Mrinal Pande 
Saakhi is a Sunday column from Mrinal Pande, in which she writes of what she sees and also participates in. That has been her burden to bear ever since she embarked on a life as a journalist, writer, editor, author and as chairperson of Prasar Bharti. Her journey of being a witness-participant continues.
One no longer gives a start at the sight of lone men in jogging gear, talking seemingly to themselves in a public park. Of course they are all using that miracle of the 21st century, a cordless device connected to a smart phone in their pocket, to converse with unseen friends with loads of time on their hands. You just get a whiff of stale armpits or their cologne when they open their arms wide. There is something about this man that I dislike. He is walking ahead of me, unaware of the beauty of a public park all lit up with spring flowers, explaining the Hindu dharma to an unseen companion with a passionate intensity in his voice that still remains impersonal.
First he wishes his friend a happy Hindu New Year which, in his fake accented American English, he pronounces as Shubha Nava Sam Vatsara, rolling his ‘R’s. He then proceeds to say a Hindu should not say Naya Saal Mubarak. Mubarak is Islamic, not Hindu. And from there on, it is all about being a proud Hindu, no matter where in the world he has chosen to relocate. It is obvious from the nasal monologue that follows that our walker is on his annual visit to his ancestral house and touching base with old friends. Each time he visits, he is telling the guy at the other end, he can only marvel at the new Shining India and the wonderful air of a resurrected Hindu piety that surrounds this land today.
Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty
I’d hardly recognise this man if I ever met him outside of the park, but I’d hate to bump into him again. He is now talking gushingly of the new wide roads that can take you from Delhi to the hills in a couple of hours, the posh new malls and of course gloriously rebuilt pilgrimage spots. The Char Dhams, the 12 Jyotirlingas, the dazzlingly new Kashi with the magnificent corridors around the Shiva temple, the spectacular Ganga aarti. Ageless, the aarti, he says. I wish I could give him a hefty push and tell him the garish aarti was started only in 1991, with the explicit aim of attracting more foreign tourists! But by now he has moved on to the ancient ecological concerns of Indian scriptures and the great Hindu emphasis on cleanliness recorded in our Brahminical texts. Our scriptures yaar, he says, have been the backbone of Hindu society and its piety. Hindu dharma is codified in Dev Bhasaha, the language of Gods, and has survived six centuries of Muslim rule or two centuries of the British Raj… Know what, yaar? The Brahmins who have absorbed it generation after generation, are today heading Western academia and digital giant companies, and are winning Bookers for English writing!
It was obvious the target of the fulsome spiel didn’t say much beyond ‘yes’ or ‘that’s right’ or maybe ‘absolutely’.
The bluetooth bully strode on: “I wish to also tell you how happy I am with our leadership’s great involvement in saving the planet from ecological degradation and saving our rivers forests and mountains! Oh man!”
“Great trip to Varanasi, yaar,” he says, “had our fill of divine street food – all those kachauris and jalebis washed down with lassi. I need to work off all that fat now, hahaha! And I say yaar, great aarti there on the ghats, centuries old tradition the Panda fellow said. Got some great videos. So since we were there, we said why not go also to do the Buddhist circuit? Even Richard Gere goes there. Great guy, Buddha! The Japanese can’t have enough of spending their yens to maintain those monuments. No no, didn’t go to Nalanda, no time and then who wants to go to Bihar! Even Amartya Sen couldn’t last there, hahaha! Next year we are planning to visit the Himalayas. I understand they’ve built great green resorts there!” His voice, though, remained dry as dust that coats the once green fields and forests and rural homes in the Himalayan region, coming apart with annual landslides and floods. The young in the villages he plans to visit have left for the plains in droves, only a few feeble old men and women hang there like old family locks.
A newfound Hindu piety hangs around his neck like a lead weight, dragging him down to the bottomless seas of idiocy. And he does not have the courage to either get rid of it or question the unavoidable traffic jams, its dusty slums and stinking small town bylanes. Piety inside those Nike togs sloshes around like some incipient attack of diarrhoea, which he is powerless to control. I didn’t have the courage or the breath to argue with this man. I was tired and despairing and wished to finish my usual rounds without pushing past regulars even older than me, shuffling slowly with their home laundered clothes and rubber tipped walking sticks. Some have indifferent attendants with them, holding leashes of ageing family dogs, others are just tired and lonesome and must sit down periodically to catch their breath.
After the walk, my rage cooled but a certain sadness and anger still remained. This survival as a typical non resident Indian filled with intense hatred of Islam and one’s own vague notions of Hindu piety and the scriptures cause a state of emotional, social and moral confusion. All NRIs are not the same, but many of them are slowly becoming a strange bunch – with their feet in the 21st century and heads turned backwards to the first. They do not vote in India, but celebrate it as Vishwaguru, teacher to the world. They are law abiding in their adoptive land but we may suddenly see some of them picketing the Indian embassies or high commissions, protesting against groups of other NRI protesters alleging mistreatment of non-Hindus in India.
Look at a great achambha (astonishing sight) brothers, say Kabir, a cow is taking a lion out to graze, a Guru is touching the feet of his disciples.
(Ek achambha dekho re bhaiya,
Singh ko chali charaavan gaiya,
Guru chelan ke laagey paany.)
Mrinal Pande is a writer and veteran journalist.