LISTEN TO THE SILENCE - IT HAS THE ANSWERS

   The vast majority of us ( and I include myself in this list ) are completely unaware of the role that sound - and silence - plays in our lives and mental well being. I was made aware of this recently by a BBC documentary about an App developed by some whizz kid in response to a peculiar Covid phenomenon. People working from home apparently missed the usual buzz of office sounds and felt disoriented. Some smart kid has now developed an App that has a graphic equaliser which can stream the ususal office background sounds- the chatter of colleagues, ringing of phones, whirring of photo-copiers, clicking of typewriters- which simulates an office environment and makes the person feel comfortable and therefore more productive !

  This demonstration of how "surround sound" shapes our state of mind is telling in a number of ways, not the least of which is the manner in which we have allowed human generated sounds to replace the cadence of nature, with unhealthy effects on our mental well being. Numerous studies have proved how the tyranny of ceaseless sound- especially in cities, in which 40% of the human population now resides- causes stress, hyper-tension, high BP, and most of the time we are not even aware of this hidden killer. It is time to understand what we have given up in our fruitless quest for a materialistic Valhalla.

  It is time we began listening to the Universe again, as our forefathers ( in the not too distant past ) did. We must go back to hearing the silence beyond the background noises and cacophony of modern life. To do so, however, we must first understand the true quality of Silence.

                                                  There is music here.[ Photo by the author ]

                                      

  There is no such thing as complete silence. The universe is producing sounds all the time, and has been doing so since time immemorial. It's we who are not listening. To prove this, a famous American music composer and musician, John Cage, wrote a composition in 1952 titled 4' 33'' or Four Minutes and Thirty Three Seconds, which stunned the music world. The score consists of three movements- of complete silence. The musician sits on stage before an open piano without playing it, there is complete silence and quiet in the hall for four minutes and thirty three seconds. At the end of this period he gets up and walks off the stage.

  In this total quietude, the audience discovers the existence of sounds they had never heard before- the sound of blood circulating in the arteries, the muted beating of the heart, the soft whispers of one's breathing, even the rustling of fabric against fabric as one moves. Which was precisely the point John Cage wished to make- that sound permeates every fibre of the universe, that it does not exist only outside us, but also inside, if only we would care to listen. It is as important to listen within, as it is without.

  Every environment and soundscape in the universe has its own unique sonic signature. There are basically three types of sounds: Geophony ( sounds of the non- biological natural world- the wind, flowing water, the rustling of leaves, the creaking of tree branches moving against each other); Biophony ( the sounds made by living creatures such as insects, birds and animals ); and Anthrophony ( sounds generated by humans and their contraptions). The tragedy of modern life is that we have been allowing the anthrophonic signature to dominate and eclipse the other two, and are consequently losing touch with the natural cadence and rhythms of the universe.

  A natural environment is musically generative, it is alive with musical expression : just think of the symphony played out by the hidden cicadas in the monsoons, the honking of a wedge of geese flying overhead, the rat-a-tat of a woodpecker, the plaintive baying of a lonely pack of coyotes or wolves, the cooing of a wood dove or a " papiha", the roar of a waterfall, the moaning of the wind through the trees. This is the stuff and lifeblood of music, from the ancient bagpipes to the modern orchestra. A healthy environment has birds, animals and insects that occupy the high, medium and low frequency bands of sound, like a symphony. When we take out any of these " musicians" we forever alter the music of the symphony itself.

  The "silent" forests have other sounds too, which researchers are only now beginning to discover. Did you know that trees " talk " to each other ? In his fascinating book THE HIDDEN LIFE OF TREES, Peter Wohlleben reveals that scientists in the Western University of Australia have registered roots of seedlings crackling quietly at a frequency of 220 hertz ! The roots of other seedlings, when exposed to these crackling sounds, oriented their tips in that direction. That means the latter were registering this frequency, they were " hearing" it. Some day we too may hear it, if only we could escape our man made surround sounds.

  In our corrupted and degenerated modern life style we call this " silence"- the silence of the forests and nature, because we have got accustomed to hearing only the anthrophonic sounds. And to escape the tyranny of anthrophony the lucky among us escape occasionally into the realm of nature. But that is not enough. We must also learn to listen to, and preserve, this silence, which is no silence at all, but the music of a universe that is billions of years old. It is the music of " OM ", of Pachelbel, of the Buddhist chanting, of our venerable and ancient Ragas. And unlike the sounds made by man, this "silence" has the ability to calm, to soothe, to rejuvenate, to connect us with the eternal. This is what meditation, Vipassana and Pranayam are all about, realigning our antennae to the world within us. Listen to the Silence- for it has all the answers you are seeking.

  

EXPIRY DATES , FUSED BULBS AND THE GHOSTS OF RETIREMENT.

  A bureaucrat is like a bottle of medicine: he comes with an expiry date. He knows, right from his first day in office, the exact day and year on which he has to hang up his boots, and yet most of them are caught unprepared on the appointed day, scrambling to adjust to the changed realities. On one occasion, when I moved into a house being vacated by a senior who had just retired, I found him in his pyjamas, furiously packing mounds of "raddi"- three years' worth of old newspapers (he was entitled to five every day), a pile as imposing as any in the National Archives. Seeing the perplexed look on my face he sheepishly explained: "Just to tide me over till the pension starts coming, you see...."

  Bureaucrats don't retire, they are filed away and become a PPO (Pension Payment Order) number in the Accountant General's office. The smarter ones among them refuse to accept the expiry date and consider it  the "best by" date at most, and adopt various yoga postures in an attempt to get another five years, one reason why Yoga has proved to be so popular with civil servants. The most practiced asana (position) is the  "Sirnamaskar", a variation of the  "Suryanamaskar"- the posture is the same, only the God has changed. It's nothing but old whine in new bottles, but it usually works.

  Retirement is, of course, the great equaliser and leveller, as I'm now finding out in my village of Puranikoti. I may have retired in the Apex scale, but I have to bow and scrape before the IPH (Irrigation and Public Health) key man or the Electricity Board lineman every time  I have a water or power supply problem. They are the new VVIPs for me, along with the Patwari, the driver of the single HRTC bus that serves my village, and the postman who comes once a week if you are still in his good books. Our  "Acche Din" depends on them and not a distant Prime Minister expounding on Atmanirbharta. This was very well explained to me one day by my good friend and I.P.S. batchmate, Heimant Sarin: "A retired babu is like a fused bulb, Shuks , it doesn't matter whether the bulb was of 120 watts or 10 watts- once fused, all bulbs are similar." Had he studied English literature in Delhi University instead of guzzling  "chhang" at Tib Dhabs , Heimant would perhaps have couched this wisdom in more poetic language: 

" Scepter and crown shall tumble down

  And in the dust be equal made

  With the poor crooked scythe and spade...."

But the gist of what Heimant says is certainly an improvement on a First Information Report, which would have been his favourite bedside reading when he was yoked to the plough.

  It is said that a criminal always returns to the scene of his crime, which is why retired bureaucrats just can't tear themselves away from their former offices. They haunt the corridors of power like Banquo's ghost, but unlike this Shakespearean spectre, they insist on dishing out unwanted advice, recounting hoary tales from their undistinguished pasts, and drinking endless cups of sarkari tea while the files on his reluctant host's desk keep piling up. But their effect on the serving babus is the same as Banquo's ghost on Macbeth- making them feel guilty that they are still in service while the old geezer has retired, that they have taken his place unjustly. I would strongly recommend that all bureaucrats read Macbeth, so that they can exorcise all such ghosts when the bell tolls for them.

  Retired bureaucrats just can't forget their heady days in power, when they were fawned upon hand and foot, and confuse this with genuine popularity. This misconception sometimes goes to their head. An I.C.S. (Indian Civil Service) colleague of my father-in-law, who had been Chief Commissioner of a Union Territory (UT), convinced himself that the populace loved him to distraction, and after retiring stood for election to the post of M.P  from that UT. He received, I am told, 17 votes, mostly from people who mistook his name for that of another candidate. His wife later confessed to my mother-in-law that she didn't vote for him- he was already too full of his self-importance, even without being an MP !

  However, there is one positive trait that we carry into our twilight years- the habit of meticulously keeping all papers in files. I have carefully marked files for every subject under the sun, including the names of blighters who have asked me for copies of my books but have not paid for them. It's a different matter that I can never find the right file when I most need it. My doctor tells me that this is a sign of AAADD- Age Activated Attention Deficit Disorder. But I won't blame you if you thought the acronym was another one of Mr. Modi's pet schemes, announced on Republic Day and forgotten by Independence Day, or a type of cell for your electronic thingummy.

  But this habit can occasionally work miracles. When the Chief Commissioner referred to earlier handed in his pail in the fulness of time, his widow could not find his Will, which posed a problem in probating his considerable estate. When she had just about given up, the old gentleman appeared in her dream one night and told her to look in the pages of John Grisham's book THE TESTAMENT in his library. She did, and sure enough the Will was there! Who says civil servants don't have a whacky sense of humour ? (This is a true story, I swear, though I may have got the title of the book wrong. It could have been  WHERE THERE'S A WILL THERE'S A LAWYER by Confucius, or WILL HE, WON'T HE ? by Rahul Gandhi).

  And finally, there's this thing about bureaucrats writing books after they retire, something which has assumed the dimensions of a plague or pandemic. These books fall into two broad categories: toolkits for fixing the civil services, and memoirs of a life generally mis-spent. I have yet to figure out which is more lethal, but it's a close call. In this respect one can't but agree with Christopher Hitchins when he says that "Everybody does have a book in them, but in most cases that is where it should stay." Which is why I also support the government's latest diktat that bars retired govt. servants from writing about their experiences in service. Retirement is a time for blessed forgetting, not recollecting. For the latter we have the blood curdling Partition Horrors Remembrance Day now, don't we ?

  Which reminds me that my birth certificate is nearing its expiry date and it's time for me to write my own Will. But is it worth the effort, I ask myself ? By the time I get that one way ticket (with a 50% discount for senior citizens, thank you) , Mrs Sitharaman will in all likelihood have ensured that there's nothing left in my bank accounts, my car would have been scrapped by Mr. Gadkari, my Mutual Fund investments would have been squirrelled away in the Dominican Republic by some fat cat, and my Mashobra home would have been demolished to make another six lane highway for tourists from Karol Bagh and Kotkapura. Maybe I'll just spend my remaining years in that Kedarnath cave when Mr. Modi vacates it to move into his new mansion on the Central Vista. Must remember to ask Heimant whether I'll need any bulbs there.    

THE JUDICIARY HAS A ROLE TO PLAY IN THE 2024 ELECTIONS

     The bugles have been sounded for the five state elections next year and the General elections in 2024. The BJP, the well oiled election machine that it is, has already made the first moves: it has changed two Chief Ministers and brokered a deal with a third, it has started putting its blue eyed boys in crucial positions in the bureaucracy, it has hunkered down to sit out the many storms its faulty governance model has raised, it has taken the first steps to " regulate " a digital media it can neither coerce nor buy out, it is even testing the communal waters to see if it will pay the same dividends that it did in 2014 and 2019-witness the talk of " population control " measures and the inflammatory rally at Jantar Mantar in Delhi on the 9th of this month .

    The Opposition, which is more of a " Supposition " than a fact, is in the meanwhile going through the same dumb charade it does every five years- various leaders making gestures and statements which other leaders then have to figure out. The Congress has made a beginning by doing everything it can to lose the one state it was sure of winning in 2022; Ms Mayawati is still assessing whether "disproportionate assets " are preferable to votes, Akhilesh Yadav in UP has declared a premature victory ( as in 2017 ) by announcing that he will go it alone, Navin Patnaik will continue to bask in hockey glory till the BJP pulls the astro-turf from under his feet, Sharad Pawar may still strike a Presidential deal with the BJP. The new trinity of Modi, Shah and Nadda are not losing any sleep over these jaded shenanigans; it's deja vu times again, they've seen it all before. The only novel factor this time is a recharged Mamata Banerjee, but it remains to be seen how long her batteries can last in the face of the lemming instinct that drives our Opposition parties.

   To be fair to the non- BJP parties, however, they are running a three legged race while the BJP is roaring on all four. Over the last seven years they have been denied the space to function or to compete. The BJP has appropriated all the levers of administration, the flow of funds, the media space and narrative and instruments, social media and cyber space, parliamentary and legislative eco system. It even determines what constitutes truth and fact, to hell with the reality on the ground. It has achieved all this by means which are dubious, authoritarian, undemocratic, perhaps even illegal and unconstitutional. And if this status quo is allowed to continue, there is little chance of it being dislodged from power in the coming elections. To compete fairly the Opposition needs a level playing field which just does not exist today.

   This is where the role of the judiciary comes into play.

   Most, if not all, of these encroachments on the Constitution and the democratic space are, prima facie, illegal and have been challenged in the Supreme Court and High Courts. Unfortunately, they continue to linger there, conferring on the BJP a continuing advantage in elections. There are many such issues, but for the purpose of this essay let us just pick three of the most important ones.

   The Electoral Bonds are a perversity of the highest order and have enabled the BJP to not only win elections but to also subvert opposition governments in states which they have lost. They enable it to collect huge amounts of money without any transparency and to legitimise possible kickbacks. According to the latest report of the ADR ( Association for Democratic Reforms), in the year 2019-20, the BJP received Rs. 785.77 crore as donation, while 5 other major opposition parties ( including the Congress, TMC and NCP ) received a combined Rs.228.035 crores. The BJP's stranglehold on donations is further confirmed by the fact that 76% of all donations by Electoral Trusts were made to the BJP in the same period. The illegality of all this does not lie in the donations per se but in the complete shroud of secrecy that veils them- NO ONE knows who has contributed how much and to whom, except the Government! This by itself is enough to make all corporates and donors fall in line. The challenge to the Electoral Bonds has been inexplicably pending in the Supreme Court for the last three years.

   Consider next the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act and Sedition ( Sec. 124 A  of the Indian Penal Code), two legislative weaponry utilised by the BJP to ensure that it wins elections. Democracy presupposes the open flow of information, the right to criticize the government of the day, the uncensored reporting of public facts. Without these there can be no fair contest between a ruling party and opposition parties. The BJP, by its ruthless wielding of these two pieces of legislation, has created an atmosphere of fear and intimidation that prevents journalists from honest reporting and the public from being able to access the true facts. Even someone complaining on social media about oxygen shortages is arrested, a journalist going to the village of a rape victim is booked under UAPA, even a Rajdeep Sardesai or a Vinod Dua are charged with sedition. We will not even mention the hundreds locked up in Kashmir for just being Kashmiris. What the threat of these two provisions of law does is that it chokes the channels of information to the public, who are then left with only the government narrative which is what the sold out mainstream media dishes out every minute of the day. These pieces of legislation too have been challenged, but continue to languish in the courts' registries.

   Pegasus is the latest concealed stiletto  to be found in the government's arsenal. All the evidence so far, and the government's steadfast refusal to either give a categorical answer, or to allow discussion in Parliament, or to order an investigation, only confirm the belief that it has bought the spyware, and has used it to serve the BJP's political interests, not the country's. The ramifications of this surveillance extend far beyond the invasion of individual privacy, they strike at the very foundations of our democratic edifice. All the organs of a democracy appear to have been targeted: the judiciary, the media, the Opposition, activists, even the government's own representatives. The information gathered from such surveillance can enable the BJP to sabotage any opposition to it in an election and to coerce all institutions and individuals to toe its line- or else. At least nine petitions have been filed in the Supreme Court seeking a court monitored investigation but the court is yet to issue a notice to the government.

  There are other controversial decisions of the government which too are crucial in deciding the fate of the coming elections: the PM CARES fund, CAA (Citizenship Amendment Act), Article 370 and the reorganization of Jammu and Kashmir, the implications of the Pegasus surveillance on the Bhima Koregaon cases, the the new IT Rules, among others. All have been challenged but are pending adjudication and a verdict. The Rafale verdict by a now discredited judge is crying out for a review and reinvestigation in the light of the latest revelations in France.

   Any delay in pronouncing judgments on these matters benefits the ruling party as the status quo is in its favour. It further handicaps the Opposition and puts it at a disadvantage in any election. The public has a right to know whether the government's actions are legal and legitimate, and the courts have a responsibility and duty to adjudicate on them with dispatch. Elections in a democracy must be fought on a level playing field, not one where one party has an enormous, dubiously acquired superiority in money, muscle and machinations. It is therefore in the larger interest of the country and democracy that our higher courts decide these cases well before the elections so that the voter can make an informed assessment of the legality of the government's actions. This is not optional but a duty cast on them by the Constitution. For as Timothy D Snyder, Professor of History at Yale, reminds us: "Democracy only has substance if there's the rule of law. That is, if people believe....that there's a judiciary out there that will make sense of things if there's some challenge. If there is no rule of law people will be afraid to vote the way they want to vote."                                                                                                                                                                                The courts are not just an organ of governance, they are also part of civil society and have a stake in its civilised existence.

THE DEPUTY COMMISSIONER'S DOG

 

THE DEPUTY COMMISSIONER'S DOG

     Those joining the IAS (Indian Administrative Service) come form all religious faiths and creeds, excluding possibly the Mormons and born-again Adventists . But for any IAS probationer training in a district there is only one God- the Deputy Commissioner. The DC(as he is generally known) has all the attributes of divinity, is to be obeyed without question, can make no mistake, is the acme of success, represents the majesty of the state, and his every word is etched in stone. That was the prevailing general wisdom in the spring of 1976 when I was informed at Mussoorie that I had to do my district training in Mandi district in Himachal: the DC, I learnt, was one Mr. C.D.Parsheera of the 1968 batch.

    Mr. Parsheera was precisely 5 feet 3 inches tall and it took me some time to spot him behind the huge table (mounted on a two foot high platform) from where generations of DCs had dispensed justice. He handed me a folder and said, with an impish gleam in his eye that was his hallmark: "Shukla, here's your training schedule in various offices. But your real training will be at my residence, from 7.00 PM to 10.00 PM every evening. Don't even think of missing it!"

   And that's how it was for the next six months. During the day I learnt the hardware of government- rules, procedures, processes, programmes- and in the evenings the vital software and OS (Operating System), without which the former was useless. Mr. Parsheera was fond of the Hippocrene and used to boast that he could do what even Jesus could not: whereas Jesus converted water into wine, he could convert wine into water- and he did, prodigious quantities of it ! But I'm getting ahead of my tale.

   On my first visit to the DC residence that evening I was shown into an empty sitting room; I was as nervous as a patient in a dentist's chair. I straightened my tie, combed back my hair (I had plenty of it back then), polished my shoes with my hankie and sat back, as if reclining on an egg souffle . Presently, a little wire haired terrier ambled into the room with a swagger that indicated it was aware of its exalted position as the DC's dog. It saw me, gave a magisterial bark as if asking me to identify myself. Since this was a few years before Aadhar, I sat still, unaware of the social status of a DC's dog. The little horror walked over to me and started sniffing around my ankles in a practiced manner. Suddenly, it raised one leg and piddled all over my polished shoes! I instinctively kicked out, landing a satisfying blow on its ribs: the pooch howled and made for the door- through which in walked the DC. His practiced eye took in everything in an instant.

" Shukla," he asked in a menacing voice, " did you just kick my dog?"

" Yes, sir, " I blurted, " he piddled all over my shoes."

" Consider yourself privileged, young man- he usually ignores all probationers. But don't EVER kick my dog again."

" But...but..sir," I tried to explain, sticking one foot out," my shoes..."

" Irrelevant!" ruled Mr. Parsheera. "Take this as your first lesson: a DC's dog ranks above an IAS probationer at all times, and you will not raise your voice, let alone your foot, against him ever again." So that was my first lesson in service, and a good one too, for in the IAS your batch and seniority determine the rest of your life. In fact, there's nothing more interesting than watching two IAS officers, strangers to each other, meeting for the first time: they will circle around each other like two wolves in a wolf pack, sniffing tentatively, trying to determine each other's batch; once that is figured out and the pecking order established, normal social behaviour and bonhomie are restored.

   The evenings at Mr. Parsheera'a house, with the whiskey flowing like a perennial mountain stream, taught me more about government than the year I spent in the Academy. His core team, hardened Bacchanalians all of them, comprised (if I remember correctly) Mohar Singh the G.A (General Assistant to DC), T.R. Sharma the SDM (Sadar), Captain Hiralal the Land Acquisition Officer, and Dr. Pandeya the Chief Medical Officer. Listening to this merry band of Revenue Officers I was exposed to the entire gamut of survival techniques needed to progress in the bureaucracy: how to handle the ego (and more important, the personal staff) of a visiting Chief Minister or Governor, how to keep an MLA on your side without doing his work, how to extract a new car from a stingy Finance Department, how to reply to an Assembly Question without giving any  worthwhile information, how to control an unruly mob when the police have all run away, how to show the same water-harvesting structure from four different angles in order to quadruple the performance statistics! Invaluable strategies that stood me in good stead and later enabled me to rise even higher than my generally acknowledged level of incompetence.

   Mr. Parsheera was only about 32 years old at the time but looked like he was 22 or so, as all Lahaulas do till the day they are buried. But he was mature and seasoned far beyond his years and watching him deal with the public and politicians was a treat. He was also instinctively smart and savvy, belying his humble beginnings in a small Lahaul village. To cite just one example: he hardly ever went to the District Officers' Club even though he was its President, though he would tipple at home every night. I once asked him about this and his reply was: " To avoid rubbing shoulders with people who have have some work with me. Always remember, Shukla, its very difficult to say NO to a person with whom you've had a drink the previous night."

   On one occasion he asked me to accompany him to Shimla for a meeting, just to prove to me what a waste of time Secretariat meetings were. In those simpler days DCs had no cars, just Willy's Jeeps. Mr. Parsheera insisted on driving himself, his boyish head barely visible above the steering wheel. We drove into Shimla at full speed , the black flag of the DC fluttering imposingly from the bonnet. At the bus stand we were stopped by a police constable, an unusual occurrence for a DC's car. The constable walked over to Mr. Parsheera's window, looked meaningfully at the flag, patted the DC on his right cheek and said: " Beta, jab Papa gadi me nahi hote hain to jhandi utar diya karo." ( Son, when your dad is not in the car then you should remove the flag). Completely unabashed, Mr. Parsheera pointed at me, said " Yeh mere papa hain !" (He is my Dad!) and drove on. There was nothing officious about him (as a tribal boy who had made it to the IAS there was nothing left for him to prove) and he could always see the funny side of things- another survival technique, by the way!).

   Mr. Parsheera was keen that I should marry a beautiful Mandi girl. In those days Mandi was known as the Paris of north India and its girls were pretty, fashionable and educated. I was advised by the DC that I should hang out at Gandhi Chowk every evening and in no time at all my plight would be trothed with some hill beauty. Now, for those not acquainted with Mandi town, Gandhi Chowk is to Mandi what Connaught Place used to be to Delhi or Oxford Street to London- the fashionable hub for the young and trendy. Gandhi Chowk is the offline equivalent of Matrimony.com where couples suss out each other, meet, date and eventually tie the knot till debt do them part. For a probationer, "advice" from a DC is actually an order, so I took to hanging out at Gandhi Chowk every evening, circumambulating around the statue in the middle more times than the Orbiter has gone around Mars. It was, however, to no avail: the maidens of Mandi were not only beautiful, they were also smart and obviously detected in me the fatal flaw which in later years prevented me from becoming Chief Secretary! They stayed away, and I had to go back to Kanpur to find a wife- in UP you can be a lump of Kryptonite, but if you are in the IAS, your marriage prospects are bright. Neerja, of course, more than made up for what I missed out in Gandhi Chowk, but for Mr. Parsheera, however, it was an abiding regret that he could not succeed in this venture. He always considered this as one of his failures as Deputy Commissioner!

  One never forgets one's first DC, just as one never forgets one's first love. My DC died young. Mr. Parsheera suffered a massive heart attack while crossing the Rohtang pass in 1983 and was dead by the time they brought him to Manali. I attended his wake the next day at the Manali Circuit House : it was the last evening I spent with him and got thoroughly drunk. I know he would have approved.