The Fallout

The unlikeliest victim of the recent elections has been . . .er . . . my dear wife, and for the unlikeliest reason! The joy of living has been wiped off from her face, so to say, by a single, ruthless stroke!
Looking back, I can clearly see that the dark clouds did not simply pop out of thin air; they gathered in bits and pieces, over time, unseen and unnoticed…
The most important character of this story is my father-in-law. Gentleman to the core, always gives way to others, always ready to lend a helping hand. Even in arguments, his tone is persuasive, and his patience is endless.
He is not meek, though. I have actually seen him getting angry once or twice. In one such occasion, he had accompanied me to a railway booking counter where a young tout broke into our queue and though there were some murmurs of protest, nobody could actually do anything about it. FIL watched this brazen act for some time, and when it became unbearable, with a few long steps he reached the guy, wrapped his strong arm around his waist, and simply threw him out! And the fellow just fled the place with his tail tucked in! With his six feet height and athletic build (a very good footballer in his times who also played tennis), FIL can inspire genuine awe in wicked hearts when he desires.
His only weakness lies in his soft corner for the CPI(M) party. The party always has to be right -- here he has very little patience for any contrary argument. His support is purely ideological. Never have been a party member, nor does he visit the party office; I doubt if the party even knows that such a loyal supporter exists. We are well aware of this weakness of his and the golden rule to follow is, avoid political arguments as much as you can. But hara-kiri is still committed sometimes !
My mind goes back to the days when my parents-in-law visited us in Delhi around one and a half years back. They arrived from a Bengal where issues like Nandigram and Singur had been in full boil then. The whole Bong diaspora of the world were passionately debating them. To add to Buddhababu’s already filled cup of woes, the infamous Rizwanur murder (or suicide) took place just at such a time. In our drawing room, like many other Bong drawing rooms, we debated animatedly on the case -- I and my wife terming it murder or at best instigated suicide, FIL seeing it as a plain case of suicide that the media had been hyping up just to defame the left front govt. (the party line). Things were turning so hot that I felt it prudent to slip out from there. But it was already too late. FIL chased me into the next room, calling me in a loud voice, “Listen, S**** (here he took my full name including the surname… in other words, I had it on the full blast), I am telling you this now, and you will get proof of it soon, blah blah...” (I do not remember now his line of argument, but whatever it was, it was meant to be the closing line of the chapter… no arguments, baas). And yes, I better accept this, my state was not much different from that of the above-mentioned tout-in-the-queue. I mean, the tail propahly tucked under! Later when my BIL came to know about the incident (he was in Kolkata when it happened), he heartily laughed on the phone for a whole minute.
This year, just before the elections, we all met again, in Bangalore, at my BIL’s place. While on a sightseeing trip, we had the imprudence (again!) to delve into the matter of the coming elections, and naturally the political temperature within the family rose again. Left Front, or Mamata – which way should it be this time? My wife, her brother and the brother’s wife, though their hearts still lying with the left and in no ways with Mamata, argued vociferously that the lefts should be shown the door in this election. FIL, needless to say, equally vociferously argued back, with a lot many dismissive grunts thrown in. MIL and I more or less acted as neutral umpires, and when the talks were getting too hot, veered it to something else, something docile.
Our days at Bangalore passed swiftly, without any more political talks, though, I suspect, the volcano just remained dormant. Our vacation was soon over and we returned to Delhi. Life was back to normal. And then the inevitable happened.
Yeah, you guessed it right, the results were out and the Left received a severe drubbing. We came to know that FIL was sulking deeply. Now, I am not actually aware how the daily telephonic talks went between my wife and her parents in the days that followed, but I know of a particular conversation between my wife and her mother that took place about three or four days after the left’s debacle, which somewhat went like this:
Wife, at the fag end of the chit-chat: Oh Ma, know what? I am not getting this particular sari here; next time we go to Kolkata, I will surely buy some from there.
MIL, in a crestfallen voice: Shobbonash! Hell! How’ll be doing that? Your father has already vetoed it. He said, ‘If S dislikes the state of affairs in Bengal so much, why does she rush here every time to buy saris, that too in dozens? Let her buy them from her beloved Delhi then!’
I leave the story here, and with an ominous note too, as I can see more dark clouds in the horizon, in the form of the not-so-far-away state elections of 2011!

Sri Lanka -- the right and the wrong

Hats off to the Sri Lankan government. A small country is showing the world how to correctly deal with terrorists. After years of dilly-dallying and endless (and fruitless) soft-touch intervention by the Norwegians, somebody has finally dared to catch the bull by its horns, just as our own Brinda and KPS Gill, the then Chief Minister and Police Chief of Punjab, once did to quell the rampaging insurgency in the state. To me, President Rajapakse is doing even better – he is taking care to keep the civilian losses to the minimum, and also he understands the importance of explaining to the Tamils that the war is not against them but against their real tormentors -- the LTTE. Now, even some Sri Lankan origin Tamil human rights activists are able to come to the fore and let the world know that the vast majority of Tamils of Sri Lanka have always been actually longing for a long time to come out of the clutches of the LTTE. These Tamil HR activists were earler scared to come to the open or their voices were simply not heard. I am sure we will soon come to hear more tales of horror of how the LTTE had been using the entrenched Tamils as shields once the rest of their area is liberated by the SL army.

Hope the SL Government brings the whole thing to its logical end and does not develop cold feet at the last moment, and by this I mean catching Prabhakaran and his cohorts and punishing them. It is always important to root out the leaders. Hope the government ignores all sorts of international pressure (from people who remain strangely silent at human rights violations by the terrorists) and also the numerous mass petitions that are being generated in India urging to stall the assault, and instead proceed determinedly to finish the agenda.

It is indeed shocking that the SL cricket team has been attacked in Pakistan today, and we can expect Pakistan to even try to put the blame for it, at least initially, on SL’s current domestic strife. (The next day's input: Pakistan has begun blaming India instead. . . should have occured to me that they were going to do this.) It also proves, albeit with the benefit of hindsight, that visiting Pakistan when other teams including that from India already refused to do so, was an extremely unwise decision . . . was probably done to show solidarity between small neighbours of a big brother . . . it also shows that one sometimes has to pay a heavy price for such political one-upmanship.

These People Need Help

Urmila, in her thirties, a poor widow and the mother of two small boys, studying in the 5th and 8th stds in government-run schools, used to earn her living by working as a domestic maid in the Lajpat Nagar area of New Delhi, India. Her old parents stayed nearby – they earned their living as neighbourhood press-wallahs (who presses or irons clothes). Being old, they frequently fell sick and Urmila was their only support to take them to a doctor and get treated. Our house was one among many where Urmila worked as a cook and I and my wife marveled at how she managed to support so many people with her paltry income. Urmila herself was not physically very strong, malnutrition and life’s constant troubles having taken their toll on her body.

Urmila recently died (on the 3rd November). After an illness (probably affecting her kidneys, because her body got swollen during the illness) that kept her hospitalized for about two months, she finally lost her battle.

Now, what worries us is that who is going to look after her orphaned children and parents. Urmila wanted to give her sons some education so that they can have a decent living.. she must have suffered a death-before-death worrying about their fate from her death-bed. Will they now simply be devoured by the cruel world? And what about her parents – will they die out of hunger and illness without anybody to look after them?

I write this because in our small capacity we can do very little, peanuts actually, and what these helpless people need is long-term assistance. Is there anybody/any organization who can stand by them in their hours of crisis? Can anyone help in connecting these people to kind individuals / organizations who can act as their long-term benefactors?

My email address is: soumitroray@gmail.com. Another email address is given in my profile I think. I do understand that anybody who wants to help will need to verify the genuineness of the circumstances I described, and I shall do my best in this regard. At present we ourselves do not know much about them…did not have to while Urmila was alive. But we can always find out more about them now that they are in dire need of help.

Chandrayaan-1

Among the all pervading universal, national and even personal gloom, the successful launch of Chandrayaan-1 today morning leaves the heart filled with ecstasy. Shall be keenly watching its progress...

Congrats and three cheers!

Terrorism in the Indian context -- I

Fatalism

Responding to my anxiety over the well-being of my near and dear ones in Bangalore in the wake of the multiple blasts, my wise colleague assured me: “Don’t worry . . . nothing is going to happen to them, unless of course it is written in their destiny. If it is so, unfortunately, then no amount of taking precautions will stop it from happening”. I had to very strongly resist my urge to ask him why then he goes to a doctor when sick – isn’t it useless to gulp down those pills when everything is in the hands of destiny, after all?

It goes without saying that we need to shed this fatalistic attitude completely. Safety and security is our birthright, and also being vigilant citizens is among our most fundamental duties towards our country. I must admit that fatalism has its plus points too, in a morbid way. In terrorism-stricken situations, India behaves like a mammoth that refuses to respond to pin-pricks, which is surely not what the terrorists desire. They want India to suffer visibly, to moan, to try to get up and fight back, and in the process suffer even more. Not much pleasure stabbing a corpse! To make India stir, they need to hurt it in a grand scale… and this is what they are up to now.

Having said that, what a citizen has every right to demand is answers to why even a single life has been lost, why a single family has been destroyed. Is it not the responsibility of the state to provide safety and security to all its citizens, irrespective of religion or ethnicity?

The Policymakers

Our policymakers – the lawmakers and the bureaucrats -- they either cannot think of a comprehensive policy because they personally live a well-protected life (do they know how it feels to live everyday in terror, as scores of Indians have to do?) and therefore cannot comprehend the situation, or do not really want to act pro-actively (to turn the table on the terrorists, to hunt them in their own dens and not to wait till they hunt us), as this will affect their oh-so-important vote banks. Our PM famously spent sleepless nights worrying for doctor Haneef who was arrested in Australia (a country where you can expect a fair trial), but was he so forthcoming with his anguish at the plight of Indians working in Afghanistan or even in the Indian states of J&K (the Hindus) or the North-East (the Bengali and the non-locals)? At least I do not remember him (or for that matter anybody else) doing that. The so-called nationalist opposition party, the BJP, seems unable to rise above municipality-level politics – they have even invented a conspiracy in the recent attacks, hatched by their political opponents, to divert attention from the cash-for-vote scam in the Parliament!

Hopeless situation -- needless to say!

The Intellectuals

Come to the most deplorable part – the role played by our bleeding-heart intellectuals. It seems their hearts bleed truly only for the terrorists (never heard of organizations like SAHAMAT shedding tears for the victims of terrorism); it is the human rights of the perpetrators what they are only bothered about. Many so-called human rights groups are actually frontal organizations of the terrorists.. we hear of the MASS (Manab Adhikar Sangram Samiti) of Assam. I also cannot forget that a leftist Bengali intellectual once acted as an independent election observer on behalf of the Hurriyat Conference of J&K a few years ago, knowing fully well whose interests they represent. I can remember those times when huge rallies marched through Srinagar streets and letters dictating leave-the-valley-or-die were slid under the doors of the Kashmiri Hindus by the mob … did any human rights-wallah’s heart bleed then? Again, did it do so when Hindus were dragged from buses and gunned down in Punjab? Or when Assamese youth mobbed Guwahati’s city buses to hunt out the Bengali passengers and then play football with them (the method used to sort out was simple -- passengers were told to count from 1 to 10 in Assamese – the accent was always a clear giveaway to who were non-Assamese, particularly Bengalis).

(More on another day…)

Forgetful

As usual, baba was in a hurry. He was getting late for his college. Mother said wryly, just wait a minute, he will back soon. And of course she was right, within minutes he was back… he forgot to carry something. This time it was his umbrella. It might be something else on another day -- his handkerchief, his glasses, the bunch of keys – anything.

So he was that much forgetful. We grew up under the shades of such a person, and we adored him more for this endearing quality of his. I remember him once groping in the dark for the torchlight with the flashing thing in his hand, or on another occasion looking for his glasses with them on – our initial puzzlement used to give way soon to queries like: think you are not looking for the torch? Or your glasses? “Yes, yes, can you find them for me?”

Mother could not match baba in this front, though I do remember her cooking her most delicious dishes and then simply forgetting to serve them, or preparing to go to a wedding in her best attire but with rubber sandals on! It was always didi’s job to have a final checkout before dear mom left the house!

My cases are no less legendary. I’ll cite the two most embarrassing episodes. long back, in my hostel days, we friends watched the movie Chit-chor, a superhit movie of that time, and I was so bowled over by it that I invited my uncle and aunt (who were my local guardians there) to see the movie the next Saturday, on the evening show. I was supposed to buy the tickets in advance and wait for them in front of the hall. To this day I hang my head in shame to think of it that on that fateful day uncle and aunt enthusiastically returned early from their offices and flocked to in front of the movie house, but I was nowhere there in sight! They had to go home after waiting for an hour for me. I remembered my promise just before going to bed that night and did not show my face to them for almost a month!

Next comes the li’l gopal’s birthday to mind (his parents were our landlords then). It happened here in Delhi. The celebration was a low-key affair, inviting only a few of gopal’s friends for the evening. We went out of home early to save them the embarrassment of not inviting us. All the same, when we returned at night, they called us to their home, just to have a little refreshment. A plate was served before us (probably they were short of plates!) with pairs of each item –cake, sweetmeat, etcetera, on it. I immediately attacked it with gusto in front of the watchful eyes of our hosts. At the same time I continued talking gibberish as, for some unknown reason I always tend to feel that it is my responsibility to continue the conversation in an assembly.

Wife did not get a single bite that evening. It did seem a bit strange to me why they served so much to a light-eater like me, but it never occurred to me that half of the stuff served were meant for the wife! That night, after coming back to our home, I had to skip my dinner and she had to cook a full meal for herself (because she cud not skin me and eat me lock, stock and barrel instead). To this day, she cannot forgive me!

So this is my family and me.

Under the circumstances, I got a little rattled after my marriage on finding my in-laws not being forgetful exactly of that grade. There were little incidents now and then, but nothing to write home about. Chalo, you cannot expect all to be similar, I said to myself.

It occurred that my parents-in-law paid us a visit recently and stayed with us for a month during which period we were pampered to no end. But as all good things have to come to an end, their day of departure also finally arrived. A taxi was called and I and father-in-law carried the luggage downstairs. Surprisingly and a bit annoyingly, my wife and MIL were taking a much longer time to come out of the house than usual… we saw them locking the door when we started. They arrived at last and my wife shoved something quickly into her father’s pocket. Not being a good observer of things, I did not take much notice of it. The secret was revealed to me by my wife after their train left the platform….. Papa-in-law in fact forgot to take his money! Wife remembered that just in the nick of time and had to go back and fetch his wallet from the almirah – that was the reason for the delay.

Oh, I sighed in relief! After all I married into the right family….:-)

Wifeless in the City!

The stark fact stared back into my face from the liquid contents of the cups that I laid before me today morning. Shash was away from me for almost twenty-four hours now and I began believing that I got used to her absence by this time! Also, looking back, I didn't make any mistake while measuring the rice for my lonely dinner last night -- measured just enough for one person. But today morning, still feeling sleepy, I prepared the usual two cups of tea, and only when I was finished pouring that I noticed I have poured an extra cup!

Shash, my wife of eleven years -- I noted with a chuckle when I returned to an empty home last evening -- was all over the place. Her office sent her to Punjab for a couple of days under the shortest possible notice. She had to hurry back to home from office and just had half an hour in all to herself to pack and change dresses. Her train was to leave at 2:40 PM. The resulting mess was all over there . . . the shirt she changed lied on the bed, one of her purple socks on the floor, her trousers casually thrown atop a bag nearby, some tissue papers and one of her business cards strewn on the floor. Apparently she changed her handbag; I picked the one which she left behind from the floor and carefully put it inside the cupboard. I clutched her shirt and smelled it, as I always do when she is not with me for days. This smelling business is something I picked up form her only – it was what she told that she did when I was away to office and she was alone at home … that was long back, we were just-married and she was not on a job then.

Funny how husbands go all ashtray when their wives are not home for days. On other days we reach home almost at the same hour and after that it is quite a disciplined life till we hit the bed. But last evening I again indulged in cigarettes – bought not one but two – after an abstinence of almost a complete month! Lighted one of them and then talked to Shash on the mobile (she was still on that train). Then a feeling of emptiness gripped me. Totally forgot that I had planned earlier in the day to make good use of my lone hours in the evening by finishing the task of washing all dirty bed sheets piled up in the clothes bin for quite some time. Instead I jumped into the bed with the Dog Stories of James Herriot and it was not before 8.00 that I stirred again! Husbands like me do badly need a wife by their side always to keep them on track, it seems!

In the meantime, Shash has reached her destination and made herself comfortable in a nice hotel -- she told me over phone. It was raining there while we had an overcast sky but with no rains. We talked again before going to bed and wished good night to each other.

What I forgot to mention was that I also once made faces at her last night, in absentia, and I wondered, on the side of certainty, if she also did the same at me there! Chuckle, chuckle!! Since our marriage we have been at it, and now it is quite a developed art between us! We have devised various shapes of grimaces over the years, and also have spiced them up with matching sounds!

Good heavens Shash will be back by tomorrow noon. We will be hugging and cuddling, and above all, making faces at each other soon again!