When democracy laughs at you!

Dear people of India, I'm sorry, but you are all fools. Yes, you! You, you and you! Every single one of you. Of course, those who supported the congress against Hindutva. Oh yes bakth, even you! You who thought BJP and their coterie will save you.

Do you know what does democracy do to you? Laugh! That is what you are; Jokers! Who are to be laughed at.

Fools or Jokers? Well, does it make a difference? Maybe fools and jokers. Do you remember that man in the circus of yesteryears? Who made foolish things to be laughed at? You remember him, don't you? With green hair, rainbow-coloured baggy pants, a pink nose, and an irritating walk. That man is you! In the circus of democracy, the clown is who you are.

So BJP joins hands with the Naturally Corrupt Party (NCP). No, I did not name it! Modiji did. You jokers, who thought BJP will wipe away corruption from the face of the earth, take that! Modiji will join hands with who according to him is the most corrupt person and wipe away corruption! Well, Modiji is mocking at you! He laughs, and he laughs till his guts hurt. oh, the funny joker! Woe unto you.

Well, others who supported congress, coz, the congress is against Hindutva and the politics of hatred, did you forget that the Shivsena was almost the epitome of the politics which you repudiate? But going along with Shivsena is okay, ain't it? Ah, did you see the glint in the eyes of Uddhav Thackeray? That was him laughing at you, poor you!

Even as I write the laughing continues and it will continue since you and I don't have a choice but to dance; dance to the tune of democracy. A democracy which will forever laugh at your dance! 

Of hatred and grace!

The friend called frantically. Treeng treeng, rang our house landline phone. The year was 2001. I had just entered my teens. "Switch on the TV! Switch on your TV and see what is happening", he sounded panicky. I switched on the videocon television set of the yesteryears, the ones with a big back. I just froze at what I was seeing with my eyes!

Two huge buildings had just come crashing down. Few rabid terrorists had just rammed their flights into the twin towers. Shortly after that news came that another building is also hit and then the pentagon itself got hit. Life as I knew it was never the same again, for I realized that day what hatred was.

I clearly remember lying down in my bed that night not able to sleep. Questions jammed my young mind. Many of which I could not fathom. The next day in school, everybody had their own version of answers! A new generation was trying to comprehend hatred that day.

Then 2008 happened! Most of us had just finished college. A few had managed a job! 24*7 live televisions with hollow news channels and petty debate shows were becoming the fad! November 26th, 2008 was when our generation saw hatred first hand! For four days I stayed glued to the TV, thinking whatever has happened to mankind. "How did hatred percolate so much into the human veins", now a little more mature young adult brain of mine was trying to comprehend.

For a person and to a large extent a generation that had only thought about hatred as exported from outside, the last few years of social media has shown that actually hatred is deep within every human's heart. We innately hate! We hate each other on the basis of religion, caste, political affiliation and everything else. We hate, coz we can hate!

The epitome of hatred in the last three decades of this country was when we let hooligans raze down a building in the name of religion! For all the complications Ayodhya's history is, hatred is its fulcrum. Hatred towards people of another religion.

Can man ever overcome hatred? Will the experiment of having an Indian state with many different nations put together as one ever be bereft of hatred? Can mankind ever live without hating another man for living a life different from his own? The questions that thronged the teenage mind of 2001 and the young adult mind in 2008 still beg for answers!

Today could well be the day where we can overcome hate! By showing grace. GRACE?

Grace is showing love to the underserved. Intentionally showing kindness to those who have hated us. Going out of the way to understand those who have rebuked us and ours. Grace put simply is 'loving the undeserved'! For none of us deserve love, with our hate-filled hearts.

Grace could well be the answer! As the world expects the Ayodhya verdict with bated breath, Can we show some grace to the world that hates? For grace and only grace can overcome hatred! 

The Scam the governments are!

So Indian government is planning a new parliament and a central secretariat building! "The new building will symbolize new India's aspirations", quipped Biman Patel, whose architectural firm has been given the job of designing the new buildings. Do you know that they designed the Sabarmati river front, the BJP head quarters as well? No! No! I'm not smelling anything here. Just putting out facts! Yet that is for another day.

So the total cost for the design stage is a measly 229.75 crores! A humongous 3% of the overall budget allocated for the project. Are you bad at math? I will do the calculation for you. Just 7500 crores approximately is the total money going to be spent on the new buildings. So the parliamentarians could sit nicely and debate. Of course they walk out often coz there is not much space there to sit now.

Just to put things in perspective, the central government spends around 7400 crores on policing Delhi every year. Do you know the new health insurance scheme of the prime minister? It includes 100 million families! The scheme is allotted 6400 crores last year. Just in case you did not know, the Indian government gave Rs.400 crores to build 'world class institutions' this year.

So how does it matter? For you and for me?

I was not working for a year and so did not pay any tax. So do I have the right to complain? Well, let me just put out facts for the learned working middle class who end up reading me rather than complain.

Most of you paid 20% of your salary to the government of India! So basically, 20% of your time spent in your offices is for the GOI. So you actually worked the entire months of January, February and a few days of March without getting any payment for that.

Well, all of you who worked hard for nearly two and half months without getting a pay for, you would have been called slaves in the yesteryear. We are called tax payers in the modern world. And what did you slave this year for? For the parliamentarians to sit in aspirational new India's  modern building and debate! I promise they won't walk out anymore. They will have enough place to stay back after all! 

Farewell Sussex! You were so kind

Life, I know, is never meant to be easy! They say the ship is safe at  harbour but that is not what the ships are made for; they had to go to  sea and man(or woman) the weather! But the ships do like it when after a long journey, it is washed and painted at the workshop, before embarking on the next journey.

Two years ago, I was quietly flipping through twitter when QS world ranking for institutes doing Development Studies popped up. Institute of Development Studies(IDS), University of Sussex, the best in the world was shown above Harvard, Oxford and Cambridge. Curiosity became the lust of the heart. "What about studying in the best Institute in the World?", said the heart! Oh, you won't be able to make it said the mind. The practical mind! Life went on! The thought never did.

Suddenly one fine day I found myself walking in the green, serene campus of the University of Sussex! I was lost. I looked lost too I presume, for one stranger walking past me, stopped to check on me. "You look lost son,  can I help you", she asked! From that day, Sussex has been so kind. So very kind!

Growing up in a dusty small town in a remote South Indian town can never be the best exposure to the world out there! But dreams are sometimes funny; I dreamt and Sussex was where my dreams took me to.

Sussex was in fact made of dreams. I dreamt of sitting in an intellectually stimulating discussion with people from many different countries, and that is what my institute was all about. I dreamt of reading economics and development and here I was debating the theories of development economics. I dreamed off policy research, and policy research is what I did most of the year. Of course I had a dream to go to the Lords, watch a match in the hallowed lawns of Wimbledon, peep into the majestic Old Trafford stadium, play cricket in the villages of the English country side, and ended up doing all of them! England gave me everything I had asked for! In fact everything I had dreamt of. And it was kind! For everytime one dream came crashing down, it healed me with something different, if not better.

Then there were the people! The beautiful people from across the world. The people Sussex threw at me. So many of them from so many different countries. From Syrians to Pakistanis. From Canadians to NewZealanders. And ofcourse countrymen from different parts of India.  Sussex and the dreams would have never been the same without them. They were the family away from family! They were the rock on which I built the dream. They accepted me as I am! The careless, uncombed, bearded, dirty, loud mouthed individual; And better still, they shared similar dreams. When dreamy eyed people gather together, It is fun! Believe me.

So, sadly today I woke up to reality! The dream is coming to an end. The ship is washed and painted. It is ready to go. The huge waves of life are ready to swallow them. As I waved and hugged the final good byes, I realized most of us may never even meet again! Yet we braved ourselves for the final farewell, for dreamers don't exist until they go out to make the dreams come true.

Farewell Sussex! Farewell IDS! Life as I know in reality is much harder. But you taught me that dreams do come true. Until life's dreams bring us together again! God speed.

The toxicity of our political discourse

Two incidents that happened in the last week clearly showed what is wrong with my country! One which happened in Tamil Nadu. One in the place I live now, in Brighton, UK.

Last week a group of civil service aspirants from the Central University of Tamil Nadu (CUTN), Thiruvarur had planned a discussion on the Kashmir issue, the abrogation of article 370 and 35A. The Vice-chancellor of the university sent out individual memoranda to the 30 odd students who allegedly participated in the discussion. Well, the memoranda said, 'anybody or group of persons who indulge in activities which is a threat to the security and integrity of India will not be tolerated' and such activity will lead to dismissal from the university followed by criminal action under IPC'.

Yesterday I got an email from a friend from university. She is organising a discussion on the Kashmir issue. The University has been kind enough in arranging two eminent speakers on this, one from India and one from Pakistan. Both social scientists, who have studied policy processes and political participation all their lives.

I'm sure the discussion will be thought-provoking. I'm sure it will be analysed from every angle possible. There will surely be questions and debates coming from both sides of the spectrum. Of course, there will be a historical narrative being presented. At the end of it all, we will come back as better people, with a better understanding of the situation, the processes and the politics of it all.

So, you may say, that this is being done since the country has no stake in it. But even Brexit was analysed threadbare in events like these.

Politics and policies should be discussed in academia. Well informed scholars who have the studied the subject should lead debates at the university campuses. If academia does not contribute, then WhatsApp universities, paid & biased journalists, riled-up politicians will fill-up the vacuum. That, unfortunately, is the tragedy of our times.

Toxic political discourse is the bane of this generation, and excluding academia from politics might well be the reason for it. 

Independence from hatred!

On the 14th of August 1947, Mahatma Gandhi was in Calcutta, where he and one of his bitterest critics, Muslim league leader Huseyn Suhrawardy, were together trying to ensure that the communal riots of 1946 would not be repeated again. 

"At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom. A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance", as the first prime minister was uttering these immortal words, a journalist thrust his mike on Gandhi. 

Do you miss being in Delhi now? he asked the great man. The man had just won over the greatest power planet earth had seen till now, without taking a gun. 

"Others may sing of the wine and the wealth and the mirth,

The Portly presence and potentates goodly in girth;

Mine be the dirt and the dross, the dust and scum of the earth! 

Theirs be the music, the colour, the glory, the gold;

Mine be a handful of ashes, a mouthful of mould.

Of the maimed, of the halt and the blind in the rain and the cold - 

Of these shall my songs be fashioned, my tales be told.

Gandhi quoted John Masefield's 'Consecration'! 

When yet again India wakes up to another day to remember the day of independence, I remember the words of the great man again and fashion my song on his. 

My song will be on Kashmir and its people, for their true freedom; The innumerable Dalits and the tribals and the battle for their rights; the minorities and their peace; 

For my country is maimed and halt and blind, in the rain and the cold of hatred; 

The post truth era!

"I went to the tuition ma", I said. அங்க என்ன மா சொல்லி குடுத்தாங்க? (What did they teach you?). My mother asked nonchalantly. 'Chemistry' I replied, not suspecting that they have caught me playing the fool. The unflustered dad sat there quietly listening to our conversation. இங்க வா (Come here), he said. He made me sit on his lap. And in his own inimitable way said, "இனி விளையாட போனா சொல்லிட்டு போடா" (If you are going to play, inform us and go).

I clearly remember having tears flowing through! I had been caught red-handed. I had told them that I'm going to tuition and went to play. I had lied.

I was, and in many ways still am, an impulsive liar. I exaggerate ordinary things. I'm a writer after all. But that lesson which my dad taught me that night never really went away from me. He said, "it is important to stand by the truth, come what may"! Falsehood is for the fainthearted. You are brave, face up to the truth. They still ring loud and clear in my ears.

In the year 2016, the word 'Post-truth' was described by oxford dictionary as the word of the year. I started imagining how would my dad have lived in the era of 'post-truth'? Where objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief. I mean, a man won an entire election based on a Model of development which did not exist. But no, it does not matter! People believe it is true. It is okay if it is not true. People's beliefs matter more than objective reality.

Does truth matter to me as much as it mattered to my dad? I seriously doubt it! If so, then why do I even forward WhatsApp messages without verifying its veracity? Most of the WhatsApp message I forward might not be true. But I don't care. I like the story. Most of the NEWS I consume is not true. Yet I read them and believe it to be true. Do I like the story, then it must be true. I don't like it, it cannot be true, has always been my definition of truth in the post-truth era.

In a relative world, will absolute truth survive? When every Tom, Dick and Harry have their own version of the truth, will opinions and ideas become part of our living reality called truth?

What will I teach my children? that it is important to speak the truth or to speak what he wants to be true?