Seasons and Flowers

India has six seasons- two more than the four( spring, summer, autumn and winter) observed in the West. The additional two seasons are Varsha(Monsoon) and Hemanta(Fall Winter). Varsha gives us relief from the scorching Summer months and Hemanta heralds the onset of Winter. This seasonal classification is truer of the North than the South that has neither Spring nor Autumn nor Winter.  The seasons in the South are broadly Summer, Monsoon and Fall Winter, bringing in the weather changes from hot to hotter to hottest  all through the year.

The hot summer months and the cold winter months of Delhi are tough seasons and that too specially for the aged, despite the capital city enjoying the privilege of uninterrupted power supply to keep the ACs and heaters running and  protecting us from the climatic rigour. Delhi is full of neighbourhood parks - a boon for walkers to stretch themselves in the early mornings of the Summer months and in the late afternoons of the Winter months.

Delhi is relatively green in spite of the concrete jungles that have dotted the landscape of the city. Even in dry summer, the trees provide the shade though the green leaves look brown with the hot winds blowing the dust from Rajasthan. The trees wait for the rains to wash away the dust and add green luster to the leaves. The dry heat of the summer months from May to July vanishes with the first droplets of rain. The walk around the open park in the scalding Summer months provides great relief after being cooped up in the heated walls of the house. The coming of the rains during the Monsoon months from July to September puts an end to the  scorching heat of the previous three months (May to July) though the weather continues to be hot and humid. It is amazing to see the arrival of seasons with a clock-like precision(marginally delayed by a week or two) despite all the human meddling with the environment. The change in seasons is well matched by the change in the colours of Nature. For the Delhi-ites, this is an additional bonus as colorful flowers of myriad shades bloom at different seasons. The hibiscus that remains dormant during the winter months loves warm weather and blooms from mid to late summer.  Hibiscus gladdens our minds with its lovely red colour symbolic of courage, life and growth. But as summer grinds to a halt allowing autumn to take its place, we see geranium, gardenia and little white flowers sprinkled over small green shrubs that resemble jasmine but without its scent. Roses bloom from Fall winter (November) to Spring (March). There are about 150 varieties of roses. Whatever be their colour, size and  fragrance , a rose is a rose is a rose. The white rose is symbolic of purity while the red rose stands for love. The red and white striped rose stands for togetherness or unity, the pink with elegance, the yellow with friendship and so on and so forth.

What is astonishing is different flowers bloom at different times of the year and they follow a cyclical pattern in keeping with the seasons. There is no rivalry among the flowers , there is no attempt by any species to prolong its pride of place in the park and on the shrubs . With systematic precision, one group of flowers disappears to be replaced by another. Nature has many lessons to teach and the most significant of them is to know when to arrive and when to depart. Nature’s life is marked by punctuality, discipline, order and justness. It gives every species its right to appear, but appear only at the assigned time. The species also band together as a unit and bloom together and retreat after its work is over. While we keep talking about human rights- the rights of individuals to liberty and justice, we never realize the wonderful rights that Nature has bestowed on the flowers.

India has no drastic seasonal variation as is seen in the West. In UK, not a single flower is seen during winter months and the arrival of spring is heralded by tiny flowers emerging out of the grass. In India flowers are for all seasons and this is indeed a great blessing. We have to learn from Nature about equal rights- not to try one-upmanship and attempt to hold on to our positions without yielding them to others in waiting. The Government has fixed 60 years as the age of retirement and many senior bureaucrats and senior military personnel wait for positions of power as Governors, ministers and -if nothing else – as Rajya Sabha members (members of the Upper House). There is a highly competitive edge to every human activity even after enjoying a long innings of being in the limelight. We have forgotten the ancient Hindu philosophy that has given us the guidance to go through an orderly four stages of life. The strict discipline of the first stage with a focus on learning has considerably been diluted  to yield to more pleasurable and sensual activities. Learning and storing the knowledge for the future is no longer in vogue as it calls for a strict discipline that the young people resent. The second stage of enjoying family life and carrying out one’s duties by the family and society is becoming increasingly stressed and difficult due to a high degree of competition and rivalry. Enjoyment is on the decline and work has become tedious. The Third relates to gradual withdrawal from the world in preparation for the total renunciation in the next and final stage of life. As stated above, we are finding it difficult to accept retirement from jobs and withdraw from family life. We cling to the family and seek the position of an elder to advise and direct family affairs. There is a constant clash as the youngsters  now desire to occupy the space that the elders had held while the elders resent being relegated to asubsidiary role in the family. The last stage is no longer evident as in this material world the pursuit of the spiritual is more in theory than in practice.

Thank God, Nature has her schedule intact and has put in place the rights of every flower not in any hierarchical and vertical order but on a equal and horizontal plane. As Professor Higgins despaired in My Fair Lady “ why can’t the woman be like a  man” , we may have to ask ourselves “why cant humans be like Nature?”.

Vanshvaad

The zeal of the new convert is today less true of religious beliefs and truer of newly held political affiliations. This is because there are fewer religious converts in action as most of those who tend to act(and kill)  on behalf of religious faiths are not converts but mercenaries. In the case of political converts, there may be a few who do wait for the crumbs to fall from the top, but by and large their zeal is more passionate and emotional and to that extent of high voltage than out of any reasoned conclusion. A lot of Modi acolytes belong to  the order of the newly converted and their passionate panegyrics of Modi are sure to make him blush if not in public, in private at least.  One of the Sunday issues of a leading Newspaper speaks about the strikingly handsome 41inch waisted Modi because he is from handsome Gujarati male community ( Gujarati females,what aboutyou?) while another leading columnist hails him as the destructor of Vanshvaad to make the road to ‘parivartan’ easier( making poor Mamta  see ‘red’, being denied her share of  ‘paribortan politics’ despite not having a Vansh of her own a la Modi).

Vanshvaad as I understand is ‘dynastic tradition’- or in a much broader sense ‘family tradition’. There is no one born in this world that cannot claim to a family or ‘vansh’. The journalist’s praise of Modi for his battle to destroy  ‘vanshvaad’ is doing injustice to the idea of a family. But what baffles me is that we are ready to applaud destruction of ‘vansh’ because it is something undesirable and therefore to be rooted out. Dynastic tradition is a continuation of the family tradition. The Journalist seems to be myopic to limit  ‘vanshvaad’ to  Indian politics, choosing to turn a blind eye to Kennedy clan, Bush clan, Clinton clan who have carried the political torch of the family  in American politics. In fact, the destroyer of Vanshvaad had just met the Clintons who are aspiring for the Whitehouse in the next elections.

Vanshvaad in politics faces greater hurdles than in any other occupation.  It is easy for a carpenter’s son to wield the chisel with aplomb as it is for the tailor’s son to use the scissors. It is easy for the doctor’s progeny to join the father or the mother or the parents in their clinic; so is it easy for the lawyer to have his/her offspring to be called to the Bar. We have a number of great scholars and academics whose sons and daughters have made sure that their parents’ footprints are left in tact by carrying  their legacy in the university circles. Infact the journalist I have referred to has her own son followingthe mother's profession as writer-cum-journalist. There is nothing wrong to follow in the footsteps of the parents and proclaim proudly to the world that I am my father’s/mother’s son/daughter. In fact the phrase ‘a chip off the old block’ refers to someone who is similar in character, talent and skill to his father or mother.

Vanshvaad might have gained notoriety as a result of the caste system that had come to the society from the ancient days. Again this is also a partially understood concept as the original idea behind it was known as the ‘ Varna’ system in ancient India. Then the term ‘Varna’ was used for four different groups and not based on occupations and hierarchical ranking as it came to be  in the medieval period. The concept of dharma evolved in ancient India dealt with the duties assigned to each ‘Varna’  and the health of the society depended on each individual contributing in full measure to the duties and responsibilities given to him/her. But the  effect of binding some communities to inherit power, wealth  and status while denying the same to other communities resulted in the heinous caste system that had plagued and continues to plague our society, making Vanshvaad a disreputable term.

In India, this has been used ad nauseam to target some families whose scions have used to pitchfork them centrestage in the National politics. To be born of political parents is now made out to be a cardinal sin and to destroy dynasty politics is denial of democratic right to a politician’s progeny to enter politics. This is a misconceived approach because democracy provides the best safeguard by throwing out those who seek their goodwill at the hustings on the basis of inherited family reputation  without possessing merit or character.

 So to hail Modi not for his articulation nor for his honesty nor for his ideology- (one can differ from it but that does not mean there is no ideology)-but for his single minded determination to demolish vanshvaad is doing gross injustice to him. It is a pity that the Modi acolytes seem to be chanting in the same breath

All hail Modi, hail to thee

The PM of India

All hail Modi, hail to thee

The one and only face of the BJP

All hail Modi, hail to thee

 The destroyer of Vanshvaad.

Let us hope that our journalists learn to package sociology into their political discourse and not package politics into their newfound zeal for the PM.

The Cat and the Squirrel

My morning walks are enlivened by the sight of squirrels running, chasing each other (cannot say whether in friendly competition or in rivalry), chomping nuts , climbing trees and simply moving from one place to another. Their speed is amazing; their jump is breathtaking. Neither Usain Bolt in 100mtrs dash nor Mike Powell in long jump can match the speed and stride of the squirrels. They have a running start at 12 miles / 18kms per hour and with absolute ease jump vertically about 4 feet / 6 kms.  What is astounding is they are non-stop runners till they retire to their habitat in the trees at the end of a day’s workout. I used to wonder if these nut crackers can ever be caught-given their speed, stamina and stability.

       My delight in squirrels was marred the other day when I saw a cat on the prowl. I have never been a cat lover as I recall Eliot’s unpleasant image of the cat as that

                                             which flatters  itself in the gutter

                                             slips out its tongue

                                                  and devours a morsel of rancid butter

    The cat is cunning, slimy, silent and somewhat untrustworthy and disloyal. In fact Montaigne said:” When I play with my cat, who knows whether she isn't amusing herself with me more than I am with her?” The cat has the sciurine ability to make a sudden leap after pretending to lie curled and asleep.  One day during my walk a small cat surfaced and in a peculiar way it moved ahead of me keeping a two feet distance. It was as though it was a mine sweeper clearing the land mines ahead of me. This became a daily routine and I tried to reorganize my pace-either to walk slow so as to remain away from the cat’s visibility or too fast to overtake it and in this, I failed as the cat was much faster and had a mathematical genius to maintain the distance at two feet. I slowly began to warm up to the cat and began to miss it when it did not show up.

     But I got the jolt of my life when one day I saw the cat suddenly leap up and with an eagle-like swoop catch a squirrel from behind and run towards a bush to have its breakfast. Maybe the squirrel had a momentary lapse of auditory concentration as it failed to register the silence of the cat’s paw. My first reaction was to throw a stone at the cat so that the jerk would let go the squirrel from its mouth. But the savior syndrome did not last for long as I questioned the correctness of my attempt to rescue the squirrel and deny the cat its breakfast. Neither the squirrel nor the cat had done any harm to me nor for that matter I missed the cat less and loved the squirrel more. It was a matter for the two to resolve not through reasoned arguments but by greater physical agility and skill. It may be argued that   cat had no right to enter the park which is the habitat of the squirrels as they rest on the trees. But the moot question is who has drawn the LOC and who has denied the cat the freedom to roam round the park.  The park is free for all to enter- that includes me, you, the squirrel and the cat. No doubt the squirrel had been blessed by Lord Ram for its efforts to pile up a stone heap across the ocean for Ram to cross over to Lanka. But that was in Treta Yug while we are now in Kali Yug which according to Hindu Cosmology grants maximum freedom with the least quality of life. The squirrel can no longer display its stripes of honour to gain immunity from the cat. I realized that a third party interference was not called for in this issue between the cat and the squirrel.

    I returned home with mixed emotions, sad about the squirrel and complacent about the right of the cat to have its breakfast. I sat down to read the Newspapers. The headlines screamed that Nawaz Sharif, the Pakistan PM had raised the K-issue with a delegation of US senators. I was relieved to learn that the US senators  had declined Nawaz’s call for intervention in Kashmir saying American policy on Kashmir "has not changed an iota" and it was left to the two sides to sort it out at time and pace and place of their choosing. I smiled to myself that in my limited way I had also endorsed bilateralism with regard to the issue relating to the cat and the squirrel.

The Congress scores a self goal

                                                       The Congress scores a self goal

 “For whenever the anger of divine spirits harms someone,
it first does this: it steals away his mind
and good sense, and turns his thought to foolishness,
so that he should know nothing of his mistakes.”

These lines are attributed to some of the old poets of Athens and they have been later adapted by many Greek dramatists. If the Greeks have to be believed, one should not venture to find out why and when we become victims of the divine wrath, but accept it unquestioningly as the power of the Immortals over the mortals. The Western writings, in particular after World War II have identified this irrational and unpredictable the quirk of the Gods as the Absurdity of existence- as something that is beyond reason, logic and understanding. The more one tries to look for meaning in a meaningless world, the greater the possibility of his being unhinged. This is what the ancient Greek proverb says: “Those whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make them mad.”

The Congress led by the mother and son have been the target of the divine spirits in recent months-if not in recent years. After successive defeats in UP elections and General elections besides in some of the State elections, the Congress party is in disarray. After the initial period of trauma when the only news from the Congress headquarters was that the party was in deep introspection, post introspection the party seems to have gone into slumber. Occasional outbursts from a few party members against the mother-son duo and more against the son’s incapacity to articulate and lead from the front were given a quiet burial and the Congress blithely ostrich-like went with its head buried in the sands of 10, Janpath in deep meditation. Every now and then the sleeping giant was disturbed by the quacking of a few congress men demanding a change at the top echelons of the party. But surrounded by the non-political backroom boys, the mother-son du were insulated from the quack-quack of the dissenting voices.  In their state of somnolence all the men and women of Rahul, the prince,  instructed  him and his mother to plug their ears  from hearing the well meaning and well articulated views of a few party loyalists like Manish Tiwari, Rashid Alvi and Digvijaya Singh as though they were the mythological Sirens to lure them into total annihilation. They were removed as the spokespersons of the party adding to the further depletion of any sane voice arising out of the party in wilderness.

 With Congress-mukht Bharat as his one single agenda, the deft PM used the opportune moment to rope in Shashi Tharoor the intelligent, cultured and sophisticated face of the Congress party to join him in cleansing Bharat( without mentioning that this cleansing included cleansing Bharat of the Congress).   PM also knew that Tharoor may need his benevolent grace if his party’s maverick Subramanian Swamy were to tighten the noose rightly or wrongly around him. The Swachh Bharat Andolan was handy and Tharoor was roped in before being tight roped by the PIL expert. The PM did not ask the leader of the opposition(though without an official status) nor Mrs. Gandhi nor the price as he fondly called him nor any other non BJPleader, but only Tharoor. Tharoor’s praise of the PM for giving him the opportunity to join him in Operation Cleansing was enough to raise the hackles among those who must have had a complex with regard to the distinguished diplomat turned congressman. PM ‘s clever ploy worked very well. The henchmen bayed for Tharoor’s removal , the prince frowned, the Queen nodded and the PM had his last laugh.

The Congress has scored a self goal. Even the diehard congress supporters gasped at the inability of the GOP to grasp the significance of the PM’s Tharoor call. The more intelligent among them felt dismayed that the original GOP founded by the intellectual giants like  Gandhiji, Nehru, Patel, Ambedkar, Rajaji, has now declined to the extent that it could not understand that true culture lies not in withholding praise where it is due but in raising one’s bar to go a step farther than that which has been achieved. Congress would have reinvented itself if it had allowed its spokespersons to articulate with passionate conviction and without emotional overtones. It depende still on mother-son duo where the mother can still read her texts well while  the son’s occasional foray into public speeches are best  remembered for the gaffes than for any substantial content. Maybe the divine wrath has stolen the present Congress party of its mind, forcing it to commit folly after folly and what is worse, has made sure that the party  knows nothing of its imbecile and ludicrous acts. Let us pray that the divine wrath is lifted and we have an opposition that acts and talks with wisdom, with malice towards none and graciousness towards all.

If the GOP is to reach heights that it had initially reached under the stalwarts who were cultured, articulate and well educated crusaders to restore national pride  and progress, it should shed off sycophancy and in a true democratic way elect those who have the intelligence, the experience, the power of articulation and the passion for bringing a new India. The current democracy under one man rule may be good in the short run, coming as a relief to the rudderless governance of the last few years. But true democracy is that which allows million voices to speak, million ears to listen and million minds to reflect and act. If GOP has to score goals in the future, let it first learn to resist scoring self goals that are easy to come by but difficult to be counted for victory.