My Electric Nights With Vikram Chandra

Published in Tehelka Magazine 14 November 2010

http://tehelka.com/story_main47.asp?filename=hub201110Vikram_Chandra.asp

End of a Romance

Published in India Today, 11 September 2010

http://indiatoday.intoday.in/site/Story/112179/Nation/end-of-a-romance.html

Mumbai is 'like a novel written by a magical element'...

Or something to that effect:

http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,5867818,00.html

A Mouthful of the Big Apple

(published in Mumbai Mirror, 20 May 2010)

JFK airport's immigration counter was where I least expected to be addressed as “Altaf-bhai”. It was also the last place on Earth that I hoped to see a copy of Chetan Bhagat's The 3 Mistakes of My Life. Not only was my immigration officer from Mumbai, he was Muslim, too, and all-too familiar with Byculla, my neighborhood. Despite being severely sleep-deprived, I thought it prudent to be cordial with a man who could, theoretically, send me back on the next flight home.

We chatted in Hindi as the officer stamped my passport and fingerprinted and photographed me. Oh, you know, just two Mumbai boys catching up over crucial port-of-entry formalities. I asked the gentleman how he was liking Bhagat's book, a dog-eared copy of which lay on the side counter. He seemed non-committal. I suggested that he read my novel. The official had never heard of it, of course, and until that morning he had never heard of me. We exchanged cards and bid farewell with a “Khuda haafiz”. Ticket to New York? Forty-two thousand rupees. Being reminded of one's literary insignificance? Free!

To Be or Not to Pee

America's economic recession is showing up on Manhattan's streets with a vengeance. Every block has at least a couple of stores with forlorn 'For Rent' signs or little notices announcing the closure of some decades-old deli or cafe. The dwindling of fast-food restaurants and coffee shops has spelled bad news for pedestrians in a very significant way: Fewer eateries mean fewer restrooms that one can stroll in and out of as the need arises. On weekdays there are veritable mobs waiting to use the loos at Starbucks and McDonald's – the only chain-stores that seem to be weathering the rough times, although no one can be certain for how long.

I ventured into an Au Bon Pain one blustery evening with an insistent bladder. When I asked for the key to the locked restroom, the cashier informed me that the restroom was for customers only. I argued: “But I do intend to be a customer.” “You gotta buy something first,” the cashier replied. “I can't think of food till I don't use the restroom,” I said. “Buy something first,” was the cashier's stony answer. Such unyielding customer service would've been unimagineable in pre-recession America. Maybe that cashier had a sixth sense for full bladders. I considered purchasing a croissant so I could obtain that key. But two-something dollars for a leak? No-uh, not in recession-time America.

Stick-Shift Prez

The automatic transmission in American cars permits no measured responses on the road: it's the accelerator or the brake, you either speed up or slow down – two extremes that more often than not end in disaster. How people drive says a lot about who they are. Considering that the average American drives 33.4 miles a day, and close to 90% of the population drives automatics, that's a lot of people spending a lot of time veering between the extremes at dizzying speeds.

This behind-the-wheels extremism carries over into other walks of life. America is not a country of fence-sitters, of multiple party democratic options, or of tempered approaches to policy making. It is either Republican or Democrat, pro-war or anti-war, White or Black. All other options are mere background noise.

I arrived in New York just in time to witness what the media was terming a “historical” vote on the Health Care Reform Bill. The run-up speeches in the House of Representatives were a crash-course in American polarization. Those opposed to the bill were vicious and unrelenting, those in favor were gushy and evangelistic. The Bill itself was neither here nor there, an ambiguous googly delivered by one of America's least huggable of Presidents. Since his election, there have been a rash of articles about President Obama's reserved public demeanour, as if this is an unusual quality to find in a head of state. The two previous Presidents, both of whom served two terms, were reflections of America's affective national character. Whether indrawn Obama will be voted into office a second time remains to be seen, but for now he is the stick-shift America sorely needs.

Ignorance Is...Kindle

New York's subways are the spotting ground for the world's latest entertainment gizmos. 2010 promises to be the year of the e-reader. Kindles and their ilk have begun showing up in the hands of subway commuters with increasing regularity. The technology is still new enough to turn heads. It must take heroic self-control to remain focussed on one's e-reader screen while half the subway car is peering over one's shoulder. Until now one could scope out fellow-commuters based on what they were reading. If predictions about e-reader usage prove to be accurate, it is likely that in a few years most subway passengers will be holding these slate-like devices that reveal nothing about the contents being displayed on them. The Roth-addict will be indistinguishable from the Coehlo-junkie. For many writers, present company included, this will be a God send. If there's no telling what an e-reader is displaying, it would be safe to assume that one's own book is being read on every e-reader in sight, including, some day, an e-reader at JFK's immigration counter.

The Delhi Anxiety

(Published in Mail Today, June 2008)

Walking through my city, Mumbai, on any given day, here are some sights I might typically encounter: slums, missing footpaths, minimal greenery, loads of people, and maybe the shooting of a film or soap opera.

Now compare this to what an average Delhi-based writer might stumble upon while riding through the Rajdhani: a semi-nude march against rising prices, or a candle-light vigil by Tibetan exiles, or thousands of poor and landless tribal farmers picketing for their rights.

If I were that writer in Delhi, I’d be grateful for such periodic and forceful reminders of how bad things truly are beyond the sedating confines of our urban enclaves. It would inspire me to know that I was just a walk or drive away from 10 Janpath and Parliament, where our hot and dusty nation’s destiny is charted, albeit in air-conditioned comfort. I wouldn’t have to travel the country to know what ails it. The nation’s beleaguered masses would converge at my doorstep, waiving their banners and yelling their slogans in a futile attempt to gain the Central Government’s precious attention. Being a writer in Delhi would, I imagine, lend my vocation gravitas; it would sharpen and authenticate my politics and prevent me from falling into the trap of frivolity and navel-gazing. I might even nurse the fantasy of being read by an MP or bureaucrat, and of my words subconsciously affecting the opinions of those shaping our national policies.

Alas, I am not a writer in Delhi. I am a writer stuck in Mumbai, where the only politics we know of are the sort played out every night at ten between the inmates of Big Boss. The biggest protest-march in Mumbai’s recent history was of MNS workers stoning business establishments that didn’t give precedence to Marathi on their signboards. It hurts to admit this about the city of my birth, but the cultural and political landscape of Mumbai is by and large petty and provincial. Presiding over our superficial middle-class lives is Bollywood’s gigantic silver-screen, ever-ready with its brain-dead plots and well-choreographed dance numbers to distract us from the gruesome realities of our city and our nation.

Delhiites, much as they may want to turn their faces away, often have no choice in witnessing first-hand the horrors and ironies of our fledgling post-colonial democracy. When I imagine a Delhi writer waiting for a VIP convoy to pass, and how the ensuing rage might feed that writer’s art, I am filled with an envy that has, over the years, turned into a full-fledged syndrome: Delhi Anxiety.

Delhi Anxiety is the sense of inferiority and worthlessness that our nation's capital engenders in writers who don't live in it. It is a purely imagined disorder, unverifiable and little known, and it increases in intensity the further one resides from the city of Gandhi topis and No Confidence Motions. As a born-and-brought-up denizen of steaming over-crowded Mumbai, and a long time sufferer of acute DA, I wish to catalog the malady's symptoms in the hope that someone – a Karol Bagh chaat-wala, for instance – might concoct a cure for this crippling affliction. Because as far as I can tell, short of moving to Delhi & NCR, there is no known cure for Delhi Anxiety.

I first became aware of DA after the publication of my debut novel. Like most first books, mine too was a barely-concealed fictionalization of the milieu I'd known since childhood. The chicken shop I was sent to for half-kilo broilers, the loud over-eating aunts I encountered in marriages, the abortionists' fliers I noticed during my train-rides to work - all these and more wormed their way into book one, which was, not surprisingly, marketed as a 'Mumbai novel'.

When it came to writing book two, I discovered within me an ambitiousness that was astonishing. I wished to write the next Truly Great Indian Novella. I wanted it to be the literary equivalent of our national anthem, a 'Mile Sur Mera-Tumhara' type of pot-boiler bound in hard-cover and selling for Rs. 495. I assumed that I had only to widen my canvas - from my city and its hinterland, to the staggering landmass demarcated by our squiggly national border. I never doubted my grasp over the nation's pulse. Why else did I read Tehelka and Outlook? Why else did I endure Aaj Tak and follow the dreary debates on NDTV? I knew our states; I'd encountered people from all over the country in the course of my life. I may not have traveled beyond 250 kilometers of Mumbai, but what the hell kind of novelist was I if I couldn't fib my way through Kolkata’s Kalighat and Hyderabad's Begumpet. The technicalities were still sketchy in my mind; all I knew was that book two would be tri-colored and big!

And then, soon after book one was launched, I visited Delhi for the first time and my world came crashing down.

My cocooned existence in politically stunted Mumbai had led me to believe that India’s nationhood was a fluke, and that there was no meeting ground between our nation’s unseen rulers and their subjects. In Delhi I stayed at my Malayalam editor's home and attended a Sindhi wedding and was introduced to people from Kolkotta and Hyderabad. I even ran into folks who remembered the Partition well enough to flinch at my Muslim name. I met at least one writer who claimed to be on phone-calling terms with a Cabinet Minister, and several other people – doctors, journalists, etc. – who seemed to possess a casual and intimate understanding of the workings of power. It was awe-inspiring and even a little intimidating to be among ordinary people who were, by necessity, forced to look the state machinery in the eye (even if, in the process, their knees knocked and their hands trembled). Delhi Anxiety knocked me out, and when Delhiites spoke, I found myself unable to argue. For what did I know? What did I really, really know?

I considered moving to the capital. The climate repelled me. The prospect of having to engage with national-level nitty-gritties, after decades of luxuriating in state-level trivialities, seemed too enormous to bother with. I may crave consequence as a writer. But as a citizen of a flawed democracy, I know all too well that one can’t be too close to the smoldering center without being occasionally scorched by it. My pan-Indian designs for book two have been tempered by a more realistic assessment of my abilities. Pending the Central Government’s relocation to Mumbai, I’ll have to make do with the MNS and its Marathi chauvinism.

B.E.S.T. & Worst

(Published in Time Out Magazine, April 2006)

Five rupees is a lot of money. Two weeks ago, I saved a lot of money when I rode ticket-less from Fountain to Cuffe Parade on bus number 138. 'Free hai, free hai!' the conductor said when I held out a tenner. What? Why? The conductor motioned me to move along. 'Ticket nai, free hai, free hai!' is all he would say. I sat down next to a middle-aged man. 'No ticket?' I asked delightedly. My fellow-passenger shrugged coldly. I looked around at the other deadpan faces. What was wrong with everyone? A free ride, in a city like this, was an occasion for joyous revelry!

As the bus pulled in at the next stop, I suppressed my chortles and watched the next lot of passengers clambering in, oblivious to the pleasant surprise awaiting them. A bumpkin-type became alarmed when the conductor refused to give him a ticket. Other passengers had to intervene and assure the panicky fellow that there really was no charge for this ride.

I looked out of the window. Our double-decker bus was now winding down Marine Drive. The city seemed more beautiful than usual. There was the sea glittering under the afternoon sun. I wanted to stick my head out and yell at passersby to hop on and enjoy this unprecedented gesture of municipal munificence.

The bus took a turn towards LIC. I restrained my over-excitement and tried to imagine some sane reason for this bonanza. Was the B.E.S.T. finally shutting shop? Was this free ride their swan song? Or had New Delhi taken mercy on Mumbai at last?

I looked around. The conductor was sitting in the opposite aisle, two seats behind me, enjoying the ride for once. This time I wouldn't take no for an answer. 'Free kayko hai?' I asked. My listless fellow passengers turned their heads perfunctorily. 'TV channel ney bhaadey pey liya,' the conductor replied. What channel? Which channel? The conductor named a popular Hindi TV channel and pointed to the front, where a twenty-something man was sitting in the seat behind the driver's. The chap was wearing a T-shirt and cap with the TV channel's logo. I knew that TV channel; was familiar with its imbecilic programs and its vociferous media campaigns. But this was a new low: bribing citizens with free bus rides in an attempt to earn our precious viewer-ship.

After the bus had pulled away from the Mantralaya stop, the TV channel stooge in T-shirt and cap stood up and addressed us passengers. He began talking about some soon-to-be-aired reality show. By then I had already rushed to the back of the moving bus. I stood on the exit platform for the rest of the journey, clutching a metal railing, swearing to get off, but never quite managing to.

Mumbai Spirit – R.I.P.

(Published in People Magazine, 1 December 2008, days after the Mumbai terror attacks)

My family’s first outing since bloody Wednesday was to a mall near our home. The place wasn’t as packed as other Saturday evenings. Yet, there were enough people around who, like us, needed the reassurance that normal life was still possible – something we’d begun to doubt since the mayhem began on Wednesday, and continued into Thursday, and even as we went to bed on Friday night, Saturday threatened to be no different (which, thankfully, it was). The food court, as usual, was the busiest place in the mall. As one looked on to the subdued crowd of couples, college students, and families with kids, one couldn’t help imagine what horror might ensue if someone rushed in and fired indiscriminately at the unsuspecting diners. Thoughts like these drain the joy from life. Yet, it is something we must live with from now on – with the probability of sudden and deadly intrusion into our most innocent and lovely moments.

The ‘spirit of Mumbai’ was first lauded during the floods of 2005. After the train blasts of 2006, it was exhumed, dusted like an old blanket, and waved about like a banner. Like some dependable old saint, the ‘spirit of Mumbai’ has repeatedly come to our rescue, calming our nerves, making us feel less stupid for allowing ourselves to be targeted and screwed-over and killed, again and again and again. Mumbai may be drowning, blasted out of its wits, and a sitting duck for every psychopath organization out to make its gruesome point, but at least we Mumbaikars have had the fortitude to keep working, to keep traveling and smiling no matter how many bodies we’ve had to step over to get to our destination. It’s no wonder that inept politicians and corrupt government officials have loved the ‘spirit of Mumbai’. Despite repeated instances of systemic corruption and official dereliction of duty, we’ve carried on, often without a choice, always with the cheerfulness of slaves.

Know what? This time the slaves are angry. They are truly, inconsolably, and immeasurably furious. And the god-damned spirit of Mumbai can shove it. While people like us were being systematically and cold-bloodedly butchered in other parts of our own city, the rest of us had to pack our lunches, pack into trains, and trudge to office, pretending like it was just another normal working day.

Past tragedies have made us experts of aftermaths. We know how to forget, how to move on. But this time, we were asked to do the impossible: we were told to disregard the evidence of our own senses. We could hear the gunshots and feel the explosions. We could see the plumes of smoke. We could smell the stench of rotting blood as we got off our trains. And every uniformed gun-toting policeman was a terrifying reminder of the battle unfolding just kilometers away.

The attack on Mumbai lasted long enough to make us despise our own resilience. If only we weren’t so well behaved; if only we weren’t so brave and hardworking and good. The whole of New York City stayed shut for days after 9/11. In most parts of Mumbai, life remained normal even during what is unimaginatively being called ‘India’s 9/11’. (Journalistic laziness has truly reached its nadir.)

People who claim that Mumbaikars have no choice but to get to work are underrating the affluence of our city. For every Dharavi-dwelling peon who would starve if he didn’t toil, there are at least a couple of moneyed merchants living in Breach Candy or Malabar Hill who could afford to live comfortably without ever getting out of their homes. It is on the shoulders of these affluent, privileged people – and make no mistake, there are hundreds of thousands of them in Mumbai – that the responsibility of our city’s well being truly lies. This time, by striking at the very playgrounds of rich Mumbai – the Taj Mahal Hotel and the Trident-Oberoi Hotel – the terrorists have embroiled the city’s high and mighty. These are people with contacts and financial muscle, and if they decide to, they can use their clout to force politicians to make this city safer not just for their own employees and business interests, but for all seventeen million of us.

The ‘spirit of Mumbai’ may as yet have a chance to break free from the stranglehold of cliché and to become an active force that can inspire the rest of the nation. Those of us directly unaffected ought to be no less enraged by the attack on our city. The important thing will be to keep our anger going until there are no further occasions when we must be praised for our so-called spirit.

Losing My Shine

(Published in Time Out Mumbai, June 2006)

Earlier this month, coinciding with the buzz surrounding the film Gangster, a national weekly commissions me to interview actor Shiney Ahuja, Gangster's hero number two. My attempt at conducting a scholarly email interview bombs. We schedule a face-to-face for a Monday evening.

After an hour's wait at a Lokhandwala coffee shop, Ahuja sends his car to pick me up. I assume we are going to his house. Thirty minutes later, the car pulls in at the entrance of In Orbit Mall, Malad. "Where is Shiney?" I ask the driver. "I don't know, I was asked to drop you here," the driver replies. I stumble out of the car amid armies of mall rats. It is past dinner time. I am tired and mildly terrified by the absurdity of the situation. Ahuja has stopped answering his phone.

Wanting nothing more to do with neurotic, perverse, and disrespectful Bollywood stars ever again, I decide to abandon the interview and to feed myself before my trek back home. On my way to a pizzeria on the third floor, I spot Ahuja emerging from the multiplex. He is lumbering through a crowd of men, women and children clamoring for autographs and photos. Despite the run-around I've been given, I introduce myself to someone in the actor's entourage to fulfil what I believe is a journalistic duty. Minutes later, I am back in Ahuja's car, conducting the interview en route to his Lokhandwala residence.

The actor is sorry for making me wait. The promotional event at the multiplex kept getting delayed. I learn that Ahuja's roles affect him – they make him vulnerable and moody. He is glad that Aamir Khan lent himself to the Narmada Bachao Andolan, but nothing worries Ahuja enough to want to make him raise his voice. He hopes someone will make a biopic on Mother Teresa someday, and his most frequently read book is Sanford Meisner on Acting.

I ask Ahuja what he thinks of Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi, Sudhir Mishra's Emergency-era masterpiece, in which Ahuja played the role of Vikram. "I get something new every time I see it. The film's like a novel," the actor says. Would he change anything about the film? "No, it's perfect," Ahuja says. I remind him of the confusing transitions between some scenes. He tells me I am missing the point. He launches into an animated analysis of HKA, and tells me things I hadn't noticed despite repeated viewings. When deconstructing a scene from the film, he re-enacts it precisely. Such recall is suggestive of a deeper connection to a role than that of a mere performer.

A week later, when I turn in my feature, the editor at the national weekly finds it unremarkable and refuses to publish it. I should have eaten the bloody pizza.

Spoiled Rotten

(Published in Time Out Mumbai, November 2006)

As if hauling us down to Germany for the Frankfurt Book Fair wasn’t generous enough, the National Book Trust of India (NBT) issued Business Class tickets to us writers. When my wife and I landed at Frankfurt, we were received by a striking young lady of Bengali descent – my ‘personal assistant’ – one of several German nationals appointed to escort us writers around the city and to ensure that we reached our scheduled readings on time.

A chauffeur-driven car drove us to Hotel Intercontinental, which was to be our address for the next two weeks. Our room on the seventh floor had a view of the River Main. I was warned by my PA that the mini-bar was out of bounds. For someone who thought he had forever bid goodbye to the corporate world and its concomitant perks, I was bewildered by the mere presence of the mini-bar, and the PA, and the plush hotel room. The bedside cabinet had a copy of the Bible and a book titled The Buddha’s Teachings (presumably to ward off pangs of guilt that might assail someone enjoying such luxury at public expense). I settled for the Buddha tome and its message of life as suffering.

The breakfast buffet was served at the hotel’s Signatures Veranda Restaurant from 6:30am to 10am – not enough time to sample the incredible variety of cheese, fruit juices, cereals, breads, eggs, preserves, cookies, meats, pan-cakes, waffles… One felt compelled to overeat if only to prevent wastage of such perfectly good food. As souvenirs for folks back home, I flicked as many mini-jars of honey and jam as my moral threshold would permit.

The best part about breakfast was pausing with a laden plate at the entrance of the dining area, while deciding whom to break bread with. Sahitya-Akademi-Award-winning novelist Amit Chaudhuri and his family, or the bilingual poet Dilip Chitre and his wife Viju? If I ate with Tamil poet Salma, would Telugu poets K Siva Reddy and Shahjahana feel snubbed? Would it be insolent of me – a first time novelist, and an English one, at that – to join Ajeet Cour or UR Ananthmurthy at their tables? And what could I possibly say to distinguished Hindi poet Gagan Gill (after I was dumb enough to ask on the first day if she was NBT director Nuzhat Hassan)?

The Indian government's hospitality stopped short of our clothes. When it came to laundry, the NBT put its foot down and refused to foot the bill. Unsure of how a request for a bucket might be perceived by Room Service, I complained of swollen feet that needed to be soaked in warm water. A vegetable crate was sent up half an hour later. My wife used the shampoo as detergent. By the time I was done draping our wet clothes all over the furniture, the room looked like something we were more used to. We kicked back on the impossibly soft bed, glad at having saved a little bit of our nation’s money.

On Vipassana

(Published in Time Out Mumbai, January 2008)

Dalit Voice deems it a Brahmanical conspiracy to brainwash innocent Dalits and kill their revolutionary zeal. It has a presence on every continent except Antarctica. People either flee it by day two, or they return for course upon course, year upon year. To those of us who've survived the grueling ten days, it would seem the world is fast splitting into two: those who have, and those who haven't been for a course in vipassana meditation "as taught by SN Goenka". This is an important disclaimer. More than 2,500 years have passed since vipassana, or insight meditation, was rediscovered by Gautama the Buddha. Since then, successive teachers have adapted the technique to suit their own era.

SN Goenka, a Marwari from Burma, offers vipassana for our digital times. At centers situated within the most idyllic natural surroundings, the technique is taught over ten days using Goenka's audio and video recordings. Wonder how the Buddha would've judged this employment of technology, given the violence inherent to the production of audio-video equipment and the electricity needed to power such equipment. Odd, too, that by relegating Assistant Teachers to mere manipulators of CD and DVD players, Goenka would chose to deny this ancient technique the immediacy it demands. But then, it wouldn't be "vipassana as taught by…"

Charges of excessive control and borderline cultishness aside, Goenka's vipassana centers are one of the few non-commercial options left in a severely compromised self-discovery market.

The courses are open to all and they are free the world over. That's ten days of free fresh vegetarian meals and comfortable shared or independent accommodation. With no access to newspapers, television, radio, magazines, or the internet, and a strict rule against the possession of cell-phones and reading books, a vipassana course is an entry into controlled wilderness.

The technique is easy to imbibe. Goenka's exhaustive recordings in English and Hindi guide students at every step of the way. A familiarity with Buddhist texts might make things less mystifying to new students, given the liberal references to metaphysical concepts such as 'sankhara' and 'anicca', as well as Goenka's frequent chanting of Suttas in a guttural Lama-like drone. This cultural baggage, thankfully, is not central to the technique.

It is to Goenka's eminent credit that in a time of Hindu resurgence, when it would have been expedient to align with the ethos of the majority, vipassana centers, especially in India, have preserved the universal non-communal appeal of the Buddha's teachings.

According to the international homepage of organizations offering vipassana under Goenka'a tutelage, the technique aims at the highest spiritual goals of total liberation and full enlightenment. Goenka calls vipassana The Art of Living. After experiencing the exquisite torture of addhittana that commences from day four, when students must remain immobile for upto an hour, old-timers prefer calling vipassana the Art of Suffering. And that, perhaps, is the most pertinent aspect of this ancient technique. As the ecological repurcussions of our consumerism become harder to dodge, vipassana might just be the skill we need to endure the discomforts of going green.

That leaves us with Dalit Voice and its grouse against Vipassana's neutralizing effects. As if the only good revolutionary is a frantic and single-minded one. Training in self-awareness and centredness is a revolution of the mind, be it Dalit, Muslim, Brahmin, Parsi... The results may not be as expected, but they are usually remembered for thousands of years.

New York, होली

इस साल होली के दिन New York में बर्फ बरसी

पूरा शेहेर सफेद चादर से बिछ गया

मैंने अपनी खिड़की से किसी को किसी पर बर्फ का गोला फैंकते देखा

थी तोह वोही खिलखिलाती चीख

वोही पागलों सी हँसी

बस कोई हल्दी या सिन्दूर बहा दें

इस बेरंगी बर्फ को गुलाल सा बना दें

New York had snow this year on Holi

White had blanketed the whole city

From my window I spied it all

Someone hitting someone with a snow ball

The scream of mirth was familiar

As was the hysterical laughter

Turmeric and vermilion – a handful, no more

Would infuse Holi gulaal into this colorless snow

We, the Terrorists

(Published in Mumbai Mirror, December 2008)

I saw a terrorist a couple of days ago. He was a clerk manning window number 60-something of the RTO office at Tardeo. Although he had no guns, grenades or RDX, his devices were no less sinister. Armed with the invincibility of bureaucracy and un-fearing of the repercussions of his actions, this clerk had only one explicit demand from all those unfortunate enough to land up at his window: Kai dya. Kuch toh do. Give me some. It didn’t matter if your papers were in order, or whether you’d obeyed the RTO’s arcane and confusing procedures for the simplest of tasks. (I was there for the hypothecation of my car.) That clerk at the RTO office was beyond the methods of the system. He was a system unto himself. The drawer under his desk opened and closed so many times it made my head spin. He was conscientious that way — once he’d received his bribe, there was nothing he wouldn’t do. No car owner’s signature on documents? No problem. Registration card barely legible? Will do. Every flaw in your papers, however grave or inexcusable, could be overlooked for a price. And if your papers were error-free, you could count on the clerk to invent mistakes that didn’t exist. Thanks to the man’s haggling and chicanery, the long line at his window barely moved. I lost my patience and returned home, my task unfinished and my cynicism through the roof.

We’ve got it wrong. The thousands of us who swamped the Gateway of India last Wednesday have got it all wrong. We denounced Pakistan, violence, Islamic terrorism, politicians, political parties and our government. We slapped slippers on our ex-CM’s photographs and we waived our flag, our tiranga, shouting: Inquilab zindabad! Bharat Mata ki Jai! At some point, many of us broke into song — Hum honge kamyaab… We raged, ranted, screeched and hollered. And then we went home. Oh of course things will change. As a society, we’re experts at fulfilling formalities. There will be metal detectors galore and added vigilance in public places. There will be new heads of state and new laws dictating our national security. If we conduct peace marches for a couple of more Wednesdays, we might even manage to get a CEO appointed for Mumbai. In a perverse sort of way, Maharashtra’s ex-Deputy-CM was probably right: the terrorist attack will seem like a small incident compared to the sea-change that is about to occur in the way we citizens demand our nation is governed, ostensibly at least.

And yet, for all our righteous rage and for all the heads that have rolled at Mantralaya, the thousands of us demonstrating at Gateway on Wednesday were clearly barking up the wrong tree. The true bane of our nation — the deserving tree, so to speak — is so vast and all pervading, that we wouldn’t know where to begin, or how loud to bark.

I will earn no points for originality when I state that visible terrorism, the horror of which we witnessed on television last week, has its roots in corruption. It is the culmination of countless acts of dereliction of duty by the countless faceless people who exist around us, among us, and are often one of us. Suddenly, the incurable dishonesty of our babus, netas, havaldars and industrialists is no longer cute. Suddenly, passing a 20-rupee note to the traffic policeman has ceased to be a harmless act of street-smartness. From now on, whenever we encourage the warping of rules for our benefit, we will have added to the store of moral bagginess in the world. Worse, we will have behaved exactly like those 10 monsters who wreaked havoc on our city. They managed to get in, with fake IDs and SIM cards, sailing unhindered into Mumbai’s coast, because enough people along the way chose the convenience of a quick buck over the righteous path of restraint and vigilance. These ordinary abettors and unsuspecting agents of terrorists were no less than terrorists.

Mumbai is special because it provides daily evidence of a job well done. Our trains work! Our buses run! A majority of us get potable water and regular electricity! Lost in a city of 17 million, it would be easy to think of ourselves and our actions —- however reprehensible or dubious — as inconsequential. However, given the unpredictability of terrorism, our every harmless-seeming misstep can mean life and death for someone else. Garbage-free streets are essential because some day we may have to run through them to save our lives. If enough of us follow traffic rules, someday a terrorist’s car will jump the signal and he won’t be mistaken for just another enterprising fellow. I often wonder how many people who died at CST that fateful night had slipped and fallen on the remnants of other people’s paan gunk. Our spitting, littering, thieving, bribing, shirking, polluting, insensitive and illegal ways can, depending on the situation, switch from innocuous to lethal in a second. Those of us gathered at Gateway last Wednesday must’ve observed how dangerously overcrowded the streets had become. One random gunshot, and the ensuing stampede would’ve been nothing short of a massacre. As if enough lives haven’t been lost.

The corny truism of being the change one wants is, unfortunately, truer than ever before. Before we can combat terrorism, we must first abolish every trace of the terrorist in ourselves. The bribe givers and spit-spewers are often the moral ancestors of gun wielders and life takers.

I was exaggerating when I termed that RTO clerk a terrorist. I have no reason to doubt that he is as patriotic and peace loving as the rest of us. But if it ever turns out that he’d illegally okayed the documents of a car that was eventually used for anti-national activities, I would hope that RTO clerk is arrested and tried like the very worst of them.

What I Really Want to Write Gives Me Nightmares

If I wrote what I really want to, goons of varied political hues would converge at my door, followed by the bovine camera crews of eye-ball-hungry news channels. As retribution for what I’d written, I’d have my face blackened, my nose broken and my home ransacked. Maybe my wife and mother would have their hair pulled or their faces slapped. I hope the mob would spare my ten month old son.

Having written what I really want to write, I’d expect to be summoned to the local police station, where an FIR would be filed against me. My crime? Oh, take your pick. Disrupting communal peace. Willfully hurting religious/political/regional sentiments. Offending Indian culture. Taking undue advantage of my freedom of speech. It would be impossible for me to feign surprise. I’d know I had it coming. I’d have expected nothing better when I was putting down those words, those sentences, those paragraphs. Stringing together, page by page, my own death sentence.

What I really want to write makes the hair on my neck stand with its sure-shot potential to offend and enrage. Like pouring acid on a lump of sponge, the effects of what I write will be instantaneous and corrosive. I suppose the sensible thing would be never to write what I really want to. Just because dissident words haven’t been printed, it doesn’t mean they haven’t been thought of or spoken aloud – and not just by me but by hundreds and thousands, maybe millions of others like me. Maybe the whole nation has nightmares about what it really wants to write/speak/think. One point two billion (and counting) tongues biting down on the dangerous thoughts they are itching to utter.

I don’t have a choice. It’s my profession. If I don’t write I don’t eat. And if I don’t write what I really want to write, what I eat tastes like mush, life loses its glitter, I grow flabby at the edges, my shoulders droop, and every moment is shot through with the stench of unspoken words decaying in my mind like meat in a go-down.

Oh, the things I want to really write! Years’ worth of pent up statements are dying to burst forth in an acerbic soup of the unspeakable: Thakeray, masjid, Allah, Shivaji, Sena, MNS, Supreme Court, Modi, miya-bhai, Pawar… I will be crushed in an instant. My middle-class, unprivileged, and remotely known existence puts limits on what and how much I can say. Conversely, it puts no limits on what can be done to me. Once I cross the implicit boundaries, there’s no telling where I might land up: in prison, in a courtroom, or six feet under. Is it worth the trouble? Probably not. What I really want to write – I could sing it, in stead. Or perhaps paint it. I could dance it out of my system as an hours-long tandav thrashed out in parody of the blunt, cataclysmic sentences that no one in their right mind would want to pen.

The right mind – now that’s a remarkable thing to possess. It keeps you housed, fed, clothed, moneyed, and safe. It allows you to be occupied or bored, and it lets you invent ways to escape that boredom. More importantly, the right mind ensures you don’t say or write the wrong things – things that you really want to utter, but shouldn’t. We would be nowhere without our right minds. Which would be fine, I suppose, if being nowhere meant I could inhale the toxic fumes of democracy and emanate in one canine howl all the impolitic, wrath-invoking acid noising up my head like a rattler's tail.

I must write what I really want to. I must. I have to. And I don't want to be beaten up or killed for it, or have fatwas issued in my name. I don't want my home destroyed or my family harmed. I don't want to have hundreds of PILs filed against me in courts throughout the country, forcing me to run away from this, the city of my birth, the land of my ancestors. I refuse to be nuanced or clever. I will not mince my words like some salaried clerk. I want to say it like it is. I want to say it like they get to say it from behind their Z-grade security covers and their thickets of AK-47s and police barricades.

I am unarmed, unprotected. I have no political or corporate affiliations. I stand to gain nothing from writing what I really want to, except maybe a truckload of trouble and a cheque for a few thousand rupees as per-word payment for my troublesome outpourings. Those few thousand rupees will be the most honorable recompense I will ever receive as a writer – a writer, the real thing – not the impotent court jester who currently passes for a writer, and who churns out pages of harmless juvenilia (like these ones) that pass for acceptable content.

I suppose I could go on for pages with this panicky chicken dance about what I really want to write. It is time to take the plunge. My fingers tremble over the keyboard as I try to frame the first damning sentence that will kick it all off. What I really want to say gives me nightmares. A person has rights – not least to dig his own grave and help himself in.

(Published in Mumbai Mirror, February 18th)