Superstar India

by Shobhaa De

  *

  Maya has become the nation's duvet. We huddle and cuddle under it, seeking comfort in the alibis it offers. ‘The most generous people in India are the poor,’ a jaded hotelier tells me, as we tuck into monstrously large lobsters from the Bay of Bengal. He goes on to narrate his experiences travelling to remote locations in Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand and Rajasthan in search of the perfect fort to convert into a boutique hotel. ‘I'd stop at tiny villages and walk into a hut… I'd be greeted with welcoming smiles, and offered water, if not tea. I'd talk to those simple villagers and ask them if they didn't dream about moving out of their miserable huts into the big city. They'd smile and say they were far better off where they were. It's the rich who are unhappy, discontented and restless.’

  Did he have a point? I've often felt the same way travelling through the vast, desolate countryside, pulling into an insignificant-looking hamlet and chatting with occupants of makeshift huts, some of them nothing more permanent than three bamboo poles covered with bright blue plastic sheeting. There'd be kids, womenfolk, men… most of the adults engaged in road-work involving a lot of physical stamina. Women in tattered ghagras, naked babies tied around their waists in improvised slings, helping the men to prepare tar in gigantic cauldrons… black, velvety, smooth tar boiling away over a wood fire. A huge woodfire with flames leaping skywards. All this in the middle of a searing summer!

  Switch a few key details around, and the story repeats itself—another site, a different job. Maybe a highrise, a mall, a highway. The labourers become interchangeable, expendable, once the job is done. Nothing and no one to protect them, their lives. No helmets, no safety nets, no compensation apart from the measly few rupees given at the contractor's whim. They can die on the job, and nobody would notice. Despite the hardship, they smile away broadly at strangers who stop to pick up chilled mineral water bottles from a kerbside kiosk for twenty bucks—their earnings for the day. The kids wave happily as a swanky Chevrolet zooms past. It is such a common experience, nobody pays the slightest attention to the irony of it all. We take such contrasts in our stride and discuss karma… maya… before snuggling under that soft duvet. It is foreigners who react. Always foreigners. And we promptly trot out our convenient maya theory.

  Years ago, I featured in one of those snide international documentaries that feed on our maya syndrome. The script, predictably enough, stayed on course. The usual suspects (me, included!) were rounded up to provide personal perspectives on the paradoxes that dominate life in India. A particularly annoying erstwhile ‘princess’ from a pocket-sized ‘state’ was asked by the director to discuss her OTT lifestyle—the fancy cars and crumbling palaces, the inherited pearls (and diseases). She fell for it, and blabbered on, while allowing those monkeys complete access to her private residence. ‘Don't you feel guilty— look at your wealth… you have so much, when the majority has absolutely nothing…’ She lit a cigarette and answered dreamily, ‘I have all this because of my good karma—why should I feel guilty? I must've done something wonderful in my previous life to enjoy so much in this one. As for those poor peasants—tough luck. It is in my destiny to own Cadillacs. And it is in theirs to ride on bicycles. In India, we accept our fate.’ Though it sounded outrageously insensitive, the princess had boldly articulated what the majority believe. Accept fate. Accept caste. Accept poverty. Accept everything. For it is pre-ordained. And there's no escape.

  The villagers who simply say that they have no desire to leave their humble villages, are, in fact, telling the truth. They've lived there for centuries. They want nothing more. And yes, they do share whatever there is in their home with total strangers. It could be a crushed onion, a piece of jaggery, a green chilli, a glass of buttermilk, a bajra roti, a bowl of rice. You walk into their home and you instantly become a mehmaan who must be honoured.

  I reflected on this marvellous quality and felt ashamed of our hard, cold, city lives. Yes, even mine. I'd seen the change from the time I was a school-girl, and my parents would put themselves out for the few visitors we entertained. Ours was not a ‘sociable’ family. We did not maintain an open house. My own schoolfriends rarely came over for meals. And yet, when my father's relatives or colleagues were expected, they were received with whatever resources that were made available ungrudgingly. Over time, that too, changed. All of us became acutely aware of the pressures of coping in a frenzied world. We got busy. We got so busy, we barely had time to greet one another, as we rushed around trying to add ‘quality’ to our lives! Relatives and visitors rarely came by. And we rarely went a-calling. Instead, we remained steadfastly focussed on our personal goals, our personal ambitions, our personal agendas. This became ‘normal’. We didn't notice the alterations. We didn't care. We were all doing ‘well’. The family was ‘prospering’. The children passed exams with first classes. Father got promoted. Mother got her diamond kuddis. The car was upgraded. There were bright new curtains in the living room. And we ate out over weekends. Wow! We were the happy middle class of India, with newer refrigerators and air conditioners. But we rarely laughed or chatted as we once used to. Where was the time for that, dammit?

  *

  Today, when I watch my children negotiate friendships, relationships… whatever… I marvel at the ease with which their generation manages to juggle emotions, time, priorities. Somehow, they seem to cope just fine, without the strain showing or getting to them. Well, for the most part.

  These are privileged kids, who've had it easy. Even so, I'd say, their lives are more complicated, more complex, since they don't have reliable road maps to guide them. They know they must work hard. There is no option. They know they must succeed. Nobody wants to be seen as a loser. They know they must compete. Now, that's the tough part. Student suicides are on an increase, and sociologists claim it's a worldwide phenomenon that's finding echoes here. As if it's some sort of a tragic trend… hey guys, it's in vogue in Texas to, like, kill yourself? It's like… so cool, dude. So, where's the rope?

  Even if that's an absurd exaggeration, the fact remains that students across India are struggling to find stability. This goes beyond youthful angst and Camus-style The Outsider posturing. There is a mind-boggling combination of both despair and euphoria, a lethal cocktail. Students who can't handle its potency fall by the wayside. Yes, some of them reach for that rope, or a bottle of insecticide… say goodbye to it all. Leaving perplexed and wracked-by-sorrow parents behind. ‘Why?’ ask fathers and mothers of those healthy, high-achieving nineteen-year-olds, who've given zero indication of their desperation. No answer. So we console ourselves with the thought that at least our kids aren't picking up guns and shooting one another, like they do on American campuses.

  But wait a minute—what about that besotted loverboy from Rourkela, Avinash Patnaik, who shot his Jezebel girlfriend's family before shooting himself? What about Rizwanur? Jessica? Others? Bam! You're dead. Exceptions, we insist lamely. Nothing but exceptions. And we take comfort in the fact that oh, unlike those foreigners, we aren't a violent society, our children still stay at home with us. So far, so good. Family still matters. Or that's what we'd like to believe, as we eagerly stuff laddoos and barfis down protesting young gullets during festivals. And pat ourselves on the back that our betas and betis are ‘basically so loving, so caring’. Yeah, just like in all those Bollywood films and Ekta Kapoor TV serials. Basically, that's true. Very basically.

  *

  And yet, one hears stories that reflect a different and very bitter truth. Parents blame the Internet for corrupting India's youth, refusing to accept responsibility. We've found a perfect villain in the Internet, which is being accused of breaking up families, eroding traditional values and generally damaging the delicate fabric of Indian society. The irony being, so much of India's current status is based directly on its position as a global IT leader. The very people driving this change are the ones directly affected by it. The Call Centre Syndrome has inspired books, movies, music videos, jargon, fashion, food habits, lifestyles
… virtually every aspect of life even for those not directly involved with the BPO revolution.

  Since I travel frequently to Pune, I know just how rapid and radical this change has been. In under ten years, Pune has got totally transformed. It's another city. I no longer relate to it as passionately as I once did. And I fail to recognize several localities that have undergone a dramatic make-over. So dramatic, in fact, that old residents have either fled, or been pushed out to the fringes of this once tranquil city of scholars. On a recent visit, I commented to my husband that there were hardly any Maharashtrians in sight, leave alone Punekars.

  But that could also be a harsh, new reality underlining the absence of people visibly over forty! There are no sweet, old grannies around, wearing the traditional kashta-style sarees so typical of the region. There are no dhoti-clad grandpas either. Most areas are overrun by BYTs (Bright Young Things) dressed in denim and tearing around on bikes. Most swanky apartment blocks are leased out to the countless IT professionals who've placed Pune on the global grid. To cater to these restless folk, entire areas like Koregaon Park have pumped up the experience, with coffee chains, ice cream parlours, massage shacks, cafés offering multi-cuisine from across the world, lounge bars, night clubs, boutiques, art galleries, spas… the standard ‘amenities’ that satellite cities in the thick of an ‘image switch’ have to offer, if the new arrivals so demand.

  And the new arrivals demand all that—plus, plus, plus! Why not? They are so conscious of their ‘contribution’, they want a big bang for their buck. They definitely want their money's worth, paisa vasool, as we say in Mumbai. But in the hurry to provide these, entire cities are losing their original identity. And so rapidly, at that, it's becoming harder and harder to tell them apart. When I'm in Bangalore, I could as easily be in Pune (separated by a formidable distance of 835 kilometres). Ditto for Hyderabad, or Jaipur to a lesser extent. City centres look the same, since important landmarks have been torn down to make room for malls, glass-fronted office spaces, towering apartments, all in the name of development and progress. The people moving into these ‘cities of the future’, look alike, talk alike, think alike. They move where their jobs take them. Given their crazy work hours, they have zero time to invest in cultivating relationships.

  Life is fragile, too, as a young female BPO employee discovered when she hopped into a ‘dedicated’ taxi to get home—only to be raped and killed by the two men she believed were responsible drivers, not men with criminal records. Pune struggled to ‘damage-control’ the mess. But the story left a nasty stink that seriously affected the amazing BPO saga driving Pune's economy. The BPOwallahs woke up to the sinister possibilities of isolation. The closed lives, the shut-off-from-the-world existence. The upside-down nature of their surreal profession.

  Their neighbours, too, are like them—youn professionals in transit. Nobody wants to invest in anybody else. Meet. Greet. Move on. Their idea of relaxation does not go beyond smoking up or knocking back gallons of vodka at posh bars which waive cover charges for single women, but extract a fat fee from stags. The mating game is brief, furtive and frenzied. It's sex-driven and that's about it. ‘Need-based’, as a young female engineer told me with a naughty grin. Strictly no strings attached, no obligations. A hit-or-miss transaction, with zero expectations. No time for love-shove. No time to marry. No time for kids. Family-shamily? You must be joking. Speed-dating is here to stay. And if all else fails, there's romance on the Internet, and virtual sex with strangers. Who says life's boring?

  *

  Garibi Hatao was the war-cry adopted by Indira Gandhi's cheerleaders. It was as good or as fake as the earlier Jai Jawan, Jai Kisan. In a nation where there is no shortage of naaras for any and every occasion, both slogans were emotive enough to inspire the masses. But inspire them to do what? Construct ‘meaningful’ floats for the annual Republic Day parade down Rajpath? The toiling masses represented by a few ‘babalog’, generally nephews and nieces of ministers, diligently ploughing plastic fields as the float cruises past the presidential bullet-proof enclosure, with the ‘Honoured Guest’ taking the ceremonial salute (‘Bonjour, Sarkozy! Ou est la Bruni?’) ? All this would be seen in millions of homes across India, on Doordarshan, the government channel, with over-enthusiastic anchors gushing, ‘Oh… look out for our brave jawans! Cheer for our hard-working kisans!’ Everybody would clap and feel patriotic, waiting for the grand finale (tri-colour plumes-spewing jets streaking across the sky). Garibi never looked so photogenic.

  So many years later, it remains equally photogenic. And now sociologists are telling us, garibi sells. People from Sweden come to India in search of poor people, since this generation of Europeans has not seen what an honest-to-goodness poor person looks like. Prosperous NRIs also come in search of poverty. They point to the rapidly proliferating slums and tell their grandkids (the ones who speak with a yankee twang, or a cockney accent), ‘See those slum-dwellers? They are very poor… India is also very poor…’ And the kids stare wide-eyed at the misery their grandpas had wisely abandoned so they could enjoy a better life. Their version of India is the one projected by the commercial film industry—lurid, exaggerated, grotesque. They feel hopelessly let down, when what they see is far removed from a Namastey London, filmed in soft focus. Every Indian has his or her own ‘Garibi Hatao’ theory. We all agree it should be hatao-ed—but how? No solutions.

  We have begun to view our own poverty through a vaseline-coated lens and kind of accept it—like one accepts an ugly mole on the chin. We don't actually ‘see’ it. Equally, it doesn't disappear by itself. It has to be surgically removed, or covered with a thick layer of concealer. Clever make-up saves the worst situation, as any successful fashion model will tell you. Well, our cosmetics department is going easy on the foundation, which means, the world can stare at our ugh spots. Theek hai. We are philosophical and patient. One day, we tell ourselves, garibi will become gayab. Bang! Blink! And Bingo! Gone. No more garibi. Till then, we'll talk about the ‘problem’ ad nauseam, and pretend things aren't all that bad.

  ‘Poor people like being poor. They don't want to become rich,’ I'm frequently told. Never by a poor person, of course. Always, a wealthy, smarmy person in a designer suit. ‘Ask any villager… he'll tell you he's better off being poor…’ It's difficult to keep a straight face at such times. So… what are we saying here? The poor want to stay poor? If that is so, then why do thousands of poor people come to Mumbai from all over India? To stay poor in Mumbai? Maybe. Do the homeless who scrounge around in garbage dumps and sleep on Mumbai's pavements stoically accept the deal and get misty-eyed about their own existence? Or do they look up at buildings as incongruously named as ‘Persepolis’, ‘Miami’ or ‘Acropolis’, and wonder what it's like to sleep on a thick, springy mattress in a cool, dry, air-conditioned room, after eating a hearty meal of chicken tikka masala washed down with beer? Do they stop their thoughts, for fear of going mad with rage? Ask them, if you dare.

  Revolution. Andolan. Watch out, the Naxalites are here.

  So the self-styled intellectuals in Delhi tell us, arranging their expressions into careful scowls of deep concern. ‘They are everywhere… before you know it, the entire north-east will be gone… just like that.Those buggers are ruthless. And very organized. What discipline in their ranks! We ignore them at our own peril. See what's happening in Nepal? Maoists and Naxalites are more dangerous than those Al Qaeda types. You know why? They look like you and me. They speak like you and me. They could be your neighbours.’ I started to stare shamelessly at mine, each time we met in the elevator. These guys? Naxalites and Maoists? Naah! But who knows?

  That's the whole problem these days. We are like fruit salad—or bhel puri. With our ‘prosperity’ and economic boom we have grown ‘non-discrete’. In the old days, one could tell a person's persuasion from his attire. Not anymore.

  I still recoil when our family priest shows up for the annual Satyanarain puja, clad in jeans and twirling the keys of his motorbike, while placi
ng his helmet at the entrance, along with the latest trainers he has to remove before changing gear and clothes. Minutes later, he is bare-chested and dressed in a diaphanous cotton dhoti, the sacred thread nestled in his thick chest-hair. Before he gets down to business, he chats informally about current affairs… pop music (he sings at concerts when he isn't praying for our salvation), politics (Congress loyalist)… and I wonder. If I were to run into him on the street someday—would I recognize this light-eyed dreamboat in denim as the same man who recites Sanskrit shlokas as unfalteringly as his forefathers before him (he is the sixth-generation Saraswat Brahmin priest in the family) ? What about his eight-year-old son? The one who watches Ratatouille, Boogie Woogey and dreams of owning a Playstation soon? Will that boy take the trouble to understand the shastras, memorize shlokas, conduct rituals at births, weddings and deaths, like his father? Would that be his day job? Impossible! All that knowledge, all those traditions, so meticulously practised over two centuries, will in all probability end with the dreamboat.

  Each year, I watch the priest's expanding waistline (he is clad in just a dhoti, remember) and marvel at the ease with which he straddles two worlds. It seems so effortless… it couldn't have been so for his father or grandfather. He tells me they'd go from home to home, performing daily pujas for the regulars on their beat. These were precious family associations, established over generations. They fostered close bonds within the community and kept the pujaris in business. Those were the days when pujaris looked like pujaris—no confusion there. But now? My pujari could be a pop star!