Aren’t we all the same?
I am not sure whether I’ve shared this lockdown anecdote before but it’s a funny one so here it goes. My dad proudly falls in the I-don’t-care category. When a young person claims that she doesn’t give a damn, she is usually bluffing. When an elderly person in his early 70s claims the same, you’ve got a lot to worry about. When social distancing was imposed and movement restrictions were raised, my dad was still trying his level best to not disrupt his routine. His morning walk is quite dear to him and he would sneak out before 5.30am to complete his rounds in the local park. Last month, to his misfortune, a cop was standing outside the gate and the following conversation took place in Marathi.
Cop: “Where are you going?”
Dad: “Home.”
If you ask around in your circle what they think is the most suicide-friendly profession in India, you might get varied answers. According to some stuck in the sedentary IT jobs, software profession must be it. According to those who read a bit more, manual scavenging has to be the correct answer. Those who once read newspapers and still do, farming would be it. All of the above are brilliant guesses but they don’t match the question. Yes, software professionals tend to overwork (and are underpaid) leading to a lot of stress but they are far from the ‘worst’ radar. Manual scavenging is unpardonable in 2020 but when you read about it, you’ll be confused by the conflicted data. Different studies point to different rate of casualty. According to one report, there have been about 300 deaths in this category over the last four years — about 75 deaths per annum. However, voluntarily stepping into sewage can be an ambiguous way of being in a suicide mission. On the other side, about 30 farmers kill themselves in our country on a daily basis, with the majority (per capita) suicides taking place in Maharashtra, Karnataka and Kerala. Yet, farming is still not the most suicide-friendly profession. The depressing answer belongs to housewives. According to a recent study done by Brookings, among the different demographic categories, housewives report the largest number of suicides (18%) while farmers report much lower (11%). Different women take drastic decisions depending on the circumstances that they find themselves forced into: abusive husband, harassing in-laws, societal pressure for bearing children, violence, lack of financial independence, zero agency, etc. The problem is of perception as much as it is of the prevalent conditions. To improve this stat in the coming years, the policy-makers ought to find ways to empower womenfolk who are anyway stuck in a thankless mela of domestic responsibilities.
When you fall down in public — could be from a bicycle or thanks to a banana peel — what is your foremost reaction? I don’t know about you but mine is to check whether somebody has noticed my decline. Doesn’t matter whether I’ve broken my femur bone as long as nobody has seen me in my embarrassing glow. Right? I am sure I am not alone in this. Yet, the interesting episodes of shame often include nobody else but you. Happened to me one evening last July outside our local market. I was walking home busy on my phone as usual and suddenly felt a blunt object crash against my head. A sharp pain followed and for a moment, my mind went through hundreds of possibilities: I am being robbed, I’ve got a mortal enemy, I must have pissed off somebody on social media, etc. All these thoughts scrolled on the canvas of my consciousness within a second or so and I immediately looked behind me to check who it is. Plot twist: There was nobody. It was then I realized that I had hurriedly grazed my head against the low-hanging branch of the neem tree. Since that day, you wouldn’t find me walking on footpath with my eyes engrossed in the chess game on my phone. Lesson learned.
Speaking of online chess, nothing, absolutely nothing, can beat the joy of defeating trash talkers. Although I must admit that the platform boasts heavily of soft-spoken individuals from across the world, you’ll still find some jerks who will keep bantering. Particularly when you are playing blitz/rapid and know for a fact that your opponent is online with you and is engaged in a live game. You are in continuum with somebody somewhere glued to a chessboard. No distraction is entertained during these moments; no phone calls, no chore requests, no nothing, no nobody. The slightest of error during such games can prove costly. During a prolonged daily game (24-hour window), you can at least rectify your mistakes over time; speed chess can be extremely brutal for your ego. And if you’re unlucky enough to find a bigmouth opponent, you will click the ‘rematch’ button and hope dearly that you don’t lose again.
In this lockdown, how many online series have you bingewatched? Not asking out of curiosity. Just wondering whether our existential crisis is in congruence with the rabbit hole of content. We consume therefore we are? There was a time when I took immense pride and pleasure in locating a torrent file and downloading a coveted movie/documentary/etc. Not anymore. I, alongside my wife, simply log onto Netflix/Prime/Hotstar and click on ‘Skip Intro’ and ‘Next Episode’ like pros. I’ve noticed a slight evolution in my reactions to these shows though. Due to lack of contact and intimacy with the outside world, I end up growing way too attached to onscreen characters — Moira Rose, Haathi Ram, Pradhan Pati, to name a few — and see them in my dreams. I don’t think this has happened before.
Speaking of streamworthy content, I am always thrilled to witness a production where a character actor grabs the limelight. All good actors deserve to bag great roles. And that’s what happened with Jaideep Ahlawat in Paatal Lok on Amazon Prime. To grant you a tiny spoiler alert, the show begins with his face and ends with his face. What he does — and he does a lot of things, reminding us once again that there is room for rooted writing that isn’t afraid of the dust in our hinterland — during those nine episodes can hardly be contained within words. There are some shows that are must-watch and then there are very few shows that are must-experience. Mr. Ahlawat ensures that Paatal Lok falls in the second bucket.
According to historians, the golden age of Islam unfolded from the 8th century until the 13th century, with the first 300 years playing a critical role. During this period, there were scientific and mathematical breakthroughs, unprecedented work in architecture, astronomy and alchemy, and splendid innovations in administration. To give you an academic gist, there are more stars named in Arabic than in any other language. Similarly, the graduation gown worn today by college students across the globe is a remnant of Arabic (Islamic) tradition, not European (Christian). To sum it up in millennial terms, it was cool as well as rad. However, to understand this man-made phenomenon better, you’ll have to read and understand what the caliphates were up against. There are a lot of myths involved here but for history’s sake, let’s play along. After the demise of the Prophet, the caliphs took over — just like Peter established papacy after Jesus left the scene — and achieved what is yet to find a parallel in recorded history. The Abbasids managed to spread Islamic conquest from Arab heartland towards northern Africa and southern Europe. According to one estimate, the closest analogy we can have to their achievement is witnessing the Eskimos defeat the USA as well as the USSR at the height of Cold War. Imagine a small tribe of like-minded individuals boldly taking upon the world they knew and succeeding like never before. All the studied events from that era point to clinical militarism as well as ruthless expansion. Nothing else explains the downfall of established empires in the way of their conquest, be it in Egypt or Spain. However, in my opinion, that era wasn’t the golden age of Islam. The 21st century is on its way to upgrade that title. Within the next 15–20 years, Islam is slated to replace Christianity as the most adhered faith. In the same line, Africa is en route to becoming the first Islam-dominated continent in the world; currently the Islam-Christian (north-south, respectively) divide is in favour (43%-50%) of the latter. Evidently, the Quranic principle of Da‘wah has never been more pronounced than in the Internet Age. Yes, it’s a number game but it’s an intriguing one. The greater question is, at what point does this competition end? In other words, when does a golden age upgrade to platinum?
Data can be gory as well as oasislike. How you read something says a lot about what you’re looking to read. For instance, if I told you that data suggests that there has been an uptick in the adoption of Welsh, Tulu and Guarani (by natives), you will be glad. However, you need to read beyond the layers. For instance, a few years ago, Marathi was reported to be the only state language to undergo a decline in adoption. This happened not because Maharashtrian families started conversing in some other language but because of the mass influx of migrant workers who didn’t adopt Marathi. As a result, the data wagged a red flag. The politics of language is hidden in the silence of economics. The reason a Marwari trader adopts Kannada in Bangalore and Khasi in Shillong has more to do with the necessity of the marketplace and less about lingual fidelity. Similarly, Hebrew was the last ancient language to resurrect successfully, mainly because the Israeli state machinery couldn’t have it any other way. Even if Dr. Ambedkar wanted Sanskrit to be the national language of India, we can’t expect it to be a spoken language anytime soon. Every month, two languages die out globally. As gory as it may sound, this is an endless funeral and no rate of adoption — either by native speakers or otherwise — can alter the reality.
According to many shoots of Vedic philosophy, all living beings are part of a sole aatma. What we call life is present in all creatures whether the consciousness is shared or not. Which means that the life of an ant you didn’t think twice before stomping on matters as much as yours (or your dear ones). It’s a rather unique way of thinking about everything around us. If you can feel pain, so can everybody else. If you can feel mirth, so can everybody else. And so on. In simpler words, we are all the same. Not just fellow humans but the whole world itself and possibly, the universe. When science shows us that we share 99% of our DNA with chimpanzees, we are amazed. But then the same science tells us that we share 60% of our DNA with bananas and 35% of our DNA with daffodils. Or that our DNA is fully capable of producing feathers but our evolution chose not to; why fly when you can build aircrafts? Maybe, just maybe, we are indeed all the same to a large extent. Despite all our latent differences.
While watching Panchayat on Amazon Prime, I understood something very primal about our national identity. You see, people like us who were fortunate enough to go to school don’t acknowledge their privileges. Take for example, our national anthem. A beautiful piece of poetry by Tagore sung by millions of students in their respective assemblies. But this knowledge is unwittingly denied to those who didn’t go to school. How are they to learn the lyrics? Chances are a mother who spends her entire day worrying won’t be taught the anthem by her child when he returns home from school, In fact, it’s worth wondering when exactly did you and I learn those lyrics. Not that there was a special class where we were made to rote. No, that never happened. We just picked them up as we walked along the years. The most ironic bit about this 7-decade long development unfolds in a multiplex where the national anthem is played before the movie starts and moviegoers take to their feet. The cleaning staff stand by the sides too least bothered by the reality of whether they know the lyrics or not.
If you follow me on Instagram, you must be aware that I call myself a trivia slut for a reason. And in the spirit of lockdown and my renewed passion for quizzing, I’ve started participating in India Wants to Know Quiz every Sunday afternoon. During my school/college days, I used to be superactive in the circuit but after dropping out of college, I quit the whole shebang. A quiz, for lack of better words, is a humbling experience in learning how little we really know. For the uninitiated, a lot of useless information floats during an interactive quiz like this. With every passing question, you go away with myriad little factoids, feeling a little enriched than earlier. I enjoy this process because I would have learned these nuggets from books and non-human operatives. Must be the isolation of lockdown but it’s nice to hear enthusiastic folks share their answers and guesses online. Those who aren’t fond of quizzing might crib about the uselessness of knowing who edited two of Naveen Patnaik’s books (it was Jacqueline Kennedy!). But they miss out on a bigger truth: everyday we learn something new and then we die.
