He is a Peoples' Man

I have always believed, when Bihar will regain the glory of Magadha, India will regain the glory of Bharat.
The tilt in favor of Nitish is more than most of us expected. Yet I am not excited. In fact very disappointed. Nitish did manage a more than 2/3 majority, but Lalu still got 25 pct of the votes polled. Can you imagine a man who for 15 years looted Bihar, promoted nepotism, used the state machinery to sponsor lawlessness and terror, ran a kidnapping racket still polls 25 pct of votes. How skewed would the priorities of people who voted for him be.

Psephologists are ecstatic, as they got it right. The well meaning people are happy as good has triumphed over fraud and evil. But happiness is completely contingent on the reference frame. The moment you think that India is still a country that is 178th in the world on the Human Development Index, it is a backward country, still reveling in defunct institutions like caste, then of course you have come a long way. But the moment you look at India as a country with a glorious past and one poised for a glorious future, the elections’ is disappointing outcome.

While many Indians like to believe they are materially backward, but philosophically very enlightened and elite, it is clearly not borne out by the fact that their democratic system keeps a patron of corruption like Lalu in power for 3 terms. Their democratic system tolerates a scam stricken demitting CM to install his wife as the surrogate CM.

My disappointment notwithstanding, clearly the result actually establishes victory of earnestness, honesty, dedication and good governance on corruption and nepotism, chicanery and social engineering, the latter being actually a euphemism for casteism.

Macro indicators show an unbelievable change in the entire eco system of Bihar. Roads have begun to exist. Petrol pumps function more honestly. Hospitals are well appointed to treat patients. State sponsored kidnappings have stopped. Girls feel safe post sunset. Goondas don’t flout the laws with same impunity. Police stations lodge reports and are not just places for drying striped underwears.

I remember, Nitish as a very humble man. Once with my son who was still very small then, I was at the N Delhi railway station. Nitish Kumar then the railway minister was returning to Delhi by train. In India the aides of a VIPs deem it their personal failure if their master has to walk a few steps. So cars are parked so as snugly as possible and as farther as they can reach to the arrival lounges, to facilitate the transfer often inconveniencing people. Infact someone foreign to the system would feel that in India all VIPs are handicapped may be. So, this time was no exception. His car was parked in such a manner that it straddled the entire entrance stairway. I was furious and shouted at his driver. The gunners felt outraged at the sight of a common man talking upto them and surrounded me. Meanwhile Nitish Kumar arrived and upon learning the cause he apologized to me. He did not need to do that. He took one step more and snubbed his henchmen for the rowdy behavior. What should I say. He is a peoples' man.

I Heckled and then Walked Out

The First Heckle

The Comedy Store was started sometime in the late 70s atop a strip club in SOHO, London, I suppose inspired by the comedy theatres of USA. This company has a franchise in India also operating out of a posh mall in Parel, Mumbai.

The outfit claims to be a temple for stand up comedians and it is said that there is no stand up comedian worth his salt who has at some point of time not performed at the Comedy Store.

So I was there, casually dressed, actually ill-dressed, in a white T Shirt hidden beneath a dark blue cotton sweat shirt. The crowd that I saw was defying the stereotype of theatre goers that I had in mind as I would usually see at the Prithvi theatres. The kurta, jeans and sachel was completely missing, and the neo rich, most pretentious Hinglish speaking anglophile crowd populated the waiting lounge cum bar. The men were in skin tight shiny shirts and the women were of course in short skirts. There was enough flesh to ogle at while groups transacted flirtatiously over drinks in the bar. Presumably, more money is made in the bar than the show.

The show anchor was himself a stand up comedian. There were three more in the line for the performance including one Indian.

Stand up comedy too like most arts has been evolving. It started as a racist and regionalist wet and wild humor. But eventually this genre with overt racist content was considered to be in poor taste and passed into desuetude in due course. Today, the standard of stand up in many cases degenerated into ill appointed sexual innuendoes. Although I agree, it is healthy to laugh, and it is even more healthy to laugh on your ownself. But standards or yardsticks have to be uniform. If comedians constantly make fun of your country, religion and culture and not theirs it is really laughing at others and not at themselves.

But the show which began as a satire on Indians and all that was Indian, and all that India stood for, soon degenerated into sexual innuendoes and eventually pornography. We did witness a detailed depiction of a priapic lover fornicating and then masterbating as his woman was turned off by the air mattress they had at their home. Pathetic humor. Actually no humor. And even more pathetic content. But what was noteworthy was the fact that the audience laughed their intestines out even at such a crass depiction that was clearly and overly offensive for even boorish sensibilities. What was most disappointing was the females seemed to be enjoying the filth much more than their male companions. May be brazenness is yardstick for emancipation.

Also, nobody seemed to be uncomfortable about the fun that was being made of the country, its culture and history, and of course of Indians in India and also the diaspora.
The audience just laughed. When I objected with vehemence to one of the extremely pejorative remark of a comedian about the country which I believed was completely uncalled for, he thought it was a typical heckle and tried to target his buffoonery at me.

Comedian : what do you do sir
Heckler ( me ) : I work for a pharma company
C : what do you do in the company, sweep the floor
H : yes housekeeping is also one of the functions reporting to me
C : you look very elite, you must be a brain surgeon
H : you bet
Man fm the audience : ( who was like me disgusted by these comedians) he can repair your penis that you wife crushed with a brick ( as this was one of the acts that the joker had done )

From the audience which would have been about 300 strong, I think there was just one more man both literally and proverbially who reacted to the stupid comedy. One stand up comedian even referred to the Tata acquisition of JLR as reverse racism. Just look at the mind set.

Of course, the ultmate insult that I could have hurled at the performers was to stage a walk out. I don’t think an artist could find anything more dejecting and disparaging than being booed or walked out upon from his performance. That is exactly what I did.

The question that I would pose is this. Can Indian stand up comedians travel to UK and reverse the humor on the British audience? Would the British audience be able to stomach such humor on themselves? In what capacity was the audience laughing then.
But one thing I am clear about. Xenophobia not withstanding, Indians will have to bring in some sense of self - worth, pride and propriety about their culture, country and history. Material progress without them would be futile.

Now I Know India is Great

Now I know Mera Bharat Mahan

Now I know for sure. India is truly a great country. I have no doubt anymore.
The president of United States has said so, and he can’t be wrong. Particulary the self effacing Obama who conjures in me images of my favorite Vulcan of Star Trek - Spock - who spoke nothing but truth.

Indian culture is great. The president of the United States has said so, and the first lady has gyrated on a Kholi number. No bigger vindication for a nation begging approval of the West.

I personally believe that Obama is a well meaning man but Americans will ensure he fails, just to establish, they gave a black guy a fair chance on the highest ideals of equality of opportunity and democratic values, but as a community they are not yet equipped enough to lead America and thereby the world.

I am now also convinced that Swami Vokanad (sic) aka Vivekananda was a great Swami visiting the hometown of Obama - Chicago - although I don’t think he succeeded in establishing Hinduism as the greatest religion as many of us like to believe because Obama did not say so. Or did he?

Seeing Michelle I always feel, she is a dominatrix. While the stressed first black president of USA slogs to redeem the pledge that he made to the people who voted him to power, Michelle does all fun stuff flaunting her sartorial sense ( which at least I believe is bizarre ) and outings. To me she gives Govinda a run with her acute sartorial sense.

In addressing the joint session of the parliament, I think Obama had his tryst with the most corrupt of politicians of the world under one roof. May be some dictators in Africa or Latin America could beat the Indians in corruption, but collectively, the Indians will be clear winners. Many Indian politicians could even buy the Queen of England hands down or tease Warren Buffet at his own game.

He also saw how the most vibrant and largest democracy appoints a President whose only claim to fame is being close to the first family. The Prime Minister has not faced the electorate but is generally perceived as a safe stop gap arrangement ruling as regent till the prince Rahul is of age. Although, an avid commentator may in a saccade of the eye on the American political firmament gloat on parallels like Palin or Bush himself. But that is no savior.

Obama and I would say America all of sudden remembered that India discovered the zero. May be in the next trip, economic compulsions would force him to recognize ancient India’s contribution to astronomy, science, medicine and philosophy also one by one.

Battling constantly falling rating at home, I don’t know how much Obama will gain returning to America with an applauding India on his back and India which was no longer emerging but an “emerged” economy.

Joe the Plumber

Joe the Plumber

Curiously, stupid questions but put to famous people could make you famous and therefore Joe the Plumber was no exception. Almost as famous as being at the helm of US Fed in a recession or marrying a spouse who is famous would make you.

But what is critical is the fact that the Plumber did question. And who. None other than a candidate running for presidency. How many societies in the modern world today encourage such debate and accountability. And we Indians despite having had an age old tradition of questioning and debating, reasoning and rationalizing, seem to of have abandoned such cognitive pursuits. Of course questioning has its own perils. Had it not been for the audacity of questioning, Ashtāvakra would have been born without deformities, perhaps the world would have known him with a different name too.

But in modern India, can even the most powerful today dare ask, how Sonia Gandhi runs her house. The very thought would be blasphemy. Why Z level security cover is deemed essential for Robert Wadra. How much wealth a Pawar or Mayawati possesses.

Even during the rule of descendants of Raghu, a petty washerman could question the legitimacy of a legendary King and Maryada Purshottam Ram’s decision to restore Sita. Saktar and Chanakya could question the mighty Nanda. Today, my wife a civil servant questioned probity and demeanor unbecoming of officers of some her bureaucrat colleagues, and many of her well wishers cautioned her to stop “rubbing people on the wrong side.” From childhood, we are coached to not call spade a spade. Not be abrupt. Not raise our voice against injustice and corruption. Not to question the system. Also how feeble our voice would be against the entire system. But in the same vein we are also taught lessons in diligence and industriousness that would either catapult us to an orbit where we will be beyond the corruption or be a beneficiary of the malaise than a victim.

Today in modern India, we are quite wary of un-ruffling feathers or as we prefer to say, rubbing people on the wrong side. The children of Vedas, Brahmanas and Upanishads, where the axiomatic Pari Prashnen was the fundamental basis of learning and wisdom, today desist questioning. What a 180 deg we have done. Increasingly I have a feeling, more than lack of national character, which has been my favorite theory for the ills of India ( and I sometimes recommend compulsory NCC as a remedy ) it is the withering of the tradition of questioning that is responsible for the all round rot.

May be, this blind allegiance to a diktat or acquiescing to organized malpractices was an outcome of Islamic rulers overrunning the country. India is perhaps the singular exception where Islamic rulers overran the country but Islam couldn’t. Of course, the monolithic system of Islamic tradition, did not allow any questioning. Questioning Allah or quoran was clearly punishable blasphemy. Just about when this system was collapsing under its own irrationality or due to fatigued armies - fatigued not from denuded military superiority but for want ideological sustenance, the land saw a similar onslaught in the form of British where the guiding force was even more vicious commerce instead of religion. It is true, post Power Loom west made immense material and philosophical progress, and it was simply for that reason, many of them realized in no time, that they had ahead of them a task to exploit a civilization - India that had not so long ago been far superior to theirs.

Then this gargantuan task was not to be achieved by military supremacy alone, but with a definitive politico – cultural strategy where establishing cultural superiority of the western thought and tradition was integral to long term protection of politico-military hegemony and commercial interests. Commercial gains would not be sustainable without political hegemony. India even today is wallowing in the travails of such systematic thinking, loot and plunder and worse still even after independence, when the Burra sahib has been merely replaced by the brown sahib. While political independence has been clearly achieved the mental yoke continues to plague us.

May be if the generation of our children will have more Joe the Plumbers, we could overthrow the yoke of the 1000 years of thraldom and make real progress.