ARC

How does one engage with politics in a fruitful way, beyond the platitudes? Apart from voting for your local representative (which I must confess, somewhat shamefacedly, I haven’t ever done) what can ordinary citizens do to make politics less of a political word?

Our press and leaders wallow in the fact that India is the ‘World’s largest democracy’. The strength of the electorate that votes in election after election is bigger than the populations of most countries. But, voting is also a class thing, where urban middle class angst collides with the moffussil realities of the ‘other’ India that doesn’t make it to the 24/7 T.V screens; the India that doesn’t invade middle class sensibilities with its smells and sounds and the India of paan-chewing messiahs and hooded naxal ‘terrorists’.

A common complaint in middle class drawing rooms across India is that politics today has become such a messy affair. “Everyone is corrupt,” is the lament. True, politics is not the same as it was 20 or even 10 years ago; True, also, that each and every fibre of the political system seems to be dyed in the cesspool of venality; Even more true is the fact that going up against the ‘system’ seems like an impossible task.

The common perception here is that ‘we’ are the victims of a system gone so rotten that it is beyond redemption. But haven’t all of us contributed to it, don’t we all have a hand, and share the responsibility, for the way things are?

Take Jessica Lal. She has become an icon that fuels middle class rage. How dare they shoot a (pretty, young, westernized) woman in a (illegal) bar and manage to get away with it. After all, the killer(s) were nouveau riche spoilt young rich kids from political families. There were many eyewitnesses that evening when Jessica was shot, but when it came to the crunch none of them put their (middle class) money where their mouth was.

Of course, you could always argue that “it’s the system maan.” But the eyewitnesses at the ‘Tamarind Court’ were not people who might be called financially or otherwise insecure. They might have shown more spine, done something to engage with the ‘system’ that all of us love railing against in the air conditioned confines of our Tamarind Courts. When the people of planet page 3 fail, why expect poor Zaheera to defy the system.

The people who held candlelight demonstrations beside India Gate saw a reflection of themselves in the Jessica Lal affair. Yesterday it was Jessica, tomorrow it could be my turn. And yet, when thousands of women are raped across that ‘other’ India every day, the India that doesn’t make it to the T.V. screens, thousands paraded naked on dusty village streets for defying caste conventions, thousands shot dead for sullying family honour, our middle class doesn’t erupt in protest. These women are best relegated out of sight and out of mind.

A tropical sun, but without the burning heat, has come calling. I’m taken back in time to hot afternoons; of sweat drenched foreheads, of delicious mangoes, of the sudden stillness after regular electricity cuts, and the beautiful feeling of cool air on hot skin. I breathe in the thick memories of summers bygone, intoxicating in their all-enveloping glory.

Ah, I remember that strand; a sultry Sunday when I roamed through the book market in Abids and found, to my utter delight, that my doors of perception had been cleansed. Here is another memory, of sitting for an entrance exam on a ferocious afternoon in May, half suffering from sunstroke, the questions looming up from the paper and forming surreal shapes. Streaking through my senses, a cool summer morning, the way she felt in my arms among the rocks, the dream like union of hesitant lips, the heavenly vision of half-naked flesh below me and then walking back hand in hand, hesitating to open my mouth and shatter the unbelievable dream. Here is another fragment; a day spent tramping through the hot roads of Pune but with the welcome relief of frequent Neera drinking stops. Suddenly, I taste that chilled beer again traveling down my throat, cold and exciting in a sleepy Delhi fast food joint. And how can I forget the gentle lapping of the waves as I sat on the beach and consumed a book on a lazy Goan afternoon.

I remember escaping in to the icy relief of air-conditioned libraries, of the air hanging still like a guillotine at 1 pm, of mid day roads swept clean of people, of juicy watermelons melting in my mouth, of sweaty bed sheets and howling Westerly winds. An endless succession of summers unfolding behind my eyes.

And there are words as well, from half-forgotten conversations, unwaveringly similar, time after time.

“Hey, who is getting the snacks?”

“Don’t you dare forget the green peas, fucker!”

“Oh boy this is life! Chilled beer hitting the spot, tasty snacks and the whole evening stretching away before you like an empty runway.”

“…Julio and Romiet…shit…damn…I mean Romeo and Juliet of course…cut it out you dickheads, I’m not drunk!”

India is rapidly growing and needs loads of energy soon to fuel that growth. We cannot (and should not) depend on the unstable Middle-East for our oil, not just because they are repressive and thus unstable regimes but also because of the spiraling cost and long-term environmental problems. Wind, solar and tidal energies are still at a nascent stage and need more time before they can be widespread. And there is stiff resistance in India to large scale hydro electric plants. So the only reliable alternative left is nuclear power. The Indian nuclear establishment for all its talent of working under adverse conditions is still using unstable cold-war era technologies. Added to this is the fact that India has very low reserves of Uranium. We do have huge reserves of Thorium but lack the technology to use it as a nuclear fuel as of yet. So we urgently need access to safe and reliable nuclear technologies and fuel. And who controls this? The US (and other Western powers) of course. So if not today tomorrow we would need this deal. And that I think is the raison d’etre for this agreement. Remember, this deal was asked for by the Indians and not the Americans.

Now with this little setting of context out of the way let us come to Mr. Bush. I do not like him and I think he is perhaps the worst US president in history. He is a war mongerer and I seriously think he is in the pocket of big business. But I do give him certain credit. He has had the courage to change decades of anti-India policies by the US. I know he is not doing this out of love for India, he is doing it from a purely strategic and business point of view but he did something which even Clinton was not willing to do.

So it is a purely pragmatic decision on India’s part to deal with him. When we can directly deal with war mongerers and repressive dictators like Musharraf of Pakistan and Wen Jiabao of China what is wrong in dealing with Bush? Musharraf is even worse than Bush I think. He was directly responsible for the killing of hundreds of Indian soldiers during the Kargil episode and indirectly responsible for the thousands of deaths due to terrorism in Kashmir and beyond. For god’s sake, he blatantly ignores terrorists acting from his own soil! And I doubt if even you will support a totalitarian state like China and the immense human rights abuses it’s ruling government has been party to. So why didn’t anyone (apart from perhaps the far right parties) protest their visit to India? Why didn’t the Left come out in full force and protest the Chinese leadership’s visit sometime back or Musharraf’s continuing support for terrorism? Do you really believe that the Indian left cares for the issues on hand? They are making such a noise only because they have elections coming up in key states where they hold power or have influence. So I don’t see anything really wrong in India doing business with Bush.

Finally, that brings us to the question, what is it that the Indian left wants? Do they even have a vision for India’s future or does it change every time they taste power? Do they want to turn India into a totalitarian communist regime like China? I mean these were the very people who apparently opposed nuclear weapons of any kind when India embarked on a such a program first. Now, it is hilarious to see them getting concerned for the military nuclear program!

Even though my politics lie left of center I’ve never been in favor of the Indian Left parties. They have never done anything that has benefited the poor and have only bothered themselves about staying in power as long as possible.

Let not the above words give you the impression that I support nuclear weapons. Far from it, I wish they had never been invented in the first place. But they exist and will continue to do so. I was disappointed to see India soften its long held stand for the complete eradication of nuclear weapons in the world. However, that is a also a shift based on current reality. India is surrounded by hostile and unstable regimes. From Pakistan to Burma, from China to Bangladesh, we have neighbors who refuse to see reason and are willing to continue on the path of violence and/or brutal suppression of human rights. So we do need a credible deterrent, something that will make them think twice before threatening our national and territorial integrity. In spite of this obvious security fear, India is perhaps the only nuclear power in the world who has imposed on herself a no first-strike policy. Did any of the other other nuclear powers follow India’s example? The answer is a resounding no. And this is where India’s need for nuclear weapons comes from.

(A post that was in response to Tushar’s argument that Bush is a war criminal and therefore it was an insult for him to offer respects at Mahatma Gandhi’s samadhi and that India should not do business with him.)

She came into the room I was in sometime after midnight. I was still awake, tossing around under the weight of all the shared memories that had reared their head. Hard to think that what had happened was a decade before. The remnants of that passionate affair still echoed in my heart from time to time. But here they were unstoppable. The gentle heat of the night was also not making things easy. My body was consumed by desire and that was the main reason behind the lack of sleep. How can one sleep when every cell of your body is craving for that which cannot be had in the present circumstances? But her entry changed the equation a bit. Her roommate was in the other room, only a thin wall separating us. She stood at the foot of the bed. The soft moonlight gave shape to her beautiful outlines. It was obvious she was not wearing anything under her thin nightdress. Even in the dim light I could see that her nipples were rigid. My tongue craved to taste them in my mouth and hear her sigh from the depths of her soul. I was sure that her eyes would be half-closed, intimating that she too was in the grip of our shared past.

Without a word she slipped beneath the sheets beside me. Her flesh was warm to the touch. She snuggled up to me, her body turning me on like one turns on a light bulb in a dark room, a sudden rush of extreme passion. It was one of those rigid, painful yet sensuous erections. Chucking the burden of the past into lust’s dustbin, I embraced her fiercely; my hands tried to envelop every little inch of her. We moved to the edge of the bed, interlocked thus.

Slowly, we slid down the bed and onto the floor, still wrapped around each other. Our mouths dissolved into each other as my tongue undid the soft tension in hers. The languid kiss one dreams of was a reality lived only by our lips. A gentle exploration of each other while tasting the love written on our tongues. My nose touched hers, a pleasant friction of two disparate senses. The long kiss continued, uniting sense and skin in a low wave of rising erotica.

I loved the silky smell of her mouth. I committed to memory the mellow taste of her tongue. I savored the feel of her lips interlocked with mine. I anticipated the sensual delights hiding behind her naughty smile that I could only taste. Her hand traveled down my body in one graceful arc sending shivers along my shy nakedness as her fingers awakened sleeping rivers of desire along their wake.

After a billion years our mouths separated, the aftertaste of her tongue still echoing in my mouth.