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Thursday, July 24th, 2008
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11:35 am - How my grandfather fought a case for Shivaji
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My grandfather was a lawyer, who went by the oxymoronic name-title amalgam of Sharif Wakil. But in the days of yore when Persian was the official language of the courts (Grandpa was fluent in it) his profession was a reflection of his name. Practicing at the courts in Dapoli meant a seventeen kilometer journey each way from his house in Furus. For this he rose at four and walked it down (or up, as Dapoli is at an elevation higher than Furus).
My father, the youngest of the brood of seven, remembers him poring over a lot of manuscripts in various languages, and fighting pro bono cases for the kulwadis of the village. When he felt there was enough studying done under the waning oil-lamp, he would talk about history, geography, ethnography of the Konkan area with the interested children. One such instance was when he spoke about the case he fought for Shivaji.
About 24 km from Dapoli is the scenic coastal town of Kelshi. There are huge dunes dating back to a Tsunami in the 1500s and a beautifully located Durgah of Yakoob Baba here. Now one fine day, a group of Baamans¸ who had been farming some land near the Durgah claimed it their own. The trust of the Durgah raised an eyebrow, and said wait a minute, these seven acres belong to us! But the Baamans refused to let go, and before a communal voice was raised, it went to the courts.
Here stepped in grandpa, engaged by the Durgah, who handed over all their land deeds. In the yellowed sheaf, nestled an ancient document dating back to the late 1600s with a Royal seal. Unknown to many, (including the Sena Brigade, I’m sure) Yakoob Baba was one of Shivaji’s Gurus. After his death in 1689, the King ordered the construction of the Durgah and surrounding seven acres of land. Here, my grandfather paused and drew out the parchment. Just another yellowed piece of paper from Sharif Wakil’s files, was the reaction of my father and his siblings.
The Durgah won the case and the Baamans were evicted. Shivaji’s royal bequeathed land was given back. More than four decades later Dad remembers the yellow paper with the crusty seal in the ochre glow of a lamp in the room of red bricks and a cow-dung floor.
current mood:  contemplative
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| Monday, April 30th, 2007
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12:30 pm - Bus Kya?
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Late evening, and the highway could not live up to its name. It was clogged with those huge 12 seater cars with 3 people inside, the smaller autorickshaws with their unheeded shrill breeeeps and the little tiddly motorcycles making their way through like pee down a rough wall. The BEST had done everyone a favour by calling off the strike and sending its fleet of buses to add to the joyful menagerie on what is called the Western Express. Smirk, Express, heh.
Bus driver, glad to be on the job in the lustful heat. Khaki folded up, one leg raised to ventilate his loins, buttons flipped open, ponk ponk ponkingthrough the crawl. And as any BEST driver knows, the best way through a traffic jam, is to ease the bus forward in the 3 meters which have just opened, stomp on the breaks to bring the behemoth to a halt, wait the next seven minutes so that another 3 meter stretch is free, ease forward, stomp. If the passengers dont scream because of the jerky brakes, speed up the bus in the next gap, and stomp harder on the brakes.
This bus was special.
There was a year old cranky baby on board. Nothing, absolutely nothing could make him stop crying and kicking. The 70% humidity and 35 degree C made all of us want to slap the baby silent after the 45 minutes it was on board. He paused to sip water, and then continued his rant against the city. And I am sure the crying, and the Shhhushes of the passengers and the Tchs and the mutterings egged on the driver to slam the breaks harder and stronger, conducting the symphony of louder S-n-M Aahs, impassioned growls, the staccato of stumbling feet on the aluminium flooring and the sonorous bellows from the babe making music out of this beautiful chaos.
Enter a spoilsport European travelling on this 'burban route. He came lumbering from the back of the bus to the driver cabin, and in a medit accent thundered, "Whay yoou brek like that? You not hear people shouting? This is note haw you derive bus!"
Apna BEST Marathi Manoos fresh back on duty having stooped neither before the High Court, nor the BEST management, wasn't going to let this Firangi call the shots, was he? Predictably and illogically, apna MM replied in Marathi. Arre baba, we know you have a culture to protect, but in this international court of justice ad hoc bench, what good is your pompous reply of "Assach chalavtaat ithe. Zaa parat tumchya deshat"? And to get his point across cultures, he flipped open his khakhi collar wider than before. Firangi stood glaring.
For the next 30 minutes when Firru was standing beside the driver, (blocking most of the gangway) before getting off, MM never braked hard once. Not even when the truck in front stomped on his. A slow easy brake kept peace. But the baby didnt give a flying act of fornication for this altercation. Its ebullition was least affected. When the family got off the bus, I thought the baby will breathe fresh air and see the open skies and an angelic smile would sprout. Fat chance! As the bus crept away from the bus stop, I could see it kicking and hear him hollering, and the echoes receded only by the next stop.
Bad Baby.
current mood:  accomplished
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| Friday, June 23rd, 2006
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9:04 pm - li'il
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For all the malchicks and the devotchkas who have been demanding another belteshaazar horrorshow from this droog can finally stop waving their yabzicks..No more tolchocking around the bushes, no more peeting endless cuppas of chais and no more rot revealin zoobies and govoreeting excuses..
As you can viddy, time to govoreet gromkily and then guff at you keeshkaless hen-korn. if you thought you could kupet my slovos, pah!, not even in my most sammy moods! My dorogoy droogies, slovos are not to be counted like deng here and carmanted, elsewhere is elsewhere.
No chumbled fawnie appy polly loggy will do!
The nadmenny skolliwoll of slovos is hereby open! Ptitsas can leave.
If the junta is in for a slovo-bitva or a britva-bitva, me not behind my droogies!
without anymore chepooka, i wish you all a gorloty nadmenny goodbye, and spit in your glazzies. Dont platch on my shiyah.
What's it going to be then, Eh?
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| Saturday, May 13th, 2006
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10:47 am - A Poem called Red
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red
ReD reD red red red
RED RED RedreD
red red
red red
red Red rED RED ReD red
red red red RED rEd red rEd
ReD
Red R E D
Red rEd REd
REDREDREDREDREDREDREDREDRED
redredredred
rrrrrrrrrrreeeeeeeeeeedddddddddd
current mood: Rage-filled
current music: simply red
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| Friday, May 12th, 2006
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8:34 pm - OH WESTERN WORLD, WHY YOU FRET ABOUT GOOGLE-CHINA?
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The holler about censored Chinese Internet- is an absurd crusade trying to express shock at how no one in China is allowed to know about the Tiananmen Square Massacre. Retort: do you really need a google-china to erase memories? Look, the Chinese people are going to remember Tiananmen regardless of governmental censorship.
You think just because they wont be able to see the picture of The Forgotten Hero in front of the tanks, they are going to say "Awww, Chinese Shit, We are going to forget this revolution too!"Flipside, the western world seems to have forgotten Tiananmen. Forgotten Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Vietnam, Korea, Afghanistan, will forget Iraq..(no khaliq, there is no relation between the two. The western world Protected good ol' democracy by all these! All those little vietnamese children we killed were Commies.Die, Commie, Die!! All these Afghanese Mussalmaans are terrorists!! And always remember-China is Commie and therefore Bad!)
Google and Wikipedia these topics to see how intellectuals rant about american hegemony while others celebrate Am-E-Ri-Ca land of the free...Be utterly confused since you will never know who was right..wether the right was right or the left of whom very few are left in the world.
But at the end of the day chinese interrnet is a total piss-off! Imagine all those western journalists stuck in china with their favourite porn sites blocked!! Oh, this is totally unacceptable, I have my Right to Wank, Mr. Commie President, don't you dare infringe on it!
Make a noise about something worthwhile, Western Media! For instance, how about checking on
those 30,00,000 poor people who-dont-have-money-to-put-gas-in-their-cars in the USA (thank you , Oprah).
Next time you log on, Google for some reality...
current mood:  aggravated
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| Friday, April 28th, 2006
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11:11 pm - Bohemian Rhapsody.
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Red and white plaid
shirt with a yellow polka dotted
tie and purple
pants, smoking pipe in one hand,
ready brush in
the other, I stare at
the mirror opposite me which I
intend to
paint on after I have finished musingly
staring at my divine
beauty thinking about today
evening when I am going to the
sea-face to ride my
tricycle on the seaside promenade with all
the conformist philistines staring at an artwork they will never
understand and oh, their
black and white clothes which will never
see light in my one
room apartment which doesn’t see anyone else
anyway, except the mirror
which is not going to see much after
today’s session, it will just be able to
hear my Tibetan chants
and my readings of haikus for which I will have time again after
I get back from my tête-à-têtes about
Matisse’s use of yellow
with my
droogs at the coffeehouse
at midnight which reminds me
I have to leave to do all these things (which wont earn me a
penny, but there is grandpa)
and I have just about time to get
my silver top-hat and black
grandfather umbrella since there is
neither sun nor rain to spoil the rest of my day.
I, the bohemian, have left the building.
current mood: grinchy
current music: Bohemian Rhapsody
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| Tuesday, April 25th, 2006
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12:27 am - The Peculiar Secular
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(This demonic pessimist essay was written for a contest.Obviously someone who believed in Secularism won the prize-his essay was damn good...might reconsider my depressing rant...in retrospect, this essay is flawed but am still in 7 minds about it..)
With great plaudits, every Indian establishment and institution -governmental, social, educational, industrial, and even religious- has made it a point to emphasize their partaking in the engraved word ‘secular’. At the same time they are repressively aware of the crumbling façade which the nation has tried to touch up on after every shocking act of betrayal against the ideal by the members of each of these institutions. The secular tag which has been sported for more than five decades on our republic’s clothes has frayed through and through after undergoing a series of brutal hand-washes by the communal forces of our nation.
Fifty-odd years after chiselling it on the mind of our young nation, we have very little to exalt our nation’s participation in upholding its own principles. Despite the ‘educated urban elite’ who think they harbour the purest form of secularism, we have had more claims and less action towards India being touted as a secular nation. While the nation groped for the lifeline of a secular-therefore-civilized nation, its people tarnished the very image by their actions since independence. One can find religious-economic-linguistic clashes in the nation every possible year.
Let us face the horrible, jarring fact that secularism never existed as a substantial practice at the national level. Yes, we all are proud of our own mohallas and co-ops at the local level which foster inter-religious harmony even amidst riots and clashes. But these ideally strong yet practically weak examples have seldom solved a national communal crisis. For example, even though a local mohalla protected its minorities from a mob in the 1992-93 riots of Bombay, thousands were still killed on the city streets. The point I am arriving at is that however significant is a citizen’s group in contributing to secularism, the communal force has always held greater dominion within our nation.
Having lambasted secularism till today in the Indian context, let us divert our attention to the actual secular elements of our time. This is the right time to question the secular functions in our nation. At this juncture of the globalising 21st century, we have a lot to practice to keep with our secular beliefs. The secular thought in its purest form of peaceful parallel coexistence within the divisions that India has to offer has seldom been implemented by most for a good reason. I say this keeping in mind the number of groups that benefit from this non-secular pattern that assails us. As the nation still tries to cope with its internal turmoil and external meddling neighbours, these fundamentalists groups with nothing to lose (except a few hundred members every year) have a lot to gain. These groups have realized the stasis that secular peace will lead them into. The time is still immature (for many) to comprehend the simplicity of a secular outlook in the country.
This secular paragon that we as a nation have aimed for has to be finally put into enthused practiced at all and not just local levels of the nation. Therefore the simple and obvious solution is to secularly educate the masses about secularism. Which is what we have been trying to do as a nation since independence. Or for that matter any other democratic, republican, secular country has been trying to practice in its nation state. But the rethink that we need to employ is whether secularism as itself has hitherto survived unblemished anywhere. Even in ‘modern’, ‘civilized’ Europe, ethnic battles ravaged the 1990s. Intra-national ethnic and religious conflict are a part and parcel of even the oldest secular republics.
So what models do we adopt to make the perfectly secular nation that everyone so eagerly wants to champion? Do we go the way of the French secular by erasing the identity of these groups which are a hindrance to this necessary secularity? Or do we adapt a version of communist governance by simply assuming groups do not exist and should not exist? Where is this rational system of ultimate secular polity which everyone is dying to achieve? Are we aware of any system where non-secular thought does not arise in its members? No. So are we pursuing a utopia more ideal than Plato’s Republic or Moore’s Utopia?
That brings us to the question of whether we should stick with this preconceived notion of secularism of harmony, and peace, and brotherhood, and co-existence, and solidarity, and other clichés! Because despite these, secularism still has not been achieved.
So how does any notion of secularity change the way India develops from now on? It doesn’t. If we are looking very rationally at what Indian (and global) extremism and fundamentalism is reduced to, there is no national ethic which can overtake it. What will the redefined secular do? Very little. Secularism has been redefined in different contexts all around the world, to little known effect on anti-secular forces. Knowing that our country has hundreds of religious and communal groups, can they peacefully co-exist? The answer is self-evident once you realize that nations with barely two or three ethnic groups have had a hard time making secular sense.
The sheer simplicity of secularism is lost on any nation. The teaching of Secularism, whether as an ideal or a practical application, has to be seriously re-thought as a solution. The applied ideal is as unfeasible and utopian as universal justice and peace. The ideal, with due respect to its propounding fathers, belongs with classical apotheoses that have never found practicality in any (modern or ancient) ‘civilization’. This redefinition I employ therefore, is redefining what it has meant so far.
I have no intentions of squashing down principals and ideals, but when it comes to giving direction to an entire nation or to the world as we know it, one needs to find if the path leads anywhere or it is a circular journey. Thus having dissected the fallacies of this Peculiar Secular principal, I would conclude by asking one to definitely keep upholding the thought, which in itself is pure. But at the same time caution about it achieving its ends, whether in modern India or a globalized one-world.
current mood:  apathetic
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| Thursday, April 20th, 2006
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5:34 pm - I Eez Sad To Announce Revivhal Of Mee Blog
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allo, my phashunable bloody chubbywubby droogs!
i eez pleased to announce rejuvinashun!
me not high, but ishpellings are a mater of choyce!
hail James JoyCe!
pheel phree to leeve responses..
this time update will be regular...i swear
some from blogspot carried forward..forgot the passsword to that one!
please attend.
darbar is in seshun.
circe beckons as does medusa...
khaliQ
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5:32 pm - BLUE-GREEN LOLLIPOPS
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Me and Sam decide to munch on turquoise lollipops(leechee flavor, but turquoise none the less...) on the way to the garden. I carry a grandfather umbrella that taps on the roads and suck on the lollypop at the same time.
The junta occasionally turn to look at us in clashing outfits(me: blue;sam: red) talking away with the pops impairing our speech...
At the garden, the bekaars have occupied all the benches for sleeping. We make ourselves comfortable on the children's broken merrygoround. We speculate wether the corporation will bother building and maintaining a pond with fish. We laugh at each others' hues of blue and green tongues and teeth.
Half an hour later, we walk back home. Umbrella tapping, almost spent lollypops in our mouths...
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5:29 pm - SUN-DRIED SPITTLE
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Every morning when I walk from the station to college, the clean swept foot-bridge awaits me. When the sweeper is sweeping, the dust creates hues of unseen colours.And he always is scraping off the sundried spittle from the day before with his coarse broom.
The clean bridge is a purely ten-minute phenomenon. New spittle adorns the freshly swept stairs. Even at 7:30 in the morning. It doesnt have to be paan stained. Just plain sparkling early mornin spit which crystallizes by next morning. Occasionally you make out the green of mucus.
The flock of crows sometimes peck at the nutrition. The first time I saw that, I was filled with disgust. Now used to it.
Day after day, spittle crystallizes on the pathway. I make an attempt to ignore it. But the glittering crystalline spittle in the morning sun always catches my eye...
___________________________________________________________________
DISCLAIMER the posting is not for evoking disgust...if it does, make people stop spitting. Take initiative.
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5:25 pm - ACROSS THE BORDER
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In my building there is an old Sindhi man who came across the border during the Partition.
When i pass by him everyday he just smiles, speaks a few lines in pure, immaculate urdu. He gracefully greets and enquires about my health and so on. All this while he calls me bhaijaan. Needless to say i am quite excited about being called 'dear brother' by an 80+ year old man.
My clan killed his and vice versa. changes nothin i say. somehow I dont like the thought of him dying. He isnt exactly that close to our family. Neither do we talk more than a few words.
just the thought of the plain white kurta clad bhaijaan who quotes urdu poems and sonnets.
A grandfather of sorts, also a brother....
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5:21 pm - EXISTENTIALIST LOACHES
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In the annual cleaning of our water tank, we found two Y- loaches skimming and swimming through the murky, muddy depths. Realizing that we had been drinking water and bathing in the same water for more than a year (ok, we were really lax about the ‘annual’ rule) in which the fish peed, pooped and secreted other fluids, fits of nausea overtook the joy of discovering the reason of the pale yellow colour of the water. But the mystery of pale yellow water was secondary to the really important question that haunted me: What were loaches doing in my water tank?
The loaches had probably gone through a similar quandary when they found themselves within the confines of a black Syntex tank: What are we doing here? Is this the universe? Where are the lights? Why do we exist where we do? Why do we primarily exist? Do I have a major purpose in life? Am I going to help build up a new social structure along with the other loach that is swimming around? Is it of the opposite gender? Is money really the most important thing in life? Are we the last remaining creatures and everyone else is destroyed in war? Is there a library nearby? A McD’s possibly? Where is this god person that my mother told me about? Where is my mother? Mommaaaaaaaaaaaa! Waiiil! At the same time the other loach was calculating his chances with the first loach. They got around to it by and by.
So did the rain bring in eggs? Was the water supply contaminated? Did they come with the rain? Did they swim through the pipes to come live in a tank? Was it a trick the neighbourhood kids played on us? Was it the CIA? Were they aliens? Mom, where do loaches come from? Did god send them there? Why spell god with a capital G?
If the two loaches were not in the tank, where would they be? Would they exist if my house had never been built and the tank never installed? What about the well from which we pump water? It had frogs in it. And even a few catfish and yes, even a few loaches. But how did they get there?? What about the frogs. Did they ever see outside the well? Who ate whom in there? Or were they vegetarians?
The ultimate horrifying realization dawned upon me that the loaches were probably going to live their entire lives in the tank with no inclination of the outside world! They were going to spend all their life in a tank with no idea how, why, where, or a purpose of existence. Two fish stuck in an infinitely small place for all of their forsaken life! Sounds awfully similar to mankind…
Do loaches go to heaven?
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| Saturday, April 23rd, 2005
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12:18 pm - brand new blog
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it is great joy and pleasure , my hombres and droogs, that i am taking in announcing my new blog!!
hail to the thief.
dali guruji.
i am repeating my previous blogs so please be to excuse yours truly.
might try and update regularly.
poems and more tales are on the cards.
gods a he
life's a bitch, ergo a she.
see ya.
khaliq
current mood:  rejuvenated
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