Author: Anshuman Rawat

Author. Entrepreneur. Filmmaker. Journalist.

Categories
Book Extracts Shorts Writing

When it Rained in Bopal

The following is an extract from I Am Ahmedabad, a collection of short stories

###

Ashwin and Ratna were both married for close to eight years. Though their kids were young, they were just old enough to allow the parents a bit more time than a few years ago.

36 year-old Ashwin was a self-employed person, with interest in IT-related consumer white goods. A masters degree holder, he was actually one of Ahmedabad’s biggest franchisee partner of a global IT giant. And yet, his dream was to have an IT firm of his own. With his education, go-getting attitude and a very impressive 6-feet tall, athlete’s personality, Ashwin seemed to making the right inroads into all the places that mattered – financial institutions, dealers market and big corporate clients looking for  more economical solutions for their IT requirements.

31 year-old Ratna, on the other hand, was just a simple commerce graduate. But it never really bothered the ever-smiling girl with a fair skin and flowing waist-length hair. She was more than happy with her husband – and the family life – and never really showed much interest in pursuing a career outside home. Her dream was to be one of the most successful ‘home managers’ of her times. A dream that she had more or less managed to achieve.

That day, Ratna had dozed off while watching the TV when suddenly the doorbell rang.

3:30 PM. Since her son was not expected to be back from his school till 5:00 PM, she knew that it would be Ashwin to make full use of the time.

After getting up from the sofa, she immediately rushed towards the mirror and brought into order her hair and Sari. It had always been like that for both of them. Even after so many years.

She went to the door and opened with a naughty smile. Ashwin, with a laptop carrier hanging from his shoulder, had an even bigger smile. He tried to immediately hug Ratna, but she stopped him before he could even move. The expression on Ratna’s face was a mix of a stern headmistress and an embarrassed lover.

Even though it was a society of independent bungalows beyond the 200-ft Sardar Patel Ring Road, with little or no visual access to other people’s doors because of the trees lining the inner streets, Ashwin and Ratna were always careful of expressing anything at the door.

So, after the usual ritual of being restrained at the entrance, the two entered the house and slowly closed the door behind them. But that was going to be the only slow act of the late afternoon.

Ashwin immediately got hold of Ratna’s hands and folded them behind her with the ease of a big wrestler. Not that Ratna did not try to get her hands free. But not only was Ashwin more powerful but also that Ratna’s heart was more into what Ashwin was going to do next.

Gripping with his left hand both of Ratna’s hand by her wrists, behind her, Ashwin raised his hand and got hold of Ratna’s hand and at one instant both pulled her head behind and pushed her body on to him. As Ratna gave him a look of pain, Ashwin looked back with a wicked smile, both in his eyes and on his lips. When was good-looking evil ever easy to overlook that Ratna could have fought any longer? And, while still in pain, she smiled back at Ashwin. For Ashwin, this was a tiger taming his mate with sheer force. Oh so intoxicating!

An hour later:

Ratna was preparing tea in the kitchen for Ashwin, while he talked to someone on his phone and worked furiously on the laptop in the living room. Even from the distance, Ratna could feel that every passing moment, Ashwin’s tone was getting more agitated. Ratna quickly poured tea in two cups, took some namkeen in a plate and rushed towards Ashwin, who in the meantime was almost shouting at the other person. Ratna put the tray on the table and sat beside Ashwin. She took Ashwin’s right hand between her palms and patted it, almost like a mother trying to calm an agitated child.

Alas! The child was not going to get calm that evening. One of his deals had gone bad and it held the possibility of hurting the chances of his having his own IT Company.

Ashwin got up, apologised to Ratna, took his laptop and rushed out of home for work, again. He did not even wait to have tea that Ratna had prepared.

As Ratna got back in front of TV after closing the door behind Ashwin, she sat down thinking how much she did not want the modern day life of busy professionals. She was happy for her life and pitied the millions of people who spend their lives running between one client and the other. Ashwin too agreed with her philosophy. He used to think that for someone who never gave too much to formal college education, Ratna was always surprisingly learned. Or maybe it was because she was so learned that she did not give too much to college education. Ashwin, however, had dreams to run for. And dreams that made him run; day in day out. But for beautiful stolen moments like this afternoon’s, he might have gone crazy.

But he loved his pursuit; inspite of the effect it was having on his health and emotions. And she loved her peace; inspite of the fact that she never got much respect from the ‘educated and on-their-feet’ women of her bungalow scheme in Bopal. But Ratna was never the one who would fall for the mad race of the entire human race to become a clone of one another.

Anyway, as she put on some music on radio and went to the glass window with the cup of tea in her hand, the droplets on the glass couldn’t help but remember their first meeting on a rainy day in Bopal.

It was two years ago. Their children were both in the same school, in Bopal itself. Aditya was elder than Riya by one year and was in Class 1 while Riya was in Senior KG.

One day, it had suddenly started raining very heavily. And as everyone living in Bopal knows, the season that should be the most romantic one is generally the most torturous one for those living beyond the ring road. Streets get clogged, electricity often becomes erratic and life generally comes at a standstill during a heavy downpour.
Ratna was alone at home those days and she had got very worried about Riya. Since the area around her bungalows had got completely flooded, driving her car to the school did not seem a good idea. But it looked dangerous to even walk through that knee-deep water. Especially the idea of bringing Riya through it. While the school authorities had informed her of taking care of the children in the school till the rain lasted, Ratna looked unsure of things after that. Especially since the rain did not seem to be in any mood to stop that day.

Just then she got a call on her mobile phone. The number was not stored but it of course was of Ashwin.

“I’ve brought along two children. Do you think you can have a look and tell me if they are ours”, Ratna clearly remembered the words from Ashwin that had made her fall for good.

But what she had found even sweeter was the sight of Ashwin standing in the verandah of her bungalow with Aditya in one arm and Riya in the other. All the three were smiling and seemed high on life. While Aditya and Riya were giggling while doing pushing-each-other fight while being in Ashwin’s arms, Ashwin himself was smiling like a radiant Sun amidst the downpour.

It was one of the those Kodak moments that shaped Ratna’s following life.

It was the day that had brought them really close. It was after that day that Ashwin could gather further courage and Ratna could further lower her guard. Life was never the same for them after that. They learned to make maximum use of the moments available to them in today’s present life.

Still sipping tea and looking out of the window, Ratna took a deep breath as she lived back those moments. Just then, she saw Aditya and Riya coming towards her home along with Kavita – her very good friend and Ashwin’s wife.

###

Categories
World Diary

What is Going on in Pakistan!

Experts say that the recent Lal Masjid mess was just the tip of an iceberg as far as problems staring the Pakistani establishment is concerned. Since many of Pakistan’s problems can occur here too, it would pay to study our neighbour!

An year and a half ago, an American intelligence think-tank had predicted that Pakistan would be a failed state by the year 2013. It sounded, and still sounds, nothing more than a fantastical statement from a big-budget Hollywood film.
Pakistan, in all probability, would not break up in 2013. And for India’s sake, it should NOT either. Simply because, it is far easier to handle one big monster than tackle infinite small reptiles. Not the most charitable of all terms for a neighbour that we are destined to live for life. But if it makes the sensitive people feel any better, let’s accept that the adjectives coming from that side for us are similar in nature and greater in number.

Anyway, coming back to the topic: The 2013 scenario was mentioned at the beginning of this write-up because the way things are moving on ground at the moment in Pakistan, one can be excused for a moment to find the 2013 prediction coming true. Yes, quite like India, Pakistan has a million problems at hand. But unlike those in India, many of Pakistan’s problems were DIRECTLY given birth by the state of Pakistan itself.

The biggest example of a home-grown Frankenstein having a go at the master is the recent stand-off between Islamabad’s Lal Masjid radicals and the Pakistani armed forces. While more than a 100 people (just the official figure) died in the clash within the Mosque / Madarssa premises itself, the retaliatory attacks by the Lal Masjid Cleric sympathisers in the Waziristan area of Pakistan (see the map on the adjacent page) have claimed more than that (103) in suicide bombings in a matter of one week. Anyone who knows the area and its operations knows that there is more to come. And more scarily for ordinary Pakistanis, the suicide bombers are now ready to target Islamabad, Karachi and Lahore – and not just on the issue of Lal Masjid.

The fact of the matter is that there are areas within Pakistan that were NEVER under complete administration of the Pakistani state. And those areas – largely at the Pakistan-Afghanistan border – are becoming increasingly to control. Tribal warlords not only have the best of weapons but have an increasing army of brainwashed and military-style trained young men who are quite willing to blow themselves up for their ‘cause’.

The biggest proof of the Pakistan state’s inability to penetrate these areas was the ‘Peace Accord’ signed between the tribal leaders and the Pakistan state in the Waziristan area. The accord made it mandatory for Pakistan government to move out all its armed forces from the area and also remove all the check-points put by the security agency. In return, the Waziristan ‘warriors’ would stop attacking Pakistani army and also not blow up any oil or water lines traversing across the area!

The accord had drawn sharp reactions from the American and British media – which dubbed this as ‘surrender of Pakistan to Al-Qaida’. And their fear seems to have come true – what with Taliban regrouping itself in the ‘lawless’ areas around the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. It is also the area where Osama Bin Laden (if alive), his deputy Mullah Omar and other hardened Al-Quaida seems to have found a safe haven.

The attacks on the NATO forces in Afghanistan have increased manifold in the recent times. Simultaneously, the authority of the state of Pakistan has diminished to such an extent that it has almost given the local tribal leaders around the Federally Administered Areas (see the map) the status of an equal partner in dialogue for peace. What’s next, agreeing to independence of that area?

Funnily, they are not even demanding independence. Probably because how different would things be anyway, if they were to get official independence!

The people (some of them anyway) who are demanding independence, however, are those from Baluchistan, the biggest province / state of Pakistan in terms of land area.

“We have been Baloch for more than 7000 years. We became Muslim some 1400 years ago, and have been Pakistanis for just 60 years”, said an unnamed tribal chief in Balochistan, (cited in Himal South Asian, May 2007). With most of Pakistan’s natural resources coming from the province and the presence of a strategically important port, built by China (almost directly, including Chinese labourers), lying in Baluchistan, this is one trouble that Pakistan can do without.

And yet, again, the problem is just a tip of the iceberg! With 3 out of 4 provinces (states) in the middle of one major trouble or the other and about one to two thousand Madrassas (out of the estimated total of more than 20,000 Madrassas across Pakistan) said to be the breeding ground for Islamist militancy, the country seems to be in a real deep pit.

Add to that the fact that instances of nuclear proliferation by the likes of A Q Khan and links of terrorists arrested in Western countries with camps in Pakistan, the country is already in a state of serious credibility loss across most of the world – notwithstanding USA’s occasional pat on the back.

Whether it makes us happy or whether it should make us jittery is for the security agencies to decide. For the moment, the truth is, we need to be watchful. For, our neighbour is in a fix.

Categories
Design Activism Writing

Page Layout – Index Page (League Magazine)


Categories
Writing

Is It Just This World or is This Not a Just World?

During blues, we often end up lamenting that there is no justice in this world. Our despondency often makes us believe that everything immoral, illegal and undeserved is flourishing and that there is no incentive to be good. Let’s hope that it is not the truth

One of the most expressed laments of our times is, “there is no justice in this world”. In a world of corrupt officials, vacuous ‘role models’ and chimera-driven professional life, it is barely surprising.

What do we want more – to be rewarded duly, as per our definition of ‘due’ or seeing others bereft of rewards that they do not deserve as per, again, our definition of the ‘deserving’? Maybe both, maybe the former or maybe, most definitely, the latter.

Irrespective of the answer, the core of the subject is the idea of justice, of getting ‘due’ rewards for our actions or of (invariably, someone else) deserving karmic lashings for his / her ways with life.

Curiously, our belief in the idea of justice comes to the surface almost invariably when we are feeling low. We never remember the entity ‘justice’ when we are having it good in life. Unfortunately, it is a human trait and it just needs to be accepted.

If there were no concept of reincarnation what would have been the inspiration for any of us to be good? Don’t we see the immoral, illegal and illegitimate ruling the roost in our present society? With reincarnation, one can hope for some justice in the next cycle.

The endeavour here is to see above and beyond the individual or community planes; to see the larger idea of life itself and its relation to the various laws of it.

There are hundreds of people out there who are either murderers, rapists, thugs or plain and simple feet lickers who are not only not going to ever get caught for their acts but are having pretty good in life. So, what’s the incentive for you and me continue with our simple, honest way of life?

Pretty much nothing if we see it through that prism!

Because the prism itself is doubling up as an agent of justice. It has appropriated the task of reading out sentences against distant, seemingly inhuman examples. It is like looking at life and its actors through the shades of prejudice.

Not done.

We have to understand here that we too might be the non-deserving ones for some eyes. We too might deserve punishment by nature / God because of the way we are. Yes, that’s the whole point. We get surprised, shocked or offended when someone even mentions this possibility.

But as we said, the idea is to look above and beyond the individual or community planes; to try and read the relation between the laws of life and life itself.

So what is justice and what would constitute justice in a human life?

Justice is understood to be the ideal, morally correct state of things and persons – and depends upon the interpretation of the notions of ‘ideal’ and ‘correct’.

Furthermore, it is difficult to ascertain to its maximum minuteness, the acts of ours that contribute towards, and invite justice and injustice. So, while we all seem to agree that there should be justice in this world, we continually struggle to distinguish justice from injustice in our characters, institutions or actions, or in the world as a whole.

Add to that the conundrum of a thing called ‘reincarnation’ or ‘rebirth’ and role of karma in it, and you have a perfect recipe of complexity at its peak. No one sense can ever come out of conversations with regards the aforementioned. Simply because they are not only based on many interpretations but also give birth to many newer ones.

We are talking of Karma or reincarnation here because the subject of justice, often, seems way to vast to be understood within a span of a single lifetime!

And yet, most of us don’t really subscribe the idea of reincarnation. “Why should I pay for the acts that I’m not even aware of? Maybe I was not me in my previous birth” – that is the most prevalent and entirely understandable sentiment. Consequently, the argument runs on the lines of the much abused phrase, ‘justice delayed is justice denied’. Applying it to the school of reincarnation, justice was delayed for the acts of the previous birth – which in itself is injustice – and the delay has cost the acts of this birth (probably noble) to carry out the sentence on behalf of the previous birth.

Justice is often postulated as the philosophical concept of the morally correct assignment of goods and evils. But then, isn’t philosophy an approximation of various streams of thoughts? Doesn’t philosophy allow fluidity of thoughts, contexts and their interpretations? So, how can there be one single definition of justice?

So then, rest assured that our very ‘being’ and our being capable of thinking about abstract notions like justice is a justice of sort in itself. Think that we deserved to be, hence we are!

But is the ‘present justice’ because of our acts in our earlier lives? Well, it depends entirely on the school of thought that we subscribe to.

How can that ever be termed justice?

It can be. But ONLY if you see life through the prism of ‘the cycle of life’, where the soul goes on repeatedly being born and dying. According to Hinduism, you get a human form only after 8.4 million ‘yonis’ (divine passage) does someone get a human form. Once there, a man has three destinations in after-life depending upon his Gunas (qualities) in the previous life. These three Gunas are Sato-guna (highest virtue), Rajo-guna (medium virtue) and Tamo-guna (Lowest Virtue). The man with Sato-guna enters the heavens (mokhsha) whereas the man with Tamo-guna enters the hell. The man with Rajo-guna is sent back to the earth to again complete a cycle of birth and death!

So, while being a human being in itself is justice (reward) for you, your acts then determine the future life cycles.

But if you don’t believe in the idea of ‘cycle of life’, you can either try and remember every small thing that you did and arrive at the reason for your having to pay back in some other scenario or you can sit back and relax. If there is justice, it is happening to all of us. If there is not, it is because you are not reading out the sentence. Choose peace of mind.

_________________________________________________________

For the Sake of being Topical:

The picture shows Ghalib, son of Mohammed Afzal, the parliament house attack convict, asking for clemency for his father. The Supreme Court has sentenced Afzal to be hanged. But the President of India has not signed his go-ahead for that as yet.

Hindu scriptures divide karma into three kinds: Sanchita (accumulated), Prarabdha (fruit-bearing) and Kriyamana (current) karma. All kriyamana karmas become sanchita karma upon completion.

So, did the dead ones get ‘justice’ for their karma of the previous birth with Afzal’s help? Would Afzal’s hanging be justice for his present birth? Is carrying out the Supreme Court’s sentence injustice? Is just one person deciding the fate of someone’s life justice?

How can we hope for justice when we don’t even know who has the right to mete out justice! No wonder we fall back upon God to decide. But would that be doing justice to the heart & intellect of our human identity?

Categories
World Diary

She May Be Out of Sight but Don’t Let Her Go Out of Your Mind

Giving someone the Nobel Peace Prize cannot be turned into mere means of passing a statement against that person’s opponents. But that is precisely what the world reaction to brutal massacre of democracy in Myanmar (Burma) seems to suggest. The world may be fighting for oil, but let’s spend some time with a slender thought called democracy.

Aung San Suu Kyi was born on 19 June 1945. Her father, Aung San, was credited for having negotiated Burma’s independence from the United Kingdom in 1947. However, being consistent with the political history of our region, he was assassinated by his rivals in the same year. Following the assasination of her father, she lived with her mother, Khin Kyi, and two brothers, Aung San Lin and Aung San U, in Rangoon.

Later when her mother, Khin Kyi, was appointed as Burmese ambassador to India in 1960, Aung San Suu Kyi came to India with her mother and studied in New Delhi. She followed it up by education at St. Hugh’s College, Oxford and also in New York, where she also worked for the United Nations.

In 1972, Aung San Suu Kyi married Michael Aris. She has two children from her marriage.

It was only when she had come back to her homeland in 1988, to visit her ailing mother, that she had got involved in politics.

The same year saw the long-time leader of the socialist ruling party, General Ne Win, stepping down. The step was followed by demonstrations for democratisation. The demand was ruthlessly suppressed by a new military junta, that took power.

Heavily influenced by Mahatma Gandhi’s philosophy of non-violence, Aung San Suu Kyi entered politics to Work for democratisation, helped found the National League for Democracy on 27 September 1988, and was put under house arrest on 20 July 1989. She was offered freedom if she would leave the country, but she refused.

The treatment meted out to a legitimate, elected leader of the nation led to wide condemnation of the military rulers by western nations; and in the process, won her the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991.

But that’s just about how far the external support has gone. For, the world did not shake when her husband died away from her – for neither she was allowed to move out of Myanmar nor was her husband allowed to enter. Or when she consistently gets kept under house arrest by the present military rulers. Once her convoy was attacked by the ruling junta supported mob and she had barely managed to escape with her driver while her supporters were murdered and looted.

Today, she lives on under house arrest with the solitary hope of seeing a dawn that would bring democracy in her country.

If not for her Gandhian methods, Myanmar’s border with us and use of its land by outlawed Indian outfits should make us take her case strongly at all international forums. Go democracy!

Categories
Reflection

Quote: Activist

Life of an honest activist in India is often a journey between the enthusiasm of  ‘giving it all for the nation’ and the despair of  ‘the nation not wanting anyone to give anything’.

© Anshuman Rawat