THE GREAT INDIAN TAMASHA

India knows its drama. The land has had many traditional forms of theaters be it in the forms of tamasha, jatra, nautanki or something else. Every part of the country has its own form of drama. Thanks to the Indian media and our very special politicians (and may I add the resurgent civil society groups?), there is never any dearth of drama in this country. I recently overheard a young boy telling that if you want entertainment watch the Hindi news channels! Probably nothing else describes the condition better.

The recent insurgence to fight against corruption has only heightened the drama. When Anna Hazare declared his resolution to fast, no one took him seriously. But within 24 hours, the real tamasha unfolded and immediately it became a media circus. I don’t want to go into the details of what happened. Too much has been said and written about the entire event. I will suffice by saying that everyone was entertained in process and probably the real fight against corruption got a true impetus.

However, if this wasn’t enough, came our very own yoga guru who changed the way Indians ate, drank, slept, etc in the last decade. He has taken it to himself now that if Hazare can fight against corruption almost single-handedly, he too can rake up an issue and fight it similarly. So came the issue of black money and our yoga guru becomes the self-appointed crusader for the ‘aam aadmi’.

Now this event has real drama. Usually it is said that films are inspired from real-life. But here is one exception where the opposite happened. A real-life event apparently seemed out of a film. Here I am mentioning Aamir Khan’s Peepli Live. The events of 4^th June are a case in this regard. After midnight when the police attacked the sleeping crowd pof the Ramlila Maidan, one could literally feel the poor news channel crew hurriedly waking up to capture the events of a live tamasha. The shots that are now repeatedly shown on the channels are shaky (as was the case in the film), you could really feel the journalists and camera crew fighting to get the best shots. However, like in the film, the protagonist manages to escape from all this cacophony unseen. Can you believe 10,000 or more policemen, hordes of mediapersons did not see a single person escape!! And if this wasn’t enough, the very next day Baba Ramdev is seen wearing a salwar kameez in which he had apparently disguised himself to escape briefing the media about what had happened!! Now I say, beat this!! Impossible.

As I write this, the Baba’s condition is detoriating, the UPA is up in arms to protest the fight, the Sangh Parivar is dancing its way to support the Baba’s cause and there doesn’t seem to be a end to all this soon. As this drama continues, we the poor ‘aam aadmi’ can simply stay glued to our TV sets to see the tamasha unfold further. Who knows tomorrow, the Congress and Baba may declare to be long lost brothers!!!

The memoir ends...

It is time to continue the memoir. It is time once again to chronicle the events in the past few months in the new city.
But once the flow of actually doing a job goes, so also goes the easy flowing manner in which the ideas and memories were coming. Thus i conclude it was a bad idea the other day to end the blog. I should not have bothered about the number of words but should have continued. Today as i sit to write, I feel that its a homework and not something to be done happily. Thus the memoir ends where it did in the other blog.

A long-awaited memoir

It has been so long that I havnt written something that now whenever i am reading an article, the novice writer in me wakes up and my hands itch to hold that pen and start writing. But the not-so-busy yet never finding time me gets too lazy to sit and actually do what her heart wants.
It has been more than six months that the city of joy opened its arms and allowed me to stay and work here. Being the quintessential small-town girl, the spirit of the ‘big’ city awed me, amazed me, thrilled me, scared me and above all made me realise how much i loved my home town.
It seemed to me that almost all of Kolkata was always on the streets, always running, always late and always ready to argue and fight. At times it seemed silly and at other times it irritated me. Then I realised these are the very qualities that make Kolkata what it is. This busyness, this hyper-active state is really the pulse of the city.
Durga puja 2010 was the first time i was away from home. A time of my life I wil not easily forget. Another instance that made me realise that i loved my home, loved shilling, loved everything there. I had always heard Durga puja should be experienced in Kolkata. This is where the Goddess really comes home to. But I was dismayed at the way people celebrated pujas here. According to what i observed it was simply a mockery of the best religious time Bengalis have. It was a case of simple commercialisation of the festival. Pujas are essentially for three days, but here it starts a month back and the goddess actually stays for 5-6 days quite easily breaking the age-old religious belief. Hinduism is by nature a very open religion, it is always open to adapt and change and this is the very reason why it has survived for so long. But even then, there is a limit to adaptation. One can’t keep pushing and pulling all the strings of the religious beliefs and have the attitude ki yeh sab chalta hai. Nahi chalta hai. Its awesome to be a tolerant group but it definitely isn’t cool to forget ones culture and core customs. I am no authority on my religion nor do I know everything. I don’t even mind saying that I haven’t read the Gita. But believe that whatever I know, have learnt I should maintain. This is enough. Like me, most of the young generation Bengalis have very little knowledge of the religion. And if we start destroying or playing with this, our next generation will be left without this culture, this custom.
Anyway going back to what I was saying about Kolkata, pujas became a time when people cashed on the image of Maa Durga and her children. There was one ad of a Bengali television where Saraswati, Lakshmi, Kartik, Ganesh were all represented as reporters report about the mega commercial even of the pujas. Incredibly disgusting!!
I guess I have too much to chronicle and one write-up isn’t enough. Hence I stop here tonight with a satisfied heave that I managed to write some 500 odd words!!