On Being Fine

There's a particular manner in which inconspicuous and enigmatic old men smoke cigarettes. Dry lips and wet palates, it's nostalgic to a point where you feel like they aren't smoking in the present, but smoking by association, in an older glory. They should ban long standing gentlemen from smoking, it's far more enticing than any screen moron doing it.

Being an intern, is an exercise in taming the pride of youth; the independence that undiminished, leads to either death or glory. So, I wandered aimlessly in a premier Indian journalistic organization, with no recognition, and mild sympathy from my colleagues. Besides learning that I do not want to be a journalist (special thanks to a cover journalist with a sub-human IQ and a lovely young copywriter who took an interest in deconstructing a non existent work environment for me), I learnt of inconspicuous, weathered old men.

In the hope of finding something mildly inspiring, I, the intern, decided to take a walk near the staircase (synonymous with smoking room for all print media establishments), where I saw a 5 feet 8', 60 something years old man relishing a cigarette. He smiled at me in full recognition of my presence on that staircase and almost as a conditioned reaction searched his kurta-pocket for his cigarette pack. He drew the pack out and presented it to me as a man his age would, a blessing. 'Would you like one?' he said, brisk and well-enunciated and just like that started up a conversation as genteel as the one we have about the weather, only nicer.

He had studied in a premier boarding school pre-independence and had gone to England to study. He had worked a while in different organizations, found some success and had returned eventually to fight a losing battle for the sanctity of the print media. He had returned to find deft touches replaced by loud colors. To find that wordplay and references had been replaced by jarring alliteration and disturbing use of font. He seemed harrowed and happy. A soldier who knew the battle was lost. He was just happy he fought, and happy that he was going to be gone before the New Order had time to establish itself. Kurta, glasses, titan-watch, loose jeans, receding hairline and perfect English intact, he was an Aragorn-of-sorts.

I was walking lazily up the staircase next morning, when I saw him and said, 'Good morning' his body jolted into an absolute response, the kind you get from people who really are looking for conversation. He said,'to you too, young sir. And how are you today?' and I said, 'I'm good' and halted just a while to finish off the cursory conversation. He lit his cigarette looked at me nonchalantly said, 'I wonder when fine became good'. And mumbled to himself in several tones, 'I'm fine'.

In one response he embodied the in-exactitude of everyday conversation. The unnecessary positive overtone of fast food marketing. The assumption that if you weren't miserable, the other condition, the compromised condition the world gave to you, was good. I have embraced the compromises I've made with that which surrounds me and I'm fine. Getting better.

Justice

That Justice is a blind goddess
Is a thing to which we black are wise
Her bandage hides two festering sores
That once perhaps were eyes


Langston Hughes

For Saundra

I wanted to write a poem
that rhymes
but revolution doesn't lend itself
to be-bopping

then my neighbor
who thinks i hate
asked-do you ever
write tree poems- i like trees
so i thought i'll write
a beautiful green tree poem
peeked from the window
to check the image
noticed the schoolyard
was covered with asphalt-
no trees grown in Manhattan

then, well, I thought the sky
ill do a big blue sky poem
but all the clouds have winged low
since no-Dick was elected

so I thought again and it occurred to me
that maybe I shouldn't write at all
but clean my gun
and check my kerosene supply

perhaps these are not
poetic times at all

Nikki Giovanni

How the fuck does it make a difference if I change my blackberry status to 'Japan <3' or 'Pray for Japan'. How do you react to a mass funeral of people you do not know? Japan, Egypt and China just make for good conversation. And ofcourse the sense of empowerment and informedness that the information age gives us.

It's the
end of the world
as we know it
It's the
end of the world
as we know it
And I feel fine

R.E.M

An Open Letter To Mr. Bhagat

www.chetanbhagat.com/2011/02/open-letter-to-sonia-gandhi/

Kind Patron,
After your frivolous attempt of trying to emote 'the youth of India' by writing an open letter to Mrs. Gandhi in the Sunday Times, I have realised how easy it is the write an 'open letter'. And thus I write to you with the juices of my veneral patriotism flowing.
It is heartening to know that a bollywood sellout with little or no sense of ground realities and a below average middle class take on India cares about us, i.e, the youth of India. No really, that a man with neither literary nor intellectual standing would bother to hijack the position of our representative is inspiring. That you took a thousand words to expound on how corruption is a big problem in India and how the Indian youth look up to the leadership of a Nehru descendant to make things better was ground-breaking. To emphasize on it enough I decided to take a bath in a tub, and eventually run out shouting Eureka. To my astonishment people thought I was mad. Of course I musn't be unfair. It is easy to criticize. It's nothing personal (besides of course that your novels were the three biggest mistakes of my academic life) it's just that I am sick of middle aged ex-corporate honchos dabbling in literature and attempting to take the position meant for the likes of MJ Akbar, Vinod Mehta and Tarun Tejpal. You see your monolithic idea of the youth of India, your colorless potrayal of their aspirations and your insipid choice of our saviour was so pathetically archaic that I was fascinated at the lightbulb that I saw after reading your article.
The youth of India sir, don't give a damn. About your column, the times of India, my letter or Mrs. Gandhi. They have realized that our romanticized ideas of Gandhism, Nehruvianism and Socialism have led them nowhere. They are basking in a self perpetuating apathy of survival further fed by substandard literature that on a scale of 10, I would not rate even five point something. It is this system of keeping the proletariat of India at subsistence level that leaves vast spaces in India's leading dailies open for non-sensical rhetoric like yours. It is this oatmeal media that has bred zombies for half a generation, and is now producing degenerates. The youth of India needs a reason to read editorials sir, and you are just not it. We need the flogging of a Mubarak, a Tianamen square, a Vietnam, a Watergate, a Prague Spring, a French Revolution topped off with no holds barred civil war for the youth of India to even realize where the faultlines they step on everyday lie. It is great to absolve the heiress' crimes for a greater good, or talk about an austerity drive, but of all things what the youth of India do not need is emasculated symbolism. For the sake of the blood sugar levels of the few who read editorials, the fewer who assimilate them and finally in the name of god, put down that pen soldier.

Sincerely Patronized,
Rishi Razdan.

Ps. Don't worry, the movies were worse than the books.

Red With Reason

"Honorable judges, if there is in your hearts a verstige of love for your country, love for humanity, love for justice, listen carefully. I know that I will be silenced for many years; I know that there will be a conspiracy to bury me in oblivion. But my voice will not be stifled...I know that imprisonment will be harder for me than it has ever been for anyone, filled with cowardly threats and hideous cruelty. But I do not fear prison, as I do not fear the fury of the miserable tyrant who took the lives of seventy of my comrades. Condemn me. It does not matter. History will absolve me."

-Facing prosecution for armed revolution against the state,
1963,
Fidel Castro.


Jefferson concluded that the state was at it's best a neccesary evil and it's worst an intolerable one. Speaking from the suburbs of Mumbai, in the province of Maharashtra, India, the state has become (and a while ago too) an intolerable evil. And the answers as well as the questions to the same are the tremors of Naxalbari being felt everywhere. Blood is red. And that means more than just that. A Marx-smitten Mao reigns in the land of Gandhi.


Violence thrives of despair. It is but rarely that this angst is given a decipherable form. The 'Id' of Freud and the angst of J.D Sallinger, though the two aren't really coherent enough to be used the in the same sentence, barely ever find a target that could be deemed legitimate. Enter, Karl Marx. That the lord of average non entities, the landlord, could himself be the devil was the greatest exposition of truth in the last few centuries. Something which has had and will have much greater bearing than the man setting foot on the moon. Marx was the first man, who did in that sense, explore completely the concept of equality. Elliot once said, "Do I dare disturb the universe?", Marx neither sighed at the question nor waited for an answer. (Please do not bother with chronology) He disturbed the order of the universe. The concept of the rich and gifted owning and the distraught and poor owing was blown to shreds. Therein, lies the crux of his appeal. You can either hate him or love him. But you cannot buy him. Nor can you isolate yourself from his theory. He was either a 'commie' or a revolutionary, there isn't a sub-section of society that can be diffident towards Marxist theory. It implies an all engulfing and neccessary conflict. It pre-supposes black and white. The right and the wrong are as definitive as they were under the brutal capitalistic system. The rich are as wrong as the poor were worthless when landlords decided to dip their beaks into whoever the they wished to. Numbers, however, do change the stories. 2% of the world's families own over 90% of immovable assets in developing nations. India has enough billionaires to make a cricket team out of them, yet, if the average Indian had to eat as well as the average (let's not get too far ahead, Europe is a whole new inter-galactic system) Chinese, then Indian food production would have double. All this while we continue to dole out Commonwealth-s and IPL-s. And this has well been the order of things. Whether it be the ascent of the old pre-partition land owning families like the Scindias into post-liberalization India. Or the monoply over illiteracy that the moneylender has. Very little of the economic order has changed. Except, word has spread. The Mortality of Capitalistic systems has been proven over and over again. In Cuba, in Venezuela, In China (questionably) and to some extent in the other liberal and left leaning states like Brazil. India awaits.



Let us take a sample of populace. A congregation of young B.As and B.Coms with well kempt and thin moustaches and well oiled hair, from the villages and towns of India. Men who would after studying (though only very literaly) Marx and Rousseau become watchmen or peones. Not that there is anything wrong in that. Yet, there is a lack of dignity in such a profession that owes to the inherent attatchment of the Indian mind to caste. There is a lack of pay. Due to massive availability of such labor. Thus a Mukesh Ambani builds a monstorosity that he calls a house and employs 400 people as 'staff'. An imbalance that under no god, should be allowed. Hard-work? Mukesh doesn't work harder than the rock-breaking labourer with a child on his back, does he? But that isn't where the buck stops. The civil society is most uncoothed. Apathetic to the plight of the masses. When civil society has listened, revolution has been peaceful. But the angry resentful and money-engined nature of the new Indian civil society is frightening. A revolution is coming. And with good cause too. A revolution that will unsettle the generations that have been living off smartly acquired, highly valued properties. One that will deny privelege to nobility of South Mumbai and South Delhi. A revolution that will shatter the ruins of the mansions of Calcutta and Luckhnow.


Angry men have taken to Islam. They have taken to crime. They have taken to substances. A whole new generation of angry young men are taking to evolution. Human society has seen several stages of evolution. Fire, Script(Language), Agriculture and Industry have passed. Enough has gone wrong since the last big revolution towards evolution and one more leap is required to undo the few steps back. A greater human being is being born. I'm not a communist. That presupposes a society which is communistic. I am someone who does not believe in the current order of the world. I am someone who would rather believe in angry young men. In a different order. Not to wake Uncle Joseph/Vladmir up. But a metamorphosis is required. A metamorphosis which is in desperate need of a catalyst. Most Catalysts are acids. And acids burn. Violence is regrettable, yet natural to angry young men. Men who are trying to fight against oppression. Men who are forsaking the comfort of domesticity. Men who the world will condemn. Yet men who, if they do not forsake the Ithacas that they set out for, will make a change. And then, lords and ladies, history will absolve them.

Guilt, for beginners.

The article is a work of pure fiction. Any resemblance to any person living or dead is purely co-incidental.

*Bursts out into laughter*

My father is an Architect. However, his job description is quite unrelated to what I want to say. He is also what is called 'comfortable' in matrimonial advertisements. For those of you who do not know the workings of the matrimonial market, it means that he is capable of not only paying for his own wedding but also has enough standing to get his nieces and nephews internships and 'sifaarishes'.

I am a student. I eat a lot and at irregular timings. I travel a lot and am usually late. I buy many things and don't really take care of them. I have lost a cell phone, 2 Ipods, a hair trimmer, a walkman, a digital camera and a Rs. 16,000 pendant which I was told to wear for astrological reasons, in the 17 very short years of my existence. The fact that I can sit infront of a computer screen and indifferently (or maybe not) recount these things, and still go out to shop tommorow, is also a corollary to the fact that my father is 'comfortable'.

My pocket money is Rs. 3,500. Equating that with my monthly expenditure would be nothing short of the Enron scandal. My driver who has two daughters and a(?) wife earns Rs. 8,500 a month. Besides all of this he also picks up my father's bags, goes to get my xeroxes, carries my little cousins underwear enroute the swimming pool and calls me 'bhaiya'. Being a tad more courteous than the rest of this world, I call him uncle. So I am Rishi 'bhaiya' and he is Bhagwan 'Uncle'. That is what money does. I am my uncle's bhaiya. This dual relationship, of age vs. monetary standing I share with most of the population of my country. After all my father is one of the few who are comfortable.

I'll probably spend an hour discussing my blog with someone or the other on the phone. That would cost Rs. 60. Assuming that I spend no more than that in a day at an average on the phone, my monthly phone expense turns out to be Rs. 1800. That's Rs. 1,200 less than the average monthly income of an Indian. Had my father not been comfortable, my family would have to somehow manage to live within Rs. 1,200 or I would have to part with phone (Ha!?).

I always thought averages were desirable. That the world was at some sort of an equilibrium. That it was good to be like the rest. Maybe that's why I always ended up with average marks. However my teachers always maintained I was above average. They would not defile me with that heinious word that equates me with a populace that earns Rs.3,000 a month. I wasn't going to an average school, in some godforsaken part of the country. I was going to a private school. My father was no average rag-tag. He was a comfortable man.
*smile of contentment*