Home Truths part II

After my last post, I have suddenly discovered writing about 'home truths' is as much fun as reading them in assorted magazines ( One of my favorite section in any magazine, specially the seedy hindi type)..Last night when I hit bed, the only time when my starts thinking coherently - for too little time, as I get too tired on a regular day - I started thinking about the life I led as a child. Today, when I look around and see parents going out of their way to manage the lives of their kids, I envy, at the same time, feel blessed not have such haranguing parents. More importantly, as a kid, I always used to think, my life is devoid of any color and fun. I used to hear people talking about city life and the range of activities it offers. It was all so enticing at that time, and I used to feel so cheated as to why on earth I have to live in a town where people have no culture, social life or scandals.

Scandals: Interesting word. Life is what happens to you, when you are busy making other plans. Little did I know, that the life I am leading has scandals all around. ( When I look back, I feel there so many scandals all around me that I can guest write a few episodes of Desperate Housewives, and may be better than what their writers do.) But, the amazing part is that I never got any sugarcoated/ simplified version of things that might suit a child's wild imagination, as parents of today like to believe that they have to protect their child from all such gyans. but, not the people I knew of. They were blase and open about it, even discussing it in front of the children ( with careful selection of words, so not to give much, but I was smarter than they thought). Today I can see that they did not wear their morality on their sleeves, They all knew that everyone is upto something and the best policy is to live and let live, instead off making a huge tamasha of the whole thing. So, adultery, pedophilia, bestiality, suicides and homosexuality were the staple affairs of the people where I grew up with.

Speaking of homosexuality, let me recall the first gay couple I knew of. I must have been some seven or eight years old, and used to play with all the kids from the colony where I lived. There were different informal groups where kids of certain age used to play together, me too playing with kids of the same age bracket. I saw a young boy, barely sixteen or seventeen, who started coming to play with us. He was tall , good looking and wore stylish clothes ( That included wearing crochet vests-so popular with Muslim folks then, and perhaps Mithun Chakravarti had worn them at that time in one his movies- which show more of your body than cover it). To add to his charm was, the cigarettes that he used to smoke. the fact that he was young and could smoke so freely in front of others fascinated me a lot. For me it was some kind of independence assertion. However, the fact that he smoked made him a pariah for at least me. ( Thinking of it now, it amuses me the reasoning of mother that smoking is so much worse than being gay). So, I had been told not to get much close to him lest he offers me something to chew/ eat or smoke ( I realize now he had other things than cigarettes he could have offered). But the point is, this fellow, Hassan, perhaps this was his name, was not from the colony and had a openly gay relationship with one of its inhabitants. The paramour of Hassan was no less extra ordinary. To begin with, he must have been of fifty at that time with a wife, around three or four kids and two grandchildren and a daughter- in -law, all living under the same one room house. His youngest son, who was not more than three-four year old than me, used to come to our house and played with me often. I still remember him telling my mom that Hassan lived like his mom in their household. I could not get this expression and wondered how this guy, all masculine and manly, be living like his mom who always wears saris and makeup. It baffled me, but not for long. Birds and bees were in the offing, and with my acquired knowledge I could put two and two together. What, till today, intrigues me is the acceptance of their relationship by his wife, his family and the society at large. Today, when gay people feel discrimination, persecution and are often butt of joke in raunchy hindi movies, I am often reminded of this episode, how in the heart of small town India, people accepted such a thing without fuss and let others live their life. And yea, they did gossip ..as it was the only thing that gave them succor from their daily grind, but moral policing. No, that was not their game!!

Shall I say Home Truths?

I am trying to write about my father, who is right now sitting in the next room trying to watch third India Australia ODI with undiminished enthusiasm, inspite of constant wicket fall on Indian side. I had promised Fortunata that I will write about my father in my next post, but later on I realized that it will be so much difficult to even give a snapshot of his personality in some 800 words. But, surely, I will try.

He was the person who married my mom and brought me and my sister to this earth. The reason I am stating this fact is that it was no ordinary arrangement. The marriage was his second and first for my mother. There are different versions of the story told by different people on why they got married. Different reasons and rationalization were handed out to explain this unlikely match. I still have not been able to collate all versions together and form an arc. I think Love Marriage is what people used to call this arrangement in places I grew up, and it was sacrilegious and forbidden for most of them. I was so much embarrassed by this word: love marriage. Everybody felt, at the time of their liaison, that it was nothing out of place. Many others have done this in the past and many will do, and it is just a matter of time before he leaves her for his 'legitimate' wife.

Our lives were in a constant state of paranoia, what if he actually does it, leaving two children with a woman with no income or fortune or a home to return to.

But, he never did it. And yes, I am thankful to him for that.

Hindus & Muslims: Why we are more similar than different

I recently wrote a long rebuttal to a Pakistani journalist's article proclaiming Indian intellectuals can't accept Pakistan, only to later feel that I might have been a little jingoistic in my response. I absolutely agree that there are sections of Indians who feel that way, but to term an entire community, or so called liberal Indian intelligentsia, Anti-Muslim would be preposterous.

This has reminded me so many incidents from my life where I, as part of growing Indian middle class, faced people with varying degree of paranoia against muslims. Having grown up in a libearal environment, my parents never instilled any anti-muslim sentiments in my mind, whereas everywhere else I found that hindu children are told vicious things by parents about their muslim counterparts. Here I have tried to list down some of the misinformation fed to the children from a young age, which later perhaps shapes their perception of the community:
( based on my experience of growing up in small town north India)

• Muslims are the filthiest creatures to be found. They take bath only on friday, the day of prayer, and they make do with their customary 'wuzu' (ablutions) for rest of the days. And not to forget, they hardly ever change or wash their clothes.
• All muslims are incestuous. They don't value any sisterly or filial relationships and can be betrothed to even their step-mother.
  
• Muslims are very cruel, they have no feelings and in the event of slightest tiff, they will chop you like a butcher the moment they seize you . And muslim women are not far behind, they too can make a barrah kabab out of you single handedly with their knives in times of riots.
  
• They have no culture, tradition or customs. They will keep four wives and divorce their wife whenever they wish.
• Muslims can never be trusted, they would never fight shy of backstabbing at first available opportunity.

Now, these reasons are adequate enough to create a distorted picture in the impressionable young minds, but not enough to clamp down young childhood friendships. Inspite of all the misgivings parents or society tried to inculcate among my friends, none of them ever had any reservation in sharing our study notes or lunch boxes. I don't know how many of them feel the same way about muslims now, but I am very sure it must not be very different from what it used to be.

Eastern Uttar Pradesh, the place where I grew up, was once famous for it's ganga-jamuni tehzeeb, the camaraderie between different faiths and harmonious, peaceful co-existence.This, coupled with liberal attitude of my envioronment, led me to be enchanted by the wonderful cultural heritage I was exposed to. I looked forward to month of ramzaan much more than Holi or Deewali because unlike a single day of celebration, it brought steady stream of muslim delicacies in the form of iftaari for one whole month. Muhaaram was not far behind in my scheme of things, where I would listen to all the marsias and wait for the hissa, the food item given at the end of the majlis. I used to go to mosques and dargaahs with same reverence as to the temples every year before examination results were to be announced. ( Even today, I feel muslim dargah are quicker in listening to your wishes and granting them than hindu gods)

Cut to year 2006, while travelling through busy lanes of bangalore, my fairly liberal, educated, broadminded friend becomes wary of driving in a muslim ghetto. His fears are same. He feels he will be killed if he accidentally even just touches a kid running on the road. I prod him to know more about his paranoia and he gives me the same answers: how muslims are brute, and killing people is in their blood, they have no compunction while butchering people. When I remind him of the atrocities perpetrated by hindus in gujrat riots, he gets dismissive of it as a retaliatory action.

My arguments could not convince him on that day that there can be a non-violent muslim, and I had to give up. I normally don't try to act as an intellectual, liberal champion of muslim cause. But in his case, I was deeply hurt. I never expected somebody of his class, intelligence and awareness to be so rigid in his view of his muslims, and he never believed in right wing politics of BJP. I later realized that it was not his fault that he had not come across any muslim who challenged his set perception of muslims. Those beliefs were perpetuated in his mind by mass media where all terrorist activities are brandished as muslim handiwork.

As mentioned in the article by Mr. Ramchandra Guha, in whose response, the piece of Writing that I responded to was written; people who migrated from pakistan at the time of partition are most resentful of muslims. They see them as the reason they were displaced, and hold them responsible for everything they went through. Political parties have exploited this sentiment and used it to rouse people against each other. It has become another 'us' versus 'them'. When I look back, I find not 'them'. We were all 'us' and hope to continue to remain so.

In his particularly relavant book on this subject, Identity and Violence, Prof. Amartya Sen discusses the same nature of commonality which bonds people of different faiths. Dismemberment of Bangladesh is a case in point that religion alone cannot keep people united. I just wish more people become curious to find commonalities than differences among muslims of today's india and see that we are more similar to them than what is projected by political parties.

P.S. Some people might get confused as to how it is possible to be friends with muslims and all that ganga-jamuni tehzeeb remains intact, when such a malicious traits are attributed to muslim. The list of virtues ascribed to muslims are part of a folklore which gets passed down to different generation, and everyone renounces them when they see muslims are not what is projected of them, because they get chance to be frinds with them, study with them and interact with them, unlike living in a ghettoized envioronment