A little slower, if you please!

About twenty five years ago, long before mobile phones and the internet became ubiquitous, I wrote an essay about whether the relentless speeding up of life is doing us much good. I put it up among the earliest posts when I began writing this blog.

In my newspaper today, I found Professor Samantak Das of  Jadavpur University warning and lamenting about what is happening to us in a world that is always ‘connected’, and everybody is always busy and determined to form and voice instant opinions on everything. I had a very strong sense of déjà vu. These are things that I have noted and commented upon long ago, when I was still a young man, and unlike Das, who might be about my age, I made up my mind about how to handle the situation long ago too, much before mobiles and the Net apparently ‘revolutionized’ our lives. Have very few friends, do not stay connected all the time except to the handful of people who really matter, give yourself time to think before opening your mouth, and, heeding advice given more than four hundred years ago, ‘give every man thy ear but few thy voice’. Actually, in my case, it’s ‘give few men thy ear and even fewer thy voice’ – I stopped talking unless I am getting paid years ago.  While travelling in the US almost thirty years back and meeting a lot of very diferent kinds of people, from factory workers to doctors and policemen and teachers, journalists and university scientists, it occurred to me that I could have meaningful, thought-provoking conversations only with folks below ten and above seventy. If anything, that is what has come to India with a vengeance. As Shakespeare also said, and I have listened, ‘how every fool can play upon the word! I think the best grace of wit will shortly turn into silence, and discourse grow commendable in none only but parrots.’ Want to bet that our internet era wouldn’t have surprised him?

There are many kinds of ‘busy’ men, with or without phones. There are the Zomato/Amazon delivery boys. I thank Providence every day that I wasn’t required to make a living that way. There are cabinet ministers and business tycoons, who handle great affairs all the time. I am glad I wasn’t chosen for a life like that: I have greatly enjoyed spending my time mostly my way, at peace, at leisure, all by myself and a few loved ones. And then there’s the most numerous, most contemptible aam admi, with all the time in the world, dressing up, partying, boozing, quarrelling, zooming about on bikes, shopping, obsessing about acne or children’s marks, living utterly empty lives of the mind, furiously 'busy' spewing all their filth all over the internet. Imagine a wise Martian monitoring our radio waves. What conclusion would he draw about the nature and content of our ‘civilization’?

Hermits have the best lives, I have often thought. And in this day and age, when you cannot withdraw to lonely hills and forests, you can live a good life only if you can make a hermitage of your own mind…

Professor Das has said that it is important to think. I have been a compulsive thinker all my life; if anything I think too much (a trait that my daughter has inherited!), and of late I have been consciously trying to revv down, to let my mind rest now and then. So his lament makes me smile wryly.

But in an age when even great policy matters are being decided and disseminated instantaneously via twitter, can civilization, or democracy (as distinct from majoritarian tyranny) or even sanity survive? In an age when most 'educated' people, such as doctors and engineers, won't even understand what that question means? 

Quick getaway

My daughter had an incredibly busy year from July 2018 to June 2019 – classes at 11 p.m., assignments to be submitted by 5 the next morning, that sort of thing. Naturally we could keep in touch only electronically, besides my running off to Delhi every now and then so that she could spend at least a night or two in the weekends with me. Well, now we are over it. I insisted on her taking a month’s break after that course ended, and mercifully she herself came around to seeing how valuable that could be, so she has been able to laze at home for several weeks at a stretch, and now it’s time for her to get back to Delhi and begin her working life in earnest.

This last week of her vacation I took three days off, 23^rd to 25^th. On Tuesday morning we drove off to Mukutmanipur. The staff at the WBFDC Sonajhuri resort there was as friendly and welcoming as I had found them to be in March last year, but this time Pupu and Ma were with me, and we had no trouble booking cottages (Haritaki and Amlaki, the ones with the best views) online beforehand, so it was heavenly. Since it was mid-week and ‘off season’, we had the resort more or less to ourselves. We decided within hours of arriving that we wanted to extend our stay for another day. The first day was stiflingly hot and sultry, and the only saving grace was the early-evening boat ride on the sadly depleted reservoir, but the next afternoon a thunderstorm arose out of nowhere, followed by torrential rain for an hour, which sharply brought down the temperature, and the drizzle continued till almost nine p.m. The meals were simple and very Bengali but sumptuous, so my cup was full. I think Ma enjoyed it quite as much as Pupu and I did. Sudipto the young manager couldn’t have been more insistent that we should visit more often.

Pupu likes big city life, but she also loves silent hills and forests. I cannot thank God enough for that. What would I have done with a daughter who didn’t love books and good movies, who didn’t do charity, who couldn’t tell the difference between music and monkeying, who couldn’t talk philosophy with me, but was crazy about shoes and clothes and makeup and parties and ‘likes’ on Facebook instead?

And what would have I done if my mother had also been a common woman?

 our cottages

 when it was raining hard

the storm was really violent

Madam Sheila Dikshit, RIP

One of India's strongest women for decades yet quiet and self-effacing, Ms. Dikshit, three times CM of Delhi (who should have returned to the seat once more), has just passed away. She was exactly my father's age. Here is the obituary that India Today has posted.

She showed that you can be traditional yet very modern and progressive. She showed that you can be a firm go-getter with a suave touch. I don't think she ever had much truck with firebrand feminists, yet she proved that a woman of mettle can make her way in a man's world: it's only the good for nothings with huge senses of unearned entitlement who whine and rant. She showed that even in India, a land of ingrates and inveterate fault-finders with very short memories, some few people can leave marks that everyone salutes, friend and foe alike. She deserved the PM's chair far more than lots of others who have sat on it or aspired to it.

I admired and respected her. India needs far more like her, in every field, but politics most of all. I cannot pay a greater tribute than saying publicly that among contemporary Indians, I have put her on my list of ideals for my daughter for a very long time...

Choicest picks

Now that I have been writing here for thirteen years, and there are 570-odd posts, and more than 630,000 pageviews already, I have begun to think of culling those which I consider the best (or at least, most readable and/or significant) of the lot, in the hope that someday someone might want to turn the collection into a book. Roughly one out of every ten posts has been so honoured. Consequent upon this decision you will now see a tag called 'choicest picks' along the right hand sidebar. Click on them to read or re-read some of them. You might also let me know whether you feel that certain particular posts did or did not deserve to be labelled with that tag.