Bharat Darshan

My trip starts from my home town Kolkata. On that typical hot and humid summer afternoon, I went to that drowsy rickshaw puller. He barely heard my calls, and on trying a bit harder, half opened his marijuana blessed red eyes and muttered, “Can’t go …”

“Why?”

“Because I won’t! Don’t bother me!”

… somehow reaching the Hospital’s reception for the clinical test, I asked the reception where to proceed. The glossy faced overweight woman was chatting, presumably women stuff, profusely over her mobile phone. Visibly disturbed, she frowned at me …. and came her irritated response:

“No tests today … today is a bandh …”. Yes there was a strike call by some Autorickshaw Unions.

… and thus you are relaxing. “… but … this is healthcare …how ..”

“What do you understand about politics ? It is about rights … everything can wait.”

“But … ”

“Wake up! A revolution is unfolding!”, said she, and resumed chatting.

 

 

 

And back in Delhi, one Saturday night at the pub, a group of senior school kids were stealing the show.

“Patiala Blue Label for all my friends … “, the tall and fair leader announced.

.. the confused waiter vanished .. must be to talk to his manager …

“Why won’t she like me? My dad is a minister … I can do anything… and that 10 lakh bike is sure to steal her heart”

“But …”, his friend objected … “that’s about your father … because of that incident you had to leave the school …”

“Yes … my father will settle that too … ”

“And if they don’t agree ? You almost raped her!”

“Simple … I will shoot her … all her family!”

“Cummon …. you cannot do that”

And here came the shocker: He drew a pistol – a real one … and roared “How dare you **** … I will shoot you down and your whole clan …”

Before someone says, “Aarey! Ye tow mar gya!” – We fled!

 

 

 

Once when I visited Chennai, a guy in our group had lost a piece of luggage on the train. De-boarding at the Central station we visited the station master’s office. At the complaints desk, our guy committed the master blunder … he started in Hindi.

“No Hindi!”

“Okay … someone stole my bag …”

“… or you lost it …”

“Well, …maybe I misplaced …”

“You North Indians … don’t know what happened to your own bag ?”

“I am from Assam … and not a North Indian … ”

It was simple to spot an alien: “You speak Hindi … you North Indian” … said the dark guy, his heavily powdered face bubbling with perspiration.

 

 

 

My friend Rajat’s prospective landlord in Hyderabad is a stinking rich man – and wears a massive bunch of bright yellow chains. My friend says he stinks too! He otherwise looks similar to his own driver – only with a bigger belly and a cleaner shirt. The man stuck all the gold when Hyderabad stuck the cyber-tech buzz and expanded to engulf the neighbouring villages. He owns half of the flats in the society.

They met at the lift foyer, with the landlord’s bright young son also accompanying him.

“The cyclone Thane will cause a lot of damage to those Andhra guys”, he smiled.

Oh boy! You must have totally forgot this was Telengana!

The boy goes to an international school and his dad soon went gaga about its greatness. Without any insistence he boasted of his memory skills – and soon started listing the 51 US states. And lo! He was done in below 30 seconds.

“All my flats are perfectly Vastu compliant. It works like magic in your life”, he described his flats, all of which have two things in common – their terrible design, and a kitchen in the south east – usually the best place for a balcony.

At last, my friend got his first chance to introduce himself to the boy. When he added that he hails from Tripura, the grinning boy quipped, “Welcome to India!”

 

 

After Kashmir cooled down in recent years, Deepak’s long desire to visit materialized.

An inquisitive tourist, he talks with every man he can. Riding a Shikara on the Dal Lake, he befriended his boatman. Discussing about the spate of tourism in recent times, his boatman was quick to agree, “Indians are visiting a lot nowadays”.

 

A little rain cloud

Three years ago …

A ring on my mobile phone woke me up in my Noida apartment. It was four in the morning and I was alone. My wife had been staying in Kolkata, with my in-laws for the past two months.

…  A strange fear crossed my mind, before I answered …

It was a short call, and keeping down the phone I called a cab. By the time the cab arrived, in 15 minutes, I was ready, with my baggage of bare essentials. And I cruised to Delhi Airport in the next 30. A mild drizzle followed me …

That was my  first instance of  buying a ticket from an Airport counter … There was a long wait for the flight – actually about an hour – but it felt way too long. Two quick phone calls followed – making me more nervous as I boarded. And I switched my phone off at the command of that overly made up hostess …

… I had not bothered to choose a seat … so check-in counter allotted the worst of the lot … a middle seat just in front of the emergency exit … one with a fixed back … A very long 30 minutes later …. stooping to my front I tried looking out of the cabin window…  Little patches of clouds stretched out from beneath the aircraft … all the way to the mighty Himalayas on the  left …  It was the rainy season … but I was flying over the heavens … watching a perfect sunrise over the highest mountains on earth … live …

…. A sudden jerk brought me back to reality … from the painful, neck-stiffening doze … the flight had just landed …

I tried turning my phone on … and it was the longest  I have known for any phone to turn on … now signal was playing truant … I tried calling a few times …. in vain …   that same hostess had come down to me by then … lecturing on the how unsafe my act was. I felt like throwing that worthless phone on the her painted face.

I deboarded … and finally, on the pick up bus …. the phone crooned, receiving a message … and … I opened it …

… I felt a lump in my throat, my vision blurred  … and I realized I was crying! My fellow passengers inquired… consoled … patted …. my haggled, unbathed, unshaved, uncombed self …

“A little rain cloud has showered bloom in our lives.”

“Mehuli is born: I am a father!”

Oh Calcutta!

One of my friends once asked me, “Is it true that there is a Bandh in Calcutta if the tram fares go up by 10 paise?”
This is what remains of the character of the soul City of the Bengali people. And this is not all propaganda.

From what was once “the Second City of the British Empire”, it has descended to a overcrowded unplanned chaos, strewn with shanties and black sludge canals, hawker encroached roads and sidewalks, shabby public vehicles, bumpy roads, ill-panned shaky humps (locally called “fly-overs”), effectively, a provincial capital of insignificant political, economic and even (ever diminishing) cultural importance.

And inhabited by mostly old and middle aged Bengalis whose children work elsewhere. Thanks to a political climate which breeds everything that I mentioned, and in addition works hard to repel the honest and hard working, the enterprising and intelligent. The stinginess has got imbibed into the culture because the City has turned into a old age home. People think twice before spending their hard saved money, in a place without ventures, opportunities and hope. Almost all business houses have left the turbulence. Post Offices dealing with deposits and monthly interest based income schemes have turned the most popular means of income.

A place where people have stopped dreaming, and having ambitions, this is a common sight: young people sitting at street corners doing nothing other than eve teasing and playing cards, day long. Some of the more enterprising believe in landing a job as the most important aim of their lives. Forget about working, they enjoy the gherao and Bandh culture. Who would like to work if it were perfectly legible to earn, whatever meagre, without working. People, in a way savor a Friday Bandh, if not a Monday one. There are no shortage of issues and there are no shortage of people to enforce the calls. Newcomers desperate to impress their political bosses ambush even ambulances and fire tenders.

There is not a single hospital of repute. And those which are there are heaps of filth, layers of protocols and infested with crooks. And of course the doctors readily see patients, but in his private chamber. At the hospital, the most brilliant suggestion would be “Referred to Vellore”. Means in plain language, “please take him away, or we will not be responsible!”.

Religion flows in a controlled stream. Godmen, squint or otherwise, are a little more popular, in daily terms, than Gods. It is true that fanaticism is less apparent in Bengalis than elsewhere in India. However, the religiosity is more intense than it should have been: the pragmatic young have mostly left. Religion comes with its own bonus of ills, which thanks to the steady decline in the intellectual caliber, is catching up. People are surely learning more charming stuff.

Tagore flows. Not in their hearts, but to the gutter of experimentation and misappropriation. Tagore is a lone hope, and with little of the talented intellectual left in these gutters, Bengalis love clinging to his beard. The way to demonestrate this is by arranging shoddy and makeshift evenings of Rabindra, Nazrul, Sukanta and what-not geeti. I always thought sharing Tagore with anyone else is sheer felony. Cheapness of His people caught up with Him after all.

Educational institutions and the Education system have been destroyed, with medical precision. Syllabi of the state boards have stagnated in the ’60s while Dilli boards (by the way, even Bihar board) has moved on. I marvelled why they never taught us the vacuum diodes at IIT, which had a heavy boring chapter in the HS syllabus.

A Bengali, who prides his language, culture, and cuisine, Calcutta often visits my heart. I was not born there, neither brought up, nor lived there long enough. But I could realize the central stream of my Bengali being passing through the City. Bengalis cannot be without the City. My bias to look as the darker side of things may be due to the fact that I did not give the sloth enough time to set in. The insiders have no idea how far things have moved on, elsewhere. Wake up Calcutta! We yearn to see Bengalis known in Delhi as bhadroloks, and not maids or drivers or rickshaw pullers.

The ruling communists have always whined about bias from the Centre. And the immature opposition have always blamed the communists, turning off any lights that caught their eye. If there is a political conspiracy for the plight of this great City, it must have been framed by each of those shoddy, shortsighted, hopeless and unscrupulous representatives that the people have elected at every election, communist or otherwise.