Migrants have always been numbers for urbanites - in school as a lesson, for sociologists as a research subject, for politicians as a convenient manipulation for attention getting, for NGOs the reason for existence, for the genteel folks a nuisance, a suspicion of lurking danger and what not.
You see them in construction doing hard labour, as waiters in restaurants/resorts/canteens trying to look 'butlery' and trying very hard to speak in English, in beauty parlours trying to pass off their looks as Chinese, in entertainment/amusement parks as dancers and stuntmen, as carpenters, marble workers, painters, glass workers and so on and so forth. Living at workplaces in cramped quarters and muddied surroundings, packed together, earning, earning and earning, even if they are pittances. They save all year, and once a year go home to their families. Only to come back and start at the lowest rung of the ladder once again in the same old cramped hells. How come we don't seem to give them more than a passing glance? How do we take their existence as pieces of furniture? We have no time. We have no energy to take rest from our own rat race. We simply think of it is their bad luck - or more callously - their own doing because they are illiterate or poorly literate. We also 'generously' pride ourselves as a land of opportunities as the South is more progressive than the regressive north and that people have no language problem here in Hyderabad and it is somehow to our credit that people come all the way here to look for job opportunities!
And of course, we don't mind them working on Sundays and holidays (excepting if they are working in malls and they are forcibly closed down by authorities - this definitely affects our convenience!). Why have become like this? Why have I become like this? Though I do think of them, and I also tried to help one or two people - sometimes without much success for helping them with transfer of an account or safe keeping some papers, or guiding them to doctors after my initial OTC drugs do not alleviate their symptoms, I have actually not gone beyond that. Then one day it hits you in the face in full force in seemingly innocuous situations.
Like when I met Nepali cooks (young boys really) in the deep hinterland of the South in Trivandrum! The guest house happily had these two boys, who lived behind the kitchen, which fortunately was decent even if quite small and cooked good food, both North Indian and South Indian! You are of course delighted that you can eat roti that tastes like roti and speak in Hindi, specially after a day of hearing Mallu accented English. Then it strikes you - how did they ever think of coming 2000+ miles away from their homeland, to another country? How did they come? How did they know about this place called Trivandrum in their little village in Nepal. How are they managing to buy groceries and vegetables - how did they manage to learn the language which we never seem to learn beyond a few words and which are usually used to amuse your hosts? They came because one of their village friends landed up a job here, having answered as advertisement, by a stroke of luck really because clerical jobs do not come for people from so far away. After that, there has been a steady stream of his people from the village and he and his brother also came over. They know that they have to work hard for something that would not be enough compensation anyway. And to think of it - they spend nearly Rs 4-5000 in travel fares after depriving themselves of any luxuries!
Even NGOs to a certain extent with a miniscule number of migrant labour on health issues, there is nobody for the rest of the multitude of migrant labour. Will Nandan Nilekani's project help them in any way? It would be worthy of a Nobel Prize if the identification system can help them access PDS, gas, health and other critical and basic citizen facilities.
There are non-migrants too amongst other professions like drivers, mall workers, who do not get a day off and work log shifts. The swank and efficient airport cab services where the cab driver pays a deposit of Rs 10,000, gets trained and then pays Rs 1000 flat every single day of the month irrespective of business, buys his fuel, carries out his repairs and dreams of the car ownership after four years! A car that has run heavy mileage with not a single day's holiday for him. Where is our collective conscience? What can I do? What should I do?
Friday, July 31, 2009
Sunday, July 12, 2009
Taming of the Shrew
What is about films like Rab ne Bana di Jodi, Namastey London and the like? What is this craving of a common guy taming the flaming, vivacious girl, and bringing her to "her senses" at the end of the movie? Why this blatant attempt to seek a totally opposite character and bend her completely to your way of living and thinking - in the name of the virtue of upholding the so called traditional values? Is it the fantasy of the average, introvert man that aims at possessing and 'reforming' her, albeit with a loads of melodrama of sacrificing love? And why are they such big hits?
Why does a vivacious,, energetic, educated, modern girl need to be taught a lesson? Why is the oily, rustic, not so socially skilled man the better human being and a more versatile, dynamic and socially adaptable girl the not so good one? What are these flights of fantasy (or should I more aptly state it as fantasizing?) of the male ego? Is it really possible to make a success of this union?
Whenever there is a discussion on women, tempers invariably run high - and very predictably turn into stereotyping the more 'visible' outspoken woman. Why do I hear of most women in senior positions referred to as dominant or arrogant? (The other extreme is dumb female!). Is she really so or perceived as a shield against man's own insecurity?
Why is it that a man can live comfortably and happily with a not so smart wife, while the same is not true vice versa? No answers, only questions. We probably still need many more years before emotional maturity can be evident. Or will it ever?
Why does a vivacious,, energetic, educated, modern girl need to be taught a lesson? Why is the oily, rustic, not so socially skilled man the better human being and a more versatile, dynamic and socially adaptable girl the not so good one? What are these flights of fantasy (or should I more aptly state it as fantasizing?) of the male ego? Is it really possible to make a success of this union?
Whenever there is a discussion on women, tempers invariably run high - and very predictably turn into stereotyping the more 'visible' outspoken woman. Why do I hear of most women in senior positions referred to as dominant or arrogant? (The other extreme is dumb female!). Is she really so or perceived as a shield against man's own insecurity?
Why is it that a man can live comfortably and happily with a not so smart wife, while the same is not true vice versa? No answers, only questions. We probably still need many more years before emotional maturity can be evident. Or will it ever?
Monday, July 6, 2009
ghettos & politics
The spread of the Indian diaspora has always intrigued me. The spirit of entrepreneurship of risking something new for higher returns gives a calling that is too hard to resist. In the Western world, there have been explorers, conquerors, traders. A part of the Eastern world has been marauding pillagers, who slowly tired of it and became settlers and new rulers. Indians - though this collective term is disputed as being a British legacy and that India did not exist as a collective before that - I still believe that too many things have tied all the generations in some kind of a common heritage and therefore tend to behave in a culturally distinct manner. Notwithstanding the differences between the different regions in India, there appears to be a thread that identifies them clearly, specially with reference to their outlook on life, money and politics.
All migrant communities set up their own self styled ghettos - sometimes for collective moral support, sometimes for shutting out the external world and creating a familiarity they are comfortable with and sometimes, simply because they look down on the people and the land of their immigration. As conquerors if you shun the natives, it leads to rebellion; as migrants if you shun the locals, it leads to racism. This view of mine is contrary to the prevalent view that racism is innate to locals - one does not realise that it could also be a reaction to the unspoken, but unconsciously or subtly expressed superiority complex of the migrants. Unfortunately, the manifestation of this is in the attacks on the undefended, innocent and the meek as they are easy prey. Occasionally, the rasher ones exhibiting bravado also get the rough end, but it is mostly the milder ones that get hit.
It usually starts with hating the weather and the food - that is universal across world cultures. However, when it manifests itself in hating those who eat such food and enjoy the climate, the ugliness becomes vivid. Intelligent as we are, we are however, naive when it comes to mental maturity and adult behaviour and the hatred shows. We simply cannot understand that respecting one's culture has nothing to do with hating another culture or its followers.
Can we really learn to respect other views? we cannot even agree in our ghettos - the Telugus in US are now in four splinter groups. each vying with each other to show how they preserve Telugu culture, particularly the caste politics! We cannot tolerate our own culture and we stoop to slander and character assassination all the time, and we call others racist? What is happening in the Indian diaspora is politics worse than what happens at home in India and is full of caste racism, which is even more hateful than racism per se. What right have we to talk about racism, when all day long we mention caste at least once and in derogatory terms of a person belonging to another caste and proving it time and again that caste prevails over everything else, no matter how many years or generations or thousands of miles you are away from it. Racism exists in us inasmuch as it exists elsewhere.
All migrant communities set up their own self styled ghettos - sometimes for collective moral support, sometimes for shutting out the external world and creating a familiarity they are comfortable with and sometimes, simply because they look down on the people and the land of their immigration. As conquerors if you shun the natives, it leads to rebellion; as migrants if you shun the locals, it leads to racism. This view of mine is contrary to the prevalent view that racism is innate to locals - one does not realise that it could also be a reaction to the unspoken, but unconsciously or subtly expressed superiority complex of the migrants. Unfortunately, the manifestation of this is in the attacks on the undefended, innocent and the meek as they are easy prey. Occasionally, the rasher ones exhibiting bravado also get the rough end, but it is mostly the milder ones that get hit.
It usually starts with hating the weather and the food - that is universal across world cultures. However, when it manifests itself in hating those who eat such food and enjoy the climate, the ugliness becomes vivid. Intelligent as we are, we are however, naive when it comes to mental maturity and adult behaviour and the hatred shows. We simply cannot understand that respecting one's culture has nothing to do with hating another culture or its followers.
Can we really learn to respect other views? we cannot even agree in our ghettos - the Telugus in US are now in four splinter groups. each vying with each other to show how they preserve Telugu culture, particularly the caste politics! We cannot tolerate our own culture and we stoop to slander and character assassination all the time, and we call others racist? What is happening in the Indian diaspora is politics worse than what happens at home in India and is full of caste racism, which is even more hateful than racism per se. What right have we to talk about racism, when all day long we mention caste at least once and in derogatory terms of a person belonging to another caste and proving it time and again that caste prevails over everything else, no matter how many years or generations or thousands of miles you are away from it. Racism exists in us inasmuch as it exists elsewhere.
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Ganga & Me
River Ganges (Ganga) fascinated me for the sheer position it enjoys in the pantheon of rivers in India. Apart from that, a Telugu saying "Ganga snanam, Tunga paanam", meaning a dip in river Ganga and a sip of river Tunga are considered as the ultimate standards. In my early childhood I had quite a lot of Tunga Paanam anyway and did not know the difference.
I did not get to see Ganga till 1980, when I went to Delhi to appear in an interview for a Netherlands Fellowship Programme. After that, I went visiting Dehradun to Jaya's place (sis in law) for the first time. They & Rakesh, my friend from BITS Pilani, who lived in Dehradun, naturally took me around - which meant going to Hardwar and Rishikesh and of course Mussoorie. At Hardwar, I saw Ganga for the first time. The experience was nice but not significant. I became aware of the refreshing whiteness of Ganga and nothing more really. I was, however, to visit Ganga several times in multiple cities and only then could I experience its power, its mystic, and its magic. It has invoked deep seated emotions in me.
I visited it twice with my children - the first time it was to laugh with them and play with them on its banks and give them a dunking and also show them the huge fishes swimming swiftly in its current. We also bought some fish food to throw to them, as if they were not well fed enough already. The second time was a bit scary - I hadn't realized the danger of sitting on the concrete platform created for the evening Aarti as a single chaperon for four highly playful kids of descending ages (my two nieces and my two daughters). It was brought home to me when Shivani squirted water with her palms on all of us and I mistook a plastic scrap to be a water organism and jerked suddenly, almost toppling Preeti into the water. My stars were good - I only managed to knock off Preeti's new black and white framed spectacles and we also involuntarily stooped down to save them. It was impossible - I still did not realise the danger of slipping and falling. A couple of kids (urchins really - who keep hanging about) dove in and searched without success. One of them said to me that the current of Ganga is so strong that the glasses would have been swept away a great distance already (he said miles). It was then that the risk I was taking in putting the kids to such danger, made me immediately get the children to move away from the platform. I was petrified with the thought of what could have happened. It didn't help with Preeti's wild imagination that her glasses would reach the Bay of Bengal and then travel to Indian Ocean and reach the South African shores where Alan Donald (her favourite cricketer) would pick them up, as it only compounded my dread. It was this incident that made me look at Ganga properly - how many times we visit places and only just about visit them without actually seeing them properly? I noticed the quiet but superfast current of the river and admired its sheer power without any sound or show about it. It is so deceptive! The mark of the truly powerful!
The true spirit and power of Ganga is captured in Bapu's film Seeta Kalyanam (a film that is prescribed syllabus in many US universities). The artiste director Bapu created a poem in celluloid on the birth of Ganga. It seems Bapu created many sketches of Ganga in various stages, almost like an animation album, as words cannot accurately express the right emotions, characterisation and nuances, as well as a picture can. He then filmed the actual sequence. He has been able to capture the true spirit of Ganga in the splendour of her being, her dynamiting dynamism, her anger and her arrogance, her power and more. This picturisation remained embedded on my heart eternally. I also bought an imprint of his painting where Ganga deigns to come down to earth first dancing on Shiva's head and one small part of her is allowed to escape from his knotted labyrinth of hair to make her mark on the land of mortals.
My next encounter with Ganga was the most beautiful and insightful. This was when I was doing a study on the Restructuring of Bharat Yantra Nigam (if there is a Limca Book of records for the number of studies, probably this would win), I went to Allahabad with my colleague Sanal. It was November, cool days had started. We had a very short time of one and a half days to cover the Head Office and the two factories in Allahabad and Naini. The liaison person, DGM Corp Plg, wanted to know if we wanted to visit places, particularly the Sangam (confluence of Ganga and Yamuna - a very holy and a must see place for Hindus). I was totally averse to it, having seen ad nauseum, the TV images of the Maha Kumbh, which concluded just a week before we visited the place. The entire pseudo religious commercialisation had put me off completely, and no amount of incentive for crediting my virtue account with God, did not entice me to pay a visit. Sanal was anyway a work focussed man, so we declined. We were returning from Naini at about 5.20 pm and the November sun was just about setting. When we reached the Sangam - the DGM almost pleaded with me that since the place now had no crowd, we should step out for a dekko for just five minutes. I felt bad that we were giving such a hard time to the person whose only interest was in making us witness something which every visitor to Allahabad demanded to see as a matter of right. I thought that if we just take a walk and come back to the vehicle, it would take no more than 5-10 minutes and we thus proceeded.
I was totally unprepared for what followed. I don't even know whether I can describe it in terms that would do full justice to it. I found the river bank devoid of any humna being, sans one panda who was doing some ritual on the sand. We had an unbounded view of the magnificent painting in the sky - it was, coincidentally, a full moon day. The sun was setting and the moon was rising. On one end I could see a huge ball of orange and on the other, a huge ball of silver. It looked so beautiful and too good to be real. I had never seen such huge orbs of the sun and the moon at what seemed like very close quarters. I felt that if I ran ahead, I could hold each ball in each of my outstretched hands. My eyes could not stop drinking and getting overwhelmed by this magnificent celestial painting. It was then that I heard the Ganga - she was rushing forward as if in a tearing hurry - you could feel her power surging forward. She was white and rippling in every muscle and yet looked sinewy and graceful. I turned to look at Yamuna - slow, limpid, languid and lazily, heavily meandering, as if she knew that her sister would come rushing to meet her even if she didn't move an inch. She was lost in her deep brooding thoughts. What a contrast - the two sisters - born in the same terrain , coursing through the northern plains on parallel but paths of different stature and character. Yamuna - the elder one - deep, dark - (deep green), slowly moving - her mass providing her the momentum required to move forward, heavy and brooding. Ganga - white, rushing on treacherous slopes, tearing down everything that stood in her way, never slackening her speed, but not very deep, every movement of hers characterised by dynamism. Ganga then hits the 90 degree corner and her sheer force pushes away the older, heavier Yamuna a good distance. The arc where Ganga pushes away Yamuna is almost a half circle. At this point, Yamuna loses her identity and existence to Ganga's complete domination and she ceases to exist. I wonder what Ganga did to the underground river Saraswati, which also was said to join here - we do know that Saraswati ran dry. Ganga strides majestically forward.
My next views of Ganga were not so good - inasmuch because of the thronging crowds and dirt as also because now I cannot accept anything less than my earlier vision of this great lady. These were at Benares and Patna, both for UNICEF work related to water and sanitation and these places were anything but that. The overwhelming ritualistic presence at Benares put me off and I felt that Ganga became heavy and dirty here. I tried conjuring up my mother's experience on the floating bridge in Benares, decades earlier when she came to write her Matric exams and the misty droplets she described as splattering her face when she crossed on this bridge. I tried hard, but could not get to feel the beauty of Ganga here. I also was not very enamoured of the aarti here. In Patna, I did see the expanse of Ganga because of the large Gandhi Setu - I may be biased but Ganga appeared to have bloated and slowed down in Patna. The Setu itself, though supposed to be a great construction, the lack of attention to details and lack of aesthetics somehow undermined its greatness.
Probably my last encounter with Ganga was way back in 2002. I was in BHEL, Hardwar for a training programme. I was taken by AGM Mehrotra for the customary evening Aarti in Hardwar. This time I went willingly as I now had a relationship with Ganga. As VIP guests, we were taken very close to the waterfront and could sit just where the Aarti was to be performed. As I sat down, I was overcome with a tremendous feeling that she was calling me into her arms. I was petrified - I felt that I was being pulled heart, soul and body into a vortex. A part of me was saying that I should heed the call and go and my eyes kept flashing the images of my daughters and I knew that I had to stay longer in this world for them. But the tug was getting fearfully stronger - I felt that if did not move away from there, something disastrous was going to happen. I shocked Mehrotra by telling him that I feel like jumping in and ending my life. He just took me away from there and gave me a lecture on getting back to senses, whether or not he believed me that I had intended to die. I know definitely that if I hadn't made the effort of blurting it out, I would have taken the plunge - I would have been probably saved given the crowd there - or I would have probably been swept away into the arms of Ganga and released from all cares and worries of this world - who knows?
This feeling of pull stayed with me for two days, ebbing slowly as the flood of Ganga does. I went to Dehradun the next day to visit Jaya and with my strong belief that I have to overcome this feeling and pull that was lingering in me and that it can only be done by outpouring , I confided to Jaya about what happened to me. She was not in her normal cheerful and warm demeanour - she probably had something on her mind, or she simply thought that I was being melodramatic - she didn't say anything. Every pore of my body and soul was crying out, please reassure me so that I can become normal again. I knew then, I had to summon my own internal reserves to help myself. I again remembered and kept remembering my children and reminding myself that they still need me and returned to Delhi. It was in Delhi, when I had to wait for a delayed flight to Hyderabad and with all people milling around me that I thought and thought about a lot of things and the strong pull of Ganga was left behind slowly. I now no longer laugh at people who die for seemingly unnecessary reasons - I no longer think of them as cowards who could not face life - the urge to end it all can be sometimes the highest philosophical thought and it is indeed difficult to resist the dizzy eddying of emotion that surges at such moments. I also know now that I would not want to see my mentor Ganga again because this time, I may become one with her. By the way - I did not have Ganga 'snanam' till date, having managed only to wet my feet and not wanting to impart my sins and impurities to her.
I did not get to see Ganga till 1980, when I went to Delhi to appear in an interview for a Netherlands Fellowship Programme. After that, I went visiting Dehradun to Jaya's place (sis in law) for the first time. They & Rakesh, my friend from BITS Pilani, who lived in Dehradun, naturally took me around - which meant going to Hardwar and Rishikesh and of course Mussoorie. At Hardwar, I saw Ganga for the first time. The experience was nice but not significant. I became aware of the refreshing whiteness of Ganga and nothing more really. I was, however, to visit Ganga several times in multiple cities and only then could I experience its power, its mystic, and its magic. It has invoked deep seated emotions in me.
I visited it twice with my children - the first time it was to laugh with them and play with them on its banks and give them a dunking and also show them the huge fishes swimming swiftly in its current. We also bought some fish food to throw to them, as if they were not well fed enough already. The second time was a bit scary - I hadn't realized the danger of sitting on the concrete platform created for the evening Aarti as a single chaperon for four highly playful kids of descending ages (my two nieces and my two daughters). It was brought home to me when Shivani squirted water with her palms on all of us and I mistook a plastic scrap to be a water organism and jerked suddenly, almost toppling Preeti into the water. My stars were good - I only managed to knock off Preeti's new black and white framed spectacles and we also involuntarily stooped down to save them. It was impossible - I still did not realise the danger of slipping and falling. A couple of kids (urchins really - who keep hanging about) dove in and searched without success. One of them said to me that the current of Ganga is so strong that the glasses would have been swept away a great distance already (he said miles). It was then that the risk I was taking in putting the kids to such danger, made me immediately get the children to move away from the platform. I was petrified with the thought of what could have happened. It didn't help with Preeti's wild imagination that her glasses would reach the Bay of Bengal and then travel to Indian Ocean and reach the South African shores where Alan Donald (her favourite cricketer) would pick them up, as it only compounded my dread. It was this incident that made me look at Ganga properly - how many times we visit places and only just about visit them without actually seeing them properly? I noticed the quiet but superfast current of the river and admired its sheer power without any sound or show about it. It is so deceptive! The mark of the truly powerful!
The true spirit and power of Ganga is captured in Bapu's film Seeta Kalyanam (a film that is prescribed syllabus in many US universities). The artiste director Bapu created a poem in celluloid on the birth of Ganga. It seems Bapu created many sketches of Ganga in various stages, almost like an animation album, as words cannot accurately express the right emotions, characterisation and nuances, as well as a picture can. He then filmed the actual sequence. He has been able to capture the true spirit of Ganga in the splendour of her being, her dynamiting dynamism, her anger and her arrogance, her power and more. This picturisation remained embedded on my heart eternally. I also bought an imprint of his painting where Ganga deigns to come down to earth first dancing on Shiva's head and one small part of her is allowed to escape from his knotted labyrinth of hair to make her mark on the land of mortals.
My next encounter with Ganga was the most beautiful and insightful. This was when I was doing a study on the Restructuring of Bharat Yantra Nigam (if there is a Limca Book of records for the number of studies, probably this would win), I went to Allahabad with my colleague Sanal. It was November, cool days had started. We had a very short time of one and a half days to cover the Head Office and the two factories in Allahabad and Naini. The liaison person, DGM Corp Plg, wanted to know if we wanted to visit places, particularly the Sangam (confluence of Ganga and Yamuna - a very holy and a must see place for Hindus). I was totally averse to it, having seen ad nauseum, the TV images of the Maha Kumbh, which concluded just a week before we visited the place. The entire pseudo religious commercialisation had put me off completely, and no amount of incentive for crediting my virtue account with God, did not entice me to pay a visit. Sanal was anyway a work focussed man, so we declined. We were returning from Naini at about 5.20 pm and the November sun was just about setting. When we reached the Sangam - the DGM almost pleaded with me that since the place now had no crowd, we should step out for a dekko for just five minutes. I felt bad that we were giving such a hard time to the person whose only interest was in making us witness something which every visitor to Allahabad demanded to see as a matter of right. I thought that if we just take a walk and come back to the vehicle, it would take no more than 5-10 minutes and we thus proceeded.
I was totally unprepared for what followed. I don't even know whether I can describe it in terms that would do full justice to it. I found the river bank devoid of any humna being, sans one panda who was doing some ritual on the sand. We had an unbounded view of the magnificent painting in the sky - it was, coincidentally, a full moon day. The sun was setting and the moon was rising. On one end I could see a huge ball of orange and on the other, a huge ball of silver. It looked so beautiful and too good to be real. I had never seen such huge orbs of the sun and the moon at what seemed like very close quarters. I felt that if I ran ahead, I could hold each ball in each of my outstretched hands. My eyes could not stop drinking and getting overwhelmed by this magnificent celestial painting. It was then that I heard the Ganga - she was rushing forward as if in a tearing hurry - you could feel her power surging forward. She was white and rippling in every muscle and yet looked sinewy and graceful. I turned to look at Yamuna - slow, limpid, languid and lazily, heavily meandering, as if she knew that her sister would come rushing to meet her even if she didn't move an inch. She was lost in her deep brooding thoughts. What a contrast - the two sisters - born in the same terrain , coursing through the northern plains on parallel but paths of different stature and character. Yamuna - the elder one - deep, dark - (deep green), slowly moving - her mass providing her the momentum required to move forward, heavy and brooding. Ganga - white, rushing on treacherous slopes, tearing down everything that stood in her way, never slackening her speed, but not very deep, every movement of hers characterised by dynamism. Ganga then hits the 90 degree corner and her sheer force pushes away the older, heavier Yamuna a good distance. The arc where Ganga pushes away Yamuna is almost a half circle. At this point, Yamuna loses her identity and existence to Ganga's complete domination and she ceases to exist. I wonder what Ganga did to the underground river Saraswati, which also was said to join here - we do know that Saraswati ran dry. Ganga strides majestically forward.
My next views of Ganga were not so good - inasmuch because of the thronging crowds and dirt as also because now I cannot accept anything less than my earlier vision of this great lady. These were at Benares and Patna, both for UNICEF work related to water and sanitation and these places were anything but that. The overwhelming ritualistic presence at Benares put me off and I felt that Ganga became heavy and dirty here. I tried conjuring up my mother's experience on the floating bridge in Benares, decades earlier when she came to write her Matric exams and the misty droplets she described as splattering her face when she crossed on this bridge. I tried hard, but could not get to feel the beauty of Ganga here. I also was not very enamoured of the aarti here. In Patna, I did see the expanse of Ganga because of the large Gandhi Setu - I may be biased but Ganga appeared to have bloated and slowed down in Patna. The Setu itself, though supposed to be a great construction, the lack of attention to details and lack of aesthetics somehow undermined its greatness.
Probably my last encounter with Ganga was way back in 2002. I was in BHEL, Hardwar for a training programme. I was taken by AGM Mehrotra for the customary evening Aarti in Hardwar. This time I went willingly as I now had a relationship with Ganga. As VIP guests, we were taken very close to the waterfront and could sit just where the Aarti was to be performed. As I sat down, I was overcome with a tremendous feeling that she was calling me into her arms. I was petrified - I felt that I was being pulled heart, soul and body into a vortex. A part of me was saying that I should heed the call and go and my eyes kept flashing the images of my daughters and I knew that I had to stay longer in this world for them. But the tug was getting fearfully stronger - I felt that if did not move away from there, something disastrous was going to happen. I shocked Mehrotra by telling him that I feel like jumping in and ending my life. He just took me away from there and gave me a lecture on getting back to senses, whether or not he believed me that I had intended to die. I know definitely that if I hadn't made the effort of blurting it out, I would have taken the plunge - I would have been probably saved given the crowd there - or I would have probably been swept away into the arms of Ganga and released from all cares and worries of this world - who knows?
This feeling of pull stayed with me for two days, ebbing slowly as the flood of Ganga does. I went to Dehradun the next day to visit Jaya and with my strong belief that I have to overcome this feeling and pull that was lingering in me and that it can only be done by outpouring , I confided to Jaya about what happened to me. She was not in her normal cheerful and warm demeanour - she probably had something on her mind, or she simply thought that I was being melodramatic - she didn't say anything. Every pore of my body and soul was crying out, please reassure me so that I can become normal again. I knew then, I had to summon my own internal reserves to help myself. I again remembered and kept remembering my children and reminding myself that they still need me and returned to Delhi. It was in Delhi, when I had to wait for a delayed flight to Hyderabad and with all people milling around me that I thought and thought about a lot of things and the strong pull of Ganga was left behind slowly. I now no longer laugh at people who die for seemingly unnecessary reasons - I no longer think of them as cowards who could not face life - the urge to end it all can be sometimes the highest philosophical thought and it is indeed difficult to resist the dizzy eddying of emotion that surges at such moments. I also know now that I would not want to see my mentor Ganga again because this time, I may become one with her. By the way - I did not have Ganga 'snanam' till date, having managed only to wet my feet and not wanting to impart my sins and impurities to her.
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