THE PASSPORT DILEMMA

   I've just discovered that my passport has expired, but after much deliberation I've decided not to renew it. I already have more "citizenship" documents than I can handle in my advancing years- Aadhar card, Voter ID, Domicile certificate, Driving licence, CGHS card, I.D. card, Club Membership card, PAN card, Pension Life Certificate- and most of them require periodic renewals. I refuse to spend the rest of my life standing in queues, repeating my father's name and date of birth ad nauseam, giving my finger prints and iris scans that never match the previous set and can therefore transport me to Tihar jail before you can say "anti- national". It's time to lighten my KYC (Know Your Customer) burden. But there are other reasons too for giving the passport a pass.

  I'm terrified of the possibility that the Ministry of External Affairs may decide to affix Mr. Modi's photo next to mine on the passport. Now that all Covid vaccination certificates will have been issued by December, the Ministry is already looking around for new documents on which to paste his saintly visage. And what better way to enhance his global visibility than to put his benign portrait on 65 million passports ? I've no problem with his photo per se, but where does this end ? Will it be Yogi Adityanath in 2024 ? Or Kejriwal in 2029 ? Or Kangana Ranaut in 2034 ? I mean, for the sake of God, is it a passport or a rogues' gallery, or an INDIA TODAY ad for wannabe Prime Ministers? Not that I mind being next to the Raging Ranaut (it's the closest I'll ever get to the ravishing diva) ,but I'll probably not be around by then, so why should I have to share print space with these other scary specimens ? You get the point, hopefully.

  I've done my share of globe trotting and am the poorer for it, I don't think I can afford it any more. It's not the price of the airline ticket I'm worried about, but my moveable property (no, this does not include my wife: anyone who knows her will tell you that Neerja is as moveable as a grand piano with Pavarotti sitting cross-legged on it). It's my registered baggage I'm talking about, folks: I and my suitcases are never destined to meet at the same destination. I've lost more registered baggage than I've declared in my Annual Moveable Property returns to the government; some of it is probably now floating around in the stratosphere as space debris. I've sued the airlines but somehow always lose the cases along with the suitcases. But I can no longer afford to lose or misplace my remaining trousers and toothbrushes: I subsist on a pension now, and what with the denial of 18 months' DA arrears by the lady- who- doesn't- eat- onions, I now live from one "Quick Wash" to another. Any break in this cycle and I'll be looking for fig leaves to cover my very modest modesty. 

   And now, with this pandemic, our passports are as useful as a one-legged man in an arse-kicking competition. Then there's this god-almighty confusion about Covid tests on departure and quarantine on arrival. Factoring in all this, it takes almost as long to travel from Mumbai to London as it did on a P+O (Pacific and Orient) liner in the days when people travelled by ship. It's also very dangerous: a recent article shows how, in pure law of averages terms, someone on a plane has a 80 % chance of testing positive on arrival. No wonder there are fewer couples walking down the aisles of planes today than the aisles of churches. And then of course there's the issue of the middle seat: the gals at the check-in counters invariably have one look at me and allot me the middle seat (perhaps for my own safety), in which I feel a bit like Yogi Adityanath sitting between Mr. Modi and Mr. Shah- hemmed in, you know, usually by a large lady on the left and a hyper active kid on the right. And since both are protected by misguided laws, there's very little I can do except- like Yogi Adityanath- remember my " abbajan" and wish I was never born.

  And now there's Afghanistan, which has completely changed the geo-politics of the Hindutva brigade, giving it a strategic depth which Pakistan would be envious of. Till now, if you fell foul of these nationalists, you were advised to move to Pakistan. Now, this invitation can also be extended to relocate in Afghanistan. This doesn't appeal to me at all: no Shukla has ever made it beyond the Khyber pass  (with good reason) and I do not intend to be the first one to do so. If I have a passport I could be put on the next flight to Kabul or Kandahar and dispatched forthwith amid the chanting of Jai Shri Rams and a liberal sprinkling of well directed stones. However, this may be more difficult to do if I don't have the said document, since even the Taliban now insist on one if anybody is stupid enough to want to go to this benighted country. It's safer therefore not to have a passport these days. As the punster said: don't travel, stay Indore and watch your savings Dublin.

OUR HOUSES ARE LIVING ENTITIES TOO - A TALE OF TWO HOUSES

   I have always believed that the houses we build for ourselves have anthropomorphic qualities, that they are as much part of our families as any other member, that they also share our feelings and emotions, that they reflect our own states of mind, that they too have their own destinies just as we do, destinies inextricably linked with ours. They are not mere brick and mortar, they are living, sentient beings like us, they go through good times and bad, and like us they also mature , age and die. And as time marches on inexorably, I am only getting more confirmed in my belief.

  Houses, dwellings, homes are an extension of their creators and of those who dwell- or dwelt- in them. Over time they absorb the vibrations- both positive and negative- that their owners radiate and in turn reflect them back. You must surely have noticed that there are happy houses and sad houses, houses that spontaneously give off cheer and well being while there are others that diffuse sorrow and misery. Ponder a bit more, and you will also notice - you cannot fail to- that these effusions invariably reflect the state of mind and emotional condition of the people who live in them. (They are very similar to our pets, dogs especially, who also reflect the personalities of their owners. Show me a dog and I'll be able to tell you what kind of person his master is ! ) To adapt Tolstoy's famous observation- all happy houses are happy in the same way, but all unhappy houses are unhappy in their own, different ways.

  I have observed this phenomenon playing out in my own extended family. Both my grandfathers built fine mansions in the prime of their lives. My paternal grandfather, Pandit Kalicharan Shukla who had a flourishing chain of bookshops in Calcutta, built a massive haveli in his village Husainganj in U.P. sometime in the early 1930's. In 1939 my maternal grandfather, Shri Roopnarain Shukla, a leading advocate of his time, built a mansion in Kanpur, U.P. Both the buildings are now nearing centurion status, but their destinies have been different, like that of two individuals, and it shows in their visage and condition.

  For its first forty years or so the Husainganj haveli was a cheerful beehive of activity. Its thirty odd rooms were always occupied by hordes of Shuklas- my grandfather's extended family, his five children and their progeny. The kitchen worked almost 24x7, especially when we as kids and teens landed up there for our holidays, and halwais were called in to make sweets, Akhand Ramayan and other religious " paths" were organised frequently. Neighbours, panchayat members, village officials were always dropping in to have a " darshan" of Pandit Kalicharan. There was no electricity those days but at nights the haveli glowed with a hundred lamps and sounds of laughter and music wafted through the air, almost as if the haveli itself was giving voice to its delight at playing host to so many of its family.

  Things started changing rapidly in the 60's and 70's. Both my grandfather and grandmother died in quick succession, their children retired to different towns, and my generation scattered all over the globe, busy with their own families. No one had the time or perhaps even the inclination to go back to a village with no power, piped water, flush toilets or cable TV. Holidays were now spent in hill stations, Goa or London. The haveli was locked up and more or less abandoned; with a joint family now running into dozens, everyone's responsibility became no one's responsibility. All of Pandit Kalicharan's children are also now gone; the haveli is a multiple orphan, crumbling and dilapidated, both its body and its heart broken by the inexorable passage of time.

                           

             

                             The desolate Husainganj haveli today

It's a ruin now, an old man who has lost the will to live, forsaken by those who once played in its lap, waiting for death, its denuded doors and windows like empty eye sockets, looking upon a world without hope. Once a happy home, it's now a hollow shell. Not unlike a lot of old men living alone in empty flats in uncaring cities, hoping against hope that their children will visit them someday, waiting for their destiny to play itself out.

 My maternal grandfather's mansion in Civil Lines, Kanpur, has been more fortunate. Although of almost similar vintage, it has aged much better. Roopnarain Shukla also had a large family- six children- all of whom grew up in this house. But, unlike the haveli, this home was never abandoned; my Mama/ Mami and cousins still live there- the fourth generation. And the building shows this- a still graceful 80 year old, full of vitality and activity, glowing in the evenings, rejuvenated from time to time with parties, poojas and " paths". I go there often, but do not have the feeling of sadness and a dull regret ( mixed with guilt) that Husainganj engenders. It's a happy house, looking to the future and not the past , aware that it is still cherished and loved, nurturing its residents, not one which has given up hope and is just waiting to die.

                     

                                     A happier house in Kanpur ( Photo by Dr. Anupam Shukla)

  Both houses mirror the fate that befalls many humans, the different paths that life takes- they are but reflections of the attitudes and emotions of those who live or lived in them. Where there is love and care there is happiness, where there is neglect and unconcern there is despondency. In many ways, our houses reflect the direction our own destinies have taken.

  Which is why I always envy my cousins in Kanpur- you have to be fortunate to have been born and brought up in the same house where your parents and grandparents also lived ( and perhaps bid you farewell), for their memories make it a consecrated and blessed place. Walls not only have ears, they also speak- of your family's past, of events witnessed, of the good times and the bad. They keep us together and remind us of family bonds which can otherwise unravel very quickly in these turbulent times. Families which stay together stick together. And our houses reflect all this, make it possible- their bricks are the DNA, the building blocks of families.

  And I sometimes wonder what fate awaits the house I built in Mashobra in 2007, which Neerja has lovingly named " Shinay" ( a state of quietude, meditation and inner peace.) Since then we have had more than our fair share of adversity and misfortune which kept us in exile in Delhi for a long time. But Shinay has provided us a safe harbour, a place we continue to return to for solace and to heal our souls.

                                                        The author's house, SHINAY.

                                                                                                                                                                   But the march of time will take its toll, and I occasionally wonder: will Shinay, in the years to come, continue to greet the morning sun with the joyous promise of another day, will the birds continue to sing in the trees that surround it, will the flowers still bloom with that little extra tint of colour and whiff of fragrance ? Maybe it's better that I don't know what awaits in the womb of fate. For in time the red brick walls of Shinay will tell their own story, like all houses do.

IT IS EASIER TO ERASE HISTORY THAN TO SCRIPT IT.

  History and literature rarely get it wrong. Didn't the poet say that " If demonetisation comes, can monetisation be far behind ?" And Ms Sitharaman has proved him right with her just launched NMP or National Monetisation Pipeline , barely five years after the National Demonetisation Pipedream, which turned out to be more of a nightmare than a dream. This one won't fare much better and, given the inept handling of disinvestment so far ( including Air- India ), is all set to be another man-made calamity. But it was never really intended to monetise, its purpose is to monopolise, thereby making a few of the Godfather's cronies even richer. It could more appropriately have been titled National Monopolisation Pipeline. But I am not on the economics of the programme today- that is better left to Mr Chidambaram and Kaushik Basu. I am struck today by the psychology and pathology that lurks behind such thinking.

  The NMP is not a one-off, and should be seen as the latest manifestation of a mental disease, just as Covid is only the latest of a long string of coronas. The condition is now endemic among the top BJP/ RSS leadership. It springs from the insecurity, over weening rodomontade, and the narcissistic self glorification instincts of one individual. It began as paranoia but has now assumed the proportions of a psychotic disconnect from reality. Simply diagnosed, the disease is this: a Kublai Khan complex, the refusal to acknowledge the contributions of leaders before or after him, and to destroy and dismantle every good work done by others. Leave no trace of any good work done before 1 AD ( After Damodaran) .

  To the extent that the NMP privatises a huge chunk of the public infrastructure painstakingly built over the last 75 years- railways, ports, airports, godowns, mines, pipelines, stadiums- it is only the latest attempt to rewrite history and to redact the contributions of past governments to the country's development. It should surprise no one, because this exercise has been going on for the last seven years, but it's only now that the dots are connecting themselves. Here are some instances leading up to this  destruction:

* Renaming the Planning Commission as the NITI Ayog. It has served no purpose and achieved nothing but has severed one important link in the chain of federalism.

* Replacing the National Relief Fund with PMCARES. This is not just empty vainglory but a cunning strategem to avoid any audit of donations, voluntary or coerced.

* Doing away with the special status/ statehood of Jammu and Kasmir, something which all previous governments( including Mr. Vajpayee's ) had preserved even through the most difficult times. This will now come to haunt Mr. Modi with the Taliban making clear its intentions about Jammu and Kashmir, but the country's larger interests be damned: it's more important to win Uttar Pradesh in 2022

* Renaming towns and cities simply to remove inherited legacies and create another historical black-out.

* Vandalising the very heart of Delhi to obliterate its very essence- 4.58 lakh sq. meters of it- something even the Mughals had not attempted on this scale. The Central Vista project shall permanently demolish or make dysfunctional some of our most iconic structures, and ( more importantly for the BJP) the nation's memories that are associated with them: Parliament, National Museum, Indira Gandhi Centre for Arts, National Archives ( Annexe), Vigyan Bhavan, Krishi Bhavan, Nirman Bhavan, Shastri Bhavan, Udyog Bhavan. They are an affront to the new leadership because they are reminders of how little this party had contributed to the freedom and development of a modern India, and so they have to go.

* The shocking and infantile omitting of Nehru's name by the ICHR (Indian Council of Historical Research) from the poster meant to commemorate India's 75th year of independence, while the names and images of all others are there. This is almost an ethnic cleansing of the Nehru name and legacy.

* The renovation of Mahatma Gandhi's internationally famous Sabarmati Ashram, without even a cursory consultation with its trustees, employees and residents. This will destroy for ever the simplicity and solemnity of the place, which was in fact the true reflection of the Mahatma's values and beliefs. But these are of no further value to this government, what they need is his name and a makeover by a favourite architect.

* The Disneyfication of Jalianwalla Bagh, inspite of the protests of historians, scholars, relatives of the shot freedom fighters and even an outraged global community. This is a place where death came to thousands of innocents and deserves to be remembered as such, preserved as a frozen moment in time so that the nation never ever forgets its gory legacy: the narrow lane through which the soldiers marched with their machine guns, the bullet holes on the walls, the well of death, the blood stains everywhere. For this government, however, it is just an amusement park, perhaps to be " monetised" at some future date, a moment in history which serves no further electoral purpose, a monument to be replaced with another temple or statue in some distant place. 

* Just about every welfare/ social programme introduced by previous governments has been renamed to break its connect with the past. Shashi Tharoor, MP, had, in 2017, come out with a list of 19 such programmes of the UPA ( out of 23) which the BJP has appropriated but rechristened in true cuckoo fashion. They include: Nirmal Bharat Abhiyan ( renamed as Swacch Bharat Mission ), National Manufacturing Policy ( Make in India ). National Skill Development Programme ( Skill India ), Free LPG connections to BPL families ( Prime Minister's Ujjwala Yojana), National E-Governance Plan ( Digital India ), Basic Savings Bank Deposit Account ( Jan Dhan Yojana ). This is not even old wine in new bottles, but old wine in old bottles with only the label changed. The list must be even longer now.

* Revising the syllabus of colleges and schools under the New Education Policy to delete references to inconvenient truths like federalism, secularism, citizenship etc. because they don't suit the BJP's ideological narrative. Rest assured, however, that these are only stop- gap measures till the time the party has the majority to amend the Constitution and get rid of these irritants permanently.

* The attempt to fundamentally alter the character of India's premier civil services- the All India Services. Structured painstakingly by Sardar Patel and Nehru to bind the Union and the states and to maintain a balance of power between them, Mr. Modi is hell bent on obliterating their federal component; their objective selection process is being compromised by lateral entries; the members of these services themselves are being intimidated into being disloyal to the states. This "steel frame" is perhaps the most visible and influential reminder of the nation building work done by the Congress after Independence, and therefore must be demolished.

  The genesis of the RSS / BJP's insecurity with the past lies in the fact that history has not been kind to them, and with good reason, and therefore must be rewritten, or at least redacted ( like the CAG report on Rafael ! ) This explains also the visceral hatred for the Nehru family; the ghost of Jawaharlal Nehru, particularly, has to be exorcised for ever from the nation's collective memory for he is still the symbol of the freedom movement and the architect of a modern India- to neither of which the BJP or its precursor ever contributed.

 But there is a problem here, and it has been brilliantly enunciated by Dr. Parakala Prabhakar in one of his weekly videos: Nehru is both a threat and a necessity for the BJP, it needs him even as it seeks to destroy him. The BJP, according to Dr. Prabhakar, needs Nehru so that it can blame him for its own failures and incompetence; but it also needs to destroy him so that it can erase from public memory his contributions to a modern India, and also hide their own absence from India's freedom movement. It's a schizophrenic state of mind.

  The sickness begins when you conflate an idea with the leader, as Tarun Tejpal points out in his recent essay on Animal Farm : the leader is now a living embodiment, and he alone represents the idea. "And the idea that is now the leader is the statue, is the building, is the road, is the hospital, is the airport. In his name do a thousand flowers bloom."  There can be no place for anyone else or any other idea. This is grandiosity, paranoia and insecurity combined, but it is not statesmanship.

  Greatness requires a dream, not a grudge; it needs a vision for the future, not a wallowing in the past; it is based on creation, not destruction. But these are distinctions which the Supreme Leader is perhaps incapable of understanding.

THE ALTERNATE SOCIAL MEDIA IS RESTORING THE BALANCE OF NEWS

   In the 2014 and 2019 elections every dimension of the news and social media was completely dominated by the BJP. The so-called mainstream print and television sector had already been or more or less bought out or intimidated into a hallelujah mode. As for Facebook and its subsidiaries, Whatsapp and Instagram, one has only to read the book THE REAL FACE OF FACEBOOK by Paranjoy Guha Thakurta and Cyril Sam to realise how complete the BJP's control over these mediums had become. This well researched volume exposes fully the complicity of Facebook in blatantly favouring, and working with, the BJP in furthering its political agenda. There is, of course, nothing new in this: increasingly, Facebook seems to prefer extreme right wing ideologies across the globe, and to consort with its purveyors, who tend to be autocratic or semi-autocratic governments. No wonder Mr. Amit Shah could boast, before the 2019 U.P. elections, that " we are capable of delivering any message we want to the public, whether sweet or sour, true or fake." This was no idle boast: the BJP had 3.20 million group members in just UP alone !

  Today, nothing has changed for the print and television media. A leading newspaper just dropped Karan Thapar's weekly column because he dared to point out that the Muslims had also been victims of the partition riots in Jammu. Television will still not show you Rahul Gandhi's press conferences or discuss the recent hate crimes in MP; they will instead spend hours on Sidhu's shenanigans in Punjab. But what is changing now is social media. Not Facebook and its instruments, not Twitter whose so-called " confrontation" with the government is nothing but a vaudeville act which should fool no one. The BJP needs these platforms before the 2022 elections and cannot afford to antagonise them. As the previous IT Minister found out too late. 

  The new, and fresh, faces of news are the channels on YouTube and digital news platforms. They are independent, not beholden to either the government or the corporates for financial support, get their funds directly from subscribers. These platforms are run either by small outfits or individuals who enjoy a lot of credibility among the discerning public, including senior journalists whose integrity was not to the liking of television channels, and academics and intellectuals who believe that keeping quiet is not an option any longer. These channels and platforms are making a commendable effort to redress the balance in Indian journalism. I myself watch just one hour of television news in a day: the 7.30 PM news bulletin of BBC to get the international news, and the 8.00 to 8.30 PM Newshour on NDTV to get the latest Covid figures, since Sonia Singh seems to be besotted with them ! For actual news and its analysis I turn to YouTube and the digital news portals.

  Lest you cock a snook at them, let me tell you that these are not chicken feed: some of them have subscriber bases running into millions. THE WIRE was part of the consortium of 16 global publications which investigated the Pegasus case. The other portals which still have the guts to take on the government are THE CITIZEN, HW NEWS, THE PRINT and QUINT. Their strength is that they not only present news responsibly, without any bias, but provide their viewers with rational and objective analyses, which is almost totally missing from other media.

  The YouTube channels are in a category by themselves, and may their tribe increase ! Most of them are in Hindi, which is a good thing because this increases their reach and catchment area. The better ones include Ashutosh's SATYA HINDI, NEWS CLICK, ARTICLE 19, LIVE TV, THE PRINT, TV NEWSANCE. Unlike the jaded and repetitive TV channels they are not dependent on biased wire news feeds like ANI for their information, nor do they have to depend on the same faces (the G-37) of recycled " experts" or party spokespersons for their analysis of events. They thus bring a freshness and a 360 degree perspective in their reporting.

  Even better are a number of outstanding individuals who regularly post their videos on YouTube to analyse specific events, policy decisions and trends. They go BEHIND the news to make better sense of it and provide a depth of analysis that is missing from mainstream media. It helps that they are all experts in their fields ( law, corporate matters, international affairs, defence ) , or coopt experts whose credentials cannot be questioned. Included in this list are Parakala Prabhakar , Punya Prasun Bajpayi, Faye D'Souza, Sujit Nair, Faizan Mustafa, Ravish Kumar, Akhilesh Bhargava, Abhisar Sharma, Pravin Sawhney and Dhruv Rathee ( who has 5 million subscribers!) Karan Thapar is another YouTuber whose regular THE INTERVIEW routinely attracts a couple of lakh views: it is the nearest we will ever get to a HARD TALK type of show in India.

  All these channels and individuals provide an invaluable service to the citizens at a time when all news is either censored or fake, when the BJP's IT Cell has replaced Reuters and PTI as the biggest dispenser of ( fake) news, and it has become impossible to distinguish between paid and genuine news. Granted that they are not camp followers of the ruling party or the government and are generally critical of them, but that too is an essential ingredient of a democracy. They are performing yeoman's service in attempting to set the balance right.

  And it's working. It appears to me that the government has belatedly recognised that its complete dominance of the social media is now under threat, notwithstanding that the Electoral Bonds will ensure that Facebook and its subsidiaries will remain in its pockets. Which explains the new IT regulations and the desperation to impose controls over all digital channels and posts. It is heartening that a couple of High Courts have struck down some of the insidious provisions of these rules, and that the Supreme Court has so far refused to interfere with their orders.

  It's time to switch off your TV and turn on YouTube.

  

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.