IS DARWIN ROLLING IN HIS GRAVE ?

       I remember having seen a brutally sensational movie, about a decade back.The intentionally futuristic movie , narrated in an almost mythical but grossly spine-chilling fashion, was one of a woman getting married into a womanless family and subsequently being brutalized by the men of the family. The story had the backdrop of a town, which had this traumatized girl as the sole woman member.

       Today, when I keep coming across newsbits ( I squirm at the concept of 'updating' myself ) about lexicon-defying  and human-behaviour-defying attrocities against women, I wonder whether the film was a clear prophetic paradigm. And I, for my part, have been at tremendous unease , although the post-Godhra riots and the post-partition upheavals were not unknown to me. The mere sight of a truckload of ironbars makes me traumatically break into bouts of sweats. What I am penning down is, probably an attempt at a sublimational release. Within a couple of months of a gruesome brutality wrought upon a student of physiotherapy in December 2012 ( I refuse to classify it as mere rape ), an entire Pandora's box , an entire  can of loathsome worms seems to have been left
open. And out is spewing an unending volley of similar crimes, each gorier in degree than the previous one. A pregnant woman raped and then stabbed several times. A disgruntled lover shoving an iron rod down his paramour's mouth. Or a goon threatening a harrassed woman with a fate similar to that of Nirbhaya , as if the incident was a standard, a prototype . I shudder at the thought that crimes similar in magnitude and manner would be termed as 'Nirbhayad', just as castration got a new nomencaltural identification as 'Bobbitized' !

        On one hand, it has woken up the equanimous and the less inhumane among us, out of  their reverie to understand the vulnerability of the human body and psyche. On the other, you almost fume in indignation and ask whether it has to be at the cost of  what a nubile
23 year-old had to go through for what would have seemed to her as epochs. On one hand we raise our voices against female foeticide, while on the other you wonder as to whether a woman has to aspire for a better life or to choose a better mode of dying !

        Is it a case of one sex against another ? Or as a 'well-meaning'
( let's give him the benefit of doubt ) political leader stated, a case a migrants against locals. I doubt this. For, the victim as well as the perpetrators of the crime were not locals. Sounds trite, but it is definitely a case of sanity, rendered weak due to minority in sheer numbers, losing a gory battle against insane and depraved brutality, strengthened by sheer numbers again.

       What comes to my mind is a case study that exemplifies Darwin's Theory of Natural Selection, in which he propounded the paradigm of 'survival of the fittest'. It is about two sets of moths, grey ones and black ones, in Birmingham, with the grey ones being larger in number in the pre-Industrial Revolution era , due to their ability to camouflage themselves against predators, among the  clusters of fungi that formed a thick patina on the barks of trees. But the Industrial Revolution changed the scenario, what with soot spreading itself all over the trees. In the following few years, genetic mutations in the following generations ensured a step-by-step conversion of the grey moths into black ones. So much so that black moths became almost extinct in that geographical region !

        Should I nurse the temerity of prophesizing a similar change in the structure of human population ?     

AM I GROOMING A LIAR ?

"Couldn't you pick up something more ... say .... suitable ? Has it to be pink tees and blue jamaicans ? " That vociferation , though softly articulated comment, is met with a wide-eyed, what-do-I-do  , flabbergasted expression from my cherub-faced nine-year old junior. And that look, non-verbally said, 'But didn't you ask me to choose ?' The verbal and non-verbal pow-pow between us terminates with my trite "Well, ultimately you have to choose. So, fine Zeph, go ahead."The moppet is left confused and riddled with guilt for his sartorial faux pas of having chosen to don something that the cat had pinched from the cellar !

This, though an instance of a lighter vein, is just one of those many instances when I 'projected' (Long live Sigmund Freud !) my own value confusion on to the hapless kid and goaded him in subtle and not-so-subtle ways to convince him that it was he who was perenially confused. I, being a single parent, and he being a late issue ( while I am currently the biggest issue for him !) and to top it, he being an adopted child, there was a lot of idealism that had been drilled into his head from early childhood.When he was a year old, I started 'educating' him about adoption and how he was 'no less and no better than any other child'. I did not spare  any effort to keep him grounded by regularly keeping in touch with and taking him to the child care centre from where he was adopted. All this, in an attempt at being 'honest'. The innocent was taught, like a
keyed-up doll, to say "My dad is my mom too", whenever any of his friends put him to the test of pesky questions. Concepts of sharing were drilled into his tender psyche .While other toddlers of his age would cling to their parents and refuse to allow anyone else to be molly-coddled by them, my little one would merrily allow me to cootchie-coo with any moppet of his age. And the perks were eyebrow-raising compliments raised to his advantage ( 'Such a secure child !'). But there was this one incident which I can never forget,just because it was an antithesis to the above theory.

He was just two years old and had not even broken into speech. On one of those harrowing days,my little one rudely pulled out his closest friend Jaden from the seat next to mine in the car, by non-verbally threatening him with his transparent-as-distilled-water eyes 'Bugger off man.That place,next to my dad, is mine.' I was shocked then,at having failed in drilling effectively the'sharing and caring' regimen.Then, as like today, the little soul was made to feel that he had committed a crime worthy of the fires of hell !

When I look at him today, quiet and more often than not , melancholy,my heart gets wrenched into cogitating on what he might have really missed. These days, his responses are indicative more of   what he 'should' do than what he 'would' naturally do under specific circumstances. He is often totally at bay when he has to decide on how he would deal with the simplest of strifes. His sense of belonging to a space and what belongs to him seems to be slowly withering away even before blossoming. Often lost, he shows responses which are below the benchmark set for children of his age. A naive mind, drilled with and by adult idealism, his has umpteen adult questions to ask, with not clue of how to articulate them. The resultant is, a steady plummeting down , into the safe cocoons of regressive baby-like behaviour.

On my part,in my attempt at playing a dual role of a father and a mother, I often seem to be neither here nor there. In an attempt to make him an 'ideal' selfless child, I have almost truncated the growth of his 'self '. And he on his part, is subconsciously smothering the natural growth of his cognitive process. And the effect on me is a constant spate of temper outbursts, which is more conspicuous in the space outside my home. As one wise man (was it Freud ?) aptly put it,'When nations cannot manage the civilized peace at home, they go to war'.

But lest this long drawn confession lures the reader into believing that I am in the clutches of maudlin tempered with self-pity, I would like to take a detour here. Being a kinky,quirk of the ultimate variety, I work best in an atmosphere of negative reinforcement. Hence, what is done shall be undone and what is undone shall be done ! I look at a few silver linings in an otherwise sombre cloud. I take heart when my son refuses to buy the 'Tvameva maata cha pitaa tvameva' ( Dad, you are my mom,dad and the entire universe) bit, when his sedulous friends relentlessly badger him with questions about his mom. He comes out promptly with "I think my mom is dead. When I get to know the real story, I'll share it with you guys. So, till then, why don't we get to know our Play Station better ?'

He may or may not have uttered the truth, but he has learnt to deal with a situation whose verity is dubious.  And I, on my part,  am not worried that my son has not uttered the truth.

IS IT MY SWAN SONG ?

        
          The  much familiar number on my caller-id sent a spasm of euphoria up my nerviest of nerves. Three months of trepidation and butterflies-in-the-stomach state was replaced by a highjump to the 'whoa!'-plane. In those three months I deliberately cogitated and scanned on my musical 'achievements' in the  thirteen years  since I got formally inducted into training for Hindustani vocal classical music. Not that I had never made any such review earlier . But it was more of the perfunctory , superficial variety which imitated to great fidelity, the ostrich-burying-his-head-deep-in-the-bosoms-of-earth proverb. What I am talking about is the mandatory self-analysis as regards my musical yen. During this period, my morale had been vacillating, covering the entire spectrum of moods from extreme exuberance to a down-in-the-doldrums state. Exhilaration, when my 'guru' and teacher would subtly pass a compliment about  my sense of 'ragas' and my ability to pick up arduous 'taans'. And frustration , everytime I reminded myself  'Hey dude, you still can't tell your 'dhaivat' (la) from your 'rishabh' (re)' . And my teacher, being an extremely collected, polite and rather abstemious person, would show her mild irritation by simply asking me (embellished with a chuckle,of course !) 'Is baar riyaaz nahi hua naa ?' This politeness would, more often than not dent my wafer-thin but huge-as-a-balloon sense of achievement. Paradoxically, being a largely self-motivated guy, I would go gung-ho and go in for dauntless 'riyaaz' sessions as if my next inhalation-exhalation cycle depended on it ! This was, of course, much to the chagrin of my pleasant-natured neighbours. They would .of course, put in politically right comments like ' Was it you ? It sounded like a recorded piece !'

          Getting back to my 'guru' on matters concerning music , she could be classified as someone belonging to a rare breed of immensely secure people. Someone who could be used as a prototype of the class of people who nurture simplicity but not ordinariness.Hugely talented, an exemplary artiste and amazingly sensitive teacher. And this is certainly a rare combination. I wonder how she remains almost unperturbed under all circumstances. Her very-rarely uttered hints at how her becoming a consummate artiste had not been a cakewalk, gave me a peephole view and a depth of understanding that simplicity could be attained only after traversing through a whole gamut of complexities. Darwin took eaons to hypothesize the Theory of Natural Selection. I took thirteen years to get a hint about the
concept of man's spiritual evolution, if I may be audacious enough to state so  ! The solace, of course, was that I didn't have to land up in Galapagos Islands and strike camaraderie with the
 creepy-crawlies and fork-tongued critters ! Getting back, in spite of being an ace classical singer, 'teacher' would never act as a zealot-like champion of it. Never once, had she derided film music. Her admiration for Kishori Amonkar was on par with her appreciation of Shreya Ghoshal's velvet-like voice or the stupendously sensational scale range of Lata Mangeshkar. This was something out-of-the-box for members of her species. 'Deprived' and 'bereft' of the mercurial mood swings of prodigally talented classical artistes, she rarely lent herself to the session- missing routine.

           I would eagerly await the occasion of 'Guru Poornima' to pay my obeisance to her. Considering the fact that I equate the act of 'Saashtang Namaskar' with the subtle act of pulling the carpet from under the feet of hapless victims, my subscription to the same on this rare occasion would have sent shock waves through the spine of all my near and dear ones (  if they had witnessed the 'holy' act, of course! ).For someone like me, who respects many, irrespective of the number of years they revolved around the sun along with earth, but holds no specific person as a role model, she worked as someone close to one.
 
          Hence, on one of those rare occasions, when , post our singing session, we just got to talking about what continued to push her into imparting music lessons to wannabe singers of all ilk, she mentioned that she had cut down the number of students to a bare minimum. And then, quite uncharacteristically, ( uncharacteristically, thanks to her general sedate persona ! ) she ruminated and than ruefully commented in a far-off-tone ,'These days I have to quench my soul and be happy with busy students ' There was not a hint of patent sarcasm. Being a person who reads between and often beyond lines, it struck a melancholic chord in me, though not immediately. It made me seriously cogitate on my worth as a 'shishya'. This would probably explain my aforesaid mentioned sense of trepidation, which was, of course, proved unjustified by THE telephone call !

          I was elated then. But now, after the euphoria has settled down, I ponder on what kind of longing for an appropriate musical 'heir', would a true-blue musician nurture !







   
          

WEDDING BELLS, ENTREPENEURSHIP AND SLAVERY

     The frenzied delight of the bride could not be dampened by the heady mix of the cosmetic show of my 'euphoric' enthusiasm and, as an antithesis, my feeling of genuine benevolent happiness for the young couple. The bridegroom was, of course, in an inebriated state of soporific somnambulence, thanks to the by-now eternal spell of show of effervescence , vacillating between gleeful grins and uproars of synthetic laughter. At this juncture, at the cost of sounding trite, I repeat two aspects of a much propounded theory. One - men, especially Indian men, love to believe and display that their threshold age for  infectious and enthusiastic youth is pretty much lower than that of the members of the opposite sex. Two - Indian weddings, thanks to their long list of functions shooting off due to the 'globinidianazation' of rituals transcending all parochial demarcations ,leave the poor bridegroom exhausted much before the actual thing begins ! It's a different matter that the bride, in any case, is all perky and pepped up. I have a faint suspicion ,that this is the first bone of contention that the couple has to contend with.

      Well, this  in any case, is not what I wanted to talk about. Sorry about the digression, guys. Lemme focus . Mmm... When I did manage to catch the pretty girl in question, for a few hennaed moments, between the spells of rambunctious and hyperbolic giggles, we got to talking (she talking and I lending my ear !) about the honeymoon itinerary. A trifle moony-eyed, she waxed, if not eloquent, at least with commitment, about the 3 days that she had planned in Bali, following which was a sojourn in Australia and .... And that was it ??? My rhetorical outburst, as if shook her out of her ruminant reverie! She gave me a look that resembled a curious mix of pain caused by the memory of  truncated bliss  and irritation at having had her feet brutally planted on terra firma. As if on the defensive, she snapped," That's the max that I could manage to salvage for myself from my firm." Unfazed , and with a tint of sadistic sarcasm, I added,  "What about all that bit about how much you count at your workplace and how much you are indispensable to your team ?" "I still do count. But there are others, all queued up waiting to be counted. Waiting to fill up the slot " she spat curtly, without adding the 'you moron',of course . As  an epilogue, I added, " So it is yet another case of who needs whom more !" My sardonic best was getting the better of me. Severely cheesed off, she huffed and scurried back to her world of ephemereal euphoria!

      Lest you guys have been let loose in a flummoxed space, wondering what that whole banter was about, I would like to lead you, with firm fingers around your unsure thumbs, to the day when we ( I and 'pretty girl' ) got into a seemingly unending argument. She had just got in as a rookie, fresh after her PGDBM,  at this high-profile stock-broking firm. She had then, with subtle vanity ( if something like that is not an oxymoron !), hinted that she had to deal with a wide range of tasks including derivatives and 'evaluating' them. Much like others of her ilk, in the following meetings, her talks bordered around and then lingered on how much she 'mattered' and how much she felt elated about contributing to the growth of her firm. The long- drawn spells of verbal diarrhoea seemed, at that time to my defensive paranoid state of mind, a sermon on the virtues of linking with an established brand name, a stud-like corporate unit. The cost of being branded a' corporate slave' by 'holier-than-thou oldies' (that remark was added with a sly sideways glance at me! ) , was peanuts compared to the perks.Being a never-say-die champion of entrepeneurship, I bristled up and
not-so-subtly hinted that being one's own lord was not everyone's prerogative. And the pleasure, as well as the responsibility of taking up and owning up one's own decisions ! Not to speak of the pleasures of being on a,  razor's edge doing a tightrope walk ! And the fuel that it adds to you self-efficacy drive, when you think that you can provide livelihoods to all who work with you . And what about the stupendous feeling of exhilaration  you derive when your working unit gets stamped by your looming presence and personality? And if you create your own USP and your own market,rather than scramble for pre-ordained slots in an over-worked market. Wouldn't that be the final coup ?

      But all my ecclesiastical pontification was patronisingly humoured by'pretty girl' then, thanks to her subscription to the exuberance of effervescent and optimistic youth, which periodically 'gets set to conquer the world'! I must admit, that at that juncture,even I got cowed down by it and felt like an inane mumbling-bumbling mambie-jambie ! 

      But today, on this night laid heavy by the iridescence of a hundred twinkling lights and the beats of uncountable remixes, I felt a smug smile escaping my innards and getting trapped in my oral orifice, which lipsynched to 'sweet revenge' !
 

REFLECTIONS ON THIS AND THAT (PRIMARILY 'THE' MOB MANIA THAT SEEMS TO BE THE HOTTEST RAGE)

My beautiful, glamorous,nerve strengthening(nerve racking for others !) day normally ends pretty late beyond decent working hours(Not to take into account when it begins).And the other day, it ended up in a rather quixotic note.It happened that when I got out of my office complex I was surrounded ( and more-or-less lynched ) by a mob of hyper-enthu high school zealots in their boy-scout best, screaming and booing in their highest octaves and heaving like bellows(when the exercise got too knackering) at anyone getting out of the complex to the cocoons of their secure homes. On closer scrutiny, I found them lip synching to the ubiquitous 'anna' chorus and slogan. Apparently, I was the prototype honcho who was the ultimate manifestation of the C-word. Quite a cliche' ,but I seemed to be the punching bag of their highly inflated version of a cleanliness drive( Don't get me wrong ,for paranoia is not my 'strength' !)On reaching home, my channel-trotting exercise granted me the privilege of watching Anna imploring his team to stay away from drunken brawls and violence akin to the ones so typical of communal riots. Revving up my thoughts, I pondered over the general effectiveness of civil society movements and their check on democratic norms.So , here I go with my personal musings.

Before we get into the nitty-gritties and depth of this topic, we need to redefine democracy beyond the constitutional and textbook form. Its implied definition,according to me,is the respect that one ought to have for an individual who makes independant decisions and has individualistic opinions about issues around him. It involves the mandatory requirement for every individual to take stances about the issues that encompass him during every nanosecond of his day-to-day life.

And the word movement implies a mass uprising which is spear-headed by a dynamic and charismatic leader. Every leader has a complex ideology which is the basis of his agenda. Be it Anna or Mahatma Gandhi. But, are leaders able to articulate every nuance of their ideologies ? And do they really have to ? For, according to me, ideologies are dynamic and evolving and hence arises the redundancy and futility behind translating every nuance of one's ideology. This definitely creates a huge communication gap between the leader and his followers. And the fact that one is a follower makes him a slow-thinking lap-dog whose every move is mindlessly governed by his 'master'. He loses his individuality in a slow and measured manner. It generally progresses into a situation where the follower either gets disillusioned or he turns a blind eye to his leader's human fallacies. And we cannot dispense off with the innumerable 'Frankensteins' who go haywire on a rampage at the slightest pretext. And the saddest part is that it is not the leader who is the culprit. For, no leader is a magician. Be it Anna Hazare or Mahatma Gandhi or Martin Luther King. Their mainstay is to give a lead after which the masses have to interpret their ideologies effectively and carry the baton forward. But blind followers of mass movements place the cumbersome onus of thinking and opining for the masses, on the already overloaded shoulders of the leaders. And this is when democracy gets its biggest blow.For, this creates a situation where masses desist from having individual opinions forgetting that leaders can only spear-head a movement or catalyze a change. The main reactant has to be every individual's free-thinking mind.

As people,we need to comprehend and consolidate our understanding, that we need to strongly act on what we believe in, with or without a leader. If we cannot entertain corruption rampant among public servants, it is mandatory for us to desist, by and far, from personally acting as agents of the same malpractice. It could be with the traffic cop, whom you may bribe to let you off for skipping a signal. Accept whatever punishment he ordains, thereby proving to yourself that you are responsible enough to own up your misdemeanours. And if our blood boils at any form of communalism, we ought to see that racist thoughts don't even fleet through our minds.

We ought to be constantly aware that we have the power to and the onerous responsibility of influencing the younger generation following us. And significantly, we cannot forget the power of our democratic right to choose the right representatives that we are endowed with.

To cut a long story short, I would like to believe that civil society movements can help a democracy bloom or cast its doom, depending upon how we are able to delegate the division of labour between the leaders of such movements and individuals like us.