A collective disgrace

The horrors of the Guwahati molestation incident just don’t cease to surface. The way the narrative of this grotesque tale unfolded has left us all shaken and outraged. A quick look at the disturbingly vivid video clip dismantles all our notions about belonging to a hallowed land of saints and spiritualists. If the growth of a civilization is really gauged by the way it treats its women, then India is surely sliding deeper into the nadirs of ignominy with every passing day. The outrage and shame doesn’t belong to the city of Guwahati alone. It’s a collective disgrace that goes on to show how miserably we, as a society, have failed. Are we, like always, going to rant against whoever is in sight for a few weeks and, then, try to forget that it happened? Can’t we admit that the the very root of the problem lies in the recesses of our collective psyche? Can’t we, for once, pledge to rectify it?

A fashionably dressed teenage girl visits a pub and ends up getting assaulted by a group of as many as twenty men. This isn’t happening in some obscure and dimly lit corner of the pub but out on one of the city’s busiest roads! The perpetrators, mostly in their twenties, do not belong to Guwahati’s underbelly. They’re a bunch of supposedly well-educated youngsters who are expected to be the leading light of any generation. The Facebook profile of one of the men who was identified tells us that he works as a constitutional rights activist. It makes for an amusing joke indeed, save for the fact that the joke is on us!

Somebody showed the resourcefulness to shoot the pathetic incident in its entirety and, then, it entered the domain of electronic and social media, setting them abuzz. But fresh evidences suggest that the man who shot the video was friends with the offenders. Thus, what was being celebrated as the Good Samaritan’s technology-induced bravado transformed into a shocking testimony of a diseased and voyeuristic mind, adding to the bewilderment of an entire nation.

The most wounding aspect of this episode has been the outrageous suggestion by a few that the girl had called the adversity upon herself by being present at a place ‘not meant for her’, sporting an ‘indecent’ attire. Some showed a numbing alacrity to label her as a ‘slut’, hinting at her easy virtue. Does it imply that a girl has the right to seek protection from a sexual assault only if she lives as an epitome of chastity all her life? Does a so-called slut not have the right to say ‘no’? What makes us take pride in a school of thought that celebrates a philandering man as sexually endowed but keeps the worst kind of contempt reserved for women who choose to assert their individuality?

We can’t write this off as a random occurrence in one of the country’s forgotten corners. The story of the Guwahati teenager is little different from that of the hapless girls who were beaten black and blue at a Mangalore pub by our self-appointed moral custodians a couple of years back, of the girl who was molested in a similar fashion at Mumbai’s Gateway of India a few years back or the young women from the northeast living in Delhi who are slightingly referred to as ‘Chinkis’, considered loose and easy and, thus, taken liberties with. The Guwahati case has only showed us that it looks much uglier than how it sounds.

The media, the administration and the NCW have all gone on to expose the moral rot that ensnares us. The victim’s identity was thoughtlessly revealed on national television and the culprits would have escaped unscathed had it not been for the hue and cry made by various sections of the media. The incidence has forced us to question if India is really progressing towards a sparkling future.

We may demand the administration to be more vigilant and stringent as a kneejerk reaction. The pubs may install CCTV cameras and appoint more bouncers, and the Police vans may start patrolling the roads more frequently. But that’s not quite the point! The number of cases of crimes against women being reported is spiraling with every passing year. Whether that has to do with a hyperactive media industry is debatable but what we should acknowledge is that the problem isn’t constrained to the domain of law and order. It has to do with the kind of society that we have come to be.

The problem lies within, with our attitudes, our perceptions and that’s what needs to change! A telling quote that has been making the rounds on Facebook says, “Don’t ask your daughters to avoid getting raped but teach your sons not to rape!” We need to accept that a girl who goes to a pub in the night, dressed in a western outfit is doing it because she has every right to have a good time the way she wants! It’ll be completely juvenile to attribute her getting molested to her attire. As many women will agree, stepping out of your homes conservatively dressed doesn’t necessarily shield you from a sexual assault; your being a woman is enough!

Our job doesn’t end with expressing concerns over the issue. We must facilitate change and it should initiate at our homes, our families, our centers of education and our communities. We must teach a growing child that the two genders are equal; that one wasn’t created to subjugate the other! Ask boys to respect the freedom of a girl to assert herself. Ask girls to not be silent. Empower them to confront; support them if they choose to fight back. We need to invest the right values in a growing generation. Only then can we expect them to form a sane, sensitive and sensible society.

White is bad and Black is good

White is bad and Black is good

Another write-up I had turned in for 'Big Belly' at Career Launcher Gwalior. I love it for its metaphysical tone... :-D

White is a color, an idea, a perception that intimidates me! Why? Because it’s too palatable, too flawless, too ideal to be true. To me, it symbolizes a pretentious display of spotless sublimity. The glaring brightness of it leaves me wide-eyed and utterly confounded… I wreck my being trying to draw parallels to its incredible immaculacy from the real world and fail. I’ve found that all that exists is a deviation from the ideal. Nothing manages to elude this anomaly, the extent varies. Then, how come, white doesn’t have to bow to this universal law? What’s the truth behind its dazzling facade? Where has it tucked away its flaws?

I like black for its unapologetic admission of imperfection. It looks one in the eye and declares that it defaults, that it’s a medley of all that is uninspiring and distasteful, sometimes even grotesque. Its candor is disarmingly comforting. It keeps me aware of what I’m up against. It feels strangely real and delightfully commonplace. I almost feel it challenging me to try and be just as up-front.

White, I conclude, is a farce. It has come to represent all that pretends to be perfect, hiding its inadequacies beneath the surface. Its display of righteousness is outrageous! It makes me feel as if it’s out to insult my sensibility and trick me into buying its claim of being perfect. I’d rather go with black. I feel safer that way for it allows me to gauge how deep the ravine is that I intend to wade through.

White appears to be hideously narcissistic! It enjoys, celebrates its superficial allure… And what disgusts me even more is the effect it has on us. We fall for its pretence. It blindfolds us to veracity. In the attempt to attain it, we tread over what is real and within easier reach. I resent white the success that it manages at its nasty game. It frustrates me. Its treachery takes it where it has no business to be, to a position from where it deserves to be dragged down, to a pedestal that’s not meant for it.

My heart goes out for black. It suffers much, from neglect and hatred to scorn and derision. It pays the price of coming out in the open with its deficiencies; for admitting to its reality, for speaking the truth. But its resilience gives me strength. It shows me how to stand the jibes, the shame, the agony of being true and still pull off a beaming existence. It tells me why, at the end of the day, it’s infinitely more blissful and fulfilling to stick to reality than to live a lie…

Her claim to dignity

This is an essay I had to turn in for our writing course. We had to draft it based on our takeaways from Amitav Ghosh's essay 'Tibetan Dinner'. 
Click here for the original essay by Ghosh

You may struggle to make a living but you have an undeniable right to dignity. Reading Amitav Ghosh’s ‘Tibetan Dinner’ brought home the point. I was moved not by the stories of the struggles the Tibetans faced, but the resilience with which they pulled together their scattered existence. It reinforced my belief that people who dare to struggle don’t need our pity or charity. One may offer a silent acknowledgement of their honest endeavors though.

It further brought to me a recurrent image that belongs to an old but agile woman I know from my childhood. She was called Lalmani and worked as our domestic help. She must easily be in her seventies now and it’s been almost a year since I saw her last. Chances are dim that I’ll ever set my eyes on her again.

I was never all that fond of her when I was growing up, to begin with. I deeply resented her noisy and dominating presence around me. I grew up watching her go about life with an unnerving swiftness. I remember staying perpetually intimidated, as a child, by her hawk-like sharpness that was disturbingly accentuated by her ridiculously petite appearance. I grew up watching her squabble with whoever was in sight – my mother and the others in the neighborhood she worked for over timings and wages, with the hawkers who passed by and her relatives who dropped in every now and then. I remember disliking her for not letting me have my way with her prized collection of chicks and ducklings. She never quite enjoyed spotting me chase them around the garden, trying to get hold of their podgy bodies. Infuriated, she always took the news to my mother with a diabolical consistency. I then had to endure the scolding that followed, swear not to indulge in the ‘unclean’ activity and redeem myself with a Dettol bath.

The only time Lalmani approved of me was when I spoke of Jesus. I used to sing for her all the new prayers I learnt in the convent school I attended. She didn’t know a word of English but loved the prayers and reciprocated with rhythmic claps and swaying shoulders. When in the mood, she joined in with a prayer or two in her croaky voice. On Sunday mornings, she went to the very chapel that stood in our school campus. Once, when I played an adolescent Jesus in the nativity skit in school, she swayed and trembled and cried with awe and told my mother how moving my two-minute long performance was. When I grew a little older and began to understand my surroundings better, I asked her why she never bowed to the Hindu deities we worshipped while I always spoke of her Jesus with such fondness. She responded with an acidic gruffness, telling me that it was Jesus and not my gods and goddesses who came to her rescue when her son fell ill and was at the verge of death. My newly acquired rationality hurt, I tried to reason with her but it only strengthened her rigidity. And that was when my resentment towards her subsided, giving way to something more powerful – contempt.

Lalmani belonged to Odisha. She migrated to this part of Madhya Pradesh in the sixties when the paper mill my father worked for was being constructed, tagging along with her husband who had come to work as a labourer. They stayed on after the construction was over and the unit was up and running. It was located in the middle of nowhere and the staff and administration lived in the residential colony that came up next to it. The bungalows stood neatly along symmetrical lanes, with their backs against each other. Between them ran a narrow street where the servants’ quarters opened. Lalmani lived behind our house. She worked for four different families living close by and occupied four servant quarters that faced each other, living quite comfortably with her children. She cultivated a patch of our kitchen garden that took care of her minor needs. Her poultry products were much in demand too.

She was incredibly consistent with her routine. She would wake up at sunrise and take a round of our garden, banging on our bedroom window when she reached it. This worked almost like an alarm for my mother: they started the day like a team! My mother would make her some tea to charge her up, sending her racing to do her chores. My mother worked as a teacher and needed to be out of the house and on the school bus by seven in the morning. This meant that she usually had a little over an hour to wake us up, cook, bathe and leave. Lalmani acted deftly, doing the washing and cleaning as my mother ricocheted from one corner of the house to the other. After her bus plied off, it used to be Lalmani’s job to wrap up the work, lay out the breakfast and remind us to lock the house well before we left. The routine remained unchanged around the year. While I struggled to wriggle out of my warm quilt on winter mornings, she cleaned the wares in the courtyard, with just a tumbler full of lukewarm water at her disposal, a flimsy cardigan her only defence against the cold.

As I grew older, I learnt more about her personal life. And the more I did, the more pity I felt for her. She was abandoned by her husband for another woman. This was surprising because I’d always taken her for a widow. I was amazed to observe how seamlessly she had managed to subtract his existence from her life. I never found her as much as mentioning him, let alone brood or lament over his deceit. She had earned much of what a woman needs a husband for – a livelihood, a sense of security and a social standing. She couldn’t be bothered with his whereabouts! She had a life of her own which she lived with much aplomb! I will never know if it was that easy for her as I’m making it sound; if she ever craved his presence, his warmth, his proximity, she never showed it.

She had three children – a son and two daughters. Her elder daughter was married off at a suitable age, but she was soon returned because she had turned insane. She charged at random people, sprayed spittle on them and made strange growling noises. People advised that she be kept locked up in one of the servant quarters, but Lalmani decided otherwise. She ran from town to town and doctor to doctor, determined to get her daughter treated. The girl could never go back to being the same person, but she at least stopped being a violent wreck and, gradually, even started helping her mother run the house. But this took a long time – a spine-breakingly long time. My sense of pity turned more intense. Her son was a proactive and worldly wise sort of character and was expected to dispel her financial woes once he reached the right age. But soon after he started earning, he eloped with a married woman many years his senior, only to resurface much later. Lalmani refused to receive any sympathy. She spat on her runaway son’s cowardice and went about her life as usual. She took it upon herself to get her younger daughter married and found a suitable boy for him. The last I saw of her, before my family shifted from the place, she was still working for four families and bringing up her grand children with the same deftness and agility that I remember about her the most.

Her struggles didn’t cease to exist but nor did her resilience. When I look back at her life – or whatever I had seen of it – I feel, mostly, a sense of awe. Respect. Bewilderment. Here, we have a woman who refused to break or give in, come what may. She aspired not to survive on charity but lock horns with every adversity that hit her. Her story, for me, is just as glorious as those of the Tibetan refugees who refuse to be bogged down by circumstances but, instead, thrive on their undying perseverance wherever they go.

When I look back at my growing up years, I realize that Lalmani deserved neither the resentment my puerile self once harbored towards her nor the contempt that my arrogant adolescence had conjured for her rigidity. Least of what she required was the pity that oozed out of my freshly acquired ‘mature’ disposition. I wonder if she would’ve offered resentment, contempt or pity for my outlook!

Lalmani may have considered discussing her story with me, I hope, and nodded indulgently at my silent salutes, but she wouldn’t have thought much of my endorsing her life through this essay. What good will it do her, I want to find out. Am I not marketing her struggles? Am I not selling her story? Am I not trying to narrate a patronizing version of her arduous journey? That, too, to an audience that has never known her, has no stake in her sorrows and will never be able to alleviate them. It’s only I who has seen her move about the courtyard on those wintry mornings, sheathed in a shawl, washing the ice cold floor, staying apace with life all the while. And I’m not even sure if I’ve marketed it all well enough!

What ITIHAAS changed for me..

This piece dates back to June 2009. I had drafted it as a short speech I was asked to deliver at the first annual ITIHAAS Educational Summit.

It was during a ‘walk’ to the Red Fort on a chilly January morning that I had my first interaction with ITIHAAS. We’d been taken there on a school trip and, in spite of the obvious sense of excitement, didn’t know what exactly to expect and just stood ogling at the imposing facade of the fort. The resource person soon arrived and asked us to gather around her as she stood facing us on the embankment of a tree.

The lady, with folded arms and a friendly but distinctly no non-sense demeanor, promised to take us on a journey down the lanes of history. Our skeptic attitude towards anything to do with history gradually melted away as her details and stories, peppered with her impeccable expertise in reaching out to us, turned from interesting to impressive to enthralling.

What caught up with most of us was the sheer innovativeness associated with the entire exercise as we walked from stop to stop within the fort. Delectable snippets of history, talking of unimaginable grandeur, riches and luxury seemed to be oozing out of every nook and cranny of Shahjahan’s sprawling abode. It was incredible to see how much of history and legends lay hidden within the confines of the red sandstone monument which, as we were later told, was originally called the Quila-i-Mubarak.

We finally came out content and a lot more enlightened about our city’s glorious past. This is what a friend of mine had to say about the resource person after we were through with our walk, “How I wish I had a Social Studies teacher like her back in the middle school. Studying history wouldn’t have been that nightmarish then…” We all agreed.

 I had been planning a novel based on Delhi around then and felt that the lady might help me with the research work. I gathered the courage to approach her with my intentions and she, after giving it some thought, handed me her visiting card. It carried a logo in a crayon-etch pattern that read ‘ITIHAAS’ with ‘Smita Vats, Director’ printed below it. It was the start of a journey that has proved to be thoroughly enriching for me.

What I managed to imbibe during the three hour trip with ITIHAAS was just a brief trailer of the whole lot of other things that the organization stands for. What impresses me the most is the fact that the aim of its walks is not just to state the mundane historical details associated with the sites but to make the students connect to them. It’s the story behind the structures and the way it’s influenced our culture and society that actually manages to seep into the young minds. For instance, it was only through the walks that I came to know how the dewans with arched openings entered the Indian architectural style. It was what the Mughals ended up creating when they tried to reproduce in stone the tents that they had a fixation for dwelling in, owing to their west Asian nativity. I now understand why a watered-down version of the dewan became a part of the baithak in my ancestral house.

One of the statements often used by Smita ma’am during her walks and which I’ve myself come to adore after all these days of being associated with ITIHAAS is, “There’s nothing great about being a tourist in your city and a foreigner in your own country..” It pretty much sets the stage for the endeavors of ITIHAAS. The idea is to bridge the gap that has emerged between today’s youngsters and the traditional Indian culture that they mostly feel alienated to. It is usually the first time for many of the students of Delhi that they step into a conventional Muslim locality when they walk with us through the lanes of Chandni Chowk, eating langar at the Sisganj Gurudwara , discovering Ghalib’s poetic legacy sitting in his haveli at Ballimaran and treating themselves to bowls of sewaiyyan  in traditional Muslim households on Eid.. Needless to say, they all savor the many lovely flavors that the experience offers..

One of the images from ITIHAAS that have stayed with me is of Smita ma’am squatting beside the Imam Sahib of the historical Fatehpuri Mosque, her dupatta wrapped around her head as a sign of respect, as the religious exponent interacts with the children who’re visiting the mosque as a part of their trip. How often do students get a chance to meet a person of his stature and get answers to their queries pertaining to the religion that he represents? Rarely… ITIHAAS, through its initiatives, provides the students a gateway to a world that they live in close proximity with but seldom get to understand in its entirety.

I’m sometimes asked by people, whom I talk to about my experiences with ITIHAAS, how this work is different from that done by the sundry tourist guides who swarm outside the various historical sites.

 My answer lies in the fact that the sole motive behind ITIHAAS’ programs is to educate the young Indians about their country’s rich tradition and heritage, make them connect with its past that’s shaped its present and ultimately  help them turn out as citizens who’re better informed about their roots and more considerate towards it. In fact, this very idea is reiterated by Smita Ma’am during her walks when she chides the badly-behaving kids, reminding them that they’ve not come on a picnic but are studying outside the class.

What made me return to ITIHAAS after walking with it as a student was the prospect of being a part of such a unique endeavor. It’s helped me perceive my country and its culture in a whole new shade - a shade that makes it look endearingly exceptional. I have been providing my creative assistance to its various projects under the guidance of Ms Vats and every time I see a kid come out smiling from a walk or an orientation conducted by ITIHAAS, I feel that I’ve done my tiny bit to help our heritage and culture acquire a renewed sheen. I wish all the luck to ITIHAAS for everything that it’s going to venture into in the near future.

Thank You!

Happy birthday, Piyush!

The first time I met Piyush, I’d hated him. He was too loud, too boisterous and swore outrageously, like a regular teenager. But, somehow, he was also quite popular with everyone. I wonder if I was put off by those traits or felt resentful about his envious social quotient. It was my first day at the new school and I’d made a mental note to keep away from this guy. He had fueled my resolve further by making the obnoxious claim that I, too, would start swearing like everybody else in the class within a matter of weeks. A month later, I approached him to declare that his prediction had fallen apart and he’d acknowledged it with a frivolous nod. Years later, I swore at someone for the first time in my life. I rang Piyush up the same evening, excited to tell him about it. It didn’t thrill him one bit though. “There’s nothing great about it, Prashant. You shouldn’t have. I’m not happy to hear it,” he’d said wistfully. That’s the unlikely course our friendship had assumed, meandering through what not, over the years. The Piyush I’d met for the first time was just a façade, beneath which resided the lovely person he actually was.

He wasn’t always like that, he’d told me after we became friends. He was a timid ten year old child when he joined the school. Though he was a local kid, they put him in the hostel for a few months because they felt he was weak in studies and needed extra attention. The hostel followed the law of the jungle – the mighty rules. Being the scrawny little rodent, he was kicked around by one and all. They won’t let him use the loo, take away his underwears and call him names. The ten year old Piyush could only cry, sometimes late into the night. And the more he cried the worse he was treated. At some point, he started hitting back with abuses – filthy, nasty ones – that he had picked from others in the dormitory. He was getting better at them with every passing day. It could shut up the bullies, and, of course, solicit blows and punches too if not used with discretion. But, somewhere down the line, they stopped bothering him because it wasn’t fun anymore. He didn’t cry, was too eager to fight and was immune to almost everything. He was now one of them.

That was then. He was now a tall and brawny adolescent who led the pack with great gumption! “You remind me of what I used to be once,” he had told me. “Don’t change!” But this was when he was in one of his better moods. Otherwise, he would blow me off for being such a baby. “There’s a ruthless world out there waiting to rag you! I wonder how you are going to survive,” he used to rant. But I know that he secretly hoped I’d pull it all off on my own terms.

Life came full circle when I went to live in the hostel for a month in class tenth, as the school authorities decided to hold extra classes through the summer vacations. He was among the few who commuted from home. He initiated me into the hostel life with great delight. Undergarments were destined to get lost in the dorm, but he showed me the perfect place to dry them – high up on the ledge, beyond everybody’s reach and notice. He bought stuff from the market for me and other hostellers – toiletries, stationery, even casuals – taking his cut from the cost. “Do you think it’s worth doing anything for these monkeys otherwise?” he’d say with nonchalance.

We were both good at singing and would always participate in the school functions. It was during the many rehearsals that our friendship bloomed. When our school hosted the inter-DAV sports meet, he shone through the Volleyball and Kabaddi matches. Our school earned the gold medal in the latter. His team had a guy who was an extra and never had to play in any of the matches but got a medal alright. Somebody jeered about his easy luck, but Piyush defended him, revealing how he himself was in a similar situation a couple of years back and knows how much such remarks hurt.

I urged him to leave MP and explore the world beyond it and he never took me seriously. “I’m happy where I am,” he maintained. But, as luck would have it, we both left the school and the district after tenth. I moved to NOIDA, while he went to Kota to prepare for engineering. He returned home after a year due to falling health. After twelfth, he joined an engineering college in Gondia run by Praful Patel, the Civil Aviation Minister. It was a five-star college, frequented by celebrities of all shapes and sizes.  He loved all the high profile fun and made great friends too.

I received an SMS from him one Valentine’s day: “Prash! I’ve finally found someone! Her name is Aradhana! Please draft a love letter for me!!” I did, with great passion, and was proud of the result. “What happened? Wht dis she say??” I asked later in the day. “Everything went haywire! She proposed me before I could open my mouth! I’m putting on airs now but will say yes,” said the crook! That Diwali, I went to see him. We were meeting after months, but I had a strange feeling that I’ve spent a lot of time with him recently. I was stumped to realize that it was because I had watched Jaane tu… ya jaane na that afternoon. Piyush shared a remarkable resemblance with Imran Khan!

His birthday falls on third of October. “You lag behind Gandhiji by just a day,” I’d observed way back in school. “Yeah! I’m a true ‘follower’,” he had replied with glee. Last year was just as special as always. I was one of the first to wish him and we chatted for over an hour. We were both going through messy academic crises and made the most of this rare flash of joy. We shared about the latest scandals, called our respective nemeses names, cracked jokes and laughed a lot. A couple of weeks later, a common friend from school called up to confirm if the news was really true. Had Piyush actually died in a road accident the night before?…

There were many versions, the most accurate among which I heard from his uncle when I went to his house last Diwali. He was driving down on his bike from Nagpur to Gondia, which was a couple of hours away. His friend was riding pillion. A vehicle hit the bike close to a small bridge that ran over a water body. They fell in the water with the bike and remained undetected for a couple of days. Piyush got hit on the head and died on the spot. They recovered the badly swollen bodies after much trouble. By the time they brought him home, he was nothing but a black lump. They committed him to fire and he was gone, forever…

We’ll never know what he could’ve done with his life. All the promises, aspirations and hopes have blurred into the realms of conjecturing. A few things sustain, though: the memories of his bright, handsome face, his smile, his jokes, his retorts, and the sound of laughter that still rings in my ears.  Happy birthday, Piyush! You’ve gifted me with so much! Thanking you feels so pointless. Wherever you are, and in whatever form, may peace find its way to you…

Much love!

Gwalior: Peeping in through the chink

This is another old write-up and dates back to my student days in Gwalior. It was originally supposed to get published in the local TOI supplement, but that never really came through. Nevertheless, it is very close to my heart. My take on life in Gwalior...

Gwalior: Peeping in through the chink

A chink - that is what best describes my perspective of Gwalior, because it hints at the inevitably constrained and constricted glimpse of life in the city that my residence here allows me. I’m a student living alone, with my limited set of concerns and requirements, and, therefore, can never understand the life, euphoric and angst-ridden in turns, that a regular Gwalior-wallah has to pull through, in its entirety. But, even through my relatively short dalliance with Gwalior, I’ve got enough chances to be in a position where I can put forth my unassuming opinion about it.

Gwalior will always come back to me as a city that could tell its cheese apart..! It knows what’s special about it, what makes it count. It has its role in the evolution of India’s collective heritage eloquently documented in the pages of history, its beautiful monuments presenting elegant testimonies to it. But, it also resembles a portrait painted in forlorn hues, showing that it once used to be big, in every sense of the word. The story of Gwalior is in perfect sync with those of many other small towns strewn across the length and breadth of the country. It, like most of them, has seen the time when everything about it was “big deal!”, an era of political, commercial and educational prominence… And it, like most of them, hasn’t been able to catch up, post liberalization, with the glitzy metros, to the point that the mainstream doesn’t care about it anymore. But, the loss of gloss hasn’t quite affected its inherent spirit! The old timers are still very much in love with it, actually. The views of its residents, thus swinging between the two extremes, present a very interesting contrast.

I have a daily brush with this contrast through two of my friends who both have their roots in Gwalior. One of them is a connoisseur of the many delights of the city: he knows it inside out and negotiates his way through the utterly confusing lanes of Lashkar with amazing gumption! He knows where the best eateries are, what market can get you the best deal in cell phones and can’t bear to look at Victoria market in its present state, because to him it appears battered and raped! He, sensing my initial disillusionment with the city, went to great lengths to introduce me to the best that exists here, which included a close encounter with the city’s intelligentsia. His sense of belongingness towards this place is almost infectious! He cannot stand a single word against Gwalior and, for each of its flaws, has ten arguments to prove how living here is any day better than “your Dilli-Noida!!”

On the other hand is my second friend, whose attitude towards Gwalior is amusingly cynical. He stops at nothing short of calling it a “Manhoos shaher” and simply despises living here. He can go on and on about the city’s squalor, lack of development and the crudeness of the locals. His outlook represents the many ways in which Gwalior disappoints its young breed, making them feel that they have lagged much behind their counterparts in the other ‘happening cities’, in more ways than one can comprehend. Traversing through these vastly different views, I’ve, over the years, managed to find my middle ground. I believe that though the city’s infrastructure leaves much to be desired, there’s no dearth of reasons to like it either.

What I remember the best from my first ever visit to Gwalior is ogling at the magnificent ramparts of the Fort – strong and formidable, set against the skyline of the city. My terrace, too, provides me a generous view of it, the temples and palace complexes looking like trinkets strung into a gigantic bracelet. Though countless metaphors have been assigned to it, over the many centuries of its existence, to me it appears like a falcon sitting on guard in its nest, keenly watching its young ones chuckle about, perpetually prepared to defend them against any possible danger. This is one image that’ll always stay with me.

Gwalior is trying to gear up. Every now and then you stumble across something that speaks of the city’s urban aspirations- be it a Crisp Corner Outlet, the arterial road of City Center with all its glass-fronted buildings or that ultimate epitome of upwardly mobile consumerism: the City Mall. Money is flowing into Gwalior- a fact that can be inferred from the high-end retail outlets that just don’t stop springing up and the many luxury cars that one so frequently sees plying on its roads these days. The city’s population is a medley of people who claim that ‘it’s arrived’ and those who just can’t wait to run away! The city will definitely arrive and certain people will always run away, but what’s important is to realize that Gwalior will thrive only when its people accept it the way it is, committing themselves towards its betterment. The key is to develop a penchant for its resplendent past, with our eyes set on a radiant future!.. That’s all the chink allows me to see…

My childhood dream...

Note: This was a write-up I'd submitted towards 'Big Belly' way back during my Career Launcher days.

My Childhood dream...

It’s true that every child dreams about becoming something special in life. It’s these dreams that liven up their fantasies all through their childhood. They cherish them all the time, sometimes boisterously sharing them with their peers and sometimes staying absolutely reticent about them. But somehow, as they grow up, these dreams, these ultimate destinations of their lives lose the significance and relevance and become a fragment of distant past invoking just a sense of absurdity. I was no exception but what is so different in my case is that the special dream of mine has managed to stick to my psyche to this day.

I’d, right since the age of seven, wanted to become a filmmaker. I’ve always found myself smitten by the radiant images on the celluloid. I was passionate about cinema even before I learnt to love algebra! I’d devour every word pertaining to the moviedom that appeared in the various periodicals that I had an access to. I learnt about the great filmmakers from India, both legendary and contemporary, and their stupendous creations. Their enigma always impressed me. I’d think of taking it up myself and then join the league of the likes of Bimal Roy, Raj Kapoor, Yash Chopra and Sanjay Leela Bhansali.

I always loved imagining; making things up. I’d visualize stories with my friends and classmates in the lead. I, in my imagination, would make them dance, sing, fight and even fall in love! The tendency somehow initiated me towards creating my own stories that would then serve as the plot for my movies. I started fantasizing about making films on my stories and casting the biggest names of Bollywood in it. As I stepped into my middle school, I began entertaining, and sometimes irritating, my friends and cousins with these plots replete with the title, cast and the supposedly enthralling twists and turns. My outlook towards cinema gradually matured and I found that my inclination was at the verge of turning into an obsession. I decided that I’d plunge into it and make movies that’d both entertain the audience and reach out to them with some message.

As years progressed and I became more conscious of the way things actually work in real world, my dream, my hopes, my choti si asha began losing both appeal and relevance. I’d, by now, read countless interviews of celebrities from the entertainment industry who recounted their initial struggles before they managed to make it big. They had slept on the footpaths of Mumbai, went empty stomach innumerable times and were rashly denied entry into the offices of the Bollywood biggies. I was convinced that success never came easy and wasn’t afraid of struggling for it, but I just couldn’t bring myself to digest the idea of being roughed up and humiliated in the Maximum City before getting that big break.

The entire prospect faded away and I almost struck it off my list of must-dos in life. But the creative instinct didn’t die. I kept weaving plots, kept filling hues into them and occasionally sharing them with the few sensitive people around me. My stories were getting distinctly mature and managed to somewhat impress those who heard them. It was sometime during my high school that a very different idea struck me bang on. I’d found it difficult to part with my passion towards creating stories even if taking it up professionally wasn’t exactly practical. I realized that I can still materialize them by making them into books. I was thrilled and started penning down my experiences with my friends at school. The attempt was appreciated by my English teacher which further fueled my will. I shifted to Delhi in class 11^th and that’s where I found the perfect plot for my debut novel. I worked out the details during the two years that I spent there and was ready with a full-fledged plot by the time I passed out. The problem was to imbibe the many different shades that the life and culture of Delhi stands for. I’ve, therefore, spent the past two years making regular visits to the city and getting in touch with many experienced people who’ve been helping me with the research. I’m hopeful about starting off with the first draft of my book really soon.

I’m happy that my creative urges found an outlet that’s likely to lead to something meaningful; that my passion didn’t go waste. I’ll be able to share my stories with the world without having to go through the obvious ordeals. I couldn’t get into filmmaking but it’s something that I can take up later on in life, when financial concerns won’t top my list of priorities. I still plan scripts for my movies and have amazing friends to share them with. I’m content that the dream I saw as a child didn’t get diffused during the onerous process of growing up but acquired a renewed sheen and is still a source of positivity for me.