An Unusual Birthday Gift

 8^th Dec 1992:  An afternoon I vividly remember today even on its 20^th anniversary. I had turned 6 and was jumping and dancing around whole house because of my birthday party supposed to be celebrated in eve. All my colony friends and their kin were invited. The expected events included cake cutting, numerous kids’ games, and of course, the most desired gifts. Mine being a big family, we hardly had birthdays for everyone those days. In fact if I may remember, it was one of my few birthdays ever celebrated at home.  My brother’s friends (all of age 11-12) were lending him a hand in spreading ribbons and inflating balloons. Aroma of delicacies like Rasgullas, chole, custard, sandwiches and dozen other delicacies was pervasive across the rooms.  A perfect memorable evening was on the cards. Suddenly my dad’s friend who was a DIG in Police appeared at the door. They indulged in a serious conversation for around 10 minutes before he left. Dad (Abbu is what I call him) took some heavy steps towards the living room’s sofa and called for Mom. After ten minutes Mom asked me to pack few clothes and stuff of mine immediately. She said we were going to stay at a relative’s place outside the city for the next few days. Aghast as I was, I cried infuriatingly. What about my birthday party? What would my friends say? Mom was too perplexed to explain and I was too small to understand what was going on.

As it turned out, on 6^th December,1992 Babri Masjid was demolished in Ayodhya, around 120 km away from Lucknow. The event was unfolded after a series of religious fanaticism, demagogic oratory and mud-slinging from the leaders of both religious communities in an unprecedented manner in the history of independent India. In the aftermath of the demolition, communal riots broke out in various parts of the country. Mine was a ‘hindu-dominated area’. Such terms like hindu-dominated, muslim-dominated which were in oblivion before the demolition, have become essential ingredients of every media report ever since.

So Abbu’s DIG friend came to abreast him with the tensed situation and a possible communal attack on our home. He advised us to move to a safer location for few days. I, alien to all these happenings, was agonized. To console me, my brother’s friends gave me the gifts in noon instead of customary tradition of giving them at the time of party. Among the gifts, there was a book on stories of Mahabharata and Hindu mythologies.

As we spend the next ten days at the outskirts of city, elders indulged in conversations involving uncertainty and impending dangers. I was, though engrossed in the stories of Mahabharata day in and day out. The book was in Hindi, and many terms were indigestible for me so I kept bugging elders every time. Ironic it may sound, but when everyone around me was deliberating how cruel Muslims are and how bad Hindus are; I, a 6 yr old kid, was being fascinated by the stories of Arjuna’s bravery, Eklavya’s sacrifice and Yudhisthar’s magnanimity. All my growing years, I used to flaunt my grip on these stories in front of my ‘’Hindu’’ friends and teased them on me knowing more. Little did they know how much that book played a role in me acquiring that knowledge.

Today looking back, I find a profound impact of that book and those ten days 

on me being a staunch liberal and secular individual. What helped me was the fact that even at the height of communal hatred, Abbu never desisted me from reading a book on Hindu mythologies. Today, Babri Masjid/ Ram Janmbhoomi issue is in obscurity. None of the major newspapers have given any prime footage to the story on its 20^th anniversary. People born in 1990s may hardly apprehend what a dreaded monster that issue was once. But the seeds of communal hatred are still not dead.  People might let the issue go, but those who stand to benefit from it, notably politicians, will never stop infusing life in it.

 I, as a silent onlooker can’t hope to change much. But given a chance, I would like to see more kids exchanging Islamic story books and Hindu mythological stories with each other on their birthdays.

                               A Land Of Wolves

There is an old cliché that if you want to know the humane level of any society, observe the treatment of handicaps and elderly people in it. I take the liberty here to include the treatment of women and children too. Every now and then we come across few soul-stirring incidents which shake the very pedestals of human conscience or even the idea of humanism itself. The Guwahati  incidence of girl being molested in primitive barbaric manner was an epitome of that itself in full glory. A mute nation of 1.2 billion spectacled on TV this horrendous crime whose nonplussing nature left everyone flabbergasted. Many of them, the so called ‘intelligentsia’ made it a dinner table conversation. Many girls and their mothers vent out a silent prayer to God to protect them from such incidents every time they step out in a local train, bus or metro. A large population as expected flipped the channel and watched those tear-jerker soap operas or music channels. A miniscule fraction had an uneasy sleep with those horrifying images haunting them. A day later, a self-mandated ‘social panchayat’ barely a 60 km away from the National capital announced the diktat curbing the women’s independence to bare minimum. But it is not about these one or two bizarre obnoxious events only. People might say, blabbering on net won’t solve the case. I’m aware of that. I’m not solving the case. I’m presenting my resentment as an Indian and a human being. Today I feel ashamed to call myself a ‘mard’, whatever that means. If stripping down a helpless adolescent girl in a downtown area and getting away with a guffaw is a display of machismo, then I would love to spend my life in a country of hermaphrodites.  Come on people, what has got into everyone??? Enough is enough. Stop basking in the glory of being proud Indians and chanting your country as the ‘Greatest in the World’. This is blatant chauvinism which is bound to doom everyone. Yes, I don’t think ours is the greatest nation in the world, not even close to it. A nation is not about its landscapes or geographical assets. A country is what the people living in it are. And if such wolves inhabit the country in all the parts, then it’s nothing more than a jungle. Yes, a jungle where wolves wear pants and shirts. Wolves that go berserk after getting drunk on streets but treat any female consuming alcohol as a whore, a piece of raw meat which is required to satiate their hunger. These wolves issue diktats that ours is a cultural land where women shouldn’t drink or wear revealing clothes and should confine to the roles of these wolves-reproducing mothers.  What about your culture, your ethics and nationalism you leech? Stop making these frequent visits to Tirupati, Ajmer, Shirdi, Bangla Saheb, the local temples and mosques. God will never be pleased with you no matter how dark are the sandal liners on your forehead or how long the beard you keep. You may not touch non-veg and liquor for life, God won’t give you any brownie points if you’ve kept this wolf alive inside you.

I was born in an educated, unorthodox family, where the interpretation of culture didn’t vary from my sister to me. Yes, I’m a practicing Muslim and proud of my roots. No matter what the perceptions are, I vociferously vouch for the dignity and rights of the women not in spite of being a Muslim but because of it. And I know a fair amount of my religious information backing me. Prophet Mohammed PBUH said ‘’never look down upon people who’ve daughters. Remember, I’m a father of daughters too. Daughters are the blessing of Almighty upon you, a proof that He is happy with you. ’’ a reason why one can see the predominance of names like Fatima and Zainab in Muslim families.                                                  
 Alas, merely naming won’t make the prophet and his God content. Nor will establishing giant statues of Goddesses like Laxmi, Durga,Kali  and Sarasvati if their own human incarnations are pursued as sex objects.

From Mangalore to Lucknow to Mumbai to Delhi to even the perceivably liberal cities of North-East, an obnoxious breed of wolves and jackals are breeding and quadrupling. I reject this distinction of India-Bharat here. No village is better, no city is safer. People are either actors in these crimes, or worse, they are the silent onlookers.  Anxious people are worrisome about giving birth to daughters. They are dreading about their future and safety- adding one of the major reasons behind female feticide and infanticide; a reason which Amir Khan’s Satyamev Jayte missed to elucidate.

Eve-teasers, rapists and molesters are out in the jungle blatantly. The common college goers and working females on one hand have learned to be prone to the passing remarks and glares from the nooks and on the other hand, pray silently that the next victim of any wolf pack would not be them. As for the rest, we are still busy getting stuffed food in our mouth by our ‘mommies’, getting done with our share of daily rituals of worshipping Goddesses and as soon as we step out of our cozy homes, checking the neckline of the female standing near the bus stop and deducing the number of men she must’ve slept with according to the dress she is wearing. And yeah, end of the day, posting ‘’India is the greatest country’’ on facebook. Middle class indulges in cribbing about the failure of the establishment while forgetting that ‘One gets the government he deserves’. If we are demons, we can’t expect angels to be our caretakers. People like me are left wondering what type of creatures we are? Ostriches, I guess.

plight of a solitudinarian

The clock strikes the chord producing an annoying sound disturbing the silence of night. I turn in its direction to check the time- 4:00 am. The wee hours approaching and not an iota of drowsiness in my eyes. Days after days, weeks after weeks…its more than a quarter past year since I've experienced a cosy sleep in the darkness of night.

Like a mechanical device following pre-programmed instructions, I get up to make extra strong black coffee and have few long sips… People came and went from life, old friends left, new ones came, best friends parted away and soon turned into not so close ones to be gradually replaced by a new set of friends.. I weigh 12 kgs more than i used to during college days which weren't too far a distant memory, merely 2.5 years to be precise.I wear spects now mostly and when I look back at my college pics, I feel I'm fairer now. I speak less than before and think more. I spend less now and save more. Small kids get away at times by calling me uncle which cud've resulted in their bashing by me 2 years back. I prefer my macbook with a fast net connection or a good book left to all by myself rather than a fun-filled outing with friends.A weekend well spent may mean not stepping out of the flat for whole 2 days too now.

Friends of college who used to swear on our friendship tales and moaned on how would they survive without each other are incidentally doing very well in their respective jobs.Those who've gotten into US/UK universities are probably busy into swearing on new friendship tales. And those who've tied the knots are ,though left with no other choice, swearing on their spouses now …

Am I passing through the mid-life crisis now? Wait..I’m not even close to thirty.Probably mid-20s crisis wud be more appropriate. Am I finally settling down to realise that there is a difference between solitude and isolation & the former can actually be gratifying? What is it about the solitude that I’m drawn so much into it?Is it because of the comparatively high-paced life I lived during my college days engulfed in all kinds of weird habits that now I run for solace? Is it because of the unkept promises of those whom I counted upon? Or is it the stigma of myself not able to do much justice to someone’s expectations? Is it because of my hurting someone somewhere sometime that I feel this constant repulsiveness from new relations? Or is it because somewhere I might be nursing a grudge, an unfulfilled desire, a void caused by someone?

Am I the only one sailing into this peculiar boat of solitude? Probably not. Are my friends, experiencing the same mid-20s crisis, feel the perplexity time and again? Are they too at times philosophical for no reason? Alienated and silent without any extra ordinary purpose? Probably yes.

Are we drifting towards a state where we’re clueless about the inherent voids in life? Are we feeling isolated in the crowd after a while more often than before? Are we experiencing that our saddest thoughts engulf the mind immediately after coming out of a good news? Are we carrying enough baggages of our past which need to be offloaded now? Is it something which stops us from being truly liberated, totally ecstatic? Are we becoming accustomed to half-filled laughters, nods without thinking,cynical about maximum beauties of life?

Are we getting trapped into what I call the ‘dilemma of prefering to be a solitudinarian or a social’??