Birthday Bumps

“Ghadi (Clock) Main 12 Bajte Hi,

Ab Mujhe Birthday Bumps Dega Kaun?

Waise To Naam Main Kya Rakha Hai Yaaron,

Par Phi Bhi, Ab Mujhe ‘Sutho’* Bulayega Kaun?”

These were the last two lines of a ‘poem’ that I had recited on stage on the day of my farewell. It was way back in 1999. Year 2000 was knocking on the door. ‘Millennium’ was the latest addition to the vocabularies of a lot people around the world (just like the word ‘Tsunami’ became a household name after that unfortunate incident off the coast of Indian Ocean), and Y2K was building up to be this Loch Ness monster that it eventually turned out to be.

But the mention of ‘millennium’ and ‘Y2K’ is just to set the context. It is definitely not intended to be a red herring. Because the words that I want to draw your attention to, are right there in the second line of the poem - ‘Birthday Bumps’!

If, I mean really if, by any chance, you have no idea what it is or have not experienced it firsthand, don’t kick yourself in the butt. Wait for your next birthday to come up and allow others to have that pleasure instead. This seemingly well intentioned (more often than not) ritual was in the news recently. IITB HAS BANNED BIRTHDAY BUMPS. Ouch!

Two boxes (besides a few others of course) according to me, if you haven’t ticked in your life, you have deprived yourself of a definitive dimension of a meaningful life: 

        Experienced a hostel life

        Rode a bike (no, ridding pillion doesn’t count) 

While it will be difficult to give birthday bumps to someone while riding a bike (although it will make for an interesting new ritual), it is not so uncommon to get that kick in the butt if you’ve had a chance to live in a hostel. Having experienced some of the most beautiful time of my life in a hostel setting, I find this ‘ruling’ by IITB particularly amusing.  

There are two immediate and only plausible planks of justification for this ban. One, it could prove to be perilous. Agreed. I myself got hit on my tailbone on one occasion, as my pals lifted me and started throwing kicks indiscriminately. But by that measure and logic, kissing someone could well be suicidal! Just imagine the amount of bacteria that you so gleefully and magnanimously allow to enter your buccal cavity when you smooch someone! Mostly, things like birthday bumps are just well intentioned frolic. Little crazy yes, but well intentioned. It’s a part of the brotherly dhamaal masti, without which hostel or college life would be as regimental as the life at home that precedes it or the work life that follows!     

Second and bit more sensitive reason, could be that it is associated with and/or encourages things like ragging. Lately, some unfortunate incidents have maligned, what was supposed to be an ice-breaker between seniors and juniors or even between classmates. Yes, ragging in several cases has resulted in mental and physical trauma for a lot of students. But again, it is the wrongful, abused and twisted version of the act that results in such incidents. Well-intentioned ragging (it’s not an antithesis, believe me) is only meant to ease freshers’ anxiety and act as some sort of light-hearted initiation ceremony. But what’s the connect between birthday bumps and ragging? Let’s say, what’s the connection between kissing and rape? Zilch. None.   

   

They say hostel life is a learning institution like none else. Especially an engineering college hostel, where you get students from across the geographies, culture, religion and even race. Like me, hostel life is the first real taste of freedom for a lot of students. It’s probably for the first time that you make your own bed, or do your own laundry. It’s for the first time that you realise how liberating it is to live outside of the care of your parents, yet how perilously difficult it is not to get carried away in the process!  

Hostel life is a time when you explore. It’s a time when your adaptability is tested, in return of a bonhomie that you don’t get anywhere else in the world. It’s one of its kinds. It’s that time of your life when you make friends for life. Even if it entails getting kicked in your butt once in a while! 

(*Everyone has a nickname in hostel. ‘Sutho’ is how my friends addressed me, and still know me by that name!)

TO STOP TRAIN PULL CHAIN

Travelling from Anand to Ahmedabad on weekends during my engineering days, the train used to invariably make an unscheduled halt just before pulling into Maninagar station (the Borivali or Bandra Terminus of Ahmedabad). The reason – chain pulling. Some milk vendors (as also some bootleggers) who used to illegally cart their ware on these trains, would get off at this place simply by giving a gentle tug to the chain hanging besides a small notice which read: ‘TO STOP TRAIN PULL CHAIN’. And there it was, the grand Indian Railways used to turn into someone’s ‘baap ki jaagir’. 

Something similar happened yesterday, but this time it was not the bootleggers, it was someone from the dreaded specie called ‘politician’. It doesn’t matter that it was ‘didi’ this time (wait a minute, with all those blackmails and tantrums being thrown day in and day out, I think it does matter) because most other railway ministers who have held the portfolio before, have treated the railways exactly like that – their ‘baap ki jaagirs’. But here was a brave and sincere soul (by all means, a mutant of the specie mentioned above) going by the name Dinesh Trivedi who tried to give railways the respect that it deserves! The railway minister announced fare hike in his railway budget yesterday. Considering the increasing levels of income of not only the middle class, but across classes, the hike has been pretty small. Sample this: a hike of 5 paise per kilometer in sleeper class and 10 paise per kilometer in AC 3 tier would mean that the cost of travelling from Ahmedabad to Delhi would increase by `45 in sleeper class and by `90 in AC 3 tier. 

But, this hike being small or affordable is not the reason for me to call Mr. Trivedi sincere. It’s the justification that he has for it – railways is in pitiable condition in terms of finances. And his special emphasis is to channelize these additional funds towards making rail travel safer! Simply put, Mr. Trivedi very sincerely intends that the next time when one of us happens to travel by train, we do not end up as a mangled dead body inside a train wreck! But for that he needs money. The railways needs money. And what is the best of arranging money for your needs? You earn it. That’s exactly what Mr. Trivedi is trying to do by hiking the fares. He is trying to make railways self dependent. Alas, the likes of didi and lalu do not want that to happen. For the sake of playing populist politics, they are ok to bleed the railways. 

Honestly, I haven’t heard much about the political career of Mr. Trivedi before. But going by the sincerity with which he was saying in a post budget interview to a TV channel, that to him country and the interest of railways is above everything else, one would be compelled to ponder that there still are a few good men in the rotting political fiber of this country. I just hope and pray that any later turn of events do not prove me wrong about my sizing-up of Mr. Trivedi and his intentions. After all, politics, especially Indian politics, is a dirty game. However, as this blog is being written, it’s flashing on the news channels that Mr. Trivedi has resigned as the railways minister due to pressure from his own party (read ‘didi’).   

   

So much for trying to resist the chain pulling Mr. Railway Minister!             

Tum Itna Jo.....

Never met him in person really, but he was always there to comfort me in my loneliness, heartbreaks and setbacks.

The first impressions that he made during one’s adolescence turned into some sort of pious admiration by adulthood.

He spoke to me on lazy Sunday afternoons, sometimes almost whispering.

Be it four friends getting wasted over alcohol or someone standing in the window and admiring the setting sun over a cup of tea, he always had something to say for every mood.  

He made blues endearing. With him around, it was never a thing of shame to be a hopeless romantic.

With just a harmonium and a tabla, he romanced tears and pain like no one ever will.

Claiming that smiling too much is probably a ploy to hide pain (‘tum itna jo muskura rahe ho…’) – he toyed with human psyche with masterful ease.  

The melody of his baritone could capture your heart in remarkable ways. A simple rendition of some soulful lyrics and you could at once feel both a spell of trance and the spiritual stirrings of Sufi music. Such was the realm of music that he operated in.  

The heavens endowed him with a gift, which he so sincerely and passionately shared with all of us.

We feel blessed being touched by you, dear Jagjit. Thank you very much.

RIP.

INC: Indian National Cancer

By cracking down on Baba Ramdev, Manmohan Singh has proved that he can wield his iron fist. Good for you Mr. Namesake Prime Minister but let me ask you this: what was this iron fist of yours busy with when the Gurjars held the country and its capital to a ransom? The Gurjars took over one of the busiest rail routes towards Delhi for almost two months and Mr. Namesake Prime Minister didn’t so much raise an eyebrow, leave alone bringing out that fist in open! And I am not even debating the merit (or demerit) of the causes for which these two agitations were being held; because if we do choose to debate that, I think there won’t be any shade of doubt in anybody’s mind as to which one was the real blackmail! To my mind the difference between the two was very elementary though a stark one: one was about taking this country back and other was about initiating a way forward for this country and its governance to clean up its act.

This government is not only corrupt; it keeps coming out with policies, each one more divisive than the previous one, with the sole intent of gaining political mileage and to hang on to the seat of power at any cost. Congress, in its umpteen years at the helm of power has made the social fabric of this country more disruptive and backward looking than ever before. Take two recent bills/acts in case: one seeks to include more communities in the list of OBC communities towards reservation in higher education and jobs. Now, I am all for social development and inclusive growth, but what way is this of ensuring that? By yet again increasing this list you are slapping yourself in the face in that you are openly accepting that all those welfare schemes and thousands of crores of taxpayer’s money spent on them, has had no beneficial effect on the marginalized communities. If anything, a progressive government should look to gradually curtail such lists by ensuring that more and more people are coming out of backwardness and poverty.

Second one is the Prevention of Communal Violence Bill. Without going into the details of it, one of the fatal and manipulative implications of it is that a victim of communal violence, according to this bill, can only be from minority community. So a person belonging to a majority community cannot claim any intervention under this act. If this is not divisive, what is??? Congress, for long has built up the bogey of ‘minority persecution’ – especially with the Muslim community- and continues to shamelessly play such divisive politics over it. Let’s put certain things in perspective here: when we talk of minorities, why do we always have to picture Muslims only? What about other communities? Second, in a country where one of the most successful captains of its cricket team was a Muslim (Azharudin); where the leading superstars of its film industry are ‘Khans’; where one of its leading space scientists turned adorable Presidents was a Muslim, where is the question of Muslim persecution? It is just a terrifying legacy of partition which the congress party has kept alive and continues to furtively nurture. In fact, talking in absolute numbers, one cannot help but think that it is a fallacy to categorize a population of about 175 million as a ‘minority’. It’s high time that the Muslims of this country stop playing into the hands of congress, and stake their rightful claim as well as their make their contribution as equal partners in India’s march towards a progressive, developed and just society.   

For the uninitiated, INC stands for Indian National Congress (full name of the Congress party), but it is only apt to call it Indian National Cancer, considering what it has done to this nation. Actually, it is not very apt after all. Cancer has now found a few treatments that can stop from making it life threatening, however I cannot say the same for the INC!

I bring this discussion to end by paying my ‘disregards’ to two biggest ‘agents’ of congress (I am using the word agent here, specifically as an English equivalent of the Hindi word ‘dalla’ or ‘dalal’). One of them openly espouses the divisive policies of INC, by habitually shooting his acidic mouth off; and another does that in a very subtle and covert manner by firing missives from his sweet mouth contained in his handsome face. I am talking about Digvijay Singh and SRK respectively. This is what I have to say to them: “Oh man, you loudmouths, you love doing that, don’t you?”   

It's Not About Anna

No respected Anna Hazareji, it’s not about you

.

And neither is it about India’s favourite Olympian Suresh Kalmadi.

It’s not about Raja-ji and 2G.

 It’s not about ‘Q’ and his kickbacks (let’s give to him, at least the guns fired when needed).

It’s not about the housing scheme run by our government for the really needy.

It’s not about how ‘adarsh’ our politicians are. 

It’s not about a certain gentleman who ate up all the ‘chara’ meant for cattle.

It’s not about ‘a-safe-heaven-to-stash-away-all-the-black-money’ being labeled as ‘bank account’. (I would rather prefer chocolates and a certain tennis player from that country though.)

It’s not about how someone used ‘tel-ghee’ to print stamp-papers instead of official government ink.

It’s also not about the fact that our parliament is no more a place to debate and implement say a primary health care policy, but a place where cash is traded for votes.

It’s about the ‘thug’ lurking in each one of us.

It’s time we stopped heeding to him every time it tries to hoodwink us by saying ‘chalta hai’ and ‘is desh ka kuch nahi ho sakta’.

It’s time we ostracized him.

It’s about the state of the world that we are going to hand over to our children.

It’s not about Anna.

It’s about US.