The prime time for the tribe of forecasters is the eve of elections. They make a killing predicting who will win and which party will lose. Our widely circulated magazines like India Today, Sunday and The Week have already launched this exercise. The only exception so far is Outlook. The Asian Age has gone ahead with publishing on its front page, other items from the astrologers’ lexicon: Rahukal, Yamagand, Gulikakal. If we take this kind of rubbish in our daily diet, how can we hope to cultivate a scientific temper?
I have been provoked into writing this angry piece by a homeopath (I refrain from naming him as it might damage his practice) who besides doling out sugar-coated pills, also indulges in astrology. He sent me his manuscript with a request that I write the foreword. I begged to be excused as I did not have the time to read what he had written. He wrote back an angry letter telling me that in his book he had predicted six months ago that India would make it to the finals of the World Cup cricket tournament. And if that proved to be wrong, I could dump his manuscript in the waste-paper basket. I wrote back on his own letter, ‘How can all educated men like you believe in this kind of medieval garbage?’ That very day, our team went out of the reckoning in the tournament. The learned doctor’s manuscript was not dumped in the waste-paper basket but sold to the kabariwala, as all books on astrology deserve to be.
26 June 1999
Turbulent weather
The flight from Delhi to Calcutta was as smooth as can be expected during the monsoons. It was only after the descent on the Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose airport that the plane began to run into turbulent weather and the ‘fasten seat belts’ order was flashed on the panels above the seats. The plane began to rock violently. There were continuous flashes of lightning, some very close to the aircraft. As the order came for the crew to be seated in preparation for landing, the plane flew out of the black clouds and we could see the vast spread of glittering lights of Calcutta (Kolkata, the capital of Paschim Banga) beneath us; they looked as if all the stars in the heavens had come down on the earth to welcome us. The plane made a very smooth landing.
This is the kind of turbulent weather our country is going through right now. We have to fasten our seat belts and not be unduly alarmed by the plane’s rocking or by the dark clouds, lightning and thunder. We have to reaffirm our faith in the competence and determination of our jawans to drive out the intruders who have sneaked into our land. At the same time, we should send a message to the people of Pakistan that we bear no ill-will towards them. It is their government, and more than their government, their army that has betrayed them and us by colluding with religious fanatics and mercenaries to encroach upon our territory. No nation worth its salt will tolerate goondagardi on its soil. Nor will India. No matter what it costs us in terms of human lives or money, we will not rest till the last intruder has either departed, or is dead. We have been wronged. Nations of the world are agreed that we have been wronged by the rulers of Pakistan. We will rectify the wrong done to us by mustering up all resources at our command.
Having failed to prove its innocence to the United States, the European nations and even to its old ally China, Pakistan’s rulers are trying to whip up sympathy for themselves from among Muslim nations. It may gain some support from states that have an unthinking knee-jerk response to every confrontation between a Muslim and non-Muslim country, but this is not likely to yield very much support even from their co-religionists. A jehad has to be for a just cause, not for the purpose of blatant aggression. And blatant aggression is exactly what the Pakistani rulers have allowed to be committed against India.
10 July 1999
Daghaa (Betrayal)
It is becoming increasingly difficult to believe words spoken by Pakistani leaders. Our faith in their integrity has been rudely shaken. After fifty years of acceptance of the Line of Control as the border between the two countries, what provoked them to allow elements hostile to India to cross it and entrench themselves in our temporarily unoccupied outposts? And now Pakistan’s Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, having realized that military adventurism has turned world opinion against Pakistan, is desperately trying to wriggle out of the trap he laid for himself and his country.
First he denied that Pakistan had any hand in the intruders getting a foothold on Indian territory. He was confronted with hard evidence proving Pakistan’s collusion in the sneak operation. Then he denied that regulars of the Pakistani army were in any way involved in the operation. He has now received concrete evidence in the Pakistani soldiers captured or killed on the Indian side of the Line of Control. All options of lying his way out of the predicament have closed.
If he now orders the unconditional withdrawal of intruders from Indian territory, he will have to face the ire of the hawks in his armed forces and the fundamentalist political groups in his country who are forever clamouring for jehad against India. I would not take a month’s insurance on the life of hapless Nawaz Sharif. He has betrayed us and he has betrayed his own countrymen.
I have little doubt that ‘Operation Vijay’ will end in victory for India. ‘Nasr min Allah Fateh-un qareeb’ (Allah grants victory to people whose cause is just), said Prophet Mohammed. Our cause is just; Pakistan’s is not: it has allowed its leaders to commit daghaa against us.
17 July 1999
After the war
In the expectation that by the time this piece appears in print, the last infiltrator will have departed from our side of the Line of Control in Kargil and guns from either side will have fallen silent, we should ask ourselves: ‘What should we do next?’
In the recent conflict, young men laid down their lives to protect their motherland and gave whatever they could afford to help families who lost their sons. However, we must remind ourselves that we should not need disputes with our neighbours in order to put up a united front. By now it should have become an integral part of our national character.
The need to mend fences with Pakistan has become imperative. The conflict poisoned the atmosphere in both countries. This must be dissipated—the sooner the better. Those of us who have friends in Pakistan should assure them that we bear them no ill-will. On the contrary, we have always been eager to be on brotherly terms with them and should reaffirm our resolve to resume the friendly relations that existed between us before Kargil exploded in our faces.
It will not be easy, but the process should be set in motion at once. Visas should be given to visitors without delay; cross-border buses, trains and other services be resumed; Pakistani artists, scholars and poets be welcomed in India; Indian artists, scholars and poets be welcomed in Pakistan. And people of both countries should swear by whatever they hold most sacred, that never again will they allow suspicion and hatred to steal into their minds.
24 July 1999
Views from the other side
I have a lot of friends in Pakistan who do not toe the government line but have minds of their own. I was unable to communicate with them while the Kargil war was on. But as soon as the guns fell silent, I sought them out to find out what the Pakistanis in the streets of Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad made of the fiasco. Did they accept the fact that every drop of blood that was shed in the confrontation between us and them was shed on Indian soil? Did they know that the men who were killed on their side were not only mujahideens as it was first put out, but regular soldiers of the Pak army, and India had provided concrete evidence including bodies of their dead and documents found on them to prove it?
A lady who lives in Karachi and came to call on me, admitted that their official media and sections of the anti-India press had done its best to obfuscate the issue by harping on the larger question of the future of Kashmir, and accusing India of harbouring ill-will against Pakistan. But she added that Pakistanis are not as angry with India as they are with Nawaz Sharif for allowing the Indians to humiliate them once again on the battlefield. Pakistanis have not forgotten their disastrous defeat in the 1971 war. They were hoping that their army would level the score by giving the Indians a
bloody punch on their noses. It did not turn out that way. ‘They must hate our guts,’ I suggested. She paused before she replied, ‘Hate is too strong a word. Let me just say that they do not have much love for the Indians. Victors can afford to be forgiving towards the vanquished; the vanquished find it much harder to forgive victors.’
She went on to explain the changing scenario in Pakistan. Religious fundamentalism is rapidly gaining ground. You see a resurgence of rituals in homes; and the younger generation of even westernized Pakistanis use Islamic terminology these days. More and more women are wearing burkhas of the Iranian style. ‘I find this more alarming than hostility towards India’ she said. And for good measure, added, ‘I also notice growing religious intolerance in India. Travelling in buses and trains where people don’t recognize me as a Pakistani, I hear a lot of nasty things being said not only about Pakistan, but about Muslims.’
Among the Marwaris
The stereotype image of a Marwari is a skinflint who starts off with nothing besides his lota, a few paise tied in a knot of his dhoti, and a few years later, becomes a millionaire. At school we used to sing a doggerel which went somewhat as follows: ‘Marwar no baanio, Mumbai seher ma aaiyo and lived on two pice of ghee and atta.’ They are also known to be close-fisted and calculating. They never give away anything unless they are sure they can get it back with compound interest.
Having worked for a Marwari (K.K. Birla) and befriended some others, notably his niece, Manjushri Khaitan and her parents (Mr and Mrs B.K. Birla), I can vouch for the fact that I have yet to meet people of that class of affluence more courteous and uncalculating in their generosity than they. To meet the upper crust of Marwaris, rather than going to Mumbai seher, one should go to the capital city of Paschim Banga, Kolkata. That’s exactly what I did a few weeks ago.
It was monsoon time. Dark clouds spread across the sky. By the time Col. Ramesh Dadlani (who works with K.K. Khemka, an associate of B.K. Birla) came to take me out for lunch, a strong wind had picked up. Ramesh is a very dapperly-dressed Punjabi. During his last posting in Calcutta, he fell in love with the city and decided to make it his home. He took premature retirement, joined Khemka, and has been with the firm ever since. I asked him what working for Marwaris was like. ‘They are good employers,’ he replied, ‘very courteous, and generous. If you do the work assigned to you, they treat you like a member of the family.’
I asked him why there was no resentment among Bengalis against them. He replied, ‘They (the Marwaris) do not throw their weight about or flaunt their wealth. They have put down their roots in Calcutta and give liberally to local charities like schools, colleges, hospitals and temples. Upper-class Bengalis are snobs, and for many years they would not take Marwaris into their swanky clubs. So Marwaris, being captains of industry, joined the Rotary movement. You will notice their predominant presence in Rotary clubs. They never rub Bengalis the wrong way.’ That is true.
Only a week before my visit, a brash young Marwari had the audacity to use the word ‘Bongs’ for Bengalis on his website. Bengalis exploded with anger. My friend Sunil Gangopadhyay, Bengal’s leading novelist, who did not think it mattered if he used the Sikh stereotype to portray a villain in one of his novels, blasted the Marwari and went ahead to proclaim that Calcutta would soon be Kolkata, and West Bengal, Paschim Banga. So be it.
At Khemka’s luncheon party at Hotel Hindustan International where I often stayed in the past, of the over-two-dozen guests, all but four were Marwaris. Among the prominent ones were S. Bangla (tea), Bangur (chemicals and electrical appliances), Daga (automobile parts and electric components), Jaiswal (hotels), Jalan (theatre), Kanoria (chemicals), Khaitan (fans), Jhunjhunwala (silks, ice-cream and leather), Kejriwal (tea), Khemka (railway components), Rohatgi (automobile parts), Sureka (real estate), Rajgarhia (steel) and Sadhu (paper).
I noticed only four non-Marwaris—Jit Paul—Swaraj Paul’s brother (hotels, tea, real estate), P.K. Sen (tea), A. Aikat (TV) and Harbhajan Singh (Allahabad Bank). Marwari predominance in the business and social life of Calcutta was even more evident at the Rotary Club dinner meeting at Grand Hotel where K.K. Khemka was sworn in as the new President. Among the 200-odd guests present, barely two dozen were non-Marwaris. Of them, three were my guests—Vice-Chancellor Surabhi Banerjee, her husband and daughter. It spoke well of both communities: of the Bengalis, for their spirit of accommodation of so many outsiders who were doing better in life than they.
7 August 1999
Prepare for death while alive
I do not know when I was born, because in my village, no records of births or deaths were maintained. And in my part of western Punjab, no one bothered with such things as horoscopes. My father was away in Delhi; my mother, who was barely literate, did not think birthdays were of any importance. My year of birth was put down later as 1915—it could as well have been 1914 or 1916—and my father put down February 2 as my date of birth. His mother, who was there when I was born, told me later that her son had got it all wrong and that I was born in mid-August. So I am right in saying that I am not sure when I was born. And I cannot say when I will die except that it will not be too long from now. By any reckoning I am eighty-five years old, give or take a year.
Humra Qureshi had come to interview me on what she assumed was my eighty-fifth birthday, for a column she writes for The Times of India. After putting me through the usual routine of questions about my past and present, she came to the final ‘What now?’ I did not give a very coherent answer on what I planned to do in the years left to me. However, after she left I pondered over the matter for a long time. Socrates had advised, ‘always be occupied in the practice of dying’. How does one practice dying? The Dalai Lama, then only fifty-eight, advised meditating on it. I am not sure how thinking about it can help. It is particularly difficult for someone like me who has rejected belief in God and the possibility of another life after death, be it reincarnation or the Day of Judgement followed by heaven or hell. However, there comes a time when one stops regarding death as something that comes to other people with the realization that you too are on the waiting list. If you are taken ill, you begin to think about it sooner than if you are in good physical shape. In either case, by the time you are in your eighties, it begins to preoccupy your mind more and more. You think of what you could have done in your life but failed to do. You wanted to become a millionaire but did not go beyond accumulating a modest bank balance; you wanted to become prime minister of India, a champion tennis player, cricketer, golfer, athlete etc., but did not get beyond being part of the second eleven of your college team or a medicore club player. Or, in my case, I wanted to win many literary awards, earn huge royalties but ended up as a second-rate book writer who would be forgotten a few years after he was gone. So the first thing to get over through meditation or just pondering, is the feeling of regret over your failures—you did your best but it was not good enough to get you to the top. So what?
Equally important is to get over the sense of guilt for having wronged other people. Everyone of us causes hurt to someone or the other in our lives. This rankles in our minds. It is advisable to make amends by expressing regret. Having peace of mind should be a person’s top priority in the final years of his life. Prayers, pilgrimages and religious rituals are not as effective as candid confession and seeking forgiveness. There also comes a time when you begin to regard your body as no more than something which encases your real self, like an envelope that contains a letter with a vital message. The body will perish when the envelope is torn open; will anything survive after the body is gone? Will the letter inside the torn envelope be something worth reading after the envelope ceases to exist? I do not have answers to these questions, and none of the answers given by people who believe that something of us survives after death, makes sense to me.
All I hope for is that when death comes to me, it comes swiftly, without much pain; like fading away in sound slumber. Till that time I will strive to live as full a life as I did in my yo
unger days. My inspirations are Dylan Thomas’s immortal lines:
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rage at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
One should prepare oneself to die like a man; no moaning, groaning or crying for reprieve. Allama Iqbal put it beautifully:
Nishaan-e-mard-e-Momin ba to goyam?
Choon marg aayad, tabassum bar lab-e-ost
(You ask me for signs of a man of faith? When death comes to him, he has a smile on his lips.)
21 August 1999
Independence Day
Our century’s final Independence Day will be diferent from others we have celebrated so far. This time last year, not many would have taken a bet on Atal Behari Vajpayee unfolding the tricolour and addressing the nation from the ramparts of the Red Fort once again. But there he is, and with more than a fair chance of being there yet again. Though he heads a makeshift government (kaam chalao sarkar), his speech is not likely to be kaam chalao. He is undoubtedly one of the best orators we have heard on similar occasions. And though he is wise enough to know that he must not make his oration an electioneering harangue to attack rival political parties or indulge in chest- thumping over his government’s achievements, he will inevitably (though subtly) dwell on the inadequacies of the other aspirants for power, and paint a rosy picture of his dreams for the future of the country.
Our relations with our neighbour, Pakistan, have never been icier than they are today. They will remain frozen as long as Pakistani-backed militants continue to be active in Kashmir and the border districts of Himachal. How will he break the ice and the impasse? Clearly he will have to do more than take a bus ride to Lahore. The onus of resolving the Kashmir problem rests entirely on the shoulders of the Kashmiris. It is they who must come up with proposals which are practicable and acceptable to both India and Pakistan. Kashmir has soured our relations ever since we became independent nations. Much blood and vast sums of money have been wasted trying to settle the issue by use of force. We have to go beyond reiterating our respective positions ad nauseum and reach a settlement acceptable to the three parties: the people of Jammu and Kashmir, India and Pakistan.
Big Book of Malice Page 13