They don't make men like this anymore..

Published in The Pioneer and Centre-Right-India
It came hurtling down heavy and hard, at 150 kilometers an hour. It hit the ground and took off as if it fed off an invisible source of venom in the earth. It seemed to have perfected the art of hunting. Like all predators, it went for the throat. Baring its fangs, it was only one hundredth of a lunge away from sinking its teeth into the smooth, sweaty skin on the Adam's apple of its prey. Just about the moment the predator looked like fulfilling its blood thirst, it fell down in an almost impeccable vertical line from the exact spot it occupied fraction of a moment ago. It lay limp, lifeless. What had transpired? Was it a sudden pull of gravity that brought it down at that instant? Not really. Someone had tranquilized it. Not with a dart, but with a piece of wood. The precision of effort and the economy of movement by the bearer of willow ensured that a fine line was tread. That finest of lines that exists between the predator ricocheting off the wood, forced to fly away on the one hand and the predator forcing itself on the willow and pushing through on the other.

Not discouraged, the predator returned. This time, it flew a little wider, hoping to entice the prey with a bait. A tasty crumb it would ostensibly wave, and the prey would fall for it. Simple plan, but devious enough to have devoured dozens of unsuspecting prey. While it was hoping to encounter its target, all it encountered was thin air. It had to be content with passing through the shadow of its prey’s willow.

Disoriented and worn out, the predator resumed the hunt. To its credit, it was not too off target. It was just a wee bit distant than it had been last time. Little did it know, that it had hell to pay. A ferocious strike, lightning quick and as fierce a battering as it had ever received, admonished the predator from the presence of its prey. As the predator accelerated off the grass, you could almost sense it rubbing its backside, hardly able to come to terms with physical castigation it just received.

To the perspicacious lovers of cricket who perceive the recondite battle between willow and leather stripped of its ostentatious razzmatazz, Rahul Sharad Dravid is a Godsend.

To those opposed to favoritism, nepotism and a general lack of meritocracy, Dravid is a mascot. Be it a spiteful green top, a vicious turner or a docile featherbed, each ball would be judged by its merit and merit alone. A bad one would be dismissed from his stern presence. A good one would be left well alone, an art in which the difference between himself and his contemporaries can be measured in the amount of daylight. And when he succumbed, very often, it would be to a ripper of a delivery. If he had surrendered to a less than good ball, the rage which he flew into, at himself, could generate electricity for a few villages.

The steel that he batted with suddenly gave way to exceptional softness of hands that is required of a slip fielder. But the moment to wait for, was when a catch was pouched. That childlike glee in a man of intense unyielding demeanour, at having conspired to bring success to another teammate in the form of a wicket remains to me, one of the most fulfilling sights in the game. Rarely if ever, there would be a missed opportunity. And that would be followed by self admonishments of the most ruthless kind.

If sacrifice was any yardstick to measure a man, Rahul Dravid, the man who batted wherever he was asked to, the man who kept wickets just so that his team could afford that one more batsman, the man who fought at the most difficult times while allowing others to walk away with laurels sits at the very top.

That Dravid was the indubitable spine of his team when they won some of the most momentous victories in their history was never a coincidence. He was the military tank that made its way through the rough and tumble of the grind rather than the fighter jet that adorns the skies. Not only did he know this, but he was also comfortable with this. The mark of a man who takes things as they come, after having ensured he did his best.

Sometimes, the camera would zoom in on Dravid’s face while he was batting. What ensued onscreen was a lesson. A lesson in concentration, seriousness, steely resolve and intense passion for the game, bordering on worship.

So much for being called a gentleman by all and sundry, Dravid, to me, remains the most bloody minded warrior in the game. Every muscle, every cell would be twitching, pulling out the last ounce of ability into focusing on how best the present moment could be dealt with.

Hell! I don’t know how I will bring myself to watch cricket knowing well that the high left elbow and still head of Rahul Dravid won’t be around!

Middle Class?? Shoo! Scram!!

“For all the troubles that befall you, Shani (Saturn) is the sole reason” - a Kannada proverb. Rather sarcastic.

I’m reminded of this every time some public intellectual makes the middle class an object of ire and derision. While the fact that all roads of power in India currently lead to Rome (a Roman to be precise) is left untouched by many of our public intellectuals, they are convinced all the vices that plague the country must compulsively lead to the middle class.

Aakar Patel, in a contrarian piece (linked here) attempts a sterling defense of Manmohan Singh and talks down to the ‘shallow’ middle class. He says South Delhi rejected Manmohan Singh in 1999 and justifies Mr.Singh not bothering to come in through the Lok Sabha later. The intellectual has no popular appeal in India, he laments while evoking an analogy that Dr.Ambedkar lost elections from Mumbai in 1952.

You read that right. Manmohan Singh : Dr.Ambedkar.

Let’s see how none in their well informed mind should take recourse to such a frivolous analogy.

When Dr.Ambedkar fought elections, he took on the might of an establishment led by Jawaharlal Nehru. Mr.Nehru and his party were credited for winning us Independence just 5 years earlier, a watershed moment. Apart from being portrayed as a stalwart of the freedom struggle, Mr.Nehru had also been selected as protégé by a certain M.K.Gandhi, whose name still evokes reverence across the spectrum of classes. Amidst all this there were talks of the full might of the Governmental machinery being used to defeat Dr.Ambedkar. We all know what that means, don’t we? With such factors staring him in the face Dr.Ambedkar was always asking for the moon.

There is widespread doubt if we have a Prime Minister at all in the past few years. So let me remind, Mr.Singh was the incumbent Prime Minister in the 2009 elections. He was hailed to a crescendo as the man who ushered in reforms that set the stage for the middle class to take the world on. It shows the poor political courage of Mr.Singh that the man who had just been Prime Minister and had the whole establishment on his side,  still did not seek a popular mandate for himself. Comparing Manmohan Singh with Dr.Ambedkar is a no-show. Period.

It is true that the intellectual animal is not always the middle class darling. That’s mostly because elitist holier-than-thou mumbo jumbo usually passes off as intellectualism in India, and often puts the middle class off. Despite all this, Aakar Patel offers us an option to agree with Khushwant Singh that Manmohan Singh is the best Prime Minister or be called shallow. Thanks, but no thanks. Depth is not my cup of tea.

Meanwhile, along comes Sagarika Ghose with liberal democrat airs and unleashes a diatribe on “middle class India for being a drag”, calling out their “army-worshipping, democracy-hating, yearning for machismo, abusing independent women”. Now do not ask for proof. That’s as nonexistent as sanity in TV debates.

In the wake of the Army Chief vs Government controversy, in a condescending tone, she said notions of ‘honour’ are common in patriarchal feudal societies. She took potshots at the Army Chief alluding that his ‘fight for honour’ as it has been hyped, stems from his feudal patriarchal tendencies. Icing on the cake - she likened the almost failed state of Pakistan to India in this. I now appreciate why it is not often that accusations of high intellect are leveled at her.

Many vented their opinions about her rather profound analysis in both sensible and colourful ways typical of twitter. That Ms.Ghose’s rants here are crass generalizations is a given. But it would be very naïve to imagine it was just that.

Having never seen middle class life, she fails to understand that the most admired quality among the middle class, is sacrifice. Most of them have seen parents, siblings and close family make sacrifices to get them where they are. It is obvious that the middle class deems the Army, which is the simplest example of sacrifice, as admirable. But Ms.Ghose’s mathematics teacher taught her that, admiring the Army = worshipping the Army = Hating Democracy. The great Srinivasa Ramanujan would be proud of that.

Doing some investigative journalism on why the Government may want the Army Chief out is pretty easy. The more intellectually challenging and onerous task is making generalizations against the middle class. And no prizes for guessing Ms.Ghose took the tougher route.

The defense of the Army Chief by some was enough for her to pronounce the middle class machismo-yearning and that the middle class as a practice, hold your breath, abuses independent women (like herself obviously). She resorted to the same ‘I am being targeted because I am a woman’ ploy when she was treated to a heap of criticism at her purely accidental look-live sham involving Sri Sri Ravishankar. Excellent improvement, considering that she has added ‘independent’ to ‘woman’ this time.

With the advent of social media, the distance between the elite powerful class like Ms.Ghose and the middle class that logs into a website at office is just a few keystrokes. It is no longer easy to hoodwink anyone and get away scot free. The middle class’ easy access to her and to facts, has resulted in her bluff being called every now and then. That the people who must be worrying about home loans are actually asking her uncomfortable questions makes her squirm in her seat. And that is her true grouse.

Ms.Ghose obviously doesn’t realize there are the goods, bads and the uglies strewn across the spectrum of classes and the middle class is no exception to it. Being insecure about the middle class growing up and breaking shackles or labeling it for having opinions of its own is an exercise in denial.

Having listened to Aakar Patel, Sagarika Ghose and some other such leading lights I am convinced that the middle class is the biggest threat to democracy and world peace at large. So push them middle class low lives to concentration camps pronto and bang!, all the nation’s problems are solved. Easy peasy…

This piece has appeared on Centre-Right India - centreright.in and can be found here.

The Intellectual, the Publisher and me.

Despite my rather young age as a 20 something back in the 2000s, the best times I had were with a 50+ year old Publisher Uncle who lived across the street and a 60+ year old Intellectual Uncle next door. Whether it had anything to do with my being a rolling stone lost in thoughts and books, or it had something to do with other people of my age being too engrossed in reality shows, super bikes, swanky cars, international pop-stars and most importantly the opposite sex, I do not know.

Intellectual Uncle was a retired, unmarried IAS officer who had served in high posts in various capacities. The only ambidextrous person I knew. A treasure trove of anecdotes, he was a great raconteur who seemed to have an unconventional take on the political and historical events that shaped our nation. For instance, he had a hilarious take on how Mr.Devegowda became PM. The Janata Party was thinking about the right candidate to choose for PM. As is his wont, he was catching up on his dose of doze. Noticing that his dhoti was slipping away, he got up to adjust it. Fortuitously for himself (only!) when he stood up the question was being thrown around for volunteers to the most coveted post. Lo! He was chosen.  I often pestered Intellectual Uncle to write a book comprising all his anecdotes, only for him to shoo me off with a dismissive wave of his swarthy hands and his mumbles which contained ‘defamation, vendetta, mad, peace, dirty politics’.

Publisher Uncle as his name suggests, was a highly successful publisher of books. He had all the most popular authors on his side for a couple of decades now. That he had an excellent taste for literature was almost a foregone conclusion. He had a keen sense of politics and cricket. And the biggest home-library I have ever seen in my life belonged to him. Intellectual Uncle could be found there almost always.

For years, the three of us sat down in Publisher Uncle’s library, with finely brewed filter coffee or fine whisky (of which Intellectual Uncle was a connoisseur). It was intellectual nirvana. No topic in the world was left untouched. But invariably, the one thing that wove our strands of thought together was our passion for literature. Hence, all our conversations would go hither and thither before turning back to books and litterateurs. Although I would like to think I was endowed with the proverbial pen since birth, it is undeniable that those conversations were the most deciding factor in shaping my thought and my current occupation – an exponent of the written word.

Intellectual Uncle, was a sort of an open book. From the sexcapades of his younger days, to the predicaments of his old age, nothing was taboo.  He would often bring the personal angle to most of what he spoke. Publisher Uncle on the other hand, was extremely secretive, impersonal and an enigma of sorts, whose soul you knew you could not fathom.

Some of the most interesting and fulfilling conversations we had were about a hugely successful author of those days. He wrote all of four books. All bestsellers. He wrote under a pseudonym – Savyasachi Krishna. He remains, to this day, my favourite. I haven’t seen anyone else who could write a subalternist version of the Mahabharata narrated by Karna in which Karna is eventually crowned, follow it up with a huge treatise on the political machinations behind many important events of India from Nehru’s times till the early nineties, then write a book on a Pharaoh in ancient Egypt and finally round them all off with a Sherlock Holmes style thrill-a-minute detective novel based in the USA. Four books of themes from almost different worlds. The sheer versatility, the way the author communicated with readers at various levels, the clairvoyance of a seer and the witty ironies woven into the daily lives of characters in all these books were a total standout. What I loved most about his books were the women. Intelligent, exciting, strong yet grounded.

Publisher Uncle was the publisher for Savyasachi Krishna. He said even he didn’t know the identity of the author, apart from the fact that it was a man, and an Indian. I refused to believe that Publisher Uncle did not know him although I did not make that known to him. He thought Savyasachi was an excellent author, among the best he had read, but used to have a few specific criticisms of him.

Intellectual Uncle was full of criticisms about Savyasachi, always presenting many parallel views to what Savyasachi had deduced at various occasions in his books. I used to have impassioned debates about this with Intellectual Uncle, moderated unofficially by Publisher Uncle. Some debates even bordered on the rancorous given my irrational hate for any criticism leveled at my favourite author. But I could see that every alternate view Intellectual Uncle propounded was a valid one and could be a perfect fit for stories to metamorphose, different from how Savyasachi had shaped them.

We had one such discussion, sipped some scotch and retired for the night.

The next morning I woke up to the news that Intellectual Uncle had passed away due to a massive heart attack while sleeping. Shocked as I was, I called Publisher Uncle to inform. It was news to him too. Intellectual Uncle looked peaceful in his eternal sleep, the serenity of a man who had seen, loved, lived and deciphered all that he surveyed.

Drowned in my reminiscences of this favourite companion of mine, I stood there expressionless. Publisher Uncle came close and whispered,  "I know it appears a strange question to you, but what were the most striking physical features of this man?"

"His unusually dark complexion and his ambidexterity", I replied.

"Which was his favourite language?", Publisher Uncle questioned further.

"Sanskrit", said I.

"Connect your answers", he said.

Tears started flowing involuntarily as I managed to figure out – Savyasachi Krishna!