For a fleeting moment you felt like hugging him. You struggled to find words to comfort him. But it is he who had come to comfort us. He spoke in simple words, and wept silently as he spoke. “Who can understand the sorrow one feels in one’s heart,” he said. The poignancy of those words could have melted a stone. You were sitting on the floor, close to him, trying to catch the warmth of the weak winter sun which was streaming through the door. You too shed a tear as you sat there listening to him, soaking in the sun and the wisdom of his words.

How loss can unite even as it creates deep void within. And words feel so inadequate. Beyond platitudes what really can one say? But he said so much without saying much. He was never known for his eloquence. Or for anything else, for that matter. He worked in a government job and is now probably retired. He has lived a conventional life, simple and ordinary. He is a man of God. Perhaps that’s what God intended humans to be: humble, meek and withdrawn. Completely at peace with himself and the world, he’s not a seeker. He seems to know the truth. He has never missed a prayer. At an age when other young men were chasing girls, he was spending his evenings at a dargah sweeping the marble floors.

Every evening you would find him there doing his chores, totally absorbed, and unmindful of the constant traffic of devotees. People would come and kiss the tombstones and were done with it. But his devotion demanded more. He would keep the place clean, dust and re-arrange the gilaf of all the tombstones. And when he did ziyarat it was not just a mechanical act but a deliberate, slow routine. He would reach under the gilaf and caress the bare marble with his hands and then rub his hands on his face as if transferring the divinity from the sacred stone to human flesh. When he was done, he would sit in a corner and read the yasin for hours on end.

Then, you found him weird. Life had so much to offer, it was yours to be lived and be made success of. Why waste it sweeping floors? You were young and arrogant, drunk on reason and scientific temper. You had no capacity to understand a dimension of reality that lay beyond the physical and beyond the visible. Today you think you know better, success and rationality you so prided in did not measure up after all. All things material do not amount to much, you realise. This is a truth that cannot be taught. It just dawns on you, if you’re lucky. That day, as you sat with him sharing common loss, you could appreciate his simple faith. A lifetime of ardent devotion had a meaning, a spiritual logic that cannot be explained. He and you were separated by worlds but you knew, that unlike you, he was in touch with his inner universe. Wisdom does not come from mere workings of the mind. From dry intellect.

Looking out to the door you saw dust particles floating in the shaft of light. How was this life, this planet different from those tiny specks in the air? Wasn’t it all mere cosmic dust? Fragile, fleeting, insignificant. And we make such a production of it.

When I think of you…

When I think of you how can
I keep my heart from breaking
This Neem tree, this shade, this sun
This silence left behind by a life
This desolation that has settled
Like a rock deep in the heart
Cold morning air hangs heavy with
Moisture of raw, melting grief
How much can one cry, yet behind
Dry eyes I hold back a river
Rose petals adorn your bed like
A thousand sweet-smelling regrets
You sleep well, I’ll sit here and
Wait and watch over your dreams
They say it’s time for closure but
Where do I bury your memories
Day by day, sigh by sigh you had
Stolen smiles from a tight-fisted life
The winter chills you so dreaded
Now run down my spine
Your lifetime of love and longings
Tied in neat bundles now sit
Orphaned behind locked cupboards
It was a simple life, ordinary life
Why is it that those who have
Not much to begin with
Have so much to lose
When I think of you how can
I keep my heart from breaking

The funny thing is, Afghans treat their vegetable the way the Taliban treat their women – they never let them out. The veggies in my kabab must have been grown and prepared in some dark place and were perhaps seeing the light of day for the first time when it was put on plate in my honour. I felt a pang of pity for this thing, and was in no mood to give it any further grief. But pangs of hunger soon overtook and I dug into the kabab with gusto and started masticating it down to another dark place. The palate was not impressed. The kabab tasted just the way the dry, arid Afgan countryside would.

As if eating veggie kabab in an Afghan restaurant wasn’t odd enough, there soon appeared a Mickey Mouse character. The irony of this this life-size mouse in this setting was not lost on the people around. I felt a mixture of empathy and revulsion. Empathy for the poor, desperate guy who was driven to make a living in this manner. The burqa-clad Afghan women, I wondered, might feel no different from him – claustrophobic, demeaned and forced. But at least this guy had a choice. Apparently.

An odd interloper.

Revulsion because here was this Disney character symbolising everything American. And here was this restaurant representing everything Afghan. One a ruthless imperial occupying power. The other its poor, helpless victim. To see a Mickey Mouse in this context seemed a cruel joke – but only from a safe North American perspective.

In Afghanistan, joke was hardly the word on one would associate with the savage American occupation. Afghans have been raped, ravaged and killed by the thousands and their country laid to waste. But all that cruelty and savagery as well as the cry and pain of the victims seemed distant and surreal. Just like the panoramic idyllic Afghanistan that the restaurant owner proudly displayed on the walls. For a moment the mind wandered trying to make sense of this mad, mad world but soon returned to the joys of the veggie kabab. All of a suddend, it tasted like irony.

But I digress. Here is a poem – rather an expression of random thoughts and images that have been playing on my mind for the past few days. I’ve attempted to give them a coherent shape, or so I would like to think. Here goes…

On the wings of hope

Round and round the heavens swirl
Spreading marvels in countless hues
The heart cries a silent sob
Of wonder, of terror, of awe
At the utter beauty of this night
Oh to be alive, to be human
To breathe a breath that comes
From the darkness of time
Bearing bouquets of love and pain
Of failed hopes, of endless seeking
Oh the tyranny of the unknown

To ancient rhythms the heart still beats
To what end no one knows
A nameless love lingers
In the shadows of everyday life
When everything is said and done
Emptiness remains
Prisoner to words and meanings
On this day of Sabbath
Free spirits have lost their minds
Come, bring your gods along
Let’s drink to their eternity and
Snatch the secrets from their hearts
Then in the circus of unreason
Religion will be the clown
But don’t be too quick to laugh
New messiahs wait in the wings

Meet me beneath the scented cedars
By the pond where lotuses grow
We’ll walk on a path to nowhere
Away from the straight and narrow
We’ll write songs with stars
Under a low hanging moon
And dance like mad lovers
To the music of our souls
You and me, me and you
Whirling, turning, merging
Into one body, one being
Here, on the threshold of
Sacred and profane we’ll
Un-name all that is named
One by one, thing by thing
Unlock the mysteries and
Free the Word from the Book
And rescue the meaning from
Prophets and priests

When the music stops and feet are tired
We’ll rest under a nameless sky
Among the ruins of shattered certainties
Caressed by the slanting rays of a moist dawn
We’ll close our eyes in silent gratitude and
Fly prayers on the wings of hope

Yes, you guessed it. Just say “Ramadan is coming” and a sudden dread fills their heart. As soon as it is said they want the thought banished lest it may linger and spoil their mood, and the person who says it is considered rude, not fit for polite company. Of course, for the pious and pretentious this is the most blasphemous thing one could say, but I’m not talking about them.

I’m talking about Muslims Lite, the kind who were born into the religion, given a Muslim name and faith, and were conditioned into accepting its ways and norms the way we are conditioned into accepting schooling, market forces, marriage, taxes, traffic rules etc. In short, they are Muslims for no fault of their own. Or, to put it more delicately, of no choosing of their own.

So, once a Muslim is always a Muslim. That is the general norm, although there will always be an odd apostate here and a victim of reason there. Even then, neither of them has much to fear, for their lack of faith was preordained. The Quran clearly says that it’s up to Allah whom He makes believers and whom He does not. Of course, Muslims Lite do not know this, nor do they care. And the mullahs even if they knew would never let on, because revealing the finer points of revelations does not make good business sense.

Muslims Lite tend to struggle with their Muslim identity like they do with their, say, skin colour, but as they grow old and are cast into the chaotic world of cultural diversity they begin to cleave to their Muslimness and even begin to take pride in it. Yet, it is rare for anyone of them to take that leap of faith and become truly religious. For them religion is a little more than a cultural thing. It gives them an identity, a community and social occasions where men and women can come together to gossip and kvetch about the world.

Their knowledge of religion is sketchy and almost always second-hand based on hearsay. For them religion is rituals, and that’s all they care about as it makes them feel and look like Muslims. Practice of formal religion, superficial and perfunctory, is as far as they would go in being religious.

And I’m with them all the way. No amount of devoutness or deep study of religion will bring them any closer to what is promised. There are no guarantees – none in this life and even fewer in afterlife, no matter what the scriptures say or how the mullahs interpret them. As for mullahs, Muslims Lite treat them with snickering contempt. But if you’ve the misfortune or the stupidity of belonging to the priest-infested Orthodox Bohra fold then it’s mullahs who hold you in contempt and snicker in your face. Yes, such a thing is possible.

Muslims Lite tolerate mullahs only because they are needed to perform rituals and, when rituals demand, tell stories. One such story is popular about Ramadan. The legend has it that the one-month Ramadan was a real deal that Prophet Mohammed struck with Allah. During the Prophet’s trip to the Seven Heavens – Miraj – Allah prescribed six months of fasting for Muslims. The Prophet baulked at the suggestion and, fearing revolt from the believers, asked Moses to intercede, who with tact and much haggling brought it down to one month. That by any stretch is quite a bargain. But for Muslims Lite it is still 30 days too many.

Even in the best of seasons, the very thought of Ramadan unsettles their mind. But it positively unsettles their life when it arrives in summer months when the days are long, the sun is hot and the mood is not just into it. It is not just the prospect of fasting for long hours that rankles them so but the fact that they have to plan their parties and vacations around the Holy month. And heaven forbid if they have to forgo some of the fun to make room for it.

For the pious and pretentious sacrificing fun is a good thing, right up Allah’s alley, the very raison d’être of religion. But for Muslims Lite it is a waste of life. Even so, no matter how much they gripe and grovel, they have little chance against 14 centuries of conditioning that has paralysed their psyche with fear and guilt. They finally give in to the inevitable. Ramadan arrives and the dull dread in the heart, in a surprising twist, gives way to solemn piety.

There is a frantic exchange of greetings on Ramadan’s arrival – and some eager souls start it days in advance much to the irritation of Muslims Lite. The greeting’s format is pretty much standard and it normally ends with the mandatory plea asking others to remember one in prayers. Muslims Lite do not normally pray the whole year but during Ramadan they make it a point to pray regularly. As mentioned, the emphasis is on rituals. It is easy to be seen to be praying, but not so with fasting which is a quiet, private activity. This leaves the young and the pretenders ample room to play fast and loose with fasting.

Everybody is expected to fast during the Holy month, those who don’t remain mum and furtive, and then there are those – Muslims Extra Lite, the godforsaken – who are open and unabashedly public about it. Regardless, iftaar – the breaking of the fast – is something they all enjoy and look forward to. And iftaar, after fasting and prayer, is the most important ritual, and perhaps the only one that takes up Muslims Lite’s most time, thought and enthusiasm.

But say what you may, after the first few days of sleep deprivation and tea-less, heavy-headed mornings Ramadan settles into a nice rhythm of fast and break-fast, and Muslims Lite begin to enjoy the religiosity of it all. Except that by the end of the first week everybody is soundly constipated. Barring the digestive and sleep problems, a diffuse air of spirituality begins to hang over their homes and Muslims Lite go about their day with stoic self-control hoping as hell that all this that they are subjecting themselves to will come good on the Day of Judgement.

Or is this all a hoax? The doubt is always at the back of their mind. But they go through the paces anyway, not wanting to take any chances. Because perchance if all this turns out to be true, then they have got, to put it crudely, their asses covered. Well, at least partly covered. The notion that appearance is all that matters is deeply ingrained in them– and they know it works. Detaching intention from action is the way of the world and they think it will work with God as well.

One has a hard time explaining Ramadan to non-Muslims. They actually think it is self-torture but Muslims Lite are always quick to justify it as a noble deed, a way of feeling the pain of the poor and hungry. But nobody tells them that feeling others’ pain will not make their hunger and poverty go away. Isn’t it better to feed the hungry rather than just feel their pain? Another explanation which is quite common and I believed in it for a long time is that fasting is good for your health. It helps get rid of toxins in your body (not to mention the sins of the soul). Then there are those who use Ramadan to get back in shape. Trim the fat and earn (heavenly) reward points – a win-win situation. But, to be fair, this and other such justification are only partly true.

So far as I’ve understood, Ramadan has two main objectives.

One, the sense of deprivation that day-long abstinence creates is designed to force us to realise that our life, our very survival is dependent on God’s bounties. At iftaar we are supposed to partake of food, water and other nourishment with gratitude and a deep sense of humility. Our own Thanksgiving, if you will. But it is more than that. Ramadan cuts our ego, our arrogance down to size, and shows up we humans to be what we truly are: vulnerable, weak and at the mercy of Mother Nature. Maybe, there is a Green message in there.

Two, Ramadan provides Muslims a chance to shun the material world so that they can come closer to their Creator. Fasting is their hidden, private passage to God, a way to commune with the divine. Those who have any idea of what spirituality is about will know that it makes a lot of sense. The break from unconscious daily routine – from food, water and other needs and pleasures – does create opportunity and space for God to creep into one’s consciousness. The sense of spirituality one feels during Ramadan is none other than the presence of the divine.

But there are several problems with Ramadan as it has come to be practiced. First, even most devout Muslims have no idea why they fast. Two, the whole thing is bogged down in rituals and there is little time for self-reflection. And without reflection there can be no connecting with God. Three, the sense of spirituality – if at all sensed – is too ephemeral to leave any lasting impact on one’s consciousness. Four, Muslims have been taught to fear God who demands absolute obedience. Hence the emphasis is on obeying God’s laws rather than communing with Him. Besides, any relationship based on fear cannot lead to Love – which is God itself. Five, when you’re hungry all you can reflect upon is food not God unless of course you have the self-discipline of those yogis who starved themselves in hopes of achieving nirvana. Thankfully, Ramadan was not designed to be so taxing. The sunrise to sunset abstinence was thought to be good enough. Yet, it seems to me that spiritual gain of fasting, if any, is quickly lost in the material binge of iftaar.

And for Muslims Lite iftaar is the only light at the end of the fasting tunnel. Depending on one’s social class and family tradition, iftaar can be a quick routine affair or an elaborate glutton fest. For Muslims Lite who are generally well-off the latter is normally true. My family was typical Muslim Lite, in fact any sign of more than necessary religiosity was frowned upon and actively discouraged. Although we were quite well-off our iftaar was a pretty spartan affair, perhaps in keeping with our small-town culture. Samosas and tea were pretty standard in most homes. In bigger cities and richer homes iftaar was quite a feast with a variety of fried goodies, cold drinks, lots of fruits and the customary almond encrusted dates to break the fast with.

Such luxury was unheard of in our town and our home. Minced-meat samosas was the only delicacy we knew, and to our young minds, the only reason to fast. If you fasted you got to eat more samosas. If you didn’t you not only got fewer but also survived the day on leftovers. Definitely a bad deal. Then there were occasional shaami-kababs to break the routine. And on days when there were pakoras – the lowliest of fried goodies – you felt cheated. Even insulted. But, then, it was all relative. The people who could not afford meat samosas seemed quite happy with lentil samosas or pakoras, and on a good day when they felt like it they allowed themselves meat samosas but there was more onions than meat in them and they made them small and lean.

In our home they were thankfully fat and stuffed. They felt so good in your hand, crisp brown crust with a glistening patina of oil, a perfect triangle of voluptuous goodness. Oh that first bite, crunchy and juicy, was just heavenly. Our own sensuous, culinary communion with God. And there was no such thing as enough samosas. But in a joint family with uncles and aunts and cousins there was only so much to go around. Besides, children were the least of everybody’s priority. Adult men got the lion’s share of everything. The world never seemed more unfair than at iftaar time. Where was God’s justice, I secretly and constantly wondered.

Maybe it’s because I don’t pray, I tried to rationalise. Because instead of praying I was trudging to the mosque at maghrib time (evening prayer) with a kettle of hot tea in one hand and a bundle cups and freshly fried samosas in the other. This was the iftaar fare for the men of the house who went to the mosque for prayers. Most other men would carry their own food, but the men in our house were calibrated differently. They insisted on their food delivered exactly at iftaar time so that the tea was hot and samosas crisp.

We children were pressed into service. During that 10-minute walk carrying that precious cargo I was filled with anticipation and shame. Anticipation for obvious reasons and shame because I was not among the other boys my age lining up in the back row praying. It really felt humiliating to be ferrying food like a girl while my peers were doing the boy thing. On days when I reached before time I just lingered outside the mosque trying hard to be invisible. The thing was I did not know how to pray. Well, I knew some of the stuff which we had learned by rote but I could never bring myself to practice it.

But I did not know then that those boys did not know much either. They were there for fun – pushing each other when they went into sujood (prostration), snatching caps and kurtas and harassing some old coot who happened to cross their path. I was too timid and protected for such rambunctious horseplay, and had no wish to be part of it. I still envied them, though, for they did not have to deliver food, and that they were wearing suitable “Muslim” clothes unlike me who in half-pants, gangly legs felt exposed. And ridiculous.

As soon as the maghrib prayer ended the congregation would break for iftaar and the collective sigh of relief was almost palpable. I would enter the mosque in the nick of time and melt in the crowd hoping nobody would recoginse me. Those who lived close by would rush out to their homes for a quick bite, the rest would hurry up to their respective spots, huddle around in small clutches and, squatting on their haunches, proceed to eat.

My father and uncles would come to our designated spot where I would be waiting – and the fast would be broken without much ceremony. We all ate in silence, except when someone would comment on how the tea was not hot enough or the samosas lacked salt or some such thing. By the way, the samosas for them could never be perfect. There was never any appreciation for the effort that went into making them or the humiliation involved in delivering them. I would look around to see what others were eating only to learn that the general fare and palate was fairly limited. It felt good as my private shame found temporary refuge in the smell of food and din of chatter that hung over the mosque.

When iftaar was over and before the muezzin called for the next round of prayer I would slink out and trek back home, convincing myself not to do this next year. But that never happened until fate took me to the big city where I had no choice but to claim my place among the boys in the back row. I had finally arrived. Even so, I could never come to terms with religion and my relationship with it remains uneasy and conflicted. To this day.

It’s only appropriate to end with a couplet by Faiz:

Aaayiey haath uthain hum bhi,
hum jinhein rasme dua yaad nahin

Come let us also raise our hands (in prayer),
Those of us who have forgotten how to pray

Ramadan Mubarak! God bless us all.

But of course we never get to make that choice. By the time we’re born it’s too late. Or is it? Do we choose our own life? Do we choose to be born and come into this world? Is there life before the body? Is there life after the body? Who is asking these questions? Who is reading it? Oh, the tyranny of not knowing. These are the ultimate questions which at first blush may seem ridiculous.

But when you are done blushing, done this and that and the other, done achieving success and wealth and fame, what are you left with? Satisfaction. Pride. Sense of fulfillment. Maybe. Yet there comes a time when the smugness about your successes becomes rancid. When all is said and done, a free-floating emptiness remains deep inside. A dull, un-named sense of despair silently plagues us, as if something is missing, as if you have reached someplace but have yet to arrive.

Maybe it is a bout of existential crisis that hits one at a certain age when you have seen through the arrogance of reason and the imperium of science. When you have wrestled with philosophy and high-thinking and have found them wanting. Intellect, no matter how brilliant, can only take us so far – at the end of all possibilities, at the end of all knowledge – beyond which lies the great unknown that stares back at us, mocking our learned pretensions.

This is not to belittle man’s intellectual achievements but to put them in perspective. When I was young – or rather younger – I prided in being rational, to the point of being militant about it. Bertrand Russell was god and Jean Paul Sartre the high priest. Religion was the opium of the masses and Marx the purveyor of secular nirvana. You were so cocky that you viewed all orthodoxies – religious, capitalist – with all-knowing disdain and didn’t even realise that you were clinging to one of your own. You only read books that confirmed your biases. The whole world was of course a bourgeois conspiracy and whatever was left over was laid at the door of religious bigotry. You pointed at human tragedy caused by senseless accidents and natural disasters and mocked the believers with “why is your God doing this?”.

You mistook your naïveté for intellect and used big words to impress the girls. Much later it dawned – much to your chagrin – that you actually frightened away the girls and what you considered intellect was nothing more than borrowed wisdom. You spent too much time grappling with a language (English) that was not yours, and had little time left to think your own thoughts. Certainties came easily. Impossible was nothing. You were young and feckless and full of yourself.

Maybe all this was a necessary part of growing up. You stumbled and fell, you got back up and then stumbled and fell again. You can’t even begin to imagine how much time, energy and agony was spent on defending an idea, a belief system which later turned out to be illusory. Why illusory? Because your perspective had changed. The world remained the same, only your way of looking at things had altered. But there are people who are still mired in what you now think is cow pie. And how can you be sure that your truths of today will not turn out to be the illusions of tomorrow? Perhaps, that’s what it means to grow up, to evolve from one truth to the next. Perhaps, this is what development of consciousness is all about. Perhaps, this is what life is all about.

You look at the young people of today and wonder whether they too must repeat the same routine, jump through the hoops of temporary truths. Surely, there must be a better way of growing up. At so many levels life has become so much easier for them. From vaccinations to training wheels for bicycles, modern innovations have rescued them from the “necessary” pains of growing up. If instant gratification was not bad enough, now our world is awash with instant messaging, too. The concept “here and now” uprooted from its spiritual moorings has now ironically acquired – hungrily and urgently – a new consumerist quality. Young people have more information at their fingertips and yet are none the better for it. Reminds me of T.S. Eliot’s Wasteland, again:

Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?

The point I guess I’m trying to make is that the modern world of physical comfort and technological advancement is the best deal the young of today have got. But when it comes to making sense of this world, of this universe, and our place in it, why are the young people left high and dry without a clue, without a signpost. Not that the grown-ups are any better. We are all in the same boat, rudderless. But age and experience inevitably bring wisdom, and most people tend to reach a place of peace. But the journey to that place, despite all the modern ingenuity, is still fraught with pitfalls.

And somehow, despite ourselves, we trust that our civilisation if we abide by it long enough will make things better for us. This is what the people of all previous eras have sincerely thought. And we continue that legacy. We think good education is all we need to solve our problems. If only the whole world was educated.

The truth though is that schools are elaborate baby-sitting programmes (to take care of the children while parents are slaving away) designed to brainwash us with irrelevant facts and snuff out the spark of life from young lives. And years of schooling which we unjustifiably call education gives us a little more than a means to a livelihood. Those with drive, ambition and luck make it good, those who have none of these just make do.

In the end, everyone comes out the same: clueless and dead. And the drama of life continues haphazardly as it ever has for millennia. We can take pride in being modern, educated and savvy. Science and technology may have given us countless comforts but at the same time they have also made us more efficient killers. All the education and knowledge of the world just cannot shake off our moral inertia. Our flawed ways of doing things. Our ingrained habits of thought.

Count among those habits the instinctive rush to religion: in a moment of crisis, or when we are at an intellectual loose end, or when our rationality reaches the end of a tether. We think if we teach the default religion of our birth to our children we’ve done our parental duty and set our children on a path to God. Actually we’ve done no such thing except repeating the error of our parents and easing our conscience. Religions are nothing but stories about the unknown and man’s struggle with it. No one story is truer than the other. And as a general rule the more elaborate a religious doctrine the more fraudulent it is. Feeding children the fiction of God and submitting them to His ridiculous rules of reward and punishment would be funny if it were not so mind-numbing.

This is not to say spirituality doesn’t count. It does, but religions have nothing to do with spirituality. And spirituality itself, overused and over-rated, has nothing to do with making sense of this universe and our place in it. If science is superficial and religion hokum then what do we have to go by? Where are our certainties?

The answer apparently lies in mystical wisdom known to the masters for centuries. If ancient sages and modern mystics are to be believed, it all comes down to the self. Or rather not knowing our true self. They say life’s suffering stems from the false belief that we are this body, that we are this life. According to them, the only reality is the reality of the self – that sense of being, that sense of awareness, that sense of presence that animates you, that courses through your body, that makes you tick. That permanence amidst the transient. This the truth, unadorned by religion and unencumbered by ritual.

This reality, the true nature of self, can only be experienced, it cannot be understood, it cannot be taught, it cannot be explained. Words no matter how eloquent fail to describe what is known as the Oneness of Being, the sense of the Absolute, the taste of the Supreme. The Brahma. To the uninitiated all this may sound gobbledygook, and not without reason weaned as we are on the thin gruel of mass religion. The difficulties in the path to Self are many, and limitations of human language and human knowledge make it only worse. Besides, this is not a communal, group activity. It is necessarily an individual, private, solitary enterprise. It is not a belief system nor some New Age pap.

The search for Self – commonly understood as God, Allah or whatever one may call it – as expected begins with the self. It’s not out there but in here, within one’s self, in the silence, the stillness and the emptiness of being. It’s that sense of presence which is always with you no matter what. It is you. In order to glimpse it all you have to do is quieten your mind just for a moment and look within, look at yourself. Again and again.

It is claimed that if you do this often enough you will reach a stage where the universe and its mysteries will fall in place. From the Vedas to Lao Tsu to Buddha to Sufis to Maharishis – all have validated this truth down the ages. The tragedy is not that we have forgotten our true self but also the teachings about it. T.S. Eliot sums it up brilliantly in Wasteland:

The endless cycle of idea and action,
Endless invention, endless experiment,
Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness;
Knowledge of speech, but not of silence;
Knowledge of words, and ignorance of the Word.
All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance,
All our ignorance brings us nearer to death,
But nearness to death no nearer to God.
Where is the Life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
The cycles of Heaven in twenty centuries
Bring us farther from God and nearer to the Dust.

The show itself was quite tame and it seemed as if the presenters were trying hard to please. The funnies were forced and the show was less than spectacular. All this would still be tolerable if only they had shown some sense in the choice of winners. My beef is mainly with the best picture going to The Hurt Locker. On its own terms the movie is really good, a story well told and well made. It has an edgy finesse that perfectly captures the frisson of a war situation, but whatever its superlative qualities, it is no match for Avtar.

The latter is a breathtaking magnum opus. It inspires your awe and leaves you stunned at what human creativity and imagination can achieve. Leaving aside its technical prowess – which itself is a feat of human technology – Avatar has a breadth of vision and depth of wisdom rarely seen on the silver screen. At first blush the story may seem like another extravagant go at good against evil. True, there is the usual tripe of human greed and how we’ll go to great lengths – even to a distant planet – to satisfy our material hunger. Human imperialism, if you will. (On another level it is also a sharp critique of the U.S. foreign policy – its gung-ho willingness to invade foreign lands and steal their wealth.)

But what is different here is that James Cameron presents an alternative world – the world of the Na’avi people who live in complete harmony with nature. Theirs’ is a more advanced civilisation and their technological advancement is more organic than material – for example, the Na’avi have the ability to plug into the energy of the universe and become one with it. The real sting is in the end of their tail, so to speak. Avtar opens up a vista of grand vision, a paradigm shift, a palimpsest of possibilities that borders on the spiritual. Our planet, on the verge of collapsing on itself, never needed a more saner message more urgently.

Avtar, a film with a vision.

Cameron tell his story on a larger-than-life canvas, holds up a mirror to our moral and civilisational crises and then offers an alternative vision of possibilities. And he unfolds this vision with spectacular imagery and a technical mastery yet unmatched. Commercially too the movie has broken all records at the box office.

So, on every count this is a gem of a path-breaking film. It deserved an Oscar. But who got it instead? The Hurt Locker. A war movie that concerns itself with the travails of a bomb-disposal squad. Yes, theirs’ is a precarious existence, they play with danger with the possibility of a bomb blowing up in their face. Behind the drama and the tension is the sub-text of the futility of war. But in the end the film’s sympathies seem to lie with the invading army, as if proclaiming “see what a tough job our boys have to do to keep the terrorists out”. The narrative completely sidelines the real victims – the Iraqis. As if they do not matter. The human condition of the occupiers – dealing with their internal demons resulting from murder and mayhem – is somehow more worthy of our consideration than those whom they kill and destroy.

The Hurt Locker at one level is exactly what Avtar is decrying: Imperial ambitions and an inability to recognise the humanity or even the existence of the “other”. Some years ago Michael Moore denounced the Iraq war at the Oscars. This year a war movie wins an Oscar. And you thought Hollywood had no sense of irony.

Dear would-be husband,

Thank you for writing to me. Your letter was like so long I almost fell asleep, and you write in complete words and full sentences. That’s so last century. Just to get even I too will write a prolonged letter – with full words and sentences. Serves you right. And it’s going to take me a while okay as I’m not kind of used to writing like this. I’m sorry if this thing is delayed.

Okay, so let’s get a few things straight. I’m really not as “simple” as you think I am. Actually Mom insisted on writing that ad for me. She said girls must never let on that they are smart even if they are because boys don’t like smart girls. They – and especially their families – feel threatened by them. And I was like…! But you know you’ve to give in when they pull that wisdom thing on you, “I’ve seen more Diwalis than you, and I know what’s best”. I don’t know what to say when she says that, but what puzzles me is why it’s always Diwali, why not Holi or Eid or Christmas? Anyway the point is, I’m as smart as you are and I hope you don’t feel threatened. I won’t eat you, okay! Relax.

For the rest of the ad I just went along with what she said, I had no option with that Diwali firebomb hanging over my head. But I didn’t give in without a fight. I said, okay make me “simple” but then make the boy “fun-loving”. She agreed, saying, boys have every right to have fun. And I’m so glad that you’re taking your fun-loving seriously. It will come in handy. Or should I say you will stand me in good instead? Whatever. You know what I mean. Fun is very important to me. Fun is like so much fun. I’ll tell you more about it when we meet.

I’m really impressed by the amount of understanding you and your family have, probably more than one person can handle. No wonder you have to spread it around. However, (Oh, how I love ‘however’, it makes me feel so educated!) I think there was a slight misunderstanding about the “family-oriented” bit. Even I don’t know what it means, but I’m kind of sure it doesn’t mean Chinese. It probably means that you must always do things facing towards your family. For example, if we go to a restaurant you must sit facing me and kids – the family – and not turn your back to us and goggle at some other chicks. But no worries, I’ll allow you to throw side-glances at them if only you do not insist on showing them your understanding also.

The thing is, if I were somebody else I would have allowed you anything you wanted, but you see I’ve been brought up to do everything in half-measures. I’m kind of confused. My Mom and Dad have been saying different things to me all my life. One says sit, the other says stand. So most of the time I’m neither sitting nor standing. It’s that crazy. Mom is God-fearing, and Dad I’m sure is feared by God. God, they are always arguing about God. He says to Mom your god is the pigment of your imagination and this makes her red blood boil. Now she suffers from hot blood pressure, that’s what the doctor says. They are so completely opposite personalities they should stick together like magnets and actually they do whenever God is not being such a big haddi (bone) in their conjugal kabab.

Mom comes from a poor family so her upbringing was kind of low-key, and I suspect her “god-fearing” is just a put-on. She fears “other people” more. She’s always going on about “what other people will think”, and stressing about looking good in other people’s eyes. And funny thing is she doesn’t even know who these other people are. She is so hyper about the whole thing that when she’s driving she would rather run over a pedestrian in front just to look good to the driver behind. Dad feels sorry for her, says she suffers from manic obsessive paranoia. That sounds so cool, a three-word disease must be so nice to suffer from. Dad says there’s nothing nice about it, it is a disease of poor people because they have had such a raw deal in life.

He says this is the reason why poor people are such junkies – addicted to the opium of religion. He learned all this stuff from Karl Marx, the German dude who started this new religion called Communism and declared that all capitalists will be crushed by their own contradictions and go straight to the proletariat – I guess that’s some kind of Communist hell. Dad’s head is full of ideas from this Karl dude. Mom is convinced that if Karl didn’t exist Dad would have invented him. He is that crazy about him. You see, my Dad has completely different ideas about poor people from your Dad. We better make sure that they never come near each other or we would have a revolution on our hands.

And oh, how I hate revolutions. They give me a headache. Have you ever sat in a merry-go-round or like that stupid carousel they have at fairgrounds? Especially that music, it’s like fingernails on a blackboard. I know you are too smart to have ridden such silly things. From your letter you come across as really intelligent. And what impressed me the most was that you don’t use big words. I said to myself, wow here’s a guy who doesn’t feel the need to impress me with big words. Sure, he must have other big things to show, I thought to myself. But anyway, the thing is that I hate big words because I hate dictionaries.

And here’s why: When I was a teenager I suffered from an acute case of what my Dad called “likemia”. I had developed like this habit of saying the word “like” all the time. I would like say like 10 times in a like 7 and a quarter words sentence. If you’re wondering like why quarter, then like you don’t know teenage girls. We never like allowed each other to finish our sentences. And if we did we would curse ourselves like for a whole week. And like nobody liked that.

Anyway, my parents got fed up of my likemia because they said they could not understand what I was saying. When I said this to my friends they could not like stop laughing. We used to laugh at our parents a lot, and often without any reason. Like the moment you uttered the word “mom” or “dad” and everybody would like burst out laughing. Parents were such a joke. It was our way of taking revenge because they really had us by our gondolas when we were home. Oh, how we detested home.

Anyway, so where was I, yea, my Dad got so fed up with my likemia that he set up a plan to punish me. He said each time I said the word “like” I’ll have to learn a new word from the dictionary. When he said that I felt like gagging that Karl dude. All his fault. After some years I began to get a handle on “like” and learned so many diabolic words. Thanks to Dad, my vocabulary is very randy today. But I try not to use diabolic words very often as you can see I’m smart but at the same time I’m also very humbug. When I use diabolic words they all look at me like perpetuated – as if I’m from an indifferent planet. So you see, likemia actually, really turned out to be a blessing in disgust.

Okay, moving on, I must say that I like how frank and open you were with me. When I read about your laptop and Solitaire, I found it so funny I could not stop jiggling. Sad to know that you were not allowed to play Tom Raider. When I told my big sister about it she said your laptop must have a conservative version 13.0. That is very old. She says you must try the new liberal version 69.0. Her boyfriend has that, it comes with conventional morality disabled. Well, that’s what her boyfriend says. They play it all the time – and they are not even married. She was saying all you need is a mod-chip, I believe it is made of rubber. All you have to do is install a mod-chip and play it with any partner you want. You could also use mod-chip after marriage to avoid misconceptions. Well, that’s what she said.

But to tell you the truth even I’ve not played Tom Raider yet. Because of Mom. She says, “your big Sis has gone out of my hands but I won’t let you out of my sight even for a second.” Now that is not fair, no? But to be fair, all the partners I found were jerks. Dad doesn’t care whatever I play. When I told him about you and your letter, he said, “if you two can get the chemistry right then the rest, as they say, is biology.” Gosh, he makes it sound so hard. So want to gag Karl dude. But I tell you what, after marriage we will keep it very simple, like simple math. So here’s the aftermath of our marriage: First 1 + 1 = 3 and then 1 + 1 = 4. And that’s it. I can’t handle anything more dilapidated. Besides, diapers cost money, you know.

Talking of money, I’m so happy to hear about your long-term business plan. But just want to warn you, don’t be like that Karl dude, Dad was saying he died a poor man. The problem with him was that he was always on the left side of the rich people. What a loser! That’s why all his followers call themselves Leftists. If only they left the rest of us alone. But you make sure you pitch your tent on the right side of the rich people. I’ve heard that they always give with their right hand and the left hand doesn’t even know about it. No wonder Karl dude was left out, uh!

You know what, I’m already picturing you as some kind of a propheteer. But please don’t get too melodemocratic like going on a mountain and issuing commandments and stuff. Nobody believes in that tripe anymore. People have become very shopisticated – they only buy what really works for them. So I suggest that you get some marketing guy to work with you. And also a psyche-artist, Dad says it’s all a mind game – if you know how to control their minds you can control their pockets. So you better get it right baby, and remember I’m right behind you, just to watch your back. I don’t want that woman who’s always behind a successful man to attack you or something. Bitch, if only I could get my hands on her.

And yea, before I forget I must tell you that even I know Philosophy. You know my friend Sofy she’s going out with this guy Phil so we call them Philosophy, as in Branjelina. Get it? I came up with that, nice no? The two of them swear by each other, totally. And I’m like, totally? That reminds me, that thing about life-long commitment was Mom’s idea. I know size matters but life-long, Gosh what would I do with that? Don’t sweat over it, whatever commitment you have is good for me, I’ll be grab it with both hands. And yes, my Sis knows a thing or two about guys. She says for guys love is a three-letter word – it starts with an s and ends in an x. Why are guys so dumb? Can’t they count? Not only that, Sis says they also lack tongue-mind coordination. Like they will say something and will be thinking of something completely different. Especially when they say, “I love you” don’t fall for it, because when they say that they are only thinking of that three-letter word. One track mind, that’s Sis’ final verdict on them.

I hope you are not like that, and that your mind has more than one track. It’s so boring to listen to the same track over and over. My Dad does that all the time, he’s so annoying. I wish I could wring Karl dude’s neck! I hope you’re not like that. From your letter you seem sensible but who can know what is larking in a guy’s heart. I like the way you play the balancing game, though. Mom was hung up on that deen-duniya stuff. But, as you should know by now, I couldn’t care less. You know I received tons of letters in response to my ad. God, there’s so much desperation out there. One guy had a very interesting way of balancing out things. He wrote, “Whatever is considered bad I do it for six days and then take a rest on the seventh.” You know where he borrowed the idea from, God. Yea, he wrote, “God created the world in six days – which we all know is a bad thing – and then rested on the seventh. So, God has set an example for all of us. If you follow God, you can’t go wrong.” Interesting, no?

Anyway, I’ve gone through all the responses I received and I’m kind of leaning towards you. Now you better catch me before I fall heel over heads for some other jerk. So mister it seems you’re after all right for me. I like people who are on the right side of everything. That’s where the money is and it is money that makes the world go round and we can all make merry. Actually I love this merry-go-round because no matter how fast it goes it never gives me a headache. Some revolutions are just right, right? Money has that magic power, Karl dude could never figure that out. That is why Dad is such a stick-in-the-mud. I so want to gag Karl dude.

Okay I’ll end here, if I’ve missed anything I’ll text you. Writing like this with full words and all is too exhaustperating for me. Keep in touch. Love you.

Your would-be wife.

For who could be against the celebration of love? Sufis have perfected the art of love, if not exactly of love-making. (For the latter we must refer to Kama Sutra.) The concept of unity is central to Sufi belief where love and god are the same thing. For them the union with the beloved is the only purpose of human life. And the beloved, of course, is God or Self. One of the ways – or perhaps the only way – to achieve this union is through bekhudi, forgetting of the false self, banishment of the ego.

In popular Sufi music and poetry the beloved is often represented by metaphors such as lover and wine. The qawwallis and ghazals are rife with reference to the mashuuq (beloved) and sharab (wine) and shama (flame) and parvana (moth). Using poetic imagery to invoke the divine is a timeless tradition and Sufis have done wonderful things with it. And it is this imagination – this invoking of God in ways other than those set by theology – that gets the mullahs’ goat, or rather their goatee, or maybe both. Organised religion is nothing if not against the imagination, against possibilities. But that rant we shall save for another day.

The great Mirza Ghalib – whom I understand little but whatever I do I simply love it – has skewered the prudes and prissy like no other. Here’s a couplet I can never tire of quoting:

haa.N vo nahii.n Khudaa parast, jaao vo bevafaa sahii
jisako ho diin-o-dil aziiz, usakii galii me.n jaaye kyuu.N

Yes she is not a believer, what if she’s an infidel (in love)
If religion and heart are dear to you don’t enter her lane

Khudaa parast = follower of God/Muslim;
diin-o-dil = religion/faith and heart

Love is a wonderful thing. I’m hardly breaking new ground when I say that, but sometimes all it takes is a look, a word, a whiff, a coming together of universes in that magical instant that sets off that unexplained chemistry. It just happens. That’s the beauty and mystery of it. You won’t find love when you go looking for it, and that’s its enduring bloody paradox.

And sometimes you’re in love with the idea of love itself. Some years ago I must have been in such a state of mind and this poem (see below) insisted on being born. I midwifed its birth. Or as Ghalib has so beautifully said:

aate haiN Gaib se ye mazaamii.N Khayaal me.n
‘Ghalib’, sariir-e-Khaamaa navaa-e-sarosh hai

Thoughts/ideas come to me from the unknown
Ghalib, the scratch of the pen is like a sound of an angel

Gaib = hidden/mysterious
mazaamiiN = topics/articles
sariir = scratchiing sound made by a pen
Khaama = pen
navaa = sound
sarosh = angel

I dedicate this to all those Valentines out there.

Dreaming of Spring

Don’t tell me where you go
where you come from
just be there
like a new day
fresh, full of promise
like winter
always eager to arrive
always reluctant to leave
like life itself
mysterious, beautiful, cruel

Don’t speak your name
or any such detail
tell me instead of
tales you heard at
your grandma’s lap
of things that make your
mind blush
of the world you
carry within you
of the world you
left behind

Don’t hide the
glint in your eye
let it sing of untold secrets
speak of dreams
that hang at the edge of dawn
of tears of your people
yet unshed
of smiles yet unsmiled

Don’t ask why our paths
should have crossed
why here, why now
who is to know life’s
strange purpose
fleeting, silent these
shy moments maybe
but not without joy
not without angst

Don’t ask why
I’ve festooned
spent sorrows
imagined joys
unruly hopes
across taut heartstrings
and left them to dry
under cold cynicism
yet, despite myself
today they flutter madly
like flightless birds
at a mere hint of a distant
hesitant happiness

It may so happen
that tomorrow
the night may
descend without stars
and you’re not to be found
and then the first autumn rain
may wash away
meanings, restless yearnings
leaving behind puddles of
memories, stagnant
festering like yesterday’s news

Wars, ignorance, greed will remain
life’s terrors and fevers will remain
so will the terrible legacies
of man’s mad, pointless sojourn
from dust to divinity
form divinity to dust
yet, life will meander
once again listlessly
finding new meanings
new beginnings among
its endless doings

Then it may so happen
that on the night of
crescent moon
when a cool primal
breeze blows from the past
I may dream of you
like I dream of spring
that never comes.

Every time I read this I cannot help smirking. What the hell is it supposed to mean – a balance between deen and duniya? Here’s a typical ad from a girl seeking a suitable boy:

Looking for a smart, good looking boy between the age of 23 and 27 years. He should be from a respectable family, well-settled with a stable job/business and should be understanding, fun-loving and family-oriented and must have life-long commitment to relationship. I’m a simple, beautiful and fair-complexioned girl with a BCom degree and am looking for a partner who is well balanced in deen and duniya.

And here is a not-so-typical response to the ad:

Dear would-be wife,

I’m responding to your ad very simply because you are a simple girl. In fact I too always wanted to be simple but I just can’t help being smart. I know this is not a good thing to say. My mother always says it is bad manners to praise oneself. But I’m not praising myself, just telling you the facts because you must know everything before you make your decision about me.

If you asked me why I wanted to be simple, I’ll tell you this: When you are simple people leave you alone, they think you are a fool. But with smart people, people have a lot of expectations. Even when you don’t have a clue about something you’ve to pretend as if you know everything. In my honest opinion, it is better to appear like a fool and do smart things than appear smart and do dumb things. Being smart all the time causes me too much stress. I’ve had nervous breakdowns so many times, still I’m not afraid to be smart. I hope this is acceptable to you.

I must confess that I’m not very good looking. I find this requirement very insulting. Men are never supposed to be good looking only women are. It is good to know that you’re beautiful. And I’m ugly. So see, it balances out. I’m an expert at balancing things. You’ll know what I mean, just keep reading. I’m 24 years old, and my family is very respectable. In our town we respect everyone who is richer than us. My father taught me to laugh at the joke of the rich people even when they are not funny. He says, it is only polite. He also says that it makes rich people feel important, and keeps us in their good books. You cannot have a better win-win situation, he says. Now you know where my smartness comes from!

Also, you’ll know how respectable our family is when I tell you how we treat people who are poorer than us. We treat them like dirt. Father says social ladder was invented for a reason. You move up by climbing on top of the people below you. That’s what respectable people do. My elder brother says that people below you should always be kept in their place. If you try to be nice to them, they would one day climb on your head. That’s why they deserve to be where they are, he says.

In our family women must also be kept in their place. For example, my mother does not agree with all this rich/poor stuff but she is always told to shut up. Women’s place is in the kitchen and the bedroom – two places where man’s happiness comes from. All the thinking and talking must be left to the men, that’s our family tradition. I hope you find my family respectable enough.

I’m also happy to tell you that I’m very well settled. When I settle down to eat or sleep or watch TV it is very difficult to get me to do anything else. I believe in remaining settled. You will see how smart I’m when I tell you that I easily settle for anything that requires least amount of work or effort or even thinking. I know thinking is a man’s job. But I leave that to my father and brother. Why bother when others can think for you. See, that’s smart. Anyways, where was I? Yea, I’m also well settled in my mind about work. I find this whole idea of making a living very unsettling. Work is for losers. Why work when you can cheat and con people? Someday I want to start a religion. That is my long-term business plan.

But for now I do have a stable job. I work in a stable, it belongs to my father. He learned horse-trading from his politician friends. When he couldn’t become a politician he started dealing in real horses. I hate horses, I think they are dumb and produce so much horseshit. God, it stinks to the heavens. The only good thing about them is their 360° vision, which we humans don’t like so we destroy it by putting what they call, yes, barnacles, on their dumb faces.

But I love horsing around, but not with the horses of course. You are mad or what! With the girls in our stable. All innocent fun though, that’s what makes me fun-loving. You see my philosophy is that unless I’ve fun now how can I be loving to my future wife. Just learning a few tricks so that I can make you happy. You see I take my fun-loving very seriously, for you.

What is next? Yes, understanding. Oh, how can I tell you how understanding I’m. I understand everything, and in my family everybody has a good understanding. My brother often visits one auntie next door whose husband lives in Dubai. She is alone and lonely and brother goes there to give her company. He’s very kind and understanding. There is a place in our town where there are a lot of lonely ladies, brother also goes there to give them company and also gives them money. He’s so kind. And understanding. He has got these qualities from father. But father doesn’t go there anymore, he’s too old to show such kindness and is also slowly losing his understanding.

Long back when I was a teenager my mother found out about father’s visit to the lonely ladies. She was mad and fought with father for showing understanding to those women. Father slapped her and yelled, “you women are the worst enemy of women”. After that mother did not say anything and I guess became very understanding. At some point I too will have to show understanding to the lonely ladies. I’ve no choice. You see it is in my jeans.

Between you and me I can be completely frank, and I know you will not take it the wrong way. Will you be surprised if I told you that I have a laptop? Yea. There is this girl in my stable who always comes and sits on top of my lap. She only lets me play Solitaire. I want to play Tomb Raider but she says I can only play that after marriage. When I ask her why, she smiles at me and says “you’re so cheeeewt”. I hate it when girls say that. One reason I want to marry is that I want to play Tomb Raider bad.

I’m sorry if I’m rambling on but it is important that I tell you everything about me. Maybe I’m writing without thinking, but as I told you I don’t waste time thinking. I just do it, as Nike people always tell us. Anyways, the next on your list is “family-oriented”. I don’t know what you mean by this but I must make it clear that our family is not oriental. We are Indians, you know desi. Can you please tell me why you want marry into a Chinese family? Although I’ve nothing against the Chinese but they speak funny and have chinky eyes. Just want to warn you that Hindi-Chini are supposed to be bhai-bhai (brother-brother) or bhai-behen (brother-sister) and not miya-biwi (husband-wife). It would be so wrong if you married a Chinese – it would be like marrying your own brother. I’m hoping you’ll change your mind about family-orientation.

If you do, I promise to bring life-long commitment to our relationship – although I never knew commitment came in life-long size. I’ll try to find it on eBay. But don’t worry too much about commitment, my understanding is more than enough for our relationship. The long and short of it is that I’m already beginning to love you, just by writing this. And all the cockles of my heart are erect to know that you are fair-complexioned. I hope you did not get this by using Fair & Lovely cream because I know it does not work. My sister used it for years, the more she used the more unlovely she became. Some would say that the people who make Fair & Lovely are very unfair because they promise people something that can never happen. But in my opinion “false promise” is a good business strategy. There is always a market for it. Promise people what they can never have and they will go crazy about it. That is why religion is so popular. I want to start a religion so bad.

It is also good to know that you’re a BCom although I would have preferred if you were an ACom. Anyway it would be great to boast to my friends that my wife has a degree. They say that there is not much use for it but it does make a nice wall decoration. We’ll hang it in our living room, so when people visit us our importance can rise by a degree. When I get my degree, am in final year, we’ll hang mine too there, then our importance will rise by two degrees. That would be something. What do you say?

Finally we come to balancing deen and duniya. Oh, how I love to play this game. My favourite you know, better than cricket shriket. Actually everybody plays deen-duniya but very few understand the objective of the game. The objective is to find a balance between deen-duniya, between good and bad. Rohinton Mistry wrote a fine book explaining this game, and called it A Fine Balance. What the majority of people do is that they either do a lot of deen or a lot of duniya or as they say in Indian philosophy, a lot of dharma or a lot of samsara. They get so involved in doing just the one thing they are doing that they forget about the “balance”. If you ask me that is dumb, it defeats the whole purpose of the game.

I’ll tell you a secret which my father taught me. See you’ve to learn these things in the real world, you don’t learn it in your mother’s stomach. Okay, the secret is this. Life forces you to do bad things. It starts with our birth, we are born in sin. You may ask why. Because we are the result of bad things our parents have done. No matter what we do in life we cannot balance out this sin in our lifetime, it can only find balance in our death.

Putting that aside, this balancing game is real fun. It always start with a bad thing, like you’re tempted to tell a lie. For example, if you don’t like a girl, say Maria, you tell a lie about her, like “you know Maria has a boyfriend”. Now lying is a bad thing, don’t ask me why, I did not make the rules. So you must balance out the bad thing you’ve done by telling a truth which is a good thing. So what you do is say, “you know Maria’s brother is Sam”, which is a truth. See, this is how you balance a lie with a truth, bad with good.

And like this it goes on. My father slaps my mother – bad thing. Then he kisses her – good thing. My father does not pay enough salary to the workers in our stable and also cheats on income tax but then he balances out by praying five times a day. My brother drinks beer every day but regularly prays Juma namaz to balance it out. The factory owner next to our stable puts out a lot of chemicals in the ground which spoils the water that makes a lot of people sick, but he balances it out by going to the temple every morning and distributing prasad to the same sick people. They really know how to play the balancing game.

And I’m learning from them, the best I can. My laptop says playing Solitaire is not a good thing, so I try to balance it out by playing it every alternate day. I also like to drink beer. After every glass of beer I drink a glass of water. Perfect balance. I’m really getting good at this game. But I must tell you another secret. It is not necessary that every bad thing should be followed by a good thing. Some people play it differently. Like they do all bad things in the first half of their life and they then do good things in the second half. Remember the objective is to achieve a balance. But people generally don’t like this way of playing the game. There is a cat-call for such people: “sau chuhe kha ke billi Haj ko chali” (meaning the cat is going on Haj after eating 100 rats). But I fail to understand what the cat has got to do with all this and why she has to go on Haj.

Anyways, I hope you’re impressed with my skills at balancing deen and duniya. I’ve explained to you point by point in great detail about all the requirements you are looking for in your future husband. I know I’m Mr. Right for you. I sincerely hope you will overlook my lack of “family-orientation”. There is no way in hell my family can become Chinese. Also, please do not insist on life-long commitment, if I don’t find that size will you settle for any other size? Please let me know.

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Already loving you so much,

Your would-be husband.

Howard Zinn was the great historian and activist who with his classic A People’s History of the United States changed the consciousness of a whole generation. After reading him you would never look at history the same way again. A very public figure, inspirational orator, a great orgnaiser who believed in the power of the common people and who did not flinch from speaking truth to power.

J. D. Salinger, on the other hand, was a recluse, an aggressively private person who shunned fame and the world that idolized him. His all-time classic The Catcher in the Rye defined the angst and anger of an era and achieved a sort of cult status.

Both men detested authority, cocked a snook at the establishment and did not have much use for the received wisdom. Of course, I do not know enough about either of them to present even a half-decent study of contrasts about them, nor would I want to. All I want to do here is jot down my thoughts by way of tribute.

So, Salinger first. I read The Catcher in the Rye at an “advanced” age, even so it had a deep impact on me. I cursed myself for not reading him earlier. The novel is about this teenage character Holden Caulfield who is completely disillusioned with life around him – parents, teachers, education system, social mores. His cynicism, his devil-may-care attitude is infectious, and you completely identify with him as he navigates through a minefield of hypocrisy and pretense around him. If I had read this book when I was gauche and geeky (some would say I still am) teenager some of Holden’s irreverent attitude would have rubbed off of me too.

But having missed the bus, I do not want the young of today to grow up with the same regrets. That is why I always urge whoever would listen to me to read this book. My older son – not fond of books – never even attempted. The younger one did but abandoned it half way through. What the hell is wrong with the teenagers of today! Maybe the world has moved on, the grip of the system is becoming tighter and non-conformism is no longer fashionable. But if you look closely the world and its problems have not changed much. If at all things have only worsened.

It is against this rising tide of authoritarianism Howard Zinn warned us and declared “education can, and should be, dangerous.” I discovered him in the early 1990s along with Noam Chomsky and other famous American dissidents. The irony is that the majority of Americans have never heard about them – which is not the fault of the American people but their mass media which has marginalised all the voices and faces that matter. Such is the power of corporate media and the culture of obedience that it can completely shut out critical thought from public discourse.

Ditto about the real history. The history which A People’s History of the United States promulgates, a history from the point of view of the people, a history in which the people are the actors and agents of change. Zinn rejected the idea of “great men of history.” According to him it is the small acts of millions of people that bring about change. Of course, this subterranean view of history is not new from the Indian perspective. Mahatma Gandhi too believed in the power of the people and successfully mobilised the Indian masses against the British.

Like Gandhi, Zinn was a great believer in “sataygrah” which he interpreted in the American context as civil disobedience. “Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is that numbers of people all over the world have obeyed the dictates of the leaders of their government and have gone to war, and millions have been killed because of this obedience. . . Our problem is that people are obedient all over the world in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity, and war, and cruelty. Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves, and all the while the grand thieves are running the country. That’s our problem,” Zinn writes in one of his articles.

Before I came across A People’s History of the United States I had read Chomsky’s Year 501: The Conquest Continues, that was a real eye-opener – not just for its earth-shaking content but also for the fact that such a radical book could even exist in such a go-getting, highly hedonistic culture. That book opened the door for me to the vibrant, albeit marginalised, dissident movement in America. From that moment on I had a new respect for America and its people. I avidly devoured books and articles by these writers and that’s when I came across Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States.

It should be compulsory reading for all Americans – and people around the world. But guess what, you’ll not find it on the course list of any American school or university. Why? Because it is rejects the official history as seen and written by the rich and the victorious. It unearths details and facts about American history – from the genocide of native Americans to the greed and cruelty of European conquerers, from the exploitation of the poor and working class to the uncontrolled rapacity of the rich, from the bravery and sacrifice of the common people to the manipulation of public purse and policy by the wealthy – that do not sit well with the powers-that-be. It is a subversive book which if read widely can spark a revolution. Maybe it will, someday. Is it any wonder then that the establishment has been quick to denounce it as “revisionist history”?

But Zinn never cared about what the masters and their hangers-on had to say about the book. In the court of public opinion he was already king – the book has sold more than 2 million copies and was famously touted by Matt Damon in the movie “Good Will Hunting”. Recently the book was made into a documentary “The People Speak” by History TV. I’ve yet to watch it. Zinn’s autobiography You can’t be neutral on a moving train is also a compelling read. He comes across as a caring, compassionate man; a teacher who connected with his students and the public in a very special way; an activist who devoted his entire life to the cause of social change and world peace.

This is what Zinn writes in the introduction, “When I became a teacher I could not possibly keep out of the classroom my own experiences. I have often wondered how so many teachers manage to spend a year with a group of students and never reveal who they are, what kind of lives they have led, where their ideas come from, what they believe in, or what they want for themselves, for their students, and for the world.”

They do not make teachers like that anymore, do they?

These two men, Zinn more than Salinger, enriched my life as they did, I’m sure, of millions of others. Thank you. Will end with a verse from P.B. Shelly which Zinn quotes in A People’s History of the United States:

Rise like lions after slumber
In unvanquished number!
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you -
Ye are many; they are few!