The Origin of Restlessness

A strong & singular Government must emerge from this elections.
Duh !
Otherwise there are a lot of problems.
But the most significant problem is, to identify, who is the wrongdoer???
Traditionally, revolts & rebellions have risen up, against a tyrranical power, the "tyranny" prevailing & pre-eminent, & acompanied by decisive & compelling authority.
Now, we are in a pathetic situation. The misgovernance is still there, but we are clueless as to who is responsible!!
(Excpet ourselves, of course! But which self-respecting Indian will accept that 'there is something wrong with my politics' )My politics? Wrong? (Poignant pause. Now you have stepped on my tail!!) Do you know what atrocities have been (OR have been being) committed against my ... (fill in the blank -caste.. gender.. district.. profession.. )? How we have been deprived of our rightful rights?
Well, all the wrong is alive & kicking, only, the decisive & compelling authority is gone. In fact, there is no authority at all!

Where does that leave the poor revolutionary then?

This is all very unfair!
Opression has become everyone's business!
Not that I grudge equal oportunity, after all, like all truely unbiased people, I hate everyone equally.
But if every next five people are another political outfit, then each of these five-member political party can hold another, or a few of the other, responsible,
& then, if the common man want to rise up, the rulers have such an unfair advantage: to shift blame, to point finger towards the next (Pout, pout...), & the common man is dizzied in settling the blame.
Who to blow up?
No Rajah, no British, only commoners, & that too, too many!!
So, the revolutionary then takes one of two available & abominable ways out.
1. Start a new five-member political outfit, enter the vicious circle, & set out towards a glorious career of corruption & WASTE
2. Blow up commoners.
Shame.

Survival of the selfish

It’s difficult to believe that pure money motive, or lust for power & being feared drives someone to join realpolitik, mind you, & not referring to the drives (or circumstances) which make a politician successful, but those which make a man or a woman choose politics as a career, & later, take such career decisions as seeking a party ticket to contest, or changing their party, or forming a new party.

However, when we look at samples, rather than census, we often come to despair. Take, for instance the political themed movies. You surely get the hint at the latest you watched, the sagas of waste.
These are case analysis by the layman (non-political-scientist).
As a recurring theme, we see, that the most idealist vanish from the scene fastest. Either suffer career suicides, or if in the land on gun rule, actually cease to exist.
Those who act only for themselves, (& “themselves” in a very narrow sense), win. Thrive.
Why is that? Maybe the more abstract the ideas, weaker the conviction?
Or more precisely, the closer one’s political will to one’s on self-interest, the more energy & desperation employed.
Self-preservation is the essence of politics.

To tame the “Rulers”

If today, you were to join politics, for a very substantial reason, what would that reason be?
Let’s try to understand the psychology of the guys, who, today, join the politics of our nation, to participate in GOVERNING US. Whatever we are today, as a society or culture, we are, definitely, RULED by those who we CHOOSE.
We do elect persons to make our parliament. We expect them to behave in a certain way (decidedly corrupt. We completely accept that there is non-propriety, in everyone & every viable association within the legislature, & the executive).

However, politicians are NOT predictable.
Even if we expect the politician to be selfish,
still, shall we not expect him/her to concern themselves with our interest?
After all, the position has been given to him/ her by us,a very large no. of us.
Do we demand too much?
& suppose that an individual does take up politics with the vision to immune oneself from any punitive action, opening up avenues to endless wealth, accumulated through forgery, treachery, & theft of every kind.
Yet, we find that they stumble, blunder, are impulsive, cry foul, & simply cry, & behave in every way that every other individual does.

If we assume that half the people who are in the legislature are opportunists who got lucky, then at least half of them are just like you & me.
Either they had started at the age of 22 with boiling blood & super-ambitions - for their dying craftsmanship of weavery , or saving their tribal grounds from encroachment or against unfairness against medical PG students…;
or at middle age, had bitterly realized that they had to join what they most hated, to make any real difference.

The first half can only be restrained, & hopefully brought to trial only if the latter half wake up, & realize how far they are, from what they set out to achieve. They need to realize the power of their dreams. Maybe they also need to realize the value of their peers’ dreams, so irrelevant to them…

The Mango Businessman

I met him in the train. Strangers meet in trains, & might or might not, at the end of the journey together, exchange phone nos. We didn’t.
He has a textile business.
He also, every summer, shifts base to an obscure little town near Vishakhapattanam, for a seasonal business of mangoes, which his father left him. The mango orchards are in the villages near the East coast.
So, every April, he has this change of location, climate, work schedule & lifestyle. In Delhi, he commutes 40 kms to work. Here, he has an office-cum-residence… Then, one year, he noticed that the neighbourhood of his office-cum-residence had become quite glam; the local “upcoming” leader had moved next doors. So, he kept on on his business, as usual, & smiled, & greeted, & sent complementary gift boxes of the yield to the “local upcoming leader”( while the latter also supposedly made great leaps of progress in his own profession.
Another few years went by & the free cartons of fruits were not good enough anymore. The (now already up) leader, & his upcoming protégés & his near relatives, should be partners in these businesses!
Which are run on their land! employing their people! After all, outsiders will always need local support! & businessmen will always need political backing!
Brings me to think, who is it, that benefits from the produce (not to say labour) of another? Definitionally, it should be the Govt. And, also definitionally, this collection should be known as the taxes. Defined by the law of the country?
Then why is it, that everywhere in this country, individuals & gangs extract money? & of course they run a parallel Govt., if they will do absolutely nothing to appease those that they exploit, then someone will rise in revenge. So they do perform some philanthropic activities. Mainly of religious nature. Or should I say communal?

The Mango Businessman II

My copassenger told us that they conceded to these demands. Not exactly making them partners, but making huge donations. To the religious functions arranged by the leader, to the party funds. In return, what unlawful gains he received out of the latter, he did not tell me. “ I requested him to get me a CNG station in Delhi, he can keep all the proceeds from it, just my ownership on paper. He never once said no. “I’ll see to it” he hasn’t yet seen to it." He further told us that a few months ago, the demands fortified and escalated to threats. How do we elect despots? Democratically pick & send “representatives" that will forge & indulge their own little fiefdoms, squabble among themselves & bleed us so that we are antagonistic of the taxes that we owe the country? So, he and some other businessmen dealing mango produced in the same region were summoned by the leader, now the MLA of that same obscure town, & part of the ruling party, at his residence in Delhi, at urgent notice. They were collectively addressed and elucidated about they all had been formerly separately told. Perhaps this was the leader's one wrong move. Because, according to my copassenger, very soon afterwards, these very businessmen consolidated, stood their ground, & decided to show the leader, that politics needs to be backed by business. Whether my copassenger was a good employer, a fair customer of the locals, a law-abiding businessman, I am in no position to judge. Neither do I swear by the truth of the incidents that he narrated. For the purpose of this particular muse, I assume him to be a “normal” Indian citizen with a balance of conscience & ambition. To be fair to the other party, I have no information as to whether the leader developed a clean or a corrupt image, as to what were his means of success & progress. I guess that these men were only one step away from forming their own political outfit. Would it have done any good to anyone? I wonder.

Atmosphere

If you were to be lost, where would you like to be lost? Do you have a memory of a place where you won’t mind forgetting your way? Do you indulge in it often?
Harsingar is a tree, which bears little white folwers, with orange stalks, in autumn. They pour down during the night, & cover the ground in a loose carpet. It’s probably the only flower, which might be offered to the deity, even after it’s picked from the ground. We had two trees in the house where I grew up. Sometimes, I’d spread newspaper sheets below the trees in the night, to save myself the labour of picking them up. Needless to say, the sheets flew away at night.
“Dushehra-Deepawali holidays” was a long stretch from the Durgashtami to Bhai Dooj. No school and no private tuitions, I’d have the entire morning to myself, to visit a friend, to go cycling, or to simply daydream under the Sun.
The sky would be blue as the sky, the morning, from a little after sunrise, till noon, would feel like time was bound at 10:00 am, roasting heat in the open, comfy cool in the shade. That’s autumn for me.
Whenever I get a whiff of Harsingar, I involuntarily start looking for the tree. If I’m dazzled in passing a white marble structure at midday, or some other thing makes me realize that it’s sunny blue above, I want to daydream for a moment.
I feel my childhood autumn.
I’m transported.
I’m at loss for words. It was the situation, the being. It’s not the time of the year, or the time of the day, the weather or the location, but the confluence. I loved existing there that day. It won’t return, but I remember the atmosphere.

Smells & Sounds

Do photographs take you back in time?

Oh! They do take me back a few steps, i.e., to when I was looking at them, perhaps with some friend? Memory rewinds to a few particular points in time, instantly I remember what jokes we cracked about it while we looked at the snap. But it never takes me as far back as when the snap was actually taken! Memories were created when the artifact was unchanged, just the way it now is, not when it was created.

Neither faces nor places remain the same, enough, to evoke memories. Of course, certain objects that we took to be fixtures, become prominent by their absence, & open a floodgate of memories of ‘have-beens’. A tree that used to be, (and obviously has been hacked), a window you used to stall your bike below, (which has disappeared behind another construction), the little shop which sold erasers & sharpeners (where now stands a rose garden) make you aware of a living & aching hole in your chest.
What reminds me of happy times, and in its full glory, are two things, that never change, Smells and music.
There’s this particular hindi movie song. Every time I hear it, & immediately back in the computer room of my Management School, Smitha’s system playing the song in the row behind me… I try to hold on to it for as many moments as possible, I know it no longer exists. Still, I can still experience it once more, for a few moments, with so much resources as a song. Thank God for small favours.