Old posts

I have been noticing on the visits counter with mildly amused surprise that an old post on Rani Rashmoni has been of late suddenly and steadily climbing towards the top. How can this be explained? It was hardly a ‘hot’ post, given whatever almost every Indian below forty considers to be hot. Could it have some connection with the fact that a biopic on the said lady currently showing on TV (Star Jalsa, I think) has become very popular?

On the other hand, have you noticed what I wrote in the last lines of the post titled Farewell to Tagore, and what has transpired by way of comments since I put it up?  Wouldn’t you say I was entirely justified in concluding the way I did – that with every passing year I have ever more reason to be convinced that given the sort of people the vast majority of my fellow countrymen are now, the time is not far when we shall have nothing called a heritage left nor miss it: that not only will the likes of Tagore have vanished from our minds but sites such as the Konark Sun Temple and the Ajanta caves will have been taken over by shopping malls, spas and private engineering/management colleges?

If some old posts can keep coming back up on the most-visited list (Growing up in Durgapur is one, I wish I had resigned sooner is another), why not The Worship of the Wealthy? I often laugh with my daughter about how history keeps repeating itself – especially the worst parts of it! – and that essay, written by Chesterton a whole century ago, sounds as though it was written yesterday, it describes today's world so aptly, and with such devastatingly disparaging wit. Wit and sarcasm are the last weapons of the quiet and civilized man, until they too are forced to fall silent under the jackboots of tyranny. And in our country, at least, the tyranny of the majority – the greedy, ignorant, philistine majority (many of whom can speak in pidgin English, drive expensive cars and have been to Umrica, so I absolutely refuse to identify them with one religious community or just the ‘lower classes’) will ultimately decide everything. At least until some kind of real disaster strikes, such as being conquered by China!