Return to Normalcy

Hundreds of them, and thousands of their family members, had always looked at the factory as a promised bowl of rice. It was here that they worked, day and night, without caring for the long hands of the watch fixed in the tall tower, or for the light- dim or bright. They have been working in this factory for a time longer than the loss of collective childhood.

In the last 10-15 years, free markets have showered its riches on the factory. Its assets grown, profits multiplied. And these assets and profits were intertwined with the growing working hours. With each wave of amassing wealth, with each round of retiring or retrenched worker, came swelling fear of losing job, and breaking of the rice bowl. They worked even harder to please the master, to keep the conveyor belt moving, even faster. But with the increasing speed of the conveyor belt, the number of hands locked outside the gate was growing bigger, which further scared them, and they moved it even faster.

As the days grown longer, stretching from dawn to dusk, most of them started forgetting that their children were getting taller, and they needed new clothes. More money could bring it, but for the bare two hands it couldn't be. When there are millions of hands waiting outside, ready to take over at the slightest of discontent, you can not ask for new clothes for your children, now in their teenage.

But slaves of capital can not ask for money. First it had to be freedom, freedom from fear, the scariest of which is fear of losing job. So they instead demanded a regular job, which can not be terminated at the whims of the market. They were agitating peacefully, sitting on hunger-strike. What they got instead were bullets, what they lost were a few lives with whom they had learned to live, and now to fight. But there was a life which was also lost, but which weighed heavily on the system, which was worth many million times of other lives, if measured in rupees. It was that of the master. So the balancing wheel, alias, the repressive machinery was put into motion, rolling over the workers' resistance, crushing it, trying to get them back to the same old world, where fear looms large.

Later newspapers reported it as return to normalcy.

Martyr, no despair

When we sang, danced

and sowed wheat

when we took life from the earth

and gave it back to her.

With our sweat and blood.

You tried to snatch it

from her, and from us.

You too sowed a seed that day.

You saw the gold that it birthed

we just saw our bloodstains.

When you had the young girl

singing in your palace,

we could barely whisper our songs.

When you fed the overfed,

we could just feel

the trembling feet of our children

carrying your load

still trying to match

the dance steps of the spring.

The crops are ripe, you thug!

You weigh the gold,

we have collected blood

from our open veins,

And we offer it

to the rising tide of the sea.

When the waves smash

against the rocky coast,

and splinter into million drops

we fill our palms with

and come back to our fields.

We have sown a sea in the earth,

Do you stand a chance!

We have not lost our songs,

We still remember our dance.

Don't you see it?

(Dedicated to millions of Kishans)

University

-1-

He was a very bright student from his village. They said that he would be an IAS. He had the opportunity to study in the best university of his province. But the university could not offer much to him. He enrolled with the masses. Went to the dusty countryside to study economics. It was good time. Two failed crops in the last as many years have trained people in economics. He was having a good time.

Universities nowadays, and governments always, do not like absconders. He deserved to be punished. They got him last month. He was charged with sedition and conspiracy, and waging war against the state. To serve, he was enrolled in another university. His old university friends called it by a name, Ara sub-jail.

His friend, another student, told me that his mother and brother had gone to meet him in jail. She told, they wanted to go and tell those who have kept him that he was just a research student, and had never hit anyone. The only blasts he enjoyed were the small firecrackers that his brother burst during diwali while he was still very young school student. And that he was a really good student, scoring high marks. And he wanted to study more.

The jailor's head swung up and down while he listened to them. Then he looked at them from his chair and asked, in a very cold voice, what business has he got to do with those farmers, who still have not taken their lives or left for far away places in search of bread, on a parched earth under an almost dead tree. That was not expected of a bright university research student. Thus pronounced guilty. Courts will carry out orders later.

-2-

It was a two hour long journey as a second pillion rider on a motorcycle in a dry, very hot afternoon. After the hustle-bustle of the city and some small towns on the way, we took a long, relatively newly carpeted road heading straight into the setting sun. Sunrays, still very hot, were burning our faces and we looked down as much as possible. Very soon the surface of the road became bumpy and three of us adjusted ourselves carefully on the seat. Just before the dusk we reached a small market stretched for about 200 meters and he stopped the bike. He was his younger brother.

It was a coincidence. Just as we were talking about how could I go for a small field trip to do a quick survey of peasantry in central Bihar, his brother informed him that he would be coming to Patna next day. It did not take more than a few minutes to decide that I was to leave with him. Now that we were straightening ourselves after a two-hour long drive, he offered that I must eat some snacks and sweets before we set out for his village which we could see from this place at a distance.

By the time we reached his house, at the edge of the village, it was almost dark and a kerosene lantern was being wiped clean to be hung on a brick wall. A cow was already moved inside the house to rest at night. A little while later we slept on the rooftop. The surface was still very hot despite the two buckets of water poured on it.

His house did not have curtains at the door. His mother, the only woman in the house, lived with his brother and his nephew. His father have long been away to work, more than two thousand kilometers far. He only occasionally came. His labour of last many years had earned just enough to make a portion of the house pucca, with brick walls and a concrete roof. His nephew was a sweet 12 years old boy with very bright eyes. In the next twelve days that I shared the house with them, he very often turned up with his books to clarify things. He had an unusual degree of curiosity about geography, about earth, moon, stars, rivers and mountains. But more often he dug dip into maps to fish out surprising details. He wanted to know how is an entire landmass, or oceans, countries and continents, could be shrunk to the length and breadth of a page. Almost everyday in the hot afternoons, when 47 degree Celsius wind burnt the dust on the road, we played ludo inside. It was a very old ludo board colours of which had faded, the two torn sides were fastened with a cello-tape, and old shirt buttons had replaced the lost pointers.

His mother was old and not keeping well. She said that her knees were not strong enough and they pained. She got up very early in the morning, took the cow out in the open, gave her fodder, then put fire in the stove which emitted a cloud of dark smoke burning her eyes, cooked, and cleaned the entire house before taking bath. She said that she is tired of doing it all alone and he should marry so that the younger brother could also marry, so that she had a companion and someone who could share this back breaking work. She complained that all the boys of his age were already married with children, and that she could not understand why he is so reluctant to get married. She asked if I was married. She was a little apprehensive when she asked me to convince him to get married, when I answered in negative. She lamented, “He is so intelligent that he outclassed all of them at school. Everybody says that he can easily become an IAS. But he is not interested in any job. Now he doesn't even come to village. He asks his brother to bring me to him in the city when I need to see the doctor.” She could not understand what was taking so much of time in settling down with a family and a job.

-3-

For long I have been thinking of sending a big wooden globe for his nephew. But I fear he will start searching for his uncle on the smooth slippery surface of the globe.

Games that nations play

Hostage...

For the last nine days, a police van is posted round the clock just outside our houses in the college campus. This is to make sure that we don't venture out in the newly constructed stadium. The only way to come inside the college campus and to go out has become a stagnant pool of mud and water ever since the rains started two months back. I could still make it to the main road in the beginning. But no longer. Only those having a car can venture out. I am confined to my house for last four days with more rains and mosquitoes. There is no milk or bread as the vendor could not bring his cart.

When the construction started, our taps went dry. The newly planted 'angrezi' grass was always green though. But the rains I loved. This year it is abundant anyways.

The whole area needs to be 'sanitized'. We are asked to park our scooters and cars inside our houses. When the games start, I think we would not even be peeping out of our windows. The players' ground is very much in the range of our gaze. We can not complain. Four of us can not talk together outside our homes as the prohibitory orders are in place.

The students have long been evicted from their hostels. They have ended up as a mouth watering platter to the neighbouring landlords. They have also become experts on economics of rack-renting. Some of them will come back to the hostel once it is transformed as a world class facility. But only the students of 'class' will afford this world class facility. Rest of them will remain hostage to the economics of rack-renting.

Long before it came to us in the university, four hundred thousand of others had already vanished from their shanties along the river, and from the streets where they dwelt. An entire games village and dozens of flyovers have grown out of their bellies. Maternity death rate is very high among poor people, remember.

But this must go on in the name of national pride, as we are only a couple of weeks away from being a great sporting nation. We must not complain. The national pride will purify me from dengue, and others from their souls.

Pride...

The only passage, along the drain, to the main road is stinking with shit. Hundreds of them produce quintals of it everyday. There is no bathroom, toilets, drinking water for them while they toil from dawn to dusk. Tall grasses doubled up as walls to protect modesty. Civilised didn't like that. Grasses lost the battle of modesty. Guards sprang up to protect the civilisation. Pathway cleared of grasses were patrolled by guards. Some young girls and middle aged women stayed put. They waited for the civilised and their soldiers to move away. Later, they couldn't even wait. Bared bottoms didn't inflict or invite shame. It is only when we absolve ourselves of the feeling of shame that we are bestowed with national pride.

Medals..

What medals are we going to give away as prizes in the Common Wealth Games? Is it gold, silver, bronze? Kalmadi has a better idea. Let him give away all those dark-skinned, malnourished men and women who have not yet perished while building these grand stadiums, swanky flyovers and apartments. We don't want to touch them anyways. He can keep all the gold, silver and bronze for himself. Those men and women who are still left can be hung on the walls displaying the grandeur of a great sporting nation. Erotic!

Patriotism

“Look, there is corruption everywhere. These politicians have eaten away our foundation like termites. They should all be lined up in the street and blown right away. No?”

“Yes, the country should be rid off these traitors. Only patriots have a right to rule.”

“These bastards politicise everything. They fight like dogs for their politics. Look, they do politics even over Kashmir. They don't even have scant regard for our soldiers dying over there fighting terrorists. They do politics over their dead bodies too.”

“Patriotism means nothing for them. They don't even care for those hundreds of them who died there for the country. All these sacrifices go waste.”

“We need change. Those who can lay their lives for the country, the incorruptibles, should snatch power from these leeches.”

Newspapers and magazines, unwillingly, have given away in their reports that millions of farmers too have given up their lives in the last ten years. But only fools will say that these cowards have died for the country. Only patriots have a right to rule.