The Wild Goose Chase

(It was quite a job, editing out the sexual and the scatological, not to mention the scathingly vitriolic from “Friends, Foes etc.”, so I have culled an account of things - call it fictional if you like - for my gentle readers.  This is a vignette picked up at random.  If anyone fancies resemblance to the character described herein, he may please himself.  I take no responsibility.)

  

At the same station, we had some comic relief in the shape of another of my superiors.  This character seemed to have materialized straight out of some Rabelaisian farce.  Fat, paunchy, and perpetually hungry, he blamed his obesity on the two prolific cows that he owned.  He had a tremendous appetite, and during visits to my station he would really ply himself with goodies.  I made it a point to invite him over for meals, whatever the time of his arrival.  His opening gambit was, of course, “I have had my fill at home”, but his entire being gave lie to his statement.  It demanded to be fed, to be loaded to the brim.  But he was honest enough.  Immediately after his meals, he would visit the loo and promptly deposit the best part of what he had consumed.  My wife – poor victim of my urge to be hospitable – always treated him as a thing; as one gigantic waste and biogas producing machine.  

Notwithstanding his comical appearance, he was imbued with a Spenglarian sense of destiny.  He looked upon himself as a later day Alexander, Charlemagne and Chanakya, all rolled into one.  He took his work seriously; but he looked at the problems that it presented, through the prism of his many idée fixe.  This led to great quixotic adventures with him at the head of a marching column of sniggering, joking and half-reluctant followers.  His exploits in the area of mistaken identity must await some later day Shakespeare to immortalize him.  Such was his tenacity to his idée fixe that in one remote village, all the persons bearing a particular name abandoned their homes and ran away - fearing interrogation or arrest.  The ostensible reason was that a person with the above name was wanted in a criminal case.  In another village, people stopped riding ponies because riding a pony rendered them suspect in the eyes of my boss.  Some outlaws had reportedly used ponies in the commission of a crime and this particular incident got fixed in his mind in such a manner that the association of man and pony became, for him, the surest sign of criminality.  The gentleman always saw things in generic terms.  If one event had a particular outcome, the class of all such events must have the same ending.  So on and so forth.  And often enough he made reality confirm to his idea of reality.  It left in its wake some avoidable embarrassments; many clues that went a begging, and sleepless nights of futile adventures for all of us.  

He was in his elements during one of the visits of the prime minister to his area of responsibility.  Leaving the surging mass of people to the care of his juniors, he walked up the considerable distance to the VVIP, stood to attention and barked “Good morning, sir”.  The exalted lady was none too pleased at his mixing of genders and asked him to go and do his duty.  But he came back grinning from ear to ear, satisfied with his performance.  

Once he kept the entire hierarchy - from the Chief Minister to the IGP (as the head of police was designated in those years) - on the tenterhooks, by interpreting literal ducks, with the metaphorical ones – some big catch.  This episode needs some re-telling, even though it has become part of police folklore.  

It was a cold winter night, a little more than three decades ago, in an obscure little place in the most backward part of the state.  Those of us who have served in the remote areas of North-Eastern Bihar would have an idea how the winter chill and fog transform the place into a surreal locale.  In the evenings, the countryside seemed to float upon invisible stilts of fog and thin air, and the three dimensions of space got horribly mixed up.  The high road, smooth and eminently motorable, flanked by the low lying fields, spread on and on like a black ribbon, and like a ribbon it effortlessly curled up - sometimes, unexpectedly.  One had to be careful in conditions where visibility, late in the night, could be as little as only a few feet.  You drove more by instincts and gut sense.  The villages were few and far between but they showed no signs of human habitation, as the people around got up with the sun and their activities came to a complete halt with the sunset.  Centuries seemed to have left them by.  Electricity was a rarity in the countryside and reserved for the district and the sub-divisional headquarters.  The whole countryside was submerged in primeval darkness.  The policeman was more like a lone voyager on a lonely planet, or when moving in groups for raids etc., dressed in overcoats and jackets, they appeared to be marauders from the outer space.  

On that cold winter night, I got a call from my boss.  He was conspiratorial as usual, and asked me to get ready fast and assemble as many armed personnel as I could muster instantly.  In the days prior to the automated exchange, the utility of the telephone set was only marginal.  It was, at best, an amplifier - a mechanical augment to natural lung power, because one shouted so hard in the mouthpiece to be heard on the other end.  The circle of confidence, as far as the sharing of sensitive information was concerned, included the operator of the exchange as a necessary party.  So we barked our instructions and received it in the canine form of speech as a matter of course.  But my boss was an exception.  He would whisper in the mouthpiece, and the subordinates had to decipher the susurrations on the other end.  I guessed that we were to raid a particular village three districts away at 4:00 in the morning.  Nothing more.  The objective was not spelt out.  He did not share his intelligence with anyone.  He was a firm believer in the saying: three can keep a secret, if two of them are dead; the trouble was, sometimes he hid it from himself as well.  He said he would be there in a jiffy.  

It was 8 in the evening, we had a drive of about sixty kilometres on metalled road, then about three kilometres on the sandy kas -lined fields (kas is a hardy shrub which grew wild in the riverine areas).  From there we had to cross a river in a country boat and then, by various modes of locomotion, travel another 18 kilometers.  A near-impossible task, given the conditions.  But with him, you could not reason.  The physical constraints apart, everyone knew the worth of his intelligence assets.  But we had no choice in this matter.  It was a one-way street.  We only carried out orders.  

The entire fleet of three jeeps – one each borrowed from my local civilian counterpart and the Executive Engineer of the irrigation department, and my own official jeep - and the FC vehicle of the police station were lined up and loaded with about 35 or 37 reluctant policemen - chowkidars, writer constables, sub-inspectors, all of them deeply convinced of a futile night’s adventure. 

The boss did not keep us waiting for long, and we were on the move just a little past 9:00 PM.  I remember having made a long entry in my diary about the charge of the asinine brigade.  Even the motor vehicles shared the mood of the menagerie and the forward control vehicle would splutter , then threaten to come to a grinding halt but would miraculously pull up and pick up speed – as  much as it could, given its vintage model and the dense thick fog.  After a couple of hours, it was clear that we were going to miss the tryst, whatsoever it was .  The mood of the medley was anything but pleasant.  

Just three kilometres short of the river – or rather the dhar, as an extinct stream was called – we sighted a contraption which appeared to be advancing towards us, in the middle of the road, ambling its way into infinity.  We surmised it to be a bullock cart in the dim light of a lantern, which was hanging by the small bamboo canopy.  Neither the urgent honking of the vehicles, nor the manifest of important dignitaries on board the jeeps, affected its slow and steady progress.  Wrapped in a nirvanic calm, it trudged its way.  Orders were promptly given to discipline the bullock-cart driver, but it transpired that he was asleep.  A half-asleep, half-confused inspector was ordered to take over the reins - or whatever was the term for the mechanics for navigating the bullock cart - and turn it in the reverse direction.  Having performed this task, he marched with a great swagger, as if he had just broken an Olympic record, saluted the boss and took his seat at the back of the jeep.  This one incident recharged my boss and we were exhorted to move on with renewed vigour on our voyage.  

The ambience was a perfect setting for movies in the Woh Kaun Thi (Who Was She?) genre and I always wondered if I would bump into some eminently beautiful and mysterious woman, wrapped in pure white sari, sleepwalking with a candle in her hand.  However all that one found was some fisherman, out with his net, or some other unfortunate creature with a lota (a small metal pot to carry water for ablutions etc) in his hand, victim of an unruly and indisciplined bowel.  In the eyes of policemen, such figures were ex-officio suspicious, strange incongruities, stragglers from the ordinary work-a-day world, which had obligingly receded undercover for the dialectical contest of thieves and cops to be played out.  The police men would invariably demand to know what was the fellow was doing out at that time of the night.  But this was preceded by some very informal greeting, which suggested an unusual degree of familiarity with him, extending to their knowledge of his incestuous relations with his mother, sister or daughter.  These preliminary courtesies were followed by some light hearted, almost playful, pummeling.  Some of the sundry slaps and jabs went only to show the boss that they were not callow or cowards.  I think each one of us had his own fantasy, and found it betrayed.  The vigorous mode of questioning was in large measure fuelled by this collective frustration.  But this bullock cart scene was unscripted, and full credit to the boss that he wrote an impromptu role for us then and there.  

To cut a long story short, we arrived at our destination about five hours late, exhausted and famished, ready to disintegrate at the mere touch of a human hand.  Our contact was a rich local landowner who used to host duck-shooting trips for police officers from the State Headquarters and influential civilians from the State Secretariat.  He was visibly surprised.  It appears that he had sent a QST invitation to my boss through the local Thana about the arrival of the migratory Siberian ducks, the geese and graylags, the teals and the pintails.  My boss, who lived on a single level of obsession, deconstructed the laconic message “the ducks have arrived” as some metaphorical big catch.  The boss could never be accused of nursing even an incipient inclination for poetry, but his misreading of a literal statement for a metaphorical one had led us to this situation.  

I think our cognitive faculties were not at their best, because immediately this bit of news did not quite make sense to many of us.  We just looked blank and barmy.  But when the import of the message seeped in, the undifferentiated and listless bundles of khaki stained by mud and slush, and wisps of kas and other vegetations suddenly achieved critical mass.  Murder and mayhem was uppermost on our minds and the boss did sense the mood of rebellion.  But the hospitality of the obliging host did a lot to assuage our frayed temper.  Our hunger stilled we gradually returned to being our humble disciplined selves.

Friends, Foes and Faceless Jokers

(These notes were randomly jotted between November 1987 and May 1988, when one of my periodic crises had rendered me practically destitute, without office, without work, without the perks that go with the office. The point to appreciate is that I had lots of leisure. In those pre word processor days, writing was a heroic task and needed great determination and lots of leisure. But I could proceed no further than forty or forty five handwritten foolscap pages, because in June 1988, I was posted to the CID and assigned the investigation of cases registered against the members of so called “Cooperative Mafia”. The many cases that we launched against influential political figures as well as high profile IAS officers left me no time for anything else for quite some time. It put an end to this project.

I must put in the all important caveat. I deliberately approached the subject in an elliptical, non linear fashion for fear of exposing the identity of the persons concerned. Adequate precaution was also necessary because identification of the characters due to some coincidence or chance resemblance could seriously expose me to the danger of personal harm; if not actually murder, the loss of a few limbs was a distinct possibility. I’ll tell you why; one of my closest friends threatened to shoot me should I dare to immortalize him or his father in law- a senior police officer himself- in my ephemeral memoir which was certainly not going to see the light of the day.

Written to fill in the empty languorous hours of my enforced idleness it is bound to be coloured by the mood of the moment. Lampooning and caricature was the only weapon available to a junior officer to get back at the unreasonable and iniquitous system. So all that will figure in here has to be taken in a lighter vein. This piece has been in existence for close to 22 years now as part of the police samizdat, and some of my close friends have gone through it and some more have been aware of its existence. Since a blog is after all a personal account put up for public inspection, I thought an expurgated version may pass muster. Initially captioned Friends, Foes and Faceless Jokers, it is being published without any updation . Superintendents have gone on to become Director Generals and Director Generals have been buried six feet deep under, but this story has not kept pace with their rise in fortune and ranks.)
 

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Leisure has its own rewards, especially if it is enforced and fully paid one at that. It is very conducive to introspection and if such leisure takes the shape of a near permanent holiday (with, I repeat, the compensation package intact!) You may sometime even experience a tremor of bliss, a wink of heaven, a curious feeling of déjà vu. Never did it appear more certain to me that God was in his heaven and I could swear he was a pretty kindly fellow at that!

My day begins early – there is no hard and fast rule, though. It may not start even till late in the afternoon. The fundamental point to appreciate is that one is liberated from the bondage of structured time. One becomes the lord and master rather than the slave of the clock. And if the tick tick still bothers, one can just smash the bloody nuisance of a clock and be none the unpunctual for it. After all, time comes in quanta. All one needs is the ingenuity to organize it.

But to begin at the beginning. My newfound freedom has given me lots of time to think, to meditate, and to introspect. And I need no great stimulus to ignite my thought process. No accompaniments are needed. Any setting will do. Just plain me and my head. We got along nicely and like each other’s company. Except when the upper story tenant has a bad ache and then how I wish I was not saddled with the baggage. But that is rare considering my body, (I was thin and underweight) my mind is remarkable healthy. Healthy – and a little wayward too.

A good hearty lunch followed, may be, by a catnap makes me exceptionally receptive to ideas and suggestions and puts me just in the right frame of mind for deep meditative thought. But what about the pre-lunch session you may wonder. Well, even after I have been laid off, beneficiary of a fortuitous but very

welcome nevertheless lock out, I go to office every day. It is very comforting for my wife and children. Shows that everything is normal. And after all there are the neighbors, too. For appearances, sake. And more importantly to remain fully acclimatized to that mind – free zone called office. Don’t the potential astronauts submit themselves to grueling sessions in gravity free chamber in preparation of their trip to the outer space? After all one may some day, any day, be called back. And I am not the one to flinch from making sacrifices or sparking a thought for myself in the interest of work.

But this realization has dawned on me only recently. A thinking mind can be a professional hazard. It can be a bit of a nuisance. Can interfere with your co-ordination really. You may find yourself scowling when a smile is expected. A snigger may escape when the appropriate response should be a wide eyed `oh no’. So when I go to office, I leave my upper story tenant behind. Now I nod, I smile – or the involuntary twitch of the muscle does the job. Say yes sir, no sir, thank you sir, I am sorry sir, without any trace of feeling. By sheer force of habit. No intellection. And what a great relief it is. It saves one from the bother of thinking, of judging people; of giving opinion. And also saves one’s skin. One can’t be accused of being smart, or impudent; indisciplined or arrogant.

...


My wife is a very normal, peace-loving, husband-baiting, typically middle-class woman. Like all middle-class women, she takes her nagging very seriously. Nothing out of the ordinary really – except that her extreme anxiety about and complete ignorance of official matters, makes her very jumpy. But the worst thing about her worries and her anxiety is that it is dangerously infectious. It multiplies faster than the most fertile virus. So very soon I am myself in the grip of this anxiety of unspecified etiology. I have a feeling that my career is taking a nose dive. (Absolutely imaginary – because my career had never soared really!) So aided by the nagging of my wife, my own propensity to introspection and the ambience of uninterrupted leisure, I sat down – or rather we sat down – to have a good look at my future. One gloomy foreboding led to another until it seemed there was no hope for me. I seemed caught in a cul de sac of meaningless gestures, in an impasse of comic bravado. Was there no hope for me? Was I a doomed soul already, ear marked as a drone; destined to compulsory retirement or worse? We became victims of a curious time lag; it seemed to me that my future was already behind me. No promising lead was in sight; the atmosphere was getting far too oppressive but no magic casement opened for us to escape. In a deliberate effort not to look at each other, we caught ourselves casting furtive glances at each other then away and back again to gazing at each other in obvious and plaintive search of comfort and reassurance. But none came our way. We changed strategy and put the time machine in reverse gear. May be we could scan the past in order to draw some conclusions, to be forewarned and take evasive action; to analyze the mistakes committed in the past so that we could shape the future nearer to our hearts desire.

I just played back the past fifteen years of my career as on a video monitor, at a slow speed; almost frame by frame to see whether in the expressive phrase of my wife I had made a complete “pig’s breakfast” of my career. I would have liked to delve deeper; to try and relate my failures to the facts of biology, to raid the unconscious to arrive at a theory of subliminal longing. But that was uncertain territory and after my spine chilling voyage to the future I wanted to tread ever so cautiously.

But I was in for a lot of surprise. Along with the mass of seemingly familiar and trifling data came up recollection of the purest vintage. And now that I was standing apart and was not too close it I could look upon these things with a real cool detachment – a god’s eye view as it were.

...

I am serious about my work but not solemn; respectful to authority but not reverential. Open to conviction; ready to take advice but no respecter of persons. Precisely the failing and infirmities any young, aspiring and ambitious police officer must studiously avoid.

...

Bosses, generally, have a singular inability to appreciate their subordinate’s point of view; their failure to look at the world through glasses other than their own. Or shall we put it the other way. The subordinate who does not have the talent to ingratiate himself to them would not go very far. Sooner rather than later he will fall by the way side.

I have had mixed luck in matter of bosses. Some were bad, some very bad and some downright insufferable. It is ordained that the boss will judge his subordinates and there is no armour against this fate – it is part of the burden of karma really. The lower down in the hierarchy you are the greater number of people there are to judge you. To find out infirmities that you don’t have, to point out short comings that are not there; nor is even part of your genetic inheritance; to lionize others for qualities that they could never possibly have.

This whole sordid business of recording A.C.Rs, I always thought, was a weird piece of book keeping, operated by the law of caprice and personal whim so that the worst failing can be entered in the credit side or sterling qualities entered in the debit side should the bursar so decide, and management experts are kept busy at devising ever more ingenious and labyrinthine forms of performance appraisal. New toys to play with; new games with the same set of rules. Cronies must be taken care of. Favorites first. Pets must prevail.

So you judge and are in turn judged; and in the process you produce drivel of unimaginable sloppiness. Everyone is kept busy. The entire play of the evolutionary strategy of nature is replicated in our offices. The big fish chase the smaller ones. While the bigger ones themselves hide from the powerful political sharks. Nature at least in the services is still red in tooth and claw. He who dares dies or is decimated. He who sucks up to survives and attains salvation. Silence is the law of the services. Servility is the stuff of official decorum. The service has its revenge on those who break the moral laws, with the inexorable certainty of a Greek play. If a modern day Agamemnon breaks an official taboo adverse ACR or worse is the inevitable wager of the act

With the unremitting media focus on 2G, Arushi case, and now the nth resurrection of the Bofors, the CBI is drawing flak from all and sundry. But as Jean Paul Sartre said in a different context “they are half victim half accomplice, like everyone else”. I am posting an article that I wrote for the Indian Express way back in 2004 .Though a little dated, it has not lost its general relevance. A couple of words have been changed and some connecting words have been supplied.
                http://www.indianexpress.com/oldStory/59591/

                        That Pantomime Artist Known as the Police 
                         
The growing ineffectiveness of state police forces in the face of powerful offenders creates a demand for CBI investigation. This occurs even in cases which are well within the professional and logistic competence of the state police. The CBI itself becomes eminently vulnerable to charges of bias once the affairs of the Central Government become the subject matter of enquiry. The state police forces are well on way to being reduced to a level where they will be good for nothing but ceremonial parades and watch and ward duties and a day may come when the CBI too may face an erosion of credibility. Who shall we turn to then? Interpol, the FBI, or Scotland Yard?

In public perception, the police are regarded as partisan and prone to unlawful behaviour. The Dharamveer Commission (1978) had among many other things recommended the selection of top police leadership by a representative and impartial body to guard against opportunistic or expedient transfer and insulate police officers from undue executive influence. It had also called for a fixed tenure.

The political context within which the police functions has changed dramatically. Criminals with political clout and politicians with criminal connections have an increasingly large say in the system. The fate of political leaders holding responsible positions in governments sometimes depends on the outcome of the investigation of a criminal case. Hence for the political elite the control of the police has become more urgent than ever. Theoretically the police are independent in matters of investigation but by using the carrot and stick policy of transfer it can be made the handmaiden of the government.

Whether an officer will stay for three months or nine years at a particular place is entirely the employer’s privilege and “public interest” is invoked to justify arbitrary actions against which there are no forms of redress. Transfer and postings should not matter to an officer, but sadly in prevailing situation, they are all that matter. In the less developed states where even the barest amenities such as electricity, connectivity, medical facility and good schooling are available only in few places, a premature transfer can be a fate worse than suspension because the fate of an entire family is placed on the line. Benefits and opportunities often accrue to the same individuals. Some remain in perpetual disfavour and are consigned to redundant post while trusted ones are assigned several important assignments. Cadre rules simply become esoteric texts to be interpreted according to convenience of favoured groups; personnel policy, a sieve to create a committed following of believers. In these circumstances it is foolish to go on believing in the myth of independence and neutrality of the police.

The options in some states are stark. Either you are a man of the establishment or you are on the hit list of the establishment- you have to choose between co-option and outright rejection. It needs courage and conviction of heroic proportions to resist the temptation or ignore the risks. In the context of the police, a group of not more than a few score of ‘committed’ Indian Police Service officers can secure the control of a police force of several thousand officers and men. By selective posting of these pliant police leaders at various strategic levels, it is possible to convert the rule of law into rule of men. These puppets, jiggling on the strings of political patronage, command the obedience of their subordinates nevertheless, and are in a position to enforce obedience to improper orders. And if the due process of law is interfered with on a regular basis to suit the requirements of a particular individual, group or clique, the pretence of the rule of law wears thin. Incidentally or perhaps significantly, the All India Services Act has rules governing every service condition of an Indian Police Service Officer except his transfer! The counter factual however must also be stated. Immunity from fear of unseasonable transfers will not make saints of police officers but it will certainly make the saintly among them, and there are some, immune from needless interference.

Policing is increasingly being depleted of public spiritedness and accountability. The powerful can command the service of police, the rich can purchase it whenever, wherever they can. It is the poor, the weak and the vulnerable that are not welcome to the party. The developing asymmetry—police vis a vis the extremist groups, police vis a vis the crime syndicates—is among many other things, rooted in this lack of credibility and moral authority of the police. Public opinion, an important institution of the open society, ineffectual at best of times, rather than feeding the reformist agenda in institutional forums actually colludes in its anticipation of such behavior from police.



Large-scale transfers of police officers and costly deputations of the CPMF are made on election to eve, ostensibly, to neutralize the bias of local police and to ensure that those who want to cast their vote should do it without let or hindrance. But it appears that the citizen is useful only for his vote and once his vote has been extracted out of him his other rights are not cause of much concern to the ruling political elite because for the protection of his other rights he is left to the tender mercies of this same police for the rest of the five years? Democratic politics perceives it that way, because every shade of political opinion has had the opportunity to initiate reformist measures to insulate the police in the light of many recommendations. So when political parties make ritual pronouncements of misuse of the police by the ruling party, actually it is a coded message from one power group to another seeking an assurance that this highly versatile legal construct called ‘the police’ shall be available for illegal use when it is their turn to wield power .The instrument which was fashioned to uphold the colonial rule suits them fine , thank you very much.

Two Tears for Barkha Dutt

The so called Barkhagate controversy raging here is a pointer to two significant truths.  The first is that the Alternative Media seems to have come of age.  It is much the more a moment of celebration for it, because it has stood up to question the powerful and established mainstream media, which has the backing of corporate houses and unlimited funds.  The second is that “Scandal”, as a "growth industry" spawned by 24/7  cable news,   now threatens to engulf the creators themselves. 

To briefly establish the context: an assorted transcript of wiretaps of conversations between journalists and a corporate PR consultant, regarding many issues, some of which now appear to have a bearing on the 2G scam, were leaked by unknown people, for unknown motives, to the leading media organizations.  Yet, barring a few exceptions, no one raised the issue.  Viewed in a certain manner, these transcripts appear to indicate an abuse of the privileged position of proximity to people in positions of power and influence that the media enjoys.  Uncharitable bloggers and tweeter birds have described them as “lobbyists”, “fixers” and “facilitators”.  Barkha Dutt of NDTV, for some reason or the other, has become the emblematic figure in the whole episode. 

The transcripts were discussed on some blogs and the trickle soon became a torrent, especially on Twitter.  It viralized to such an extent that the mainstream media, which had imposed a conspiracy of silence for so long in deference to their secret covenant of “not naming and shaming their own kind”, have been forced to fall in line, and now appear to have been themselves infected by the mood of the slugfest.  Some of the journalists whose names figure, prominent telecasters and columnists, have come out with their long explanations through their columns etc.  But it is the larger media that owes an explanation; as to why they studiously ignored it for so long and have engendered the debate only under duress, compelled by the outrage in the alternative media that itself leads to an adverse presumption of guilt against them.  Thus our concern is why the mainstream media played shy of airing an issue which was not only of great public interest, but of overarching media concern as well.  Their magisterial stance was that the public was better off not knowing it.  The censorship is the issue, not the content of the transcripts. 

One must, at the very outset, disclaim any view on the authenticity of the transcripts, or the allegations of wrong-doing.  That is a matter for detailed investigation.  But a TV channel came to the defence of its iconic but beleaguered colleague not so much with a marshalling of facts as with an admonition, a reprimand to those who had dared form their own opinion.  The channel would like to educate its viewers in the art and science of decoding meaning from a given text.  Aided and abetted by the mass media, in this post-modernist age, whatever random insight the audience can bring to bear upon the reading of a text or viewing footage is considered fair enough.  One must not submit to the criterion of authorized reading of a text. 

The fundamental requirement of the successful communication of a message, says famous semiologist and novelist Umberto Eco, “…is a code, shared by the source and addressee.  A code is an established system of probabibilities…. ” The inept, ill-informed and inquisitorial handling of serious issues related to corruption and wrong-doing in the past has established the code that allegation of wrong-doing is in itself the conclusive proof of wrong-doing.  Media has for long appropriated the job of institutions of polity charged with the responsibility of investigating matters according to a fair and codified procedure.  Now the media itself is on the wrong side and the lynch mob cannot wait to make a kill. 

Barkha Dutt, ring master of many a confrontational live wire big fight and gladiatorial duel, was in the unfamiliar role of defending herself on NDTV.  To her repeated pleas against the nebulousness of the charge and her plaintive query, “Why am I being singled out when a whole lot of other people from the media figure in the list”, Manu Joseph quipped that it was because she had a pretty face.  I don’t know if he was being facetious, but I shall attribute full seriousness and gravity to his remark. 

How long can tongue twisting South Indian names, to which no face can be attached, hold the interest of the baying voyeuristic crowd?  Better to hook a story to a well-known figure, and better still if it is a high profile woman in the public eye.  Who cares if, in the process, the eponymous Barkhagate overshadows the larger story of acquiescence, manipulation, power-broking and pervasive corruption in high places. 

ELECTIONS AND ILLUSIONS

Watching prime time TV during the run up to elections is a valuable experience. To find one self – humble, anonymous, powerless citizen- being courted  by those who would rule us for the next five years, forces one to reflect on the whole electoral enterprise. “ ‘Free elections’’, says the maverick thinker, commentator and polemicist Slavoj Zizek,” involve a minimal show of politeness when those in power pretend that they do not really hold the power, and ask us to decide freely if we want to grant it to them.” The model code of conduct enforced during elections in our country, only serves to reinforce the illusion. The contestants are at their most “politically correct” behaviour. After the verdict, of course, they show their true colours.Is it given to the citizen to enforce a reversal of their behaviour pattern; they could be their natural selves before they were elected but an epitome of correctness after they had won the trust of their constituents?


Apart from the tired old generation, there are a host of younger “leaders” in the electoral fray now, who owe their rise to prominence exclusively by inheritance or political maneuvering or daring acts of criminality, begging us to allow them to be our masters. But their way of doing politics is the same as that of their precursors. The absence of greater variety by way of “new people” seriously impedes the possibility of political change and evolution. As if inbreeding in politics had not muddied the waters enough, retired bureaucrats and police officers, who could be described at best as closet politicians, reveal their true colours by seeking a role in active politics.

Reverting to the issue of voter participation and their freedom of choice. By what criteria would they decide that one or the other is more worthy of their votes and better suited to hold public office? Between hordes and hordes of people charged with various crimes, political charlatans and serial defectors which one is the least venal, which one is the most trustworthy, who can tell? How do they choose the kindliest of oppressors?  Is it a privilege to be forced to choose, one or the other from the available lot, against their innermost convictions? Should it not be within their rights to reject  them all?

It is perhaps axiomatic to say, that only those with lots of disposable cash can seriously contest elections Thus money- largely the ill gotten wealth of the contenders -makes a mockery of the  right to equal opportunity and equal protection that democracy offers by way of equal voting rights and equal right to seek votes for an elected office.In a situation like this the ordinary citizens with just enough to keep body and soul together can only make a symbolic fight. So what are they doing here on this table, where the stakes are so high that only the rich can play and win?

There is a deep narrative structure to the staged contestations and phony debates conducted by the seekers of office in “code language.” When in power they are wonderfully understanding of each other’s crimes and corrupt practices. When out of power they seek every opportunity to disrupt normal life by demanding that those guilty of self same charges be punished. The everyday spectacle of demonstrations and bunds which affect the life of the common citizen exemplifies this “strange symbiotic relationship between power and resistance.”

All this is made possible by Television, which is the most ill suited medium for debating serious issues because its primary concern is to deliver audiences to its advertisers. If corruption is the issue why should party A be made to answer the charges of party B or why should party C get away by accusing party D of greater misdemeanors? It is the honest tax payer who is the aggrieved party. The political actors are past masters at feigning conviction and the television is an accessory to their deception. Instead of the seekers of political power ,collectively, being made to account for the situation in detail, the TV manages to stage a fixed political reality show and we are reduced to be mere voyeurs of the antics of the participants in political arena .

But I still love elections. Howsoever illusory the nature of the experience- seated on the make believe throne in all ones phony majesty, playing king and granting ruling rights to all and sundry- is exhilarating while it lasts.

TRUST YOUR HEART! NEVER

( An invit piece which was written on the occasion of a seminar/ conference on Cardiology at Patna. The death of a friend recently gave it an immediacy, which I had not felt when I scribbled it in a lighter vein.)


    Posthumous  shame is likely to be heaped  on those those who die of heart attack . Only if they had taken enough precaution, they could have kept their deaths  at bay. Preventive heart care is attracting eager converts to its fold. Seminal to the dogma is the assumption that the heart is intrinsically unreliable and fickle. One shouldn't trust ones heart-not only in amorous matters but in the simple physiological sense of the term as well. It is essentially delicate and fragile; vulnerable to a hundred influences from our own mental landscapes as well as from the external environment.  If you are forty ( better still if you are thirty five) it, needs to be kept under constant surveillance. Abnormal heart sounds may indicate enlargement of heart; bifid impulse is the harbinger of evil tidings.Not seeing your doctor  will seriously jeopardise your chances of survival. There are no atheists or agnostics now. Few can ignore a chest pain, or palpitation or shortness of breath. Flatulence can scare most of us with intimations of disaster. The spell is inescapable.


Heart foundations are propagating the new religion of heart care with as much zeal, and ardour as the proselytizers ever did. In our time everyone-from policemen to politicians, from doctors to dream-merchants, from stock brokers to surrogate mothers- just about everyone, is believed to have a heart apiece, despite the compelling evidence of the heartlessness of many of them! People who   are overweight  they are living a state of sin and their hearts are in mortal danger of being claimed by the devil. Djuana Barnes sounded the alarm bells when she said, 'We are adhering to life now with our last muscle -the heart."

The sickness of the heart we are told is caused by our personal life style, (diet, activity, addictions etc.) and the harmful things in the personal environment. The classical medical wisdom that disease is the result of infringement of natural laws has come full circle. "Diet" says Deepak Chopra M.D, oncologist turned T.M exponent, "is destiny". (Revising Freud's dictum "Anatomy is destiny".) .To buttresses his point he enlists the authority of the Taittereya Upanishad. No less!



"Dost thou think because thou art virtuous, there shalt be no more cakes and ale?" asks a Shakespearean character rhetorically, to which the answer of the virtuous must be a firm and unambiguous, "Indeed, there shall be no more cakes and ale". Cholesterol, rich food, red meats, ice creams, condiments and cookies, in short whatever tickles your palate are temptations placed in your way by the devil himself to which the standard response should be the upanishadic Neti, Neti (Not this, not this).



Salvation lies in plain salads, sprouted beans, and frugal diets. When it comes to eating, altruism is the best policy; charity a strategy of survival. Eat the lean portion yourself, and give the succulent bits to your neighbor (especially, if you covet his wife!) The yolk of the egg, the fat in the milk, they are all dispensable and deserve to be gifted away- to your enemies! Traditionally men have sought the solution to their nagging problems at the bottom of a bottle. The standard excuse given by tobacco addicts is that they try to smoke away their worries. Some relaxation may be given in case of alcohol and one may imbibe it occasionally-preferably under medical supervision- but smoking is absolute blasphemy. If things get too tensed up, well! swallow an Alprazolam. But I find the stunning piece of wisdom offered by the once stunningly beautiful Brooke Shields more comforting. "Smoking kills" she says "If you are killed, you have lost a very important part of your life".

 

The narrow and straight path in the new ecumenical faith leads to the gymnasium’ and aerobic clubs, swimming pools and jogging tracks. The third commandment requires you to renounce the comfort and the warmth of your blanket in a cold winter morning, get into your sneakers and track suits and head straight for the Sanjay Gandhi Biological Park or some such place. Five days a week, through fog or rain hell or high-water; all the year round.



There are some more prohibitions and one wonders, whether it is the heart which is at the centre of the doctor’s concern  or is he bent upon turning us all into saints. Late night bridge parties are to be abhorred; instead pranayam and yogic postures are to be practiced early morning, behind closed doors or better still in the open. Meditation is chicken soup for the soul, all right, but it is even better for your blood pressure and your heart. Viipasana and Yog Nidra have been appropriated as therapeutic tool for idiopathic angina. In fact there is a whole ritual no less esoteric than that of a holy anchorite who has renounced the world. The devout of this sect are to be seen walking on spiked sandals, clapping their hands away to no purpose, or laughing away to glory, under the banyan tree in the local zoo.

The most important ritual of the cardiological rite, however, is  the routine checkup, for those who want to keep their body and heart together. A consultation with your doctor assumes the gravity of a confessional session. Alone with your doctor you are prepared to reveal all, in a mood of repentance and tell-all. Through percussion and palpation he prizes out the rest of the secrets out of your heart. His stethoscope probes it from every conceivable angle. You are wired to the ECG machine; you jog on the treadmill. Meanwhile you keep confessing, uninterrupted, a long list of mea culpa.



"Doctor actually I overindulged myself during the last couple of days. I have been smoking lot lately as I am going through very difficult times". “I was spotted with a women friend in the club by a common acquaintance. Had a row at home. That is when I felt a stabbing pain in my chest, on the left side". And so on. The list of woes is endless. The cardiologist, like a kindly priest presides at the confessional and listens with amused detachment. He is indulgent towards these fallen souls. He knows the way of all flesh and reassures the patients, and asks them to be good and responsible.



But there may be greater peril lying in store-the judgment may be severe. The man in white may pronounce with appropriate gravity the condition to be tricuspid regurgitation, peripartum cardi-omyopathy or heart valve pulmonary stenosis or some other disease with equally sinister name. It falls on the affected victim and his family like a tonne of bricks. The sinister sounding name kills before the disease does. The cardio thoracic surgeons, especially, those who perform the critical suture are to their profession what the aviators (not mere pilots!) are to the vocation of flying- the elite of an elitist club. What they love best is finding excuses for performing the cardiac bypass surgery. In a consummate display of their skill they saw you down and then sew you up, as a tribute to their Olympian gods like Christian Bernard Denton Cooley and others.



But "The heart has its reasons", as Blaise Pascal said (or was it Emerson?)" that reason does not know" and ever so often confusing evidence keeps turning up which inspires skepticism even fatalism in the humble uninitiated fold. This heretic has broken all the commandments, flouted all the injunctions of the sacred text. He is a doctor himself (was, alas! he is no more. Death claimed him in his late nineties and certainly the heart was not the culprit. ) around ninety, already and has ambitious projects up his sleeves. A lover of good food he can eat his breakfast, lunch or dinner at anytime of the day-and several times, at that. His dinners are invariably washed down with copious amounts of good whisky and he gave up smoking out of sheer fatigue and boredom rather than in deference to the prevailing orthodoxy. If ever there was a convincing rebuttal to prevailing orthodoxy, it is him.



And this friend of mine. Forty-eight, athletic and young, lived his life by the book. Almost like Rousseau’s noble savage. Definitely not the type A personality. He died on way to airport of a massive heart attack. The chauffeur discovered him, dead as a dodo, at the airport, in the back seat of the car. I was told there was a frozen look of mild surprise on his face.What had he done to deserve this? Milton though blind, justified the ways of God to men in unreadable and boring poetic texts. The cardiologists, however, were not at a loss for explanation.It seems that he had a genetic predisposition. Was born of the wrong sort of parents.So there you are. You cannot trust your heart. NEVER!

Bringing up Father

It was a Sunday and, while surfing the World Wide Web, I noticed on the net my daughter, who is generally unavailable to speak to us during the day time, available for chat.  Normally she likes to lurk in the “invisible mode” or her presence is sternly marked in a forbidding red, warning obtrusively solicitous parents to stay off.

It seems we stay in different time zones; on different planets, almost.  Even our biologies, it appears, are different.We are the 9:30 to 6:00 people while for them the day begins when we are preparing to call it a day. So we generally manage to put in a word or two edgeways and get the standard reply ‘Dad I’ll call you in a while.”  If it is 12:00 PM then may be at 12:40 AM, if her shoot gets wrapped up early, and at 4:30 in the morning if things did not go as per schedule, she would like to pick up the threads.  In a state of total stupor or somnolence we end up getting all confused and tangled.  We beg ourselves, hoping to sort out the matters tomorrow.  My wife has been trying to conclude a conversation in respect of my daughter’s marriage for the last two years. It still goes on - simply because she has not been able to advance her most cogent and clinching arguments. When the summit actually takes place she is at her fuzziest and most confused, while her interlocutor is in a state of heightened clarity.  No prizes for guessing the result.

We got started after the customary hi and things like that.  The drift of conversation was in no particular direction, but what bugged me the most (dear me, my English is really getting all screwed up!  Are children such bad influence on parents?) was a string of consonants, like proper nouns of Balkan or East European origin.  In a kindly fashion my daughter took to educating me in the new language with all the consideration due to a nouvau admis.  I had heard that "LOL" is the shorthand expression for laughing out loud.  But there was the ASAP, for my benefit it was explained as soon as possible ,then BTW cropped up, which I understand is "by the way".  In the middle of a raging conversation you could just hang up, leaving the other fellow high and dry with a BRB - be right back. Then there was this neologism NTW, not to worry, but I am told it is catching up fast.  Or viralising, I should say.  But more economy was available.  On the chat you do not say I am happy or annoyed in words, you just hurl a smiley - annoyed, delighted, intrigued, puzzled etc. There are a dozen of them nicely organized in columns, in half platoon strength.  And yes, even in their world there are etiquettes, clearly recognized protocols.  Capital letters and punctuations are screaming bad manners.  Internet has forged its own sociology of private and public manners, new and dynamic forms of community.

We had a long conversation and on almost every issue we had different views.  Since my daughter has studied literature in one of the best colleges of the country, the cultivated illiteracies of the text messages, the brutal abridgement of the capacious and rich English language, the deeply alienating influence of internet, pop culture and high art figured recurrently.  I am afraid we could never ever come to a common ground.  The chat came to an end with a parting shot from her.  She quoted Jacques Lacan’s famous quip with its proper spelling, Les Non-Dupes errent. (‘The undeceived are deluded’).

My daughter excused herself.  After all, the young of her generation are so hard pressed for time!  They have to remain in touch with each other, the 450 friends on Facebook, the 1100 followers on twitter, the streaming e-mails on their Blackberry, blogs, the new cool video on you-tube!

But long after she had left, I wondered if this is the first time people of two generations are trying to start a dialogue.  The children have been forever in a state of holy war against their intrusive, ignorant parents.  It is something that is perhaps, in the nature of things.  So what is different?

I just venture the proposition that the pace of change in our generation was perhaps slower, therefore, obsolescence set in much later, the shelf life of parents was much longer. In our time I guess, and more so in the time of my father and before, two generations could be part of the same adult world but with clearly defined roles, well defined territories.  In their prolonged period of childhood they became conditioned to look up to the adult for guidance and advice. The parent child relationship - essentially one, between untrusting-self and the regulating other - was one of authority.

But now we have worked up a rapid, vertiginous pace.  Now the secrets of adulthood or the ways of the vile wicked world are open to children much earlier.  Parents no longer hold the key.  They trust themselves, their own judgments, opinions and capabilities, and they have moved the internet in loco parentis.

Instead of curiousity and wonder, a certain world weariness and cynicism is the hall mark of the precocious adult. Riding the wave of technology, especially the TV, internet, the iPhone, they have renounced the community of real men and women and retreated to the virtual communities where they have discovered new modes of participatory activity and leisure, new ideals of shared experience, new sites of protest and resistance.  The generations seem to inhabit different worlds with different rules, mores conventions and morals.  Relationship, marriage, paternity they all stand liberated from the immemorial taboos.  People of my generation tend to put too much premium on experience.  But I now realize experience has its down side.  With age comes not only the erosion of physical capabilities but also stiffness of mental fibre, the incapability of appreciating the new and the unfamiliar. I think the best strategy is to have trust – trust in their judgment and ability and pray to God that your trust is not misplaced.

But reverting to the core issue, the debilitation of genuine literacy in favour of the digital, the deliberate renunciation of the vast resources of language in the interest of expediency, economy of both time and money (I am told mobile service providers charge per character instead of words), the dumbing down by way of homage to the intellectual democracy, has a direct bearing on the whole issue.  We live inside the language of our discourse.  And as Wittgenstein once said, “the limits of my language mean the limits of my world”.  A few lines from Romeo and Juliet, the emblematic symbol of romantic aspirations in our less unhurried times in the world that has gone by, juxtaposed against two lines from the chart buster song “You and Me Baby” which inaugurated the third millennium for us, would perhaps illustrate the point .

ROMEO
[To JULIET] 
If I profane with my unworthy hand
This holy shrine, the gentle fine is this:
My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand
To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss.

JULIET
Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much,
Which mannerly devotion shows in this;
For saints have hands that pilgrims' hands do touch,
And palm to palm is holy palmers' kiss.

ROMEO
Have not saints lips and holy palmers too?

JULIET
Ay, pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer.

ROMEO
O, then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do;
They pray, grant thou, lest faith turn to despair.

The great ceremony of the courting ritual, the obliquities of speech, the passionate yearning and that awful daring of the proposition that demands but a kiss, will be thrown into sharper relief by this direct and uncomplicated exhortation of the Bloodhound Gang pop music group of this Brave New World:

You and me, baby, we ain’t nothing but mammals.
So let‘s do it like they do on the discovery channel.

Romeo and Juliet would be left stranded and speechless, in this world of naked apes and instant gratification of desire.  But I am not worried about the plight of the iconic lovers, nor about the elimination of all possibilities of romantic love.  I can rationalize my own little dialogic problems with my children.  We will soldier along, since we must.  My worry is how their generation and the succeeding generations will be able to strike even a conversation between themselves, each a separate island , seated or strapped variously, to their laptops and iPhones or playstations and desktops.