Man had not walked on the moon when I was
born. It took another five years for that “giant step for mankind.” I was born a
long time ago; a rather long time.
In the year I was born India lost its
first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. So perhaps my birth led to a leadership
change in the country.
Even while I was a young boy, a
not-so-silent change was happening in my country. Seeds of high-yielding food
crop varieties were being introduced in the fields of farmers who had access to
irrigation. The gift hamper that these farmers received from the government
also included chemical fertilizers and pesticides. Together, the ingredients
helped these farmers to increase food production in their farms, leading the
country to food self-sufficiency. Exempted from the need to import food, there
was a new vigour in the country.
 |
| Irrigation plus a package of support ensured that the country was self sufficient in food |
The political map was also being redrawn
simultaneously. While farmers with irrigation were recipients of government
largesse to produce more crops from their farms, those who tended rain-fed
farms were being ignored. While the Green Revolution was sowing the seeds of
growth in less than one-third of country’s farmlands, seeds of discontent were
being sown in the remaining two-thirds. I continue to see my country suffer
from the fruits that the seeds of discontent produced.
My generation did not face famines that
our fathers faced. But, we did live through shortages. And we did realise that
jaggery was a reasonably good substitute for sugar in coffee.
We were not the wallflower generation. We
just missed it. Thankfully. We did not need acid to see what others could not.
We saw what we saw. We didn’t believe that there was anything more to see, or
know.
Neither were we from the consumerist
generation. We were before that. We believe that taking care of our parents is
as important as supporting our children.
We did not know much about Vietnam. But
we knew of Bangladesh, Mukti Bahini and Sheikh Mujibur Rehman. As our fathers
tuned Marconi-valve radios to catch the latest from the front, we found new
games to be played during blackouts. We had heard about Sam Maneckshaw and
Jagjit Singh Aurora, the sardar general to whom Niazi had surrendered his
revolver. We remember pictures of starvation and genocide from the war,
refugees walking across the border.
Manoj Kumar injected us with patriotism –
“Meri desh ki dharti.” He also gave
us more advice. It was in his nature to do so. He told us not to trust blondes
– “Koi jab tumhara hriday tod de, tadapta
hua jab koyi chod de …”
Even in our childhood we knew Manoj
Kumar’s patriotism was kitsch. But we
got a lump in our throat whenever we heard Lata’s Aye mere watan ke logon. We still do, even though the Indo-China
War happened before we were born.
We were rather young when the Emergency
happened. Our parents experienced it, and through them us. The impact was
forceful – we promised that we would never gamble with our democracy ever
again.
We saw the turmoil in Assam, Kashmir and
Punjab. We heard about killings in Punjab in our daily news on radio. We
followed Operation Bluestar and its sequels – Indira Gandhi assassination and
the post-assassination riots with apprehension and pain.
We realised that if the earth shakes when
a tree falls, it will shake again, and again. It shook in 1984, 1992, 1993 and
again in 2002.
India became a nuclear power in our
lifetime. Not once, but twice. Some among us gave our lives in the Kargil War
that followed.
Our rockets reached space in our
lifetimes, though they first landed in the sea. Recently we saw our leader take
credit for our spacecraft reaching the Mars orbit – a project that was
conceived and implemented well before his time. The media applauded. A senior
journalist repeated that his fingerprints were on the Mangalyaan.
That is where we are, when the media is
no longer a chronicler of events but considers itself a driver of history.
Every evening at nine, when we return from work to the comfort of our living
rooms, we watch our political proxy – Arnab Goswami – demand answers for the
nation.
Arnab Goswami-ko gussa bahut aata hai. He is the embodiment of our collective
anger. He rallies against the “corrupt”, and stumps them in their answers every
evening. And, if through the week we have residual anger left in us, then Aamir
Khan provides us the platform for catharsis on Sunday mornings. The truth shall
prevail, he insists.
We are angry, and impatient. For the
first time since the Freedom Movement, we have been able to collectivise our
anger. Anna-ji did it for us first; Arvind-ji turned it into a political force;
and Narendra-ji continues to harvest the fruits of our collective anger and
impatience.
We use QWERTY keyboards to register our
anger. Only birds tweeted during our childhood. Now we tweet through our
laptops and smart phones, but are unable to hear the tweet of the common house
sparrow.
It is ironic that my greatest regret in
the past 50 years relates to our first angry young man. He exhorted us to be
angry, act and change our lives.
Flash back to boarding school days. Those
were the days in the ninth grade when Amitabh Bachchan, Sashi Kapoor, Parveen
Babi and Hema Malini were at school to shoot Do aur do paanch. More than a month at the location, they had
enough time to indulge us with long autographs. “To Gopi, all the best,” wrote
Bachchan when I stretched my notebook to him.
Later, when I came to Thrissur for my
graduation the Coolie accident
happened. The diehard fans among my friends were anguished. They prayed, sent
telegrams to him for his recovery. I mentioned that I had an autograph. They
wanted to buy it off me. The bidding began, and finally the deal was struck at
one tea and two aloo bondas. Yes, I should have got more. I certainly should
have got more for Amitabh Bachchan’s autograph. I was young and unaware of the
ways of the market.
Today, I cannot claim to be young, but am
still not very aware of the market. I get my high from my work. I write as I
understand – as the truth unfolds before me. Unlike the oncologist, I do not
need to climb the Everest to get a sense of being. Or, unlike the investment
banker, I do not need to dive in the Andamans to look inside. God has been
kind; immensely kind.
[I reached Station 50 a few months ago].
