Political systems, II.

Jiwei Ci in his book Moral China in the Age of Reform talks about two different strategies followed by human beings to acquire agency: agency-through-identification and agency-through-freedom. The latter is the method of choice in modern (liberal) democracies, while the former is found in traditional Eastern societies such as China and India as well as in Maoist China. To understand a people and their politics, and, more, the differences between the East and the West, I believe that understanding well these two concepts is important, hence this post about these two strategies.

The strategy of agency-through-identification is about identifying yourself with someone (else): this belief gives you the feeling of a free agent and the power to do things what you would interpret as in accordance with whom or what you believe in. The constraint is a prerequisite of belief; thereafter, the interpretation may be left to you, making you feel an agent, controlling your own subjectivity, thus giving you a sense of power, a freedom. This freedom may be illusory or manipulated, but you may never realise it as long as you are a believer. The range of actions for a believer are manifold: he or she may interpret it even to kill others or to do other things which otherwise would be socially sanctioned; as long as you identify with the someone else, you have a wide range of actions available. (You would normally be conditioned to not think of this constraint at all; identifying with that someone else would never come into question.) Traditional India with its caste system (especially when fluid) is one such example of this system: once you believe in the fate, you do not question your assigned status and role, and having accepted that, you could reinterpret your role as much as you would like, even crossing to other statuses, all within the belief system. It is like coming to a game of cards on a table: you may believe yourself and others to be the cardmakers as well as cardplayers, and you wouldn't be surprised to see a fifth ace of the same colour, since the cardmaker could of course make new cards on the fly as long as he or she does not question others' cards and cardmakings. The freedom seems unlimited once you have believed in a role, identified with being a cardmaker or a cardplayer. The creative drama at play even stimulates you to conceive of and add new suits on the fly.

The strategy of agency-through-freedom is about the freedom to choose from a given set of possibilities identified as legal for you by the society: this gives you the illusion that you have the freedom to do what you wish, even though it would only be from a socially sanctioned set. You can mix and match the sanctioned possibilities, thus playing with identifications to a certain extent, but can never go out of them. The constraint thus is the lack of creativity: they set the dance moves allowed, though their sequence you are free to readjust. (You would normally be conditioned to not think of this constraint at all: that any other dance move is possible would never come to your mind.) Modern (liberal) democracies are one such example of the system, and this traces its origins to the importance of a contract in Western societies (for the Word has held immense importance in Biblical societies). (The Western societies of old have already been evolving to this point for many centuries, especially since the rise of Protestantism.) It is like coming to a game of cards on a table: there is only a fixed number and variety of cards, and you can only play with those cards, though of course you could make any move with those cards. You are only a cardplayer, not a cardmaker. The freedom seems unlimited once you are happy with those cards and like the order of it all. It even stimulates you for greater cunning to either circumvent the rules or best your opponent's way of thinking.

Imagine now the collision that must have happened when the West met the East: whether in India, China or Japan. The Indians were adding aces and even suits on the fly; the Westerners were aghast, finding it cheating or even, worse, savagery, finding the East as uncivilised; they wanted the contracts of cards, suits, rounds, everything fixed. They wanted to "reform" the Easterners. Some of the Easterners did get educated or were educated ("enlightened" or "reformed") in the Western ways, and then, naturally, a confusion arose in Eastern societies, notably in India, colonised by the British and taught many British ways. The presence or absence of contract was seen and felt by some: it was cheating for some, it was creativeness for others. A modern democracy (with two marketplaces of intellectual and ideological being open) was chosen as the way to go by India, thus a contract-respecting society, and in 1990 the liberalisation was complete with the opening up of the economic marketplace as well: however, it is not that India's nature itself of being a creative society changed with this political structural change. Hence, a new set of knaves, India's present-day political leaders, arose from this pell-mell: they saw a golden chance of appropriating power through exploiting this confusion. They could make cards on the fly using the first method and playing the cardmaker, and then say these are the only cards to play and new ones are not permitted, using the second method: in this way, you surreptitiously use the social acceptance (in an Eastern society) of the first method (agency-as-identification), and then exclude all other cards, all creativity in favour of only your cards using the second method (agency-as-freedom) using the tools of a society in Westernization: in this way, you hijack the agency of those others who until now were also cardmakers. (As a more specific instance, you pretend to be dharmic or national, for remember that identification is the form of agency as society's nature has not changed, then introduce your cards in the play as now a valid cardmaker, now start claiming that there could only be fixed cards and that anyone introducing their cards is against dharma or nation, which argument seems very plausible, even cogent, as after all the norms of the state are now of having a particular set and playing by that, and then you start excluding the possibility of introducing other cards by others; and this process could keep going on, thus a single player designing the set in their way completely, not letting others having their cards in the game. This disgruntles both those who expect contracts to be the be-all as the opportunist is continuously changing cards by reinforcing identification as strategy, and those who adhere to the identity but because their cards are at the mercy of the opportunist, are unable to play any longer. Eventually, the tension can only build up, and inevitably it results in a shattering of the tension through violent means.) You have now an added advantage against those whose agency you are hijacking: some of them still playing the old game, they are trying to act as cardmakers and not questioning your cardmakings, without realising that you are on the side playing a parallel process of discarding some cards (their cards) for ever from the game. By the late time they realise it, your cards are dominant in the game, for remember that in any game a card carries a certain different value than others. (In any society, some things are valued and some are not: those things may well be different in different societies, but a value attribution is inevitably there in any human society, plus an absence of attribution itself for whatever is not on a society's horizon.)

I will continue.

Political systems, I.

With the rise of technologies, the model of representative democracies is getting broken and exposed, and it is no wonder that knaves, whose knavery democracies are designed to protect from, are finding enough loopholes to overrun them. It is hence that I open a series of posts intended to look at the systems themselves, in order to understand them well, before we can think of something new. My focus eventually will be primarily on India, which is going through a crisis of governance, a crisis that is rooted in what I see as an incompatible system with its traditional ethos and now being milked by the thugs that know how to take advantage of it. I will also focus, secondarily, on China, which I estimate is slowly reaching a critical turning point (which may yet take a decade or more to materialise).

Let's talk about democracy per se. The original democracies of Greece were a completely different proposition than today's representative democracies. The most important distinction is that in a direct democracy such as Greece, everyone had a skin in the game: so you do not want war sitting from your drawing rooms just like that, for it is you or your son who would be out on the battlefield. Today, in countries such as Switzerland, there are referendums on big and small topics, so there is some element of directness, but there is still no skin in the game: people may vote for something even though they do not suffer necessarily the consequences of it (or so they think). Direct democracies have the obvious fault that they are unwieldy to manage. With today's technology, that shouldn't be a problem, but how to ensure that everyone has a skin in the game? It might be possible in some creative ways if a place were to have more or less equal access to resources (education, health, security, infrastructure), but in most countries of the world, there is too much of an inequality in access to resources.

Let's talk about the modern type of democracy: representative democracy. Here, a person is supposed to represent the wills of hundreds, thousands or even millions of people. In a way, the small currencies, the individual wills, are "demonetised" (taking the expression from a 2016 Indian disaster): it's the big note, the representative, that counts and has a disproportional power. Now to cut down the powers to some proportionality, a variety of checks and balances are introduced. These checks and balances, crucial in any democracy, whether direct or representative, but even more so in a representative democracy on account of a de facto voicelessness of the small currencies, basically come from the very Christian, pessimistic view of human nature: the original sin. Since all human beings are considered in Christianity as inherently fallible and sinful, it is important to keep a check on them: thus a system of governance has to attempt to not to give too much power to anyone, and hence an elaborate system of checks and balances, especially more so when a representative system actually does give more power to certain individuals. (Of course, Greece was pre-Christian, but having your own skin in the game was in itself a strong check and balance. The Greek city-states were more, politically speaking, a kind of "tribe", which obviously has all its privileged members sharing all the smooth and the rough, but with the sophistication of a state.) The Christian-inspired model assumes that it is knaves, fools, the greedy, the imperfect who will be governing a country along with some better informed, who may also fall to greed or foolishness any time: a democracy assumes in advance man's readiness to make a contract with the Devil, operates from a complete lack of trust and hence introduces elaborate checks to thwart the contract's implementation. This model worked tolerably well until information technology exploded: the checks and stalemates are too rusted to work against today's technology, which keeps on advancing day by day. (Just imagine when deepfakes become commonplace! We will need to change the term to "disinformation technology.") In first-past-the-post electoral democracies, the problem was always bad: a person chosen by 25 people out of 100 might still be considered to be representing 100, thus not only making 75 voiceless but even maimed. (That calls for another thinking about electoral systems of such countries: should the win in an election be based on first-past-the-post overall as well as at least 50% votes of each significant minority; or should it be a proportional system as in Scandinavia; and so on, but that merits a volume of discussion on its own backed by several statistical inputs.)

An autocracy of course works in a very different way, whether it be the enlightened king, a set of technocrats or an all-knowing party assumed to be wise (like the CCP in China). Eastern societies such as China and India have had the dominant thought of "good" (li or dharm) as being the most important yardstick and maintaining of which is the most important goal. Human beings are not considered fallible but rather considered to have the potential to reach the dao or brahm, the Ultimate Reality: it is not considered impossible to attain harmony in human societies; Ram rajya is not just a myth, but a striving, a goal. China has thus not adopted a system designed for knaves (democracy), but rather a system designed for a set of wise leaders and gurus guiding the country to the goal of a harmonious, stable and prosperous society. Of course, in doing so, through this optimism, the power placed in the hands of its leaders is near absolute, which is very much prone to misuse: for it is one thing to hope that power is being placed in the hands of the wise, but another thing to find that it is knaves who now possess an inordinate power. A preventative could have been a very strong, healthy, debating democracy among the learned, the guiding class (the CCP in the case of China), but the circumstances of modern China's birth and Mao's ruthless consolidation of power after that put paid to that. In ancient India, the learned (the Brahmins) could have taken the power in their hands rather than left it to the kings and created such a society, but that didn't happen for whatever reason, and we were left with the Brahmins rather trying to consolidate their power relative to other segments of Indian population (e.g., via casteism). Modern India is not even in alignment with its traditional thought: it has adopted the Christian fallibility-inspired representative democracy as its political system, and yet living by and large with the Eastern optimistic ethos of aiming for the Ultimate. Thus, India currently lives permanently in a state of schizophrenia, and new tools of information technology are only bringing out the disease so far hidden out of sight. For China, instead of the schizophrenia, it is an alienation that is getting ever more stronger. The sight of the "good", of the dao is now lost with the CCP leaders only interested in a power grab, and thus the CCP exists now merely to ensure the opium of money and a hedonistic lifestyle, which means that many people have started to live in a moral vacuum, not knowing how to find meaning in their lives, not knowing how to express themselves. Meaning-making is essential for a human being to live, for without it we would be merely sated beasts: in schizophrenia, the condition which India finds itself in, you are taught to interpret something in some other way than what you internally experience it, and hence you realise the meaninglessness of the meaningfulness of meanings, and thus a horror is born within the soul; in alienation, the condition which China finds itself in, you learn the meaninglessness of meanings, and thus an intense desolation is born within the soul.

I will continue in future posts.

अल्लाह, करम करना

किसी ने कहा था, आज बारिश पड़ेगी |

वहां ईंट के बने खंडहर में
मैं इंतज़ार कर रहा हूँ,
जब कि बाहर कुछ जलने की बू आ रही है,
शायद दूध, शायद ख़ून |

तू बोलता,
चल यार, आईस-क्रीम खाने चलते हैं,
ताला टुटा हुआ है, फ्रीज खुला पड़ा है, मौक़ा अच्छा है -
पर तू होता तो घर भी तो जाते |

कब तक खड़ा रहूं, क्या मालूम?
कब आएगी रात
जब जश्नीयों की विकृत भंगिमा
कर देगी ग़ुम हँसी का तबादला ?

धर्म मेरा, राह देखना
कि अय्याश ईंटों से सर पीट-पीट कर परास्त हों;
इमां मेरा, ढेर हुओं को संजीवनी लाना
कि रात का ख़ौफ़ न बन जाए मेरा साक़ी |

किसी ने कहा था, सवेरा हो ही जाता है |

The Baahubalian India of today

Knowing the success of Baahubali franchise pains me on many counts; the first of those are cinematic ones. It is difficult to digest that such a poor work can work so well, and, by power of money and regional-national feelings, even lead to some critics praising it; it is far more painful, though, to gauge the future trend of Indian cinema. Special effects sounded the death knell of much of U.S. cinema, especially the big studio Hollywood fare; while Europe has escaped largely unscathed from such temptation, India may not. Already, many Hollywood films are made keeping the China market in mind: which means Hollywood stars, special effects, and brand (franchise) name. A film may even bomb badly at the U.S. box office, but it may try to recoup costs in China, as is happening right now with the new The Mummy. More China specifics even cast an actor from there or set the film there: like the recent The Great Wall. India also will increasingly eye the China pie: with Dangal's success there and the recent casting of a minor Chinese actress in a big-budget, mainstream Hindi film (Tubelight) coming in as handy prompts. While quite a lot of good cinema in China has already died, which continues to make some fine indie films though in the additional backdrop of heavy state censorship, there has been no mourning but simply an obsession with brands, and thus Hollywood cinema; it also signifies the trend that much of Indian cinema will pick up: big, IPL-like tamasha. However, Baahubali also well reflects today's India, and it is no wonder that the film has been so successful. It is today's India that is painful to see, and yet one can only hope that a newly independent land is going through some growing pangs: but, have we seized (any) liberty?

Baahubali furthers the confusion between nation and state, and, even more remarkably, between a kingdom and nation-state: the denizens of the fictional kingdom of Mahishmati even have a national anthem, and everyone good has the "Jai Mahishmati" slogan. It is extremely problematic when kingdoms are painted by the same brush as today's nation-states, when a kingdom's subjects are portrayed as citizens (are they voting?) taking interest in the welfare of the state (oops, kingdom). It is even more problematic when one person takes up the role of messiah, and the rest of the "citizens" are shown as just looking up to him: so much like helpless puppies, as if they were born without an iota of brains. (Watch the scene in Baahubali 2 when the hero is making some fantastic gearings, though Charlie's Chocolate Factory could have done them better.) Baahubali, in fact, is quasi-identified with God himself: from the first part, when he lifts the lingam, through the continued frenzied adoration, to his non-stop exploits of stopping man, beast and armies in their tracks, single-handedly (after all, his name means "the one with strong arms"). A "state" with a leader worshipped like God, who is in fact God and supreme: to self-identify with either Baahubali or the gaping, adoring crowds is but one small step for many Indians, belabouring under grandiose visions of recapturing some glory, that in their imagination is lost and that though in reality may never have existed. For glory lies always in not being conscious of one's gloriousness: the Middle Kingdom (China) was great as long as it conceived itself as the Middle and be-all; today's China, even if it expands and usurps many seas, would not be able to lay claim to that. The U.S., which also in its consciousness is a type of Middle as many are unable or ignorant of all that lies outside the U.S., is however not great, for it is not the same Middle: the U.S. is arrogantly ignorant of the outside, while old and ancient Chinas were ignorant of the outside because of non-interest. Of course, many Indians today are rather more envious of, and knowledgeable about, their erstwhile white-skinned masters: they seek to emulate Europe and the U.S., though all the while also dreaming of their own "past glory". But the West, while committing many crimes, established itself on certain values, with which it did not compromise for a long, long time: Protestantism brought it pragmatism, reduced and even eliminated in many places the Baahubali worship syndrome or expectation of a Baahubali, and sought to progress by finding its own civilisational roots, in the form of the concept of law, more specifically law that applies to every single being, be it a king or a pauper. Today's West is firmly based on this concept: it has its own shortcomings, and current tendencies are trying to dismantle the base, but so far it has chosen a firm base with its own good and bad attributes.

It is not that India does not have its own civilisational roots: any civilisation has. But to reach them, India will have to short-circuit the dreamt-of, the imagined past glory. Those roots are in the value of dharma: and in dharma, you are first your own master, you decide your own obligation, rather than look up dazzled by Baahubali. Or rather, by Baahubali's might, for he (or anyone in the film) does not show a speck of intelligence (not to go as far as wisdom). Is it an indication that today's India worships might? Maybe, for Gandhi is despised by many young Indians; maybe, for belligerent actions by a state towards its own citizens or others are celebrated; maybe, for when you live in India these days, you feel afraid that you might be lynched any time if you utter what you think. After years of colonialism, India has not learnt the lesson: the British ruled over the world thanks to their cunning, not merely their naval forces. More importantly, a game can never be hastened; it can be, though, slowed so that fatigue may set in for the opponent. India is currently playing the hastening game (China has already been playing it since Mao came to power): there is a "rightful place" it wants to occupy. But what, and whose, exactly is this "rightful place"?

I can understand when, say, an intelligent student is not given admission somewhere and then that intelligent student resents, that she is not given her rightful place. But, resentment, if felt, for a truly intelligent student, is only against missing out on a fine opportunity for learning: it is motivated neither by jealousy against another (the one who got admission in her place), nor by thoughts of occupying a station of prestige. If so be the case, can the student be called intelligent, and can there be a case then? It is far more difficult to understand though what a rightful place for India can be: for India is an abstract concept. So, whose? "Every" Indian's? But then, I also come under the label of an Indian, and I am certainly not feeling like this, so certainly, there is no "every". The concept of universal may be absurd. So, "some" Indians'? And where lies their rightful place? They might be well-to-do engineers and bankers, but that rightful place is still not theirs: unless in their imagination, they think they are now respected, kow-towed to, they are "something". They want to be the Orwell, but without of course being handed over the rifle to shoot the elephant. But, then, aren't they dead? This is stagnation: if you imagine you have arrived at some station, what is there left to learn and to live for? Is death then the wished-for rightful place? In the dumb god-worship of Baahubali is reflected death on those ecstatic faces: do we want a land of dead people? Dead, who arise only to lynch others (to shoot elephants, in other words), and thus prove that they can merely serve as border guards, not advancing battalions.

Today's India, caught in the ism of "India" (what is India? is there one of it? or as many as the number of Indians? or more? or less? what is India?), bereft of humanity, given a semblance of poorly understood and misapplied liberty, and trapped by the crassly spectacular, is hurtling towards death: life does not exist in a mass trapped to stand up compulsorily to sing national anthems, but it exists rather in a body of men and women gathered when each one of them reasons, doubts, and then comes to sing a paean, but midway the paean might change tack and start a debate without fear of being lynched. Life exists in dharma, the ever-pulsating one, for at each moment, dharma's dictates may be different or may be even hard to interpret, caught as we are always in the play between rita and our own actions and their counterreactions (which themselves are all part of the rita). The base of today's India is neither law nor dharma: it is jealousy, it is narrow-heartedness. And that is a very weak base. Today's India's is admiring Baahubali because it itself is Bhallaladeva.

The new akhand danger to India

Even though sheltered quite naturally by geographical forces, India faced two key challenges across its centuries-old history: the multiple Islamic invasions, in particular of those who stayed on to impose taxes such as jizya; and European colonialism, who gave names and concepts such as caste and religion to Indians' understanding of India. Nothing in this life is a gain-gain or a loss-loss: we gain some, we lose some, but it's not a net zero either. We evolve: not into better or worse, but something different. India has evolved: keeping many things, notably its stunning diversity of lifestyles and beliefs, thus enabling experience of an extraordinary amount of freedom for many an individual; losing many things, in particular its groundedness, its contentedness, becoming "ferociously ambitious" as the West teaches it to, and to which new India aspires to. It is this aspiration, where individual colludes with national and religious, that gives rise to the most dangerous challenge for India: the uniformization of India, presently under way since the BJP came into power, is probably the biggest ever attack on the Hindu fabric of India, as I see it. This time again, if the BJP succeeds, there will be gain and there will be loss: India will gain as a nation-state, much stronger, muscular, ambitious, and even leading its people to greater material prosperity; India will, however, lose its freedom that I talked about earlier, and will transform from being the conscience of the world into just another ambitious upstart. This is easily the biggest assault on India's Hindu identity and ethos: when Modi tries to bring a uniform civil code, he takes away India's biggest principle by which even today millions of Indians abide, if not always then sometimes: dharma. When codified law replaces dharma, we undo the very same ancients' work that the BJP is proud to call their own: to avoid this very codification, India chose, by favouring oral transmission of knowledge, to suffer from lack of knowledge transmission and lack of material development, as opposed to, say, ancient China, which saw value early in codification and, thus, law, thus a societal structure less interrupted by craziness. When every Indian is forced to bank, to have an identity card, to come inside a system which they are happy without, we destroy millions of lifestyles, free choices, traditions, and the very feeling of freedom. For, it must be always remembered, freedom comes first from the feeling of freedom, not merely the infrastructure provided: a man left to roam wherever he pleases but having a suspicion that he is being watched does not give the recipe to a free man, whereas a man even in a prison may feel free when he is so mentally developed as to let his fancy fly unhindered when and where he pleases. Freedom is in the mind: it is not enabled by laws. The best example is France, the so-called self-proclaimed land of liberty, and in reality anything but. But when law takes the upper hand, when dharma is banished, the Western distinction between the sacred and the profane, the society and the individual, comes into play: then, schizophrenia comes into play. Already, in times of globalisation and fed by Western, leftist education, not many Indians have the ability to think things from their perspective: the BJP-provided antidote now is much the same thing, but hued saffron. Hued in the old RSS vision of an akhand Bharat. But, is Shankaracharya's akhandness the same as the RSS's akhandness?

I don't think Adi Shankaracharya, when he established the four dhaams in four corners of Indian subcontinent, ever envisioned it as akhand, or used the word, though if he did so, even then that akhand would be very different. The akhandness of India does not come from some geographical realm under one umbrella, nor from some one religious cult holding sway: it comes from the typical character of an Indian. In that way, every land (not every nation-state) is akhand: however, many lands of this world lost this aspect quite early, when they stopped, for example, their animistic practices and were converted on a mass scale to Abrahamic religions. A concept born in one land, that of the Abrahamic religions, thus suddenly was mass-exported quite early in many lands' history, and most of them succumbed to it completely: thus was born a schizophrenia, for the native character often clashed with these imported values. With industrialisation, and people's license to turn their schizophrenia (greed) into profit, things became more unhinged. In India's case, though, it held onto its Hindu identity: simply because it was, and even today is, too difficult to define what or who a Hindu is. How do you define one, at all? How do you break water? Today, though, the water is being frozen: it is being given a shape, an identity. It is done in the name of glorifying it, so that there is an akhand Hindu raashtra, but what it does is only make the water breakable, to finish the last populous land of this world where that original akhandness was surviving. Nationalism is any day an extremely dangerous evil, but when coupled with what is the Western concept of religion, it launches people into a dizzying velocity of feeling self-important and threatened from everywhere: do you expect such a person to develop in an all-round manner?

When Shashi Tharoor wrote in a book about those great Hindu mathematicians and what India did first, it is easy to forgive him: he is but a completely Western-dyed man and he thinks himself too wise. But when the BJP starts to claim ancient airplanes and we did it first, we begin to wonder, does their Indianness, or Hinduness, stop at the sacred thread itself? What's the difference between Tharoor/Congress and the BJP, except that the latter is even more dangerous since it appears to many as the one which will protect dharma? What is first, or biggest, or highest ... such superlatives come from a Western idea of timeline, of history, a history that is organically born from codification, from writing systems. If Indians were so interested in the first and the biggest, they would have written things, not orally transmitted them across centuries. If someone from Italy or Jamaica were to invent something first, does the knowledge become less fascinating, less useful, or less enlightening? Knowledge is gained through thirst: that thirst is a love of knowledge, is an utter fascination with seeking truth; that thirst is not of someone who rushes to get a patent or plant a flag on a mountain. The one who lagged behind to seek himself in the mountain air and seek mountain air in himself is a richer person: though without "proofs" for those who cannot see beyond the flag. We do not love the Ramayana for its BC or AD dates: it is the West's role to call it "mythology". Why should we call it? Do not we meet Ram or Krishna or their aspects in our own lives: what "myth" is there about it? Let those others who see merit in anchoring things on an imaginary time do their own thing; can we not devise our own methods using our own loves and realities?

It is easy to write. So my dharma is now to fight: for dharma. I shudder at the thought that once India falls, which it may soon if no one fights for dharma, the world will enter the Kali Yuga very, very fast indeed.

Narendra Modi: new twist to Asian story, world history

It is amusing to read some of the invective both pre and post Modi win, and people sharing it on social media: the variety includes leftist intellectuals who still yearn for some socialist, subsidy-ridden state; human rights advocates, who conveniently forget years and years of Hindu-Muslim riots that happened all throughout Congress-ruled regimes in Gujarat, something that is no more there since the post-Godhra riots in the last ten years; those who are concerned about the growing strength of a religion, Hindutva, at the expense of sanatana dharma, a philosophy that defines India; environmentalists, who fear from a China-style development, which is supposed to look only towards short-term benefits; and, finally but the biggest quantity, those who haven’t lived in Gujarat, who simply read a CNN news article about Modi’s revoked visa or rights records and who don’t know what secularism is and assume it to be some unquestionable good, those who pitchfork themselves into the category of humanists and intellectuals. As always, some concerns are valuable, some others seem to be derived from flimsy grounds, and in many there are a few grains of white and few of black and a lot of grey. And yet, Modi has often been painted as black, univocally black.

But not by the populace of India. BJP couldn’t ride to this seat share even after the mandir chestbeating and VHP terrorism and interminable rath yatras in a Hindu-dominated country in earlier elections; rather, in an electoral campaign sans emotional issues and emotions, Modi has yet won a rare majority by himself. What does that say? One, at whatever cost, the people of India are mature enough voters now: the days of dynastic politics, nepotism and buying votes through subsidies and populist schemes are over in most of India. Two, the lack of anti-Congress vote divide, by and large, says that Modi does speak to them somewhere directly: thanks to the Anna/Kejriwal stunts, the people of India have started to interrogate themselves now and express their preferences. While there seems to be a dangerous political volatility (which though is not of that much concern, given the durability of India’s strong democratic institutions), as the citizens remain immature and easily swayable by the media, at the same time, the strength of media, while being a double-edged sword, also keeps all in the public eye now on their toes: all the more necessary when a party has a clear majority and opposition is decimated, an otherwise dangerous situation to be in for any country, for any system. Even a king needs to be aware of some covetous bastard child.

It is difficult to say where Modi will turn to, which wind will take him whither (or he will take which wind where): however, it remains now incontrovertible that India has turned a chapter, not just a page. It has taken its Westphalian nation-statehood seriously for the first time. Most Asian and African countries got independent at a time when statehood was already reaping fruits for Western nations, and on top of that when the Cold War did not let them choose to become states at all: rather, they had to choose camps (or try to please both, the path chosen by Nehru), try to survive, and just remember the hard-earned nationhood. Different countries took different paths. China’s early post-independence isolation ironically helped it to become a state much earlier than others could: whatever Mao’s policies were, and how much ever disastrous in the short term, it is undeniable that he always remained a flag-bearer of Chineseness. This ironically given that he had rejected the quintessential Chinese values of Confucianism: flung onto the little island of Taiwan (and now forgotten by them as well). However, we Indians forgot what Bhārat means: in our mad rush to speak English and become civil servants, the sarkari babus with all the perks and batti-vaali gaaRi. Yet, India has such varied pockets that homogeneity was impossible: so even if the English speaker was respected and white skin was (and is) venerated, it wasn’t everyone’s lot, wish or ability to imitate them. Countries like Turkey and Iran tried to steer away from Islam, an ideology to which political statehood is in itself an incompatible concept (a contested view by some, but according to me, the concept of ummah precludes loyalty to political state, unless if the spiritual caliph can be divested with political caliphate as well: an ongoing experiment of the ayatollahs in Iran, limited to the Shi’i); the miraculous¹ leadership of Atatürk was able to do that, though Turkey would later return to Islamic leanings, while the US bungled and intervened in Iran, thus helping to prop an Islamic regime, ironically now one of those blacklisted by it. The worst lot was that of countries like Syria, and regions like Palestine and Kashmir: not helped by Saudi Arabia’s double-dealt hands, and too wise to lose its real independence by taking US aid, Syria has been fighting for survival as nation itself, whereas Kashmir and Palestine struggle for recognition as nations, forgetting that it would be easier (acceptable/face-saving to other entities) to make the fight that of statehood (only). In a world of colliding and collapsing entities, not just political but also human (e.g., social networks) and economic (e.g., the experiment of Bitcoin), nations may soon be an outmoded concept, to be studied along with the dinosaurs.

Such a background, though too much simplified, is essential to understand India at this corner of its story. It is also necessary to understand how Gandhi sided with the moderates; Savarkar’s viewpoint; why Godse killed Gandhi; and most importantly, what we have gained or lost, at least as much and as far we can judge, from independence, partition, the unnecessary wars we fought with China and Pakistan, and a secular constitution. Nothing should be unquestionable: nothing should be on a pedestal except the cleanliness in our heart and the ability of our mind to think through.

I will simply list a few paragraphs of the challenges ahead for Modi.

a. Geopolitical: It has been an old school of thought in RSS circles and in fact in all revolutionary Indian circles to valorize the East. However, India had a shared Buddhist and trade story with Southeast Asia and China; that story no more exists, and religion isn’t the most trending thing among Chinese youth, or rather most youth anywhere in the world, today.² Much has been talked of Modi’s eastward stance, but Modi would do well to be careful of China. While there is no need of incensing China unnecessarily,³ India must strengthen ties with Japan and Southeast Asia: the time is ripe for that in the background of: (a) China’s push to become a great naval power, and hence its increasing tensions with Japan, the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia (strangely, Taiwan is not on that list; the present Ma government⁴ with its China leanings is a danger for the whole region); (b) the US pivot-to-Asia policy, which may not be shelved even if Obama goes. While the US will keep playing double games for its maximum benefit—engaging with China, protecting Taiwan but not playing it off with China, and yet creating forums as part of the pivot to form some kind of a counter-hegemon against China, should the latter become belligerent—countries like India (or Indonesia), which are growing fast but do not have the resources to devote to defense (already India spends too much), should take care to create bilateral alliances with key potential allies like Japan and S. Korea (regardless of it being politically close to the US and culturally these days to China), rather than happily and dizzily jumping on board US-sponsored multilateral Asia-Pacific alliances, unless as observer. Though India is not an Asia-Pacific country, the US pivot is to Asia, not necessarily Asia Pacific: and hence an inevitable offer from the US at some point in the near future, and the danger of acceptance. China may resent India’s entry to such alliances, plus India gets bound by a multilateral forum’s restrictions: and it gains nothing. China is not looking for landward expansions, and will not turn belligerent towards India as of now, unless India acts really stupidly in some way (Dalai Lama, Arunachal/Sikkim, boasting). It would be good though if India could silently strengthen Nepal (i.e., economic or infrastructure aid).

Coming to Modi, he should be careful of inviting too much Chinese investment into India: rather, he should look further east (to Japan), north (Russia/Ukraine/Uzbekistan), immediate north (Afghanistan: critical for passage of pipelines), west (continue engaging with Iran, esp. now that the US is also softer), and especially inward. India is too service sector dependent: and it services Europe and US, the former of which seems to be an irrevocable downward trajectory. It is high time that India starts also on its manufacturing path on a larger scale, to match China’s to some extent: it is important to enter markets like Africa, as China is already doing (and as one Indian company, telecom major Bharti Airtel, has done), not just for services, but also for products manufactured at home.

A concern is the Tamils: Modi might be more friendly towards the Sri Lankan government, and while that is good for India in terms of politics, what about the voice of Tamils, who have been almost effaced out of the political picture in Sri Lanka? The redundancy of Tamil parties’ wins in the elections has presented an unsavoury conundrum for India.

b. Domestic: Key concerns after these elections are Assam and Kashmir; both have thrown up polarised results, and I am not confident about Modi’s ability to handle them, unless by ruthless measures, which is no measure at all, since suppressed wounds fester and become venomous grouses over time. It is a good beginning that Modi has invited Sharif and other neighbouring leaders for his swearing-in, and he must continue in the same dialogue mode with local leaders, and remove Army from Kashmir and the Northeast, and rather focus on creating economic prosperity. Material well-being, when equitably distributed, is the most effective means, usually, of promoting harmony.

Modi’s Cabinet also is a concern: while it is not yet formed as of the time of writing, there is hardly anyone in the ranks of BJP that inspires much confidence. The Vajpayee cabinet was hopeless, carrying on the legacy of Congress. And it may be by and large the same Cabinet in place. The one good ally that Modi has got is Chandrababu Naidu, and Modi must ensure that Naidu remains strong and influential in his government.

Modi may also be a target of more terrorist activity in India, especially at the beginning, in a bid to hustle him or test his mettle. That he is not the dearest for Islamists would not be a discovery. If the US forces do withdraw from Afghanistan, it will be a challenge for both India and Pakistan to fight Taliban and allies both inside and outside their countries, and keep the region safe.

c. Development: If high-speed rail links and expressways mean development,⁵ then Modi is on a wrong track, and he may have to face the same public ire that Congress did this time. Fast connections are good, but when people can drink clean water, have a roof on their heads, do a job and earn respect, not just money, and send a child to a real school, not just some arrangement to get the child fed. A country where there is no education is not developed: and education does not mean churning out engineers and doctors in lakhs. It means the ability to think, the capability to stand on your own feet: to give that confidence, that experience and those skills. You must not tell what to think: you must inculcate a habit of thinking, of questioning. For even thinking is a habit: it is gained and lost through habit and ill habit (as Hermann Hesse said in one of his works).

Development needs to be also targeted to a country’s needs. In a country where the GDP per capita isn’t a great figure, who will take the high-speed rail, particularly when the ticket difference won’t be much when compared to airfares? Rather, encourage small and big players in aviation industry, but don’t give so many licences that the existing ones are not able to run on profits; build more airports; give tax breaks and incentives to airlines; make cities that fall on global trade routes like Delhi or Chennai transit (and shopping) hubs like what Doha or Dubai are. That will encourage small businessmen to fly, make India more connected, and increase by leaps and bounds India’s economic well-being. And let the Indian rail be as it is; just make it more accountable and efficient, and lay electric rail lines through the Deccan plateau. It is the freight sector that needs attention rather: modernize wagons (introduce proper cold storage), re-lay those lines where freight is more, so high-speed lines can be there for freight, and focus on safety of passengers. Re-introduce some now-disused narrow-gauge tracks (e.g., the track that used to go from Madurai to Tenkasi and onward in western Tamil Nadu)—conversion of narrow gauge to broad gauge is not modernity. Instead, if properly marketed, these narrow-gauge lines can bring you lot of foreign exchange through rail fans.

d. Culture: This in fact is where Modi can contribute most critically, but will he? He must be ruthless this time—in dismissing leftist intellectuals’ voices. But careful that he does not slide into Hindutva.

In a country where more than 80 percent of people are Hindus, we do not know our own works of philosophy: religion is taboo in schools, though not so in missionary schools or madrasas, where Catholic masses are sung quite proudly and the Qur’an is taught as the first thing to learn. Modi must not veer to Hindutva, but where is even Hindu in this country? We live in some kind of perpetual apology: of what? Of being numerically dominant. We do not know the rich web of Jain, Hindu and Buddhist thoughts, and neither Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh) or Aquinas at our schools. We are fed rote materials, not debate and discussion and frankness. We never talk about dvaita and advaita; and we squirm in strange notions of our own sanatana dharma: feeding milk to Ganesha, thinking not eating meat as “religious,” and boasting of how “scientific” our ancestors were. We do not know the erotic poetry with Krishna at its center; thankfully, for its anti-institutional tones, we can read Kabir at least. And our students learn French and Spanish as foreign languages on top of the three-language formula, but the UP person does not learn Tamil, a classical language with rich literature, and no one is bothered about the Tibeto-Burman languages of Arunachal, or knowing what does a little boy in Kashmir eat for breakfast. No one learns Dogri, and no one learns Tulu. India must learn to appreciate and take joy in its own richness: India is a Hindu land by its traditions and thought processes. That is far from Hindutva.⁶ Everyone is welcome here and everyone is absorbed in this land and new thoughts come, new practices come, new syntheses occur. Sometimes there is smooth sailing, sometimes there is friction. Yet the Indian mentality remains as it is: that of fatalism, detachment, leaving everything to what “the one above” or “the fate” wishes or does or desires, alms-giving, monkhood, openness to every thought and un-thought, personal honesty. Irrespective of which so-called religion you follow, it is these that define India, just as Hindu, Islam, Jainism, Buddhism or Christianity, in the mouths of the wise and in the acts of the generous, all boil down to simply a perennial philosophy—sanatana dharma—of striving for truth, of not fearing suffering but of striving to reduce suffering, of thoughtful action. India now must begin to learn satyam shivam sundaram. In the name of secularism, we do not have to shy away from it: it is our right, our duty and our fate to learn and seek, avidly and widely.

There will be a lot that Modi will leave undoubtedly undone out of this, and maybe he will do some good things not thought of by me. And maybe some bad things. He remains a politician, an opportunist, and his allies remain corrupt leaders and misguided RSS cadre. However, India is only now independent: free from an apologetic tone of existing. We are quiet, and that’s good; we are humble, that’s better; but we need to be wise, always looking to grow. The path may be long, but at least it has begun, maybe in fog, but yet dark has dispelled.

¹ Every statement always carries two, or even multiple, faces: and so do all of mine. Turkey has also lost a lot of its culture with modernisation, with the agressive secularisation of Atatürk. Also, Turkey has also been guilty of not being so warm to other ethnic groups, as was the old Iran towards Azeris. There is nothing right; nothing wrong—just as Modi is neither white, nor black. Politics, and human life, is a game: it is only each instant’s greater right and greater wrong that we can recognise. And even then, our judgement may falter, be occluded, or even be on a stroll in the park.

² So, now alliances can be nothing beyond economic: China in particular is not much interested in spiritual sharedness, though Chinese tourists can of course increase on the Gaya circuit, again bringing some forex.

³ It is Dalai Lama who uses us; what do we earn in return? China’s enmity is not worth having. China’s stance is unfortunate towards Tibet, but the Lamas have also been feudal landlords of the spiritual sort. In a political game between the two, one a big fry and the other a tiny one, India has unnecessarily caught itself up in between. Modi should distance himself from Lama.

⁴ This can change rapidly; China’s recent (as of the time of writing) tensions with Vietnam can inflame the region as a whole, and Ma Ying-jeou may have to change tack (subtly). Ying-jeou is letting ROC (Taiwan) be a pawn in the game for the island chain in the Pacific: Taiwan is never going to control them, so why supporting China? In the end, ROC itself will end up soon being part of PRC if it continues likewise.

⁵ We must not go the way of China: we may develop very fast when we pollute our lands and waters with unlimited investments and then fighting others to eye more markets so our industries can keep running; even more fast, when we can have one language, one religion and one culture (Mandarin, atheism in China, and nationalism at the expense of many other cultures, one of the main sufferers being Confucian values), but of what use is development where we can read all day about fascinating stuff on our smartphones but actually don’t have it? No, we must not become intellectuals!

⁶ Hindutva means treating Hindu as some religion: excluding other thought systems and ideologies, blindly and unquestioningly adopting certain aspects of the Hindu traditions and thought (basically adopting the conservative text of Manusmriti, and excluding everything else from Hindu thought), and becoming intolerant, agressive and non/not-truth-seeking. Valuing the widespread branches of Hindu thought and learning about them is however not Hindutva: we are a Hindu land.

Love that defines

It is a rare feat, one I've almost never come across, to be able to capture India, or a corner of it: for the whole magnitude of it is merely impossible. It is further rarefied to be able to tell everything in a matter of minutes and leave countless stories untold: to go deep into one man's consciousness and show him what he is composed of, amidst the flying accusations and erudite theories, of what all he was and still is, of how the Marina sparkles as I sit for hours on its wide expanse of sand looking at the stormy Bay of Bengal for hours on end, feeling the humid Madras sun. It is all that the latest "Royal Enfield: Handcrafted in Chennai" ad manages to do, another ad that proves how India excels head and shoulders above the rest in the advertising world, but also that goes so much beyond.

My love for Tamil Nadu is synonymous with my love for life; both commenced very early. Even though I do not know Tamil, and there are many more things that I, the uninitiated, do not know, it has never bothered me: when I am there, I know from inside that I am there. The soil, the air, the sun, the smell. Every being inside me cries with delight, and every me is moved to beauty, to the contemplation of beauty. What tells me I am there? All modern scientific theories seem so ridiculous besides that knowing: I pity them; they will be always at a loss to know the worth knowing.

Tamil Nadu, on overt looks, is a land of men and women very simply clad, especially men: checked shirts not inserted in the pants, and of course lungis. A land where both religion and atheism has its rigid rituals and many men and women are bound by them: to sway the populace to the latter, a leader would strike a deity with a chappal and laugh, and ask did something happen to me? The land where films with strange pyrotechnical fights and dances rule the hearts, and the actors are more dearly loved than gods, because the latter are feared more than loved.

But Tamil Nadu is so much more to me. It is liberty itself; the sense of vastness and an open earth and open seas is everywhere. In the luckier days, you could have gone to Tharangambadi and felt man as an outpost of nature: behind, the desolate Danish mansions of the first missionaries to India, and ahead beautiful ruins of a temple or two. Besides, a honest face who is trying to make sense of the world and an intelligent mind, selling you conch shells picked early morning. And yourself: in a world which is not uniform, which does not apportion you theories to follow and isms to join and sophies to debate about, but which directly enters your heart and makes you understand all its beauty. The world where religion is completely absent, unless you call the unflinching humidity everywhere except in the mountains by that name. Architectural marvels rise here as commonplace as every stone's throw, and every road of Mylapore rings with music: from temples equally as from vocalists practising and learning. In the harmony is that disharmony brought by the British - ideas of nation and state, ideas of career and English; and yes, the Enfield - but India has the unique ability to dissolve everything in itself but not to lose itself. And thus to create only more of richer nuances and novel ways of expression. The people are too many, the diversity is too great and the minds are too intelligent; how would you make a robot, whether mechanical or intelligent word spewing one, out of a Hindu?

Tourism ads are meant to please, and nowadays one is pleased when things are adapted for them; thereby, those ads automatically go against the grain of India. Hence, it is not an accident that the ad had to be that of a motorcycle, Royal Enfield - the oldest continuing motorcycle brand of the world. I would simply say that the ad is flawless and I thank the maker for it. Love of the earth, for when you love, it is always there: forgetting the receiving, you have to give, and it is in you and with you, it never takes you for a ride. It is the truest for every day comes with a new sun and a new storm, and every day must you woo.

You may watch the ad, if you have not already done so, here: http://www.royalenfield.com/community/handcrafted-in-chennai.aspx or http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goOu4aNsOKU

Your Moment Is Waiting

The highly impressive "Your Moment Is Waiting" ad for Kerala Tourism (watch the ad on keralatourism.org) raises several questions when it comes to documenting something, when an ad purports to recreate an authentic feeling or emotion: how justified is a filmmaker?

The ad in question is probably the only tourism ad worth its salt I've seen in all my existence till now for any part of the world: it pushes the boundaries of both film as art and film as spectacle, and it resonates with a traveller's emotions, his/her seeking of merging with an unknown. It also manages to give glimpses of Kerala to some extent, though trying to understand, comprehend, portray, and learn India can be an extremely difficult task. It is worth mentioning that instead of a local music score, director Prakash Varma has gone for a Senegalese composer's mystery-evoking piece, and of course the lead model, Miriam Llorah, blends in beautifully: she looks a discoverer at the same time as in harmony with her surroundings. In sum, it's one of those rare beautiful ads which come once in many years.

However, Kerala is not at all lonely: it is the unloneliest spot, even when you are in the thickest of forests and for miles there is no one, of India. There is something so bustling in the air itself, there is such a sense of life having explored every nook of this place, that, except probably to some extent for the Ananthapura lava plains, where man feels lonely in terms of free and floating in the sky rather than drifting, that feeling of lonely searching which the ad evokes is not there at all. Rather, Kerala represents a paradox of one feeling connected with oneself and yet being participatory in the world: one connects with oneself as part of the world, not as the individual detached from it, and yet the connection is the only thing that stresses and implies the individuality. From a director's work viewpoint, the film is stunning in that it is highly consistent, too: the exact shade of the sunlight while Miriam is floating on the Alapuzha backwaters is not only just so reminiscient and authentic, but also brings on again that feeling of searching; yet, Kerala makes you open the doors to the world and your heart registers every beat and every drop of water, and it is that openness that I miss in the ad. It's a wonderful ad, yet it is not Kerala: the international gloss added should not deprive something of its spirit. In India's and Kerala's case particularly, it is the happiness and the oneness with which an Indian lives, a resolution of everything. To come to India, and to Kerala, is to be liberated: and find all the missing connections.

India blasts fascism out; a nation poised on greatness

When a people become mature, the man whose business is to evoke hatred digs his own grave. The British divided India into unfulfilled scraps of religions and languages, this to a nation which already had a stew of castes and multiple rituals. The post-independence, partitioned India continued to see this profitable politics, with southern India especially at the forefront, as even today. But methods have to change as the times change.

The sheer diversity of India, unparalleled in human experience, and yet the unity of the oldest civilisation and the oldest religion of the world running through it, make it simply impossible for the country's people to become fascists, fundamentalists. The British might well have given a democratic superstructure to India, but well before that India was always democratic from heart: every warring and unwarring clan and kingdom and population of earth was and has been welcome here, from the invading Aryans and Alexander's Greeks, to the Slavs, to the Mongols (Mughals), from the refugee Persians (Parsis) to the modern-day Bangla refugees. Islam wasn't that of other lands here till Aurangzeb happened: Kabir and Sufi saints had created a beautiful synthesis of Islam and Hinduism, which only taught love among people, sans rituals, sans rigidites. And unmindful of the heart of India, now a few politicians think they can create even more ghettoes? Hinduism's very core is plurality: the day it's finished, it has become a religion from a tradition, another rigid discipline that would spawn untold number of terrorists.

My Name Is Khan might be an ordinary film, but the spectacular slap that Shahrukh Khan single-handedly, without any support from the film fraternity at all, has given through sticking to an upright stance and that the Mumbaikars have given in going to watch him through all the commotions and fears is a complete rejection of the fascist element that swept in a restless India in the last decade, a time when India was yet developing slowly and people were dissatisfied with lives and needed bones to pick. Not so the India of today, as very evident by what happened to BJP after Gujarat: from being the ruling power of India to a party that is on the verge of extinction. The Indian voter remembers; it will remember Thackeray this time, and the strong Indian media will keep them reminded of it. A stunning reprisal from the man on the street, bringing memories of the one time earlier when people rebelled - the VP Singh's Mandal crimes - a fresh hope is born today; it's truly a time when India can be heady.

A Journey through Northern Kerala

The image of Kerala of course evokes all the palms, all the lagoons, and all the oil massages that one can think of or dream of - not only as to their plenty, but also their ability to spring upon you from nowhere, to jut at unexpected corners, to elbow you into a premature dusk when for the rest of the world it is meridian.
Yet, it differs so much. Having been to Kerala often, maybe, has helped. The southern Kerala is so different - more humid and hotter, more drenched in the commercial spirit that is more evident in neighbouring cities of Tamil Nadu, more worldlywise, and yet veritably acting as a doorway to the Kerala beyond. As you move up from Alwaye–Kottayam region the things pick up momentum. The vast lagoons call you to get submerged in water, water everywhere, the paddy fields remind you that the escape is nowhere, and the overcast skies put the final stamp upon the only element which seems to be nourishing life. It all does sound so clichéd, so romantic - ducks being shepherded on the water, government boats plying school students cheaply on the stagnant water dying with weeds, spotless white 'lungis' with sprightly steps on the boat jetties - but then what is a better praise, a better temptation, for a place to lay claim to than to bear clichés justifiably and proudly.
Yes, I know the last word is somehow wrong, at least to me, 'proudly'. Kerala never seems to be proud of its beauty, though Keralites themselves seem to be a proud race. It is maybe the numerous temples and churches that dot the smallest of towns, probably the number of lithe young men working as conductors, hotel boys, tea stall assistants, criers for buses, probably the drunkenness that sets in once the sun has already done so, or, simply speaking, probably the stark poverty all around, which always seems to point out to a broken spirit, to a heritage not proud of itself, to a country which seems to be touted as 'God's own country' more for the 'Christian humility' with which it keeps itself than the 'green thumb of Parasurama'.
Nowhere is this more evident than north Kerala - it's poorer, it's dirtier, and in some ways, more beautiful. Having seen much of south/south-central and east-southern Kerala previously, I went to the northernmost district of Kerala, Kasargod, bordering Mangalore in Karnataka. The following account, rather than a list of things to do, or an insincere effusive praise, which many tourists, especially the ones who write/show something, are prone to (maybe, to not to admit, that after all their time taken off, they were not successful in keeping it sincere and honest), is simply a record of my own experience, my emotions that I felt about the whole journey, in parts and in all.

I had gone expecting nothing, or rather a mixed bag - but the way to Kasargod itself turned me around. The route went through Madikeri–Jalsoor, and I don't think that I have ever been through a more wonderful experience in my life uptil now. Slow rain leading to everything dripping - the lonely bungalows sprawling on the lower tiers of the road, with barely proper gravelly ways leading to them (and yet all those steep paths were ending at a car parked in a porch), the plantations come to joyously, their joyous dripping prompting you to alight there and then, and to be lost in that oblivion, and the quietness of the life in general making you more unquiet, more ambitious, more eager to get the good things in life! In a way, it was a precursor to that transforming experience which was to come soon – that of Ranipuram. More of that later!

Kasargod is an extremely disappointing town - even though there's nothing being touted as ‘touristy’ there, yet every place has its own magic, its own charms; but, at least at first glance, it is difficult to pinpoint anything there. One arrives at a washed-out looking bus stand, with no hustle, everyone (including the buses) seeming to lag, a place which really is like the outpost of Kerala (and is, in fact) in every aspect, where people seem to live apologetically, as if the place is no fault of theirs. After the hills give you company right from Madikeri to the very edge of Kasargod, it is indeed a something stronger than disappointment. But, then, a tourist knows that he has heard about this place, he has heard about the fort of Bekal, and it's an unexplored country as yet, so he can always stumble upon something priceless, something which has the potential to become a memory for him, and that too a dear memory. To quote from Lemony Snicketts, "there is always something".

The sense of the beauty is somehow lost when you reach Bekal. Yes, if you say so, 'technically speaking' it is beautiful (for now when people's emotions are being tried to be read by computers, maybe places are not far behind). But, for me, it was a different emotion. The vast grounds of the fort, the sea lashing furiously at the fort, the simple, aesthetic fort itself (which, in fact, looks less a fort against the mighty landscape in which it is set) - all is unbridled freedom, and when did freedom not fail to frighten the man? Nature is challenging you to embrace it, and you are powerless - you don't want to simply go to it, see it, roam there, come back, but you want to be there only, always, learn about how the fort bears the hot sun and bears the constant drizzle, of how the moon peeps from the gun holes and how the sea turns crimson when the sun rises, of how every morning it must look as if you are the possessor of this earth and how every evening that you have lost one more day in probably a futile effort to possess this earth.

My base was Kanhangad, a better, and much more livelier, town than Kasargod. There I used to return before each evening, and explore its markets, its bus-stands, its eateries. It was again a poor-looking place, but being not the source or destination of any route was a happening place. Buses always going to north (Udma/Tellicherry) or south (Kannur) - the constant stream keeping you on the move always, bringing the world to you with minimal effort from your side, unawares taking you to places you would never have dreamed of.

Ranipuram was one such place - I had never decided on going there, and yet I was there. I did not go high up in the hills, as I was to return to my base in the evening, but the foothills were already a new love for me. The trek in those hills, the climb down the slopes to the rivulets there (probably, the manifold sources of the river Chandragiri), and the darkness enwrapping me all alone when rain became heavy - had I ever got all this before? Every leaf, every blade of the grass, every small and big rivulet and stream had to tell a story when that rain fell, me alone on the densely vegetated slopes of the hills, on the banks of the stormiest of the sources of the river - there was no other man in sight, and yet I was so much in company. Different ways lead you to different aspects of the life there - while some lead you to plantations, where you occasionally met a man, some led to quiet brooks, where you could easily wash your face and hands, with much pleasure and much quietitude. In between, higher up the hills, an occasional house was dotted, people who worked for the plantations, or kept a couple of cows. Salt was their constant source of comfort against leeches and snakes, and an umbrella against the intermittent rain.

I have seen so many shrines of so many faiths, big and small, in my life, at all sorts of places, in all sorts of designs. Yet, to describe the Ananthapura temple would be difficult. Suddenly, in the midst of the greenery come vast, black plains, as if encrusted lava all over. You reach out your neck, you crane you eyes, but to no avail, just long, winding, lonely roads amidst undulating black plains, with not much habitation in sight, not much life in sight. And yet, the air itself seems full of life - the air there is keener than the sea air of Bekal, it feels that as if you stay the night here you will come upon a wondrous adventure, you will come come upon that story of Hawthorne, where the culprit comes and goes silently from the fireside. The temple itself, set upon a pond, is somewhat unreal - combined with that place, you feel as if some witchcraft is going to be practised, and that you will like like to be a part of that ritual; you want to be an integral part of those plains, those people, that temple with its tank, its crocodile, and its weediness. The whole temple seems to be a 'swayambhu' - even its weedy vegetation and the dirty pond look to be springs of miracle in that dry place, and the magic wand really crosses your mind.

When I went there, it was 'Janmashtami', and much of the hamlet was assembled at the temple, with a mike and accompanying music, a singing competition being held in the main (and only) 'mandapam' of the temple, with songs devoted to God being sung (the competition was for, I think, children to tweens - most of them were terribly out of tune and had shrill voices); as I turned my back on the temple and the long, straight but sloping return road faced me, I could still feel the temple and its songs in my ears, in my bones - the quietness of the coming evening, the cheerfulness of the lonely plains, the sharp air, the hamlet's way of living, the solitary cyclists, calm bungalows further on the long road - all blended harmoniously, and drew my three-day tour of the Kasargod district of Kerala to a close.