Naseeruddin  Shah’s book has been on my reading table this Feb week

 And  makes me write about my (PU) days when I was callow, dumb and meek

Naseeruddin Shah's memoir and my musings on PU Chandigarh

I am  reading Bollywood actor Naseeruddin Shah’s memoir ‘And Then One Day’ these days. It is an engrossing, charming book written with luminous honesty that Naseeruddin is known for. Among several interesting things, he writes about the AMU, Aligarh. And he paints a dim, unflattering picture in regard to its insularity, and general air of neglect and apathy in some respects. Reading that, I am reminded of my own days at the no less prestigious PU Chandigarh in the good old seventies, and find some resonance with him.

After having missed entry in Medical College Shimla by a whisker – for which I had no real regrets – I got admission in the PU’s zoology department. Looking at the beautiful, sprawling campus with neatly arrayed, grey, red-tiled buildings, lawns, water fountains, playgrounds, I was overwhelmed with joy. This is the place where my talents will blossom…where my worthy professors will ignite the spark of scientific quest and empower me with knowledge and learning…make me a scholar, an academic worthy of respect and admiration…What pure joy it would be to hear brilliant, thought-provoking lectures from them, and participate in steamy, stimulating discussions, debates and discourses to delve deeper into the mysteries, puzzles and wonders of biology... Thus would the cobwebs of my ignorance be removed from my poor rusty mind…Thus would the sunshine of scientific temper light up the dark recesses of my inner self and broaden my mental horizons to take on and embrace the whole world. With such fantasies flooding my mind, for a few days I walked the hallowed corridors of PU’s science departments with a sense of pride and exultation.

But my dream was short-lived.

As the classes commenced and we settled into a regular routine, my fantasy-world began to crumble; optimism began giving way to mounting disappointment with each passing day, week, month and year.

There we were: a batch of 30-some huddled in a classroom with boys and girls perched in distinctly separate clusters. Soon a grave, ponderous professor would enter with an old musty file tucked under his arm. He/She (mostly he) would open the file and on cue, in hushed silence, we would open our notebooks and pens and get (battle)-ready. Then there would follow a marathon, non-stop, 1-hour dictation from out of the mouldy, yellowing, dog-eared pages stashed in the file. Sometimes our aching, tired fingers failed to catch up with the professor’s  dull but fast paced drone. But who would dare ask him/ her to repeat the missed word or line? At times some words or sentences remained inaudible or improperly heard. But it didn’t matter…we had to march on doughtily, regardless. This went on class after class, teacher after teacher.

Classes over, we would tuck our note-books away in some corner of  a shelf in our hostel rooms. These were meant to be opened only at the time of house exams, and the final annuals in peak summer. Come exam days and sweating and fretting we sat long hours late into the nights in our fan-less rooms, mugging up a few select topics out of the many scribbled in our notebooks. It was sheer gamble, but if lucky, we found questions relating to the stuff learnt by rote in the question paper and belched it out feverishly on answer-sheet after answer-sheet.

That was how we were taught, trained, nourished and groomed as future zoologists at PU Chandigarh!

In the evenings, to get away from the day’s dull, uninspiring rigmarole, some of us wandered off either to the  theatres to watch Bollywood movies ('Rekhas' and 'Hema Malinis!) or to the sector 17 shopping complex to ogle at (only furtively and from a safe distance) buxom Sikhnis strolling about leisurely there, mostly accompanied by handsome brawny Sikh hunks. Another exciting diversion for some of us was to meander off to the arts blocks bubbling with life and energy with sprightly, vivacious ‘arts girls’ to ogle and salivate at - unlike the ponderous, introverted, reticent, glued-to-the-microscopes, romanceless girls of our science departments.

Naseeruddin Shah had at least the cigarette-smoking, 'feisty' lady-professor Zahida Zaidi in the English department at the AMU to recognize his latent talents and show him the way. Later he had an erudite teacher Ebrahim Alkazi (may his tribe increase) at the National School of Drama (NSD) to take him under his wing to inspire and guide him through. But sadly, I had none at any stage of my  formative, learning years.

But having said that, it would be very dishonest and unfair of me to lay the entire blame for my poor innings at PU on the teachers alone. Some of the blame must rest on me too for having been casual and careless about my classes with Epicurean tendencies having a greater sway over me than commitment to studies.

Be that as it may, when I came home with the degree under my arm, I had no clue at all where to go. And it was with great effort that I had to de- and re-learn zoology entirely on my own to pass muster as a teacher in a college later on, with a secret vow NEVER to replicate the follies of  vain worthies who (mis-) taught me at the university.

Perhaps I bored you with my personal outpouring above. Well, coming back to Naseeruddin’s book, if you like this genre of writing, which I personally find the most inspirational reading of all, I strongly recommend this gem of a memoir.

        

                                               ***

      To a lady, nay, a  lioness  called Asma -  I pay my humble tribute

           A beacon of  hope she was to the oppressed and mute

           Who lit a divine torch of love, peace, liberty and goodwill

            Whose loss sends in our hearts a deep, painful, unending chill

  Let's salute this lioness amongst pygmies

                     

We in  India must shed tears over the untimely death of this brave, unorthodox, unconventional, enlightened, liberated woman- at least those of us who are not jingoists but patriots in real, liberal sense. In the present times when dark gloomy clouds of mutual hatred, muscle flexing, abuse, eye-for-an-eye kind of attitude loom low and ominous over our sub-continent, she was one of the few crusaders for peace, amity and goodwill between the people of two nations, India and Pakistan. Besides being a zealous champion for human rights and liberty, it was she who helped found Pakistan-India Peoples’ Forum for Peace and Democracy (PIPFPD). And no less significant is the point that she was not an Indian but from the Taliban-infested, crisis-ridden and violence-scarred land of Pakistan where human life sells dirt cheap and such intrepid voices attract bullets rather than applause. Well, she was Asma Jahangir. As you must have read in the news, she died last Sunday, the 11^th of February, at the young age of 66, felled not by a fanatic’s bullet but sadly, owing to a heart attack. And at a time when the common people of India and Pakistan, people like you and me, needed her the most. Asma Jahangir was an advocate by profession and the first woman president of Pakistan’s Supreme Court Bar. She was a  lady with the guts - a lioness among pygmies I would say - to take the all-powerful Pakistan army head-on for its anti-India approach, its war rhetoric, for paddling terrorism and for the ongoing sordid drama of death and destruction across the Indo-Pak border. Besides that she was an irrepressible voice for women, minorities and the LGBT community.

She was a frequent visitor to India and had a sizeable number of admirers, supporters, associates, followers and fans (myself included) in India who shared her vision and joined her mission for mutual peace with hope and gusto.

When in India she was not the one to be cowed down by the diehard, misguided, anti-Pakistan fanatics, and fundamentalists. She was as forthright and outspoken in her views here as in Pakistan. Therefore – as I read in the obituary to her in a newspaper – she had no hesitation in asking bold and blunt questions from the big and mighty in India such as Bal Thackeray on his politics of revenge and retaliation when she happened to meet him… the Bal Thackeray feared and dreaded by even the most powerful and the rich in India…and before whom the bigwigs of film industry have squirmed, cowered before and payed due obeisance to just to keep him in good humour.

The liberated souls like Asma Jahangir are rare and an almost extinct species. Both in India and more so in Pakistan. Particularly in these times: when bigotry and jingoism are rearing their ugly heads like never before; when communal, caste and religious hatred are radicalizing the nation like never before; when ‘intolerance’ is at an ascendant to the extent that even movies like ‘Padmavat’ are being sought to be banned through sheer goondagardi; where under the veneer of (perverted) logic of 'religious sentiments' or ‘old values’, even perfectly inoffensive scenes and songs are being violently protested against by the goons in the land of Kamasutra and Khajuraho.

Asma Jahangir, you leave a huge void in the sub-continent. May your kind, loving, never-to-die soul rest in eternal peace! May the rich legacy of courage, goodness, harmony and amity that you left behind keep on inspiring us!                          

                                                          ***

               

How we are  rated in the world is a cause both for thought and worry

 I have a  word or two on this, this week, read it at leisure and without hurry

And by the way what was so bad or unwanted about Padmavat, I simply wonder

The Karni sena did no good:  for the country or for Rajputs by its needless thunder

             Is India a 'flawed democracy'?

                               

The  other day, The Tribune news item made me sad. The heading was: ‘India slips 10 ranks to 42 on democracy index’. The shocking thing is that this slide  on the global democracy index has happened in just a year. According to the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) we are a ‘flawed democracy’ with an overall score of 7.23 points. We are good on electoral process with a score of 9.17 but have slipped on: political culture, government functioning, political participation and civil liberties. On the freedom of press also India’s score is dismal. Norway, like before, tops the list and countries like New Zealand, Australia, Ireland, Canada, Finland, Switzerland sit and shine among the top 10. Luckily, we are better off than Bangladesh (92), our pesky neighbour Pakistan (110) and worrisome China ((139).
 EIU is a credible UK- based body of 70 years’ standing which makes these evaluations on certain well-known and universally accepted criteria which define democracy. These ratings come handy to foreign investors in deciding which countries would be safe and risk-free for investments.

Days later I read Ramchandra Guha’s thought-provoking essay in the Republic Day Special issue of Outlook magazine dated 5 February 2018 only to feel sadder still. Ramchandra Guha is our well-known historian and an intellectual. He minces no words in expressing his anguish over rapid erosion of India’s democratic values in his piece carried by the magazine. Not just Mr Guha. Increasingly strident and louder voices of dissent and anguish over India’s steady shift from patriotism towards jingoism are emanating from several other quarters as well. And are becoming increasingly audible too.

According to Guha, a distinct line has to be drawn between 'constitutional patriotism' and ‘jingoism’. These are “…two distinct, different, opposed varieties of nationalism. Patriotism is suffused with love and understanding. Jingoism is motivated by hate and revenge.”  The founding features of patriotism, Guha argues, are:

1.      An appreciation of individual and cultural diversity

2.      A readiness to enact one’s citizenship at different levels

3.      The recognition that no religion, nation, or leader is flawless

4.      The ability to feel shame at the crimes of one’s religion, state,                     society or nation

5.      The willingness to learn from other countries

What about jingoism? Its founding features, as Guha points out, are:

1.      The belief that one’s religion, culture, nation and leader are            perfect and infallible

2.      The demonising of critics as anti-nationals and deshdrohis

3.      Violence and lumpenisation, not just abusing your critics                but harassing and intimidating them, through the force              of the state’s investigative agencies and through vigilante             armies if required.

In this lucid essay, Mr Guha also lambasts the Congress party for having let the country down, having promoted and perpetuated dynastic Nehru-Gandhi culture and having “turned its back on its own founders".

Friends, I don’t know how you feel about this diagnosis of our country’s ailing or “flawed democracy”. But when EIS says so and a man of Guha’s standing strikes a similar note, I think we need to sit up and take notice. Well, not just take notice.  Those of us who deem themselves to be patriots and not jingoists must fight to rescue and safeguard our values. Values like “pluralism”, “democracy”, “decency” and “non-violence”. For, these are the values that are enshrined in our constitution...that our great leaders like Gandhi, Tagore and Ambedkar blue-printed for us. And these are the values we all need to imbibe, preserve and foster among ourselves, and will take India forward  on the path to greatness. These are the values that will help India rise in global standing and empower it to rub shoulders with countries like Norway, Iceland, Sweden and Denmark in all the parameters that define a country’s overall wellness.
                  
                                                      

                                                          *  
In passing

"What was all the fuss about?" I asked myself at once after watching Padmavat. It is a neat and clean movie. And quite a good one to watch compared to the trite, trashy stuff habitually served out by the Bollywood’s fan-pampered bigwigs. If anything, the movie just extols Rajputs…maybe a tad too much. What on earth was the ground or reason or justification for the rage, anger, hooliganism, rampage let loose by the Karni sena’s goons and hoodlums? Why did some governments let them run amuck and hold so many cities to ransom? And look, what a roaring success the film has been at the box office. I am sure each and every one who saw the movie had just the same very question in mind after coming out of the theatre: “What was all the fuss about?”

                                                        ***

           

                Let's leave science alone, let the great Darwin's soul rest in peace

               Evolution is as true and right as the plural of goose is geese

              I write this week on our worthy minister getting it all so wrong

             I don’t know whether to laugh or cry or sing a baleful song

      When Charles Darwin turned in his grave                               

Friends, Charles Darwin turned in his grave. This happened two weeks ago because a minister in the central government suffering from foot-in-the-mouth syndrome waxed eloquent on man’s evolution. This he did, not in a casual, off-hand manner in some cocktail party sipping scotch but at a public function. Origin of species is scientifically wrong, he boomed before the mike. No one, not even our ancestors, have seen an ape turning into a man; humans appeared on earth as humans, he said. Going a step further, the worthy minister of state for Human Resource Development, Mr Satyapal Singh then asserted that since this was the case therefore necessary changes should be introduced in the school and college curricula. The cocky, over-zealous minster did not stop here. He repeated his misplaced notions at another public function soon after and justified them further by claiming that since he is himself a Chemistry postgraduate, he knows science.  Therefore what he says is a scientific fact. As was natural, the entire scientific community squirmed and uttered a collective sigh of shock and surprise at the minister trying to turn the well-established theory of origin of man on its head with just one sweeping statement. A body of 2000 scientists therefore had to issue a joint statement to contradict and reject what the ‘scientific-minded’ minister had tried to push down nation’s throat. And his own superior, the HRD minister Mr Javadekar, had to ask him to desist from trespassing into a field (of science) that he knows little about.

Like all, I too have been shocked and surprised at the brazenness and the gumption shown by the minister in making such a  stunning assertion on  a universally-accepted, time-tested scientific concept like human evolution. For,  to say something wrong is one thing. But to try to  justify a baseless and fanciful argument and peddle it as a fact of science merely  on the boast of your own scientific background - after you have dealt science a body blow – is ludicrous and hard to swallow. Needless to say, it needs hard scientific evidence to prove a theory wrong and not an irresponsible comment at a public function.

Charles Darwin didn’t enunciate his theory sitting in a cosy, cushioned chair in an AC-cooled, swanky ministerial chamber. He set sail  in a ship ‘HMS Beagle’ on 27 December 1831 on a rainy morning enduring all kinds of hardships on a long voyage to South America and the Galapagos Islands brimming with diversity of life. There he made thorough observations, collected samples, made elaborate notes. Back home he pondered over what he had seen, collected, observed and written. Then after years of meditative reflection, debate and scientific enquiry did the light of knowledge and discovery illuminate  his mind, leading him to pen down and spell out page by page the theory of evolution in his book:  ‘ On the Origin of species…’ which he published on 24 November 1859.  That was not the end. His trailblazing ideas came under severest scrutiny in the scientific world. He also faced stiff resistance from the orthodox Church which thought it blasphemous because it ran counter to the misplaced idea of all creation being an act of God.  But Darwin’s concept was scientifically robust. It stood the test of time. And is now an irrefutable fact of biology beyond doubt which only the superstitious, the dogmatic and the ignorant alone would dispute.

Now let’s answer the minister. He says that the theory of evolution is wrong because no one – not even our ancestors - have seen an ape turning into a man. Well, Mr Minister, this is because evolution is not an act of magic. It is not that by merely waving a magic wand an ape will transform itself into a man in the twinkling of an eye. It takes many thousands and millions of years for the process of Natural Selection to work its way. Under its slow, invisible ‘hand’, small little changes accumulate and then a species different from an original one takes shape. That’s why the ancestral man - the Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons - some 200,000 years ago, were so different from us. Any biology book of a plus two student will tell us that.

Therefore, may I please respectfully say this:

Let's please leave science alone, and with those who belong to it  and do their work. For, such utterances demoralize us, give a bad name to the country and make it a laughing stock. We have enough of superstition in our society already to get rid of and are still miles away from fostering scientific tamper in the country.

                                               

                                                                 

                                                ***