The Children of Tutakhamun

It was one of my usual business trips when I try and cover all contiguous markets to save time and money. So from Istanbul I flew Turkish Airways to Cairo. Turkish Airlines was an accidental yet a good surprise.

Infact I had protested to HRG Sita my travel agent why they put me on Turkish, an untried though Star Alliance carrier. HRG told me I had approved it. This must have been those hypnagogic moments when I say yes to many things which I believe do not merit minute attention. But as you can imagine I later regret.

But the airline was a delight. The Business class was good, hospitality I think second to may be Singapore Airlines, fare competitive and food choices enough. The Business Class was also quite sparsely populated that added to the comfort.

The day I landed in Cairo, Tunisian dictator Ben Ali had sought asylum in Saudi.
Cairo was whispering. The soothsayers predicted turmoil if not doom. The contagion of the Jasmine Revolution was deemed to take over this north African land of the Nile.

Call it determinism or the operation of the anthropic principle, the children of Tutankhamun seemed destined for a period of unrest and strife. I say anthropic as I think the conditions are determined by the outcome as much as the outcome by the conditions. The argument may sound counterintuitive on a logical plane but on a platonic one you will see it holds merit.

Well Egypt indeed bears similarities with India. The society is hierarchical. The culture is rich and ancient. Anthropomorphisation was integral to both cultures till the wave of Islamisation swept the land of Nile like it did all the contiguous lands. The only difference being that India retained its culture in some variegated form, like wine maturing in a bottle, and Egypt lost it to Islam. It took the westerners to help Egyptians recognize the science of the Giza Pyramids or the pristine nature of their cultural richness and heritage.

In fact in some respects, the rot in Egypt was evidently more than India. I traveling with my agent whose car bore the sign of the Parliament. He was hailed by a cop for overshooting the zebra at A traffic light. Noticing the sign of the Parliament on the car, the cop smiled and stepped back. In India now a days they do make a pretense of the equality before law.

Also at the entrance of the museum I got a feeling some Americans were let in with out proper identification. When I shouted/protested, the security officers were apologetic. This too was familiar. First allow in violation of a rule and upon being checked behave sheepishly, in fact the guards at the entrance thought I was some person in authority even though not Egyptian. The only difference being, that in India they would perhaps not allow foreigners without frisking but anybody in white khaddar or an I card with steel chain (a bureaucrat )they would.

HUM DONO RANGEEN

Hum Dono Rangeen

After many years I watched a movie in the theatre. They are called multiplexes today. The multiplex is not so much about the multi-screens as it is about multi-cuisine food court within.

When I was young in middle school, eating out was not considered good. Although even then, in the more westernized Indian family systems, it had started gaining some acceptance. Today if you eat at home the whole week, it is a shame
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Higher disposal incomes today are redefining mores not just in India but the emerging world at large. Just as in my grandfather’s time, eating out was a sin, causing perdition, today an outing is incomplete unless you masticate on something preferably non India, unless of course you are traveling abroad. Ironically, much as we like to eat non Indian food in India, a zealous hunt for an Indian restaurant is the top on the to-do list as soon as we land abroad.

Coming back to Hum Dono! We went, we parked and we bought the tickets and of course arranged our tray of eatables even in anticipation of the movie.

Hum Dono is a movie of my parents’ generation. It is about Captain Anand ( Devanand ) and the scintillating doppelganger Major Verma, their spouses and mothers. Thus, clearly a different genre of movie making; emphasizing on subtleties of relationships, emotions, sentiments and virtue, calling for imagination from the modern generations to relate to the scenes and storyline, and too slow for even my generation which seeks instant gratification and the younger one which finds such sentimentality at best risible.

So on one side where there was so much sentimentality on the celluloid, there was lot of family dynamics to be experienced in the rows behind and in front. Indians, gregarious as they are, they are also immensely family centric. They love connecting with other members of family. So they go to view movies in groups. They like idea of movie more than the movie. So seat exchanging and adjustments are continuously happening. Sometimes even at the hazard of your hair being pulled by some panic grip of your head rest for restoring balance in the dark. They also want their moneys worth and hence wish all of the family to understand should something be subtle and not so obvious, so continuous prompting is a standard practice.

Hum Dono treats amongst others the ‘61 military engagement with China, so there are staccato bursts of gunfire between the platoon of the wiry Devanand and Chinese troops on the screen in front tuned on modern Dolby sound. But behind me was the chomp chomp chomp of Nachos. I curse Mexicans for this gift. The gunfire stopped but chomp chomp lasted through out as today the munching is not confined to the intervals.

If business is ignored, then the movie cannot be afforded and hence cell phones kept ringing and many busy people continued to transact business also much as they continued to translate the subtle portions for their spouses. On top, if this was not enough, there was a family with two children. Their chuckle was undying.

Jai ho.

THE BURDEN OF THE DYNASTY

Just like every individual every country also has a destiny. And every destiny has a burden. And every burden has a cost. An integral burden of India’s destiny is the Nehru-Gandhi family. And the cost of this burden has been immense down the ages.

Nehru was a man in a hurry. He did indeed have “miles and miles to go before he slept”. In his eagerness to acquire a global stature he blundered many times at home. Nonetheless, something that he did fool proof and none of his peers (some like Sardar and Bose were with even better credentials) could was to institutionalize a process that would continue to anoint his heirs to the throne he would vacate.

To me the Nehru family is a big liability. A bigger liability is our mentality to let it stay at the helm of the country killing the essence of the democratic process. The country has returned to them much more than the sacrifice that they made. Game is being laid for Rahul to be the next prime-minister. Our current PM (a very learned man) is perpetually supplicating to the matron willing to bow out in favor of Rahul upon signal of the matronly Sonia.

Rahul is of course a very eligible prime ministerial candidate. He has now even lived in a dalit home and broken bread with them in all earnest. He is serious about becoming the PM. He has equated RSS to SIMI. He has always shown great understanding of this lands variegated culture, and now courtesy Wikileaks he has even shown great networking skills by sending an SMS to Obama that Hindu terror is a bigger threat than the perpetrators of 9/11.

The matron of course has on many occasions in the past given many positions of public power a go by as her primary objective is to see her son in saddle in a bid to preserve the dynasty than usurp power for herself. In fact, it is best to have authority without any accountability as she does. In India, Prime Ministerial berth can be manipulated. The democratic system shall not have the option to decide.

The politicians and even bureaucrats have this uncanny capability to dismember good institutions, even emasculate them and give political masters reasons and means to constrict any form of opposition.

I very clearly remember my mother tell me a story how Gen JN Chaudhary one of the best soliders that this country had, opposed Nehru (some people say JNC even threatened Nehru with house arrest) just out of disgust at the stupid decisions that he was taking in the context of both Pakistan and the China. Nehru with the support of Krishna Menon dismembered the institution of Joint Chief which threatened his unencumbered sway on the country.

Just about when the Indian forces got their act in order in JnK and started the process of recouping the land lost to Pakistan inch by inch, Nehru dug his heels and pulled the troops back. What a disaster!

Indira did make some gains at the Simla pact but failed to get LoC recognized as the international border despite the release of 90,000 prisioners of war. Again, Nehru despite internal and American warnings refused to see the irredentist designs of the Chinese in the Nefa.

Indira Gandhi clearly did integrate Nefa as Arunachal - first as a UT and then as a full fledged state - but the same could not be done with Kashmir. Again Nehru made a blunder of escalating Kashmir to the UN and agreeing to plebiscite.

Of course the integration of Arunanchal was much simpler, as the local population was not muslim. If NEFA had been predominantly muslim may be government would not have liked to integrate it. I think all governments work on the premise, probably unfounded, that Muslims are not Indians. Else how can hanging the joker who masterminded the Parliament blasts in which so many people were killed be construed to hurt muslim sentiments. Most quarters believe this to be the reason for the case to drag. I don’t speak for Muslims but I cannot imagine why their sentiment would be so sinfully parochial.

May be the signal intended is that no matter what you do, till you vote for us, we will turn a blind eye to what you do even if it is defiling the sanctum sanctorum of democracy – the Parliament. Of course, any group of citizens will like this special treatment, why only the Muslims. That the muslim brotherhood enjoys this and also uses to propagate the fear psychosis is another matter. But clearly one aberration that the muslims must rectify is their propensity to cast block vote. They must cast with their mind on not based on Fatwa.