Season of Protests

I have been feeling slightly down cast these days.  A sense of uneasiness or perhaps an inferiority complex as any Behavioral Therapist would easily point to. Before you jump into further conclusions let me tell you it’s all about my inability (again a contrarian?)  to see eye to eye with many of my friends…..on raging current issues, be it India Against Corruption, Food Security, Money stashed abroad or the Wikileaks. And why I write this now is because I have not been a great supporter of Anna Hazare’s movement. And this precisely is the cause of minor quarrels at home. For, I have not participated in a sit-in or lit a candle. Neither have I joined the Facebook group to support the anti corruption drive.  My wife feels I have missed the bus and when the movement comes to power I would be one in the firing line, hopefully a little away from the point blank range. Some consolation.

It is not that I’m not against corruption. But it is the definition of corruption that bothers me.  From petty corruption to massive swindling. Sleaze, bribery, fraud, petty theft. The list is endless. Would I fall into any of these categories?  Or would some misdeeds be excluded from the purview   so that there will be still some left in the movement? I wouldn’t worry too much as the core group will burn the midnight oil over these minor issues. They will, for sure, come out with some innovative ways of ‘eradicating’ corruption. And not just newer and stiffer punishments which we all know are not effective deterrents. I would keep my fingers crossed.

I never thought corruption is such a high brow subject with many nuances , has class conflict characteristics and philosophical undertones until I came across ,in the internet,  a paper titled ‘The Social Construction of Corruption’ by Prof  Mark Granovetter of the Stanford University. I won’t burden my very few readers with the gravitas of the paper, save quote: “yet it is common in human history that groups with conflicting interests present different sets of standards for what behavior is appropriate, and label behavior that benefits competing groups as illegitimate or more specifically “corrupt”.”

Again it was around the same time that I came across a very novel idea mooted by none other than Dr Kaushik Basu, Chief Economic Advisor, Ministry of Finance.  I found this absolutely radical and out of the box.  Make bribe giving legal! Don’t knit your eyebrows too soon… Not all kinds of bribery, but the petty ones; what the Dr. terms as ‘harassment bribery’.  A kind of speed money you have to part with to get a certificate, a tax refund or a bank loan. By making ‘payment of such bribes legal, the giver gets immunity while the taker does not’. Dr Basu avers this divergence of positions could be a deterrent to the bribe taker. The immunity is not to be retrospective and the details yet to be worked out. Make no mistake, this loud thinking by the learned Dr. has already met with stiff opposition from the moral brigade.  I’m, however, an enthusiast and would like to give this a try.

If I were to confess retrospectively on my misdemeanors I would have a few cases to report. These are not bribe taking instances and some are not related to bribery at all.  And pray what are my misdeeds? Obtention of a railway berth through a tout, an unauthorized electric connection, an out of turn gas cylinder and may be a few more similar ones if I rack my brain really hard.  When the matter of my not joining the sit-in was discussed I confessed to my wife I could not be considered blemishless and as such it would be hypocracy if I shouted “Bhrashtachar Murdabad”. Her response: “Only Caesar’s wife must be above suspicion and not Caesar”

Her latest take on the subject is that since I missed the Anna bus I should atleast jump on to the Baba wagon.  Something unthinkable for me.  But I had to do something to buy peace. It was around this time that the “Bodies of the Soil (copy right: my friend Kozhipurath Rajagopal) issue cropped up…. Ivor Madom crematorium won’t take bodies from outside the Panchayat any more. A body blow to many of us who had mentally reserved a nook for our heavenly journey!  Taking up the cause the local Citizens group decided to go in for a ‘Dharna’ demanding construction of a decent crematorium in my home town

Not to miss the God sent opportunity and more so to buy peace than to heed the still, small inner voice, I joined the sit-in in front of the Municipal office. None could fault me for this and there is truce at home. For the time being!

Hurricane NiNa

We have just been warned. About the impending storm. The severity has not been forecast. The land fall is expected in a month. We get daily alerts and   situation reports.  We are brazing up for the event and looking forward to it with great anticipation. The alert is about the impending visit of our two grand children and their parents on their annual holiday.  When we saw them off last, one was a sweet play school girl and the other just about on his feet. Now the elder girl, Nandini, is in her LKG and the younger boy, Nikhil, just made his foray into the play school.  Between them they are a bit of an ambush squad. 

During their last visit, which was a year back, they had not yet teamed up into the deadly duo. Other than pulling down my computer key board, dismantling my small pocket radio, running away with the mobile phone or the remote control or subjecting the walls to their art work, they had not been into any major destructive activity. Not so now, we are told.

A small update:

Nandini would go to sleep only after the usual quota of the same story- alert at pointing out even a minute deviation. She likes it without any change from the original.  She would start a conversation by asking you seemingly simple but profound questions that could shatter the foundations of the universe. What? Why?  The ‘What?’ questions are more or less harmless and are endless. Like what did the pussycat say to the puppy? What did the puppy’s mother say? And so on. It’s the ‘Whys?’ which take the life out of you.  Mercifully she is past the ‘Why’ stage. 

Her brother is not the questioning type. He is action oriented. I understand that he is more into ‘deconstruction’ / reverse engineering or finding innovative ways of playing with his toys.  (Like Derrida, the French philosopher, I’m averse to use the word destruction, and therefore, deconstruction. Similarly reverse engineering for dismantling.  After all, who knows, Nik might even turn out to become a great scientist!)

Nandini is more into arts. She likes to paint. (I’ve preserved her first effort, though the fresco has been painted off.).She attends a Bhajan class every Saturday and knows a few patriotic songs. Her favorite is ‘Jana Gana Mana” which she sings not less than half a dozen times at a stretch and expects us, at the other end of the Yahoo Messenger, to be in attention. She likes to play act her teacher with Nikhil, a reluctant student.  He is often game as he gets an opportunity to handle her crayons. Both have picked up a few words from their Hindi speaking teacher/ friends. They like to utter words such as ‘chup baito’ or ‘shut up’ which they know are a taboo at home. They can be a boisterous, marauding squad as their Doctor discovered recently, much to the discomfiture of their parents. Being frequent visitors they had developed great camaraderie with the Doctor.

Both are keen observers. Nandini liked the white bridal gown of Kate Middleton although she felt if she were to wear it she would like it shorter! Looking at the chorus boys she asked…Why are they looking so sad, Amma?  Nik felt that Princess Anne resembled the child catcher and he didn’t want to look at the TV any more! Nik can identify alphabets, particularly if it happens to be M, written in the manner of McDonalds! Once he told, looking at the Gurvayoorappan photo, “Amma, the Ambatty is smiling at me. Why?”  Another occasion he declared, peeping   through the windows, on a rare bright day with a clear sky-- “Amma, look the sky is falling!  He can become Hanuman or a cricketer, any instant, with the aid of kitchen gadgets usually kept out of his reach.

I have mentioned just a few of the instances from the situation report shared by our daughter during the daily chat. She says these are just the curtain raisers. Mentally and physically we are getting ready for the event. I surfed the net for some information on what people do when they get a hurricane warning. They fortify their homes, stock essential water and ration and keep praying that the storm doesn’t leave a trail of destruction. We are following suit. We have arranged with our carpenter to fix an extra barricade for the stair case railing, wicket gates for the sit out, moved the breakables into the loft and kept our books locked in a glass cupboard with a fervent prayer that they won’t take a fascination for the books.  Well, as the saying goes: Expect the unexpected! Keep your fingers crossed.