The
plan to get to Mysore was last minute. I had already booked a hotel
for the night in Bangalore and we could have just stayed there -
running water, no power cuts, shiny chrome taps and an A/C whose
workings had just been explained. But we all knew how difficult it
has now become to get around in Bangalore. In the once garden city
where I had had the bumpy rides of my youth riding auto-rickshaws, I
was now met with eye-burning pollution during long waits at traffic
lights. What once were villages were now “skylish” apartments. We
could do better than staying trapped in the hotel - we said to
ourselves - and the plan to Mysore was hatched. I found a cheap hotel
in Mysore to convince myself of the plan’s economy and hailed a cab
to Mysore. A lot of cab operators still haven’t found GPS feasible
enough in India and so were to rely on my cell-phone to get to the
destination. After some navigation from the back seat I got ourselves
to the hotel in Mandi Mohalla. The driver was to sleep in the
car while we headed to our cheap room.
It
was past midnight and I was too tired to worry about anything else
but a good sleep. The squat toilet worked just fine and the checked
pure wool quilts which hurts your skin bad gave me a sense of that
nostalgia of 80s which I still seek in India and quietly put me to
bed.
Morning
was to wake me up with chatters on the street in a familiar language
which I didn’t so much understand. The noises of bicycle bells,
scootie horns, miscellaneous pots shaken on carriages by road bumps
and occasional yells in Kannada were filling up the streets. There
was a knock on the door . Which I answered but was unable to
understand. I picked up the few words in English which the boy said
and walked straight to reception. There was no concern about anything
I was told. The boy had apparently misunderstood what he was asked to
do and came knocking at the door.
I
walked back getting a better look of the hotel now. Right outside my
room on the right was a courtyard paved with irregular stones that
were joined together with cement and dust of time. The sunlight shone
at all corners and had kept the potted plants alive. The floor of the
hotel paved in mosaic, was studded with glass fragments that formed
square patterns converging into a flower. The morning light in India,
more so than other places, gives a yellowish tint to reality. The
noises then form a certain music and a small corner maintained with
only little order makes a refuge from chaos of markets and the world
around.
It
was this order of world which my childhood was built with. There was
no internet, the TV ran only in evenings and we spent our summers
playing carrom board, card games or reading thick Indrajal comic
books. The TV ran in the evenings and was fullu controlled by my
grandpa much the way TV broadcasts themselves were controlled by the
government. The half hour of Chitrahar on Wednesdays played
songs that sew the ideas of love and separation much before sexuality
could have made any sense to a child’s mind.
Back
inside my room, I switched the TV on out of curiosity. I had
preconceptions of what was to be on. The free and dynamic world of
the TV had become quite repetitive in the decade of globalization -
sensationalization of trivial reports, retorts and empty slogans
exchanged between dynasts, goons and politicians and soft-porn of the
mainstream cinema. Men were all now hooked to it in the increasing
order of these.
The
quiet world of my childhood now found only in poor neighborhoods of
India had long departed from its cities and though I have only hit
30s this world seems to have been moved to a museum - of which I can
only pick up the reminiscence of at places where globalization still
has not made its way.
Not
without their clashes the two worlds - market and backyard - seem to
coexist in India. The urban India claims to have become West already
while the rural backwaters of India struggle to survive - untrained
in Western ways and trying hard only to get by.
There
is a new song on TV for a film to be released next year - models as
Nicole Faria and Evelyn Sharma show up in the trailer song, enjoying
the beach, the sun and company of the Indian rapper Yo Yo Honey
Singh. There is a certain buzz to the song, vibes of a new, money
squandering, prosperous India and I quite like it.
But
there is also the other song on Zee Cinema, of which I still relish
the poetry of.
جب
چلی ٹھنڈی ھوہ جب ئٹی کالی گھٹا
مجھکو
اے جانےوفہ تم یاد آیے
زیندگی
کی داستاں چاھے کتنی ھو ھسیں
بن
تیرے کچھ بھی نھیں بن تیرے کچھ بھی نھیں
As
the wind caresses me and clouds come up to the sky,
I
think of you - the soul of my promised life*
The
story of my life may be as pleasant as it is right now,
But
it means nothing without you, nothing without you.
Asha
Parekh, the actress, takes leave from a pair that tried to engage her
into dancing and sings the song - out of nowhere as is always in the
movies of the time and spends about five minutes mostly staring at
the camera in an agony of separation which we don’t see on camera
any more. It is that innocence, that rather repressed longing for the
beloved that is nowhere to be seen in the new India. But why then is
it still on TV - I wonder - and why do I keep coming back to it?
I
think a lot of what we consider happiness did come out of this
innocence. We often find comfort in losing ourself to another person
- caring for someone else without the hope of getting something back.
The world of my childhood may have departed but this control-sharing
of Indian families, probably inherent, still survives. That could be
why that seeing the cacophony of India media, it is my granddad’s
(remote) control that I miss the most.
To
reconcile the departure of the 80s world I often tell myself that the
life was a bit too controlled in the 80s. Perturbed by the noise of
Indian media, I often relish the memories of dharmyug, saptahik
hindustan and krishi darshan when the license raj wouldn’t
have allowed just anybody to broadcast whatever they wanted. In
quitting the era of parental and governmental control, we seemed to
have lost a bit of self-reflection as well. I see an excess of
thinktanks, aspiring writers and international commentators but an
orchestra of international acclaim is yet to come out of India. As I
move closer to 40s and witness the departure of the world that
brought me up I try coming to terms with that some things gone would
never come back. The Hindi commentary, its popularity and its
literature are not going to come back in that same form and whatever
comes back or is reinvented would be as alien to me as anything else.
Indeed
there are those who see continuity amidst the disparities of India
and are fine with the demonic contrasts which globalization has
unleashed. Enjoying the comforts of Western life, however, I still
wish that I had spent more time on carrom, cards rather than video
games and soft-porn. There is too much tantalizing on TV - everywhere
- I think. There is a constant rush to reclaim what you could be
missing out on without answering what you really want. What started
as science in the era of enlightenment has now been reduced to
knowledge of chemicals and genes that drive your body to get what it
desires. The quite backwaters of India offer a stop where you could
still think of what you’re missing before you’re madly after it.
*وفاء
wafāʼ
- loyalty, sincerity; consciensciousness
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