History books, and I am talking about the ones prescribed for us in school, tell us simple stories. Like how Gandhiji brought us freedom.Like how non-violence made the British leave.
Not that we complained—after all the last things one wants in late teenage life are complexities, especially of the type that can come to bite you on your ass during Board exams.
We have seen this picture in our text books. Happy Indians, of all shapes and colors, holding hands, extolling the ideal of unity in diversity.
Hum Sab Ek Hain. We are all one.
It is a comforting gajar ka halwa national narrative.
It is also, like Santa Claus, patently untrue.
In reality, there are deeply visceral schisms that split us Indians apart on multiple axes—money, language, religion, education, Salman-Shahrukh. If we could take a bullshit-filtering lens and put it on the collective national psyche, we would see a picture that resembles a fifth day Cuttack pitch with its deep fissures, serpentine fault-lines and no binding top-soil . Hell, we don’t even need to do that. Go to Rediff/TOI, pull up any random article, and run through the comment board. You will know exactly what I am talking about.
[Published in DNA, November 11, 2012]
There are quite a few things from my teenage years that I cringe owing up to, none perhaps as embarrassing as having been a shameless Shahrukh Khan fan-boy. As a matter of fact, I was so Madan Chopraaaa crazy that I would occasionally dress up SRK-style (I still have photographic evidence of me in my Ramjaane-inspired get-up) .
Those days, there was a hero vacuum in Bollywood. Amitabh Bachchan, after a disastrous run in politics, was turning out turkeys like Toofan and Akela, fast descending into the rabbit-hole of Dev Anandian obsolescence. Mithun Chakraborty was preparing to pack his bags for Ootie, Anil Kapoor and Jackie Shroff were on their ways out (they didn’t know it yet of course), Aamir Khan and Salman Khan were still finding their feet through a series of chocolate-boy low-key romantic roles, Saif Ali Khan was thought to be a Sharmila Tagore lookalike with no future, Akshay Kumar was cavorting in speedos as “handsome man” Mr Bond and producers considered Rahul Roy a viable sole-hero.
Yes things were that bad.
[ONLY for those who have seen Skyfall. Inside references and spoilers galore.]
When we were in high school, most probably Class 12 but this was oh so long ago that it could well have been class 11, we started this little tradition. That being that on Saptami (the day Pujo officially starts), we, some friends from school, would meet at a specific time at Anandamela, an electronics shop in Gariahat and then go pandal-hopping on foot. The first time we did it, there was quite a crowd. It was so much fun that we kept on doing it every pujo. Over the years, fewer and fewer of the original group attended the annual ritual, college group alignments washing out the high school ones and couples forking out on their own. I religiously showed up though in front of the glass display windows filled with Aiwa sound systems and Onida color TVs because Pujo wouldn’t be Pujo without it. Then I came to the US to study. And that, as they say, was that.
