I want my India back!

By I.M. Indian

Unlike most Indians who had a ringside view of the terror attack on the night of the 26th, I was asleep. I awoke only the next morning to see The Times of India and haven’t slept since then. You’ll call me mad! But the fact is, I watched the 9pm headlines and then part of a movie and slept unusually early on Tuesday night, awoke at 4 am as I usually do and tossed around in the dark before lapsing into a fitful sleep again… a disturbing pattern that recurs every night. I didn’t switch on the TV or log on to any website at that unearthly hour. So I remained unaware that my favourite city was under siege.

Over the last few days, almost voyeur-like, I’ve watched news channels scoring television rating points over each other. And interspersing their live reality shows with unreal advertising breaks – it’s like rushing someone to hospital and pausing for a cigarette break on the way. If it was terror uninterrupted, it certainly wasn’t news uninterrupted. So, the media made some quick money out of a nation’s misery. But what’s new?

I watched politicians start the blame-game. And police martyrs cremated. But it was all happening to people I didn’t know. I was upset and angry until Sabina’s news came through. As though that wasn’t bad enough, Rohinton Maloo’s name appeared in a crawler on some channel. Not the same Rohinton, I convinced myself. In vain. It was the very same full-of-beans Parsi… and I was close to losing two lovely people. Did they know each other at all, I wondered, as they lay trapped in two different hotels? After all, there was so much in common between them – both were in the media, fun-loving, feisty and ever ready to help people in need. Why did it have to be them?

Today, at Sabina’s funeral, I watched a Chief Minister give her sound byte to one of the several news channels bang inside the crematorium. And I was asked by an electrician, holding one of the camera cables, “Who died?”

I could’ve answered, “Sabina.” Instead I looked at him and said “You. And I. And our India.”

Mr Politician, I want my India back.

Over every successive election, you’ve taken it away from me in painful instalments. And now I want it back.

I want back the country the Mahatma died for. The country my parents made their home when they fled across the border in 1947. The India I chose to live in and work for. And pay taxes to. Don’t make me give up on India, Mr Politician. Because you’ve had your chance and you’ve botched it up. Big time. You can’t give me back Sabina and Rohinton and all the others who died needlessly. Nor can you take away my memories of farewells at Café Leopold, of coffee at The Taj and dinner at the Oberoi. But you can give me back my India without raping it any more.

You’ve allowed terrorists to infiltrate our borders when other countries have succeeded in sealing theirs. Has USA had another 9/11? Has the UK seen any other bomb blasts after the Tube was attacked? Has Israel allowed its people to be killed again after Munich? Has China ever seen a terrorist? Why, then, are we regular target practice to assassins without a heart? Is it because we have so many Indians that we don’t care? Or is it because our elected representatives care only for themselves?

Come on, Ms Gandhi, Mr Singh, Mr Advani, Mr Patil and Mr Thackeray! You’ve built your future and that of your progenies by systematically destroying ours. So, give me back my India.

I watched a father, a daughter, a son, a brother, a mother weep today. But I felt no sadness. Strangely, no tears. Just anger and shame that I have allowed my India to be held ransom like this.

All the way back from the funeral, I asked myself: is this the country I want my children to grow up in? Like so many others, should I abandon it and migrate to America or England, Singapore or even neutral, peaceful Switzerland? And it made me even angrier that I was being forced to think this because you, Mr Politician, chose to play your petty games while a larger war was being unleashed. So, give me back my India.

Give it to me now. Allow me and a billion others to defend themselves because you are incapable of it. Give me the India we set out to be; not what you are making it to be. Today, I am angry. Tomorrow I will be uncontrollable and will rebel. Your Z-category security will stand aside and allow you to be publicly lynched because you feel that what happened in Mumbai was “only a small incident”. You forget that the same shoulders that carried the corpses of their relatives and friends and colleagues will one day stand like a phalanx and prevent you from going any further. Don’t make this the start of your end.

Don’t tempt an angry Indian, Mr Politican. Another set of rulers tried it and failed a century ago. We’ll do it again – only this time, the enemy lies within.

I don’t want Pakistan being blamed. Or USA being pleaded with to exert pressure. I want you to give me back my India.

Because you are not India.

I am India. And I will be. In spite of you.

Teach not Cheat

If only we could Teach India not to Cheat India...

India Fogged?

On Monday morning, The Times of India says India Poised…

I say, it’s India Fogged.

Delhi is covered by a thick blanket of fog that crept in on New Year’s eve. And Delhi-ites are covered under blankets with their foggy minds hung-over from innumerable glasses nursed all night long.

The India Poised campaign says there are two Indias; I say, there are three.

Apart from the ones straining at the leash and being the leash, there’s another India that doesn’t even know what is going on. So fogged out they are.

There's the Mukesh Ambani India, the Anil Ambani India and the poor Rest of India who will finally be swallowed by one of the Brothers A.

There are beached-whale like airplanes sitting on tarmacs, poised to take off but unable to because runways are fogged.

There are parents discovering lost children in skeletal instalments in a Noida house where they’ve been butchered.

There are openers in the Indian cricket team who can’t score any runs against the South Africans.

Malls in Gurgaon are poised to earn rentals from shopowners whose establishments were sealed in Delhi. And rumour has it that the local Congress government is poised to lose the elections because they’ve earned the wrath of these traders – as well as hefty commissions from mall-owners.

DTH operators are poised to replace cable-operators (an industry is being buried even as I blog this) and their snake-like cables crisscrossing lampposts.

The Metro is poised to cut through MG Road in Delhi – where will the trees go, I ask no one in particular?

And Shah Rukh Khan is poised too… to imitate Amitabh yet again as a quizmaster. Perhaps he’ll do a Hindustan Poised campaign for Hindustan Times now as well.

So we are poised all right. The question is, for how long can we remain poised and not quite take off?

The fog is finally lifting and the sun is making its way through the clouds. India too shall rise – if you don’t believe me, listen to AB again (and let’s see Shah Rukh imitating that baritone – ha!)

Cheers!

Bangalore's Most Stylish Place

If you're ever in Bangalore and are cursing Indian airlines because your flight back home is delayed, look at the brighter side of life. Or, better still, look for 39 St. Mark's Road and diagonally opposite KC Das stands Koshy's.

Started way back in 1940, it won MTV's award for the Most Stylish Place earlier this year. And that's the beauty of this eaterie that wraps itself literally around the corner and around you with its character.

If you enter the place and turn right, you'll end up in the wrong section: sitting in the air-conditioned part of Koshy's is as bad as going to a Woodland's and ordering channa-bhatura! Enter the place and turn left and you'll taken back in time. Everything seems to come from an era left behind by the British and their pretender-followers. The menu has to be read to be believed (the food, mind you, is delicious) and the service is slow but you're not meant to be in a hurry when you come here. The loos is still called 'cloak rooms' with prominent red signs stating GENTS ONLY and LADIES ONLY (indicative of earlier goings-on behind their doors perhaps).

This is where Banaglore hangs out. And it's a good place to be in and watch locals, tourists, artists, ad-agency types and laptop-toting salesmen nurse chilled beer and masala peanuts (with tomato pieces).

However, if you're there on the last working day of the year watching old friends reunite, it's not such a good feeling. You could be amidst the crowd and still be all alone. Or you could be with a friend you're leaving behind and wondering why you have to part when everyone else is coming together.

But Koshy's couldn't care less if you kissed or cried. If you hugged or held hands. As long as you order and consume, Koshy's will find everything kosher.

You watch this and wonder... why must you leave at all? Perhaps because friends must part only so that they can meet again.

Lagaan ver 2.0

The next time you visit Shah Jahan's monumental tribute to Mumtaz Mahal, look around at the angrez tourists before you start looking at the intricate details that took 22 years to complete.

Listen to the guide - Wahabuddin, who's been doing this for 30 years, if you can find him near the ticket counter, that is - and you'll hear a suppressed tone of anguish. The Taj Mahal, supposedly one of the wonders of the modern world, is probably the sole reason why Agra even exists today. And yet, it was almost auctioned off by the British during the regime of William Bentinck. No guide will tell you this - you have to read the inscription outside, installed by the Archaeological Survey of India. But what they will tell you is that "many British person come and loot the Taj". Now this is only partly true - so did our very own Jats and Marathas (again, courtesy the ASI). Apparently, what we see today is just a pale, white shadow of a resplendent monument whose riches were taken away.

That the Koh-i-noor diamond is in the crown of the English monarchy is a well-documented fact. But apparently, there are many more riches that were taken 'back home'. The Indian in us will be wrathful for a while but will forget about it until the next time we encounter history.

So, here's a thought: while we do charge foreign tourists and unfair and exorbitant amount to enter the Taj (of course they do get cloth covers for their shoes and a bottle of water, as value for money) are we missing an opportunity here, as someone (henceforth to be known by the name 'Hey!') pointed out?

Consider, for a moment, that instead of this discriminatory pricing - which, incidentally, prevails at most tourist attractions across the country for no documented, logical reason - suppose we charged British tourists nothing. Not one single penny. Instead, suppose we requested them to contribute to a 'Return our Riches' fund and sign an online petition that would pressurise the British Government to finally return all that they looted.

One option is to prevent them from even visiting such monuments until they return what belongs to us first. But that's not such a good thing from a diplomacy point of view, is it?

Will guilt work where half-hearted governments have failed? Kya bolta?