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Greater Kashmir
Srinagar | March 26, 2017, Sunday
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Menacing Saffron
Lost in terror
A well-told story needed a touch more to
make it much better
But rarely with the ferocity on display now as the edifice is sought to be brought down brick-by-brick
X-PRESSIONS
M L Kotru
[email protected]
D
on’t you say you didn’t know. Don’t
say you were unaware that the parivar is all set to deliver the coup de
grace to secular, democratic India, threatened for the most part, its relevance brought
into question by regressive right wing ultra
nationalist forces. But rarely with the ferocity on display now as the edifice is sought to
be brought down brick-by-brick.
Looks we are being pushed back into an
area of darkness; serious attempts are on
to force us into a regime so alien to what
we had come to believe in as the Indian
reality. Funnily, even those who would
want us to go back into dark ages continue
to sell us the myth called Vasudev kutambakam (universality of the human kind, my
translation) . And they aren’t at all embarrassed when they brazenly tell you that
the only way to live is the Hindu way; the
only colour existing in their book of hate
is saffron and saffronisation their very life
blood. Is this the new India Narendra Modi
promised us post his UP triumph. The antiRomeo squads have been unleashed within
three days of the saffron takeover harassing
young men, boys and girls, brothers and
sisters walking together , the young are
at once exposed to being accosted by cops,
awkward questions asked and warned not
to be seen on the street again.
The dreams of the under 35s, Modi had
eloquently spoken of are turning into nightmares threatening to empty malls, coaching centres, college cafes, theaters wher-
ever the young usually congregate. The
new dispensation seems intent on keeping people indoors, away from the winds
of change, if any. Abattoirs and slaughter
houses are ordered closed, a century old
eatery, pride of Lucknow’s culinary excellence, is driven into virtual closure, told not
to sell its prized savoury, the Tunde kebab
because it is made out of buffalo meat ( the
difference between cow and buffalo meats
thus sought to be obliterated.
Some grossly exaggerated belief in the
infallibility of the system which we inherited seven decades ago had lulled us into
not reading the writing on the wall as it
was etched into our body politic, slowly but
surely, to the delight of the crafty believers in the saffron creed; the saffron crawl
has meanwhile turned itself into a virtual
storm, taking in frightening embrace the village choupal as much as the urban centres,
leaving many amongst us wondering if this
really is what the India story was about.
Yes, the saffronites, their mother organization, the RSS and their political arm, hold
a virtual sway over this our country just
now. So it seems just now, with not a soul
around to challenge Modi who has very
rightly come to be identified with the resurgence of the right extremism in the country. Might seems to have triumphed for the
moment as the BJP has virtually painted
the Indo-Gangetic plain, Uttar Pradesh at
the heart of it, in deep ochre colours .
Uttar Pradesh has indeed been the
crowning glory of the Modi poll extravaganza as it unfolded. The Ganga-Jamni
tehzeeb now looks dead; the BJP has a
lot to gloat over, above all for the mortal
blow it has delivered to the country’s
liberal,democratic ethos. To rub salt into
the wounds, as it were, it has chosen Yogi
Adityanath of the Gorakhpur Math, as its
Chief Minister in Uttar Pradesh. The acerbic saffron Yogi is widely perceived as the
single most divisive, abusive, polarizing
figure in UP politics, someone best known
as a mascot of militant Hindu sectarianism.
Some grossly exaggerated
belief in the infallibility of the
system which we inherited
seven decades ago had
lulled us into not reading the
writing on the wall as it was
etched into our body politic,
slowly but surely, to the
delight of the crafty believers
in the saffron creed.
A surprise for many, perhaps, the new
UP Chief Minister, like his late predecessor at the rich Gorakhpur Math chief,
has thrived on being a step or two ahead
of the BJP; he saw no problem in setting
up a young private force of his own, the
militant Hindu Vahini, distinct from the
RSS. And that was in his student days. To
be fair to him Adityanath has never made
hypocritical pretense of being secular. He
has always relished his role as a show-boy
of Hindutva and his provocative comments
about Muslims relocating to Pakistan have
seldom embarrassed him or his core group.
He was indeed one of the first to have
spoken of love jihad, ghar wapsi, long before
the Sadhvis and the Sadhus picked up the
chant when Modi took over the reins in
Delhi. One doesn’t really have to read much
into Yogi Aditya picking up a Muslim for
a Cabinet berth in the State, for the same
evening a BJP worthy had said why should
Muslims expect even one seat when they
refuse to vote BJP. The same evening we
had another party leader complimenting
millions of Muslim women who had “voted”
for his party. (Shades of common law). To
each his own truth. There was clearly an
element of truth in Adityanath’s claim that
the BJP is consolidating a politics that goes
beyond caste, at least in the way it is commonly understood. But a disquieting aspect
of that form of consolidation beyond castes
Con Men and Country |
Freeze FRAME
Syeda Afshana
[email protected]
W
hat happens when a dream
foundation of any nation shakes
and the proclaimed ideals for
which it has been created shatter? Such a
moment is historically a killing instance.
A crucial debacle that ultimately gives
birth to a Banana Republic and eggs on
con men and crooks to rule the roost.
Talking of con men, one is reminded of
Charlie Chaplin, one of the greatest and
widely loved silent movie stars. From Easy
Street to Modern Times, he made many of
the amusing and most popular films of his
time. He was best known for his character, the naive and lovable—Little Tramp,
a clown. The Little Tramp, a well-meaning
man in a raggedy suit with cane, always
found himself wobbling into awkward situations and miraculously also wobbling
away.
His most audacious comedy The Great
Dictator was a striking hit. The movie
made fun of Adolf Hitler. In many ways,
Hitler, was a natural subject for Charlie
Chaplin to satirize. Hitler, it is said, adopted his moustache in imitation of Charlie
Chaplin. Both were smaller men, of slight
build. And Chaplin saw the ideas that
Hitler was championing as horrific, and
was determined to show the world what
he saw. The Great Dictator was Charlie
Chaplin’s first truly talking picture, and
when it was finally released in 1940, it was
a worldwide sensation.
Roll in: 2017. It’s not Chaplin’s Hitler.
It’s an army of con men who carry out different roles from Administrators to Politicians. All packed under one agenda. But
dressed in many outfits like clowns!
At the stroke of midnight when India,
after centuries of foreign subjugation,
started breathing in the fresh air of freedom, few would have imagined then that
this very air would turn foul. And, with
the passage of time, get contaminated
to such a degree that the bulk of people
would be inhaling poison spread by these
con men.
Sliding into an abyss, from Congress
to coalitions, Maoists to Mac Donalds,
Game-sutra to Scamsutra and Kamasutra
to Kashmir—India needs a semblance of
much-vaunted glory as well as stability.
The latest UP verdict has left the minority population high and dry while adding
dollops of wit and sly irony to the history of a nation that now resorts to jinks.
The criminal arrogance and communal
Adult-rations! |
salt n' Pepper
Ajaz A. Baba
[email protected]
S
ome days back I saw my
neighbor lugging a huge
bag of what seemed like
groceries. As he saw me he
hurriedly tried to conceal the
bag underneath his pheran but
to his utter embarrassment he
got stuck in the folds in such
a manner that he had no alternative left but to call out to me
for help. Trapped by his own
clothes the poor fellow looked
like a trussed up chicken. Normally in observance of proprieties I would have restrained
my laughter but being rather
sore at his attempts to conceal
the bag from me I laughed out
loud and clear.
“Well you will have to hand
me the ‘secret’ bag to begin with
if you want me to ‘unlock’ you,”
I couldn’t resist throwing a jibe
at him.
“Oh there is nothing secret
about it,” he said with an embarrassed giggle and handed over
the bag which I kept by the roadside as I extricated him from the
twisted folds of his pheran.
“There is nothing secret
about it,” he repeated apologetically as he picked up the bag of
groceries. It must have been one
of those days for the poor fellow
because no sooner had he lifted
the bulging bag that it burst,
spilling all the contents.
I helped to gather up the
spilled stuff. He had purchased
several packets of milk, salt,
turmeric, and other groceries.
“There certainly doesn’t seem
to be any secret about all this.
I don’t understand why you
were so keen to hide this bag,” I
chided him.
“Well actually you see…er…I
read this headline in the newspaper that all these groceries
are adult-rated,” he said with
a blush.
I just stared at him not quite
understanding why he should
try to hide the milk and all the
rest just because it was adulterated.
His blush deepened as he
tried to explain, “Adult-rated
you see like those…er… ‘adult’
will rely on even more insidious communal politics. The political challenges of the
moment are going to be immense. Narendra
Modi’s rise to power has empowered a whole
lot of distasteful characters. Now they have
got whole-scale control of the State apparatus in India’s largest and most populous
province and with very intention to reshape
it in their image.
A forcing of the hand on the Ram
Mandir issue which had seemed a little bit
distant until only the other day is squarely
staring us in the eye, thanks to the BJP’s
loose cannon Subrahmanian Swamy (with
no legal locus in the Ram Mandir case)
choosing to float a balloon in the apex
Court asking for expeditious disposal of
the long-pending issue. The Chief Justice
somehow offered his good offices to help
the parties to work for an amicable settlement of the case. Nobody in the BJP asked
the querulous MP any questions.
Instead we had all the BJP spokespersons spewing venom on the news channels repeating old arguments to shoot
down the Barbri Masjidwallahs. Babur,
they howled, had demolished the old Ram
Temple to have a mosque raised at the
spot instead. Yes, 500 years ago, one of
them screamed, followed by yet another, deeper-dyed saffronite,who spoke of
archaeological accounts establishing
the presence of the Ramlalla temple at
the mosque site. The usual safety valves
of democracy are slowly being choked
off. No idea what kind of politics such
suffocation will spawn.A tragedy, when
one would have expected India to make
a show of good,old common sense. Not a
speck of hope on the near or distant horizon. All of it and more, of the sickening
saffronisation of our land .The man who
should have been the first to be hauled
up for intemperate, bigoted campaigning in Uttar Pradesh and indeed called to
account by the Election Commission, has
instead been anointed as the boss in Uttar
Pradesh by the party in power in Delhi.
India needs a semblance of much-vaunted
glory as well as stability
The false re-structuring
of pseudo-secular is
rarely going to make the
superficial insertions
fantabulous.
appetite of those who have a ‘distinction’
of bringing a standing mosque down, lies
buried in its debris forever. And so lies
deep now the obscured prejudice.
In the backdrop of such happenings,
one can imagine the fate of ‘Democratic
Matador’ specially crafted and designed
in erstwhile Hastinapur to meet the
rough-weather in this part of world. It
is prone to suffer unnecessary wear
and tear due to its over-use. This notwithstanding the speciality, or should
we say the uniqueness of this vehicle of
having a fool-proof, coded, inbuilt, fully
computerized mechanism to diagnose
its faults and fix them on its own without ‘operator intervention’. Of course,
eventuality in case there is any, is dealt
with ‘Service-engineers’ who keep on
frequenting this place from Hastinapur
off and on. It has also special provisions
for its ‘manual operators’ even though
their function is relegated to background. They are supposed to act only to
the extent of activating the operational
mechanism of ‘Democratic vehicle’ and
that’s all.
One could compare them to legendary
Aladdin who runs the magic lantern to
activate the Jinn. The only difference
here is that it has to be a lame-duck
Aladdin lest the Jinn should be rendered
powerless which in turn goes against
the HMV-protocols of coach building in
Hastinapur. But still, the coach builders
of Hastinapur are not bereft of human
rights’. They have special packages for
these local show managers in case of
unrest or turmoil.
What a country! And what a joke of its
“democracy and secularism”! The false
re-structuring of pseudo-secular is rarely
going to make the superficial insertions
fantabulous. There is a huge disconnect
between its past glory and plagued future.
With the fissures between rich and poor,
powerful and powerless, and mainstream
and minority growing deeper, combined
with petty polity that has fractured almost
all aspects of governance, the Pandora
of sorts seems to make the course ahead
unsure and shaky.
Kashmir, against this environment,
with Hastinapur in command, is going to
be a witness to many historical upheavals. It seems just a matter of time.
It is actually as rocking as any remix…
So it is actually one of
those free schemes. You
pay for the milk and get
the detergent for free.
movies you know…”
“…and then somebody told
me that this milk is not fit for
children and that made me
curious and I took a glass of
it myself… and I must say it
worked wonders!” he concluded
with a lascivious wink.
I almost started to dispel his
‘adult-rated’ misconceptions
but then decided to let things
be. If he thought that all this
adulterated stuff was improving his domestic bliss who was
I to rock the boat. But the issue
of adulteration stuck to my
mind and later when I went to
our local market I asked the guy
who runs a general store, “The
news about detergent having
been found in this particular
milk brand is surely going to
dent the sales.”
“No! Not at all!” he said.
“In fact my customers have
been taking double their usual
requirement. You know what?
They are using the brand for
drinking, for making tea and
then for washing up afterwards
as well!”
“Well I always thought that
this particular company was
pretty honest and all that. Good
and honest, washed in milk so
as to say,” I used an urdu colloquialism.
“You know what you may be
not quite off the mark,” the General store guy slapped my thigh.
“These khojas might be using
their milk product in their bathtubs. They sure can afford it.”
“Yeah indeed why not and
all the while they have literally been giving us Kashmiris
a stomach wash, their big words
about purity and honesty notwithstanding,” an old man
standing nearby responded
with a Kashmiri colloquialism.
“Well what is dishonest
about it!” the store wallah said
defensively. “If they have been
saying that their milk is pure
and clean it must be considering
that it contains detergent and
that too at no extra cost!”
“Oh! So it is actually one of
those free schemes. You pay for
the milk and get the detergent
for free. And you can be sure
that only the purest and the best
quality detergent is used considering the reputation of the company,” the old man responded
with sarcasm which was how-
ever wholly lost on the store guy
who went on with enthusiasm,
“Why the brand may be on
its way to becoming a national
brand! I have been getting queries from outside. You know
statues of deities are usually
bathed with milk and they all
want this brand now!”
“What about this grit in the
salt? Surely you don’t have a
reason for that as well!” I put in.
“I don’t understand what all
the fuss is about. Grit is added
to salt to make it a low-salt salt.
For every spoonful of salt you
think you have taken you will
be actually taking only half
of it the rest being grit and all
that. In fact all adults need to
be careful of their salt intake
because high blood pressure is
so common nowadays.”
The old chap nodded emphatically. “And perhaps that’s why
it is called adult-eration because
the whole process seems to be
about making foodstuffs fit for
consumption of adults!”
(Truth is mostly unpalatable…but truth
cannot be ignored! Here we serve the
truth, seasoned with salt and pepper and
a dash of sauce (iness!). You can record
your burps, belches and indigestion, if
any, at [email protected])
Write Hand
Ajaz-Ul-Haque
'
Do your story before it’s done to you’. Nayeema Mehjoor
has chosen the first lest the second happen. That is what
defines the faith of a storyteller and the novel Lost to terror
is a bid at that.
For a Kashmiri reader her fiction doesn’t read like a fiction. It plays a sequence of events happening just in your
backyard. With a familiar setting, familiar characters, familiar ambience, you are reading yourself, feeling yourself as
you turn the book leaf by leaf.
The novel is a throwback to nineties. It unfolds with
the attack on a police officer’s house followed by search
operations, cordons, killings and a pathetic helplessness of
people. Amid this an ambitious, career conscious woman
salvages her identity from the fire of violence around her.
It nicely portrays a picture of
It tells more,
Kashmir polity, society, culture
with a subtle description of our
shows less
families and relationships thereof.
and I wish it
Though the thrust is feministic (or
be the reverse if terminology triggers a different
debate at least woman-centric),
but the broader canvass of the novel is flexible enough to be
interpreted as gender-neutral.
Nayeema’s transition from broadcasting to book-writing is
smooth (though it needs to be a little smoother). As a humble
reader, I liked and not so liked the narrative for exactly the
same reason. The language device. The book is clear on clarity. It’s a see-through prose where the story travels direct
and straight and a reader – like a butterfly – flits from perch
to perch or shifts from scene to scene seamlessly. A lucid language carries the writer equally lucidly to the reader and that
mission stands accomplished. But ironically that is the point
where the novel slips. It tells more, shows less and I wish it
be the reverse. While getting us past through the scenes, the
author misses the nakedness of emotions and the rawness
of detail. Here the language leans more towards journalism
than literature. Well, the trade-off between literary flourish
and journalistic ease must have been a difficult choice to
make for someone who enters the two territories at once.
Here Nayeema has been a tad complacent. Frequent use of
(what one of the living American writers Martin Amis calls)
`herd words’ and commonplace expressions – though make
some descriptions clearer but duller. The author needed an
extra punch to be more intimate with her readers. Characters
lack blood. Asad, Baba, Sadia, Fareeda, Munna, Momin Khan,
Mehmooda though fit perfectly in the narrative, but need more
energy, more power to be portrayed in a fiercer way than they
have been. That energy would come when you exhaust the
treasures language offers you. With such apt theme, a coherent narration and a neatly outlined plot, the novel needed a bit
more. Suppleness, colour and flavour. One word. SEDUCTION.
Of Lactometer Fright
For ensuring supply of quality milk in the city the
fear of lactometer did work
Nostalgia
ZGM
T
he memories of the past work as a potion to reboot
even the fatigued minds. I relish them and love to share
them with others. Sitting at my desk, I reminisced
the days when I was hardly eight, chasing the swallows in
wee morning hours on the almost traffic-less road, our own
“Expressway” from Nowhatta crossing to Khawaja Bazar
roundabout- even beyond, was my best past time. Those
days, at the cocks crow the drains were cleared and roads and
lanes were broomed and watered. Men with brooms ensured
spotless cleaning of roads and lanes and clearing of open
drains lest they were caught on a wrong foot by the Jamadara small-time official and reported to the ward officer. For
them, perhaps it was their belief that the ward officer was
the ultimate authority who could remove them from their
job. Moreover, if the Jamadar uttered word ‘health officer’,
it would bring raindrops of sweat on their foreheads- with
folded they stood before him as before a goddess. Interestingly, for children ‘health officer’ passed as a mythical being
connected with cleanliness- and word had entered into our
lingua franca as a synonym for hygiene. In school, teachers
often reprimanded boys in dirty and shabby uniforms by
saying, ‘If health officer spots you in shabby uniforms he will
put you into the Jhelum- come clean next days otherwise I
will hand over you to Jamadar.’ I remember, my friends and
I also teased a shabbily dressed mendicant by telling him
that we will call health officer, he will set your dirty clothes
on fire- till we were told he was a Majazoob to be respected.
I do not know if it was for fear of authority or commitment to the job, the roads were so thoroughly swept as if
vacuum cleaned- not a pebble was left. I remember, seeing
devout Muslims and Kashmiri Pandits in the wee morning
hours walking barefoot on these roads on their way to the
Astana of Hazrat-i-Sultan, Sheikh Hamza Makdoomi and
temple of Sharika Devi. For my pals and me besides racing
with the swallows the best past time was running barefoot
after the water trucks splashing water on the roads in our
locality. Some more adventurous boys, to the annoyance of
the driver and assistant of the water splashing truck clung
to the huge water-sprinkling pipe at the back of the truck for
enjoying splashes of water during summers. In evenings,
we played hide and seek barefoot on the roads but our feet
were never hurt.
One of the errand jobs that my mother assigned was fetching milk from one of the milk shops in our mohalla. Those
days a seer of milk cost six to eight annas. Sometimes, the
ghost of the health officer also loomed large at the milk shop.
The milkman, Samad Gour, had his contact in the municipality- a minion living in the neighborhood. I remember, one
day when I was standing in front of his shop for buying milk,
the neighbor whispered in his ear that the health officer was
coming into the area with sheesha (lactometer) for checking
the purity of milk. Suddenly, there was sort of commotion at
the shop as if an earthquake had hit the milkman’s shop. In a
fit of anxiety, he called his wife and brother. In a maddening
speed they picked up the huge copper cauldrons containing
milk and huge ‘Dull’ge’, massive earthen pots, filled to brim
with curd to the backroom of their two-story house daubed
with white clay.
For ensuring supply of quality milk in the city during
those days of innocence the fright of lactometer did work.
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