On Christmas

Of all the festivals in the packed Indian calendar, Christmas occupies a somewhat special place in my mind. I mean, I like Diwali - that's usually when one can be at home for long stretches and meet family, and I despise Holi - no offense meant to Bhakt Prahalad, but I just don't do colours and hooliganism, I have started liking Chhath since the whole issue of Heartland sub nationalism has grown up, and other religious holidays for me are simply that only, i.e. holidays. The national holidays, the way we celebrate them in our country, remain, sadly, official occasions only. So, in a land which has around 20 Gazetted Holidays, 40 Restricted Holidays and 5000 years of culture and civilization, I am stuck up on a festival which originated outside of India. I have never fully understood why. The right wing will term me as a westernized RNI (that's resident non-Indian), but I know that is not true. Let me clarify that my own Christmas is not the "canonical Christmas", but the "Santa Claus Christmas". This Christmas has been despised by almost all 'religious' people. The really devout amongst the Christians find it as gross commercialization and trivialization. Closer home, it is seen as the evil effect of 'Westernization'. Yet, this ostensibly unwanted 'commercialized' festival has been spreading across the globe, even into the atheist China despite all the odds. Why? While for others, there might be various reasons, I feel for me, it is a festival that matches me.

I am a winter person. I love almost everything about winters - except, may be, for delayed trains. I mean winter, warts and all - not the bright sunshine alone. I love the cold waves, I love the hail, and the occasional snow. So any festival whose main motifs are associated with the celebration of winter is always going to be good for me. Frosty the snowman, Santa's sleigh, reindeer, conifers - it is all perfect mix of the whole winter deal. Closer home, anything remotely close to a winter festival is Diwali / Chhath - but again, that is hardly related with winter except for the fact that it heralds it. We have festivals that sort of celebrate the ending of winter, in various phases - like the Makar Sankranti, Basant Panchami etc. The only festival that sounds anything like being related to winters is Sharad Poornima, but then, I've never seen it's popular celebration to judge whether it suits my taste or not.

Secondly, in my opinion, it is a festival meant for largely quiet and placid enjoyment. Both 'quiet and placid' and 'enjoyment' are important qualifiers here. As a culture, we lack quiet enjoyment - it is reflected in all facets of our cultural expression - our folklore, our dances, our festivals and our Bollywood. All our enjoyment is supposed to be loud - the Bhangra, the Holi and the Munni Badnaam Hui's. Quiet is meant to be dull, didactic. Our quieter festivals are much more about fasting, staying all chaste and pure and praying devoutly. In fact, much of our life is not meant for enjoyment - even our kiddie books are loaded with 'shikshaa', which is forced down one's gullet with a ram - remember those stories in magazines like Champak and Chandamama etc. (Then they wonder why kids are shunning these didactic works of literature for 'western inputs' like the Harry Potter series!) It suffices to say that most of our culture is not very fond of enjoyment of life as a whole. Our family ties are supposed to be built of respect and authority, which are our society's cherished values, as against love alone. May be all that lack of enjoyment leads to the over the top celebration whenever we get the chance. We do not have our festive equivalents of sitting near a hot fireplace, sipping chocolate or soup and just enjoying the moment, giving small gifts and opening them near the hearth. May be that is one need which is fulfilled by this festival alien to the indigenous culture.

Again, it might simply be all the Enid Blytons I have read in my childhood, and all the Christmas songs I have heard and enjoyed. A line or two about the songs would be necessary here. Many of them are plain worldly songs, about celebration. the religious reference in most has been kept subtle, and the tune is soothing, even in the one's that are about the Christ - 'Silent Night' playing somewhere far away on a cold winter night is just heaven. Last night, near midnight, when I stood in the cool night breeze on my balcony, with the Carpenters' rendition of the song playing from inside, I felt happy, despite all the troubles I have been having all the week. For my Christmas celebration is a thing where no evil eye can cast its glance. It is one spot of light in an otherwise dark world. So, build a nice fire - or turn on that blower. Cozy up in that blanket, with someone, if you have someone - or alone - doesn't matter. Don't forget to brew yourself some hot coffee and chocolate before cozying up. Switch on a new show of "Love Actually", or simply read a warm romance. For 'tis surely a season to be jolly!

The Flotsam of the Raj

Most people like to reminisce about the good old days. It may come naturally to the old fogies, and it is not uncommon among the 'young' too. May be, in a young country, there is this relative age, and hence normal people, who would be termed young in any normal population, are some what old with respect to the population. On the other hand, it may be this culture of ours that expects unquestioned obedience of the elderly that entices people to grey up at an accelerated pace. I am digressing - I just wanted to say that many of my classmates and colleagues review, with rose tinted devices, their school days, and their college days - especially the 'fun' they had when they were ragged (hazed, for my non existent American readers). It may not really matter that it might have been only 10 years at most since they have left school, and 8-9 years since their ragging period - they'd speak about it as if they went to school during the War. I thought I was one of the rationalists, for I remembered how insecure a school student really is. Hood may say,

"But now 'tis little joy
To know I'm farther off from heav'n
Than when I was a boy."

However, I'd like to argue with the poet. Losing the heaven on the penthouse might have been a big loss, but that's nothing compared to the joys of adulthood - being able to go and take a leak without an embarrassing 'Miss, may I go to the toilet' and not being worried to death because one has lost one's pencil or eraser. The other thing was 'ragging' - don't even get me started on that one - to those who remember it fondly, I have one word to describe you - sick perverts (wait, that's two words - but then, they are used as one, just like ‘time and tide’). That may be a harsh judgement, but then, if your idea of fun includes holding a person's wee-wee, and having someone hold yours, all the while marching in a file as 'Nagla Express', that's what you are. So, I was thinking I was so much 'in touch' with the feeling of the oppressed categories of young people that I got a shock of my life when I had to relive those feelings and those insecurities once more and I felt so uncomfortable. For no one thing in the world forces one to relive all the bad school memories clubbed with the college ragging trauma the way a particular Programme in the Service does.

Set in the sylvan outskirts of a royal city, the College does not look like a sad place to begin with. In fact, it isn't. Since it is the home for my own cadre, I have spent some really good moments here. The accommodation and the works here are top-notch, especially for some one who has been exposed to the crumbling D-wing of Jwalamukhi hostel. Our sessions are held in a real palace of the erstwhile ruling house of the city. The schedule is hectic, but contained, and after a good class session, one has almost all major sports to choose from - I personally prefer swimming. Hearty meals, and nice strolls around the campus, and one is good for bed - life's good. However, in the midst, periodically, like the floods of Damodar, come things like the Programme. Ostensibly, it is supposed to make raw young recruits into 'gentlemen and lady Officers' - by 'improving their personality' and 'giving multidimensional inputs'. I have no trouble with the latter - these might not be the best classes I have ever attended, but they are generally amongst the better ones. However, I do have serious doubts about the efficacy of, and for that matter, the intention behind a lot of meaningless pageantry we have been witness to. I shall write, at some length, on both, taking up the issue of efficacy first, and giving people the benefit of doubt with regards to intentions. After all, it has been said, "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."

So, we are to become officers, and to develop (magically sprout) 'officer like qualities' in these 10 weeks. Good. So what is a good Service Officer like? Coming from a Service family, and a Service School, I have seen many Service officers. Barring one or two dandies, no one I have seen was as straitlaced as the ideal that has been set up in front of us. Even the dandies got their comeuppance - I have heared the case where a visiting principal HOD was so enraged to find a new assistant officer in suit that he fired him in front of all, and then made him run around the works for the whole day, till the time the suit met it's untimely demise! This service is field service, and for God's sake, it is not the Army - howsoever much some of our senior officers would like to believe. It does not need the glamour and pomp of the Army Cantonment life. It is good to take pride in being one of the Raj's legacies, but for heaven's sake, let's not actually try to relive the Raj (this one coming from a Raj history enthusiast). As a field service which is not the Army, the organisation needs to develop it's sartorial sense and identity accordingly - which in my opinion, includes sober T-shirts, lycra enmeshed jeans and Woodland shoes. Okay, if the guys want to live their suits and ties fantasies in here, there is a proper place for that - strictly office hours. But dinner? Come on! Are we really expected to go to the fields and the gym, sweat it out and come back and don all those formals again for supper, or one is supposed to remain in the formals till supper, and swim after that? Of the two stupidities, I've chosen the latter, and hence this piece has materialised, after a drought of more than two years. The 'lace and velvet' dinner wardrobe was developed when 'lace and velvet' was the only 'presentable' dress. The rolling wheel of time has given us many acceptable 'dinner wear' options. Let's evolve. The fashion policing has been reminding us of the days when one could get into trouble for losing the school tie or belt. My roommate was asking whether we could stroll in slippers. Really, is this what we are trying to make here - diffident wrecks and overgrown school boys? Apart from this assault on our wardrobes, many other PDP type activities look quite useless to be frank. For most of the skills that we are supposed to develop, the ship has already sailed. The mean age of the group is 28 years - these are not college kids, who can be converted, that too in 10 weeks, into Ivy League's dream students. It's clear to us - crystal clear. It would be a reasonable assumption that it is so clear to the powers that be too. That brings us to the question of intention.

Of all the things that stand out on the basis of sheer oddity, the PT is the most 'outstanding', if I may use the word in an ironic sense. The basic idea peddled here is that one has to be 'fit' in the service of the lifeline of the nation. So noble a motive, you might say. However, barring a few persons, yours truly included, most of the new batch is quite fit, and almost all, again yours truly included (at least till the fashion policing made it difficult), participate in some sort of physical activity, whenever the powers that be are benevolent enough to leave our evenings free. If this is a health and fitness thing, why doesn't the older resident population follow through, since they must be in the need of fitness much more - handling work pressure of elevated posts and battling ageing all at once. Why this insistence on shorts in cold December morning? I think the answer is that it is an exercise simply to show a person 'his place'. Looked at from this angle, it all starts falling into place. I mean, what can show a person that he is worth a piece of festering turd in a more emphatic manner than calling him in half nudity in wee hours of the morning to gyrate his hips at the command of his supposed subordinate. All the other inanities of this Programme, all the useless pageantry that we are supposed to do but others aren't, are, in sum, a big bird flipped in one's face. It's a triumphant, "Yes, We can! (make you do all this, and there isn't a goddamned thing you can do about it, coz we got the Bomb - bless Dennis Leary).” Can the reader notice the similarity between this and the other two experiences of the youth? This is the same life that school kids live - with separate standards for themselves and the grown ups. This is the way ragging in college happens - a bright young person is made to do things against his / her will despite there being no logically arguable reason behind that, except for the presence of absolute power and the need to exercise it with impunity, or may be the fact that the perpetrator was a victim once, as is true in this case too. Let me tell the readers, it wasn't pretty 10 years back, and it isn't pretty now. I hope this blog and this service survives to the day when one is able to have a say in the way the show is conducted, so that one is reminded that the old, romantic days were not so romantic, and one can make the changes that need to be made without being nostalgic. Many who know me know that I never forget any injury inflicted on me by anyone - and they attribute it to some 'hit list' I am keeping for exacting retribution in the future. While that is an interesting idea, it is not true. I just try to keep these negative experiences alive in my mind (unsuccessful, to a large extent I may be) in order to take my own decisions in their light, so that someone else’s life may not contain them. Let’s hope so, because, as Andy Dufresne said to Red in The Shawshank Redemption, “hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.”