The purpose of the meeting is to decide on another meeting. This sounds simple enough to a neophyte like Shiv, but apparently the first item on the agenda—whether they are to hold a public meeting or a rally—merits argument for a good twenty minutes. Finally it is decided that they will compromise and have both: a rally (but not a silent rally as one participant timidly suggests), followed by a public meeting outside the university gate.
Shiv would like to shed his accursed shyness (especially when words like discourse and rhetoric and problematique fly about him) and say, “Forget your little arguments, the enemy is almost at our heels! If this can happen to an ordinary, cautious man like me, what about you ideologywallas?” Luckily, no one seeks Shiv’s opinion. It seems enough that he is there, a symbol, or a statue around which living, talking people gather to make plans.
They are seated in an untidy circle; unlike Shiv’s university meetings, there is no pretense of tea, so they make do with glasses of cold water. Meena is not there; she has agreed to rest at home on condition that Shiv will tell her all about it, and that she will go to the “real” meeting that will follow. But Amar and a few of his friends are there today, sitting in a tightly knit group to one side; Shiv can practically see the red banner that holds them close together, an invisible label that screams ACTIVISTS! A few other “activists” are scattered across the room, mostly individuals who do not deign to join the bigger groups though they seem obsessed with them; their imaginary banners vary from pink to magenta. The rest of them are alleged intellectuals or merely “concerned citizens,” wandering liberals in cautious search of temporary alliances.
One of the activists (a light pink type) now takes charge. He pulls out his mobile from his shirt pocket, glances at it, then switches it off with a flourish. He clears his throat. “About the public meeting,” he says. “Let’s decide who should speak so it doesn’t get out of hand. Professor Murthy will say a few words of course—about five to seven minutes, Shiv?” (He nods in Shiv’s direction, taking it for granted that he will agree.) “Other than Shiv, I think we should ask Guru Khote and Professor Qureishi to speak.”
“Qureishi is in Italy,” interrupts one of the intellectuals.
“I know,” says Light Pink a little sharply. “His flight comes in tonight at twelve-thirty. He’s having lunch with us tomorrow, Leena’s going to cook lobsters. But I’ll also call him first thing in the morning.” He waves his mobile in the air as if to let them know his hot line is always open.
Everyone begins to speak at once. The list of names grows: an eminent Gandhian; an eminent lawyer; an eminent Indologist who trashed Professor Fraudley in a review last week; an eminent retired judge, still feisty though he is ninety-three and inclined to go off on a tangent. Objections to the names pile up with equal speed. Shiv begins to wonder if the public meeting will last all day and night if they have all the suggested speakers addressing the public.
Meena’s friend Jyoti seizes her chance when there is a lull in the discussion. Jyoti has a small, finely chiseled face. But when she opens her mouth, any impression of delicacy is instantly dispelled by her piercing, emphatic voice. “I don’t see why we should have only eminent people speaking,” she says. “What about students? And women—from women’s groups or just plain individual independent women? History has been a masculine exercise for far too long!”
An elderly citizen who has been quiet so far speaks up. “What about inviting a secular swami to speak? Swami Anand, for instance? After all, this is a broad front, and we have to make it as broad as possible.” He is careful not to look at the activists’ corner as he speaks, but they know all the same that what he is saying is directed at them. As if in response, Amar pulls his chair forward in a decisive way the Head would have envied. He holds several sheets of paper in his hand; all the heads in the room turn in his direction.
“I think we have a consensus here,” he says suavely. “G.P. can begin with a few opening remarks.” (G.P. alias Light Pink looks modestly at his mobile.) “Then we have Professor Murthy, followed by Professor Mookherjee, Mala Rao of the New Gandhi Foundation, Jyoti of the KNU students’ union and Professor Qureishi. The rest of the speakers we can invite on the spot depending on who is there at the public meeting. Some of us will be on standby if we don’t have enough speakers—though that is unlikely.” (He pauses for the predictable chuckles; everyone stretches and relaxes, sensing the meeting is winding up and that the activists will do the needful.)
Amar says, “I have a list of things we need to get done—we have to be clear about who is doing what. There are the placards to be made—I think we have some left over from the last rally and we can recycle those. We also have a list of slogans you can add to. Then there are the leaflets to be printed, and we have to get police permission for the rally now that we have some idea of the route. And I have a petition I have drafted here with me—some of you have already made suggestions and I have incorporated most of these. All of us will have to collect signatures over the next forty-eight hours.” Light Pink and some others reach out for their copies; Amar looks pointedly at the intellectuals but they seem absorbed in contemplation of their feet.
Meena sits in bed, the telephone by her, a long list of eminents in her hand. Shiv has provided her with the necessary nourishment for the endless phone calls she makes. Chocolate biscuits, a large packet of chips (mint masala flavor) and a one-liter bottle of Coke. She munches a biscuit and frowns at the crumb-covered petition lying on the bed. She sighs. “These eminents drive me up the wall,” she says. She reaches morosely for the chips, hoping for some instant consolation. “I’ve called Eminent A to O and they all need coaxing and flattering one way or the other just to put their names to a simple petition. Not one of them offered to make a single call—they are too busy of course. Now I’m stuck with calling Eminent P to Z as well, and I especially loathe P. The first thing she’ll ask is who else is signing the petition, just in case her name is sullied by lowly company.”
“I’ll call her,” Shiv offers dutifully though P terrifies him with her voracious appetite for gossip.
Meena stops chewing and rewards him with a dazzling smile. “Tell her we’ll put her name on top of the list,” she advises. “She’ll want to be in the papers.” She returns to brooding over her list. “The trouble is that the battle lines are not clear,” she mutters. “Look at all these alliances we have to make—” She shrugs at Shiv’s silence, picks up the telephone again. Her spirits spring up with their usual elasticity. “I’ll call Eminent Q then,” she says. “He’s an old bore and he’ll want me to read out the petition word for word, but he’s a good egg. I’ll get him to bring his students to the rally.”
Amar says to Meena, “I’ve brought you a good piece by Qureishi. He really tears apart all this nostalgia for the past, what he calls the essentialized past. He says it’s just crude glorification of anything premodern and traditional.”
Meena takes the essay from him, reads a couple of paragraphs quickly, then drops it on top of her stack of petitions, leaflets and pamphlets. “Did you hear about that twit Sharma’s new critique of modernity?” she asks. “It seems he complained that when he was in Paris he had to go all the way to the countryside to see a cow. But when he got back to Mumbai, he could sit comfortably in the Sea Lounge at the Taj Hotel and look at all the cows he needs to see on the road.”
Amar scratches his chin and stretches his legs out on Meena’s bed. He looks as if he could do with a night’s sleep. “So are the oilies giving you trouble?” Meena asks. (She turns to Shiv and grins. “That’s the organization of independent Leftists …”)
“These broad-front squabbles are endless, and the pettiness of it all!” Amar says. “Now we have to learn to work with everyone from GROPE to PUKE. Next we’ll have someone suggesting that Imam Asif should be part of our broad front!”
“So we can march with one gang of fundoos against another?” interrupts Meena indignantly.
But Amar is not yet done with
his list of grievances. “And all this talk of how We are the same, We are one, etcetera, is just so much government-style talk. There’s class, caste, religious community, gender, language—everything makes for difference. But have you noticed, whether it’s the government or the cinema, everyone wants to tame this diversity. Pretend to play out a goody-goody scenario of Amar, Akbar and Anthony, three brothers who are variations of the same patriotic theme.”
“Fine, we are all different,” says Meena. “But can’t we remain different and still have a language or two in common? Can’t we have more than one voice or one identity?”
Shiv feels he is in a play, miscast as a protester marching down the road. How else did he get to be part of the march, not a mere onlooker or a victim of the traffic snarls around them? As they walk past the traffic stalled on the other side of the road, he sees a man in a jeep shaking his head in disgust as he slows down to a crawl. But most of the car drivers seem resigned to the delay, some craning their necks out of their windows to read the placards they are carrying. To Shiv’s astonishment, a few actually snatch up the leaflets Amar’s boys are distributing among bystanders and those waiting in cars, buses and scooters for the rally to pass.
It’s the first time in his life that Shiv is expected to “raise” slogans. But there are so many voices, and such a variety of slogans being shouted simultaneously, that he can only make out a word here and there. Down, Down, he hears; or Shame! Then Zindabad! Followed, inevitably, by Murdabad! For a while Shiv tries mouthing the right catchword at the end of each slogan. Then Meena’s friend Jyoti calls out in a spectacular, carrying voice, “Hitler ki thi kisse yaari?” The answer to this question—who were Hitler’s friends?—comes back with an enthusiastic cheer from the marchers: “Knickerdhaari, Knickerdhaari.” Shiv thinks of Arya’s following of khaki-knicker bigots and he is overwhelmed by a great liberating urge to shout out loud. For a few minutes he actually yells himself hoarse; then he sees the university gate looming before them and the crowd already gathered there, and the words freeze on his tongue.
The public meeting. Shiv sees Meena sitting on the pavement nearby, her wildly painted cast stretched out stiffly, her crutch by her side. He moves toward her as to a magnet; but she is surrounded by a group of KNU students. He tries to catch her eye but she is talking nonstop, all her gestures expansive. Then Amar taps Shiv on the shoulder and leads him to the university gate, where television and newspaper cameras wait with their lenses ready to shoot.
When the flashbulbs stop, Shiv looks up, blinks, and takes it all in. There are almost as many policemen as there are protesters. Some of the policemen carry walkie-talkies; others carry lathis, and shields that look like they have been recycled from old cane chairs. Slowly Shiv begins to recognize faces in the crowd. Quote is there of course; and Qureishi, Italy-returned; and Light Pink is at the mike, holding on to it as if he has finally found his true love. All the usual suspects are there, the public that makes up most public meetings in Delhi. But there are also more new faces than Shiv had expected, busloads of students, mostly from Meena’s KNU, and even some smart corporate-looking types. Then Shiv notices Menon and Amita at the back and is filled with inexplicable gratitude. They see him looking at them; Menon gives him an uncomfortable grimace, but Amita waves cheerfully. She whispers in Menon’s ear; he shakes his head and continues to stand there, looking pained. Shiv sees Amita throw her cigarette to the ground, crush it with her shoe and make her way up to him.
“Can you believe the crowd?’ she says to him in a low but excited whisper. “Menon’s being absurd, he won’t come up to the front because the cameras are here. He’s afraid of being mistaken for one of the photo-op devotees.” One of the corporate-looking couples Shiv had noticed earlier walk by.
“Who are those?” he whispers to Amita.
“Nobody I know,” she says, looking them up and down. “Muppies, I guess.”
“Muppies?”
“Shiv, where have you been? A muppie is a Marxist yuppie, of course—oh Shiv, look at that ridiculous man over there with the Clinton placard! What on earth does he mean?”
Shiv peers in the direction she is looking. There is a sea of placards before him and the names of the organizations are often longer than the slogans on the placards. Secular Women Against Patriarchy (SWAP); Forum Against Hindu Terrorism (FAHT); People’s Association of Secular Scientists (PASS). The guiding principle seems to be the more the merrier, or the more diverse, the broader the front. Their slogans remind Shiv of the appeals to all possible gods that truck drivers paste on their lorries, not taking any chances; betting on all horses at one go. He sees placards saying everything from STOP TALIBANIZATION OF INDIA to HISTORY DESTROYED! to WHO’S AFRAID OF THE MANCH? Then he spots the placard Amita is talking about. A man with a ponytail, beard and thick glasses stands way at the back holding up a placard with a cryptic message. He is obviously so proud of it that he takes it to all rallies, whatever the cause. The placard says: CLINTON, GO HOME! DON’T DROP YOUR BALLS ON US!
The meeting proceeds more or less according to plan till Guru Khote takes the mike. The poor man is only on his fifth pithy quote of the day when a loud heckling voice calls from the crowd, “Pseudosecularists, Hai Hai!”
Other voices are raised, the crowd pushes and shoves as people try to shut him up.
Amar moves away from Khote and strides into the crowd purposefully, followed by two of his henchmen. As they pass Shiv, he hears one of them ask Amar, “Usko medical kar do?” Shiv has never heard the phrase “to make medical” before, and he can only imagine the young man means to make a medical case of the heckler. Shiv’s heart skips a beat; his eyes search the crowd for Meena. But before the police realize something is going wrong, before Shiv can imagine a lathi charge or tear-gas shells into existence, Amar has reached the heckler and is persuading him to leave. All the while, he has a casual, restraining hand on the shoulder of his eager henchman.
Shiv and Meena watch the late-night news to see if the rally has been covered. Shiv sees himself on the screen, looking shifty and apologetic, saying his little piece. The news editors have reduced his seven minutes to an admirable ten-second sound bite; Shiv is impressed that even he can sound like a quotable politician. All the same it is so strange to see and hear himself that he misses the rest of the coverage in a jumble of swiftly passing images.
“Forty-five seconds,” says Meena scornfully. “The government has even these glitzy private channels in its pocket.” She jabs at the remote viciously and flips channels.
“Wait,” says Shiv when he sees an interview in progress. “It’s the VC!” KGU University’s vice-chancellor, looking well-scrubbed and well-oiled, is holding forth on the official university reaction to what he mysteriously calls The Unfortunate Episode.
The interviewer is a pleasant young woman who is having trouble understanding the VC’s mumbles, and his tendency to substitute sh’s for his s’s. It’s obvious the woman has prepared for the interview but to no avail. The VC may hem and haw and mumble, and take a good five minutes to finish a simple sentence containing half a thought, but he is dogged. Whatever the question, however she puts it, he sticks like a leech to his one-point diagnosis.
“Sir, your University does not have students on campus since all your courses are distance education programs. There has been some speculation on where these students who vandalized Professor Murthy’s room came from, and if they are students at all …”
She stops, flustered; the VC has turned away from her and is looking straight into the camera. “Shtringent action,” he says, looking stern, “will be taken against those indulging in antisocial activities on campus.” Then he thaws. “The real question is shecurity.”
“Security? But sir, the identity of these intruders if that’s what they are …”
“I was shaying, it’s all a question of shecurity. We’ve shet up a committee.”
The woman quickly interrupts, “A committee to examine the disputed lesson or identify th
e vandals or bring them to—”
“We have to undertake shecurity measures on a war footing. A war footing. The committee will discuss all necessary options.”
“Options, sir?” The pleasant young woman is beginning to look a little desperate. “What are the options?”
The VC beams at her; this is obviously a matter close to his heart. Then he recalls he is on national television and that he is supposed to look grave at all times. He makes an effort to conceal his enjoyment and compose his face. But he is now relaxed, sure he is on home ground; confident, and by his standards, eloquent. “It’s all the work of outshiders. There are some parts of the univershity walls that badly need repair—we are short of funds always. This is how outshiders get in and dishturb campus harmony. I have promised the univershity community that we will keep these outshiders out.” (The VC cannot resist a momentary smirk.) “We will shtep up shecurity measures and see to their backshides.”
The pleasant young woman looks resigned. She has decided it is best to stop pretending this is an interview; the sooner she lets him say his piece about univershity shecurity, the sooner they can both go home.
“First, the walls. Broken walls must be mended. We have to consider increasing the height of the walls, maybe even put broken pieces of glass on top. Interim measures can include barbed wire. We have already handed over shecurity to a reputed private company. They are expenshive of course, but I have personally pushed for a higher budget allocation for shecurity. This is a priority, after all. I have also asked the committee to shit down to talk about campus development. High on the agenda are walkie-talkies for shecurity pershonnel and better lighting at night. We have also shuggested to faculty members that they use good shtrong locks on all doors in the departments …”
Shiv carries a tray with Coke, a bottle of rum and a few glasses into Meena’s room. “Oh thanks,” Meena says. “You have to hear what Jyoti’s got hold of—a vintage statement by the munchie historian A. A. Atre. It’s heavy-duty, full of fundoo mumbo-jumbo.”
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