought back the same leader whom they had deposed a few years back.

When Rajiv Gandhi swept into power with a brutal majority, thanks to the tidal wave of sympathy after Mrs. Gandhi’s assassination, a lot was expected from the man – a Clean Leader they said, who would make a difference. He started with all the right notes before running out of steam; the smile faded, the hair deserted him and everything else that had endeared him to the masses disappeared– a mandate given on a platter and thrown away in a span of about 2 years.

Over the years, there were many others who have come and the BJP was supposedly The Alternative and when you heard them on TV, you felt that there had the energy to make a difference and sure, they did. They managed to make themselves another caricature (mukhauta) of the Congress and so we are now stuck between 2 rudderless entities. With an octogenarian leader and a rather weak second rung, the party looks lost in this electoral sea and is solely banking on Modi’s charisma to win the Centre.

The Third Front was always a joke – a group of individuals with their own private agendas and no illusions about making a difference. The Commies never got out of their comfort zones of Bengal, Kerala and Tripura (someone tell them that Mao and Che are no longer with us) while the regional parties stuck to their regional tantrums. Thanks to years of Congress misrule, they were wiped out of India’s largest Electoral College state – UP- only to be replaced with leaders like Mulayam and Maya.

The Right to Choice was given to us and it still exists but where are the bloody choices? I am thankful that I have the right to vote and protest about it but that’s the most I can, is it? So, I am told join the polity and make the difference that you want to see but then everyone cannot get into such a role, can he? I am thoroughly disillusioned and at 28, I wonder whether my vote can make a difference but I am stuck with my choices – after all, when I whine, I am told – Shut Up and Vote.

All said and done, I am glad that we have organizations like the Janaagraha, which are making the right noises and trying to bring about a change in the electoral system (among several other things). The change may just be too small but possibly (and I am trying to be an optimist), it could give something to rally around, during these trying times. After all, it’s so much easy to be a cynic and lambast everything around but so much more difficult to MAKE A DIFFERENCE…

P.S. Despite all exhortations, my family did not vote. I had relocated to Mumbai for my job and my registration was in Hyderabad, so no vote for me. My parents, despite living in Hyderabad for 30+ years and the same house for more than 15 years and voting in every election so far, realized that their names had suddenly disappeared from the voting lists. All for the Right to Make a Difference, which does not even exist!!!

The Homecoming

For somebody who made a mark for himself with fast paced thrillers like Night of the Krait, The Orphan and The Sniper, Shashi Warrier has taken a remarkable turn in his last 2 books which are quite dark and deeply introspective. His Hangman’s Journal was a compelling story of the life of the unknown Hangman (is one of my favourites) while his latest book The Homecoming is a dark and disturbing tale of betrayal set in the backdrop of the Kashmir Valley.

Javed Sharif is a Kashmiri widower who is into a lucrative carpet and shawls business, living and working in Bangalore, having moved out of the Valley, early on. He falls in love with a widow, Sujata, but the relationship ends because of his refusal to convert into Hinduism. He decides to settle down by returning to Kashmir and as a start, he returns home on the occasion of his father’s eighty-fourth birthday.

His carefully constructed dream starts going rapidly downhill right from the birthday when the family is rudely interrupted by a knock on his door on the birthday and as he watches, his world spirals rapidly into dense pools of turmoil. His younger son Irfan, is suspected to be hobnobbing with the Lashkar and is arrested under POTO. But Javed refuses to believe this and spends all his money and energy in getting his son out. Meanwhile, his elder son, Fawzi, gets married to a Christian girl and swindles him of nearly all his wealth.

The Homecoming is essentially a story of betrayal- Javed is deceived by everyone, right from his family to the State. Irfan turns into a religious bigot, with very less concern for his father’s thoughts; his own brother, Muhammad, who becomes an influential State minister, compromises his principles and keeps his own interests intact, never really trying to help him; Fawzi betrays his trust and cheats him of his lifetime earnings ; Javed’s own father hides from him till the very end the fact that Hassan is his half-brother and bequeaths him money, whereas Javed himself does not get anything.

His mother blames him for all the misfortunes and moves away from their own house to Muhammad’s, in spite of the fact that Javed has run the family all these years. His love, Sujata, dissolves the relationship because he refuses to convert into Hinduism and later on avoids him so that their relationship does not affect her son’s marriage. Towards the end, he realizes that his daughter,Razia, has all the while remained in touch with her brother Fawzi, despite his action of cheating his father. The parting shot comes when he realizes that Irfan is probably mixed with the wrong crowd and is not innocent and the realization slowly seeps in-This is the house that I built for my family. My whole life has been a lie.

At one level, Shashi Warrier explores the father-son relationship across 3 generations. Javed wonders if he could ever do to his father what his son did to him, even if he were to resent him. There is an element of truth when he remarks that he feels pained by his son’s incarceration but that he probably would not have felt the same surge of emotions when it comes to his parents.

The selfish gene finds its place strongly in all of us and I wonder what would happen if ever a situation arises when we have to decide between our children and parents.He carries the guilt of not being around when his children grow up and he tries to make up for it by his blind love for them, only to be deceived by his lack of judgment.

It is a deeply disturbing novel which explores the failings of a family as it struggles with the spectre of violence and gloom which had become an integral part of the Kashmiri psyche since the late 80s. Javed meets people with different view points on the Kashmir issue – people who want it to an independent entity, those who want it to belong to Pakistan, India loyalists and those who just don’t care and want to be left alone- and is bewildered by the reactions of his son and brother to the problem. He slowly begins to understand the reality of the situation but is shattered by the deception of his near and dear ones.

It is very convenient to dismiss the entire struggle as a Pakistan conspiracy but while the Pakistan hand is true and very much visible, what has strengthened the factional struggle is also the dishonesty of the State, which failed the Kashmiris. A foreign hand acts as a catalyst when there are conditions created which facilitate such intervention. However, he also questions the raison d’etre of the struggle when he says that it is not just the Kashmiris who have been let down by India and that their struggles are not entirely new and original –

“The Indian bureaucracy has treated Kashmiris no better and no worse than they’ve treated the rest of India. Administrators in Kashmir are, if anything, better than elsewhere in India because Kashmir is always in the spotlight. From my visit to Manzoor I realized that Kashmiri oppresses Kashmiri with as much impunity. Will throwing out the Indian element of the administration cure that? I doubt that.”

Years of violence, fear and anxiety has a very visible effect on the surface but deep inside, the harm that is caused is hidden. Just like the horrors of the Bhopal gas tragedy which continue to haunt its people even today, the destruction that has been caused is quite numbing – reflecting in families that live in a pall of gloom and mistrust.

Family fabrics may not always be so strong as we think – a small tug and the entire warp could possibly come apart. War is catastrophic and the people who survive its aftermath have a very heavy price to pay- whether it is the Kashmiri Muslim or the Pandit.

Shashi Warrier’s prose is simple, to the point and does not involve any element of verbal jugglery which creeps in most books written by Indian writers nowadays. The journalist in him stands out as he manages to create a politically personal story which is stark and does not hover around inane considerations of the Valley’s beauty. The pathos and inevitability of the ending make for compelling, albeit depressing reading – almost reminiscent of Malayalam cinema of the 80s...