Category: Life is like that

Mary (curiously an anagram of Army, the institution being discussed here today) of Magdala (a city on the southwest coast of the Sea of Galilee) or just Mary Magdalene was being stoned by a mob because of her sins (particularly adultery; the Army doesn’t have adultery, it has infantry) and that’s the time Jesus came to her rescue and said, “The first stone should be cast by one who hasn’t sinned”. One by one, as per the gospel, they all went home and left her alone. Later, she was witness to Christ’s Crucifixion and Resurrection.

In sharp contrast, we have any number of Indians and Indian political parties who indulge in stone-pelting (physically and figuratively on the national media, for example) against the Indian Army and some of them rejoice in this carefully acquired hobby. Jesus, and for that matter Mohammad, Rama, Buddha, Nanak and others all keep quiet. It is not them but the Army that is being crucified.

The dark humour is in the fact that some of them are the same people who cannot exist in those hostile situations even for a minute without the army directly or indirectly protecting them. However, at the quickest opportunity they take up such issues (without understanding them at all) as repeal of AFSPA or Armed Forces Special Powers Act.

And what is or are the sins that the Army has committed to earn this opprobrium? I can think of a few; you are welcome to add more:

• It is ensuring the territorial integrity and sovereignty of our nation and that’s not to the liking of the vested interests that would like to see this great nation being broken up into fragments.
• Through elaborate, exhaustive and nerve-racking training, its men and women have become shining examples of discipline, valour, uprightness and patriotism, the very attributes that stand in the way of people who revel in chaos, avarice, cowardice and ill acquired comforts.
• It has values that the countrymen hold dear and there is a dire need to bring it down to the gutter that some of these people find themselves in. “Will teach these holier-than-thou b____s not to try to be different“.
• It has been victorious in very war that was thrust on it and come out in flying colours in any task or situation it was asked to handle. “It is high time these s.o.b.’s taste defeat” (“what do they think of themselves?”)
• It believes in the tenet of ‘selfless-service’, which is ‘foreign’ to self-aggrandizing lot.

In all this, no one has ever thought of the scenario wherein the army says (not that it ever would, with its self-imposed restraint and discipline): “Enough is enough; let them fend for themselves in all situations other than foreign-aggression.” (Please read: ‘Long Time No War‘, for example)

The politicians and bureaucrats have a quick-fix solution to anything and everything by calling the armed forces to handle internal situations that have been caused by the acts of omission and commission of those who should have been directly responsible for handling those situations. In my essay ‘Identification Of Friend Or Foe In Indian Maritime Scenario’, I had brought out how the Indian Navy was wrongly blamed for the failure to prevent 26/11 Mumbai Attacks and how, post that, it is the only leading navy in the world made responsible for coastal security. Having been made responsible, the Indian Navy personnel even went about conducting census of fishermen in the coastal states to bring a modicum of order in the near chaotic scenario that prevailed. They presented this data to local authorities whose job it was to conduct such census.

The joke going around in the naval circles was and is: ‘Anytime you see water, think of us‘.

It is the same with the army on land.

Recently, my wife and I undertook a trip to Kaza in Spiti district of Himachal Pradesh from our home place in Kandaghat. Roads were alright up to Rampur Bushair, Jhakri and Karcham. But, from there onwards it was an ordeal. There were only three kinds of roads: the good and wide metalled roads (about 10 percent); roads that could be distinguished from khuds and nallahs with a little closer scrutiny; and finally, what I call as environmentally friendly roads: ie, no change from their original condition before the roads were constructed.

In many places, after Powari and Reckong Peo, we came across army jawans having been placed at really bad stretches of roads. Their purpose? Hold your breath – to prevent injury to people from falling and shooting stones!

You don’t find humour in this? Well I find enormous humour in this: these are the same people that people pelt or hurl stones at and these are the valiant men who think nothing of risking their own lives to keep you from getting injured and/or killed!

We had lunch with the army at a palce called Sumdo (we cross over from Kinnaur district to Lahoul and Spiti district there). The place is free of all vegetation and there are bald ills (the distant ones had still snow on them). When we were driving back to Malling, we found a Malling Detachment of army men, being posted there in a hilly road of shooting stones, to keep people safe when it is not even their task to do so.

They offered my wife and I hot tea and Good-Day biscuits and said, “Saab thak gaya hoyega” (Saab must be tired).

I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. I am giving you my first unadulterated reaction (and please forgive me if it is a little unparliamentary language):

“Bloody ungrateful countrymen”.

P.S. One of the WhatsApp messages going around is about one of our countrymen complaining to the waiter about stones in the rice-pulao he had ordered. The waiter clarified: “It is Kashmiri pulao, Sir”.

Some of your friends who don’t exactly say it but mean it nevertheless remind you of people who are quite at home with stray dogs but cannot stand your pet-dogs. Why this strange-sounding simile? Well, on social-media discussions, the same people, would quote from little known, pedestrian authors and indeed from recirculated internet stuff that goes by the misnomer of ‘knowledge’, but readily ignore your well researched essay. There must be some psychology, some reasons behind this secret hatred for blogs. Let me examine some of these.

1. Mujhe Bhi Kuchh Kehna Hai (I too have something to say). In an essay titled ‘All Photographers And Writers, No Viewers And Readers’, I brought out that the biggest two techno-social changes that have affected our lives in the last decade or so are that everyone is a photographer and everyone can write and instantly publish. Hence, there is nothing unique or extraordinary about anyone who writes or clicks pictures. Lets take the latter first; if someone puts up pictures of his family trip to London, you can put up pictures of your trip to Rio. “London is really a destination where people used to go in the last century; it is time that these commoners now learn to go to more exotic locales. But, frankly, they don’t have it in them; for them, London is still abroad“. Now, let’s get to writing blogs: “What’s so special about what he has written? I don’t have time, else, I could have written ten such articles and with better English and humour”. If you ever visit largest Indian Blogging site Indiblogger, you will discover that they maintain a ranking of blogs dependant upon people voting for blog posts. And who are the people who vote? Well, other bloggers. Everyone, therefore, follows the tenet: ‘You scratch my back, I scratch yours‘.

2. Ghar Ki Murgi Dal Barabar (Home-grown chicken is worth (lowly) dal (cereal) only). Ah, the time when we used to read the brilliant stuff of really intelligent men and women in newspapers and magazines. Somehow the stuff that the boy or the girl next door writes does not sound that erudite or good. It is almost like discovering your son paints as good as Picasso or Rembrandt! How can that be? Yes, we want social media revolution to change governance in the country, our surroundings, world politics and community religion. However, our next door blogger doesn’t have the calibre to take on anything even close to it. In any case, having heard and read him a few times, we already have good knowledge of what he/she is going to say.

3. Quantity Has Made Quality Suffer. You can gather all kinds of arguments to support your theory. One of them is that delightful cuisine cannot be made for millions. Yes, blue jeans was an invention that changed the way masses dressed and really well to do people spent their lifetime. thereafter, in Levis. However, you cannot go to a gourmet dinner dressed in blue jeans, can you? Naturally, as seen by you since you make all the arguments to suit your bias, quality has certainly suffered now that everyone who has Internet can publish. In the words of the Urdu poet:

Barbad gulistaan karne ko to ek hi ullu kaafi tha,
Yahan..har shaakh pe ullu baitha hai anjam-e-gulistan kya hoga?

(For destroying the wonderful garden, even one owl is sufficient,
Here there is an owl on each branch, wonder what would happen to the garden?)

4. I Know The Author Well; He/She Can’t Write For Nuts. Whilst with the author in a novel, newspaper or periodical there was no personal linkages, more often than not, with a blogger, you are one to one. Hence, your mind works overtime to remember how he was a nincompoop when you were with him in school or college or elsewhere. He couldn’t make a sentence in English properly. Then there is another bigger problem, which is, that one reads so that one can quote in good company. People are taken aback when you suddenly quote a verse of Coleridge or some other quote of say, Tolstoy. But, imagine trying to impress a company by saying that your friend, the blogger wrote it. Naturally, you can’t even impress people by quoting him/her. Perhaps, if it makes a lot of sense, you can say Vikram Seth said it! In any case, who would have read all that Seth wrote?

5. Who Has The Time? The race for time is similar to Mumbai traffic or for that matter traffic in any other Indian city. Once, when a motorist overtook me in very slow moving traffic, by hook or crook, and I came parallel to him at the next traffic lights, I lowered my window and asked him, “भाई साहिब, मान लो आप मुझसे दो तीन मिनट पहले अपने ठिकाने पर पहुँच जाओगे; पर उस दो तीन मिनट में आप करने क्या वाले हैं?” (Brother, supposing that you reach your destination two or three minutes ahead of me; but, what exactly are you going to do in those two or three minutes). He laughed and laughed and said, “क्या करें? आदत पढ़ गयी है?” (What to do? It has become a habit). The same people who complain about lack of time spend hours solving the Sudoku.

6. He Is Only Promoting His Blog. In a way, unless you believe in literary masturbation, you write so that people would read. You don’t make any money writing your blog; however, they make it look like as if blogs are similar to prostitution in which you woo your clients by selling your body and soul. Recently, I had this experience when a friend used these exact words to win an argument that he was otherwise trying to win through profanity.

7. I Can’t Be Forced Into Reading Anything; I Choose To Read What I Want To. For heavens sake, our choices over a period of time are dwindling. With the onslaught of advertisements, we don’t ever have a choice of what we buy and use; we don’t have a choice in government making even though we vote election after election: many of us don’t have a choice of partner for life,and so on. At least, let me exercise choice in reading what I want to read rather than being forced to read something sent by a friend.

8. Why Can’t He Write ‘Short-and-Sweet’? Most highly popular blogs have just a picture or two or a quote or a paragraph of recirculated stuff. People immediately identify with such stuff. Such stuff also meets the demands of some of the reasons that I have given above, especially lack of time. A few years ago I started a number of groups on Facebook on various themes ranging from ‘Laugh With The Punjabis‘ and ‘Humour In And Out Of Uniform‘ to ‘Yaad Kiya Dil Ne‘ (a group for sharing music) and ‘Main Shayar To Nahin‘ (a group for sharing poetry). I insisted that people would write as per the theme of the group, write original, and steer clear of posting greetings, religious messages, political messages, and other such nonsense. I wrote my experiences in an essay titled: ‘Want To Start A Facebook Group? Have A Reality Check‘. Soon, all groups on Facebook become Friends Circles wherein everything and anything is posted. No one reads serious poetry either written by friends or by recognised poets, for example. People are happy to write, like and comment on such gibberish as:

जब तुम्हारी याद आती है तो बहुत दर्द होता है,
जब दर्द होता है तो तुम्हारी याद आती हैI

This is short and sweet. I accessed this site and found this s & s piece had 453 likes and 117 comments.

There you are: I have tried to find reasons as to why blogs are hated and disliked. If you are a blogger and you have some other reasons to add, please go ahead and share in the comments.

One oft-repeated comment that I received on my ‘Olympics Are Biased Against Indians’ has been that I should write a fresh one for the just concluded Olympics. The article, people wrote, is hilarious; but, they want a fresh one too. So here it is, not during but after the Olympics. It is not hilarious but in my own straight-bat manner, I have tried to hit the nail on the head.

Whenever we as Indians discuss and debate any issue, just like in Arnab Goswami’s telly debates, we divide ourselves into we versus they; we are the good people with best interests of the country with us and they are the evil, inefficient, and corrupt lot who are hell-bent to take the country backwards. Shobha De, for example is us and the politicians and ministers who didn’t let Sakshi (a Bronze Medal winner in wrestling in Rio Olympics) speak in her own felicitation function (because they wanted to grab the limelight themselves) are they. And, these we and they keep changing places depending upon the flavour of the day; for, if there is one word that describes Indians, it is opportunists. We ain’t good competitors; but we are good opportunists. All of us.

‘One reason for evil to last is for good men to do nothing about it’. This should lead us to realise that not just they but we too are responsible for the situation we are in.

Nearly a year back I wrote an article in this blog titled: ‘Indians – Poor In Record – Keeping; Armed Forces No Exception’. In this, amongst other things, I had brought out that after the 1999 Kargil War, the citation for Grenadier Yogendra Singh Yadav, who received the highest military gallantry award that the country had to offer – the Param Vir Chakra, that is, read that he was being awarded this medal posthumously. The poor Grenadier went on record saying that he didn’t want a medal that killed him even when he was still alive. This is how much we cared about the medal given for the highest in gallantry. Reacting to this article, some of my army friends emotionally brought out that this happens in fog of war. For heavens sake we are talking about the highest gallantry award and the army didn’t know whether the recipient was dead or alive.

We Are Like That Only. There are no we versus they. All of us including me are to be blamed. I remember the time when the Anna Hazare movement was at its peak. Everyone expected that once we would sort out the corrupt politicians and bureaucrats through such instruments as Lokpal Bill, India would suddenly emerge as a corruption free nation. We conveniently forgot our own involvement in making the babus and netas corrupt and our penchant to seek short-cuts to success through greasing palms of these worthies.

We are indeed like that only.

Thus, before and during the Olympics, it is made to appear that medal-winners are worthy of our respect and emulation, except that we don’t seem to be having many.

First, lets take a quick count of medals won by us in all the Olympics so far. The modern version of Summer Olympics started in 1896 and India sent just one athlete Norman Gilbert Pritchard (later as Hollywood actor Norman Trevor) to the second of those in the year 1900. He won two Silver medals. But, he was of British parentage, born in Calcutta and in 1905 went to settle in Britain.

We didn’t send a team until the sixth Olympics in 1920 when a team of six men (four athletes and two wrestlers) and two managers participated. We drew a blank. We drew a blank again in 1924 when we sent a team of 14 (seven athletes and seven tennis players) with one manager.

Our first Olympic Gold came in the year 1928, in the eighth Olympics, when we sent a team of 21 (seven athletes and 14 hockey players with the manager GD Sondhi. We won the hockey finals. We won the hockey gold for the next five Olympics in succession. Hockey also helped us get our first Olympic Gold as an independent nation in the 1948 London Olympics.

The first Indian (and not of British parentage who just happened to be born in India when India was under the British) to win an individual medal was in the the twelfth Olympics, the 1952 Summer Olympics in Helsinki. Khashaba Dadasaheb Jadhav won a wrestling bronze in the Bantam Weight category. Despite his sterling performances in national events he nearly missed a berth for the Helsinki Olympics due to nepotism, the bane of Indian sports. He didn’t bow down to corruption in Indian sports but appealed to Maharaja of Patiala, himself a sports enthusiast. The Maharaja felicitated his entry in Olympic trials where Jhadav defeated his opponent who was otherwise billed to go to Olympics!

What was the honour bestowed on him being the first Indian individual medal winner in Olympics? None, since he had earned the ire of the officials. Three years after the Helsinki Olympics, he joined as a sub-inspector in police. He continued winning domestic competitions. He was also a wrestling coach. He served in the police for 27 years and retired as Assistant Police Commissioner and since he had learnt to fight in wrestling, they made him fight for his pension. He was a pariah of the sports federations and thus neither a Padma Shri nor any riches were bestowed on him. He died of a tragic accident in 1984. In the last few years of his life and until his death, he was a poor man. That is India’s first individual medal winner. Do you think any industry in India, any organisation, any philanthropist supported him? The answer is none.

The last Olympics before India became independent were held in 1936 in Berlin and our team size was 27 competitors (four athletes, three wrestlers, one Burmese weight-lifter, and a hockey team of 19) and three officials including manager G D Sondhi. As soon as we became independent, our team size bulged to 79 and from 3 sports and we suddenly started taking part in ten sports. In 1952 Helsinki Olympics, for the first time we sent 3 women. Thus, after their inception in 1896, it is only in the twelfth Olympics that we sent women (there were no Olympics held in 1916 due to World War I and 1940 and 1944 due to World War II).

In Hockey, we have won a total of 11 medals including 8 Golds, 2 Silver and 1 Bronze. In individual medals, thanks to the deplorable treatment meted out to Khashaba Dadasaheb Jadhav, our next individual medal came only in 1996 (23rd Olympics) when Leander Paes won a Bronze in Tennis (men’s Singles). Leander Paes competed in consecutive Olympics from 1992 to 2016 making him the only tennis player in the world to have participated in seven Olympics.

He has been bestowed with many awards. He has received the Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna award, India’s highest sporting honour, in 1996–97; the Arjuna Award in 1990; the Padma Shri award in 2001 and its 3rd Highest Civilian Award the Padma Bhushan in January 2014 for his outstanding contribution to tennis in India.

At this juncture let me bring out that there is money in tennis and cricket. Yuvraj, for example, instantly won a crore rupees for hitting six sixes in an over. The reason is that both these sports are well suited for advertisements in between the overs and the games and there are huge advertisement budgets and sponsorships involved in both the games.

Compare these with an event that both our men and women have been winning since its inception in 2004, the Kabaddi World Cup, that is. So far, there have been seven world cups for men and three for women (since 2012). We have won all the seven golds for men and all the three golds for women. But, have a look at the women waiting for and finally getting into an auto-rickshaw after winning the World Cup:

If you go on the net or check the newspapers, you would get to see our former sports persons who brought glory to the nation languishing in poverty. Here are a few of those pics:

I am not going to fill this entire blog with numerous stories of neglect of sports persons even after they made the country proud.

Lets take one of the most famous: Shankar Lakshman who was the goalkeeper of the Indian team in the 1956, 1960 and 1964 Olympics, that won two gold medals and one silver medal. He was the first goalkeeper to become Captain of an international hockey team and was awarded the Arjuna award and the Padma Shri by the Indian government. He was Captain of the Indian team which won the gold in the 1966 Asian Games. After missing the selection for the 1968 Olympics, Lakshman quit hockey. He remained with the Army, retiring in 1979 as a Captain of the Maratha Light Infantry. He lived the final years of his life in poverty, and died in 2006 after suffering gangrene in one leg, in Mhow.

Lets take just one more case, that of Sita Sahu. This intrepid 15-year-old at the time of 2011 Special Olympics at Athens won for the country two Bronze medals: in 200 m relay race and in 1600 m race. What does she do now? She still lives in abject poverty and sells golgappas and paapdi chaats.

In our characteristic style we blame the netas and the babus and the self-serving officials of sports federations in India, very sure in our minds that we ourselves have no role to play in this rot. And then we blame the money spinning games of cricket and tennis for the neglect of other sports.

Who goes to see the cricket and tennis matches? We do. Who goes and spends hours and days watching tamasha (spectacle) at the IPL? We do. Indian sports persons have won a total of only 28 medals in all the Olympics so far that include two of Norman Pritchard and 11 of Hockey; a miserable 15 medals in 28 Olympics. Six of these were won in London Olympics and two in Rio. This means that we just had seven individual medals to our credit in 26 Olympics.

Five years ago, I wrote an article titled ‘Indians Bartering Character For Prosperity’. I concluded the article with the following words:

“At the present juncture, I am sorry to say, we are doomed to be what we bemoaned at one time: ‘a rich country inhabited by the poor’; except that now, poor is defined as ‘poor in character‘.

Everyone of us has to bring in (and do so proudly) discipline in our individual and collective lives.”

Lets face it; we love tamasha (spectacle) whether in sports or in religion or in anything we do. Everything has to be seen in money terms. IPL interests us because it is a media-made tamasha, that makes us feel great just like three hours spent watching a Hindi movie takes us away from the reality of the squalor and misery that we still live in.

And if we feel that the political leaders are responsible for this mess, think again. Who elects them? We do.

During the height of Anna Hazare movement, I wrote several articles as to why the movement would fail unless we are involved in clearing the mess and not leave it to them to do so. My only poem in Punjabi (my mother tongue) was ‘Anne Na Raho (Don’t Remain Blind)’ bringing out our own responsibility in electing the right people and not just toss a coin and vote or not to wait at all.

And, mind you, we are talking about medals won in sports. As a nation we don’t have respect for those who won gallantry medals at the risk of their lives or often sacrificing their lives for the country.

Here is a spectacle of veterans returning their medals in protest against the non-implementation of One Rank One Pension. Who cares? We don’t.

Next time, following the advice of our former and most respected President: Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam, rather than pointing finger at the political bosses and some other officials, lets point a finger at ourselves and begin with ourselves to set things right. Lets take a pledge, for example, that we shall desist from such tamasha as IPL and encourage our athletes and other sportsmen, even if the current entertainment value of watching them is little.

Lets all win together and not make it look like that they are us if they win and they are they if they lose.