The cost of silence

Certain areas of our history have become taboo. For different reasons we prefer to not to talk about them. Instead, only certain conservative groups and political parties can speak about those parts of our histories. But are there other costs to the society because of this silence?

Amitabh Bacchan and the Somnath ad

The angry reactions about it on facebook and blogs alerted me about the Somnath advertisement video of Gujarat Tourism. They also made me curious about the ad. So I watched it on Youtube and was wondering about the reasons that had provoked the angry reactions. I think that the reactions were not about what is said or not said in this ad, they were mainly about the motives behind it.

At one level, this ad can be compared to Obama talking about loss of American jobs due to outsourcing to India or China. Or it can be compared to the Italian northern league party that uses rhetoric and demagogy about “emigrants” to create fear about criminality and national identity. It reminds people about the threats faced by the Somnath temple some centuries ago.

At another level, the ad is a subtle threat, hidden behind nice words and glossy images. That threat is serious, if we look at the history of using such arguments and how such ideas have been used to justify events like the Gujarat carnage in 2002.

I can imagine the marketing managers and ad agency of Gujarat tourism, all very pleased with themselves. Their message is being spread by persons who like it and also by those who hate it. They must be hoping that in the end people will forget the controversy and remember some of those wonderful images of Somnath temple and more tourists will visit the state. Or they have done it on purpose to stir passions and make electoral gains.

Wider issues of discussion on history: However, I think that this episode points to wider issues of different links between history, politics and religion in India, that are not being debated very often.

Can we talk, discuss and argue about historical events including religious conflicts and understand their significance in India, without making it an accusation against one group of our people?

Language in pre-independent and post independent India

In the pre-independence era and even up to 1950s and 1960s, it was still possible to talk about historical events, without worrying if that was going to offend certain groups of population. Perhaps, it was because that people were clear in their minds that they were talking about historical events, things that had happened hundreds of years ago and these were not judgements about persons of specific religious groups today?

For example Jawaharlal Nehru in his "Discovery of India", first published in 1946 wrote:

About 1000 AC Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni in Afghanistan, a Turk who had risen to power in central Asia, began his raids into India. There were many such raids and they were bloody and ruthless, and on every occasion Mahmud carried with him a vast quantity of treasure. A scholar contemporary, Alberuni, of Khiva, describes these raids: "The Hindus became like atoms of dust scattered in all directions and like a tale of old in the mouths of people. Their scattered remains cherish of course the most inveterate aversion towards all Moslems." ... He met with a severe defeat also in the Rajputana desert regions on his way back from Somnath in Kathiawar.

Socialist leader, Dr Ram Manohar Lohia in his article "Hindu and Muslim" (Hindu aur Musalman, 3 October 1963 published by Ram Manohar Lohia Samta Nyas, 1993) had written (my translation from Hindi):

A common misunderstanding in the minds of both Hindus and Muslims is that Hindus think that for the last 700-800 years Muslims have ruled us, they have been cruel and despotic, and Muslims think that, even if those who may be poorest of the poor, for 700-800 years we had ruled and now our bad days have come. .. the truth is Muslims have killed Muslims. Killed, not in spiritual terms but in physical sense. When Tamur came and killed 4-5 lakh persons, among them 3 lakh were Muslims, Pathan Muslims who were killed. The killer was a Mughal Muslim. ... I want that everyone, Hindus and Muslims, we should learn to say that Ghazni, Gauri and Babar were bandits, who attacked us.

Not just about past history, even for more recent events like India's partition, and Kashmir issue, till seventies, there are countless examples of leaders, writers, thinkers from different sides of political spectrum, who expressed themselves in words that, if used today, would immediately provoke unease and sometimes even accusations of being a part of "fundamentalists" or "saffron brigade", because now those areas of our history have become "sensitive" or even "taboo".

Changing context and changing language

I don’t think that anyone would tell the Jews not to talk about holocaust or to the persons of African descent in the Americas, not to talk about slavery.

The medieval period has been an era of Christian fundamentalism. Think of crusades. Think of genocide of natives in Americas, think of Aztec and Inca empires completely demolished and destroyed. Think of “holy” inquisition in southern Europe, where Muslims and Jews were persecuted, tortured and killed, converted by force, their books and knowledge burnt, their temples and mosques razed to ground.

While it all happened in Europe and middle east, it was more or less the same time when Ghazni or other Turkish/Afghani invaders were raiding India, burning, looting, killing people and also destroying Indian temples.

On one hand, it is perfectly legitimate to talk about what happened in crusades, what happened to natives in Americas and about the tortures of inquisition in Europe. There are countless recent books and articles about it and if you talk about it, no one would dare say that you are anti-Christian or a Muslim/Jew bigot. But if you talk of what happened to temples, you could be looked at with suspicion. Why is that?

When and why this change?

All languages change with time and our way of talking about things changes. The fights for civil rights by the blacks in America and South Africa, the continuing fights for dignity by groups such as women and homosexuals and transgender persons, have all focused on words used to talk about them. The "illuminism" of concepts and ideas of human rights following the second world war, have all impacted on what we talk about and in which terms.

Thus, it is perfectly understandable that today anyone talking about groups of persons like women/blacks/gypsies/asians in an inappropriate language is seen with suspicion or distaste. It is perfectly understandable that persons using terms like niggers or cripples are told off clearly to mind their language. Thus, ways of expression that sounded perfectly reasonable thirty/fifty years ago, may be seen as problematic today.

But the change in India in not talking about certain parts of historical events, does not seem to be an issue of language. It is something else.

Thinking back of the events of the past thirty forty years, I think that part of the change may have come from the Khalistan movement in Punjab. It underlined the fact that India could fragment and get divided.

In his "Idea of India", Sunil Khilnani had written of the apparent conviction of the British and many other parts of the world that post-independence, India would break up in different states. However, till the Khalistan issue came up, while there were wars with Pakistan on Kashmir issue, and there were religious riots every now and then in different parts of India, I think that till that time, there were no real fears among Indians about a break-up of India, and it was the Khalistan movement that brought out this fear in to open.

The demotion of Babri masjid in 1992 and the subsequent bomb blasts in Mumbai, followed by more religious riots probably affected the nation's psyche more fundamentally. The Gujarat killings of 2002 with its state sponsored violence, were the final shock that told India that it was moving towards its doom. In this changed scenario, anything that puts into danger the unity of India has gradually become a taboo area, to be avoided at all costs. Thus, all violent traumas of our recent history are to be swept under the carpet, to be hidden away.

Religions and Indian thinkers

I have a feeling that the thinkers and philosophers in today's India would prefer not to talk about religions at all. For them religion and faith is a non issue, or at the most a private issue. Their distaste towards the more conservative religious believers of different religions is clear, though they are more controlled in denouncing the conservative groups among the minorities and much more vocal in expressing their indignation at Hindu conservatives. I remember an article of Ram Nath Guha in Outlook some years ago in this sense, asking us to be more aware and careful of fears of the minorities.

At the same time, past decades have seen increasing violence of certain conservative groups and the state seems unable to do anything to stop them. Thus persons burn libraries because someone has dared to write something about Shivaji or hound persons like Hussein for having dared to paint a naked Saraswati or in the name of Islam, MLAs threaten to kill Taslima on TV. Try to discuss multiple versions of Ramayana and people pounce on you for denigerating their religious feelings. Try to make a film about conditions of widows in early twentieth century and mobs will chase you away. Pose a question about a person called Mohammed in a question paper and they will cut off your hand and university will suspend you for hurting people's religious feelings. Have a negative Sikh character in a film and sikhs will protest. Talk about illicit relationships of a priest and church will protest.

The end result of both things is silence. You can't discuss anything that touches on religions. From the thinkers and philosophers, because they fear it will hurt the sentiments of minorities. From the conservatives, who have their versions of their religions and they dare anyone else to challenge those views.

Impact of this situation

Political incorrectness issue is especially serious in terms of Hindus and Muslims. Today it is politically incorrect to talk about Muslim invaders from Ghazni to Mughals. We can talk about persons like Akbar, if it is about Hindu Muslim unity, but it is better to avoid talking of Aurangzeb, and if you do it, it should be preferably in terms of “he was really not so fundamentalist as he is painted out to be, he was actually helping some temples”. And if we show Muslims killing Hindus and Sikhs in a film or a play, you should balance it by showing that Hindus and Sikhs were also killing Muslims at the same time.

To a lesser extent, similar problem applies to relations with other religions - especially Christians.

Thus, certain aspects of history have become personal property of Saffron brigade or radical Islamic groups – only VHP, RSS, some Maulanas/clerics or others of their side can speak about it and if you talk about it, you are naturally part of some fundamentalists.

Why is that? Why can’t we differentiate between the past and present? Talking about what had happened 400 years ago, doesn’t mean that as Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, Christian communities of today we are responsible of that past. In the history, terrible wars have been fought, terrible things have been done in the name of religion, but as human beings we are capable of changing, and today we can dialogue and reflect about such things without it necessarily reflecting on who we are today and what our religions are?

I also think that it is unfair to lot of persons, who are religious, but are not conservatives or fundamentalist in their thinking, who believe in multi-cultural India and have respect for all religions. Why should they be seen only as part of saffron brigade or Islamic conservatives?

I do believe that majority of people in India, be they Hindus, or Muslims or Christians or whatever religion, are sane persons, who believe in their faiths, but they also respect others, they also bow their head when they pass in front of another’s prayer place. It is a pity that they only have political parties to represent them who are either representing extremists of their religions or those who call themselves seculars but who do not understand or acknowledge anything related to their faiths.

At the same time, I think that cordoning off certain parts of our history, whether it is arrival or Aryans in ancient India or Muslim invasions of medieval India or partition of India in 1947 or killings of Sikhs in 1984 or killings of Muslims in Gujarat in 2002 or killings of Christians in Kandhamal a couple of years ago, does not help us. Silence does not help us.

Reality is never black or white. Reality is not made of one simple story of one killer and one oppressed. It has multiple stories, where religion is just one part but there are many other parts. If we can't talk about them, we are closing off our possibility to understand what happened and why it happened and how can we make sure that it does not happen again.

***

For what?

A friend has sent this message about a consideration made by the Brazilian nobel prize winner Dr. Drauzio Varella:

"En el mundo actual, se está invirtiendo cinco veces mÃis en medicamentos para la virilidad masculina y silicona para mujeres, que en la cura del Alzheimer.
De aquí a algunos anos, tendremos viejas de tetas grandes y viejos con pene duro, pero ninguno de ellos se acordará para que sirven".

It means:

"In today's world, they spend five times more for virility medicines for men and silicone for women, than for curing Alzheimer. In a few years, there will be women with big tits and men with hard dicks, but they won't remember, these are for doing what!"

***

Nigerian email hackers have souls

Tomorrow morning I am leaving for Nigeria. I was wondering if I should take my laptop with me or if it was better to leave it at home? In my mind, Nigeria is full of hackers who can steal things effortlessly from your computers just by looking at it! Then I received an email and it changed the way I look at Nigeria and Nigerians.

Yesterday I received a "different" spam message from alicesary2(at)gmail.com. It made me aware about the tough jobs poor email hackers in Nigeria have to do. Sending countless emails to people who don't believe in their crying stories, about being stranded in foreign lands needing emergency money or widows of millionnaires wishing your help in getting at their millions, must be tough and job-satisfaction must be low, apart from pangs of guilty-consciousness for duping poor sods who believe in fairy tales.

OK guys, next time I put your message in the dump-box, I won't curse you, I will smile and think about your tough lives! Here is the message:

Hello Dear,

Since you aren't falling for my African romance scam, let me be up front with you. Because I am actually a Nigerian man, you owe me something.  I am entitled to reparations from the rest of the world, including you, due to the misdeeds of my forefathers who sold their family members and neighbors into slavery.

I am also entitled to handouts since my nation is rife with corruption and graft and has no hope of ever creating a decent civilization for itself.  Since you have not sufficiently helped us, that is your fault, not ours.

Most of all, you owe me for all of your unfounded prejudice against us.So start paying up now, by Western Union.  I will accept $12,000 USD from you over a one year period in monthly installments of $1000 USD.

Otherwise I will emigrate to your country and never cease to be a social problem for you.  A word to the wise is sufficient.

Regards,

"Alice Sary", as good a name as any

God of Goldilocks

This week's Astrophysics journal has the story of a planet going around a red dwarf star, 20 light-years away from the earth.The planet has been given the name "Gliese 581g", and someone with lot of imagination, has converted the final and unimaginative "g" of the name into "Goldilocks".

It seems that Goldilocks can be a planet suitable for life similar to our earth, "the right size and location for life". May be all those scientists can take a break and need not worry about finding proofs of life on Goldilocks, I can already confirm it. There is life and there is God on Goldilocks, I know it.

Let me try to explain my view.

Scientists have already found that all matter is made of sub-atomic particles, that are in constant motion. Between our world as we see it and the sub-atomic world, there is such an immense distance that human imagination is not enough to understand it. In CERN near Geneva in Switzerland, scientists are trying to break down the sub-atomic particles to find out their compositions. I believe that sub-atmoic particles are made of ultra-sub-atomic particles, and distance of proportions between two groups of particles is as big or may be bigger than the distances between our world and that of sub-atomic particles.

In the same way, I believe that we are the sub-atomic particles of the universe, and may be our universe is sub-atomic particle for other bigger universes. For me, life is the constant motion of the sub-atomic particles, that is such that according to quantum physics it can be in more than one place at the same time. This life force joins all of us, humans, animals, plants, mountains, rivers, oceans, space, planets, galaxies into one. This super-consciousness is God.

It is for this reason that I like the ancient human's ideas of gods like mythical creatures, humans and demons and animals all combined like the mythical creatures on the Buddhist temples in Vietnam, like Ganesh in India, because these give an idea of unity of life beyond the apparent differences in our forms.

Scientists say that all our cells change, some die and others are born every minute, every day. Every time we breath, new atomic particles enter our bodies, mix with particles that make our body and some go out with our breath. We are being renewed all the time. Think of a being on Goldilocks, millions of years ago - its atomic particles mixed and travelled in space and have arrived on earth and have entered your breath. Goldilocks is here, inside you, inside us.

The hero and the villain

I like mystery stories in books and films. When you start with them, you already know that the author/director is going to plant red herrings along the way, and you have to constantly second guess them, and not to get distracted. Finally when you are able to guess the plot and the mystery near the end, or when the author/director manage to surprise you in the end, it can be very satisfying.

In Ravan, director Mani Ratnam behaves in the same way. He makes you think that you are going to watch a certain kind of movie, while showing you a completely different one.

Yes, finally I saw Mani Ratnam’s Ravan. And I loved second guessing his motives while making this movie, and I loved that he managed to surprise me in the end.

The reviews of the film were so harsh, especially about Abhishekh Bacchan. They said things like “he has single handedly destroyed this film”. Some people have even watched both the versions of the film (Tamil and Hindi) and are all praises for Vikram in the Tamil version, and thus, the condemnation for Abhishekh Bacchan seems even harsher.

I am not very fond of the Junior Bacchan. But after reading all those reviews I was left wondering if Abhishekh was so clearly bad in that film, how come the director and the different technicians couldn’t make it out while they were shooting the film or editing it? After watching the film, I feel that Abhishekh was good in the film, not exceptionally great, but good enough for Mani to plant his red herrings and create confusion.

For the last few years, I find difficult to sit through most bollywood films. So, after reading all the reviews and comments about Ravan, I had first thought that I will not watch Ravan. Then after some time, I thought about Mani's other film, Yuva. I had loved it and I had loved Abhishekh in it, so I decided that I had to find out for myself, how could both Mani and Abhishekh get it so completely wrong like the reviews seemed to suggest?

I didn’t like the beginning of Ravan. A collage of shots mixing up Beera (Abhishekh) standing on the top of the cliff, the policeman (Vikram) giving the speech in some military academy kind of place and the porcelain beauty (Aishwarya) on the boat getting kidnapped, looked pretentious and tiring. Perhaps Mani sir is too high on pretentious camera angles and confusing techniques, and that is why ordinary viewers have been put off by this film, I had thought.

Yet, within ten minutes I was hooked by the film, and watched it till the end without feeling bored for a moment. I think that it is a clever film with Mani Ratnam playing with the human biases and using them to cheat & confuse the viewers. Very thought provoking. However, may be I can understand, why it may seem off-putting and tiring to most viewers.

The archetypal revenge stories of Bollywood: The basic story of the film is nothing new and has been shown many times on Indian screens in many variations.

The revenge story involving cops has two main versions:

(1) Poor ordinary man and the corrupt cop story: The poor good guy is the hero and corrupt power-mad cop is the villain. The villain kidnaps and rapes the good guy’s sister/wife and the good guy takes up arms for revenge. At the end of the film, the villain is thrashed, jailed or killed.

(2) The honest cop and cruel ganglord story: An honest cop is the good guy. Somehow he manages to irritate the hoodlum. For revenge the hoodlum decides to teach the policeman a lesson and kills his family or kidnaps his wife/sister and rapes her. The honest police officer, goes after the hoodlum and in the end, kills him.

Mani takes these two versions of the story and mixes them up. The film starts as the type 2 story, that is “honest cop versus cruel ganglord” story, with kidnapping of honest cop’s (Vikram) wife (Aishwarya) by the cruel ganglord (Abhishekh). Almost halfway through the film, you realise that perhaps it is type 1 story, a “poor ordinary man and the corrupt power-hungry cop” story. However, Mani continues to create confusion by planting his red herrings.

Mani Ratnam’s question to the viewers seems to be: are you sure that you are supporting the right and the just side or you are letting your inherent human biases guide your feelings for the wrong side? I think that this question is very topical if you think of some issue of contemporary India like big dams, exploitation of tribals, beneficiaries of economic development, etc. It seems that if you have nice names like Vedanta or if you can use nice words like development and "India the new super-power", you can get away with exploitation, destroying the homelands of rural poor and triabls and worse. Mani uses similar techniques – mythology, looks, names to create a hero and a villain, who are not what they seem to be.

Story: On one hand there is a local tribal hoodlum, a kind of Robin hood helping poor oppressed tribal villagers. Other tribals, poor and uneducated people say good things about him (“He is like water, transparent”). He is secure in his world, not worrying about the new police officer appointed to his district and is busy in his siter’s wedding, whom he loves because “she is the independent kind, the kind who stands up to him”. He is probably a small time local crook, as there are no armed guards protecting him.

On the other hand, you have an ambitious police officer, appointed to a district, who decides to shot at the unarmed local hoodlum-Robinhood, while he is busy with kanyadaan of his sister. It is a little strange that hoodlum is loved by locals, yet police can come to his village, to his sisters' marriage and yet he and his men are completely unaware about it. This also points to his being a small local fish. Police officer's brother and other policemen, take the bride to the police station and rape her. The smart police officer, must have been aware of that? He has a nice looking wife, and when she is kidnapped by the men of the hoodlum, he goes after the tribal gang, refusing any comprise, killing as many as he can.

Treatment: Mani Ratnam takes the ordinary man versus corrupt power-hungry cop story except that he doesn't explain much about the motives of the cop and uses all the tricks to confound the viewers, so that cop is treated like a hero and the poor man like a villain.

Tribals in the film are not the cute bum-shaking, singing villagers of Bollywood, they have mud, ash or yellow paste of haldi streaked on their faces. Their clothes have black streaks, their eyes are circled with black, to make you think of devil or Shiva’s Yam-doots. Beera is made to look repulsive. He even mentions that he has ten heads like the demon king Ravan. He also has a habit of changing his expressions, and usually ends up with a crazy glint in his eyes. Just in case you didn’t get it, his hands move on his head like wings of a fluttering bird, making you feel that he is mentally unstable.

The other guy (Vikram) is macho, good looking, educated, apparently in love with his beautiful wife, a regular city guy, a hero material. His wife is cute, does lovely dances, surrounded by small children. His name is Dev, and there are different indications that he is like Ram from Ramayana. His relationship with his younger brother (Nikhil Diwedi) reminds you of Ram-Lakshman relationship. If you still had any doubts, there is Sanjeevani (Govinda), the forest guard who makes you think of Hanuman from the way he climbs on the top of roof-tops and swings from one tree to another.

When the film starts and you feel that it is story number two, the honest Ram like policeman fighting for his honour, fighting the cruel uneducated tribal bad man to save his beloved wife. As the film moves, the lines between good and bad are constantly blurred and only when the Jamuna (Priyamani) story comes out, some doubt creeps in and you start thinking that perhaps the cops are not the good side in this film.

Even then Mani Ratnam does not make it easy for you. Events unfold in such a way that every time you can feel a twinge of sympathy for the poor Beera, the director makes sure that you feel a little repulsed about him, by playing with the prejudices of urban film goers about rural unkempt, mentally ill, black and ugly uneducated persons. He plays dirty by highlighting everything that can look bad for Beera.

It is only at the end that you understand the way the policeman manipulates everything cold bloodedly, uses even his wife and her emotions, to get his own way. He does not hesitate from trapping and killing Beera, even while he knows that Beera has been good to his wife and has even spared/saved his own life. May be in the background you have some mining company or some other big company, who want the tribal boy out of the way, but Mani does not tell you about it.

I think that Abhishekh is brilliant and courageous for accepting to come out so strongly in being repulsive and crazy. Actually I liked everyone in the film, except may be for Aishwarya Rai. She does try hard enough, but she does not create electricty with Abhishekh, their vibes are not hot. I would have preferred someone more earthy and intense like Rani Mukherjee, the way she had portrayed Sashi in Yuva. Or Nandita Das or Konkana Sen. Aishwarya looks beautiful, but she vibes better with Vikram, like in the dancing song, “Khili re”. And she doesn’t fit with the wild jungle and thumping waterfall (photographed beautifully).

The week points about characterization of Beera (Abhishekh) are his hands, his legs, his teeth. His fingers seem too well kept, clean and manicured, and his teeth too white for being the tribal ganglord. I also felt that Mani went a little overboard in asking for his repulsive makeup. Like, in the dance “Thok de killi” with blacks streaking his clothes and around his eyes, looked too theatrical and obvious.

Some parts of the film, like the whole sequence at the end, with Ragini (Aishwarya) getting down from the train, coming to look for Beera, their meeting at the cliff top and their getting surrounded by police, seem very implausible. What kind of villain is this? He comes without a gun, does not even know that hundreds of policemen are following the woman in his jungle? But looking for that kind of logic does not help to appreciate the film. In any case, I think that the film was not about logic or believability of the story, but about archetypes of good and bad in Indian unconsciousness, and using them to raise questions about our inner prejudices.

I feel that with this film, Mani Ratnam throws a challenge at the viewers, that he will turn upside down your ideas about the hero and villain, he won’t let you identify with the hero, and then he seems to ask, tell me does it make you uneasy? Going by the general response to the film, it seems film goers have taken him on his words.

Think of Yuva, by no stretch of imagination, you can call Lallan a good person, yet in Yuva you can understand his compulsions and even identify with him. In Ravan, Beera is a much better character compared to Lallan, yet Mani does not let you feel any empathy for him. That required courage or may be it was foolishness? In my opinion, he does merit an accolade for making such a thought provoking film about how we make assumptions on superficial grounds about people and classify them as good or bad.

I don’t think that the Ram or Ravan of the film are in any way about Ram or Ravan of Ramayana. But rather, film uses ideas about Ram and Ravan to create confusion in our minds, to make it more difficult for us to decide who is good and who is bad. Yet, if I think of the scene where Nikhil Diwedi pulls at Priyamani’s nose at the wedding mandap and then she is gang raped by the policemen, it creats some unease in my mind. Is Ramayan also talking about something more sinister when it says Lakshman cut Surpanakha’s nose, I ask myself. Or may be I am reading too much in what Mani Ratnam wanted to say and provoke with Ravan?

Changing worlds, changing identities

I was reading about the dramma caused by Joel Stein's column in The Times, the complaints of Indian American community and the subsequent apologies tendered by Stein and Times, and also the opinions of some Indian opinionists about the issue.

The editorial of Sagarika Ghose in Hindustan Times was clear in its advice for the Indian emigrants - if you are going to be in the global marketplace, learn to laugh at yourself and also learn to live with the communities that host you. It criticised the ghetto mentalities of Indian communities and advised them to stay at home in India, if they do not want to adapt to the culture of their adopted homelands.

Another editorial in HT by an Indian-American, Anika Gupta, complained that being an emigrant kid growing up in US, she was forced to learn to laugh at herself since the majority is incapable of understanding diversity. Thus they have had enough and can't be expected to take such irresponsible comments from a person like Stein in 2010.

I agree with some parts of both the views and yet have some problems with both of them. Sagarika Ghose's views are expressed in a superficial and insensitive way. Anika Gupta's view is perhaps too close to her own experience and thus lacks the necessary detachment.

I think that people have a right to express their feelings. If this debate was not about cultures and identities, perhaps we could accept others' feeling without much problems.

If I grew up in a calm area surrounded by green farms and clear skies and today I find that place covered with concrete houses, busy highways, speeding cars and increasing pollution, no one is going to get upset if I decide to write about my feelings, and about how I miss the old days. There will be people who are happy at the change, who look at the change as being "development" and appreciate the comfort of having shopping malls and cinema halls, but even they can appreciate that you are remembering something else, and don't argue about your right to remember the old times with nostalgia.

But the place where you grew up, if it has changed because many emigrants speaking different languages, eating different food, wearing different clothes are living in that place, it is not polite to say that you miss the old times when things were different. If you say that, it is automatically taken to mean that you are a racist or an ignorant conservative.

I don't think that is the best way to look at it - I think that we human beings can appreciate the good things about the changes, and yet miss parts of the past, before the change happened.

On the other hand, being emigrants is complex business. Understanding your own diversity and negotiating how you can live with the culture that surrounds you, can be painful and difficult, at least for some. So you have the right to express your difficulties and ask for respect.

Thus, in my opinion, both the view points are legitimate and should be expressed, without worrying if someone is going to get offended. I agree that emigrants need to express their own issues and difficulties, but we can't ask others to shut up and not say what they feel.

So for me Joel Stein also has equal right to remember the old days before their neighbourhood changed. I can understand it and empathise with it. Even I feel a bit like that, every time I go back to Delhi and look at the way city has changed in the past thirty years. It doesn't mean that I am negating that emigrants don't have difficulties in defining their own cultural identities and negotiating with majority cultures.

Heartless cities

I was reading about the report of Smita Jacob and Asghar Sharif about the homeless persons dying everyday in the streets of Delhi and their conclusion that up to 10 homeless persons die every day and that most of them could be starvation deaths among men of working age. I am a little sceptical about these conclusions, even though I do believe that our cities can be terribly heartless places for the poor.

I remember reading about Delhi Government's decision to "send back" the beggars in Delhi to their original places to prepare for the Commonwealth Games. And I was trying to think, in what way this was different from the witch hunt against Bihari bhaiyyas living in Mumbai by the goons of Nav Nirman Sena? Beggars are not persons who have come to earn their living? Isn't Delhi their capital too and don't they have the constitutional right of all Indians to live where they wish? People who were indignant about Mumbai antics of the Thakre family and their followers, didn't seem much bothered by Delhi Government's decision about the beggars.

I am definately not looking at beggars from rose-tinted glasses. However, I do believe that if they are part of an organised racket, those who earn most from it must be respectable citizens who can afford to move around in big cars and who definitely do not need to be afraid of being sent away from Delhi. That racket must be paying hefty fees to the whole series of paymasters, starting from the police to the politicians.

No, my scepticism to the conclusions of Jacob-Asghar report comes from other considerations. I don't think that if people are dying of hunger, the majority of it them will be working age men. It does not seem logical. I think that the city does offer opportunities for working age men to find some work, at least enough for eating, and if homeless persons in Delhi are dying, I would expect them to be mainly elderly persons, women, children or sick persons.

I think that the Supreme Court and we all need more answers and they should not be too difficult to get. Delhi has four medical colleges. Ask them to organise autopsies for all unidentified dead persons in Delhi for ten days, as a pilot study. It is not so much extra work, just 2-3 extra autopsies per day each medical college for just ten days. Perhaps the medical colleges already have this information and somebody just needs to involve them in the discussions?

If there are an average of ten homeless persons dying every day, in ten days of pilot study, the medical colleges can do 90-110 autopsies and it will give us hard data about the ages, gender, other diseases and nutritional status of the people who are dying on the streets of Delhi. Then Supreme Court can take a better decision.