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Thursday, April 29, 2010

Banyan Treaty: The story of 'Yes' and 'Think'




Once upon a time there were two individuals one named Yes, and the other named Think. They both lived in a place called a Village, but had little in common. Yes was disciplined, almost cultish and was governed by an esoteric group of people about whom the village knew little.

Yes never sat at the village banyan tree, rather he was always seen in another small settlement away from the village called Walled Street. Here everything was walled and mysterious people shaked hands with each other, without smile.
Yes was not popular as you can understand from his exclusivity and seclusion from the mass, yet he owned the biggest house in the village and brought the first bullock cart. Yes dealt in some paper thing called Money, while the whole village lived on barter system.

When people reaslised Yes has more objects, bigger house and visibly more material than anyone else they asked what is it that makes him different, Yes said it’s the paper thing that gets him the best stuff and explained the inefficiencies in the self-sufficient barter system that has kept the villagers without material gains. The villagers felt very small when Yes used numerous exotic words like ‘streamline’, ‘topline,’ ‘bottomline,’ ‘operating margin’ etc with a peculiar ease which indicated his superiority over the villagers in the art of material acquisition.

Here comes the role of Think in this story, Think was the only villager who didn’t agree with Yes. The village council was convinced with Yes’s view that the closed economy and self sufficiency is restricting the entry of newer, bigger and better things in their life. So the village decided to sell their huge rice stock stored in mud bunkers to outsiders in return of money, which they later used to build large houses, getting bullock carts and every other luxury they could think of. They were paying a charge to all the sad looking, supposedly intelligent and polyglots at the Walled Street settlement.

Walled Street people never cultivated anything in the recent history but knew where to buy and sell things and they build a wall to prevent the outside villages to know about them.

In the mean time Think, dejected by the disapproval from the villagers started staying to himself. He was the only one who saved his share of rice for three years and stayed in the smallest hut. Everyone else had a bigger existence than him in the village. Yes became the richest and bought a boat which he rowed in the lake near the village. Villagers also wanted to board the boat, where Yes started charging them and made more money.

Yes by now owned more exotic things and would charge everyone to use it. The villagers adapted to the culture of being charged for earning the new source of pleasure that Yes brought into the village.

Everyone pitied Think for his foolishness of not selling the grains and living a small and undignified life. But they had little time and interest to sit and talk with Think, by now treated as the Village lunatic.

The villagers were interested in having more paper money than anything else and Yes was their guide. Yes found out all the grains are finished in the village and tilling the land, waiting for rains will take another year. He proposed the villagers to sell their land completely or enter into a ‘strategic alliance’ with people of the Walled Street to ‘reinvent’ opportunities in their farmland which till then was only meant for rice cultivation.

The Walled Street people now pay an annual fee to the villagers and use it for cultivating Opium, considered as the pleasure flowers, using labour services from another village with who they also had strategic alliance.

Money flowed for another few years. Think was the only one who tilled his ahre of rice land and also collected forest produce to save enough food in his mud bunker, yet he remained the ‘poorest’, as Yes defined him in technical terms.

Around this time the Walled street people stopped paying a fee to the villagers and proposed a forced acquisition using army of people from another village with whom they too had strategic alliance. The people of Yes and Think’s village had no option but to lose their lands to the Walled Street people, who till few years living on alms from the village people.

Every villager sold his house and later sold themselves as bonded labours for assisting in Walled Street people in opium cultivation in the fields which used to be their own few days ago.

The only person who survived the entire crisis was Think, who had enough food that he managed to get some money and bought his own securitymen and protected his farm land and even acquired some more in the uncultivated forest area. The Walled Street was keenly watching him but didn’t touch him for they knew Think has the sense of what they are upto and will never be conned.

Now you would want to know what happened to Yes. He was caught and held captive by a group of villagers who now live in the forests nearby after being evicted of their farm by Walled Street owners and are organizing themselves to fight back and cultivate their land once again.

Over a period of time the lands were back to the original villagers after non violent protests in-front of Walled Street and agreeing to the proposal that only Yes will be considered guilty of any in appropriate behavior they think that Walled Street might have done to them.

The villagers agreed under the leadership of Think. Yes was hanged under the Banyan tree and peace and confidence building treaty was signed with Walled Street later taught in history books as the ‘Banayan Treaty.’

Tuesday, April 27, 2010

The End of Romantics: The promise keeper

The End of Romantics: The promise keeper

The promise keeper




Indian Idol has been one of my favourite shows and I’m sure many of us like the format, where chances of bias till the final stages are least. It’s also our favourite because it brings the human emotions into real play.

Sometimes humiliating, some times jubilating and sometimes heartbreaking, but always genuine.

Last evening the show for this season began with auditioning across India for the final Mumbai competition.

As every year, the sets of audition this time also brought the varieties of people. The arrogant tailor from Aligarh, who sang exactly like Anu Mulllick, but to his dismay was disqualified, the over confident uber-chic girl from Delhi who sang effortlessly yet found no takers, the 19-year-old sweet, nervous girl who sells insurance policies to fund her education and needed a hug from the gorgeous Sunidhi Chauhan before making the judges spell-bound with her melodious voice, the almost blind boy whose voice is a gift and so on.

After the end of IPL cricket, this well suited to my dose of entertainment, despite the moral nagging from inside to stay away from watching the harassment of simple lads from small towns and villages, I was glued to the show, laughing uncontrollably, when colorful people with their idiosyncrasies pestered the judges Anu, Sunidhi and Salim Merchant.

But one moment in the show forced me, the judges and I believe everyone with a heart into tears, for two minutes at least. There came this thin, cool eyed, Armyman Manoj with his simplistic demeanour, characteristic of people from the hills of Uttarakhand, where he came from.

As he entered Manoj touched the podium where he was to sing and said something which was very painful and stays today when I am writing.

He said he after long efforts of getting leave from Army has managed to come to this audition in Delhi where 12,000 others were also present, and he thinks himself lucky for reaching the podium not because he wants to become the Indian Idol, but because he made a promise to someone which will be fulfilled today.

His sister, who would have turned 23 by now, lost the battle to cancer a year ago, but took a promise from Manoj that he must go to Indian Idol audition, in her death bed.

An Army personnel, who spends most of his time protecting the motherland, also turned a good brother and appeared at the audition. He and the judges believed his sister must be watching him as he sang, ‘phoolon ka taron ka sbka kehna hai, lakhon hazaron mein meri behna hai...saari umer humein sang rehna hai....”

I cried, the judges cried and you can understand there was no tempo in the voice when someone is managing such a tough emotional moment. He was chocked all the while he sang but delivered the greatest promise he ever made to his sister. I’m in tears as I write this. It must have been very tough for him. I wish he feels very good after the auditions and may his sister rest in peace. Amen...

Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Midnight thoughts: social networking is good


I had always hated to become a writer by night, except some educational writing, compelled by the desire to earn a degree. But the last few days have brought the writer in me to wake only after midnight.

The IPL is surely to be blamed for this. I read my daily dose of book after the night IPL match ends around 1130 pm and after midnight your body and mind gets diluted and flows in the ether.

If you listen to equally airy thin music from the collection of ‘Guns and Roses’, Kurt Cobain and Bob Dylan, the heart pounds like a unstable volcanic mass and thoughts erupt and spread like clouds that can burst as the right temperament touches them.

One such thought burst yesterday, technically this morning as I write. The thought is about being eternally happy and innocent. Do we ever manage to stay innocent in all our thoughts and actions? I think we don’t.

The ability to hide sorrow with the faint smile and happiness with the dumbfounded awkwardness is familiar to all of us in workplaces.

Those who are lucky have a family and friend network to be innocent and real whenever they want to. I think for millions of others the gift of social networking is doing miracle.

It’s like the village chowpal or you, where you have your small society that gathers, drinks chai, hookah or whatever they want. They talk about all sorts of issues -- sensitive, insensitive, political, social – and that too in small groups of likeminded ones.

Here you have the option to share your mundane views without being rebuked. You share your best moments through pictures, which can be enhanced with the gift of technology and spares you the time and effort of actually looking good.

You can share your disillusioned state of mind by sharing Bob Dylan‘s Knocking on Heaven’s Door video through YouTube, despite actually being a hope less singer yourself.

It’s good for your self esteem, your heart and mind too. You learn the slangs and management case studies here before anywhere else. I dare to disagree with whoever did the study inferring social networking sites reduce productivity. I claim they boost in more than one ways the individual’s moral, ego and power her/him even to stay on the top of her/ his professional developments.

Even in personal relationships it helps you find some and also protects you from losing some. It helps you with regular birthday wishes, which all men now can’t blame they forgot.

It also gives you opportunities to wish at personal and professional developments thereby cutting on actual travels. Lot of carbon foot prints reduced. Besides you chat and save millions of trees every year, it’s another thing you destroy them as toilet papers and on Pizza delivery.

The verdict is social networking makes your life better. As I am writing the last line, I can say it took me about 25 minutes to compose this prose and I’m still listening to Knocking on Heaven’s Door on the background.

Note: By the I posted this story I had switched to Lady Gaga's hit number' Bad Romance' so that my romance with midnight writing ends and I could catch some sleep.

PHOTOGRAPH: By Samrat Mukherjee. We all social networking aficionados, like the thirsty little boy pumping and getting his water, do our tweets, FB messages and meet our thirst of virtual society.

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

When I was young and innocent


When I was young and innocent. Discovered this photograph yesterday. The ease, interest and innocence I used to have a decade ago inspired me. Devoting a complete post to my photograph is a narcissistic idea, but I am compelled to post it for the sheer happiness it brought to me. Behind me in this photograph is a coniferous plant, which was my idea of a Jurassic era plant. Thousand metres on right was the large orchard, two-hundred metres on right was the girl's hostel, a road I usually avoided for the fear of being ragged. Thousand metres on the north was Yamuna river. The month was December and the photographer was Junwa, a friend from Burma, who went into oblivion after graduation.

Thursday, April 08, 2010

The Lonely White Horse


The Lonely White Horse, my latest acrylic-on-canvas work is a portrayal of the peaceful Indian security personnel. He may be from any section of the Indian security apparatus, always smiling, judicious with power and protector of the sovereignty of the large sub-continent. But almost complete absence of political leadership has converted him into a sitting duck. The enemy of the country like the blood thirsty red horse is engulfing him from all the sides – north, west, east, south - and even within the country. Salute to the bravery and spirit of such a white horse. But will he find a good leader who is as concerned about the country’s security and autonomy as him?
(Disclaimer: I have learnt my horse patterns from MF Hussain's horse paintings.)

Wednesday, April 07, 2010

'The Rosewood' restaurant on Varuna lake road


Neelima Bhat was a reluctant restaurateur, forced into the profession by the untimely demise of her husband. Thirty years after taking reins of ‘The Rosewood’, she still had not accepted the fact of her, a woman, managing an eatery. Married as early as 16, Neelima knew that her husband’s family owns one of the best restaurants in this small hill station, but managing it for rest of her life never crossed her mind. Bhats are among the most respected and wealthy families in the town and reside on the lake road, the exclusive address which had unobstructed view of the grand Varuna lake. Not even tourists had an easy way to this part of the Himalayan hill town. Everyone had a private balcony that overlooked flowing clouds that fell over Varuna changing colour every few hours.

The Bhats converted a part of their bungalow into ‘The Rosewood’, way back in 1920s. ‘The Rosewood’ remained the only comprehensive and easy access for the tourist to the lake view. No wonder it was never out of business whether it snows or rains, Neelima always had visitors. The Rosewood was styled in colonial architecture and always charmed the foreigners, babus from Delhi, writers and romantic urbanites who always looked for the last best symbols of the Raj on a Himalayan journey. And undoubtedly the lake view offered a lot more in addition.

Neelima was always charmed by the beauty of the lake when she came into “The Rosewood” nonchalantly in her late teens, on a quiet evening to have some romantic moments with her husband away from the gaze of the in-laws. Prakash, her husband would often show her the lonely moonlight dinner suite in the restaurant.

Even today, Neelima sits alone in the moonlight dinner suite on days of full moon remembering the beautiful moments she shared Prakash in the that corner. Ram Parwesh, the sixty year old manager and Prakash’s old friend managed everything such days and closed the moonlight suite from tourists.

Neelima’s young daughter is now back at home after spending six long years in a boarding school in Dehradoon. She wanted more of her mom and was not quite comfortable with her being in the restaurant all the day. Neelima also wanted to bridge the distance with her daughter by making surprise intermittent visits to the house during the day. But Nidhi, her daughter was not amused.

(The picture here is taken by Samrat Mukherjee, one of the best photographers of our time at Har-ki-Dhun in the Himalayas)