Have you got no language?
My childhood memory is my truest possession. You may not remember who your teachers were in your third grade, let alone what you roted with your eyes closed back then. Well, I am different. Not just that, I remember all the English, Hindi and Marathi chapters from thereon. That’s how vivid an impression they left on my psyche. Each one of them. I guess I’ve always been fascinated with stories. Any story. Be it from a book or from the bloodless lips of my grandma. I didn’t care much for the ending. Happy. Sad. Vague. Morally. Immorally. None of the labels mattered to me. If you had a story to keep me engrossed, I was yours. As a kid, when my cousin used to visit us, I used to prod him about the customers he served — he worked as a waiter for a restaurant named Dhanraj in Khar — to get him to tell me something new, something unusual. One day, it used to be about Suresh Oberoi telling him that he is a good waiter and another day, it used to be some fat lady who was rude. I believe I was always interested in what people were made up of. However, I wasn’t particularly interested in people per se. It was always about what they had to offer. My unapologetic selfishness has to be my worst possession.
Speaking of childhood, do you remember there used to be something called “Fill in the blank” or “Complete the following”? I do. I can recollect quite a lot of the sentences from EVS (before Science took over), History and Geography. One keen memory from second grade tells me why exactly our literacy system was/is at fault. It went like this: A giraffe has a long neck because it has short legs. Instead of making our kids think, the system expects them to follow the set line quietly. It’s pathetic, to say the least. The biggest disconnect is lingual. How do you expect a kid who speaks a vernacular language at home to transform into a new person just because he has learned how to write a 6-letter word on his own? After all, you can teach a kid a new language but you can’t teach a kid to think in that language. This scam didn’t end with giraffes. There were other examples too. A peacock is a flightless bird because it can’t fly. It was only after moving north to Gurgaon and witnessing these majestic beings at close length that I saw that they aren’t really flightless like an ostrich. They can comfortably fly — while screaming at the top of their lungs — as if to say “GET OUT OF MY WAY! I DON’T KNOW HOW TO FLY!” — a behaviour I haven’t noticed in peahens — for more than 200 meters at a stretch.
After dropping out of college, I immediately got a job as a business transcriber. It was the last week of September 2007 and I remember my amma telling me to work hard just before stepping out of house. Her funda was simple: when you are working, you must give it your 100%. That advice is precisely what kept me jobful for the next four winters. Within no time, I proved to the organization that I am a hardworking asset and was appreciated too for my enthusiasm. Unfortunately, it was much later it dawned on me that diligence has nothing to do with intelligence. Smart people get more done within a shorter period of time. The trick is to find space for yourself where you can grow at a personal scale. Or else, you’ll hate yourself for ending up inside a monotonous grind. In my next stint as an entertainment journalist, I understood this concept thanks to two very supportive editors. In less than a decade, the funda changed: when you are working, you must aim to grow 100%. Being great at your job should never be the criteria. If you were great at it, you are obviously overqualified. Be good and learn to be good to yourself. Regardless of what happens, don’t end up like the court jester. He can’t afford to be great at his job because if he cracks a superb joke and the king dies laughing, then he will be executed.
In light of the ongoing border controversy with Nepal, it’s worth gnawing the bark of history. There are some prominent countries in the world, like China, Turkey and Pakistan, who enjoy irredentism. Going by the Oxford definition, it means a policy of advocating the restoration to a country of any territory formerly belonging — more imaginary than real — to it. What’s intriguing about this approach is you can be picky about the parts of history you choose to relate to. If it’s filled with defeat and humiliation, you blindly ignore it. Amid such cacophonic settings, it was surprising to see Nepal join the Irredentist Club. For a nation with deep historic ties with India, the current events reflect the changing political dynamics thanks to China’s growing war chest. I just hope these escalations don’t adversely affect millions of Nepalis who live in our country on the merit of their labour and lawfulness. Sadly, that’s how political ramifications work. During WW2, when the USA was fighting against Italy and Japan, the bigger victims were the Italian Americans and the Japanese Americans for no fault of their own. Similarly, during the Sino-India War of 1962, over 3000 ethnic Chinese Indians were sent to internment camps for no reason other than the fact that they were of Chinese origin. Today, there are less than 5000 Chinese Indians in our country, with a majority of them having already migrated to China. Those who are affected the most make the least noise. When the Babri masjid demolition took place in 1992, Hindus in Pakistan and Bangladesh paid the price. A decade later, some bearded men flew into two mighty buildings in New York City and as a repercussion, not only Muslims were systematically harassed in the West but even the Sikhs were routinely pulled into the mess. That’s just the way it is. We might call ourselves modern but we aren’t. And those who take the big decisions in nicely furnished hall rooms seldom do much to benefit the unseen crowd.
For the longest time, about 8 years to be precise, I wouldn’t acknowledge any of the positive feedback I received on Twitter. And I used to receive a lot of them. Not even a like on the said tweet. Nope. It was against my humility principle. In my weird view, if I acknowledged somebody’s kind words, it automatically meant that I agreed with their assessment about me or my words. So, as a sign of modesty, I would neglect all the sweetness that was blown in my direction. That was then. As of today, I am a different beast, at least on Instagram. If you say something nice about my one-liners or blog posts there, I would not only like it but also repost it as a story. No scruples. No coyness whatsoever. This change didn’t happen instantaneously. I arrived on the shores of Instagram with the same principles I followed on Twitter. But over time, I absorbed the (un)natural warmth this platform had, set against the cynical world of tweets. As a result, I began to embrace the affection that flowed my way. Quite shamelessly. If you don’t believe me, you must check out my Instagram stories.
We like to put people into boxes. Not necessarily because they are unique in their own ways but because we like to mix drinks, not personalities. A lot easier to understand people through this method. If somebody behaves in a style we could have never guessed, we use the word ‘unpredictable’ for them. If somebody behaves in a manner we could have guessed, we use the word ‘foolish’ for them. We are people but at the same time, we are not part of them. And during these moments, we discover our respective individualistic features.
Emotions are projected to be an indicator of human weakness but if you step back a bit, you’ll see a major fallacy. Humans, by design, are emotional and all our attempts to suppress our true selves lead us to an eventual lava. You may like to believe that you are what you think but aren’t you what you feel? As a social experiment, I gaze at people and wonder what would reduce a given person to tears. No, not a sucker punch in the face. There has to be something from his past — a distinct but harsh memory, a vague but pleasant memory, a piece of music, a scene from a movie, a picture of a long lost family or friend, a whiff of a particular fragrance, etc — that will make those dry eyes drain themselves out. Even the coldest of hearts have unexplored almirah in there. We know this for a fact because each one of us dreams when our eyeballs roll up.
To say that Hindutva is problematic is like reminding us the sky is blue. To a lot of us who never heard this word until 2014, what’s interesting is the amount of trust we placed in those who tell us how things are. We don’t do our studies, they do it for us. They tell us that these people are good and those people are bad. They tell us where our sympathies should lie. Which is interesting because sympathies don’t come in fixed quota — there can be enough for everyone. We believed them when they told us that India is a truly secular country, only to realize later that we pretended to be secular to gain approval from the west. None of our neighbours carried this yoke of validation. As a result, their citizens weren’t surprised all of a sudden with an ideology that was right in the middle of the society and yet so oblivious. Only time will tell how we ultimately shape up. It’d be tragic if we imitate our neighbours — Islamic Pakistan/Bangladesh/Afghanistan, communist Nepal, Buddhist Sri Lanka/Bhutan/Myanmar — and lose whatever little is left of our uniqueness. What’s funny about this situation is a country of 1.39 billion people trying to assert that it won’t compromise on its plurality. Especially when a majority of them don’t even know how to think for themselves.
Followers don’t lead the way. Something repeatedly personified by thousands of anonymous accounts on social media who boast of being ‘Hindu nationalist’ in their bios. If only it was possible to engage with these individuals and try to listen to their version of Hindu nationalism. As far as my readings go, Sanatana Dharma, by nature, can’t be restricted to land. Small surprises why two of the most popular epics, Mahabharata and Ramayana, are tragic metaphors against property. Which is why Hindu nationalism sounds like an oxymoron. When the whole premise of Hindu philosophy is set against owning or identifying with a piece of land, the outlook is bound to be universal. So, how exactly are the so-called Hindu nationalists helping either Hinduism or nationalism? In fact, organized religions like Christianity and Islam exhibit narrow worldly goals of conquering the land and bringing its inhabitants under a monocultural fold. On the other hand, Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam (“the world is one family”) might be a cliched Sanskrit phrase from the Upanishads but its message is exemplary as it doesn’t prescribe the uniformity of culture or faith. There are no stringent conditions in place for this family to co-exist. Vedic philosophy speaks of the universe and cosmic elements. Perhaps that detachment is the secret behind its unprecedented longevity. I wonder when the Hindu nationalists finally confront such a glaring paradox in their belief system.
All languages are similar in their shortcomings. You can express certain things while you fail to express something else. Being a Tuluva who grew up in Bombay of the 90s, I remember visiting our ooru (village) in Dakshina Kannada — a misnomer for a district where Tulu is the most spoken language —now in Udupi district which was carved out in 1997 — and getting mocked by cousins for using Hindi words while speaking Tulu. This from the same folks who couldn’t coin (or remember) the original word for friend. Even today, the accepted Tulu word is dosti — a genderless corruption of the Farsi word ‘dost’ meaning friend — without a hint of irony. In our country, multilingualism is taken for granted, which enables us to borrow words from other languages to fill in. It’s an incredible organic setting which is looked down upon by the purists. Understandably so. Regardless, kids here grow up picking up two or more languages at once. However, very few of us show an inclination towards a career in linguistics though. My spoken Tulu can’t be in the advanced stage but I tend to dissect certain aspects of it that are often overlooked. For instance, different language adopt different routes to insult a person for their lack of manner/etiquette. In Tulu, the phrase happens to be “baase ijji” where baase is a corruption of the Sanskrit ‘bhasha’ (language) and ‘ijji’ or ‘icchi’ is local for “is absent”. So the highest form of derision is to tell a person that he has no language at all. In my view, this must be the SI unit of cultural burn.
Whatever we know of Socrates, we know thanks to Plato. Socrates himself never wrote anything. He believed in the practice of elenchus, with too much emphasis on oral dialogues and too little on textual diction. There are many accounts of his life and they paint an interesting picture of this not-so-handsome intellectual giant. What struck me the most about his personal life was his decision to marry in his 50s. He spent more than two-third of his life all alone but ultimately decided to settle down. However, going by the Platonic records, marital bliss was sorely missing. His wife Xanthippe apparently was always nagging at him for being interested in useless pursuits (read: philosophy) with no steady income. Yet, he had three forgettable sons and didn’t think twice about his family before getting executed for his beliefs. He could have fled the city with his wife and kids but no. He rather chose to die by consuming hemlock than spend one more day with them.
There is calm-before-the-storm weather in the north, a border dispute on the east involving a puppet state and a bully, a reckless military establishment on the west, a pandemic playing itself out a slow death game in the middle, a federal ambush to the south of India, not to forget the sighing north-east. Despite these uncertain events, we haven’t heard a word of reassurance from the most hardworking prime minister in the world. If not him, at least the father of modern chronology — our Machiavellian home minister in case you are wondering — could do the needful. Times like these demand a resounding speech that would wake us up from our slumber. But then, for that to happen, the powers-to-be need to wake up first. Or maybe they are too busy figuring out how to win the next state election. You can never be sure in our democracy.
