Rajasthan

 

Hawa Mahal

"So how was Rajasthan?" my friends ask and I find myself reaching for the next hyperbolic adjective. I've run out of them. There can never be an elevator pitch for Rajasthan because it's not a destination - it's an experience that you cannot quite get your head around completely when you're living it. It steals on you, gets under your skin, and quietly settles in your bones. Everyone who's visited Rajasthan told me "there's so much to see" and they were not wrong. The sights are spellbinding - majestic forts, royal palaces, vibrant colours, startling terrain. But it's not just the "seeing" - it's what the eye that beholds does to the senses. Rajasthan is a feast for the senses. All your senses are heightened in this land where the colours are brighter, the smells sharper, the flavours richer...and the sun definitely hotter. Rajasthan brings you alive in gently intense slow motion that is exhilarating. The bewitching beauty of ancient times is casually strewn around in happy coexistence with the unaesthetic necessary evils of modern India.

Diwan-i-Khas (Sheesh Mahal)

Char Bag (overlooking Sheesh Mahal)



Passion and pathos immortalized in stories of love, betrayal, separation, death, and war have all found expression in beauty and grace in the halls of royal palaces and on the walls of gravity-defying forts. Rajasthan is a dramatic tapestry of designs, colours, and stories. The incredibly talented native Rajasthani keeps the tapestry alive - a living, breathing, moving thing of beauty with a mysterious smoke-and-mirrors playfulness that teases visitors. You're never sure in Rajasthan what era of history your moment inhabits. You're always in a revolving door wondering if Time took a wrong turn in Destiny's lane. Visitors will sense an unmistakable reluctance in the native Rajasthani to embrace modern India wholeheartedly. Largely rustic and inexorably steeped in tradition, the natives are quietly proud of their exotic Mughal and Marwar mix of ancestry - the beautiful fusion evident in customs, dress, architecture, language, and food. This subtle yet rich mix of two of India's most influential religions - Islam and Hinduism - is a symbol of centuries of hope and endurance.

Aravalli mountain range

You will not find the impatience of modern India in Rajasthan. A laidback, graceful, and unhurried culture, patience seems to be the hallmark of every undertaking - you only have to look at the intricate architecture to know: breath-taking filigree work, carved marble pillars, intricately painted ceilings, latticed windows, mirror and stained-glass wall panels - the architectural detail and delicacy and the weight of its history is overwhelming. There is no concept of Time in Rajasthan - only Timelessness and Eternity: a fort built in the 12th century over 16 generations, another that housed an entire city inside its confines (Jaisalmer) where people continue to live inside to this day, a temple built over 65 years, a lake constructed in the 14th century all stand in their state of grace smirking at modern India's crumbling misadventures in infrastructure. Which is why the local Rajasthani is not easily surprised or impressed. His character is shaped by reverence to his history, tradition, Royalty, and his land, so history is a not a one-night stand that he wears on his sleeve for a gawking visitor. Rather, it governs the way he lives, communicates, and interacts. He understands that the visitor will never comprehend the complexities of this rich culture by walking through its forts and riding on camel backs, and his response at best is a condescending shrug and an invitation to taste his delectable Rajasthani thaali.

 

But, as with most of India, there is always the danger of romanticism in a visitor's travelogue. The ironies are hard to miss in Rajasthan. Life is hard in the punishing terrain. Amidst the wealth of centuries, there is heartbreaking poverty. There are many working children, old beyond their years, their young shoulders weighed down early with the cares of life that shouldn't be their burden. 

The Jain Temple

In Jaipur, cycle rickshaw drivers will offer to transport you to your destination for five rupees - yes, a despairing FIVE rupees! Yet, you don't see them begging. Work is seasonal. Heavily dependent on tourism, the men leave their homes to work in other states or bigger cities when the tourists go away. The society is noticeably male-dominated. Walking seems to be the chief means of transport though the distances are spectacular in India's largest piece of territory. Except for in Udaipur which has many water bodies, water is a precious commodity and quite scarce in other parts of Rajasthan.

Yet, as a race, the Rajasthanis are more graceful than stoic. They are very invested in their legacy - they continue to build in the architectural style of centuries past, they nurture the joint family tradition, professions are still passed down from generation to generation. They live unapologetically in a time warp.

There are many places you would want to go back to as a traveller. Rajasthan is not one of them - for if you go back, you might break the charmed spell it cast on you the first time around.

Taming 5-year-old class bullies

If you followed the tenor of the Jan Lokpal bill debate between parliamentarians and representatives of civil society, you would've noticed that what got the "leaders" collective goat was the temerity of mere mortals to question authority. Many members of parliament were deeply offended that ordinary citizens were sitting across the table from them and demanding accountability. Their sense of entitlement was outraged. It didn't help that representatives of civil society were calling them very colourful names - evidently, a privilege reserved for the house in session. Textbook cliches were pulled up, dusted, and aired with tiring frequency: "any attack on members of parliament is an attack on parliament itself" "all politicians are not corrupt" "they should apologise" "Parliament is supreme" and (my personal favourite) "let them contest elections." Why should a citizen have to contest an election to participate in a democracy? Should we be denied a voice because we are not in the governing class? A demcoracy allows citizens to demand accountability from its elected representatives - they may be boxing in the ring, but we not only put money on them but bought tickets for a ringside view as well, and we have every right to demand our money's worth. We need not get into the ring.

There is nothing impressive or substantive about the "Sense of the House" resolution. Thumping tables is a brain-dead and almost disrespectful way to endorse a resolution. Besides, the resolution offers practically nothing. It's a tepid "whatever" response to a show that was getting out of hand and needed to be quickly brought under control. Thump the table, break up the party, pull the plug on the media frenzy, and it's business as usual the morning after.

But the resolution is impressive and important for another reason: an innocuous-looking starving 74-year-old ordinary Indian citizen brought the administration to its knees. It is no mean feat that an old man from the dusty backroads of rural India pulled up the administration by its scruff and gave it a shakedown that rattled its teeth. Nothing Gandhian about that. Not when you place it within the context of the Indian social structure with its fiercely rigid pecking order that forbids any questioning of authority. In a society where the outcome of every interaction is directed by the power equation, a negotiating table is virtually unnecessary. Obedience to established structures, norms, and authority is supreme. Cultivation and nurturing of placid, unquestioning minds is a task that the Indian education system accomplishes with ease and pride. Our education system is not designed to be participative - none of our institutions are. We are not allowed to build the institutions to which we belong. Which is why we rarely ever belong. We only inhabit them for what they can give to us. We exist to follow orders. Unquestioningly. Because our culture celebrates and rewards "tell-me-what-to-do" mediocrity. Most of our institutions in both the private and the public sector are feudal organizations housed in 21st century buildings because unfortunately, regressive mindsets cannot be changed with legislation. Power-crazed 5-year-old class monitors hover like mother hens clucking admonishingly over their wards. People in positions of authority routinely talk down to people under them but refuse to be accountable themselves. An ordinary bank clerk sitting behind a counter will talk down to his customer simply because he believes he can.

Anna Hazare's roadshow has changed all that. The stubborn but cheerful rabble-rouser has inspired the Indian citizen to thumb his nose at a system that demands subservience and embrace the more egalitarian principles of democracy. A bellicose administration that ran around in circles for months chasing its own tail has finally run into an unexpected brick wall - not the beanbag that they had hoped to pummel into submission.

That's the beauty of democracy - you can stay out of the ring and still knock your opponent's lights out.

Double jeopardy

For a month now, the Indian television audience has been forced to ride shotgun on the most ridiculous debacle to have hit the idiot box in recent times - idiots seems to be crawling out of the woodwork (and the box) and into our living rooms "24/7"; apparently, no television channel is idiot proof and worse, imbecility seems to be contagious. A word about hunger strikes/fasts unto death: in a country like ours, millions of people including infants are on imposed "fasts unto death" because their elected representatives have looted them and ensured they stay hungry without a choice - hungry for food, hungry for employment, hungry for education, hungry simply for the dignity of life. Remember, this is a country where farmers (who feed the nation) are killing themselves because they can't eat. So, really no one is impressed by a starving lunatic.

The visual media has become an addictive drug for every maverick running loose on our streets because it doesn't take much to get yourself on television and set off fiery newsroom debates that over-the-top anchors fuel rather than moderate. Inside the safe confines of a television studio, everyone is a self-styled vigilante. While it's true that in a democracy every crackpot has the right to free speech and free antics, rights are accompanied by duties and responsibilities. If it is my right to gather one lakh people in a public space and scream myself hoarse with self-righteous anger about corruption (or "graft" as it has suddenly become fashionable to call it), it is my responsibility to understand the consequences of that gathering being broken up by trigger-happy thugs in uniform.

A cross-dressing yoga guru is not a strong contender for logic or common sense, especially in a country whose national character is hysteria. Sound and fury are always more important than substance in India (proof: Bollywood); it doesn't matter what you say - it's only where, when, and how loudly you say it that counts. This pan hysteria ensures that every potentially great revolution ends up in the dustbin of tokenism in this country and therein lies the double jeopardy: Indians are used to being betrayed by our elected representatives; now, it's clear our community leaders are intellectually impoverished as well and cannot be expected to provide any semblance of leadership that can direct the citizens to engage in meaningfully powerful and positive ways with the system that we're all part of and wish to change.

Any debate about corruption, lawlessness, or administrative inefficiency cannot be solely about governance - it's equally about the governed. It is fashionable to intellectualize in television studios and living rooms about why our country has gone to hell. We haven't just gone to hell - from the debates, it's apparent we've actually refurnished hell's living room with the most outrageously ridiculous news channels starring the frenzied "I'm completely out of time" anchors who seem to genuinely believe they're saving India from Indians and can do it with aplomb within their allotted 30 to 60-minute daily prime time slots. We talk about how endemic corruption is, how it's seeped into every institution in the country; it's the one phenomenon which has not just trickled down to the masses but has virtually swept the masses on its high tide. It's a reflection of how utterly hypocritical we are as a nation.

Indian citizens are some of the most selfish citizenry in the world. Our blinkered existence doesn't stretch beyond ourselves and our immediate families. We demand that the government look after us, clean up after us, pick up after us, police us, penalize us, provide for us and our single point argument for these demands is that we pay taxes. All our duties towards our communities end with this one noble martyr-like act: we pay taxes. Paying tax allows the Indian citizen to litter at will, spit, and urinate in public spaces without the burden of cleaning up after himself, it allows him to flout traffic rules, to find loopholes in every law that is framed, use the loopholes to circumvent the law, and then preach about the ineffectiveness of implementation, to bribe public officials to curry favours, to cheat fellowmen with impunity and at will and then to pontificate on television about "the system" and "the politicians."

Look at our cities: they're constantly raped and criticised. That is the extent of our involvement with urban governance; urban citizens think it's their God-given right to pillage resources unconditionally, treat the city with contempt, disobey its rules, trample on its culture, and yet reserve the right to prosper at its cost while using all the utilities it provides: food, shelter, employment, entertainment. People who will not make the effort to take themselves to the polling booth on polling day offer the most well-formed arguments for how things should be and why; people who let their precocious 15-year-old devils drive on the roads endangering the lives of other road users and then boast to family and friends about their ward's accomplishment, offer solutions for how traffic should be managed in the city; people who enjoy an icecream and discard the holder carelessly right where they are, foam at the mouth about how our cities are huge open garbage pits and the government is not doing enough to clean them up; people who bribe contractors and city development officials to illegally encroach on more than their fair share of land, hysterically placard and picket at any attempt to enforce the law against these illegal activities. We're completely blind to ourselves.

This is where community leaders can help - in waking us up, handing us a mirror and maybe the now famous cup of tea. A community leader - whether he's a guru, a bishop, or an imam - can wield a very strongly positive influence on his followers if he commands respect within his community. It's irrelevant whether non-believers consider his causes and motivations suspect - the fact is he has influence over his believers which places a great responsibility on his shoulders. He can choose to remain non-committal and nonchalant thus encouraging his followers to do likewise or he can find ways to positively engage with the system in the path of least resistance again encouraging his followers to do likewise; obviously, the second approach is far more beneficial to society than the first but even the first is a whole lot better than the third which is to throw his hat into a circus ring encouraging tens of thousands to follow. Systems and laws cannot be changed with roadshows - they shouldn't be; an alternative that is more frightening than the status quo is not an alternative. Debates and protests are necessary in a democracy but if they're happening in front of cameras, they will never serve any purpose other than to further alienate an already alienated population who feels nothing more than a surreal disconnect from the ludicrous public slandering that passes for serious dialogue today. As long as dialogue continues to be "we the people" versus "they the government" we will never change the destiny of this nation. How many of us can honestly say that we haven't paid a single bribe in our lifetime? How then can we take up cudgels against the bribe taker? Failure to curb corruption is as much an indictment of the citizens as it is of the administration.

The concept and intent of the Jan Lokpal movement is undoubtedly noble and much needed. Public fury against corruption, however hypocritical, is real. The fury has to find legal sanction for redressal. Any vigilantism that can lead to anarchy will not only be justifiably squashed by law enforcement authorities but will also set a very dangerous precedent that may become difficult to control or regulate once set in motion. While unprovoked crackdowns on peaceful protests cannot find acceptance in a democracy, the fact remains that there are other more serious and less publicly intrusive ways of being heard apart from a show of strength on the streets. The Jan
Lokpal cause has traveled to many cities where city rallies have garnered huge public support - it has been already established beyond reasonable doubt that Indian citizens are livid with the menace of corruption and want to see laws enforced to curb it. Holding rallies and protests endlessly at different venues achieves little other than greatly inconveniencing the public making them suspect the motives of these organizers. Also, intermittent hijacking of the issue with individual agendas dilutes the larger issue of framing stricter laws and in the end nothing is achieved.

There are sane and insane voices on both sides; however, if this debate is allowed to happen through the media rather than privately between representatives of society and administration, it can never rise above the ridiculous and in the process all it will achieve is to make the Indian citizen feel doubly forsaken - by the administration as well as by his own fellowmen with whom he identifies with a greater sense of kinship. Well-meaning citizens who participated in the Jan Lokpal cause in the hope of being part of a sustainable solution, will now feel disillusioned and frustrated. Having burnt their fingers once, their support for any future movements for public change cannot be guaranteed. We are now dangerously close to reinforcing the average Indian's stoic cynicism towards any hope for better governance, better laws, or a better tomorrow.

Beauty is usually quiet

The first thing I notice is the complete absence of noise – the jarring, corrosive sounds of everyday life – angry honking, mindless chatter, loud television and radio, a million inane things fighting for your attention noisily, aggressively. Not in the Park. The absence of noise quietens me from the inside, instantly. I look around. Blue sky. Fresh wet earth from last night’s shower. Flitting butterflies in startling colours and patterns, moving restlessly from flower to flower, spoilt for choice. I soak it all in. It’s Sunday morning in Cubbon Park and my weekly ritual is underway: I spend the morning in the Park doing absolutely nothing – I watch the world and in the process, I watch myself. I let my mind simply wander and rest on whatever it chooses and it behaves just like the flitting butterflies moving from thought to thought. I stay uninvolved watching my thoughts just like I’m watching the butterflies. It’s exhilarating, it’s peaceful, and it fills me with joy, for in the Park there’s only beauty and happiness. It’s untouched by the cares of the world, just a non-judgemental dignified bystander and when I’m in the Park I’m a mute spectator too. The Park simply is. And in simply being, it gives everyone whatever they seek from it – solitude, comfort, sunshine, beauty, silence, joy. Though I usually carry my reading or my writing to the Park, I rarely do either. There’s something to be said for doing absolutely nothing and doing it outdoors – in sunshine and amidst flowers. Sometimes, I walk in the Park – long winding walks to nowhere with only sudden crimsons, oranges, whites, purples and pinks for company as they spring on me from amidst thick greenery making me catch my breath at their beauty. I look forward to this morning of quiet and solitude each week; I feel scrubbed and washed after half a day in the Park. Now, I’m refreshed, rejuvenated, peaceful and ready to face the grind of the week.

"...so tell us something about yourself..."

Every mediocre job interview eventually comes around to: "....okay, so tell us something about yourself..."
I'd give my right arm to be able to say to them:
1. Oh, I'm an axe-murderer just out from a medically induced coma (very softly with a smile)
2. I'm a nun, a none, a none-nun....hehehehehe...that's N-O-N-E space N-U-N...of your business....hehehehe....whatever
3. I'm...uh...I'm....I'm sorry, what did I say my name was? (in wide-eyed panic)
4. I'm bored (yawning noisily)
5. I'm the Alpha and the Omega, I'm the Now and the Evermore, I'm Sin and Divinity, the All and the Nothing, the up and the down, the left and the right...err...should I go on? Or should I get down?
6. I'm hungry (jumping up and rummaging through drawers)
7. I'm your future boss. Say hello to me nicely (offering a handshake)
8. Ok. That's it! You'll hear from my lawyer (over my shoulder as I storm out)
9. I'm unarmed and dangerous...hehehehe....just kidding....hehehehe...I'm actually armed...hehehehe
10. I'm what somebody lost and you found....I'm serendipity (batting my eyelids)

Walk like an Egyptian

That could well be the anthem of change for a world that seems to be standing on its head. The Egyptian chant for change is a million-voice din that is begging to be heard above the din. Hosni Mubarak, the current Public Enemy No. 1, represents a malady that has overtaken our world today - a complete breakdown in listening. At every level and in every available space and forum, everyone is talking. Who's listening? It's not just in political systems; in institutions, in communities, even in families, listening is dead (long live listening). We hear but we don't listen. The highest form of respect you can afford to a fellowman is to listen. So the opposite is equally true. Sadly, today's leaders - and not just political leaders - listen only to themselves. Nothing can be more dangerous to institutions and societies than a leader who begins to believe that he is a leader by right and not by sanction. Leaders need the sanction of the people they lead, to exist. The Father of Taosim, Lao Tzu said "To lead the people, walk behind them." Leading from the front is fine, but sometimes you need to look back to check if anyone is following.

It's not just in "repressive regimes" that leaders stifle all voices but their own. This phenomenon is rampant in so-called democratic institutions. Indian institutions are peopled by feudal mindsets that demand obedience with a sense of entitlement rather than seek validation through enrollment. This refusal to listen has become accepted norm not just in politics but even in industry. There is one difference though - in industry, institutional heads simply want the job done without debate or dissent; in politics, leaders simply want the job NOT done without debate or dissent. How many Indian ministers, bureaucrats, even ordinary clerks in government offices will listen and consider carefully a dissenting viewpoint? In many institutions, the only value of an individual's existence is in relation to how much he/she can nod in agreement to a megalomaniac's mood swings. How many educational institutions allow their wards to dissent and still be respected? For that matter, how many workplaces allow healthy dissent? Institutional heads are very blase about the brazen erosion of respect for people (without whom the institution wouldn't exist) while they spend time preaching to the choir about democratic values. All of these "leaders" are creating pockets of disgruntled citizens - in places of learning, in places of work, in places of worship. Wherever dialogue is absent and dissension is discouraged, the seeds of revolution will take root. Institutions face exodus of good talent; administrative machineries stagnate and begin to rot from within because they house unhappy apathetic people who don't listen to citizens because no one listens to them; religious institutions incubate extremist offshoots; educational centers produce rebels without a cause. One fine day, this simmering discontent boils over on to the streets searching the landscape for a representative around whose neck it can hang the albatross. For now, it's found Mr. Mubarak's neck.