Dog. Much insult.

First of all, I shall list out three reasons why I am making this blog post, and that on a redundant topic like dogs, when of course, blogs everywhere in and around the solar system are currently raving about Interstellar. Here are those three golden points:

1) I haven't made an update in quite a while. My last post was when Cooper lifted off from earth and he is now playing with his children inside that weird capsule.

2) I need to write something bullshit, or rather, dog shit. My last few posts have had too much angst and politics.

3) I asked advice from a close friend of mine to write about buffaloes. She gave me ideas, took them back, and asked me to write about dogs, while she writes about buffaloes. So, I'm letting loose these pack of dogs on her. Don't worry. They are nice dogs. They are harmless.

Sorry, I digressed. We were talking about? Yes, dogs. The creatures to whom we extend our innate racism towards (more people have a white Labrador as a pet than a black one). The creatures towards which some of the fractions of human beings in our society enjoy throwing rocks towards, which, apparently, is a display of machismo (how?). The creatures who smell cars, tyres and lamp posts before relieving themselves . This in turn prompted Renault to spend millions and proclaim on television, "No. Dogs pee on Maruti Suzuki's cars. Not on our cars". Which is in fact fair. Maruti's cars should be peed upon. Yes, the owners of Maruti cars, I mean the insult.

I digressed again. So in our subcontinent, and apparently in the Arab world as well, 'dog' is an insult. An unbearable insult.

To look at our country, why would you look beyond Veeru and his expletive-laden rant after Gabbar's henchmen put a few bullets through Jai? Inexplicably, that rant contained 'kutte', which is also part of any Bombay or Delhi tongue before bullets are exchanged. Here's my question: why would you feel insulted at that? If I was Gabbar, I would be all "Aww, such a cutie pie of a master. Now get rid of that tangewaali whom you screw in film and in real life and get me some Pedigree, will you? I promise I won't take a dump on your shoe. ^_^ ".

So much for our land. Now let's board a flight full of Malayalis to the Gulf. Incidentally, the stock cuss word for Malayalis is 'patti'. It means, yes you guessed correct, dog.

Let's accept it, we didn't know much about the Arab world before one Osama bin Laden made some videos which more or less resembled the grainy porn that was smuggled into India by Dawood and company (I HAVE NEVER WATCHED THEM). One curious observation that I made (I'm famous for recording curious observations) was that in one of those videos, Osama used the word 'dog' at least a dozen times, the length of the video being no more than a couple of minutes. He described Indians as dogs, Americans as dogs, Christians as dogs, secular Muslims as dogs, and last but not the least, Jews as infidels and dogs (Jews always have the best Arabic reserved for themselves). I shall also not be seen as anti-Semitic.

Oh Osama (classify this as rhetoric since you have been shot in the head and buried at sea), have you seen a pure breed Labrador? Or a Golden Retriever? A Dalmatian? At the very least a Beagle? Or spare a thought for the Bassett Hound?
Yes, if your Arab brethren need to insult humans by equating them with dogs, maybe you will like to record these henceforth:
-"Indians, you idol-worshipping cocker spaniels!"
Or, "Americans, you war-mongering Alsatians!"
Maybe, "Secular Muslims, you traitors, you pieces of Dachshund shit!"
And if you are hell bent on Jews, how about, "Jews, you land and money grabbing infidel loud descendants of the Spitz!"

Now here's a strange situation. Normally, the end of my articles would leave the same effect as landing a black eye. But dogs are too cute to write hard-hitting conclusions about. So, here. Till then, good luck cuddling him.

The filtered recollections

Quite some years back, my English tutor uttered a golden sentence, "You think what you choose to think". I think he said that while explaining the class the disappointment of the father in a Joyce Cary short story named Growing Up.

I'll be honest. I had to do a Google search to get the name of that Joyce Cary short story. I could not believe that I was actually doing that. Just then I realised that I read that story almost ages back. In 2011. Back in school...

Ah, school. These days in college, whenever I eke out some bit of time to sit with my friends, all the conversation turns to those 'golden' and 'silver' and 'whatever metal' days in school. The tiny bits of mischief, all the sports days and cultural fests- these things tend to bombard conversations. I asked one my friends one day, "Don't you ever feel tired of talking about some goddamned school days?"

Pat (and angrily) came the reply, "Oh come on. If you tell me school tales are boring, I'll rap you on your face".

Of course, no one wants to be 'rapped' on the face. And I walked away from that conversation. But then again, the fault, dear Brutus, lies in our own selves, not other men or stars.

I sat down and wondered, well how was my life in school? 

"Life in school, sure", Memory sniggered, "Ever wondered why I never bring to you your schooldays? I've buried them for good measure", said Memory to me in the manner of a doctor. An epiphany occurred to me. Of course, I never chose to think of my schooldays. Because no, it wasn't plated with any precious metal. Those days were dark. As hell.

I despise complaining with whatever evil Providence had showered upon me. I didn't mind the TB, the dengue, the numerous hospital visits, the end of my singing career, the end of my ambition to join the army, or the insults I received from my extended family. Yet I just could not help being tinged green with jealousy whenever I saw kids of the same age as mine talking excitedly among themselves, as if everyday for them were a bed of roses. I would feel like punching a lot of faces when I heard all the plans being made for some new film or for the days during Pujo, sans me.

Of course, you need friends if 'plans' need to be made with you in confidence. I didn't have any. I'm not wallowing in self pity. I just did not have any. I even know the reason why. "Who the hell would wanna go out with you Shila? You know how boring you are?", said one of my classmates, a female one that was. I guessed right. 

Suddenly Memory cropped up at the back of my head and bellowed, "Nice ploy huh, Boring Guy? Dug up a lot of my hard work just because you wanted to write some stupid recollections of yours- don't make me work so much ever again. The digging and those days pain me", and he turned around and went to sleep.

You know, those days absolutely killed me from the inside... And Memory turned back towards me and looked at me with his most angry face, "Filter. Your. Memories. It pains me otherwise".

I think I felt a stray tear rolling down his cheek.

When the thunder struck...

...he woke up with a start. "I shouldn't have been sleeping in the first place", he thought. He looked at his watch. 1:30 p.m. Sunday.
He looked at the window behind the bed. It was menacingly cloudy and raining and thundering as if there is no tomorrow. It was the early August day that Calcutta is all too used to. He could smell that delicious khichuri being prepared in the neighbour's house, with an amount of butter that makes hearts stop. There, came that aroma of the hilsa being deep fried to be eaten with the khichuri, and that with extreme dexterity to avoid the fish bones. Mom knew how I liked it, he thought. And sighed. Somehow, he was surprised when he did not tear up at the thought of his parents. "An year is a long time, maybe", he said to himself, with a sad smile.
He could barely get up. Not getting to eat for a couple of days has its effects. Summoning all his strength, he let go of that thin sheet he had around him. He staggered to the refrigerator in the hall. Empty. All the shelves. Empty.
He could only look around. There lay that creaking table. And that cane chair. Where he would sit hours and hours and crumple up sheets of paper with his words he deemed inferior to his own standards. The books of those Russian authors that his father had parroted to him to gobble up- Dostoevsky and Gorky, Solzhenitsyn and Chekov- lay scattered all around. His umbrella, his only inheritance from his father, lay on the floor. That ashtray lay stuffed with the cigarette buts, tens and more of them. He remembers extinguishing each and every one of those dying embers. Only if those embers could strike a spark in his brain.

His wandering eyes over the table noticed the wallet. He grabbed it like a famine victim makes a dash for anything edible. The folds opened, and alas.

He made a search for all the compartments in the wallet. Albeit hopelessly. A visiting card came out of one of them. 'N.C. Kumar, Literary Agent'. He remembers meeting that man when chatting with a friend of his at a book shop. "Write something inspirational", he said that day, "tell me a story, and I'll see the rest".

He looked at that card, and then at the wallet. Instinctively, he tore up that card into a hundred little pieces, and stuffed it into that ash-tray, an addition to the thirty odd disappointments over the past two days.
Supporting himself on the door, he slumped to the floor. He cupped his face in his bruised and hardened hands. And all the memories came running back.

Two 'States'

For all our right-wing political bigwigs, our country effectively has two religions- cricket, and cinema. So, suddenly an idea crept into my idle brain- why not use these two to compare the two different countries in the same piece of land? Here goes my perspective of 'Bharat', and 'India'..

Scene 1: Shot 1: Vast, mammoth tracts of farmlands, only that they have neither crops nor water nor fertilizers, and the farmers have consumed the pesticides, to escape the wrath of the banks and moneylenders, once and for all. A complete absence of men from villages. All are off to cities, and its slums, to keep body and soul together.. Shot 2: Urban slums. A multitude of all squalor on earth. Spots which breed crime and drugs and guns. Where 100 share one toilet, and the sewage serves all domestic chores, including drinking water. And these are places where a million people stay wedged within one square mile. And one day the Municipal Corporation honchos arrive with bulldozers and a battery of armed policemen. The rest, as they say, is complete annihilation..

OK CUT!!..

..to Scene 2: Shot 1: Gucci. Dolce & Gabbana. Rolex. Breathtakingly lit skyscrapers and shopping malls. Castles in the sky indeed, quite literally. Luxury cars and bikes speeding down smooth and outrageously tolled expressways at breakneck speeds. The discos at Bandra in Mumbai and Park Street in Calcutta teeming with youngsters.. Shot 2: A small box is kept at the counter of the disco. A donation box. It says: "Donate for the poor children in the slums and villages". A young couple, about to enter the disco, look at the box. The strings of their heart are pulled, which are connected to their wallets, which brings out a ten-rupee note from each of them. They push it into the box, and hurry off into the neon lights and loud music of the disco..

CUT! To Scene 3: Shot 1: MS Dhoni smashes Nuwan Kulasekara into the stands of the Wankhede on the 2nd of April 2011. The crowd inside the Wankhede, all in India of course, dances up and down in joy. Cars have flocked to the Marine Drive to celebrate the success of Team 'India', honking, hollering.. Scene 2: Far away, in distant Bharat, where some 50 people have gathered in front of one television set, also are elated. They bounce in joy, smear colour on each other, shout and laugh out loud. Because 'India' won the World Cup...

Maybe these shall be the only moments in the continuous flow of time where the two 'states', under the same laws and in the same piece of land, yet with a gaping gulf in between them, shall be united. When they shall together share their joys and sorrows and jubilation. And it shall not be a Bharat versus India..

I don't know whether to call it a parting 'shot', but here goes...

MS Dhoni's shirt also screamed 'India'...

"I protested, you know!"

Protesting. Vociferously shooting off slogans. Lighting a candle. A black piece of cloth over your mouth. Carrying posters saying "Stop Rape!", "Save Women!", "Hang rapists!". Hurling a few bricks at the police and their vehicles. Strong words and loud voices in bites to the electronic media personnel.

Starting late December 2012, the above have been added to the list of the 'cool' things to do, especially by the youth. The things you can 'brag' to your friends after doing them. Known by skeptics as 'tokenism'. "You know, I went to so and so square, lit a candle before a framed white sheet of paper saying 'Nirbhaya', and I even cried!".. The other friends wonder, "Oh how amazing! What a soul!". 

Below are my questions to these 'cool' people. And trust me, the answers that I have mentioned- you will receive them nine out of ten times..

So you went to the protest march. Do you vote every five years?

-No.

Why not?

-Too tired to stand in queues.

Then what do you do with that blooming document named the Voter Identity Card?

-You know, it's easier to procure SIM cards for your phone with one of them.

And what do you do on the voting day?

-I hang out with my friends at the nearest shopping mall! It's a holiday, man!

Did you party on the New Year's Eve? 

-You think I wouldn't? All for a girl who died? Oh come on, I felt sad. But I lit the customary candle. I have shed the compulsory tear. My conscience is clean! What if I don't vote?

I protested, you know!

I believe..

"Men are masters of their own fates. Their faults
Does not lie in their stars..."- Cassius in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar.

WE have brought this upon ourselves. Now that the world looks down upon us, a country which boasts of its superpower status and then cannot even ensure the safety of its women. WE have brought this upon ourselves, that we have elected to power some jokers of politicians, a vast majority of them being convicts, and we shall have to depend on them and their empty promises that rape shall be punishable by death, no less. It will be, for quite a few lawmakers, an endorsement of their own death warrant, isn't it? It is WE who are responsible for the girl's death, because the girl and her friend, after being thrown off the bus, were lying on the road for close to an hour, but none came forward to help. Maybe all backed off fearing 'harassment by the police', because all seem to have retired in their own little and sweet worlds. And ultimately, it is WE who are responsible for crimes against women reaching what our Prime Minister says, "is at an epidemic stage". Because we have been keeping quiet, trivializing, and sweeping these offences under the carpet for too long. Why? Is it indecent? A social taboo to discuss so? Who knows?

But as my blog title says, I am an optimist. I like to hope, I like to believe, that all will take a turn for the better. So I believe that one day, that men and women can travel in the same mode of public transport and in the same compartment and seats, without any uneasiness. I believe that one day the Indian society shall eliminate the 'second-class citizens' tag from women, and they can enter Parliament having fought a battle on their own, and not via backdoors of reservations and political families. I believe that men shall, one day, start  viewing women as human beings, not commodities. I believe that contrary to popular belief that India is rotten and down the gutter, someone will, as the Colonial Cousins say, "Come back as Jesus/...Come back as Rama/...Come back as Allah/Come back as anyone" and save the world. I also believe, that 'anyone' is no heavenly creature, but someone amongst us. And I STILL believe, we can change and shape our future, our governance, our society, and our outlook. Not through the suggestions of some know-it-all people who scream "military rule!", but through the moment when you press a certain button on an electronic voting machine every five years.

I believe...

Cities do breathe with life as well!

The other day, I was flipping through the November issue of the newly-launched Nat-Geo Traveller India. An extremely unique story, an article about the amount of life and soul that exist in cities- notwithstanding all the 'squalor' and 'corruption' people complain of- really caught my fancy. I wondered, indeed so. I was born and have lived in a city all my life, but I never came to realize this. Maybe because a city- especially an Indian one- doesn't have all the Switzerland-esque qualities that makes all the world's tourists and film crews rush to those spots. But these 'spots of life and soul' in cities not-so-beautiful do exist- in pockets that is. It may be a lake, an open parkland, a promenade, a coffee shop- but you always end up finding one of such spots, no matter wherever you are.

In the aforementioned issue, there was a mention of Bhopal's Iqbal Maidan, named after the Urdu poet Allama Iqbal. A small square in one of the more congested areas of Bhopal. The level of activity out there really caught my fancy. Chessboards are kept spread out- anyone interested may sit down for a game with a local resident, discuss about the game and other worldly affairs, enjoy a cup of tea provided by your host, meet people, talk, discuss, interact, laugh- all of which reminded me of a Bengali phrase, 'manusher milonmela' (a congregation of humanity), no less. Plus the lanes around the square with a perennial aroma of betel leaves and Biriyani- irresistible!

All of which takes me back to my hometown- Calcutta. A city where the British colonial culture rings aloud to this day, perhaps more than anywhere else in India. Where the bourgeoisie still prefer to call taxis as 'cabs', keeping with British traditions. A walk down the Park Street is a perfect testimony to the fact. It still is one of my favourite haunts in the whole of Calcutta. Not that the colonial air attracted me, but the food did, considering the glutton I am. Walking down the left side of the street, at first you shall encounter the modest looking facade of the Park Hotel, the ground floor of which hosts a phenomenal amount of activity. The Trincas, almost a century old restaurant, with its pool tables, where, never mind the cops sniffing around, matches at high stakes are played out almost everyday, and the jazz and blues played live surely shall take one back to the 60s and 70s, where you can almost imagine a young Anjan Dutt or a fledgling Usha Uthup enthralling audiences. Then there exists the iconic Indian Coffee House at College Street- albeit notorious for an underbelly of Left-wing extremism since the 1960s- where people would sit around square-shaped tables and discuss and argue for hours, with a cup of tea or coffee for company. Never mind the topics of discussion, though. They may range anything from Sachin Tendulkar's footwork to a recent political hot potato. But be rest assured of one thing- all arguments will end on an amicable note.

When we the city dwellers learn to discover this sweet focus of energy, the warmth, and ultimately, a sweet fragrance amongst all the squalor, we shall feel connected to this huge urban organism, and shall instinctively understand the giddy and amazing joyfulness of being in a city..