THE ANATOMY OF A PARTLY WASTED LIFE

Most of us seek wisdom by reading tomes by wise men and Shashi Tharoor, but once in a while, going through a book for some entertainment and fun, we come across something that makes us think and exclaim: Hold on! This is bang on! Why didn't I think of this earlier?

The other day I was reading a book by one of my favourite writers, Jeremy Clarkson (of the BBC Top Gear fame), when I came across this gem: If you die with a hefty bank balance and a clear conscience, it means you have led a wasted life ! I poured myself a stiff single malt, lit a cigarette and went into a meditative torpor- By Jove! there was a lot to think about here!

Clarkson's aphorism, of course, applies to middle-class folks like you and me, not to the fat cats. The Adanis and Ambanis have no choice but to die with hefty bank balances for they are too big to hit the minimum balance, and have too much moolah to spend or give away. Anyone whose monthly residential electricity bill runs to Rs. 76 lakhs is not the type of guy Clarkson was thinking about: the only way they can shuffle off this mortal coil without a hefty bank balance is if the five biggest banks in India collapse,  St. Kitts and the Cayman island disappear under the  waters or they enter into a partnership with Trump.

Clarkson's thesis that a good life means that we live beyond our means applies to the Gen X,Y and Z of the EMI and credit card culture, but not to the fossils of my generation. We were taught to live below, not above, our means, to build our little nest eggs hidden away from Ms Sitharaman, to be left behind when we cross the rainbow, for our Hindu faith tells us that we will be reborn in the same family, so why not begin the second innings with a little advance deposit in the State Bank of India? Creating that nest-egg, however, from an erratic pension from a bankrupt state govt. and sliding repo rates, 6% inflation, sin taxes on liquor and cigarettes, Mr. Gadkari's toll tax, is no easy matter. It can only be done by adopting the virgin's SOP- say "NO" to everything.

Which is what I do. The membership of the Noida Golf Club will have to wait for a rebirth, as will that trip to Switzerland to catch up with my old friend Jogishwar Singh, or that Arctic cruise which costs an arm and a leg whether you see a polar bear or not. The single malts are reserved for special occasions, the books are purchased once a year at the World Book Fair from the second hand stalls, Old Spice will have to do in place of Paco Rabanne, the kababs are from Singh's Tandoor in Noida and not Le Merediene. But here's the funny thing, Mr Clarkson: all this self-denial does not make an iota of difference to the quality of my life. I can meet Jogishwar in Delhi (if he's stupid enough to come to India), Blender's Pride tastes just as good to my untrained palate as Laphroaig, the second hand books read as well as the new ones, the cologne doesn't matter since, insofar as attracting ladies is concerned I'm well past my sell-by date,  the best kababs are to be found in street food joints not five star hotels, and I can see as well through a Lenskart  specs as through a Ray Ban Oakley. So I think I'll continue to live below my means, thank you, and invest in a little insurance for the next life and for the inevitable ICU (Incentive Care Unit in hospital parlance because the docs are incentivised to keep you there as long as possible).

On the other hand, dying with a tainted conscience (Clarkson's second imperative for having lived a good life) is much easier to do. It doesn't require much effort in a world of dog- eat- dog ambitions, competitive aspirations, television induced temptations, a culture of doing unto others before they do unto you. Ask Moses, whose ten commandments became a hundred fragments even before he reached the bottom of the mountain. How, I asked my pooch after the third peg, does one retain a clear, spotless conscience when everything which is desirable is either illegal, immoral, or married to someone else? Not that I haven't tried, in the best traditions of Vanprasta.

I've tried yoga, meditation, cold water baths and even suffered through a few "Mann ki baats", but my conscience refuses to cleanse itself. It acquires a new blemish every time I cast a second, furtive look at the neighbour's wife hanging out the clothes on the balcony, my inner voice will not cease to wish that Netanyahu's suffers as much as the 65000 Palestinians he has killed, it insists that I do not have to disclose to Ms. Sitharaman the royalty I received for my last book, it always argues that giving up my seat on the metro for any woman is sheer stupidity, it tells me to ignore Neerja's glare and go ahead and have that last (fourth) drink for the gutter.  And, having lost most of my spine during the course of 35 years spent in the bureaucracy, I'm in no position to stand up to that damned, tainted conscience which now resembles the typical American trouser bottom when they ran out of toilet paper during the initial days of Covid.

So it hasn't been a totally wasted life, Mr Clarkson: I have a nest egg tucked away where even my descendants can't find it, and a tainted conscience the devil would be proud of. What more can one ask for?  

WATERING HOLES AND SILENT HEART ATTACKS

 

 WATERING  HOLES AND  SILENT  HEART  ATTACKS

   Watering holes are essential retreats for all species, in the real jungle or the urban one. They provide much needed R+R and the chance to rub noses (and the occasional unsuspecting posterior) in a relaxed setting. But whereas in the jungle there is only one rule- the bigger guy drinks first- we have managed to prescribe a weird set of dictums to regulate membership and behaviour in our gated oases which we call Clubs. In Delhi's Gymkhana club, for example, one has to apply for membership while still an unsuspecting foetus, such is the length of the waiting list. (I applied 30 years ago and have yet to hear from them). New members are inducted only in place of old ones who kick the ice- bucket, as it were, so a kind of Death Watch prevails on the club premises at all times, with the "waitees" keeping a close watch on the "oldies" and plying them with loads of cholesterol to help the natural process of ageing.

  I have just learnt that there exists a club in Europe called the Giga Society; it has only 6 members, primarily because to qualify one has to score more than 195 on the IQ test. That rules out everyone in India except Mr. Mani Shankar Aiyer, but I'm told that they are not accepting any applications from India after Vyapam- they don't trust our marking system. The whackiest membership requirement, however, comes from- where else?- my home state, UP. There is an exclusive club there called the Mritak Sangh, and to become a member one must be dead! No kidding. The saving grace, however, is that you don't have to be dead-dead or brain dead as in a bureaucrat, but only declared dead, through false affidavits, forged letters and documents, usually by relatives who are fed up of waiting for you to call it a day so they can grab your real estate ( and sometimes your wife). These walking dead have now formed a guild so that they can get together and drown their sorrows. In the USA there is an Ejection Club ( I checked twice, it IS Ejection and not Ejaculation, so don't get your hopes up quite yet). It had 5607 members at last count, and to become one you must have survived being fired out of a military plane by ejection seat. Being fired by the govt. from your job does not qualify, so that rules out Urjit Patel and Raghuram Rajan who in any case have parachuted safely to the Davos club. Wing Commander Abhindan of course can now join, with honours because he also ensured that the Pakistani pilot couldn't qualify.

  The ADC club in Shimla persists with a unique caste system, in violation of our Constitution. It's run by the Army but they have to take in some civilians also because the property belongs to the govt. The civilian chappies can't vote, but the unkindest cut is that they have to pay more for their booze! The army guys get their liquor at CSD rates while the bureaucrats have to pay the normal, post excise, bootlegger rates. They are the new OBCs ( Other Boozing Classes) of Shimla. This doesn't do too much for civil-military bonhomie but it ensures that at least one third of the membership is sober at all times and that only civilian bottoms get pinched on New Year's eves.

  Which brings me naturally to another club where liquor poses another kind of problem- the CSOI   (Civil Services Officers' Institute), Delhi. It's a splendid place with a fine bar and two restaurants, created exclusively for bureaucrats so that they can let their hair down without any arms dealers exploiting the bald patches. It's the place where pensioners are dispatched by their wives every morning to get them out of THEIR hair. Unfortunately, it appears to be run by some teetotaler gnome  in the Cabinet Secretariat who has never heard of CCTVs. Nothing else can explain the recent decision that the bar will open only at 7.00 PM on week days. My discreet inquiries have revealed that the govt's innovative 360 degree assessment system had perhaps revealed that some babus were playing hookey on working days, having gimlets at the bar when they should have been recording dissenting notes on various files or suppressing the data on employment generation. But why shut down the bar, for godsakes? Why not just ask Arvind Kejriwal to install one of his CCTVs at the door? That would have worked just as well, for a CCTV a day makes a babu earn his pay, as the ditty goes. I am reliably informed that the retired babus are now planning to move to Assam or Bihar en masse where the hooch is freely available in police stations and excise offices. Their wives will not follow them, of course, which is another reason why they are shifting base. As that other ditty goes: four pegs a day keeps the wife away.

   The India International Centre in Delhi has fine dining rooms where the members come to relax after delivering lectures on how to change the world in 90 days. But its restaurants have the ambience of a morgue, ( the main chicken dish, I learn, is called Morgue Masala) and not just because the median age of its members is three score and ten. I was there last month with a group of cadre mates and their spouses ( for some reason they are never called 'wives' in govt. parlance, have you noticed?), all retired chappies except one couple. Now,  IAS officers while in service are a bit like that Russian dog in that old joke- they are well fed but not allowed to bark. So when the muzzles come off after 35 years they tend to be a chatty lot. In the middle of all this yapping and general mirth a waiter emerged from nowhere like Banquo's ghost with a placard which, shorn of bureaucratese, essentially asked us to SHUT UP. Since it was an unsigned statement, like the note submitted to the Supreme Court on the Rafale deal, we took no notice of it. After five minutes the undertaker himself materialised ( it was actually the Manager) to advise us in a sepulchral tone that the IIC had a high cholestrol, low decibel policy and could we please, therefore, speak in Chinese whispers? I learn that all heart attacks in this club are silent heart attacks because of the rules. Damned irritating if you are a waitee on the waiting list, because you never get to know when a member has left for his heavenly abode. So now I begin my day by reading the obituary columns- I may get lucky some day, you know.

WEIGHTS AND MEASURES

 I don't fly much these days, mainly because I never know whether my plane is being flown by a pilot, co-pilot or auto-pilot. That's a problem for me because these days the pilot is usually busy having photo ops with his proud mom and dad in the cabin, the co-pilot is busy bashing down the washroom door with a lady passenger inside, and the auto-pilot is probably a bunch of algorithms coded by a young nerd in Gurgaon who's mad about getting only a 2% annual increment and has a grudge against everyone. Now, which sane person would get on to a plane in the hands of these three entities? So I prefer to be highway robbed by Mr. Gadkari and his toll plazas.

But on the occasional flight I am forced to take I always encounter an unusual form of discrimination which no one appears to have noticed. Now, I weigh 60 kgs on a good day, which can go down to 59 kgs on days when I do not get my favourite repast, the Delhi Gymkhana mutton cutlets. However, such days are rare since my sister-in-law, Anjali, makes sure that this supply chain works seamlessly. To get back to the point, however, my weight makes me a lightweight in a country where  40% of the population will be obese by 2030. And this is no country for lightweights.

You are not considered successful in life if you don't have a cantilevered pot-belly. On buses or metros you are invariably compressed into a corner and denied your fair share of space. One invariably gets shoved to the back of any queue Ms Sitharaman decides to put one in. Ladies think you lack in testosterone and therefore not worth their time. Insurers consider you a bad risk and double the premium. But it's the airlines with whom I have my major grouse because their baggage rules discriminate against lightweights like me.

Most airlines allow about 20 kg of checked-in baggage on economy class; anything more and you pay through your e-nose for the extra baggage, an average of Rs. 600 per kg. So if  I'm carrying 5 kg extra, I have to shell out Rs. 3000. Fair enough, you might say? But hold on. What is my total WTA (Weight To Airline)? 85 kg. (My weight 60 kg+free baggage 20 kg+ extra baggage 5 kg.) Compare this with the the Great Khali like hulk behind me in the queue: he weighs 120 kg and his luggage weighs 20 kg. His WTA is 140 kg, compared to my 85 kg, 55 kgs more- but here's the catch- he walks aboard without having to pay a paisa, while I paid 3000 bucks even though my WTA was 55kgs less than his ! There has to be something wrong here, right? Isn't this institutionalising and rewarding obsesity at the cost of those who labour to remain trim and supple?

Weight plays an important role in the flying cost of a plane, and airlines are constantly devising ways to cut down on the weight. According to one leading European Aviation magazine an aircraft which performs five flights a day, each round-flight of 1140 kms, would save 6240 kgs of fuel every year costing US$ 4200 for every kilogramme of weight reduction! Why do you thinks the cabin crew (airhostesses in the days when we called a gal a gal) are usually girls? Why do you think one now gets fewer magazines on flights? Why do you think the cutlery is plastic and not metal? It's the weight, stupid: a girl weighs 20 kgs less than a man on average, so just this gender preference can shave about 200-250 kgs off the weight of an aircraft. The same logic drives the cutlery and the magazines.                                                                                                              Therefore the question: why should airlines not apply the same principle and logic to passengers' body weight? Why should they not move to a "Pay as you Weigh" policy? Airlines should calculate the TOTAL weight associated with a passenger- what I have termed WTA- and not segregate the body weight and the luggage weight, charging only for the latter and not the former. Fix a consolidated permissible weight, say a reasonable 90 kgs for both flyer and his luggage, and charge for anything in excess of that. Why give the fat cats a free pass at the cost of the slender, Mr. Bean types like me?

This would revolutionize air travel and be a win-win for all concerned. The airlines would make oodles of money and would not have to convert their washrooms into paid Sulabh Sauchalayas, or introduce standing-only flights; the horizontally challenged would now have an incentive to move towards the vertical plane; those who cavil at this or refuse to change can travel by Royal Caribbean or Norwegian, which may be a good thing after all: we may see a return to the good old days of the ocean liners, which would be a boon for the environment. 

My suggestion is not as far-fetched as it sounds, you know. Airlines are beginning to see the light and count the millions they are losing by carrying excess lard free of cost. US airlines have now started requesting XXL passengers, who are likely to overflow into the next seat, if not the next plane, to buy a second ticket or deboard. The day is not far off when the XL types too shall be charged by weight, and we scrawny types shall finally get our day in the sun, if not the metro.

THE SOVEREIGN RIGHT TO PRIVACY-- OR SECRECY ?

We live in strange times indeed where the rules of logic are turned on their head everyday with every new executive diktat or court ruling. The latest is this new epidemic of "privacy"- one sided, of course. On the one hand the government is doing everything to prise loose every shred of personal information from its citizens, through Aadhaar, PAN, voter registration, face recognition, DigiYatra, authorising the tax sleuths to mine even one's social media chats and emails, snooping on their phone conversations through imported malware. On the other, it refuses to share with the same citizens information they are entitled to in order to meaningfully exercise their democratic rights. In other words, the citizen has no right to privacy, but the government has a sovereign right to it ! 

When you buy a packet of noodles you are entitled by law to know what it contains. But when you choose your Prime Minister- a more consequential decision, you will agree- you are not entitled to know whether he has a valid educational qualification or not. Even though he has declared it in his electoral nomination form, it has been displayed in a press conference by his Sancho Panza and published in many papers! For the Delhi High Court has ruled that this is private information and no public interest is served by revealing it.

There are so many threads of logical incoherence and fallacy in this ruling that it is difficult to separate them. For one, a person in public life cannot claim privacy in matters that may have a bearing on his character or functioning, such as educational qualification, income and its sources, marital status, material disposition of his family members, whether he has a criminal past: these details are necessary for the public to decide whether or not confidence can be reposed on him/her. Second, he has already disclosed this information on oath to the government (in this case the ECI) and it is no longer private. Third, such disclosure has to be properly verified to the satisfaction of not only the election authority but also that of the voter. Fourth, by this same misconstrued logic of the court, all other information provided by a candidate also cannot be verified or made public! Then why ask for this information in the first place, if the purpose is to put it  under lock and key? The logic of this ruling makes a mockery of the election laws and the voter's rights. In effect the court is telling us that we have no right to any information about a candidate and we might as well elect a pig in a poke! 

Actually, this ruling is an inevitable consequence of a disturbing judicial pattern which began with the jurisprudence of the sealed cover, a hideous anomaly in any rule-based form of governance. It started with the Rafale case, was further refined in the Pegasus case and has now become institutionalised with this judgment. 

The recent elevation of some High Court judges to the Supreme Court further establishes how entrenched the element of secrecy (under the garb of privacy) has become. It has been reported that one judge has been elevated after superseding 40 judges senior to him, and inspite of a dissenting note of a member of the Collegium (which is not being made public). Now, in the executive, even an Upper Division clerk cannot be superseded without recording detailed reasons for doing so, in the DPC proceedings. It's the courts which have themselves reiterated time and again this principle of natural justice. But, strangely, they are loath to practice what they preach when it come to themselves, on the grounds that it would infringe on the "privacy" of the superseded judges by besmirching their reputation. Which begs the question: are only judges entitled to have a reputation? It would appear that what is good for the clerk is not good enough for the judge!

This perverted interpretation of "privacy" has now become a weapon to deny legitimate information to the public, whether it be in Parliament, the Information Commissions, statutory or constitutional bodies, the courts, the media. Even the press is being restrained from doing its duty on the grounds of privacy or reputation of individuals. Just last week a Delhi  court has injucted some reputed investigative journalists (including Paranjoy Guha Thakurta and Ravi Nair) from publishing "defamatory" and "misleading" articles on the Adani group, and has asked them to take down some articles. Pardon me, but how can the court be so sure that the articles are not based on facts, or that they are defamatory? Has it examined any evidence to this effect before issuing the restraining order? If any defamation is involved then shouldn't the Adani group be filing defamation cases against the authors, instead of the court doing a preemptive job on behalf of the company? Legitimate questions all, since more and more politicians and "celebrities" are now taking this easy route of claiming "privacy" to avoid any public scrutiny of their deeds.

The dubiously constituted Election Commission of India has set new standards in opacity and secrecy, refusing to share any worthwhile or timely information with the voters, whether it be number of votes cast, VVPAT counts, machine readable voter rolls, reasons that prompted a hasty SIR in Bihar, the names of the 65 lakh excluded voters in the SIR and the reasons for their deletions, the number of "Bangladeshis" detected (a stated reason for the SIR). Whenever it has divulged some information it has done so reluctantly and under the nudging of the courts.

It has, however, reached the height of nebulosity and obtuseness with its refusal to make public the video recordings of the polling process on the grounds of "protecting" the privacy of our mothers, sisters and daughters! This is a formulation worthy of a Uriah Heep or a Goebbles, given that these same ladies are videographed every day in airports, hotels, shops, road crossings, usually without their permission or even knowledge (unlike the polling booths where it is part of publicly proclaimed SOPs). Surely the Chief Deletion Commissioner cannot be unaware of the fact that polling booths are public spaces and not private places? That CCTVs are set up in polling booths precisely to keep an eye on the polling process, including the polling staff and the voters? That this makes for greater transparency, and that no voter has ever objected to it?

How can justice be "seen to be done" when the process is shrouded under a cloak of secrecy disguised as privacy? Justice can be served, and the law upheld, only in the full glare of the public gaze, not in the dark shadows of legally doubtful subterfuge.

BOOK REVIEW : THE KARGIL WAR SURGEON'S TESTIMONY

 The Kargil War Surgeon's Testimony by Col (R) Arup Ratan Basu                                             Published by Bloomsbury India. 2025

                                 

All wars are invariably followed by books, but these are usually about the blood and glory,  strategy and logistics, victories and failures. Colonel Basu's book is delightfully different: while being both humble and unassuming, it is also humane and compassionate, shedding light on the usually ignored "backroom boys" who provide the spine to the arms that fight on the frontlines. Basu is a general surgeon, and this book is a personal account of the two months he spent in the army field hospital at Kargil. It is special and refreshingly different in that it looks at war, not through the eyes of one trained to take lives but one trained to save them.

Freshly commissioned as a surgeon in the Army Medical Corps in December 1998, he was dispatched to Kargil on his first posting where war had just broken out between India and Pakistan. He is candid enough to admit that he was not prepared to be thrust into the jaws of war, ministering to casualties with the most basic of facilities, A field hospital is only the first responder, its job being to stabilise the wounded before shifting them to base hospitals for more advanced care, but that is in theory only, as Col Basu soon found out. Severely wounded soldiers have to be saved during the proverbial "golden hour", sometimes with complicated operations field hospitals are ill-equipped to handle. But this reasoning cannot be an alibi, it has to be confronted as a challenge.

The wounded came every night for two months from sectors which are now household names- Batalik, Dras, Kargil ; Basu and his team worked and operated at night and rested during the day. He gives us the reason for this peculiar time schedule: Indian soldiers, attempting to climb up the lofty mountains on which the Pakistanis were perched, could only do so at night. Casualties therefore occurred at night, but could be evacuated out of the battle zones only the same night (if lucky) but usually on the next night since during the day they would be sitting ducks for the enemy soldiers. So they arrived at the field hospital at night, were attended to and, if required, referred to Srinagar by chopper the next day. Interestingly, the author soon discovered that number of casualties arriving every day was a fairly accurate barometer of how the war was progressing !

Doctors are the unsung heroes of any war, and the figures of the Kargil field hospital prove it: during his short two month tenure there Col. Basu surgically treated 350 casualties and operated on 250- that's a mind boggling 4 operations a day! He lost only two of his patients. It says something about the grit and commitment of army doctors that he had to perform complex surgical procedures which even a state of the art corporate hospital in a metro would find a challenge- splenectomy, thoracotomy, intestine resection and anastomosis; each of these would have ordinarily required a team of specialists. Basu counts as one of his triumphs his success in saving a havildar's gangrenous, splinter-shattered arm from amputation by adopting some dexterous surgical procedures. His peers at the base hospitals, where his patients were forwarded for advanced care, soon conferred on him the well deserved title of the Surgeon of Kargil!

Basu's job afforded him many opportunities to interact with his patients and he learnt a lot about the war from them, details which have to be believed because they came from people who have lived them: how the "disconnect" of our army field commanders led to the intelligence failure to anticipate that Pakistan was upto something on the commanding heights of the border, in spite of being informed by the shepherds and the bakerwals that something was amiss; the complete initial unpreparedness of our soldiers to fight in these heights, without adequate clothing, footwear, snow tents, acclimatisation, even food, a prime reason for the high rate of casualties-527 dead and 1363 wounded; how the tide of war turned with the introduction of the Bofors guns; the deceitful nature of the Pakistan army which planted mines even as they vacated the occupied areas when cease fire was declared.

There are moments of great poignancy too. As when news filters down to the field hospital of the handing over of the bodies of the gallant Capt. Saurav Kalia and his six-man patrol; the anger and sorrow at learning of the horrible mutilation and tortures inflicted on them before their murder in cold blood. Or when Basu is informed to be ready to receive a special casualty; it turned out to be that of Squadron Leader Ajay Ahuja, whose MIG was shot down as he was trying to rescue Flt. Lt. Nachiketa whose plane had also been shot down. Nachiketa was lucky- he was released after a week or so in captivity when India took up his case at international fora. Ahuja was not so lucky: when Col. Basu examined his dead body he found clear signs of torture and cold blooded murder of a POW. What happened to the Geneva Convention?, he asks. Did the government fail in mounting pressure for his release, as it did for Nichiketa? he wonders. But he realises that though wars throw up many questions they provide few answers.

It was not all shelling and surgery at the hospital, though. Soon enough, it was swarmed by journalists ( Barkha Dutt, CNN, Reuters) and celebrities, for as news of the remarkable work being done here got around Col. Basu himself became a celebrity of sorts! The glamorous visitors included Javed Akhtar, Shabana Azmi, Suneil Shetty, Salman Khan, Raveena Tandon, Vinod Khanna, Javed Jaffrey, Bachendri Pal the Everester. . They were a bit of a nuisance at times with their airs, but they were wonderful as morale boosters for the wounded jawans. The author recounts how one patient, bed-ridden with intense back pain and sciatica, jumped out of his bed to get himself happily photographed with the stars, hopping from frame to frame, his pain dissipated! This was noticed by the Commandant who promptly had the chap discharged and sent off to the front lines.

Kargil is located on the banks of the river Suru, originating from the snowfields and glaciers of Trishul. The last chapter is devoted to this river, which had seen so much bloodshed and disruption in these few months, and longed to return to the peace and tranquility its vales once enjoyed. The book ends with a number of poignant questions asked by the river: Why did our neighbours [Pakistan] have to tread into our territory, the territory that never belonged to them? Why did they cause so much destruction? Was it all worth it? There are also questions asked of the river by the gallant soldiers who laid down their lives for their country: Did we not do right in defending your vale? Have you forgotten us too, Suru, as all the others have? Why should you remember this tale, when my countrymen have forgotten me? Do you think that I deserved to die this way?

Questions that will haunt the reader for a long time. For they have no answers.

IT'S NOT ABOUT DOGS - IT'S ABOUT US AND A MORALLY DECAYING SOCIETY

 I for one was not surprised-shocked yes, but not surprised- by the 11th August order of the Supreme Court (since partially reviewed by another bench on the 22nd) on incarcerating stray dogs for life in non-existent dog shelters, condemning them to a sure and miserable death. For, given the downward trajectory of our social, legal and ethical path over these last ten years, this was a judgment waiting to happen. The inhumane response of the executive and RWAs in some states subsequent to the order only confirms the inevitability of our deteriorating civilisational values. In fact, both the first order and its aftermath faithfully reflect the components that are the hall mark of governance and society in general in this New India. To explain, let me list out some of them.

Justice today is not based on general and established juridical principles, as it should be (and used to be), but on the proclivities and biases of those who administer it, be it a judge, a District Magistrate, a Minister or a cow vigilante. It is either not applied at all, or applied selectively, or interpreted as per convenience. We witness this daily when a judge affirms that the majority view must prevail, when the police demolish houses of accused (not convicted) persons, when language and religion become the determinant for citizenship, when tribals are forced to make way for corporate cronies - all against the established law of the land. This is the context in which the two-judge bench disregarded a previous ruling of the same court, the ABC (Animal Birth Control) Rules 2023, and Article 51-A (g) of the Constitution when ruling against the stray dogs this month. It is part of a growing trend of bending the law to suit one's personal opinions or agenda.

Secondly, the country is rapidly abandoning the scientific temper, without which we shall descend into the dark ages (a process which has already begun). History is being replaced with mythology, Yuri Gagarin with Hanumanji, medicine with quackery, real data with fudged-up figures, astronomy with astrology, facts with lies, the legal processes with vigilantism, both state and private. The instant SC judgment suffers from the same malady- it is based, not on science and global experiences, but on charged emotions, irrational anger, media driven populism, and perhaps personal proclivities. One finds no science in it, except for the mention of figures of rabies cases, which too can be misleading because they are neither examined for cause, type, geographical spread or historical trends and patterns. There is no regard for the ecology or psychology of these defenceless community dogs, planning preparedness, finances involved, availability of other resources for providing "shelter" to 30 million dogs, good practices internationally. Personal prejudices and instant judgments have replaced science, which too is in complete sync with modern day India.

The judgment rides rough-shod over animal rights too, such as they are: a species which was the first to have been domesticated by man, and which has lived with us for 10000 years ("man's best friend") is suddenly stripped of all rights, evicted from its habitat and condemned to a lingering death. But then this too is part of our new ethos; when basic human rights-to life, food, education, of speech, dissent, religion etc.- no longer matter, what chance does animal rights have of being recognized or enforced? This is the age of "kartavya" and not "adhikar", remember?

There was no worthwhile consultation with any stakeholder- animal welfare activists, NGOs, municipal authorities, veterinarians, communicable disease specialists, RWAs- before announcing the judgment. In fact, it was stated that the first two would not be heard at all! This element of arbitrariness is again a sign of the times and in complete sync with an authoritative government which promulgates new laws every day, issues diktats with confounding regularity without any consultation, not even with Parliament. This is sadly now being reflected even in our courts which appropriate all wisdom to themselves and see no need to confer or obtain the advice of those who may be better informed of the subject being dealt with.

And finally, of course, this order is further evidence of how brutalised we are becoming as a society. Compassion has been one of the first victims of New India, as evidenced daily by draconian laws and rules, the treatment of minorities and the poor, the frequent use of bulldozers and an increasingly brutalised police, the manner in which millions of daily wage labourers were expelled from our towns by heartless RWAs during COVID, the hate which runs like a current on social media. The days following the August 11th order provided clinching evidence of this- the cruel manner in which hundreds of community dogs were picked up (without waiting for the final order of the three judge bench) and incarcerated in hopelessly unprepared or non-existent shelters in Delhi, the treatment meted out to them in areas like Rohini (of which the videos have become viral), the merciless beating to death of a stray by a police constable in  of Delhi. On e MLA from the south even boasted that he had himself killed a thousand dogs and buried them under trees! As expected, this barbarism was amplified and justified by ill-educated anchors on TV channels who started a "dog jihad" of their own, literally baying for blood.

I would not blame the government and its institutions alone for our civilisational decay- they tend to have their moral ups and downs, and a compassionate and humane leadership can retrieve them from complete perversity. But a society which loses its sense of empathy for other living beings, which fails to realise the imperative of co-existence, which sees only its own selfish desires as the focus of the universe- such a society cannot last long as a civilisation, and does not deserve to. We are a far cry from becoming the Homo Deus envisioned by Yuval Noah Harari.

THE ABIDING MYSTERY OF INDIAN CITIZENSHIP-- IS IT ANOTHER LEGAL FICTION ?

So you think that the issues uppermost in the minds of those who rule us, or those who tell us what the rules are, would be the landslides in the Himalayas or Trump's tariffs or our global isolation? Well, you would be wrong, but you can be forgiven for thinking so, for that is how a rational, logic-driven nation should think. But we have lost that status for a decade now and have become a Blunderland of nonsense. We are now firmly in the position of Lewis Carrol's Alice:                                                                                                                            " If I had a world of my own everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn't. And contrary wise, what is, it wouldn't be. And what it wouldn't be, it is. You see?"

You probably don't, so let me explain. The flavour of the season is none of the issues mentioned above: it is Citizenship, something we thought had been decided 75 years ago by a liberal Constitution which allowed citizenship on grounds of Birth (Jus Soli), Descent (Jus Sanguinis), Naturalization and Registration. But, as Ambedkar said, any Constitution is only as good as those who are charged with implementing it- and that is why we are a Blunderland.

For the Constitution, though unamended in this respect, is being spray-painted in many parts of the country to ensure that certain sections of our vast population are denied citizenship. An attempt to do so through legislation some years back (the Citizenship Amendment Act) hangs in limbo, or the deep freeze which is the Registry of the Supreme Court, where inconvenient carcasses are kept for revival at a more appropriate time. So now it is being done through a game of smoke and mirrors- a Bangladeshi here, a Rohingya there, an encroacher here, a Bengali speaking person there. But the message is loud and clear- we are the new India, we no longer brush a problem under a carpet (which sometimes is the more prudent course)- we now push it into Bangladesh in the dead of night, or into a detention center under the gavel of a Foreigner's Tribunal.

But there's a problem: the Constitution has been shoved into the background, and a new set of (con)founding fathers have replaced it with their version of what constitutes citizenship. The ball was set rolling in 2019 by the Home Minister himself who, through the CAA, implicitly propounded the theory that only a Hindu was entitled to citizenship of India. This doctrine has come in handy in Assam to include the few lakh Hindus excluded from the NRC there.

The RSS, not one to be left behind in the Hindutva sweepstakes, proclaimed that Hindustan was for Hindus alone, that an Indian citizen should possess both "Bharatiyata" and Bharati "swabhav" ( no prizes for guessing who would define these terms!). The BJP's eminence grise, Ram Madhav, went a step further and demanded that India should have, not a democracy, but a "dharmacrocy". That would in effect transform us to a twin of a country like Iran, presumably with a different religion at the helm, of course. Believers of other religions could lump it, as second class citizens. In short, as Seema Chisti opines in an article in THE WIRE ( 30.07.25), Indianness would be defined by faith and belief, notwithstanding the Constitution.

Enter the Deletion Commission of India (formerly the Election Commission of India), which finds conducting elections a boring job and so has now decided to identify citizens instead, something it is neither qualified nor mandated to do. Not knowing which document to rely on for proving citizenship, it has prescribed an a-la-carte menu of 11 documents to choose from. It is another matter that 90% of Indians do not possess these certificates, including (by his own admission in open court) a sitting Supreme Court judge! Many experts estimate that this could result in the disenfranchisement of as many 20% of voters in Bihar. This shortfall will, presumably, be made up by importing voters from U.P and Madhya Pradesh, as a recent report by the Reporters Collective seems to indicate. 

As if these versions of citizenship were not enough, the Supreme Court too has entered the fray by prescribing the test for a "true citizen" or "Indian"- not questioning the government on any matter relating to defence. This novel definition has been provided in a defamation case against Rahul Gandhi. The Mumbai High Court has also pitched in by declaring that Aadhaar and EPIC do not confirm sitizenship, adding for good measure that any protest relating to matters of any other country-such as the genocide in Gaza by Israel- does not behove any patriotic Indian citizen, who should be protesting on domestic shortcomings such as pot-holes and piling up of garbage etc. In other words, any protest which does not toe the official line is not the hallmark of citizen. 

So here's what all this pontificating boils down to: although there appears to be no dearth of definitions as to what constitutes citizenship, there is no official single document which can prove one's citizenship! (The govt. conceded as much last week in Parliament when, in response to a question as to which document establishes citizenship the MOS (Home) evaded any answer on this specific point). We now need a bouquet of documents, with the lotus being the center-piece.

And so, while you and I shuttle between the RSS, judiciary, Election Commission and Ram Madhav, it is no wonder that, in the last 13 years, more than 18 lakh Indians have decided that they have had enough and have surrendered their notional citizenship and migrated to other countries, more than 2 lakh in just 2024. They have obviously decided that a PIO card in the hand is worth two citizenships in the bush. And more will continue to depart our eroding shores, unless the PM's new "Demography Mission" isolates that particular Indian gene which defines Bhartiyata once and for all. Meanwhile, don't give up on your dreams: keep sleeping, for did the Bard not insist that "sleep knits up the rav'lled sleeve of care?"

THE SUPREME COURT ORDER ON STRAY DOGS LACKS BOTH SCIENCE AND COMPASSION

 

[This piece was published in the TRIBUNE on 14.08.25 under the title A RECIPE FOR CRUELTY, NOT COMPASSION]

Today's nations and societies, with their massive challenges- social, political, environmental and technological- have to be governed by a scientific temper and compassion. Unfortunately, the SC order of 11th August on stray dogs in the NCR lacks both. By directing that ALL strays should be rounded up and housed in dog shelters, the Hon'ble judges have mandated a quick-fix not based on science and one that ignores practical realities. It is not in the spirit of Article 51A(G) of the Constitution, which enjoins compassion for all living beings. It contradicts an earlier judgment of a two judge bench of the same court which had asked municipal bodies to follow the ABC (Animal Birth Control) Rules and treat strays with compassion. It is also in conflict with an existing law- the Animal Birth Control (Dogs) Rules of 2023, framed under the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act- since these Rules have not specifically been quashed by the ibid order. These Rules lay down in detail how stray dogs are to be vaccinated, sterilised, medically treated and released back into their old localities: the Rules are based on science, experience, compassion and practicality. In contrast, the order of the SC is a quick-fix, perhaps based on personal predictions, and issued without hearing any stake-holder.

Apparently, the impulse behind this order are the incidences of dog bites and rabies: these indeed are important issues, but the solution does not lie in throwing the baby out with the bath water. Firstly, not all rabies cases are caused by dog-bites- other culprits include rodents and monkeys, especially in rural India. Secondly, figures by the NCDC (National Center for Disease Control) indicate that rabies has been showing a declining trend since 2019. Thirdly, the answer to dog-bite induced rabies is vaccination and not culling of dogs, which is what the practical implications of the SC order amount to.

There are an estimated 10 lakh stray dogs in Delhi alone. The MCD has no dog shelters, there are just a few run by under-funded NGOs. Has the SC even considered the impossibility of the MCD creating shelters for a million dogs? According to animal rights activist Ambika Shukla, it will cost a minimum of Rs. 3000 per dog per month to house a dog, including diet, manpower, medicines etc. That means a budget of Rs. 3600 crore would be needed every year to implement the SC order. The capital cost of constructing these shelters would run into another few thousand crores. Is that even within the realm of possibility? Without these funds the dogs would be packed in like sardines in a can, denied food,  become diseased and would eventually kill each other or have to be euthanised. This would be institutionalised and legally mandated cruelty, which should shock anyone's conscience.

All the deficiencies and heartlessness of the SC order stem from a complete lack of consultation with those who are better informed, and work, in this field- animal activists, NGOs, vets, agencies like NCDC, pet owner Associations, RWAs. Had the court not been in such a hurry to pass this order, it would have learnt, or been informed, of other related issues that have a bearing on this matter: how the problem of strays is compounded by many pet-owners simply abandoning their pets on the roads (these, having no fear of us, can be more dangerous than the genuine strays); why it makes more sense for the govt. to assist and fund NGOs working in this field to establish shelters rather than to take on the responsibility itself; that most street dogs are not, in fact, strays, but "community dogs" who are well looked after by communities and animal lovers groups: in my own RWA in Noida at least a dozen such dogs are cared for by the residents- they are wonderful to watch, happily greet our children when they get off the school buses, accompany us elders on our morning walks, and are no threat at all. If only the Hon'ble judges had invited wider inputs, they would perhaps have seen this whole issue other than through the prism of dog-bites and rabies. They would have realised that, in fact, there is no need to imprison all these dogs, that they can be managed with a mix of practices prescribed in the ABC Rules.

Street dogs are the creation of man and have become an issue because of the incompetence, lack of vision and apathy of our municipal administrations. The risks posed by them are highly exaggerated and the judicial solution proposed is unscientific, cruel, impractical and is bound to fail. It is still not too late for the court to hold wider consultations (rather than shut out the animal activists completely) and arrive at a solution that is just, humane and has a chance of succeeding. But most important- remember: a society that can't protect its voiceless is a society that has lost its soul.

HIMACHAL'S ENVIRONMENT DOESN'T NEED MORE STUDIES- IT NEEDS FIRM ACTION- NOW!

 Governments never cease to surprise me, but they occasionally intrigue me, as in the two recent announcements by the Himachal govt. The first, in the middle of the devastating fury of the ongoing rains which has already claimed more than a hundred lives and inflicted damage worth more than 2000 crore rupees, stated that a Central team would be arriving soon to assess the causes for such disasters every year. The second was the revelation that the World Bank has approved a Rs. 2000 crore project to study the environmental impacts of hydel projects, particularly in the Beas river basin, and to suggest mitigating measures.

This is not just an example of shutting the stable doors after the horses have bolted, this amounts to opening the spillway after the dam has burst, to use a phrase appropriate to what is happening to the hydel projects in the state. For the fact is that the devastation, ruin and deaths that are occurring with frightening regularity every year now are something that experts and environmentalists have been warning about for more than a decade, but successive governments have refused to heed.

It is no coincidence that the so-called "cloudbursts" always occur in areas where there is, or has been, extensive and unscientific cutting of hills, deforestation, ramming through of roads, unregulated building activity, and construction of hydel projects. The most egregious and destructive has been the epidemic of four-lane highways- a goldmine, no doubt, for the NHAI, contractors and general officialdom, but highways to hell for the residents of the state. The millions of cubic meters of excavated earth and debris inevitably find their way to the rivers and water courses, constrict their flow and carrying capacity, and result in flooding and the misnomer "cloudburst". Continuous subsidence, erosion, landslides, building collapses follow in its wake. These activities, along with denudation of the green cover, have robbed the mountains of their capacity to absorb and hold the rainfall, which thunders down the slopes as run-off, with horrific consequences.

We don't need expert committees, hosted at the expense of a bankrupt state, to identify what is going wrong with the environment: the reasons are there in plain sight, carved on the denuded, crumbling mountain sides- stop the rape of the rivers, give up this maniacal fascination for more and more roads, cancel all four-lane projects, protect the green belts and forests, regulate construction with an iron hand (and Yogi's bulldozers, where required). Pay attention to the fact that GSI has identified 17000 landslide-prone zones in the state. Recognize that climate change is now a reality which has arrived, it will exacerbate rainfall patterns, there will be more EWEs (Extreme Weather Events). Concentrate on sustainable planning and not reckless development at all costs. Send back the central expert committee, Mr. Chief Minister- the answers don't lie with it, they lie in your office, in your files. Listen to the local citizens- those who have been opposing needless road construction, airports, hydel projects and multi-storeyed commercial projects, denotification of green belts, those whose lands and houses are getting washed away by your obstinacy, those whose family members are entombed in mud in the middle of the night.  Trust them, not your mercantile advisors..

The second announcement about environmental impacts of hydel projects in the Beas basin is even more mystifying. Firstly, such a study should have been carried out BEFORE, and not AFTER, allotting the 359 hydel projects (operational and planned) on the Beas and its tributaries. Secondly, the environmental impacts of such projects are already known, and have been for the last 15 years. In 2010 the then Addl. Chief Secretary(Forests), on the directions of the High Court, had submitted a detailed report, listing out the deleterious and damaging impacts being witnessed today: muck dumping, unscientific cutting and blasting, weakening of the mountain strata, deforestation, reduction in carrying capacity of rivers, the need to restrict the number of hydel projects on a particular river, the necessity of cumulative impact assessments for the whole river basins instead of for just individual projects, declaration of no-go areas for hydel projects. The report was accepted by the High Court but was fiercely opposed by the state govt. and was quietly buried. Thirdly, no further study is required to identify these environmental impacts- they have been happening with frightening regularity every year- the whole stretch of the river from Manali to Mandi has been  devastated and looks like Gaza- and are self evident. There is little point reinventing the wheel at a cost of Rs.2000 crore- exhume the 2010 report, get additional inputs from geologists and hydrologists, and implement the recommendations. The World Bank study appears to me to be just a smokescreen for avoiding any substantive action, and is simply kicking the can further down the river.

Neither of the two studies or inquiries is needed, and the state govt. certainly doesn't have the money to pay for them. Instead, the govt. should commission studies on factors which have grave portents for the future of the state: the changing precipitation patterns, changed hydrology of the rivers, melting of glaciers, formation of glacial lakes which pose a danger to downstream areas, carrying capacity of major tourist destinations, a Cumulative  EIA of the Chandrabhaga basin before proceeding to sanction another 4000 MW worth of projects on it. These studies will reveal  how our geology and environment are being altered, and are necessary for all future planning. It should also heed the dire warning issued by the Supreme Court last week on a PIL, having ignored everyone, including its own citizens for decades: "Entire Himachal Pradesh may vanish soon; Revenue Earning can't be at the cost of the Environment." 

Translated into simple English, that means that the time for post mortems is over, what is needed now is immediate and decisive action.

WHEN ONLY LOVE REMAINS

 I have just returned from my hometown, Kanpur, after severing the last remaining physical link with my late parents, with the tangible legacies of my dad and mom. My mother passed away in 1994, my dad joined her in 2017. He left behind a lovely flat in a multi-story development, in which he had spent the last years of his life, lonely most of the time, but content and at peace in his otherwise downsized world.

This flat contained the possessions he and my mom, and we (as children), had accumulated over the years, and not one of them was less than fifty years old! These included British time crockery, a Garrard music player with vinyl records, hundreds of books (mostly mine), furniture from Calcutta and Assam, an assortment of walking sticks. He had hoarded them lovingly, getting them cleaned and polished regularly, for would his children not inherit them some day? They were precious to him, not just because he had laboured to acquire them over a lifetime, but because they would go to his children after him.

That was never going to happen, of course. The flat was being sold, and we all had enough bric-a-brac of our own, accumulated over our own lifetimes, for our own children! Where was the space to take over my dad's stuff in our metro flats in Mumbai and Noida, where each square foot of space cost Rs. 100,000 and  Rs. 10000/-, respectively? So we gave everything away- the records whose music had once suffused the flat with lilting tunes, the books which had made holidays in Kanpur so pleasant and relaxed, the table at which I had prepared for the civil service exams, the dining table on which my mom used to serve the delicious "atta ka halwa" and "gobhi ki subzi" which were, and still are, my favourite fare, the harmonium on which my late younger sister learned her music. All big slices of our past, all indelibly associated with my mom and dad and our childhood. All now gone. I have retained only a few books, one of Papa's walking sticks, his battered briefcase, and a set of crystal Johnnie Walker glasses, which I had bought for fifteen rupees from the Jama Masjid Sunday market in 1971 and had gifted him for his birthday. They will have to suffice till I retain my memory of him.

The compulsions of "modern" life have no time for the sentiments of the past, these are weaknesses that detract from our algorithm based, market driven vision of a material valhalla. And that precisely is the point of this blog: there is a lesson in my experience, for all of us, all those adrift in the 70+ boat, most of us in sight of the harbour, or the reef, as fate would have it. As parents we spend too much time, resources and emotional capital, and deny ourselves, in collecting things to leave behind for our children. It's a waste of parental love, a mortgaging of  present needs for an envisioned but uncertain future. For nothing we leave behind will endure- the house will be sold (if not fought over), the money in the bank will be divided ruthlessly by some chartered accountant or lawyer and spent on trips to Bali or Biarritz, the clothes will go to charity, everything else will be given away. Nothing will remain but memories, and it is on those that we twilight dwellers should concentrate.. I am reminded of these haunting lines from an anonymous poet:

If I take nothing with me,                                                                                                            May I leave behind something beautiful-                                                                                    A memory, a kindness, a warmth in the hearts of those I've met.                                                So that, even when my road ends,                                                                                                Love remains.

POST SCRIPT.

I make it a point never to end any piece on a somber note, lest the reader fling himself off his 22nd floor balcony in despair; and so I must confess that I did take one other object from my dad's flat- the album of photographs of my marriage with Neerja. (That was in 1977, I think, but I can't be sure since my long term memory is no longer what it used to be). There were no digital albums in those primordial days, no smart phones; only "still" photos which had to be pasted in bulky albums. I've appropriated my wedding album, not just for sentimental reasons, but as an abundant precaution to prove my marriage with Neerja. In these days of "certificate raj" there is no saying when proof will be demanded that I am not living in sin with her. Hotels and OYO have already started demanding this, and the time is not far off when banks, landlords and RWAs shall follow suit. "Marriage vigilantism" will be the latest addition to cow and citizenship vigilantisms. Didn't someone say that eternal vigilantism is the price of freedom? Better to be prepared, no?

But I'm taking a big risk bringing this album home and reminding Neerja about our marriage. She has had many second thoughts about these nuptials over the last 48 years, about the wisdom of having plighted her troth to me in an LSR moment of weakness. How will she react to my bringing home documented proof of what she sometimes considers the "biggest mistake of her life"? Maybe I'll hide the album under the dog's bed. As they say in the Pakistan Punjab - "Better to be Saif than Suri."

THE WRITER'S CURSE-- AND BLESSING.

[This piece was published in the TRIBUNE on 27.07.2025 with some minor editing.] 

It's a tough time to be a writer or wannabe author in India these days. If you write against the government you are likely to be stripped of your citizenship, and if you support it you'll be in Arnab Goswami's B team, or sharing a room with Sambit Patra in Gujarat Bhavan.. Or , even worse, you could end up like Ms Tavleen Singh whose sacerdotal efforts at the altar of the presiding deity of Indian politics didn't pay off- her son lost his citizenship anyway. So what is one to do? The safest course, I feel, is to do a Chetan Bhagat and write only about " The Girl in Room 105" or  pen motivational stuff with misleading titillating titles, like that other bestseller "The Subtle Art of not giving a "F--k." You will, of course, find neither the girl nor the "f--k" but your persistence in trying to do so till the last page will ensure that a couple more million copies of the books will fly off the shelves, quicker than you can say Man Force. 

   The other problem I've encountered is this: what does one write about ? History is a prohibited zone, because the RSS and Mr. Dinanath Batra have already started re-writing it, with novel inputs provided by the Supreme Court, no less, in some of its judgements. Mythology is no longer available as Mr. Amish Tripathi has already mined this seam till there is nothing left to explore there but the question: was the live feed of the battle of Kurukshetra conveyed to Dhritrashtra via Netflix or Amazon Prime or Hulu? Sardar jokes are a no-go area, like the area around Parliament Bhavan, as those poor chaps from JNU found out a couple of years back; the mountains have been denuded of all their tales by Ruskin Bond; the British era has been subjected to repeated biopsies by Shashi Tharoor and William Dalrymple; nobody reads about sports these days because everyone is hooked on to biopics; romance is nowadays confined to Twitter and Instagram and has to be compressed into 140 words: who has time for a novel? War books are unlikely because even though Messers Modi and General Munir both threaten it nobody is actually pressing that blue button anytime soon. Moreover, no two Indian generals can ever agree on whether we won or lost a war, including Haldighati. One potentially promising area is memoirs by bureaucrats, and quite a few are now rushing to the printers, having suddenly remembered their stellar contributions in pushing us onto a 8% growth path. But they are bogged down with their training, confusing "penal" with "penile" ( as in the Indian Penile Code), conclude each chapter with " submitted for approval, please" out of sheer habit, and think that "analogy" is the study of assholes. Their tomes do seem to bear out the unkind observation of Christopher Hitchins that everybody does have a book in them, but in most cases that's where it should stay!

   Why do chaps persist with writing, given the hardships involved? You just have to attend every literary festival to be noticed, which is pretty tough considering that they have now started organising them even in dumps like Jhumri Tilaiya and Kotkapura where the infant mortality rates are probably higher than the literacy rates. Nobody there will recognize you anyway because they are too busy either drooling over Shashi Tharoor and "Pyjamas" Dimple Kapadia or shouting slogans against Salman Rushdie. You'll never make it to any best seller list because of Amish Tripathi: he's the BJP of the Indian literary universe with an almost two-thirds stranglehold. What is the Competition Commission doing, and why is he not being hauled up for monopolistic practices, or at least for forming a cartel with Chetan Bhagat who takes up most of the remaining slots? Both should be banned from writing for at least three years so the rest of us can keep the wolves, if not the cows, from our doors.

   Ruskin Bond once said that India has more writers than readers, which explains why the publishers act like capos. Influenced by our TV channels, they insist on the seamier stuff. One guy in Daryaganj I submitted a proposal to did to my manuscript what dogs down the ages have been doing to lamp posts, and then advised me instead to write a kiss-and-tell book about politicians I have worked with, replete ( he suggested with a wink) awards of dubious contracts, girls in rooms other than just 105, booth capturing techniques (this was before the age of the EVM which has rendered all previous practices obsolete) and other such staples of governance. It would, he assured me, sell like   "Hot Kates"- I presume he meant  hot cakes but I'm not sure: maybe he wanted a hot Kate in there between the pages if not the sheets. It appears that my books are as popular as ice cubes in the North pole: the royalty cheques I receive once a year look like Yogi Adithyanath's compensation cheques for UP's farmers, rarely exceeding double digits. Sometimes I wonder, did they even print the books ?

   But maybe I'm being too harsh on them, going by my own family and friends. Now, I have a fairly large extended family, even if I were to discount the guys who are either in judicial custody or have

 jumped bail, and they can also read though writing requires more effort. Members of my social circle are more law abiding and some of them even pay their taxes. But very few of them want to buy my books- they expect them to be dished out as gifts, never mind that it's nobody's birthday or wedding anniversary! I guess it's the effect of this new Amazon/ Swiggy culture of getting every thing at discounted prices or totally free, and I should be happy that nobody is demanding "cashbacks" ! But really, I don't mind giving them away- nobody's buying them anyway- but then I rarely get any feedback either. Nobody tells me whether they liked the book or used it as printed toilet paper. Except, of course, from the good wife who is never lacking an opinion or the urge to express it. I asked her about my last book and Neerja replied:
 " Uh, you really want to know?"
 " Sure," I replied cheerily, though not very truthfully, " I've always valued your advice."

 " OK, then, two comments: one, there are far too many conjunctions."

 " What's wrong with that?" I queried, "the idea is to stitch the story together. Conjunctions are good."

 " Nope, the road to Hell is paved with good conjunctions."

 I digested this Sadhguru type statement: " What's your second observation?" I asked, hoping for a more positive review this time. I was about to be disappointed.

 " Your style belongs to the coitus interruptus school of writing," she intoned.

 " Huh? What exactly is that supposed to mean?" I shouted.

 She was calmness itself, like a school teacher talking to a naughty child.

 " See," she explained," you use too many punctuation marks, especially the exclamation mark. It disrupts your rhythm, interrupts the flow, and delays the gland- sorry, I meant grand- finale."

    I'm still trying to figure that one out. Was she talking about my writing style, or did she have something else in mind? You never know with women ! ( Sorry for that exclamation mark).
   So why do I keep writing stuff that no one reads and not seek reemployment as an Advisor to the Minister for Open Defecation Free Himachal? Well, its partly because my net-working skills resemble those of Obelisk, and partly because the queue of retired Chief Secretaries lined up for the job is longer than the line outside the Moolchand metro's Sulab Sauchalaya, but mainly because , as some wise man once said: You are what you write. He was spot on, you know: writing bilge is better than advising about it!

   

THE CASINO IS RIGGED, LONG LIVE THE CASINO !

The oldest (and most disregarded) secret in the world of gambling is that you cannot win against the house. The decks are stacked, the cards are rigged and the slot machines are fixed. Oh yes! the casino will let you win once in a while, just so that you swallow a little more of the bait and keep returning to be ripped off. The house, folks, always wins. Which describes perfectly the state of our elections these days, after 2019.

What is happening with the SIR in Bihar, even as I write this, is the final turn of the roulette wheel: the Opposition (the real Opposition, I mean, not the Mayawatis, Owaisis, Kishores or Naveen Patnaiks of the world) will henceforth never be allowed to win an election, general or state. A few seats here and there, yes, maybe even a few inconsequential states, to keep the dumb charade going, but never a House- Vidhan Sabha or Lok Sabha: the House belongs to the croupier. No amount of petitions, meetings with the Election Commission, writs in the Supreme Court, grandstanding photo-ops outside Parliament, or threats ("We are coming after you") is going to change this inevitability. Maharashtra and Haryana were the prototypes and appropriate lessons were learnt from them- adding spurious votes is not enough, stuffing EVMs after 5.00PM is not enough, deleting a few thousand votes is not enough, the judicial pusillanimity regarding VVPATs is not enough; more work was needed to make matters fool proof.

And so the final product-the electoral Bramhastra, as it were- is on display now in Bihar. Make the nationalistic Citizenship issue the mechanism and excuse for getting rid of those pesky communities and classes who don't vote for the BJP and its allies, be selective in the desired documentation; Aadhar will do in the right wing areas, thank you, but in Seemanchal we need to see your birth certificate, and that of your parents. The motto being: show me the face and I will show you the document. Five million have already been disenfranchised, according the the ECI's own figures.

The Supreme Court will hear the matter on the 28th of this month, but don't hold your breath- the jurisprudence of the "fait accompli" will come into play and the loaded dice will keep rolling. The Election Commission knows this- it has already asked all states to prepare for an all-India roll-out of this grand larceny of democracy. At the most the Court may mandate the acceptance of a few more ID markers, but it's always the dealer who calls out the cards and numbers, and they are usually tucked up his sleeve. In the Supreme Court the SIR will go the way of the EVMs, VVPATs, paper ballots, procedure for appointments of Election Commissioners.

The Opposition will never win again. It has only one path before it in order to save democracy-drink of the poisoned chalice and boycott all elections until this casino is shut down. It must take the bull by the horns, and not by the tail as it has been doing so far. As Debasish Roy Choudhury says in an interview with Karan Thapar on Friday (which should be compulsory watching for all who value our democracy), by continuing to participate in elections which are rigged and which they know they cannot win, it is only legitimising the elections and the winning regime. A boycott will take away this moral legitimacy, in the eyes of most countrymen and the international community. That will the first step to restoring the old sanctity to the whole process.

The Opposition has failed, thanks to its own ineptitude, avarice, lust for power and out-size egos, and the abject surrender of all our constitutional institutions, including the courts. The Opposition, therefore, is no longer a player in this game-it can at best now be a coach. The actual players have to be the citizens of India, whose right to select a government of their choice is being stolen. They must be persuaded to boycott the elections too, to show the world how the elections in India now resemble those of Rwanda, where the President Paul Kagame, won with 99% of the votes. The world, of course, doesn't give a damn about Rwanda, but can it ignore India, the world's largest democracy which has historically been the beacon of democracyfor the post colonial world?

Country-wide boycotts may lead to civil unrest, which is not necessarily a bad thing, as Jayaprakash Narayan's Sampurna Kranti movement against Mrs Gandhi had shown-it finally led to her being ousted from power. A boycott could be a curtain raiser to something similar. This applies equally to civil society organisations like ADR (Association for Democratic Reforms), CCG (Constitutional Conduct Group) and others- they too have to espouse and campaign for the cause of the boycott. They have written enough letters to the Government and Prime Minister and Election Commission, and issued their fair number of press releases, to no effect: they too have to change course. As Debasish says: when your house is burgled, you don't write a letter to the burglar, you go to the police! And the police here are the people of India- We The People. It is time to turn to them.

TIME TO DECLARE AN "INTERNATIONAL DAY OF HATE"

 This is the age of empty symbolism, make-believe and the suggestio falsi. Our revered Prime Minister goes trotting around the globe intoning "This is not the era of war" like a metronome, even as he almost started a war on his own doorstep, and repeatedly abstained from voting to stop two wars which have killed tens of thousands already. The European Union calls for "dialogue and diplomacy" even as it continues to arm and fund a country which is committing a genocide not seen since the Holocaust. Trump calls for peace and demands the Nobel Peace Prize in the same breath that he pulverizes Iran with the Mother Of All Bombs. Nearer home, the RSS says we should not look for a shivling under every mosque even as it eggs on its followers to do exactly that. The Election Commission says no  voter shall be left behind even as it imposes policies that will disenfranchises millions of voters in just one state (to begin with).

You get the point, don't you? It needs a Shakespeare to describe this global perfidy and hypocrisy: this  "killing with kindness" or "smile and smile and be a villain." And so it is with the various Days we are asked to celebrate every second day- Yoga Day, Doctor's Day, Father's Day. Don't for a minute doubt the intent, dear reader- the purpose is praiseworthy, if proforma, but the irony is unmistakable. For what we celebrate  on day one, we repudiate on the remaining 364 days of the year.

So we celebrate Father's Day even as we strip the old codger of all his properties and banish him to an old age home where he rots in his own excreta. Doctor's Day only reminds me of how one gets ripped off in corporate hospitals by unnecessary tests, astronomical ICU charges and "consultation fees" for informing me what I will get for lunch. On Teacher's Day we are exhorted to sing a paean for our teachers just before we lodge an FIR against them for "hitting" a student with a ruler. We celebrate World Heart Day even as we gorge on adulterated paneer, baby food with impermissible sugar levels, and cooking oils with carcinogenic additives, all presided over by an unconcerned government. 

But wait, it gets even better if more acerbic and cynical. October 2 is the International Day of Non-Violence, and nations observe it religiously (yes, even the USA and Israel) while 110 wars/armed conflicts rage around the world, all instigated by the very governments that flag this day. March 3 is the International Wildlife Day, celebrated even as we have ensured that 500 species of vertebrates have gone extinct  in the last hundred years, and 15000 more are under grave threat due to human activities. Wild animal populations have been decimated by 60% since 1970. The 2nd of December is celebrated as the International Day Against Pollution even as we are on the verge of breaching the 2* Celsius red line for temperature increase, and 7 million people die of air pollution every year (of which 2 million are in Viksit Bharat).This is not just hypocrisy, it is sanctimonious, deceitful, humbugging on a global scale.

It is in this context that last week I received a suggestion from a WAF ( Whats App Friend) who, in his saner moments, is a very successful manufacturer of high-quality cosmetics. He suggested that the UN should now declare an International Day of Hate. His reasoning makes sense: the leit motif and zeitgeist of the world today- of national leaders, religious preachers, societies, generals, media (including social media)- is the emotion of Hate. Subaltern emotions such as Greed, Jealousy and Violence are the offsprings of hate. Just look around, or turn on the TV, and you will acknowledge that my WAF is bang on.

Hindutva types hate the Muslims, the Jews hate the Palestinians, Iran hates the Jews, China hates the Tibetans and Taiwanese in equal measure, Putin hates the Ukranians, the Sudanese hate each other, the Rwandans hate the Congolese, the Taliban hate women, Pakistanis hate the Balochis, Turks hate the Kurds, RWA types hate the slum dwellers. Donald Trump, of course, is the most eclectic and indiscriminating of the lot, he hates everyone and everything- Europeans, Asians, Islamic nations, liberals, Communists, non-binary genders, immigrants, environmentalists, judges. Arnab Goswami comes a close second to him.

In many countries which still retain a veneer of civilisation, laws do not allow this universal and all pervasive feeling of hate full public expression. But it is constantly bubbling under the surface, like the molten lava in a volcano, with occasional eruptions. According to my friend, it would be good public policy to allow this volcano to vent itself, to permit the de-facto to become de-jure. Hence the need for an International Day of Hate, when the haters can reveal themselves in their full glory and ugliness: no more dog-whistles, veiled references, obiter dictas, Prime Ministerial insinuations or vapid diplomatic niceties. They can, as the Beatles sang, "let it out" without fear of any consequences. In the words of a famous Madame- what you see, dear, is what you get!

Some country, of course, shall have to take the lead in implementing this visionary idea, and no one is better qualified these days than our own Bharat Mahan. For we appear to have elevated Hate to the level of public policy, a societal aspiration and a religious commandment. Over the last decade hate has embedded itself in every aspect of governance, education, institutional structures and social intercourse. Initially founded on religious biases and dogmas, it has now metastasized across the board- language, festivals, regions, educational syllabi, media, entertainment, legislations, even citizenship-  there is now no aspect of daily life in India which is not poisoned by this venom. Even our diplomacy is now coloured by this emotion, as our callous approach to the genocide and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians demonstrates so well.

According to a report in the India Cable dated June 27, 2025,  The Association for Protection of Civil Rights and the Quill Foundation has documented 947 hate-related incidents in the country during the first year of the present NDA govt's third term. Directed at minorities, this includes 602 hate crimes and 345 instances of hate speech; the perpetrators are rarely, if ever, punished.

No other democracy is as uniquely qualified as India to move a resolution in the United Nations for the declaration of an International Day of Hate. By doing so, we will have ripped apart the curtain of hypocrisy and deception that characterises all such Days, and will have loudly proclaimed that this is a New India. One which is prepared to venture into the heart of darkness to satisfy the lust for power, to self-destruct in order to rule for ever. For, as Satan said in Paradise Lost: It is better to rule in Hell than to serve in Heaven.

As for me, the only day I heartily endorse is Shobha De- and she might even get more votes than India's proposal. 

THE DAY THE MAGPIES LEFT

 For six months of the year, confined in my NCR flat like a Trappist monk, the only birds I get to see are pigeons, which have now become the ubiquitous symbol of urban avian life. But for the other six months, when I repair to my cottage in Puranikoti village near Shimla, it's a completely different world. 

The dozens of trees I and my family have planted on my land as a post-retirement penance over the years to atone for my large sarkari carbon footprint- weeping willows, horse chestnuts, oak, deodar, robinia, chinars, apple, plum, cherry, pears, kainth- have now come of age and are repaying our efforts in ample measure. They provide a dense vegetation and fruits/ seeds/ flowers which now attract many varieties and species of birds, which are all the company one needs at this stage of one's WhatsApp dominated life. Their social media type chattering, the bird songs at dawn and in the evenings, the ambience created by their happy presence alone, has been very well expressed  by a poet:

I sit in my garden, gazing upon a beauty that cannot gaze upon itself. And I find sufficient purpose for my day.

My avian friends are of two types: the first are the permanent residents (termed "bona fide Himachalis" in govt. parlance!) who stay on my land throughout the year- sparrows, bulbuls, tits, blackbirds, whistling thrush. Because of their established tenancy status on the land, they assume a familiarity with me bordering on contempt, literally taking the food off my plate! (See photo below). I have no choice but to grin and bear it.

                                         [Bulbul joining us for morning tea. Photo by author.]

The second type are the seasonal visitors, more cautious, not sure of their welcome or of what they can expect. Among them are the swallow, swift, barbet, silver-winged blackbird, songbird, and the graceful, long-tailed Himalayan magpie. Each species has its temporal slot and arrives when its fruit of choice is ripe for eating. They are not selfish and do not overstay their welcome- a sojourn of a few weeks and they depart, vacating the slot for the next species, having stripped the trees of whatever fruit was on the chef's special. I don't mind at all- what they give us in the short time they dwell with us is much, much more than what those fruits would have fetched me at the local "mandi."

Last year, however, was a landmark year for me, for a pair of Himalayan magpies decided that they had had enough of globe-trotting and that it was time to start a family before the EMIs started piling up: they settled down and started nesting in a dense grove of trees on one corner of my land! (see pics below). This overt expression of trust in us was a quiet vindication of all our efforts over the years to create a safe and secure environment for our feathered friends. In due course of time they built a nest and laid two eggs, just before we departed for the NCR for our six month exile.

                                   [Long-tailed Himalayan Magpie. Photo by author]

We returned this April, to the sight of FOUR magpies- two adults and two offspring- frolicking on our land, their tenure in the grove now converted to adverse possession, if not deemed ownership, like a retired politician in Lutyen's Delhi but without the sense of entitlement! It was a delight to see them flying around the whole day, like trundling helicopters- the Himalayan magpie is not a good flyer- picking up insects, earthworms and the cherries and apples from our trees. I feed them every morning: the smaller birds are happy with bread crumbs and rice grains, but the magpies have a preference for  Haldi Ram's namkeens, which is what they get! In due course of time, unbeknownst to us, the female laid three more eggs on an oak tree in the grove.

         

           [The grove where our magpies nested. Photo by author]
 

We came to know of this only when, one day, one chick fell from the nest and was grabbed by a feral cat. Brutus-our Indie dog- spotted this immediately and pounced on the cat, forcing it to drop the chick. We picked up the little bird, examined it for any injuries (there were none, but the poor thing was traumatised no end, as can be expected). We kept it in a warm room for two days, fed it rice and milk; all the while its parents staged a 24x7 dharna outside the room in the manner of Arvind Kejriwal, demanding the release of their little one. Finally, on the third day, assured that the chick had recovered fully from its ordeal and it was time again for its anxious parents to take over its nurturing, we carefully put it back in the nest, where the other two chicks were none too welcoming, of course, at the thought of having to share their snacks with another mouth! The two adults were overjoyed, of course, but quickly chased us away.

Tragedy struck the very next day. Taking our evening stroll, we found the half-eaten body of a magpie chick about 100 meters from the grove. A quick check of the nest confirmed what we feared but did not wish to acknowledge- it was empty. It was clear what had happened: the cat which had discovered the nest had not forgotten it even though it had been thwarted by our dog the first time. It had returned, and the three chicks- still unable to fly- never stood a chance. Cats are ruthless predators of small animals, especially birds. A 2022 study estimated that cats kill 55 million birds in the UK every year!

Our magpie family was desolate- they repeatedly circled the grove without alighting on it, making plaintive cries. That night, they disappeared and we have not seen them since, even though it's been more than a week as I write this. It is clear that they have abandoned our place; our hearts go out to them, rearing a family in the wild is a Herculean task, and to have laboured so long at it and lose it all in a moment is so unfair.

But I am now haunted by a more disturbing question- were we at fault, somehow? Could we have been more proactive in protecting the nest and the chicks? Should we have put that third chick back in the nest or should we have reared it ourselves? There are counter questions too: Could we have reared a wild creature without robbing it of its "wildness"? Could we have taught it how to fly and forage for food?  How far can one go in meddling in the lives of essentially wild creatures? Should we intervene or let nature take its course? I am afraid there are no easy answers.

The question that haunts me most, however, is this- have the magpies left out of a sense of betrayal, that we reneged on our implied promise of giving them security? Will they forgive us, and return some day? Will they give us a second chance?