Life In The Shadow of Covid

The decline of Covid cases to double digits ,in both Delhi and Bihar, signaled for me the opportunity to head for home.I booked my and my wife's tickets for Patna;a planned visit to Delhi for 18 days became a near permanent residency. I was under the absolute maternal care of my daughter and son in law ,and my two grandchildren but thoughts of how things might be at home never left me .

I arrived home to an uncertain welcome. The torrential rains thwarted the many attempts of the pilot to land at Patna ILS,notwithstanding.We got diverted to Varanasi and could land only after the weather at Patna had cleared .

The Covid figures have again started going up , from a low of 25 thousand sometime back to 43 thousand yesterday .Kerala accounted for more than 22 thousand of those 43 thourand , a state with less than 3 percent of the population toted up 50 % of the total number of new cases. Kerala, we are told is the most literate and progressive state. Its monitoring system was publicised as worthy of emulation. Maharashtra another standard bearer of modernity and prosperity has been consistently adding disproportionately large number of new cases .It is not in good taste to question these states. Only when poorer ,laggard states fumble , it becomes a matter of national concern . Meanwhile the two states keep the hope of an early third wave alive . Or has it already , as one report on twitter says?

Covid 19 has proved to be the greatest disruptor known to mankind in recent times. We, in India, looked for redemption in the heat of the scorching Indian summer; it was a virus of the colder climes, we told ourselves. But summer came , the way it always did, spent its fury in vain and made way for an uneventful rainy season. Covid 19, contrary to our hopes ,stood taller and firmer, if anything ,notching up new heights every day. The fabled Indian immunity, acquired by our long association with filth , dirt, lack of civic amenities , its familiarity with tuberculosis and measles did not seem to be giving us a free pass either. It was another one of those chimera which we had been pursuing!

Days passed by , seasons changed but we still had no idea how long would this ordeal continue. There seemed to be no end , no event , no hope in sight , only a paralysing sense of fear and foreboding : it could last a life time or go away in a year. Living and partly living, we pinned our hopes on 2021, in the upcoming Vaccine . Vaccine was the new redeemer!

But come 2021 and Covid 19 numbers petered off. And up surged the self-esteem of our leaders, like ink to the nib. Some needless frontier bravado and avoidable chest thumping at having defeated the disease percolated down to the grass root levels. A wave of mass delusion swept the country and people let down their guard. In The Plague in the city of Oran had similar delusions, “Our townsfolk were not more to blame than others; they forgot to be modest, that was all, and thought that everything still was possible for them; which presupposed that pestilences were impossible. They went on doing business, arranged for journeys, and formed views. How should they have given a thought to anything like plague, which rules out any future, cancels journeys, silences the exchange of views. They fancied themselves free, and no one will ever be free so long as there are pestilences”

The virus bounced back with vigour and redoubled ferocity, as if to mock the vanity of human agents. While we are getting the logistic right ,we had overtaken as world leaders, notching up a figure of more than 4 lacs per day and rising . The surreality of dead bodies being cremated on pavements foregrounded our fears of an apocalypse. Those who tried to wish it away realised that , “A pestilence isn’t a thing made to man’s measure; therefore we tell ourselves that pestilence is a mere bogy of the mind, a bad dream that will pass away. But it doesn’t always pass away and, from one bad dream to another, it is men who pass away, and the humanists first of all, because they haven’t taken their precautions” . Not even to a super man’s measure , one may add. The redeemer vaccine was way off in the future and has now started trickling down. The redemption had been postponed We are still bobbing up and down the second wave, but at our backs we already hear the winged chariot of the third wave hurrying near. If we are able to vaccinate a large number of people soon enough, we may open a window for some fresh air to get into our lives. We are clinging to that hope, desperately . We hope to live a little between the second and the third wave because Covid like “the plague bacillus never dies or disappears for good; that it can lie dormant for years and years in furniture and linen-chests; that it bides its time in bedrooms, cellars, trunks, and bookshelves; and that perhaps the day would come when, for the bane and the enlightening of men, it would rouse up its rats again and send them forth to die in a happy city.”

I guess, “That is how life will have to be: with happiness and moments of delight when all goes well, but with the threat hanging there—life set between parentheses.” as Simone de Beauvoir says in Adieu. Like the proverbial mice , we will play a while, till a fresh Covid wave sends us scurrying behind masks and for cover in our homes

A few lines of Brecht in Hindi Translation

I guess receptivity to a particular poem, or even some lines, also depends on the mood of the moment . The most sublime poetry may sometime pass you by but something by its sheer topicality may arrest your attention. Here are a few lines of a long poem by Brecht “To those who have been brought into line," which I have read several times, appealed to me disproportionate to its poetic worth. I translated it in Hindi for a larger audience.

“They describe

The fearful misdeed as something as unremarkable as the rain

Also as unpreventable as the rain.

So, by way of their silence, they lend support to

The criminals, but soon

They will notice that in order not to lose their bread

They must not only remain silent about the truth, but also

Tell the lie. Not ungraciously

The exploiters embrace those who are prepared

“Not to lose their bread.

They do not go along like men corrupted

For they have not been given anything, rather

Nothing has yet been taken from them.

When the eulogist

Rising from the table of the powerful, opens wide his mouth

And you can see between his teeth

The remains of the meal, then you listen

To his speech with scepticism.

The exploiters embrace those who are prepared

But the eulogy of him

Who but yesterday reviled the powerful and was not invited to the victory banquet

Weighs heavier.

प्रस्तुत है इसका अनुवाद , कैसा लगा बताइयेगा .

कितनी सहजता से वे बयां करते हैं

उन भयानक कृत्यों को मानो बरसात का बरसना हो

मानो आम सी कोई घटना हो , वैसी ही अनिरोध्य ।

पर जल्द ही महसूस होने लगता है उन्हें कि अपराधियों का चुप्पा

सहयोग नाकाफी है अपनी रोज़ी रोटी बचाने के लिए ।

सिर्फ चुप्पी से काम नहीं चलेगा झूठ बोलना लाज़िमी है. ।

बहुत शालीनता से शोषक अपना लेते हैं उन्हें

जो तैयार है रोटी की कीमत चुकाने को।

चलते भी हैं वो सर उठाकर पाक साफ़ की तरह

उनके दामन पर भ्रष्टाचार का दाग नहीं ,

न उन्हें कुछ पाया , न ही उन्होंने कुछ गवायाँ

लेकिन जब चारण स्तुति गान करता है

तो उसके दांतों में फँसे हुए भोजन के अवशिष्ठ खोल देते है भेद

समर्थ लोगों के टेबल पर दावत में सहभागिता का ।

उसके वक्तव्य खो देते है विश्वसनीयता , अनायास।

लेकिन कलतक जो कोसते थे ,

विजय भोज का न्योता न पाकर .

उनकी स्तुति कुछ ज्यादा ही वजनदार होती है.

POLICE REFORM IN A NUTSHELL

A couple of days ago I heard a retired IPS officer delivering a lecture , well researched , all the facts and figures on his fingertips, he looked east and west, gathered the best practices from USA and Japan , as models to emulate , suggested ways to harness science and technology to the service of better policing. In every such lecture the words of generations of police men and scholars are modified, revised, updated by those who come after them. It is generally believed that the police reform is an idealist problem of knowledge . Only if we knew then we would. In my younger days I also used to write for many newspapers. Like everyone else I believed that Police would be reformed . It is not so .Close to forty years in the IPS disabused me of this notion altogether. It will need considerable elaboration but I am not going to do that today.

People often ask me, as indeed they should, why are the police the way they are, hostile to people, lawless and uncaring? Depending on my mood of the moment, I tell them that police is not for those who pose such a silly question. Police is for those to whom this question never occurs. This gnomic answer either befuddles them and they clam shut or seek further clarification. Again, subject to my whims or vagaries of weather, I put a counter question: have you ever found his majesty the President of India, the PM of India, the CM of states, holders of capital, merchant bankers, complaining about police? You hear only good things about the police from any government, every government, even after its police have indulged in killing, looting, unabashed atrocities on the weaker sections. It is – has been -ideal for their purpose, for every government that has been or yet to come. Why should they reform it?

After forty years in the Indian police service if I were to give my opinion about police reform, I would keep simple : Indian police needs an Indian pill. It is no longer a matter of the much talked about nexus of crime and politics, criminality of many governments themselves is a sad, but inescapable, fact of our lives. Police officers have to internalize the fact that they are the agents of law and they - especially the IPS officers - must incorporate the habit of firmly saying “no”to illegal orders, not as a one-time act of heroism and valour but as a reflex response. Police officers seem to have forgotten this all important lesson that saves the rule of law from degenerating into rule of men.

When I find Singhams-the new breed of police officers- sprouting like mushrooms on the Facebook , their brave deeds recounted by some similar breed of journalist , I begin to wonder whether there is a nexus between deteriorating law and order and the rise of Singhams. I am reminded of the interesting observation, which many claim is based on scientific facts , “the louder the monkey, the smaller the balls.”

No i'll not take half of anything

This is certainly not the best of Yevtushenko’s  poems but for some inexplicable reason  reading it last night, I was swept off my feet . I read it several times and then translated it in Hindi to  see if it tastes different. You may tell me , without being unduly insulting , how much of the flavour has been lost in translation. Mind you it is a translation of a translation  

No I’ll not take half of anything..

No, I'll not take the half of anything!

Give me the whole sky! The far-flung earth!

Seas and rivers and mountain avalanches-

All these are mine! I'll accept no less!

No, life, you cannot woo me with a part.

Let it be all or nothing! I can shoulder that!

I don't want happiness by halves,

Nor is half of sorrow what I want.

Yet there's a pillow I would share,

Where gently pressed against a cheek,

Like a helpless star, a falling star,

A ring glimmers on a finger of your hand.

Yevgeny Yevtushenko

Translated by George Reavey

कल रात येवितेशेन्को  की  उपर्युक्त अंग्रज़ी में अनूदित  कविता मन  को  छू  गयी. सोचा  इसे हिंदी में बांचते है शायद कुछ और रस  आये। इसलिए इसका अनुवाद - अनुवाद का अनुवाद - कर डाला।   पेशे खिदमत है।  आप  बताएँगे कि कैसा बन पडा  है. 

फितरत नहीं  मेरी आधा अधूरा लेने   की ,कुछ भी 

देना है तो दे  दो  मुझे पूरा का पूरा आसमान ,पूरी धरती जहाँ तक है इसका  फैलाव 

सारे  समुद्र और  सभी  नदियां, पर्वत और उसके   हिमस्खलित अंश 

सब हुए   मेरे  ,इस से कम कुछ भी स्वीकार्य  नहीं है मुझे। 

सुन ऐ  ज़िन्दगी , अधूरी तुम मुझे लुभा नहीं सकती 

ज़िन्दगी हो तो भरपूर नहीं तो कोई  परवाह  नहीं 

मुझे न तो  अधूरी ख़ुशी चाहिए न ही अधूरा ग़म 

हाँ एक तकिया साझा कर सकता हूँ.  

हलके से गाल में गाल सटाकर,

अनायास, एक  असहाय टूटकर गिरते तारे की चमक 

तुम्हारी ऊँगली  की एक अंगूठी में जगमगाती है।

या दिल की सुनो दुनिया वालों , या मुझको अभी चुप रहने दो , मैं ग़म को ख़ुशी कैसे कह दूँ , जो कहते हैं उनको कहने दो।

Facebook removed a post of mine on the covid crisis sometime back because it had violated some community guidelines.( whatever that may mean but Facebook claims to know what is best for the community interest )The censored post was more in the nature of anguished musings, a rhapsody meditation, a Crie de Coeur on the moral deliquescence of our society. I rued my sense of utter helplessness- and erumpent anger at the gross mismanagement – as well as my inability to make one bit of difference to the lives of people in distress, who made desperate calls for help in this hour of national crisis. The post was removed within minutes and Facebook warned me that I had violated community guidelines . The tone of the admonishment was indulgent, it said people do commit mistakes, but should I persist! I was not surprised, I did not take umbrage . Facebook is the new opium, and I know how the west had turned oriental addiction to good account in the past . History records that East India Company had come to trade and took control of our lives. It seemed so natural, that I almost ridiculed myself for the first impulse to quit Facebook as a bit of theatrical excess.

The custodians of the representation of reality in a society view themselves in exclusively political terms and they are intolerant of any other reality that is inconsistent with the official account of things . That is why dispensations where only a single reality holds sway, writers are reduced to silence by expulsions, arrests, or by simply being cut-off from all realities for good. Capitalist and communist systems may appear to be hostile and mutually exclusive but they appear to be united in abusing their power in silencing dissent .

But why should ordinary people, people who haltingly and hesitantly string together a few words for the consumption of a few friends be a matter of concern to authorities? Do they seem to believe what Simon de Beauvoir says in her autobiography Adieu that “there are always words of this kind, thrown out absent-mindedly, which are like the absent-minded smoker’s match in some forest…and which set the whole lot ablaze.” In their anxiety they exaggerate the potential of idle musings of insignificant people. Don’t worry Facebook we are not only non combustible , we are inert matter.

The linguist Dan Jurafsky writes of a phenomenon called semantic bleaching, in which words, most often in the affective realm, lose their power with the passage of time, or as George Orwell says because of the lies that they are made to convey. The “awe” fades from “awesome” and the horror is drained out of “horrible” . A tragic spectacle loses its tragedy and remains merely a spectacle. I am reading and hearing a lot of things about my beloved state of Bihar, but unfortunately I am very bad at semantic bleaching . All that I can say is या दिल की सुनो दुनिया वालों , या मुझको अभी चुप रहने दो , मैं ग़म को ख़ुशी कैसे कह दूँ , जो कहते हैं उनको कहने दो।

Courting Sleep

Putting me to sleep is a job much harder than many would imagine . Before the Gods condemned Sisyphus to his arduous task of rolling a stone uphill, they had suggested him the option of singing me to sleep . Obviously he found the other option easier. So I have to perform this arduous task myself , every day, day after day ,because a night comes after every day . If I were a king, half my kingdom would have been up for grabs for any one who could put me to sleep. But the entire kingdom to someone who could make it last seven hours, at a stretch . I think after having tasted this state of Nirvana I would not want a Kingdom. I would be a happy mendicant gambolling in grass skirts . Having read Raja Radhika Raman’ Daridranarayan I always thought sleeplessness is inevitably accompanied with the gift of a crown .‘Taaj ke tale neend kahan,’ or that English proverb ‘ uneasy lies the head that wears a crown .’ I think in years to come fables and fairy tales are going to be written about me- a man condemned to double jeopardy . No crown and no sleep either.

As I said, last night I had counted all the sheep that were available to be counted . I started with my own country but considering sleep was still miles away and the Covid diplomacy had bombed so badly , I thought it will be a good gesture to win some brownie points for India , my India , with some census diplomacy . I decided to keep the clumsy MEA buggers out of the loop. In the stealth of the night I , or my mind ,crept through international borders . All the sheep in China , Australia , Sudan , Mongolia , New Zealand were now accounted for .Heck , no , but the goal to which this fruitless labour was hitched was still nowhere in sight . My eyes were wider and seeing much further in the dark . So I thought why not make a global census , leave no sheep uncounted . I quietly chuckled to myself that I will set the gold standard for the WHO fellows- leave no one unvaccinated. The task was done no sooner than conceived . Clueless , I looked for advice to Billy Crossby, an American poet , and went for the wild beasts , camels , skylarks , then all the animals in the zoos and aquariums. The task finished I took a jaw shattering yawn but the problems and thoughts which nagged me throughout the day were still lurking . “Give me a break “, I beseeched my nagging suspicion that Covid 19 was an unintended product of the gain of function research that was being carried at the Wuhan research laboratory and there was something fishy about it . Now what? Go on a hitch hiking mission to the galaxy looking for Gryphons, Sphinx, Minotaur, Taurs , Draconope ,Echidnam Mermaids, Sirens. Or go hunting Snarks ,

Fortunately I had a sottisier of remarks which needed mature cogitation .I had top politicians, PMs, eminent historians , intellectuals . scientists lined up. A wise general had just said that, “ The IAF is a support arm , just like the artillery of engineers,” had also been agitating my mind .There were

other conundrums which had defied hours of contemplation during my waking hours. Why not try to crack them now? Randomly I alighted on a remark which has been attributed to a certain gentleman . “ India is a beehive . China is an elephant. A beehive is stronger than elephant . So India is a super power.” I am very poor at analytical reasoning , I have not made a formal study of logic , I am weak in rhetoric but I tried my best to limber up to this nimble mind jumping from a beehive to the back of an elephant and declaring form that vantage point that India is a super power. I put it aside gently for deliberation after I had equipped myself better .I failed to deconstruct the second one also, “Dalit community needs the escape velocity of Jupiter to achieve success.” This was far above me and got clubbed with the other unsolved riddle of mathematics propounded by another genius . “We are the 2ab of a+b2 +2ab” . This third one was little less opaque , I was getting the connection between milk and women but no further “ Gujrat ko agar kisine khada Kiya hai ,to woo Gujrat ki mahila hai. Gujrat ko agar kisine amul Diya hai, Dudh Diya hai to woo Gujrat ki mahila hai . “ But I never knew someone could describe my state of sleeplessness as well as this . “This morning, I woke up at night.” The last that I can report is that I got up at around 11 AM . My wife was violently shaking me : Get up .And what is this that you have been uttering ‘get me some dhotis , get me some dhotis. I hate politics.” On my laptop, the wise man’s last remark was still there. “There is politics in your shirt , politics in your pant.” I guess this had lulled me in a state of absolute stupefaction which my wife mistook for sleep.

FREEDOM AT AFTERNOON

A REPRISE ITEM

Exactly nine years ago I retired from service. I wrote this post celebrating that event .

Freedom at Afternoon

The question that is being asked of me by many of my well wishers, friends and admirers is how do I feel, now that I have retired. Well, to be honest serving for close to four decades in one of the most coveted services of the country has many disadvantages. You tend to forget the use of your limbs. There is someone connecting and picking up the phone for you, you are driven around, your engagements, your tour, and your other quotidian worries- from filing tax return to paying your utility bills- are someone else’s concern. In higher echelons of the government someone even thinks your thought for you. You just have to be! After you retire all that elaborate support system, all those rites of pride and protocol disappear. It is like someone who does not how to swim , is thrown into the sea without a lifebelt. Or you are left to navigate in a totally unfamiliar city. Many of us tend to show unmistakable withdrawal symptoms. Jostling for paying electricity bills, or booking a railway ticket (if you are not into net transaction) doing things as others not so spoilt do, can make you maladjusted for a while. I was warned – not that I could not see it for myself –but I had some more worries.

To add to the standard quota of uncertainties of a retiring officer, I have been trying to renovate my house to make it livable. It was empty for quite some time. It is no point trying to explain the hazards and the frustration of such an activity to someone who has not undertaken such an expedition himself. There are so many liars, thugs and swindlers in this line of business that it can easily turn you into a misanthrope. All in all, my prospect in the near future looked like a perfectly scripted plot for a black, neurotic drama! Anticlimactically, it is my date of retirement that kept me buoyed up, gave me hope and sustenance. And when it actually came it was such a relief! All the uncertainties did stare me in the face as it does any one of us. The prospect of my house becoming livable had receded a few more weeks into the future. But hell is a relative habitation. The comfort zone that I seem to have left behind was no comfort for me given that so many knives were out for me and danger seemed to be lurking at every corner.

So much has happened in the dying years of my service, so many distressing things-vilification, show cause, disciplinary proceeding, supersession, a criminal case and much more- that they remind me of Lenin’s famous remark about politics, “There are decades when nothing happens; and there are weeks when decades happen." It was only God’s infinite grace that I survived several attempts to frame me up in order to harm me in my career and ruin my reputation. I have never considered the denial of opportunities, postings, medals, etc as acts of disfavour because the government giveth and the government taketh away. (For the record, I was overlooked for the post of DGP on four occasions and I have retired in a lower grade of pay than officers four years my junior. I never even made a grievance of it.) But my reputation is not a matter of an executive fiat, or a government notification; it has been hard earned and paid for in hard currency of an unwavering faith in the values of probity in public life. The worst thing is that on every occasion personal malice was dressed up as considered government decision. Since an officer cannot challenge every order in a court of law, the government can play havoc with his life and career. I felt like the French philosopher who spoke during disturbingly unsettled times in France, “If today I were to be accused of having stolen the Church of Notre Dame I would have no option but to run away from France.”

Now that I am past the hump , all these precious years of my life which vaguely leaked away in worries and anxieties seem but like a transient twitch. I am in a celebratory mood reveling in my migration from the ranks of Helots – Helots were a class of people halfway between slaves and citizens in ancient Sparta-to that of an independent citizen. This freedom is worth years of the lives of any number of tongue tied, terrorized and fear stricken civil servants. Like any liberated serf I am going to exploit to the utmost my freedom to speak my mind. Earlier on my conversations with the government were subject to conduct rules, elaborate courtesy, and the unbreakable code of never mentioning facts that could bring disrepute to the government however disreputable its conduct. Never to speak truth to power except in such a term that the unpalatable truth became an error of your own judgment. (I violated that rule on several occasions and paid the price for it. So we are quits!) In fact, when I was addressing the Home guards who had lined up for inspection on the eve of my farewell parade on the 30th of June at Bihta I kept concentrating hard so that I did not shout from the podium itself : azadi , azadi azadi. Decades of conditioning, however, was a surer guarantee and my uniformed self behaved exactly as it was supposed to.