From xkcd.
Beyond comment
Month: February 2008
Tagged. Tugged.
So Black Mamba tagged me the other day:
Post 5 links to 5 of your previously written posts. The posts have to relate to the 5 key words given (family, friend, yourself, your love, anything you like). Tag 5 other friends to do this meme. Try to tag at least 2 new acquaintances (if not, your current blog buddies will do) so that you get to know them each a little bit better.
I was determined to do this, not only because I like Black Mamba (and I do), but because I had to prove Tabula Rasa wrong; he said BM wouldn’t get a cheep out of me (this childish tit-a-tat has, in fact, gone on since we were about ten. I love it.).
Result: near failure. Not because of my lack of output – though it certainly could be a lot more consistent than it is now – but because I rarely seem to write about anything other than politics and the big bad world outside. Of course, there’s a lot of me in there – the personal is political and vice-versa – but not in ways that are necessarily familiar or familial. sigh. Looking back, I think it was because I was determined, when I started out, not to make this a blog of the kind that led the blog-o-boom: the vicarious exploration of other people’s private lives and lesions. Frankly, I found that sort of blogging both terrifying and self-indulgent. I also felt I had nothing to offer of value online, that could remotely interest a set of unknown readers. Ashwin persuaded me otherwise; a lot of his argument had to do with the description of the blogging community he comes from: the techies. Clearly there was a space for blogging about one’s interests, one’s passions, rather than about oneself.
I realise now that I have – somewhere along the way – gone to the other extreme of the pendulum and am dangling hopelessly from an oblique position of self-denial. I find that many of the blogsters I read, write about themselves and theirs with humour and insight. I kid you not: I *like* reading them! If I don’t see these blogs as self-indulgent, is there possibly space for me to sneak back in a bit of me and mine into this blog? Black Mamba, you didn’t think you’d lead to an orgy of reflexivity now, did ya??
With this long preamble, here’s my meagre offering for the tag.
Family: A bit of a stretch, but to my extended family in Raichur. Also a cheeky aside to my pun-tashtic family (not really a post at all, but wothehell, I love xkcd).
Friend: about a friend in Gujarat, and her struggles with fundamentalisms.
Yourself: a post about ‘being an action hero‘. Also my previous stab at being tagged.
Your love: music and poetry. Unsurprisingly, a post about Gangubai Hangal that conveys both my awe-struck admiration and her comments on caste. And a tribute to Kaifi Azmi.
Anything you like: a whimsical post on Durga Puja and JK Rowling. And a diatribe against the news in India today.
…and I tag those I haven’t tagged before: Anindita (in the spirit of disclosure and familial-ity, my gorgeous sis-in-law who normally tags _me_), Mangs, Lalit and (relatively new) blog buddies: Pranav and Suzanna (whose blog I promised some time ago I would explore, and this is a great way to begin!).
‘The mechanic with the oil can’: Baba Amte
Strange how death gives life to memories. I hadn’t actively thought of Baba Amte for some time, but he died yesterday at the age of 94. Suddenly, a collage of images starts putting itself together. In 1985, Baba Amte got the Magsaysay award, particularly for his work on leprosy. I don’t remember it clearly, of course, but I do remember, three years later, finding that my Hindi teacher was a cousin of his. I think she was surprised that I knew who he was, though my sense is that it had more to do with the news junkie I had begun to be, and less with any self-proclaimed activist zeal at the age of fourteen.
However, some time while I was in college in Delhi (if I’m not wrong; memories are images without accurate recall dates), I remember Baba Amte fasting in one of the first rounds of protest against the Sardar Sarovar dam on the Narmada. I remember going to sit on the margins of the crowd that had gathered outside Rajghat, watching this frail man (he was already into his eighties then) on a charpai, surrounded by those who admired him and who were inspired by him. Also surrounded – as usual – by the ubiquitous hangers-on who had come to see the tamasha, the incongruous sight of a brightly coloured pandal sheltering a sombre non-violent protest from the Delhi sun.
Why was I there? I suppose I was a hanger-on too, of a certain kind. Those years in college were signified by a painful, sometimes self-consciously intense need to find heroes for myself. I didn’t succeed; much. I think I came out of those years wiser, less pained, and able to make fun of myself, thankfully. And equally able to recognise that heroes are – in general – ephemeral souls, that inspiration is cut and paste: heroism and heroes are found in unexpected places. Yet there I was, watching Baba Amte, imagining Gandhi, juxtaposing one frail man against the other, one courage against another, one struggle for freedom against another. Somewhere, somehow, the cut and paste obviously turned into a collage. One that came back to me yesterday.
The Hindu’s obit quotes the Dalai Lama, calling him a man of ‘practical compassion’, but the description I like best is that by Baba Amte himself. In an interview to Graham Turner, he reportedly said:
I don’t want to be a great leader. I want to be a man who goes around with a little oil can and when he sees a breakdown offers his help. To me, the man who does that is greater than any holy man in saffron-colored robes.
The mechanic with the oilcan, that is my ideal in life.
Image from the Ramon Magsaysay Award website.
Let’s get political
So… sitting here in the US of A, in California, in particular (gold rich in delegates for both Democrats and Republicans), it’s Super Tuesday. Basically a national primary. When 24 states vote for more than 3,100 convention delegates – the nominated candidates for the parties get directly chosen by these delegates; ‘the people’ cast their preferences – and we might know by the end of the night who the Republican candidate is, though we might not know the Democrat candidate (since Clinton and Obama are so close, it may be finally decided only at the Democratic national convention in August). A strangely confusing process.
Initially, I found the process more than confusing: it felt nasty, brutish and unbearably long (Indian elections might be nasty, brutish and bloody, but at least they don’t sputter on interminably). Candidates were slinging mud at each other, it seemed more like personality clashes rather than ideological debates, and nobody really seemed to define this amorphous word ‘change’ that was being bandied about furiously. Change not just for this country, but irrevocably, intrinsically, for the rest of the world.
It’s felt better over the past few weeks. Clinton and Obama seem to have quietened down their rhetoric against each other, and the Republicans are now busy slanging each other off, a process I enjoy (chuckle).
However, what’s really buoying my spirits as an inveterate politics junkie, is that the spirit of this country seems to be turning political. In a way that I have never seen before in all my trips here, and in ways that American friends themselves are feeling optimistic about. Politics is getting talked about. After all, as the Guardian puts it, this election has created a tableau like no other: those standing for President include a woman, a black man, a Mormon, a one time prisoner of war and a Baptist minister. No matter who wins, history will be made. Particularly if it’s the Democrats.
And here I am, the junkie whose rush comes from my conversations with the passionate auto driver in a dusty ride from MG Road to Koramangala, or the fiery isthri walla down the road, or the feminist panchayat leader in the middle of north Karnataka (who may not know the word but does the deed)… here I am, firm believer in Indian democracy – with all its ills and spills and grease and slime – a believer because my people are political. They care. They care, passionately, fiercely, deeply. Often disastrously and despairingly. But they care.
And finally, I find that we may not be that different from those rushing out to vote here in America, today. Finally, politics matters. It might be time for change. It might even be time for transformation.
Frankly, from the perspective of the rest of the world: it’s about bloody time.