The ironies of our judgments

Sheila Dikshit has been sworn in as Governor of Kerala today. Sheila, who waxed eloquent about how women shouldn’t venture out on the roads of Delhi alone in the evenings and then crib about lack of safety; Sheila, who is purported to have amassed quite a bit of money in the run up to the Common Wealth Games. We can forget what she is accused of because a Governor hardly matters.

A. Raja has won a ticket to contest the LS elections from Tamil Nadu as of yesterday. Raja, who spent many a month in jail over a billion dollar telecom scam; Raja, who has been a DMK loyalist and “sacrificed” his precious months of livelihood for the sake of his party. We can ignore why he spent some time in jail, because one possible MP can’t harm us much.

Amma has been nursing PM ambitions for a while now. Amma, who brought Chennai to a halt with a serious law and order issue in the 90s, when she conducted her adopted (now estranged) son’s wedding; Amma, who is defending herself in a “disproportionate assets” case in court. We might not even remember what she did because that was so long ago and she must have been young and immature then.

Rumors of what exactly happened during Operation Blue Star float abound, while the kith and kin of the person behind it play politics, talking about empowerment, power decentralization and an RSS twist to Godse.

We really don’t bother about what happened in Muzaffarnagar a few months back, because we are still debating what exactly happened in Gujarat earlier this decade.

Who are we, as a nation? What are our morals? What do we identify with? What do we relate to? 

More importantly, what do we fight against? Is it communalism or casteism or corruption? I don’t know the answers. I don’t believe we really fight any of these things.

We like our convenience. We bribe the traffic policeman since it is cheaper and faster. We get agitated over reservations because we are losing out on well-earned opportunities. We, the educated populace of this country, who believe we are secular, don’t move into residential areas that are “Muslim strongholds”, and hesitate to enroll our kids in “Christianity propagating” convent schools.

Then, why does our secularist antenna pop up when we think of Modi or the BJP? If you think about it, the debate on secularism is absurd, because of two reasons. One, most of us are hardly secular in our actions. And, two, there is no political party out there that is truly secular, for each is busy playing up one religion against another for its own political mileage.

It only boils down to what we believe as humans, not our ideologies as a nation; ideologies that have time and again been ignored, trivialized or worse still, broken. 

I assume (and hopefully rightly so) that the only thing we can agree on is that we shouldn’t harm other humans, or give power to people who run the risk of harming other humans. In fact, I still get agitated when I think of the ethnic cleansing that happened in Sri Lanka, for that is how I think of it. But, I am sure there are Lankans who have a different view, who believe their leader isn’t at fault, and who trust that it was in everyone’s best interests to end the civil war.

I don’t know whether believing that Modi wasn’t party to the riots in Gujarat is just selective amnesia, or whether it is based on the fact that there has been no conclusive evidence to convict him. It does seem to be the latter. For, whatever else we may or may not have, we do seem to have a largely impartial judiciary that has given some unassailable, albeit very delayed judgments in the past. Then, who are we to convict him? Why do we hold him to ransom on the Gujarat riots, while ignoring many other political persona that have knowingly been party to many other riots and wrong doings in this country?

Is it because he is too Hindutva, and it is not fashionable for us to be perceived as Pro-Hindutva? Is it because he doesn’t come across as a pseud, English speaking, well educated politician with fancy degrees in economics and finance? Or, is it because we really don’t believe in the power of democracy and are scared that he might replicate the Gujarat model of riots across India, and emerge to be the Hitler of the 21st century?

Whatever the case, let’s at least apply the same framework and filters while evaluating every politician, Modi or otherwise. Otherwise, it seems to me a rather unfair assessment and biased verdict.

Free spirit, literally!

(post submitted to Indispire on IndiBlogger.in under the Offbeat & Personal -> Weird category)

I died yesterday, at my desk in office. The funeral was this morning in my home town. Yeah, it beats me too. In order to shove me into an electric crematorium, which will eject an urn of ashes two hours later (it is all very procedural these days), I don’t understand why my family had to spend tons of money flying me (rather, my body) to my hometown. Sentiments, apparently.

All I can hope is that some of my Jet miles were used for the flight. Wait, is that possible? Can one’s miles be used, on oneself, after one’s death? That’s a pertinent question.

I strangely feel very non-sentimental now, the antithesis of who I was, a sentimental, young fool, in life. It is an insane feeling, being detached, not just from the body, but from feelings and sentiments. For instance, I would have broken down in tears just at the sight of my mother being unhappy, let alone shedding buckets of tears and staring into nothingness all at the same time. Now, I just think she is making a big deal about nothing. I don’t like this new me, this robotic, unfeeling me, that doesn’t take her mom seriously.

My phone is lying there, almost about to die. No one is looking at it. Come on people. Get going. Charge it. Use it. It cost me 50K in real life.

Ok, I have spent too much time seeing all these tears. It is time to travel across to office to see whether it is business as usual there. At least, no one will be crying. One good thing about death is that you are so light you can travel with the wind and that too, at the speed of the wind. Since you don’t have a body to carry around, you don’t have to wait in long security lines at the airport or board rickety old buses to get to an aircraft, or get frustrated with the flight getting delayed due to air traffic congestion. The perks are attractive, I must say.

Office is looking morose. At least my desk is. No one seems to have occupied it, perhaps for fear of falling down dead. They haven’t even moved my laptop out of there. And, I know my company very well. They would have wanted to retrieve all the data ASAP. They seem to be taking this superstition thing seriously, huh!

There are hushed conversations at the vending machine, about how a girl died at her desk due to over-work. Come on! I wish I could speak to you guys and break that myth right now. No one dies of over-work. People only get brain hemorrhages when they work too hard and then go into comas. Are you wondering how I know that? I have been speaking to a lot of people who died yesterday and are hovering around, in hopes of catching a glimpse of their alive near and dear ones. One guy was a top neuro-surgeon in life. He died in the operation theater yesterday, presumably of over-work. He told me. I won’t get into the details now; we can have such in-depth discussions when you join us.

Ok, this has got boring. My colleagues are predictable. They are now fitting frameworks and structures to analyse possible causes of deaths of women my age so that they can publish a report on it. Get a life, guys. 

Let me potter around to some of my friends’ houses. Maybe, they would have moved on. 

No. No luck there either. Too much crying, too much depression. Real life is depressing me, man.

Let me go to some of the crematoriums to join my brethren in trying to figure out what exactly I am supposed to do now. I so hate this inaction, coupled with observing incessant criers.

I hope we can head to heaven or whatever place it is, where angels will welcome us and we can float on clouds and play Scrabble and b***h about humans.

Ah! Looks like dreams don’t die when we die.