Sunday, May 11, 2014
a mother's day wish
with resoundingly boring catch phrases, such as unity in diversity,
repeated ad nauseum in school i was taught the meaning of living with
people who were not exactly like my family but who were in a way just
like us.
born 13 years after india gained independence and was still in the influence of a man who may have been politically inept, paranoid, but was - from what i feel, and there will be no way of ever proving this - a dreamer, his greatest gift, i was fortunate to grow up in an environment where you did not divide people along human made lines of religion caste creed language culture economic background whatever.
i know too little about politics and history to say with any certainty whether the fact jawaharlal nehru was our first prime minister was a good thing or what... but as i said, i know how i felt growing up and my gut feel, there was an inclusive heart at work here, not just a political mind creating vote banks and other kinds of real world messes. which it did, of course.
today, in fact, just a few minutes ago... somehow i suddenly understand why my extremely liberal and fun and not at all narrowly nationalistic grandparents' lovely verandah in delhi had a classic portrait of the rather attractive man with that signature nehru jacket and red rose on. on the other side hung a portrait of president radhakrishnan. a man from the north and another from the south in the home of a family very bengali and totally from the east... somewhere a dream called india was being built in little things such as this.
because trying to hold onto an idea of one nation as more than 500, (or is it 600?) princely states came together along with what was known as british india to create for the first time a map that if you look carefully does look like a mother carrying a child (yeah, we got lots of that during our boring lessons too), is really really hard.
only a powerful dream could achieve that.
reality may have indicated, it would not work. just look at the abadi, oh our population, the poverty, the innumerable cultures, the various religions, the languages, the dialects (yeah, bengali itself has i have no idea how many, from dokhno to bangal to sylheti, and many more) the colours, the clash of egos, all the differences, that diversity... yet it did work.
you did not ask, how come your first teacher was punjabi, and not a bengali hindu kayastha as your family was. how come your first "proper" school based in calcutta was dedicated to a man called gokhale who was not from bengal, how come your parents had friends who were christians, sikhs, muslims, hindus, and from practically every part of india. in fact the lady who lived next door and loved me and let me go berserk in her house was burmese, i have no idea what her religion was and no one said, you mustn't go there because she is different. the best hairdresser my mother waited to take me to when visiting calcutta was chinese. i loved adored favourited chinese food, i still do, and cal trips till date aren't complete without some chine khabar from a basic (no michelin stars would dare to venture near) restaurant.
one of my dearest friends is muslim, i in fact got my first job as a copywriter in an ad agency run by a most interesting couple who happened to be muslims, and i am eteranlly grateful for that break. i went on to fall madly in love with a man who was jewish... yes india has a population of jews as well which i had no idea about... we married in 1985 and are still going strong (yikes)... he doing his religion, me mine... in the same home... and he was educated by jesuits and others, from primary school right up to management school studying in institutions run by christian missionaries. my husband travels the world as they say, thanks to his work, and everywhere he goes, he finds a synagogue and an indian restaurant, even where there is no synagogue, he has managed to find an indian restaurant and i have had to hear long conversations about how today he ate well because there was dal makhani, fish curry/matar paneer and naan and rice to assuage his hunger.
in 1980, my father was killed in sectarian violence in india... well assam was going crazy over all sorts of issues, they rallied around the predominant language: assamese. for n number of reasons the bengali and all people bengali became their bad guys. and one fine day, a man who loved assam and had worked there all his life lost it there too. my father had chosen to come back to india leaving a better paying job in england, because the happiness and involvement he felt while looking for petroleum in assam, his land, far outweighed the excitement of seeking the black stuff in the hidden depths of the north sea. boring boring... so back he came to assam. am i sorry he did and then went on to die? no.
he would rather be there than anywhere else. i am happy he worked where he loved to. and i know he understood the assamese people had a point...
was i then instructed by my mother to hate the assamese or assam? what do you think?
somewhere along the way though we kept and had our differences, we also got together. even when there was killing and violence. something said we are one, at least that is how it felt. unity in diversity. india.
the map that looks like a mother holding a child.
she is a feeling i carry in me no matter where i am.
i don't start that my films are created by khans and kapoors and roys and mukherjees and ratnams and ranauts. i don't think it's strange that i listen to music sung and set and scored by rafi, lata, mukesh, hemanta, debabrata, tagore, azmi, sahir ludhianvi, m s subhalakshmi, a r rahman, bhupen hazarika, ravi shankar, alla rakha, zakir hussain, bhimsen joshi... i don't think what the..., when the tv show that enthralls me has a hindu punjabi hero, a zoroastrian bombayite heroine, a muslim director from which state i don't know, and is produced by a team of two muslims and two hindus...
tell me who is hindu who is muslim who is sikh and who is issai... is david just a jew or is helen just anglo burmese, oh and the first miss india apparently was a jewish beauty... changed her name to a nice "indian" sounding one and acted... dilip kumar did that too... but there came a day when shah rukh khan and salman khan didn't have to...
celebrities apart, hundreds and thousands and more of inter caste and inter faith and inter state marriages have taken place in this crazy concoction of different but same people in the country and i know many that have worked for decades... a sense of openness in most of them. right now even, a movie called two states is collecting hugely at the box office, dosa it seems has become the favourite snack food of delhi. i know my husband here in singapore is getting ready to have a fun time with daughter, and it all begins with a crisp paper dosa and some vade. no, we don't need to always eat baghdadi jewish or bengali hindu food, while we love them, we also thoroughly enjoy other things.
that openness, that inclusive air, was certainly a part of the dream.
a dream dreamt by many at the time when india as i came to know her was born. not only the known names from the history lessons way back in school, (oh drudgery, thy name is history books in class 6/7/8), but the never to be known ones of the millions of "freedom fighters" and ordinary people who had been there and rejoiced when a saffron green white flag unfurled in the sky with a blue chakra in the centre.
who were indians in their hearts, with or without the map, the flag... the anything. my parents, my grandparents, my husband's parents and grandparents... maybe yours too among them.
why am i talking of all this today? because i believe something is about to damage the dream. intrinsically. in fact, the damage has started and taken root already.
politics in india was never good or something to be proud of. but when i traveled to europe, america, and many other places and and saw how really it is only in india that you find real living together... even with differences and riots and murders and mayhem... i have to say i was so proud of my land. a little giddily so. almost to the point of showing off.
silly.
because nothing to show off really... without that living together, that unity in diversity, that coming together and getting into each other's worlds and inner worlds, without that openness and ability to tolerate the other, india is really not india at all.
i pray nothing harms the dream.
no matter how loudly it screams and says there is only one way of doing things.
india gave birth to a truly fine body of thought called hinduism. from day one it had diversity in it... various schools of thoughts, a stunning explosion and evolution of ideas. don't get me wrong, almost nothing is perfect, and i am deeply aware of the problems in my faith as well, disturbing things that must be confronted if we are to be at peace within. but there's depth and beauty there too, a story of living, of searching for something beyond. a whole lifetime and more is not enough to understand the how and when and where of it.
and no, just reading the mahabharat, ramayan, geeta, radhakrishnan, aurobindo, etc., will not do, plenty of mystery there still. donniger may have some whiff of it, as did max mueller or my great uncle a k roy who wrote volumes on indology... okay studying about hinduism, india and the indus valley civilisation is still not showing any signs of abating... met an archeologist in israel who says he knows the lanes and baths and temples of harappa and mahenjodaro like the back of his hand though he has never been there... his thesis was on these ancient cities as he is an "iron age man" and nothing fascinates him as much as them. nothing.
i am writing in english, a language that came to india not under the happiest of circumstances, yet we made it our own and got the best out of it... that is india.
and being hindu, as my father taught me in a simple sentence, is a way of life.
there are no limits in exploring this way, you can even be an atheist and a hindu... that is how vast its scope and heart is.
so, i am sorry, with all due respect to people who rave and rant and say there is only one way of being hindu and it is fine to kill people in the name of your religion or anyone who disagrees can leave india... you are way out of line and absolutely wrong.
i can see you are managing to do a lot of damage, but strangely on this day that is celebrated as mother's day, i am suddenly not afraid of you.
look at that map, yes, it does look like a mother.
thank you, india... you are me and i am always yours, i am you.
back in school during assembly, my vice princi mr b l sharma would often recite this... though i am bengali, i never was into getting all bengalified with oodles of tagore ray and maacher jhaal, yet whenever he read this one i couldn't stop the rush of joy in me. today i heard salman rushdie quote it at the end of his speech on the curtailing of freedom of speech in india, of freedom itself. i felt the rush again.
where the mind is without fear and the head is held high
where knowledge is free
where the world has not been broken up into fragments
by narrow domestic walls
where words come out from the depth of truth
where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection
where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
into the dreary desert sand of dead habit
where the mind is led forward by thee
into ever-widening thought and action
into that heaven of freedom, my father, let my country awake.
rabindranath tagore
born 13 years after india gained independence and was still in the influence of a man who may have been politically inept, paranoid, but was - from what i feel, and there will be no way of ever proving this - a dreamer, his greatest gift, i was fortunate to grow up in an environment where you did not divide people along human made lines of religion caste creed language culture economic background whatever.
i know too little about politics and history to say with any certainty whether the fact jawaharlal nehru was our first prime minister was a good thing or what... but as i said, i know how i felt growing up and my gut feel, there was an inclusive heart at work here, not just a political mind creating vote banks and other kinds of real world messes. which it did, of course.
today, in fact, just a few minutes ago... somehow i suddenly understand why my extremely liberal and fun and not at all narrowly nationalistic grandparents' lovely verandah in delhi had a classic portrait of the rather attractive man with that signature nehru jacket and red rose on. on the other side hung a portrait of president radhakrishnan. a man from the north and another from the south in the home of a family very bengali and totally from the east... somewhere a dream called india was being built in little things such as this.
because trying to hold onto an idea of one nation as more than 500, (or is it 600?) princely states came together along with what was known as british india to create for the first time a map that if you look carefully does look like a mother carrying a child (yeah, we got lots of that during our boring lessons too), is really really hard.
only a powerful dream could achieve that.
reality may have indicated, it would not work. just look at the abadi, oh our population, the poverty, the innumerable cultures, the various religions, the languages, the dialects (yeah, bengali itself has i have no idea how many, from dokhno to bangal to sylheti, and many more) the colours, the clash of egos, all the differences, that diversity... yet it did work.
you did not ask, how come your first teacher was punjabi, and not a bengali hindu kayastha as your family was. how come your first "proper" school based in calcutta was dedicated to a man called gokhale who was not from bengal, how come your parents had friends who were christians, sikhs, muslims, hindus, and from practically every part of india. in fact the lady who lived next door and loved me and let me go berserk in her house was burmese, i have no idea what her religion was and no one said, you mustn't go there because she is different. the best hairdresser my mother waited to take me to when visiting calcutta was chinese. i loved adored favourited chinese food, i still do, and cal trips till date aren't complete without some chine khabar from a basic (no michelin stars would dare to venture near) restaurant.
one of my dearest friends is muslim, i in fact got my first job as a copywriter in an ad agency run by a most interesting couple who happened to be muslims, and i am eteranlly grateful for that break. i went on to fall madly in love with a man who was jewish... yes india has a population of jews as well which i had no idea about... we married in 1985 and are still going strong (yikes)... he doing his religion, me mine... in the same home... and he was educated by jesuits and others, from primary school right up to management school studying in institutions run by christian missionaries. my husband travels the world as they say, thanks to his work, and everywhere he goes, he finds a synagogue and an indian restaurant, even where there is no synagogue, he has managed to find an indian restaurant and i have had to hear long conversations about how today he ate well because there was dal makhani, fish curry/matar paneer and naan and rice to assuage his hunger.
in 1980, my father was killed in sectarian violence in india... well assam was going crazy over all sorts of issues, they rallied around the predominant language: assamese. for n number of reasons the bengali and all people bengali became their bad guys. and one fine day, a man who loved assam and had worked there all his life lost it there too. my father had chosen to come back to india leaving a better paying job in england, because the happiness and involvement he felt while looking for petroleum in assam, his land, far outweighed the excitement of seeking the black stuff in the hidden depths of the north sea. boring boring... so back he came to assam. am i sorry he did and then went on to die? no.
he would rather be there than anywhere else. i am happy he worked where he loved to. and i know he understood the assamese people had a point...
was i then instructed by my mother to hate the assamese or assam? what do you think?
somewhere along the way though we kept and had our differences, we also got together. even when there was killing and violence. something said we are one, at least that is how it felt. unity in diversity. india.
the map that looks like a mother holding a child.
she is a feeling i carry in me no matter where i am.
i don't start that my films are created by khans and kapoors and roys and mukherjees and ratnams and ranauts. i don't think it's strange that i listen to music sung and set and scored by rafi, lata, mukesh, hemanta, debabrata, tagore, azmi, sahir ludhianvi, m s subhalakshmi, a r rahman, bhupen hazarika, ravi shankar, alla rakha, zakir hussain, bhimsen joshi... i don't think what the..., when the tv show that enthralls me has a hindu punjabi hero, a zoroastrian bombayite heroine, a muslim director from which state i don't know, and is produced by a team of two muslims and two hindus...
tell me who is hindu who is muslim who is sikh and who is issai... is david just a jew or is helen just anglo burmese, oh and the first miss india apparently was a jewish beauty... changed her name to a nice "indian" sounding one and acted... dilip kumar did that too... but there came a day when shah rukh khan and salman khan didn't have to...
celebrities apart, hundreds and thousands and more of inter caste and inter faith and inter state marriages have taken place in this crazy concoction of different but same people in the country and i know many that have worked for decades... a sense of openness in most of them. right now even, a movie called two states is collecting hugely at the box office, dosa it seems has become the favourite snack food of delhi. i know my husband here in singapore is getting ready to have a fun time with daughter, and it all begins with a crisp paper dosa and some vade. no, we don't need to always eat baghdadi jewish or bengali hindu food, while we love them, we also thoroughly enjoy other things.
that openness, that inclusive air, was certainly a part of the dream.
a dream dreamt by many at the time when india as i came to know her was born. not only the known names from the history lessons way back in school, (oh drudgery, thy name is history books in class 6/7/8), but the never to be known ones of the millions of "freedom fighters" and ordinary people who had been there and rejoiced when a saffron green white flag unfurled in the sky with a blue chakra in the centre.
who were indians in their hearts, with or without the map, the flag... the anything. my parents, my grandparents, my husband's parents and grandparents... maybe yours too among them.
why am i talking of all this today? because i believe something is about to damage the dream. intrinsically. in fact, the damage has started and taken root already.
politics in india was never good or something to be proud of. but when i traveled to europe, america, and many other places and and saw how really it is only in india that you find real living together... even with differences and riots and murders and mayhem... i have to say i was so proud of my land. a little giddily so. almost to the point of showing off.
silly.
because nothing to show off really... without that living together, that unity in diversity, that coming together and getting into each other's worlds and inner worlds, without that openness and ability to tolerate the other, india is really not india at all.
i pray nothing harms the dream.
no matter how loudly it screams and says there is only one way of doing things.
india gave birth to a truly fine body of thought called hinduism. from day one it had diversity in it... various schools of thoughts, a stunning explosion and evolution of ideas. don't get me wrong, almost nothing is perfect, and i am deeply aware of the problems in my faith as well, disturbing things that must be confronted if we are to be at peace within. but there's depth and beauty there too, a story of living, of searching for something beyond. a whole lifetime and more is not enough to understand the how and when and where of it.
and no, just reading the mahabharat, ramayan, geeta, radhakrishnan, aurobindo, etc., will not do, plenty of mystery there still. donniger may have some whiff of it, as did max mueller or my great uncle a k roy who wrote volumes on indology... okay studying about hinduism, india and the indus valley civilisation is still not showing any signs of abating... met an archeologist in israel who says he knows the lanes and baths and temples of harappa and mahenjodaro like the back of his hand though he has never been there... his thesis was on these ancient cities as he is an "iron age man" and nothing fascinates him as much as them. nothing.
i am writing in english, a language that came to india not under the happiest of circumstances, yet we made it our own and got the best out of it... that is india.
and being hindu, as my father taught me in a simple sentence, is a way of life.
there are no limits in exploring this way, you can even be an atheist and a hindu... that is how vast its scope and heart is.
so, i am sorry, with all due respect to people who rave and rant and say there is only one way of being hindu and it is fine to kill people in the name of your religion or anyone who disagrees can leave india... you are way out of line and absolutely wrong.
i can see you are managing to do a lot of damage, but strangely on this day that is celebrated as mother's day, i am suddenly not afraid of you.
look at that map, yes, it does look like a mother.
thank you, india... you are me and i am always yours, i am you.
back in school during assembly, my vice princi mr b l sharma would often recite this... though i am bengali, i never was into getting all bengalified with oodles of tagore ray and maacher jhaal, yet whenever he read this one i couldn't stop the rush of joy in me. today i heard salman rushdie quote it at the end of his speech on the curtailing of freedom of speech in india, of freedom itself. i felt the rush again.
where the mind is without fear and the head is held high
where knowledge is free
where the world has not been broken up into fragments
by narrow domestic walls
where words come out from the depth of truth
where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection
where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
into the dreary desert sand of dead habit
where the mind is led forward by thee
into ever-widening thought and action
into that heaven of freedom, my father, let my country awake.
rabindranath tagore
Labels: a dream called india, diversity, india, jawaharlal nehru, mother's day, tagore, unity in diversity
