Of Amma Memorial !

With J. Jayalalithaa buried and not cremated, I'm reminded of Khushwant Singh's wish of getting buried and not cremated . In Jayalalithaa's case the two main reasons are said to be that as a Dravidian party leader she didn't have to adhere to the Brahminical traditional ritual of cremation,as the Dravidian party is associated with the Periyar movement, which was anti -Brahminical in nature. Another reason is that much in keeping with the tradition of memorials for MGR and AnnaDurai on the Marina Beach, she, too, was laid to rest there and a monument in her memory will come up in the days to come.
Khushwant, of course, had his own reasons laid out for a burial. "Why I would opt to be buried is because I believe that one should give back to the earth what you have taken." He had even told me that he had approached managing committee members of a couple of Sunni Muslim graveyards in New Delhi but they had declined to give burial space for a non- Muslim and with that he had requested the management of the Bahai faith if he could be buried in their burial ground . Initially they had agreed but then put in several conditions Sitting in the grip of nostalgia, I'm reminded of Khushwant's views on death and what death drags along .Let me share his views, as death is one of those realities that each one us has to go through and in the last couple of months I have lost several of my friends …Whilst talking of death Khushwant would tell me , "
I'm not scared of death; I do not fear it. Death is inevitable. Though I think a lot about it, I don't brood about it. I'm prepared for it. As Asadullah Khan Ghalib has so aptly put it:
'Rau mein hai raksh-e-umar kahaan dekheeye thammey / Nai haath baag par hai na pa hai rakaab mein' (Age travels at a galloping pace; who knows where it will stop/We do not have the reins in our hands nor our feet in the stirrups)…I don't see death as something to be worried or scared about. In fact, I believe in the Jain philosophy that death ought to be celebrated. Earlier, whenever I was upset or felt low, I used to go to the cremation grounds. It had a cleansing effect, and it worked like therapy for me... I often tell Bade Mian ( call my Creator Bade Mian ) that He's got to wait for me as I still have work to complete. I keep telling Him -Bade Mian abhi mera intezar karo, abhi kaam baqi hai

Demonetization blues

Yes, demonetization has begun to show its trickledown effect on the industry, even on everyday basic products. I'm reminded of Bengal's reigning novelist Mani Sankar Mukherji's popular novel – The Middleman - as this novel focuses on some of the bleak aspects of life and everyday realities — unemployment, frustrations, recession and all those layers of corruption. And what could be termed amazing is that even though this novel was originally written in the 1970s (its English translated version was published years later by Penguin), it seems as though the very storyline is apt for these hard-hitting recession times that we are going through right now.
The entire novel revolves around the life and times of an unemployed young man, Somnath Banerjee .With a tremendous flow to it, the story takes one along a heap of frustrations and disappointments that the young man goes through together with the contradictions and the utter turmoil.
In fact, when I met Sankar( as Mani Sankar Mukerji is popularly called) , the very first query had to be this , "Was this novel written along autobiographical lines and patterns?" And with a rather nostalgic smile playing on his face he quipped, "I have seen unemployment, poverty and injustice taking place all these years… ongoing in today's India .Since there's a story behind the writing of every novel, many people have insisted that I reveal the facts about The Middleman in the form of a confession. I had first considered the idea of this novel in, what now seems, another lifetime, when I was jobless. My father had passed away suddenly, throwing the responsibility of a huge family entirely on my shoulders. I was desperate for a job, but had no contacts in any office or factory. I didn't even know how to secure employment. Why, I didn't dare even to ride in the lifts of unfamiliar buildings, in case I was asked to pay. One day, a well-established gentleman chided me in exasperation, 'Are Bengalis incapable of trying anything other than jobs? Why don't you get into business?' That was the beginning. I decided to go into business."
And with that he portrays the dark realities and darker truths he'd confronted during those days when he'd tried to survive in the so-called business-cum-corporate world.
And this novel had caught the attention of Satyajit Ray to such an extent that the legendary film maker had quipped, "I felt rampant corruption all around, and I didn't think there was any solution. I was only waiting for a story that would give me an opportunity to show this."An opportunity did come his way when he caught hold of a copy of Sankar's novel- The Middleman. Read it and made his winning film Jana Aranya based on it. Not to be overlooked is Ray's rather apt comment on this particular film on his : the only bleak film he'd ever made!

Meaning of humanism

'Vedji & His Times -Kashmir: The Way Forward. Selected Works, Of Ved Bhasin' Volume 1 - Edited by Anuradha Bhasin Jamwal The veteran Jammu-based journalist-editor Ved Bhasin passed away exactly a year back. But even right now as I am keying in I can recollect his stark views on the Kashmir situation. There was that earnestness with which he spoke and that made that required impact. There was that gentle smile playing on his face even when he was dealing with his harshest critics. Nah, no aggressiveness and none of those hysterical shrieks and not a trace of rudeness.

He wouldn't dilute his stand and nor his views viewsviewpoints, swimming against the tide till the very end. Needless to add that the going must have been riddled with hurdles yet this man never gave up. And in a journalistic career spanning almost seven long decades, he had been writing, exposing the layers of facades to the political mess in the Kashmir region. He came across as one of those fearless men who was focused on the ground realities, aware of the build-ups and of those backdrops.
And now as the very first volume of Ved Bhasin's selected works is published by his daughter, Anuradha
Bhasin Jamwal, it get absolutely relevant to read Ved saab's views on the ongoing crisis in the Kashmir region and the possible solutions that could bring along a sense of ease for the Kashmiris. How I wish Ved saab had written his autobiography, as he was no ordinary observer of the Kashmir region and its inhabitants.
Anuradha writes about her father's in the very foreword to this volume, "A subject closest to his heart was peace. Peace to him was not silencing of guns or calm but peace with justice, peace which was people centric and would enable the most marginalized and the poor to reap its dividends. My father was a thorough humanist not because he believed in peace but because he sincerely practised it in his day-to-day life, nursing no malice or contempt for people opposed to him or people who were not to so intellectually strong. He had the ability to carry along with him people, even his worst critics and that made him special."
I cannot end this piece without quoting Anuradha…these lines which relay so much about her father - "When I was about six or seven years old , in my innocence after hearing friends in school speak about religions and Gods, I asked him what he believed in. He said,' I believe in you.' It was much later that I understood the importance and significance of those words. He had grasped the true meaning of humanism - belief in people and the goodness of people."