Taj Revisited

                                                                      Taj Re-visited

My recent visit to Taj rekindled memories of my last visit in the mid-‘60s of the last century. Five decades have passed in between.  Fifty odd years is a long time in one’s innings. It is a wonder that the Taj looks as grand and as majestic as it was fifty years ago, as it has been for the last three hundred and sixty two  years since its completion in 1653.

Considered as the “jewel of the Muslim art in India,” it stands as a monument of eternal love remarkable for its “poetic beauty, overwhelming passion and purity.” The poetic beauty can be seen in its remarkable symmetry and balance where the gigantic double dome stands , surrounded by four smaller domes and four minaret on each side in excellent proportion;  the overwhelming passion is expressed through the  smooth blending of brick and red sandstone(red- symbolizing passion and love)  with white marbles(white- symbolizing purity and peace)  of the marvelous structure that houses the tombs of the beloved couple- Emperor Shah Jahan and his Persian princess, Mumtaz Mahal;  and purity personified by the white architectural marvel. True to the Islamic tradition that forbids the etching of human as well as animal images, the exterior and the interior of the pure white building are etched with Islamic calligraphic writings from the Holy Koran that lend a spiritual aura to the aesthetic mausoleum  exalting  human passion to something akin to divine love.

When I first visited Taj Mahal, I was in my late twenties- a time for deep felt emotions unclouded by the fretful fever and stir of the world.  As Wordsworth wrote about his younger days when the French revolution began,

                         Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,

                                                        But to be young was very heaven!

I distinctly recall the feelings of joy and excitement that I experienced at that time. It was possible to transpose one’s own pristine feelings to the feelings of ShahJahan for his wife Mumtaz Mahal and experience love’s  intensity, fervency and power that made  the emperor  raise this monument as his signature tune to his lost wife. It is strange that both ShahJahan and Mumtaz were well past their romantic prime when Taj Mahal was conceived by Shah Jahan as his tomb tribute to Mumtaz who died while bearing his fourteenth child. Mumtaz made him promise not to go for a fourth wife and he fulfilled her wish by building the tomb which he designed to house the mortal remains both of himself and his wife.  For the young adults, this monument gives a sense of eternity as the present excitement and fullness of joy leave no scope for thoughts of mortality. The glory and freshness of life does not think of the possibility of the evanescence of that dream-like existence. No thoughts of fear and grief, no listlessness and torpor arise that would be at enmity with joy. It is at that time in their life when the present and only the present matters. Neither the past nor the uncertain future beckons them away from the “now’ and “here” of their experience. As a young adult, I viewed Taj as the epitome of love where the Emperor lay with his beloved Persian princess.

Five long decades thereafter, I revisited the Taj when I have moved into the last stage that life brings with it in its baggage. Though a septuagenarian, I am still on my feet and by God’s grace mentally and physically alert though less than before. Age has given me a variety of experiences that have clouded and mellowed the earlier romantic joy. Long years of experiencing the vicissitudes of life experiences have taught me that there is nothing eternal in life. All things, bright and beautiful have to come to an end. 

But revisiting the Taj now made me recognize the immortality of love captured through the immortality of art. The Taj seems to speak out: “men (and women) may come and go, I go on forever.” It  stands as a testimony to the immortality of art and love. It seems to have conferred eternity on the two souls that lie within the tomb. Shah Jahan and Mumtaz seem to speak through their vaults saying that even if life did not guarantee them eternity, death has assured them the eternity of their love. Their love legend is permanently etched in the mounument and every brick, sandstone and marble has chronicled it. Three hundred and sixty years later visitors to the Taj recall the names of Shah Jahan and Mumtaz and wonder at the passion that speaks from every pore of this beautiful tomb. Their love is immortal as it is the love of the immortal souls. The Taj seems to mock at Death saying,

                                      Death, be not proud, though some have called thee

                                      Mighty and dreadful, for thou are not so;

                                       For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow

                                       Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill us.

                                        .  .  .

                                      One short sleep past, we wake eternally,

                                      And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die. (John Donne)

 If Donne writes as a Christian poet, we also have Jalauddin Rumi, the mystical Sufi poet who says: “You left and I cried tears of blood. My sorrow grows. Its not just that You left. But when You left my eyes went with You. Now, how will I cry?”
I returned, more pensive than before with the comfort that art immortalizes love and love immortalizes art. This is what Keats says when he looks at the beautiful Grecian urn that holds the ashes of the dead that it shall remain, “the silent form” that says “beauty is truth, truth beauty –that is all you know on earth and all you need to know”.

My readers may think it sacrilegious if I were to add that from the Taj,  I went to Mathura the birthplace of Lord Krishna which is dedicated to the timeless devotion of Radha for her eternal lover Krishna. We have many legends such as that of Meera seeking eternity with Krishna, and Andal in the south seeking eternal union with Lord Ranganatha –real life stories of human love exalted to divine love between the Lord and his devotee. As I saw the beautiful carvings of Radha nd Krishna in Prem Mandir, I recognized the power of art to immortalize love and devotion. It is the same with Rumi’s poetry that is wide ranging and encompasses many different ideas but behind all the poetry the essential theme is the longing and searching for the union with the divine. He writes: “It is with all desires and affections, all loves and fondnesses that people have for every variety of thing – father, mother, heaven, earth, gardens, palaces, knowledge, things to eat and drink-  all these desires are truly the desire for God, and they are all veils covering humanity’s eyes.”

 I am no longer disturbed by the impending closure of my life on earth. I am at peace as I pen 

down my thoughts on the power of love and art to celebrate life, unhampered by thoughts about

 life’s final full stop.

Who Plays Dice Better

                           Who Plays Dice Better

             Aap jaisa koi 

                        Zindagi main aaye

                        Baat ban jaaye

This is the song all through Delhi echoing from the posh Upper class localities through the middle class homes of the babus, small traders and kinara shopkeepers to the poor class in the slums and Jhuggi Jhopris. Kejriwall’s Tsunami has come and gone , sweeping away the BJP, the Congress and the others.  Like the Tsunami waves that have a comparatively far longer wavelength, Kejriwall’s rapidly rising tides had enormous destructive power that drowned all other parties through the length and breadth of Delhi. The Capital will no longer be the same as before. It is not easy to indulge in crystal gazing unless one recourses to astrological predictions that look at the planets and  the stars to tell us about what awaits us in the Capital. On the contrary the future remains crystal clear that AAP has emerged as an alternate political force in Delhi that has come to stay not just for five years , but more than that. If it has devastated and destroyed the two national parties  - the ruling BJP and the dead Congress, it has also beamed a light of hope of providing a corruption-free government at least for the next five years- (as per its slogan Paanch saal Kejriwall ). Kejriwall’s ‘mann ki baat’ has touched a chord with the people.

Modi won last year on his promise of development. His only promise that has come true is to bring about a Congress-mukht Bharat. But little did Modi foresee that as per the law of nature, whenever there is a vacuum, there will be a rush of air to fill the empty space.  So when Modi created an empty space by freeing Bharat from Congress infestation, AAP waves rushed in to fill it up. Modi was not prepared for Kejri’s tsunami that was triggered by the deafening explosions of the Sadhvis and Sadhus, of the Sakshi Maharajs and Yogi Adityanaths about Ghar Wapsi, Love Jihad, burning and desecration of Churches, extolling Godse and disparaging Gandhi and his own deafening silence on all these issues that rocked the foundations of Indian pluralism. Kejri was astute enough to step in where Modi lagged behind. Modi’s development agenda that failed to make any impact over the last eight months of his governance was deftly adapted by the AAP. His feel-good  phrases like Good governance, swachh Bharat ,  Make in India, Acche din aayenge, and his promise to bring back the entire black money stashed abroad within 100 days and to  fill up every Indian citizen’s bank account  with 15 lakhs from the recovered money and  bring down inflation proved  to be empty words .  Instead the development agenda that Keri skillfully panned out was an action plan to provide Delhi citizens their essential needs like water, power, schools, colleges, women’s safety, and hospitals to make life in Delhi better and safer. AAP brought the action plan directly to the people and it had its impact. This time around one did not see AAP going the full hog only with the social media. Though one cannot vouch for what they told the common people that swayed them, it is clear that a direct personalized communication with them had greater power than messaging through the social media. That had no relevance for the poor people.  Modi and his party were over confident of the Modi wave that they preferred the conventional rallies and high pitched election speeches instead of direct connect with the common people. The eight months of  governance did not bring down the power tariff nor ensured water supply to those in slums and jhuggis nor did the price of vegetables and fruits and essential commodities come down despite the tumbling of fuel prices all over the globe.  Tall promises, negligible ground results and no path breaking reforms except a U –turn to adopt the earlier government’s policies which while in opposition, it had opposed. The only perceivable change was the change of policy names.  Delhi, a cosmopolitan city which is a mini India is home to a large number of aspirational youth and middle classes from different parts of the country. During these eight months, they  perceived the aggressive sabre rattling of the BJP’s Hindutva votaries and sensed the inherent dangers of communal polarization, the flaunting of cultural atavism through the  imposition of Hindi at the expense of English and in the re-writing of History and text books,  eulogizing ancient wisdom that conflicts with the scientific temper of the modern age. The huge mandate BJP had received made them dispense with all subtlety required for working out its hidden agenda. There was uncalled for hype about  the PM’s visits to foreign countries conferring on him a status of a rockstar and equally exaggerated publicity to  visits by leaders from US and China  and all these fell flat as the ground reality hit the people of all classes. It is better, Delhi decided,  to trust the promises of a fledgling party with a fresh and honest face than wait for the promised manna to fall from the ruling establishment.

Will AAP be able to keep up its promises of free water and power to the aamadmi? Can it protect the aam aurats of all sections and give them the freedom to walk or ride a bus at nights? Can it restore law and order and root out corruption of the small babus and cops with whom the common people have daily dealings? Will it make Delhi a livable city of world class?  Will the AAP promises become a reality or will they also turn out to be empty words?

Herein lies the Uncertainty Principle of politics.  The Uncertainty principle that Physicists speak of does not and cannot conform to scientific determinism. Even scientific determinism cannot predict the future accurately when we factor in the presence of chaos or the apparent randomness in the universe. Einstein’s famous statement “God does not play dice” meant that behind the randomness in the universe, there is an underlying reality- reality that must be known to God , though we, mortals do not perceive it. But Einstein’s view has since been contradicted because of the way arbitrariness overrules any possibility of hidden reality. It is now said that even God is also bound by the Uncertainty principle and He seems to play dice with the universe. New experiments and new scientific theories such as quantum mechanics and Wave motion have emerged that seem to confirm the Uncertainty Principle and state that predictions about the future of the universe are impossible. Professor Hawking has said that Einstein was wrong when he said God does not play dice; “Not only does God definitely play dice, but sometimes he confuses us throwing them where they can’t be seen… God still has a few tricks up his sleeve.”

If predictions are not possible after all the scientific experiments, it holds truer of politics . Politicians are constantly playing dice with the people, giving them hope that this time around, the dice will fall in their favour. The world has been churning around political and ideological –isms and nothing has provided the world with a certainty of stability, peace and happiness  for the majority of people. AAP has invented a new term “compassionate capitalism” to displace “crony capitalism”. The success of AAP depends a lot on many factors over which it presently has no control. It needs land reforms, control of police, generation of power, quality of education and many more reforms, the most important of them being anti-corruption bill(Jan Lokpal). It is easy to make promises, it is wonderful to dream of a corruption-free Delhi, it is heartwarming to hear about policies that address the grievances and problems of the common man. The time starts now for AAP. Can Kejriwall and his party succeed in creating a swachh Bharat which in metaphorical terms will sweep away the cobwebs of corruption both of the mind and money? Will Kejri play the dice ? Has he a few tricks up his sleeve? Will Modi pick up the dice and will he play according to his rules? The Uncertainty Principle looms large except for the certainty that Kejri and AAP are going to last at least for five years.

”

New Age Snipers

                                                                          New Age Snipers

I snipe, you snipe, we snipe, is the new slogan of Delhi elections this time around. To attack and to criticize adversely the opponent has been the focus of all the parties. The adverse criticism is not about issues but they are personal. In the last elections apart from interaction with voters at a personal level on specific issues such as Lokpal Bill, anti-corruption crusade, development, water and power tariffs and security for women, there was the active employment of the social media to reach out to people wherever they may be. The language was reasonably courteous seeking votes in the name of the party, though on the open forum from the public platform, the speeches were vitriolic, often malicious, bitterly scathing and often bordering on untruth. But the present elections are being fiercely fought on personal issues and the language has descended to low level acrimony and abuse. The twitters are looking stale and uninteresting and the social media has been put to much less use than before except to attack. “Attack, attack and attack” is the war cry today echoing from all parties and there is no attempt to pull one’s punches -though some inconsequential parties like the Congress only meow and are hardly heard in the cacophony let loose by the two main contenders-BJP and AAP. These two have raised their decibel levels to such a pitch that BJP’s CM-in-waiting has lost her voice.( probably an euphemism for being gagged by her own party) Congress looks forlorn after having been broomed out in the last Delhi Assembly elections. What is more galling for the Grand Old Party is it has neither the money to fight nor the opportunity to fight as the main contenders –the BJP and AAP- have found it not worth wasting their time to take note of Congress and given it a royal ignore, equivalent to the Tamil saying-“no use beating a dead snake”. Congress is making inaudible sounds calling the two opponents –one as jingoist indulging in vituperative rhetoric and the other as ideologically empty and shallow. While no one listens to the pathetic pleas of the Congress, the other two are training guns at each other, fishing for insults and innuendoes in their verbal duel to earn cheap brownie points.

It is a pity that all decency has been forgotten as the parties take umbrage in the saying “all is fair in love and war; the end justifies the means”. The mudslinging is further intensified by the media that headlines the vituperative phrases and jibes of  the two contenders and engages them in churlish TV debates–  debates  which are quintessentially one man’s  monologue – (that of the anchor)- who subtly brokers his allegiance to the ruling party(otherwise how can his channel  get government patronage and the newspapers run by it get government advertisements?) and cuts  the opponents (read Congress, in particular) in the middle when they  raise their voices against the establishment. I recently read a piece by a well known journalist who does not fight shy of being an unabashed admirer of the PM and all his men (as women in BJP are always slogging in the background unless pitchforked to speak as the voice of RSS).Everyone of her weekly articles in a leading newspaper for the last couple of years have lambasted the previous government for anything and everything and it continues even after Modi had nearly fulfilled his promise of Congress-mukht Bharat. In her weekly article last week, she tried to defend the PM against Obama’s veiled warning on religious conversions and intolerance saying that the present period under Modi is a far better period than the evil period of the earlier regime despite the PM’s silence (which he has picked up from his predecessor Manmohan Singh)  and his refusal to rein in the Hindutva brigade for its religious rants. I wonder if the writer understands the word ‘evil ’! The word is used to denote wickedness, villainy, barbarity, sinfulness, depravity etc. Even a bitterest critic of Manmohan Singh will hesitate to dub his government as ‘evil ’.What was evil about ManMohan Singh’s government? Were they barbaric devils who treated millions of Indians cruelly, tortured and killed them? In fact the two cardinal mistakes of that government for which it was booted out were its inabilities to shake off the corrupt coalition partners and to counter all the lies nailed by the opponents on them. That government was deservedly hauled over the coals for alleged scams, dwindling economy and low growth, but its worst crime was policy paralysis that truly turned the people against it. But policy paralysis  certainly is not a devilish act but an act of cowardice and ignorance not knowing how to take a firm decision in the teeth of the opposition that sought to find ghosts in every corner. Policy paralysis is a result of the Hamlettian dilemma- to do or not to do when both action and non-action was construed as corrupt.  The journalist has forgotten that she had been consistently attacking the Congress for a couple of years-if not more- under an unwisely generous government but not under an ‘evil ‘government. No one had ever gagged her from voicing forth her vitriolic attacks against the government. On the other hand today very often I am advised to see no evil, speak no evil and hear no evil and certainly this does not mean that the government is ‘evil’.

Democracy has taken a beating and the Delhi election is certainly not a dance of democracy, but an inverted dance of plutocracy under the mask of commoners. The daily litany is the claim of the modern leaders that they have all risen from poor background and so they feel a fraternal affinity towards the poor and the deprived classes. This is the new mantra- we are for the poor, of the poor and by the poor. All parties with AAP in the forefront seek the votes of the vast underprivileged and the less privileged among the middle classes using this mantra. The elections in Delhi has brought about a deep division among the voters with the higher and privileged classes applauding PM’s development agenda and the lower and the least privileged classes going with AAP’s promise of “achche din” (good times) through regularizing water and power tariffs and through empowering the aam admi and aam aurat  to fight for their right to good living. The acrimony and bitterness between the two parties have driven them to make personal comments that are not only unflattering but are beyond all decency. BJP's trail of advertisements target Kejriwal in a systematic manner caricaturing him, swearing by his kids, fooling the public and reducing activist Anna Hazare to a garlanded photo. The personal attacks are aimed to bring down his acceptability levels amongst the public. The AAP had begun its campaign on reading out charges of corruption every week against all political leaders except its own though at no point of time has it lodged FIR against them. The shoot and scoot strategy has been perfected by AAP to make a dent on the opposition. There is no need to speak about Congress as it has been at the centre of attack.  Its credibility is at its lowest ebb and hence its feeble plaintive charges have no takers. The GOP now stands for “Gone One-time Party”. It also indulges in personal attacks on the PM for his sartorial get-up as though it is of great significance to the voting population.

The low level attacks and the issue =bereft campaigning is complemented by the mean attacks on the twitter against the opponents. The twitter language is coarse, abusive and indecent as the twitters of the day are the modern snipers who shoot individuals from their concealed and sheltered places. Their use of language both in English and Hindi is pathetic and woeful and the twitters show not only a bankruptcy of thought but also a bankruptcy of expression. The modern celebration of twitter and instant comments on the net gives the twitteratis a false image of themselves as knowledgeable, well informed and scholarly. On the contrary lacking in depth analysis, it shows a vapid mind. Language which is truly the source and essence of humanizing culture ,that enables us  to apprehend “noble, subtle and profound thoughts”, to enlarge our sympathies and expand our lofty and refined feelings has now been infected with uncouth and uncultured expression. George Steiner half a century back in 1961 had warned:  “No lie is too gross for strenuous expression; no cruelty too abject to find apologia in the verbiage used… Unless we can restore to the words in our newspapers, political acts ( and now in the twitter and other social media)  some measure of clarity and stringency of meaning, our lives will draw closer to chaos. There will come to pass a new dark age… ‘ Who knows ‘,says R.P.Blackmur.  ‘it may be the next age will not express itself in words… for the next age may not be literate in any sense we understand or the last three hundred years understood’.” Let us not be snipers but warriors on a battlefield (as well as on a ballotfield) where we use language purposefully to serve as an insurance against ignorance, illiteracy and inhumanity.