Left, Right and Center

You check the petrol level and for another day procrastinate checking the tire pressure level as once again you are running late for office. You share your destiny to reach office in 25 flat minutes with no one else, despite the traffic blockages. You have the power that none can afford to have – For a city filled with cars, you are the lone shining star. You ride the Activa. You don’t give a damn about lane traffic. You crisscross the traffic as if everyone else is obliged to give you way. You think to yourself, “Lanes are just a state of mind, fulfilled by the neatly lined cars”. When the cars and other heavy vehicles have two lanes per road, an Activa has three – Left, Right and Center.

When I enter the flyover, I choose to enter it via the left lane. There is a lot of crowding at the left side of the road, since everyone wants to climb up the flyover and the only way to beat the one on your right is to cut him across. The left lane is accommodative to everyone and doesn’t differentiate despite varying levels of hard work, talent and the kind of bike you ride. Everyone moves at the same speed and everyone is treated equal with no regards to their social standing. You ride are as fast as the leader bike, which in your opinion is always the slowest. The leader bike has all the expanse of lane estate in front of him, but because of his’ ineptitude, he would be dismally slow. He would point fingers at the car guys complaining that they are not allowing him to move forward by blocking and cutting him. He will ask everyone behind to create a ruckus by continuously honking at something that doesn’t exist, but making the pack believe that he is fighting for the common cause. You may start your life as a leftist, but only to realize that it isn’t sustainable if you want to move forward and reach your office in the next 15 minutes.

I shift lanes. I watch my rear view mirror carefully and jump at the opportunity presented. The center lane is one of the most dangerous positions to be in. You are neither here nor there, but you know you will have to keep moving forward at a brisk pace, otherwise the car guys would just eat you up. You entertain the crony car guys with space and barter it for your personal protection. You either have no ideals or not capable of exhibiting one. You look to your left and laugh at the leftists for being so slow and unproductive, but decry the idea that your own fundamentals of stepping onto the flyover was embalmed by their ideals. I am reaching the end of the flyover and get the realization that I need to take the exit. I don’t have a choice but to change lanes once again to become a leftist for a brief amount of time and then discover my way around.

Unhappily I change lanes, become a leftist and take the exit and try to maintain the left-centrist position. When you are near Dadar circle heading into Tilak Bridge, you have no freaking idea on your leaning. You are just opportunistic and head for the right to enter Tilak Bridge – the gateway of Parel. You are on the hot zone now – the right lane. You have just 10 more minutes and you realize that you will have to be that animal to cut off every head that comes your way to reach office on time. You don’t bother about what other people think or how they may react. Your current goal is to take the right at any cost. You don’t estimate the cost because that is not borne by you. You don the hat of rightist, leftist, centrist, zigzagist and make your way through.

When the frenzy dies down, you look back in retrospection of the last 2-3 minutes. What have you done? Was it right? Yes. It was the Right way to do things. Was it wrong? May be. Who cares! I have survived.

I reach office in time and head to the parking. There again, they make me play the same political games that I played in the last 20 minutes. Alright! Game on!

The Nation Decides to Know

The village Vasville has existed ever since the Y-chromosomal Adam walked this earth in Africa. If and whether God existed, was unknown. Thus Adam, either being agnostic or having known better, called himself God. He found company elsewhere, mated and multiplied; warred and divided. Today, the thus evolved human beings are the ones ruling and being ruled. The best of the lot were too hot headed to persist and thereby perished in the wars, while the cowards survived. The genes of cowardice survived. The genes of cowardice ruled and they were being ruled.

Radolf Gannon belonged to the fourth generation of the ruling community. His family has been ruling Vasville ever since they gained freedom from their next door neighbor Briville. His family, having been entrusted by the people to rule, have since then ruled. The family changed their internal policies outlook from socialism to capitalism to neoliberalism, but people still remained poor. When it came to religious outlook, the family was confused with too many religions owing to their gene-mixing, although they all came from their common ancestor – Adam. Unaffected by communalo ileitis, the deadly disease that turns man into a wild dog and makes him hunt, at a point in history, the Gannons propagated the condition to avenge a key family member’s death. Yet, they never came out to apologize for the outbreak. Nevertheless, people being people, bestowed the family with the name ‘A perfect secular’.

The common man saw the Gannons grow in number and influence, but his hunger and struggle remained constant. In his fight for basic rights, many a two have died starving. Corruption was at its highest order, yet Radolf couldn’t control it. He didn’t have a say in how the village was being ruled, even though he wanted to rule the village someday. His internal conflicts were no less than a Pandora’s Box. Neither could he live without opening the box because of the curiosity of knowing the evil within, nor could he live with the truth that there is evil inside the box. Radolf was torn within himself.  Even as his family’s rule was running its last lap, people started calling him ‘Robber Radolf’ - not because his family robbed the village of everything that it had, but because he aided the robbers in everything that could be robbed. But, Radolf still believed in himself. He trusted the idea that he could be the one messiah they all have been waiting for. He wanted to empower the women of his village and saw clearly that the youth needed empowerment as well. His motto was ‘to find you and empower you’.

Meanwhile, Robber Radolf Gannon was facing stiff competition against a rags-to-riches, bigger-than-life persona Nathan Sircar. The story of Nathan is no ordinary story. Nathan was born into a family which went through cycles of poverty owing to poor mismanagement of resources by the Gannons. Nathan was born poor and educated poorly; but that allowed him to learn the knack of being street-smart. He could talk his way out of anything and could convince anyone. Poor people were his friends and they saw a lion in him that could roar against the atrocities being committed. Wearing patriotism on his sleeve, Nathan went on to win hearts of the many poor. When you become popular among the downtrodden, the rich befriend you. The powerful industrialists and wannabes fueled his growth. People loved him but for a section of people who loathed him for what he did. Ends don’t justify the means, so does what Nathan did a decade ago.

A decade ago, there was an outbreak of communalo ileitis in Nathan’s area. People thronged to Nathan’s house and asked him to help the people suffering because of the disease. What Nathan did was not only astounding but also shocking. Instead of finding a cure to the disease, he was alleged to have given a free hand to decimate the alleged cause. There was no proof that the converted wild dog breed Merizund was the cause of the disease, but Nathan didn’t care. He asked his people to let out the affected, even the closely associated ones. Thus was formed another breed, Hallyzund. He made the Hallyzund find and destroy the Merizunds on the whole. It was a nightmare for the area. Every Merizund that the Hallyzund could get hold of, was killed. After 3 days of Holocaust, there came an eerie calmness to the area. No one was cured of the disease, but there was a temporary control of the outbreak. There was no strength left in anyone to fight anymore. The biggest problem with the village was that the disease communalo ileitis outbreak was well controlled by the elite few for selfish reasons, but the common man continued to suffer from it during any and all outbreak hence. The debates around Sircar’s engagement in the Holocaust raged on. The interesting part during this whole ordeal was that the Gannons were tightlipped about it and offered no support or resistance to any of the suffering souls. No one noticed the conspicuous absence of voice. Thus, Nathan came to be addressed as Murderer Nathan. The name Murderer was not because he actually murdered, but because he could have avoided, but chose not to.

In the subsequent years, Nathan grew in stature. And with an unhealthy opposition that the Gannons have received due to their swindling activities, Nathan faces them as their biggest challenge. Irrespective of anything that has happened over the years, the common man has suffered. The common man has no say in whatsoever policies that their rulers bring in and he accepts that he has no power. And, thus comes the twist in the tale of two power centers of Radolf and Nathan – the rise of common man. The common man like anybody else in the village wanted to be an engineer, went on to serve the nation as a civil servant and was fed up with the way things worked. There was rampant corruption everywhere and he questioned the status quo and of the Gannons involvement at each and every juncture. He got no answers, but he persisted with the struggle. The common man questioned Nathan’s closeness to industrialists and his association with crony capitalism, but faced a dead end. Like in movies, the common man challenged Nathan Sircar’s wave with his share of anti-corruption youth’s wave. What was a tug of war between Sircar and Gannon became a triangle of contention with the common man becoming the vertex.

The common man carried his own set of flaws. He was inexperienced and too honest to play politics. There were so much improvement to be desired in his day-to-day life that the common man’s policies didn’t echo with the majority. He was beginning to be viewed as left-leaning and anti-capitalist. Propaganda started pouring in that his will would stall development. There were too many diseases to be treated, but the common man focused on only one disease. He set out to satisfy the village, but fell well short of what he intended to. People asked him for a manifesto, but the common man has got no answer to it. With age one gains wisdom. On an individual level, everyone have their reservations, but as a group, people always side with the popular belief. Vasville people were no different. They trust PR campaigns more than the truth. With the stage set, Vasville was set to vote for

1. Robber Radolf Gannon – Empowerment

2. Murderer Nathan Sircar – Development

3. Common Man – Anti-corruption

No matter what happened in the past,

No matter what happens in the future,

One can’t help but endure,

Ab ki baar, Nathan Sircar.

Will the common man rise to rule the village, or is it going to be another drab of five years by the Robber or Murderer?

Wait, the spaceship just landed….

Blah! Blah! Wedding

The article is based on real-life experience of self and others (my wife included in others!). Any sentence denoting a person living or dead is purely intentional.

Wedding, shaadi, kalyanam, thirumanam, vivaham is one of the most complex rituals in India. It is so difficult to get through one that starting a new political party and winning elections becomes a cakewalk. It’s filled with rules and regulations of do’s and don’ts and one shouldn’t be surprised if one comes across IIPM offering courses on them. IIMs can’t because marriage execution involves a lot of Planning. :P

So, marriage is less about the two individuals under the scanner and more about the two ‘broad extended’ families scanning the two individuals. The definition of ‘broad’ is quite broad that even the length and breadth of the universe wouldn’t suffice to define and demarcate the broad extended families. Everyone has an opinion and every opinion counts. And there is a scale of hierarchy to whose opinion matters when, which must be included in the course Opinion Management Systems (OMS – 101). No matter how distantly one can be related, the age always count. They all accede to one common philosophy here – the elder the person, the wiser he is, even if uncle Alzheimer has visited the elder person long ago. If there is a clash on the elderness (yes, I had to invent the word, as my editor is away for a while), they choose the person who is closest to the family. They can’t go and verify the birth certificates and all you see, because these people are so old that dinosaurs used to be their pets. You can easily identify them with the phrase, “During my times and all……” and your response must be, “How cute?? Was it a Trigonosaurus or a Tyrannosaurus?”

Once that is ascertained, the few ones who have the heads at the right place would say that these rituals are not practically possible to be performed, “See, times have changed and we will have to move to the modern times..” That’s it. That’s the end of story of their participation in the marriage. They are impeached that very second and their pink slip is sent through an overnight courier called ‘Ignore Express Ltd.’ Although they are fired, their perks such as food and lodging are retained. Only their consultancy services are severed with immediate effect. Based on their reconciliation, their future services for the upcoming weddings in the family will be evaluated.

Now that the sane ones are out of the picture, here come the diplomatic ones. Although they are the spine to any wedding, they are the ones to get hounded in between the trio of modern generation, the wedding executioners and the old-ritual-based-elders. They try to take the side of everyone in the picture that they lose their identity. They are like the call center employees who for no fault of theirs get screwed by the customers because they represent a particular company, “Welcome to Airtel customer care service. How may I get screwed for you now?” Finally, when they try to bring every stakeholder on to the same platform, the arriving guests will have a problem with the schedule, the photographer will have a problem with the angle, so-called-well-wishers will have a problem with the date being on a weekday, caterer will have a problem with salt and pepper, some wayward guests will have a problem with accommodation and food, decorations-wala will have a problem with the length of the stage, speaker system will have a problem with compatibility, light-years-distance relatives will have a problem of not-being-welcomed-properly-and-not-given-importance and more and more problems.

Amidst all this, there are a very few people who are really close to you who don’t have any problem at all. They are the brothers, sisters, friends and relatives who care for your happiness more than anything else. They keep telling you one thing, “Only, you decided that you want this to happen. You were firm that the juice is worth the squeeze and you went ahead. It’s the squeezing time. Get through with this. Rip the band-aid off. After a day or two nothing of this will make sense.” And with no option, you get through this. In the historical date of events, it will go down as your marriage. But, to tell the truth, it is not your marriage, but the marriage of the families. You two were just the focus of it.

You go to your honeymoon, come back, open the presents and make a note of who all gave you what all. You look through the pics and make a note of who all attended your wedding despite the issues of not getting leaves, sickness, boss is very angry, he is marrying a Muslim, she is marrying a Parsi, etc. You get back to real life and start living a live-in life as if whatever happened were just a formality and a legal binding.

In the end, if you are not happy you are screwed, but if you are happy also you are screwed, because you are bloody married bro!!

P.S 1: Those of you who didn’t attend my wedding; save your time, money and efforts in adding me on to your wedding mailing lists and spare me from the FB wedding invites. Unless, it is going to be in the same city as I live, I won’t be able to attend it for the free food. You definitely don’t deserve the gift anyways!! :P

P.S 2: Those of you who were a part of the wedding, thanks a lot. I know that mere thanks wouldn’t suffice, but I hope the experience was worth cherishing.