The Free Voice

by Ravish Kumar

  What I liked was that while announcing the daily forecast, Baba mentioned, first of all, a suitable time for men and women to ‘propose’ to the opposite sex. He understood that given the traditions and culture in which people of this country have been kept entangled, they should be given allowances to love, and so he used those same traditions to declare the best time to ‘propose’. In many of the videos, the suitable time was 5 a.m. So if anyone wanted to make a declaration of their love, they had better set an alarm before going off to sleep.

  Baba had also coined a new word: ‘lovemate’. This word is very different and modern from ancient-sounding words like ‘Romeo’ and ‘love jihad’. Baba frequently used the word in the singular. From the word lovemate it would seem that he was talking about two people, but it turned out that Baba was talking about just one lovemate per sun sign. Baba never recommended that a Leo should go here or there for an assignation with his Sagittarian lovemate. What he did issue instructions on was when lovemates should visit temples, when they should feed Brahmins and priests, and when they should serve the elderly. In our society, lovers who choose each other on their own are looked upon as being against prevalent culture, as a pair who do not heed their parents’ wishes. Baba rechristened these pairs lovemates and not only recommended them auspicious times for love but also instructed them to serve their parents, neatly pairing modernity with tradition.

  I liked this word lovemate. Now, at the very least, what canoodling pairs can do when seized by the anti-Romeo squads out to stop men and women from coming together in public, is to tell them, ‘We are lovemates. Baba on TV instructed us, and so we’re here to serve the elderly. Let go of your batons, take this prasad and get lost.’ But if the lovemates are only to serve the elderly, only god knows when they would find time to ‘love’ or to ‘mate’!

  On one show Baba told Piscean lovemates that they should tour places of religious significance that day. How I wished I could watch other shows hosted by Baba, to find out if he recommended that lovemates visit the cinema, or restaurants, or the Nehru, Lohia or Deendayal Parks. In one show he told Sagittarian lovemates that on that day they should take a bath and afterwards offer Datura to Lord Shiva. By doing so, their relationship would become even tenderer. I am convinced that Baba even tells lovemates when and how to shampoo their hair. In one episode, he told Leos that they could go out with their partners for a romantic dinner. I jumped with joy. See, I told myself, these babas on television cannot be against modernity. They know that their consumers will indeed go out on romantic dinners—even though romantic dinners are not part of the common cultural imagination in India. It was all one more excellent way of bringing modernity and tradition together, I thought, and an effective way to keep a toe in all waters.

  Baba also recommended that Leos should eat vitamins to improve immunity. By Bajrang Bali, I swear that I heard this statement with my own ears and typed it with my own fingers. I didn’t know that our great scriptures of astrology scriptures actually recommended antibiotics, and vitamins! Shut down our medical colleges! At the beginning of each show, he also gives out the most auspicious time to conduct a Caesarean Section—perhaps there’s a huge market for auspicious times for Caesarean Sections. After all, each one wants a child in his or her own household who will go on to become famous so that every time they want a selfie, a ready celebrity can be found at home—who wants to rush off to an airport or a hotel each time? And on one episode, Baba advised Aquarian doctors to treat patients for free that day; doing so would give them professional success.

  Baba also laid a great deal of stress on office politics, promotions and the like in his prognostications. From this, one can understand the limited and worthless context in which a common Indian views his office and workplace. Promotions, personal pride and ego seem to be the only acceptable categories. Then, on one episode, ‘change in shift’ was a new category that was added. He told Librans that their shift timings might change, and inconvenience them. But honestly, shifts change for employees in lakhs of offices throughout India. People have brought astrology even into this. He might say on one particular day that Geminis should keep their business plans secret. On the same day he might recommend to Sagittarians that a partnership in business might be beneficial to them. What I didn’t understand was if, on that particular day, a Gemini could enter into a partnership with the Sagittarian for, after all, Baba had tipped the Gemini to keep his plans secret.

  One day, Baba confused me. He declared that no auspicious task should be performed 12 minutes before and 12 minutes after 2.18 a.m. on 27 August. This is an inauspicious time, he warned. For a long time I kept thinking about who would be performing an auspicious task at this hour. Was Baba hinting at sex? No no, that couldn’t be. And if something hasn’t been clearly spelt out, why think along those lines at all? But who could be performing an auspicious task in the dead of the night, that too at 2.18 a.m.; what could that task be—I was thinking about all of this when Baba said that today, you should face in the southeasterly direction and take a pledge to free yourself from doubt and suspicion. Decide that you should not doubt, or suspect, at all. As soon as I took the pledge I was freed of the question of what that auspicious task might be which could not be performed 12 minutes before and 12 minutes after 2.18 a.m. on 27 August.

  The category I found most important in his daily forecast was the ‘Yayi Zayad Yog’. We all know that legal cases in India drag on for a long time. Not everyone has luck like Gurmeet Singh’s, for whom a verdict arrived after fifteen long years. There are many who don’t see verdicts arrive within their lifetimes and fall prey to injustice in the very exercise of seeking justice. There is no injustice in India greater than the process of filing and fighting legal cases. But Baba, under the aegis of the ‘Yayi Zayad Yog’, instructs when an application ought to be filed, when one should meet with a lawyer and when arguments should be put forward in court. Hardly any person making the rounds of the courts will not pause to listen to Baba recommending suitable times to visit the courts. If one can wait for hours at a bus stop to find transport to the courts, how hard is it to pause briefly in front of a television set? This is India, after all—a chief justice breaks down on camera and cries while asking for the number of judges in the judiciary to be increased. If judges themselves are weeping, how can litigants not? Baba saw an opportunity and expanded his market. On one episode, Baba instructed that the ‘Yayi Zayad Yog’ would fall that night between 8.10 p.m. and 12.37 a.m. I fell into a tizzy; the courts would be closed at that time! But Baba cleared my suspicion in the very next line when he said, ‘I know courts remain closed at this time but you can go meet your lawyers. You can discuss your case with them.’ Imagine: If the Yayi Zayad Yog was to fall between 12 a.m. and 5 a.m., lawyers would sleepwalk through their cases the following day.

  Every day, astrology is expanding its sphere of influence to encompass all the myriad problems of Indian society. There is something special about India’s Problems—what must have happened is that in some bygone age, these Problems must have drunk the special elixir of immortality and become eternal. They will never be solved, whether Manmohan Singh comes to power or Narendra Modi. Obviously, astrology is the only way to distract people from the Problems.

  I am taken aback by the proliferation of these astrology programmes on television. Just as weather bulletins dominated by women anchors tell us the state of the weather in different cities across India, so do these programmes report the time when the evil influence of the planet Saturn will affect cities such as Delhi, Mumbai, Bhopal, Lucknow, Kolkata, Chandigarh and Ahmedabad. Why leave out Patna and Jaipur, I wonder. There are different fixed categories of what astrology will dictate how one’s day will turn out—a grand day; a fantastic day; a good beginning is indicated; a normal day; a favourable day; a day that will bring golden moments; a day that will bring new gifts; a special day.

  India is a country where people depend predominantly on astrology—just at the economy depends predominantly
on agriculture. That is our reality. There are those who don’t believe in astrology, sure, but they are so few in number that they probably know each other personally. Study those babas on television. A Gurmeet Singh does not become a Baba Ram Rahim only in Sirsa, he can become one anywhere in India. At any time. All that is needed is for someone to innovate a Kaalchakra show, for someone to manufacture an oil that promotes hair growth, for someone to write a book on success, promote it and make it a hit. In our times, various kinds of Gurmeet Ram Rahims are available in different kinds of packages. Don’t take it to heart. This is India. These babas are us—the same as you and I.

  How We Love

  1.

  A Space for Love

  Not everyone is in love. Nor does everyone have the courage to love. In our country, most people only love in their imagination. I wouldn’t know how it is in other places, but in India, to love is to battle with innumerable strictures imposed by society and religion. Love is a forbidden subject even within the four walls of our homes. How many parents say to their children, ‘Is there someone special in your life?’ How many ask their daughters, ‘Do you like someone? Are you in love?’ With such little support, love is not a simple matter of saying ‘I love you.’

  We all learn to imagine love through cinema. Films are the sculptors of our divine madness. Generations of filmmakers, songwriters and musicians have burnt up their imaginations teaching us how to love. They have taught us the art of gazing at someone for the first time, and the trick of colliding with them by accident. In the process, films have turned us into lovers sometimes, and sometimes into lafangas.

  Ek Duje Ke Liye (1981) was a powerful film. For the first time in Hindi cinema, lovers surmounted the barrier of language and linguistic culture and gave up their lives for the idea of a great India that is otherwise a sham shouted about from the rooftops day and night. Rati Agnihotri and Kamal Hasan, that unforgettable couple, can still make you cry. Perhaps for the first time, a popular film challenged the facile and counterfeit notion of a composite India that we have internalized for too long. ‘Mere jeevan saathi/Pyar kiye ja...’: to write a song by stringing together the titles of Hindi films was not mere talent; it was a way of saying that it is possible for a Hindi-wali to fall in love with a Tamil-wala. He can construct a language of love with Hindi film names. She can call out to him using the names of Tamil Nadu’s districts and cities. She can talk to him and she can sing along with him.

  But films have not always made us good lovers. The films coming from Mumbai kept trying only to breach the high wall between the rich and the poor—that was the extent of their revolution. ‘Chandi ki deewar na todi, pyaar bhara dil tod diya/ Ek dhanwaan ki beti ne nirdhan ka daaman chhorh diya—She did not break down the walls of silver, she broke a heart full of love/A rich man’s daughter betrayed a poor man in love.’ (Vishwas, 1969) The pain of love! Rich women are always heartbreakers, always disloyal. In some films, rich women did leave everything behind to be with the love of their life, but the dominant narrative remained that in the world of love, wealth, too, is caste. Everyone should stay within the confines of their caste and explore the possibilities of love there.

  Innumerable lovers have lit up the Hindi silver screen. But they are just two beautiful bodies. They have no caste, no religion. In the fantasy world of our filmmakers, love is also a fantasy. Lyricists have never written a song where a young man confronts his lover’s social background. All heroes are upper caste, either Kapoor or Mathur or Saxena. Heroines have been either Lily, Mili or plain silly. The heroine drops fully formed and chaste from the skies. ‘Kisi shaayar ki ghazal, Dream Girl/Kisi jheel ka kamal, Dream Girl—A poet’s ghazal, Dream Girl/A lotus in a lake, Dream Girl’ (Dream Girl, 1977).

  Countless stories of Hindi cinema have put love at the service of the status quo, whereas in love you simply cannot be status-quoist. You have to first vault over the wall of caste. Films which preach Hindu-Muslim unity have very deliberately steered clear of Hindu-Muslim love stories. I cannot recall a film where a Hindu girl held the hand of a Muslim boy and said, ‘I love you.’ No hero has ever abandoned his Kapoor family for a Dalit girl. Oh, I’m now hoping for social change through films! Come on, Ravish.

  Actually, our politics too cannot imagine a love that smashes the barriers of caste and religion. There are some Muslim leaders whose wives are Hindu. There are some Hindu leaders who are married to Muslim women. These were love marriages, but such couples do not display their love in public. They fear their voters’ displeasure. But is society really like that? Yes, it is, but it is in exactly such a society that possibilities emerge for revolutionary love. People bring down the walls of caste and religion. Sometimes they do so and stay alive.

  You must have noticed how often I have used the word ‘wall’. That, really, is the tragedy. In India, there is no love without a wall. Love may be possible without a mehboob, the lover-beloved, but it is not possible without a wall! It’s a complicated business, love. It turns you into a rebel, it makes you crazy—a baawla, a baawli. There’s such tension that, as in Hindi cinema, you want to escape into a dream sequence: your trousers and shoes are suddenly white and shining. Your lover, in a flowing white gown, comes running towards you in slow motion. You wrap yourselves around each other, and then the song begins. ‘Maey se meena se na saaqi se...na paimaane se/Dil behelta hai mera aapke aa jaane se—Not with wine, the wine-bearer or the cup/My heart is happy only with your presence.’ We learnt from this song from Khudgarz (1987) that one’s lover can also be a replacement for entertainment. There’s no good song playing on TV. You’ve fought with your father. Forget all that and sing a song. Let’s get it written by Gulzar or Anand Bakshi. Escape is the only space for love in India.

  Our cities have no space for love. For us, parks are places where marigolds and bougainvillea bloom. Where a few elderly, retired people come to jog. There may be a pair or two of lovers; they will be stared at. Love needs a suitable space, just for love. Lovers in our cities get tired standing behind pillars in super-malls for hours on end. They court danger daring to love inside a car with the windows and windshield curtained with bedsheets and towels. They hold hands in the dark in a cinema and hastily let go when the lights come on. Lovers have never really told anyone of their plight. They haven’t even written about it on Facebook. ‘Milo na tum toh hum ghabraayen, milo toh aankh churaayen, humein kya ho gaya hai—When we don’t meet my heart is restless, when we do I’m too shy to look into your eyes—oh, what’s happened to me?’ When you hear this song from Heer Ranjha (1970), don’t you feel like asking—First tell us, just where can we meet?

  But hats off to all the lovers of India. There’s no place to meet, yet you don’t give up, you find a way. You pull down the plastic curtains in auto-rickshaws, you squander your entire pocket money on auto fares. In search of empty cinema halls, you raise the box-office collections of trashy films. Despite the glares from passers-by, you let your head rest on your lover’s shoulder. The long hours you struggle for a few moments with your mehboob transform you from lovers to activists. Everyone who has loved has known such hazards. If I were a neta, I would have built a love park in every city and would have happily lost the next election. Naturally, society would not have approved.

  Snap out of this ‘Ishq koi rog nahi’ slumber. Of course it’s a malady, this kind of love. Demand the space for love. Sixty per cent of India, all of you young people under 35, you are not here to just make nuts and bolts for machines or open shops or sell pakodas. Your youth will one day demand to know: How much time have you given to love, and how much have you spent on work? If you have only loved work, then of what use is life? If you were never possessed by the madness to look for hours into another’s eyes, then what really have you seen? You might measure the dowry you get as much as you want, but you will not find a mehboob in there. Society does not want to lose control over the dowry economy, and that is why it does not easily yield space to love marriages. A woman must be the only commodity w
hose price is fixed by a man’s worth. Money along with a bride. After all, the bride is the dowry herself. Go drown yourselves, young men of this nation. Doob maro!

  Love makes us human. That is ishq. It makes us responsible and slightly better human beings than we were before. All lovers are not ideal humans, nor always good, but the one who is in love can at least imagine a better world. When you are in love, you discover the many nooks and corners and secrets of your city. In some places, you hold hands as you walk. In others, you walk alongside but a little far apart. Lovers want to transform the city into the city of their imagination. The city of their memories is not the city of Ghalib’s poetry. True lovers know the city, they live it, too. The rhythm of the seasons beats in their hearts. Those who are not in love, they do not inhabit their city.

  ‘Jis tan ko chhooa tune, us tan ko chhupaoon/Jis man ko lage naina, woh kisko dikhaoon—The body that you’ve touched, I hide that body/The heart that you’ve seen, I don’t show it to anyone?’ (Rudaali, 1993). Ah! We cannot even express this feeling of love here. Meera, you who sang and danced in love, you lived in this country, did you not?

  Love makes us a little vulnerable, a little hesitant. And if a human being is neither, he can turn into a monster. To love is not just to say ‘I love you.’ To love is to know someone and, for that someone, to know yourself. It is the month of February, don’t waste all your energies searching for a lover. Look for yourself, too, and for your city, a city where love is possible. And look for the dreams you want to realize for someone else’s sake.

  Not just eco-friendly, we must make our cities ishq-friendly as well. We must make a space where we can spend a few restful moments. Where cops don’t appear, banging their lathis, when they see love. Where the defenders of honour and faith and bloodlines don’t appear with guns and knives. Where the moongphaliwala doesn’t appear the minute you start a conversation. It’s fine that there is a space for love in our dreams. And in our films. But how is it right that our cities don’t have any? It isn’t right.