Bus 332 (What Is and What Should Never Be)

When i watched the movie Bus 174, i felt embittered and stirred as much as a movie can move a man. The masterful rendition of  the documentary asked question, which i strove to ponder over for many days, wondering what man has made of man.  Happening in Rio-de-Janiero, thousands of miles away from where i am, there was a sense of unbelongingness to the entire turn of events depicted in the movie, the connect happening on the fundamental humane level, which at times can be concieted and patronisingly judgemental.

However, yesterday, the day before Diwali, what happened in Mumbai, when a young man boarded a double decker bus from Sakinaka, and took out a revolver, and in a menacing way, demanded to have an interview with the Commisioner of Police and a prominent leader of the city, it was different.  The conductor stopped the bus, the police arrived and within minutes, stormed the bus and fired 13 rounds of ‘to-whom-it-may-concern’ bullets, after the youth had fired a few times aimlessly. It became personal.

All this happening in Mumbai, a city i have surreptitioius developed a feeling for, in broad daylight. In the political ping-pong that followed, one justified the action of the police, while other condemned it as a brutal act of murder. I dont know what to make of it: could the police have delayed action, first trying to negotiate the impasse, what if the youth had opened fire on the passenger? What i do know is that the man didnt get a fair trail in a court of law for his crime. 

These days, as i grow increasingly pessimistic, i wonder if, acts of violence, as long as it is retaliatory, is sanctioned by society. Be it terrorism and counter-terrorism, be it mob violence, and counter mob violence, riot and more riots, deaths and counter deaths. What the UN says, or Human Rights bodies say hardly make any sense, as long as the common man and the society he builds, allows or disallows such acts. Movies made recently, editorial peices by leaders of the nation, media of all form, and the response it garnishes, leaves me in quandary.

A nation, a city, a society, a community is shaped, i suppose, by certain dynamic notions of virtue and vice, and is governed by certain unwritten principles of malice and love. I have strived to decipher the palimpset that hold these decalogues, but like all labyrinths, here also i guess i have come back to where i had started. Its a dog eat dog world, and not figuratively.

Nemesis

There is perhaps no sight as pitiable as a man in a jungle confronting a predator. Thousands of years of evolution going down the drain, and all that remains in the two-legged creature is a primate fear. A fear that is so encumbering that he cant run, he cant fight, he cant even submit peacefully to the fate that confronts him. He is truly and surely, as good as dead.

The tiger on the other hand, has been bred and honed for the kill. He knows his prey, by the slightest smell, more than a lover. His mind is clear, and his claws intract, his ears alert for the most minimal movement of the air, his body curled up, ready for a murderous leap, in short his entire existence is wrapped up in the act of the kill.

The man stands still, looking out helplessly, knowing well that a tiger always attacks from the rear, and eye contact is the last thing it likes. The tiger remains curled up, hissing out slow purrs between breaths. Hours, minutes, seconds, moments…

When the tiger finally leaps, the man is no longer in the body, but has become the tiger. He jumpes with the predator and digs it sharp canines in, pucturing the jugular and gets drenched in crimson blood that is alien now to him. The man, the tiger, kills, and without remorse, without thought. The tiger, the man, stands atop the dead, soul-less corpse, which is just a figement as living and as dead, as the stage where the drama is being played out.

What is dead and what is alive, who is the victor and who is the vanquished is a matter of speculation, after all…

The Quickie

After booking my ticket first thing in the morning, it was a race there on. As much as i like leisured road trips and idyllic walks, i knew this was not a time for one. Packing my bags, i had leave home after breakfast to catch my 2pm to Jaipur.

Landing in Jaipur, the first thing that happened was that my lips started cracking. With the affable autowallah asking me random questions about whence i came, and whereto i am going, and me trying to answer them in an obscurely philosophical fashion which irritated the driver to no small extent, i found myself happy in the dusty roads and dry air. It was strange, for i no longer felt like a stranger in a strange land, though that was exactly what i was. However, that was not the minor miracle of the day; it was getting a 3 day job done in a government office in 2 hours. 

Thanking my lucky stars, i boarded by bus to Delhi at 6.30pm. As afore mentioned, i love road trips, especially when they come in dying lights of the day on speeding highway. Soon the ethereal bliss passed and came the horror when i saw my ramshackle of a bus, dodging headlights. I decided this is the best get some sleep. I was awoken by my window seat fellow passenger at Kotputli. Almost half the bus emptied itself at that point. I was happy with that since i got three-seater to stretch myself. However, as if Fate balancing its act, the conductor walked up to me, and informed that the bus wont go to Delhi but stop midway. At 10 pm i didn’t have the courage to fight for consumers’ rights, instead i asked the conductor to get me another that will take me to my destination. Panged with shameful guilt he obliged. 

At Behror, it was the usual sight of small travellers’ town. It had the usual Midway resort, the usual dhaba, the usual taxis, the usual sweetmeat and liquor shops, the usual toilets and drinking water taps. What it lacked that hour was a bus to Delhi ( in spite of being assured by the conductor, that buses to Delhi leave every ten minutes). However, being the helpful conductor he was, he got us a car, which one of my fellow jetsammed passenger vehemently refused to take (quite like Dustin Hoffman from the movie The Rain Man) for he was sure his throat would be slit on the way. While the other guys took the cab, i decided to keep the company of my septuagenarian friend. We had dinner of omlette and bread, and cola, while he lectured me, in between puffs of his beedi, on the how harmful smoking is and what kind of deep-shit we were in. Luckily, we got a bus after dinner, which was on its way to Haridwar, via Delhi. Thus, sharing a the seat with a really fat lady, who was apparently going to Haridwar to relieve herself of arthritis in a bus which nearly broke my back, the last leg of the journey to Delhi was brought to a bloodless conclusion (much to the disappointment of my old mate).

Getting off at ISBT at 2am in the morning is not the smartest option. I was politely informed by one autowallah that there was a bomb scare in a particular part of Delhi with police checking every traveller on the road, and he was the only one who could take me to a safe haven. Being my sources of information highly limited, i had no choice but to be led by this good Samaritan. He was smart, he knew how to keep away from checkposts with panache. I thanked him in ways that would please him most. He tried to respond by lining up the speeding auto beside another with a less than agreeable lady passenger. I urged to make him understand that my trip was purely on business.

Next morning, after getting my work done, i made a beeline for lunch at Connaught Place. Previously, i had always been in company of my friends, in this city. Without the gang, the experience was palpably different. Nevertheless, i called up a few, and had a chat. And then decided to make the most of the trip anyway. I went to India Gate and spent sleeping on the grass which was refreshingly cooler than the rest of the city. However, at sundown i knew, i couldn’t stay here any longer, and decided to head home.

From Iconoclast to Icon: Long Journey Home!

Truth be told, i was not a fan of Sourav Ganguly right from the day he broke into the scene. Granted he scored a century in his debut test, but Mohammed Azharuddin also did the same ( not a great fan of Azharuddin either). I remember in school, that particular Biology class, when i got a “re-do” for lab-work, for saying Dravid was a better batsman than Ganguly. Neither did i get any sympathy from my classmates who thought i definitely had hormonal problems. 

All the while i was playing sceptic, Ganguly kept on hitting Muralidharan out of the park, and taking Pakistan to the laundry. Toronto, Tauntan, Trent Bridge, Ganguly shone, like no Indian left-hander before him, marauding the offside fence with sublime stroke play. He was silent and crafty, like a carpenter, grafting runs, and creating sculptures of willow and will. He was brilliant that time, possibly at par with the best, but so was Sachin, so was Dravid, so was Javagal Srinath, and Anil Kumble. 

However, things, by virtue of its being, had to change. Ganguly became captain. Thus began his crusade-like journey at changing the way cricket is played today. India then, heavy dependent on the guns-of-Navarone bat of Sachin Tendulkar, could hardly muster enough guts or gumption to hold their own in the face of quality attack on a bouncy pitch. Things were to change. Rather Ganguly was to change them. He brought in arrogance and attitude to a seemingly maverick crop. Killer of zonal politics in selection, he ushered in talented younger players he believed in, and was not hesitant to make seniors sit out if it so deemed. He flew in Javagal Srinath out of retirement and made him sit out after the first rain-washed match in Sri Lanka, he made the hugely acclaimed bowler in Anil Kumble watch from the dressing room for he felt his best spinner was someone else. He gave the luxury of first-match-failures to his crop of young turks. Conviction. Right or wrong, Ganguly was a man who stood for what he believed in. 

With time, however, Ganguly the idea, expanded beyond the 22 yards of clay. He became the face young India was looking for. Brilliant, brash and belligerent, he made the world take notice. Winning all over the world, he made sure if anything was lacking, it wasn’t self-esteem. Taking his shirt off at the mecca of cricket, or scoring 144 at a place where they could have dug his grave, or sitting out of a Test match for he detested the politics played by the ones in power, coming back from the dead like a messiah, he made statements on the field that was not enough to hold its own apologues.  Millions loved him for doing what they never could do. Millions found a vicarious redemption in the way Sourav scripted his fairytale in the biggest stadia. Sourav Ganguly had walked on water, Sourav Ganguly had become an icon. 

At a time, when he would soon he gone, questions are buzzing wild. Will be remain the culural icon that he is today? Will become a Bengali rhetoric, like greater heroes before him? Time is a cruel judge, history reverent and people forgetful. I dont care, for me, Ganguly will remain my teenage dream-god, who killed the sceptic in me, for once and for good.

Iceberged

It takes me back to the days when i read the lines “Etodin kothaye chilen?”  for the first time. An experience i believe can be worth remembering, once you know you cant put it in words, or rather you wouldn’t want to. Yet you cant help but wondering how incomplete your life has been without. How come no one told you, or you didn’t bother to find out. And once you know, you cant go back, you remain, shaken and  stirred, hoping for time to ease it out. If i have to exaggerate it, it would be equating it with what Titanic felt when she hit the iceberg.

The post, is about a certain album of the 60s, famous but overlooked by yours truly, and a writer, equally, if not more, famous in their respective circles. The album is Pet Sounds by the Beach Boys, and the writer is Jorge Luis Borges. 

Its amazing how we hit gold, like Huxley said of happiness, while looking for something else. I was still listening to Sgt. Peppers, and then something else, and then some more of McCartney and Lennon, when looking up this and that on the net, i stumbled upon The Pet Sounds. And what a revelation it has been. Musically, well, you have to listen to it, for i believe, in the process of translating a medium of expression into another quite a lot is lost. However, i can share with you a few lines of their lyrics, from one of their songs: 

I may not always love you
But long as there are stars above you
You never need to doubt it
Ill make you so sure about it
God only knows what Id be without you

or say, from another, and one of my favourite songs from the album,

Where did your long hair go
Where is the girl I used to know
How could you lose that happy glow
Oh, caroline no

From what i noticed about the album, there are two very interesting things about it.

A. Once you put the album on, and listen to one track after another, you experience something which is fresh and joyful. Lyrics and sounds, which begin at existential questioning do not end in nothing, but on the other hand, pushes the listener to a certain level of optimism, which is rare if not unique.

B. Since we are travelling upsteam in time, you cant but help yourself thinking that you have heard these sounds before. Not deja vu, but the tremendous silent impact on music in general. And it is striking different, even from Sgt. Peppers and McCartney. 

Coming to Borges, he has been an educator. That fiction can be written in ways i never knew. And again approaching, from upstream time, i found lots of parallels with my favourite authors, Pamuk and Marquez. There are stories which are told, retold, and Borges when writes them,  one cant help but feeling the freshness and genius in them. Despite being a translation, it retains the essence, which draws one to it. His works i feel (again reminding me of The Black Book) are interactive. The stories unfold, as if based on the reader’s choices while reading. Yet it is impossible to find out how different it would have if the choices had been different, for one has already walked on. It might seem strange, but try giving it a try. 

Now, dear reader, i know you will understand, how can i write in times like these!