The Bermuda Triangle In India

The Wikipedia states that Kalinga was an early kingdom in central-eastern India, which was a rich and fertile land, and was the scene of the bloody Kalinga War fought by the Maurya Emperor Ashoka the Great of Magadha circa 265 BCE. Several centuries, in a northern part of Orissa in the district of Jajpur, the original description of Kalinga stands true. Here is a vast land demarcated as Kalinganagar, which is fertile enough, and now, is equally blood-stained. There is a certain Fascist regime here, and through discreet means, the red earth here is further rendered a darker shade.

Getting to Kalinganagar is no easy feat. When I decided to go to Kalinganagar - the reasons which I will enumerate later - I was forewarned that it is not the place to go. 'Another Dantewada', I could hear my own voice. Yet, I knew I had to go there. There were random news of people being killed, roads being blocked and farmers laying down their lives for the love of land. There was news that development was being offered to the tribals living there, yet they were not ready to accept it. There was news that they were being offered 'white-collared' jobs and yet they were not ready for them. Every bit of news was scattered, and perhaps that's the reason why it got me intrigued.

Thanks to a local journalist RR who has managed to stay untouched by the authorities, I found myself as his pillion rider into Kalinganagar, from Jajpur Road. “You cannot go there alone right now. Since May 28, 2010, 25 platoons of police accompanied the goons who came with tractors and bulldozers to level people’s farmlands. These farmlands belong to those people who have been resisting the forceful acquisition of land by Tata to set up its plant there,” I am told on my way, as hot winds slap my face and not a tree is to be seen. Thick grey fumes are flushed into the blue sky, making the green hills in the distant a mirage. Tata had acquired 3,500 acres of land, but thanks to the deal of another steel company gone wrong, another 1,500 acres of land are now in the hands of Tata.

A New Bermuda ‘Square’

It hasn’t been an easy ride for RR either – there are just about two journalists who want to talk about the tribals, and not merely talk of development, as etched out by the government. The majority of the media would go into the villages, talk to the people and hear them ‘rant’ about their loss of land and livelihood, but would back to their plush air-conditioned offices and write about the ‘savagery’ of the tribals, and the philanthropy of companies like Tata which wants to ‘develop’ them. RR thus didn’t have to explain why going with him was essential – the wrath of the villagers was palpable. I didn’t have to explain to him why I decided to step in there – the ‘truth’ as told by the mainstream media and its journalists on a comfortable payroll was palpable.

The steel plants in the distant are a contrast to the foliage amid which the adivasis thrive

Most of rural India is similar in its landscape. The huge canopy of trees, clean air, green and blue houses with thatched roofs, women bathing in groups near a hand-pump, children with skinny limbs but huge bellies playing the game of chasing a bicycle tyre, men sitting under a tree and engaged in animated conversations or listening to the transistor, cows mooing, dogs befriending the cats, cocks and hens scampering through the tiny lanes – this is rural India. The similarity goes beyond this in Central India – here the people are trying hard to protect their lands from the corporate zealots who romance with the state governments, and the khaki-wearing job is all about terrorizing the villagers to surrender their lives and lands for the ‘development’ of the nation. Only, the definition and realm of ‘development’ is undefined, and its real meaning is conspicuously chosen to be unaddressed. At the same time, during each of my sojourns, I am witness to a beautiful sight of childhood innocence – any vehicle which has a motor is chased down the road with squealing delight by the sudden appearance of several children. However, as our bike made way through the villages in Kalinganagar, this was replaced by something else which initiated my understanding of the politics in place here – three children, upon seeing our bike, ran into their courtyards and hid themselves behind a tree. A fourth one, who wasn’t quick enough to run past, tried to squeeze herself amid the latticework of the bamboo boundary. Her eyes were filled with unfathomable terror. Later I learnt that the entire village would sleep in the open fields even in the winter to ward off the goons and cops who would attack them in the dark hour of the night.

I am taken around the villages before I settle in Chandia village of Dhangadi block, at the residence of Rabi Jarika – a short man in his thirties with a calm demeanour, yet a voice strong enough to stir even an octogenarian to proclaim that it is worth fighting against the might of the corporates. Rabi had completed his Masters in Sociology, but the doom spelled down upon his village brought him back to unite the people. He is instrumental is giving a voice to the resistance, in the name of Bisthapan Birodhi Jan Manch (BBJM), which primarily is fighting against the land acquisition by the self-proclaimed lord of Kalinganagar, Tata. Despite his busy schedule in getting people to stay motivated to fight this battle, while their land was being leveled with sand and metal scraps, he begins to narrate the history and other nuances of Kalinganagar.

Games corporates and governments play

I begin by asking Rabi to draw me a rough map of Kalinganagar for my convenience. But he laughs:

“I cannot draw a map because the area is forever a changing space. In 1992, the Biju Patnaik government sanctioned Sukhinda and Dhangadi blocks of Jajpur, as an industrial complex. As of today, Sukhinda comprises 24 Panchayats, while the number is 21 in Dhangadi. Yet, the area seems to be expanding. Every month, there is a new signboard in the far corners, which says, 'Welcome to Kalinganagar'. This means that more and more villages will fall under this complex; more land has been marked to be grabbed, and more people will be robbed of their livelihood. There are 11 steel plants in all, and three more including Tata, will be coming up soon.

Just about 15 per cent of the people residing in Kalinganagar have accepted to part with their land. And this has been possible through a variety of ways – some of them were coerced; some were lured into consuming expensive foreign liquor, while some others were promised jobs. It has been the lure of instant cash. However, those who have parted ways with the village are sadly our enemies today. Tata has successfully employed the ‘divide and rule’ policy of the British. The government is an ally to the corporates in throwing us out from here, and they don’t want the resistance to spread. That’s also why they are preventing the intellectuals in the cities from coming here.

The other pressure tactic used is restricting people from moving about freely. This is done to break their morale. For instance, if you want to go out for Kalinganagar from here, the nearest main road is 3kms away. From our house, that would be where the state’s government’s own Nilachal steel plant is set up. But right now as we talk, you just cannot go there. There are cops and goons employed by Tata. These goons are of two types – they are the ones who gave their land to Tata, accepted their ‘rehabilitation; package but are living in the shoddy transit camps. They are now given Rs 500 each day to terrorise their own erstwhile neighbours and making them bow down to Tata. The other set of goons are villagers from outside Kalinganagar. It need not be elaborated that these men are drunk and misbehave with anyone. And the cops would pick you if you manage to come under their scanner on the road – you will be charged on flimsy grounds, right from waging war against the state, to murder. (Rabi’s elder brother was similarly arrested in February 2010.)

One of the reasons why the government is able to terrorise the people is because they are uneducated. But most importantly, it is also because they have no land pattas. This land was ruled by Sukhinda Raja and he had handed out land pattas in 1922, and these were called ‘Raja pattas’. However, the process was no complete, and it was understood that post-Independence, those who hadn’t received the pattas would get it. But that never happened, and this is why the government claims that our land is their land. Now, the official numbers state that Kalinganagar area constitutes 45 per cent tribals. But then this is also reserved area; so going by the latter ‘fact’, the number of tribals here should be at least 60 per cent.

Strangely, majority of Kalinganagar are very fertile, as against the rest of Orissa which is quite arid. And some tribals here can be defined as ‘developed’. So they are very much content with what they have – which is an average of five acres of land by every family. Tata initially offered Rs 25,000 per acre but later went on adding more, such that today their offer stands at Rs 60,000 per acre. However, according to our own calculations which is done is accordance to a measure called ‘goonth’, one goonth is valued at a minimum of Rs 1.5 lakh. And guess what does that mean to be the price of every acre? Twenty-five goonths make one acre! Now do your math!

Since May 28 this year, the farmlands in the villages of Ambogadia, Bellahori, Kanklajhor, Champakoyla, Bamiagotha, Gobarghati, Kolamatia, Bandhargadia, Gadhpur, Baidugudi, Orasahi, Kharigatia, Baligot, Chandia, and parts of Dhurpathar and Bargadia have been leveled. Initially, people went running to protest, but the fear of bullets cannot be negated. Other than rubber bullets, they are also using steel bullets, which we called ‘charra’. These are meant to be just a tool to terrorise, but their use can prove fatal too. They come with bulldozers, level the land, pile up black sand, and scatter generous amounts of metal scrap. And we have nobody to go to, to seek redressal. There couldn’t have been a better Fascist regime than what we are subject to. The government watches on and enjoys this cock fight as our own brothers are bribed to fight against us.”

The brown land in the foreground in that which was leveled on June 20. In the background the field is still green - it is yet to be leveled. When the goons and cops come in for their work, they leave behind empty plastic packets of water.

I soak in all the information from this man of the Hoo tribe, which regards trees, land, water, air as their God. It is a unique struggle to safeguard their God, but often, they seem to feel deprived of the blessings of The One. “Why are we adivasis seen as the enemy? Don’t we breathe the same air? The government makes no qualms about initiating dialogues with the warring Pakistan or China, yet, when it comes to its own people, it doesn’t think twice before running us down,” Rabi adds with a harried smile. I try to change the topic and ask him about three buildings near his house, which resemble schools, thanks to the painted pictures of Mahatma Gandhi, Bhagat Singh and Atal Bihari Vajpayee. “Even nature doesn’t support us! It was a good school as teachers were visiting regularly but one fine day a strong gust of wind blew off its roof. Now even animals don’t use it as shed.” We laugh.

The tables now turn and Rabi asks me why I was there alone, and whether I represented any mainstream media organization. He was hoping for a positive reply, assuming that my words would help take their voice out into India Shining. My negative reply explains the functioning of the fourth estate of a democracy, which loves its ad revenue more than the ‘truth’.

Tears and hope

After a lunch of coarse rice and dal, we go around the village. I am accompanied by Dabar Kalundia, a man ‘most-wanted’ according to the local media, but someone who is contacted by the development officers to get him to convince his village folk to sell their land. We walk past a patch of land which is the sight for two houses – one intact, with an old lady working in the courtyard; the other in rubble. I ask Dabar why the stark dichotomy? “The one whose house is intact doesn’t want to move away from here. The one whose house is in rubble had accepted the rehab package by Tata four years ago. It is only recently that the cops came with the owners of the house – who posed themselves as goons to terrorise us – and bulldozed the house right before their eyes. They are doing this with almost all houses of those who had joined the other side,” he explained.

We then enter the house of late Aati Jamunda, who lost his life in a firing that took place on January 2, 2006. That day, around 10 am, the police began firing from several kilometers away, and 12 people lost their lives instantly. Three others later succumbed to their injuries. I meet Aati’s father Upin, and mother Haro. It is early evening and Haro is sifting the rice, while Aati’s daughter sits by her. Aati was 35 and didn’t have a job – he worked all day on the field. In 2005, he lost his younger brother, who was a teacher, to brain malaria. “He was ill for three days. Before we could figure out about which health clinic we should go to – since the nearest one is 10 kms away and there are no facilities at all, he died. A year later, we lost Aati,” said Upin, after a contemptuous look towards me. Dabar later explained that they spoke in Hoo in my presence – “So many journalists have come and gone. They ask the same questions, but they go back and write that my son was a goon, who would have been reformed by Tata’s developmental plans. I lost my son, but I am still angry.”

Upin and Haro Jamunda

I request the senior Jamunda if I could take a look at a photograph of Aati. He searches all around in their tiny hut but couldn’t find it. Meanwhile, I try to strike a conversation with Aati’s petite mother in Hindi, and Dabar does the job of the translator. “In a bid to protect my land and parampara (culture), I have lost my son. I don’t have the skills or energy to work in a factory, but I can still work on my field, because I would do it with love. I still have the power within myself to fight one. I am ready to give my life, as well as take life,” said the 55-year-old woman.

Slowly, Upin narrated the chain of events on that fateful day. “Aati was on the field when he heard that the cops had come in. He rushed out to see what had happened. We next learnt that he was shot on his chest. They took his body away instantly.” Dabar added, “We wrote a letter to the CM demanding that the five bodies which were taken away be returned. Three days later, we were handed Aati’s decomposed body but his palms were missing. We don’t even know if any post mortem was done. When we asked why the hands were chopped, the authorities said that it was for identification. We buried his body according to the traditional rites. They returned ‘his’ hands six months later, but how would we know if those were his hands?”

With a heavy heart and a head bowed, we walked ahead. We were stopped by a middle-aged lady who called out to Dabar. Observing her colourful house, I said to Dabar, “They must be rich.” He laughed and whispered, “Wait until you hear their story.”

We enter their large courtyard and about 10 children surround me, upon seeing me wielding the camera. They were children who were unsure of their future, yet were oblivious to the gloom that enveloped the household. I learnt that the lady who beckoned was the mother of Jogendra Jamunda, who was arrested on August 27, 2009. He was an active leader of BBJM in the village. Jogendra’s young wife Pini comes to greet us, with a toddler in her arm, who was born just three months ago. Her two children look on as we talk. “He had gone to play football in another village. Later all the men who were playing returned, except for my husband and two others. We learnt that they had been arrested. The other two men were let out on bail the next day, but my husband has not been so fortunate,” Pini says in broken Hindi.

Pini Jamunda, along with her three children, show me the photograph of Jogendra

Her mother-in-law added, “Much before he was arrested, he was once taking me to the haat (weekly market) in Duburi on his bike. We were just 100 metres away from the Kalinganagar police station when he was shot on his back by goons. It was a crowded area, and so we managed to take care of him, but he still has the bullet lodged in his back.” I ask them about the charges on which he is under arrest. “Oh there are so many!” his mother says, adding, “Everything from dacoity, murder, waging war against the state to being a Maoist – my son seems to have done everything!” A dry laughter follows. She holds my hand as we leave and says, “There is nothing much to say, you know. We just keep on hoping that we will win and save our land. And that Jogendra will be released. We can only hope that God will hear us.”

RED signals in the FOREST

(This article first appeared in Sunday Times of India, on May 2, 2010)

Maoists in the jungles of Dantewada routinely try to reach out to CRPF jawans posted there to fight them 

They don't have a fax machine.They dont send bulk mails either. Yet,the public relations of the Maoists in Chhattisgarh can give any PR agency a run for its money. Not only have they managed to make themselves heard across a section of the country, they've even managed to get the CRPF jawans posted in those thick jungles to think about their purpose in this civil war.

The latest reports about the police-CRPF ring that sold arms to Maoists may have nothing to do with the bulk of jawans but what they do corroborate tangentially is that there could be some sort of communication.

Indeed, jawans, dumped in subhuman conditions in the jungles to fight the enemy, are being reached out to by the Maoists, as this correspondent discovered in her foray into the jungles of Dantewada a few weeks ago. The Maoists have a lot of anger in them about the way this region has been neglected, said one of the jawans in the camp in Chintalnar. They leave leaflets for us, in which they say that we jawans are like their brothers who have been caught in this unnecessary battle because we are all poor.

The jawans at Chintalnar are weary of their dire living conditions. Yet they cannot voice their anguish before their seniors. A single query from this correspondent was enough to let flow the bottled resentment against the government. And the communique sent in by the Maoists specifically targeting the jawans and not the seniors further prods them to repeatedly wonder why they are posted in Chhattisgarh.

But it is essential here to understand what is so special about Chintalnar. Why did it become so infamous after all The answer lies in its geographical location.Forty-five kilometre from Chintalnar is Dornapal, a town where villagers in Chintalnar and the CRPF jawan posted at the camps next door have to go for something as trivial as a matchbox. Chintalnar is in the middle of the jungle, and further ahead are other villages, where only the Red eagles dare. No eagles from the government machinery, including the CRPF, have ever ventured beyond Chintalnar. A bus runs the three-hour distance between Chintalnar and Dornapal once a day.

"When we are walking down the road to Dornapal, if we are lucky not to have been blown apart by the IEDs, we see leaflets with text in red ink nailed to trees. They are addressed to us, telling us that we are their brothers and that this war is unjust. The letters would hit us hard because the Maoists know that we too are here to stave off our poverty," a jawan said, almost in whispers, lest his seniors hear him spill it all out.

Asked whether the letters don't help determine the locus of the Maoists, the jawan said: "They only generate a lot of discussions among us. What the Maoists are saying is valid. With much difficulty, my father paid for my fees so that I could get a BSc degree. But then there were no jobs. I saw the ad in the newspaper, and it was a matter of pride to fight for the nation. But here we are, rotting. We cannot drop out of CRPF. Where will we go? It is here that we understand why a young man or woman becomes a Maoist."

After a night spent at a villagers house, this correspondent saw the next morning what the jawans had been talking about. The Maoists had dropped some leaflets in the night just 300 metres away from where the correspondent had been sleeping in the open courtyard. They were poster papers, with Hindi words red-inked on them, and spoke of demands for development for the masses and removal of troops from the region.

"They keep an eye on every vehicle from Dornapal to here. A CRPF vehicle would have been blown off," said the villager. "But not the car you came in. You are alive, and this is their message to you."

'Why are we being tortured?'

(This article first appeared in Sunday Times of India, on April 25, 2010)

The day after I returned to Mumbai from Chintalnar in Chhattisgarh, I was still in a deep slumber at 7am when my phone rang. A hoarse voice on the other side greeted me and said that I had met him at the CRPF camp in Chintalnar where I had gone to find out more about the 76 jawans who were killed in the Maoist attack on April 6. I sprang up and asked, "Are you one of those jawans who asked me for my phone number when I was leaving your camp?" He said "yes", and asked me if I could keep my lips sealed about him calling me up. I did not know what was coming next, but I took the plunge and said, "Yes, you can trust me." And then he blurted out his story and asked me to save him and his colleagues from the 'concentration camp'. Two weeks later, such calls are still coming in from his colleagues.

At first, I thought it was just a joke. The phone number of a young woman could open up several options for these many men stationed in the barracks. I tried to sense slimy hints in their conversations, but I found none—instead there was anguish about the hellish life they were leading in the jungles. "I had completed my higher secondary education. My two sisters had to be married off. There were no rains and we could not grow anything on the farm. I saw the ad for recruitment to the CRPF in a newspaper and applied. We had grown up thinking it was a good job—after all, it was a matter of pride to die for the country. But now, after nine years in the CRPF, being posted in Dantewada is worse than getting killed by Maoists. We have to walk 50 km to buy something as trivial as a matchbox. There is no gas cylinder for us to cook food—we have to pick firewood. Does the government even bother about us?" said one of the jawans, letting out his anguish in a single breath.

Several of them have since given me varied information about the events preceding and following the attack on April 6, information which never appeared in the media. "The men who were sent to patrol had been transferred from another camp just a day earlier. They obviously would not know the terrain. How can anyone then accuse the CRPF men of not being well trained?" asked one jawan angrily.

"None of our jawans sleeps in the camp till 6am, let alone while patrolling. It is insulting to see media reports that say our colleagues were killed in their sleep. Besides, why was reinforcement sent only at 9am when the attack took place around 6.30am and lasted only 30 minutes?" revealed another. One of them went to the extent of saying, "A CBI inquiry should be ordered. It is not as black and white as it has been made to seem."

The gravity of the situation is slowly sinking in. These phone calls are from men whom we like to call 'soldiers'. Young, confident, robust—these are the images fed into our minds about a soldier ready to die for the country. But the phone calls that I have been getting say quite the opposite. No, these men are not weaklings who are scared of being blown up by land mines. These are men who have been sent into the jungles to fight their own countrymen, the Maoists. Yet, the government forgot about them until 76 of them were killed at one go. "The government thinks we are some rock statue which is best kept in a temple high up in the mountain where nobody can go," said another jawan over the phone.

My phone number seems to be the last vestige of hope for them. "We have no water, no proper food, no medicines—why are we being tortured like criminals? Please get our voices heard in Parliament. You are a journalist after all," yet another jawan said.

I recollect that one single minute under the sun near the CRPF camp, when I was getting into the car. As I was politely ushered out and glad to be entering the airconditioned car to escape the scorching heat, I heard the call, "Madam! Madam! Give us your phone number. Don't trust what our senior has said. We know the hellish life here. We have to tell you the truth about what really happened on the day the Maoists attacked."

I shouted out the digits of my phone number one by one, as the layers of barbed wire fences between us was quite a distance. At that minute, I did not realise what I had given to those men—the singular hope to make themselves heard, and lead a dignified life as a soldier of this nation.

'Save Us From This Hell'

(This is an article that appeared in DNA Sunday on April 18, 2010.)

Priyanka Borpujari visits the CRPF camp in Chintalnar — where the 76 jawans killed by Maoists on April 6 were based — and discovers that the current lot there are quite conscious of their status as 'sacrificial goats'

A square strip of aluminum with the words, "Welcome to Chhattisgarh. Welcome to Konta" informed us that we were about to cross over from Andhra Pradesh to Chhattisgarh. Till this signboard, the road was smooth. Enter Chhattisgarh, and it develops severe acne, with large rocks alternating with deep potholes. However, compared to the roads elsewhere in the state, as I was to realise later, these represented the pinnacle of driving comfort and safety — at least they weren't mined.

I was on my way to Chintalnar, a village in the Dandakaranya forests that has been in the news since April 6, when 76 jawans from the Central Reserved Police Force (CRPF) were killed by Maoists, and another six injured. Chintalnar is an adivasi village 90 km from Konta, the town bordering AP. Five hours of back-breaking drive later, we reached the village late in the afternoon.

The CRPF camp — the one to which the killed jawans belonged — was right outside the village. It looked formidable to my untrained eye — three layers of barbed wire fencing, and guarded by heavily armed men clad in bullet-proof jackets. For a moment, I felt I was standing outside the sets of a Hollywood war film. 

I was jolted back to reality by an authoritative voice from the other side of the fence, asking me in Hindi what business I had standing there peering into the camp. I told him I was a journalist. I could make out he wasn't thrilled to hear that. He glared at me in silence. He was dressed in military fatigues, and beads of sweat had formed on his brow. I had read somewhere that the daytime temperature here had crossed 43 degrees. Perspiration trickled down my spine beneath the loose kurta. I shifted uncomfortably in the heat.

Another man, dressed in a white vest and shorts came over. He asked me the same question in English. I again introduced myself, explaining that I was a reporter come to get an idea of the situation on the ground after the April 6 attack. He gave me a long, appraising look, and finally said, "Come."

I made my way into the camp through the zigzag maze of fences. Once inside, the scene didn't exactly match with the military camps of my imagination. I saw five half-naked men washing themselves at a hand pump. Some were boiling water on firewood. In one corner, boys — who couldn't have been more than 20 years old, with hardly any signs of moustache or beard, and little more than five feet in height — were eating rice from a huge plate. A middle-aged soldier was getting his moustache shaved by a younger man. Some men who had just bathed at the hand pump were toweling themselves.

Part of the camp area was wet and water from the pump had gathered in pools. On one side, to my left, was a large, green tent, patched up with bits of cloth and tarpaulin. Inside, some men — boys — were talking quietly among themselves. They wore vests and pyjamas, no slippers. I counted 10 of them, but there weren't that many trunks or mattresses. Shirts and trousers in fatigue print lay scattered around. I turned my face away, and walked on.

A Tata Sky dish sat on a rickety bamboo stool. On the inner stretch of barbed wire fence, and on a clothesline improvised between banana plants, trousers, shirts, vests, and towels had been hung out to dry. As I neared the other end of the camp, I spotted a solar panel glinting in the sun. 

My tour of the camp done, I was invited to have tea with men from the Combat Battalion for Resolute Action (COBRA) force of the CRPF. In crisp English, they told me they had been airdropped on April 6 to counter the Maoists who had attacked their colleagues. 

I asked one of the officers about the morale of the entire force. "The morale of the boys here has gone down. They lost too many of their colleagues in one go."

"Do you think your enemy is smarter than you?" I asked. "None of their men were killed." 

"The Maoists are not smarter," he countered quickly. "They are cowards. They attack from the back. The jawans fought bravely and laid down their lives for the country. We regret their demise but we are proud of them." 

I had heard this line too many times — whenever a soldier breathed his last on the battlefield. I wondered why these suave men referred to their dead colleagues as 'jawans' and not as 'our men.' One of them, who seemed eager to talk but hadn't opened up till then, presumably intimidated by the words of his politically correct colleagues, finally spoke. 

"You see the barbed wire fence," he said. "Do you think they can offer any protection against bullets? Look at the way our men are living…" Before he could complete the sentence, he was cut off by his colleagues. 

After I had downed the tea, I decided to take another tour of the camp. A senior officer followed me. I spotted some men standing near a stove, sharing a joke as they cooked. They became serious the moment they saw us. 

"There are more barracks being built now," the officer informed me. "This place was originally a police post, then it became a police station, and for the past two years, it has been a CRPF camp. So yes, positive changes are taking place." 

The officer then summoned fifty of his men and instructed them, "Speak to her about your living conditions. But nothing about policy."

I asked them: "How is it to live here?" Silence. Then I heard someone say, "The government has forgotten us. We are made to rot here and die." The voice had come from the back, and the tense senior officer strained to locate the 'rebel'. Another voice piped up, "One of our colleagues lost his mother today. He has been crying since morning because he cannot go home." 

A third voice joined in, "There are just two hand pumps for us 400 men. And in this heat, no electricity for the fans. Is this the way a country treats its soldiers?" 

The senior officer looked horrified. The men were now charged up and wanted to say more. Many started speaking at the same time. I couldn't grasp all that they were saying, but their anguish was palpable in the chorus. 

Finally the officer stood up and decided enough was enough. He told me it was time for me to leave. I wished the men, and stood up. As I was making my way outside, along the perimeter of the camp, I heard a jawan yell, "Will you take our grief to those in Delhi? Tell them that this is the worst posting ever. Ask them why we were sent here to become sacrificial goats!" 

The senior officer told me to hurry up. "Our men fought bravely," he said. "These jawans may have some complaints, but everything is being taken care of." Even as I nodded my head, I heard him instruct a fellow officer, ""Find out which company they are from. I need to have a talk with them."

He escorted me all the way out, till the last fold of the barbed wire fence. I thanked him for the tour. He gave me a half-hearted smile and rushed back in. 

As I walked out of the entrance, a jawan posted there caught my eye. "Madam," he said, in a barely audible voice, "Save us from this hell."

'Avatar': Sans The Blue Aliens?

For those who found the blue 'creatures' that flew in James Cameron's magnum opus 'Avatar' creepy, here is a simpler version. Sans the technological inputs that cost Cameron $500 million. This is a real version. Hence cheaper. Only, the reality is too stark to digest.

This simpler, 11-minute long film, is called 'Mine - Story Of A Sacred Mountain'. The analogies between the two films cannot be ignored. To begin with, both films revolve around one central topic: What would one tribe do to save their forest, their mountain, their god?

Avatar: The strange planet in question is called Pandora.

Mine: The area in question is section of Orissa, an eastern state in India.

Avatar: The inhabitants of Pandora are humanoids, called Na'vi

Mine: The inhabitants of this area on Orissa are one of the most remote tribes, called Dongria Kondh

Avatar: Eywa is the deity and guiding force of the Na'vi, which they believe, keeps the ecosystem of Pandora in perfect equilibrium

Mine: Niyam Raja is the deity and guiding force of the Dongria Kondh, which provides them with all their needs

Avatar: The floating Hallelujah mountains are sacred to the Na'vi

Mine: The Niymagiri hills are worshipped by the Dongria Kondh

Avatar: The Hallelujah mountains is the resource bed for Unobtainium, which sell for $20 million a kilo

Mine: The Niyamgiri hills is the resource bed for 70 million tonnes of Bauxite

Avatar: Resources Development Administration is the company that has bestowed upon itself the onus of mining Unobtainium

Mine: Vedanta Resources has taken upon itself the onus of blasting the Niyamgiri hills to mine the Bauxite

Avatar: The Na'vi don't need roads to the Hallelujah mountains - they have the Mountain Banshees with which they have a symbiotic relationship that transports them to the mountain.

Mine: The Dongria Kondh do not need roads built into the Niyamgiri hills, by Vedanta Resources. The hills are their home with which they have a symbiotic relationship that goes back to their ancestors.

Avatar: Jake Sully is welcomed innocently among the Na'vi

Mine: The Dongria Kondh initially welcomed the move of Vedanta Resources, as it was lured by its promises of giving them a 'better way of life'.

The indigenous people are innocent. They look upon the urban folk as their brethren - after all, aren't we all the same? Don't we all come from and go back into the same Mother Earth? Unlike the urban folk, who stare back at a stranger wondering what 'use' could that person be to him, all that the indigenous people know is outright acceptance. Yet, history has shown time and again that it is this innocence and blind faith on the urban foreign brethren that has led to the annihilation of the indigenous people. 

Avatar: Colonel Miles Quaritch says that the Na'vi would be eliminated with minimum casualties - "We'll clear them out with gas first."

Mine: Vedanta has bulldozed houses of the Dongria Kondh when they refused to move from their lands

Even the bulldozers in the two films are alike - huge yellow beasts that crash three branches and everything else that comes in its way.

Avatar: The Na'vi fight off their corporate land grabbers' large machines with 'primitive' tools of bows and arrows

Mine: The Dongria Kondh use the 'primitive' tool of axe - they chop the trees and block the road leading up to the Niyamgiri hills

Vedanta Resources, on its website, mentions that it currently operates in India, Zambia and Australia - the countries where indigenous people have been systematically eliminated for the 'development' of the few. What then, is the definition of development? Development at what cost? Development to be decided by whom? Would you let your development and thus, your life, to be decided in a corporate boardroom? Ponder: What would you do if you were to fight for your survival? Whom would then be your friend and foe?

Do we need our lives to be decided in a corporate boardroom?

Just like the way the Na'vi needed Dr Grace Augustine and eventually, Jake Sully (it is Hollywood after all - "And a hero comes along..."), to save themselves from annihilation, the Dongria Kondh need you and me and our loud voices of dissent against the atrocities committed upon them. 

The last scene in 'Mine' shows an adolescent boy, gnashing his teeth and striking down his axe in anger as he declares, "No, we won't give up our mountain." 

If Vedanta Resources continues to be the much-hated beast in Orissa, just like Tata Steel and Essar Steel are in Chhattisgarh; and if the urban folk choose to be blind to this annihilation of its indigenous brethren, then it wouldn't be surprising that few years later, this same kid with gnashing teeth will grow up with a bigger axe and sickle in hand. And he would be declared a 'Naxalite', a 'Maoist', a 'rebel', a 'threat to the nation's security'. 

Then, would there be a moment to ponder why did he choose that path of defending his basic right, through violence?

Small Talk: Raj Thackeray = Ajmal Kasab?

I had long stopped reading the newspapers. But Friday afternoon while trying to dodge sleep in office after a heavy lunch, my eyes fell on the headlines on a newspaper, which stated that the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) was now targetting Indian National Congress General Secretary Rahul Gandhi. I couldn't help exclaim, "Why can't MNS let people just be? Why doesn't it understand that Mumbai cannot do without the mix of people from different places?"

I had assumed that my muttering would go ignored, but that wasn't the case. My Gujarati-speaking colleague, who is as much a Mumbaikar as I am, said, "But what Shah Rukh Khan said was also wrong." 

I honestly did not know what SRK had said. I was least bothered about what a man in an independent country could have said. Nor should it bother anyone else. My Marathi-Tamil speaking colleague said, "SRK said that Raj Thackeray was equivalent to Ajmal Kasab." Her eyes almost popped out, indicating her understanding of blasphemy in the words of SRK. 

I replied, "What wrong did he say? Isn't Raj equivalent to Kasab, in the way he is going about annihilating the non-Marathis here?" 

Marathi-Tamil speaking colleague replied, "How could you say that? Kasab killed so many innocents! Raj is only fighting for the Marathi manoos."

Gujarati speaking colleague: "See, if you look at it historically, Raj hasn't done anything wrong. It is only politics."

Marathi-Tamil speaking colleague: "Raj is slogging and fighting for the working class, those have been deprived on their jobs."

Me: "How different is Raj from Kasab? Kasab killed many innocents. Raj has managed to disrupt the kiln of several people residing here, who are trying to eke out a living. They are being targetted simply because they are non-Marathis. Hasn't he burnt taxis and buses?"

Both girls vehemently nod their head in denial. By now, my Marathi-Tamil colleague has turned her back towards me. I say nothing. I turn towards my Gujarati speaking colleague, and she cannot ignore me either as I am too close to her face.

Me: "The problem is that we choose to let him continue his non-sense. Do you think Mumbai can ever be the Mumbai it is, without the non-Marathi people?"

Gujarati speaking colleague: "If u go to Bihar, you will have to speak in their dialect. That's what he is asking here too - that non-Marathi speaking people should abide by the culture of the Marathis. That's all he wants, which is legitimate."

Me: "Why should I abide by justifications laid down by Raj? Ain't I a free citizen? And Mumbai is not rest of Maharashtra, where only Marathi is spoken or Marathi culture is observed. This is a cosmopolitan place. People come here because it is cosmopolitan, because it offers them opportunities."

Gujarati speaking colleague: "But the Marathi manoos doesn't get jobs because the Biharis have taken them! There are apparently no jobs left for the original inhabitants of Mumbai!"

Me: "The key word here is 'apparently'. And why wouldn't others take up the jobs? Why should anyone stop them? And Mumbai has enough resources and jobs for all. Why doesn't the Marathi manoos take them up?" 

Another Tamil speaking colleague interjects. "The Marathi manoos didn't get jobs because people from other places were ready to come and do the same job for lesser pay. It is the same everywhere. The Marathi manoos is at fault. They lost opportunities due to their own laziness."

Gujarati speaking colleague agrees, but adds, "But that doesn't mean others take the jobs." 

Me: "Why not? The job has to be done. This is Mumbai, the city of dreams - dreams for all. Why couldn't the Marathi manoos come forward and take up the jobs?"

Gujarati speaking colleague: "But Raj is aware of all this. This is all politics. When he broke away from Shiv Sena, he took up this cause. He needed the support of the people..."

Me: "It is exactly this same people and their support which will help topple him down, if they open their eyes and see it for themselves. This is democracy and the government is supposed to fear its people. Not the other way round." 

She disagrees, shakes her head wildly. "We cannot correct it. Nobody can. It is all politics."

Me: "When democracy is faulty, then you have dirty politics. It is we who need to go and tell Raj that we all coexist and continue to do so without him or his intervention. We need to go and tell him that Mumbai is what it is because people from different places are here together."

Gujarati speaking colleague: "You cannot say that to him! You think he doesn't know it?"

Me: "Of course he knows it. Of course everyone knows it too. Just that Raj chooses to reinforce selective truths such that others are blinded by his words. Everyone can see it all, but they choose not to see."

Gujarati speaking colleague: "Yes, it may be true. But only the Marathi manoos, who bears the brunt of it all, can see it and feel what Raj is doing what he is doing. For them it is justified." 

By now our voices are quite loud.

My boss walks in, looks at me, smiles, and says, "Please don't corrupt the employees of this office."

I tell her, "Everyone else is corrupt in their own small ways. Even I have that liberty....."

She has already walked past me by the time I complete my sentence. And so has my Gujarati speaking colleague. I walk over to my seat as my Tamil speaking colleague tells me, "If you want to continue this debate, please go to the other room. Do not disturb me."

Silence.

Moment later, the Gujarati speaking colleague reads aloud from the newspaper, "BJP is now accusing MNS of raising this SRK issue because apparently, MNS does not want to talk about inflation." She then exclaims, "What politics yaar!"

I say, "Yes.. all politics in a democracy. And the middle class chooses not to see anything."

A longer silence. And the conversation ends. We are back to ordering coffee for ourselves.

And I still don't know what SRK really said.

'India Shining', India Blinding

Remember the second page of every textbook in school, which had an outline of the map of India, with the National Pledge printed within it? Remember how we would be recite the Pledge from memory, without giving much thought into the words? Today, as I look read again those words that form the Pledge, which was penned by Swami Vivekanand, I wonder what really happened to that Pledge that was taken to be devoted to the country, in whose well-being and prosperity alone lay my happiness.

Is it possible to be happy when the rest of the country is dying of hunger? Is it possible to regale in prosperity when millions of children have to sell their childhood to earn a bread? Is it possible to be happy and sleep through the night peacefully when a vast majority of the country dreads the dark night, lest they would be attacked by armed forces who are forced to grab their lands for your and my definition of development?

In the pursuit of development for a privileged few, blood spurts from every corner of the country. We may never have never been a conquering race, but today, we are fighting our own people – in Jammu & Kashmir, North East of India, Chhattisgarh, Orissa, Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Maharashtra and in unheard corners of almost every state in the country. With old parents waiting since 20 years for their detained and disappeared sons to return home; daughters and wives being gang-raped by armed forces who continue to straggle freely; farmers' meagre lands being snatched with force and bloodshed to make way for steel plants – India is indeed incredible. 

And I say this with as much pride as morose. But this idea of an 'Incredible India' has been well put by Pubali Ray Chaudhuri. Have patience and read her thoughts till the end -- there is little likelihood that you will disagree with her observations of 'Incredible India' or 'India Shining'. Her article is about her interpretation of the Pledge as was recited at school, and you will realise the difference between what Swami Vivekanand meant when he composed those words, and the stark distance those words from the India we live and see today.

"Arise, awake and rest not till the goal is achieved," said Swami Vivekanand. Are we willing to pledge this today?

India Shining: Passages To and From My Country

Published on February 2, 2010, on ZSpace

By Pubali Ray Chaudhuri 

"India is my country and all Indians are my brothers and sisters.

I love my country and I am proud of its rich and varied heritage.

I shall always strive to be worthy of it.

I shall give respect to my parents, teachers and elders and treat everyone with courtesy.

To my country and my people, I pledge my devotion.

In their well being and prosperity alone lies my happiness."

I don't know if this pledge is still spoken in English language schools throughout India, but when I was attending school in the mid seventies we had to recite the above sentences every morning at school assembly. We gabbled off the words without pausing, barely conscious and indeed uninterested in their meaning; they were only a tedious ritual that had to be got through, the kind of meaningless burblings that grown-ups set such store by and that baffle and bore the children who are required to pronounce them. I recall a slight internal discomfiture at the idea that my happiness was to be left to "lie" all "alone" in the midst of the "well-being and prosperity" of my compatriots, but that was the only flicker of interest that I can recall.

To mock the pledge would not require too much effort. Our young voices reciting those ponderous adult phrases, the gap we already knew existed between pious hope and profane reality - such sharp contrasts invite the deflation of irony. But one must be fair. I cannot say that the words were completely false or even unnecessary; they contained the kind of bland positives that can graft later on to more complex definitions of nationhood and collective identity. There is nothing wrong, after all, with teaching a child to love her country and to be conscious that she is heir to a rich heritage. The disconnect only arises when that child sees little around her that easily inspires the love or pride that she is told she already should have.

Even then I realized that not all Indians were my brothers and sisters. In fact, even brothers and sisters had a built-in inequity: the former were very much more equal than the latter.

I have a cousin. A male cousin. We were born less than two months apart. But he exemplified for me the inequality of sisters and brothers, made it real and living and present and enfeebled and invalidated by comparison any prepackaged assurances of equality.

"Why can he ride the bus/train/auto alone and I can't?"

"He's a boy."

"Why does he get the attention/love/praise/acceptance and not me?"

"He's a boy."

"Why can't you learn to bicycle/swim/roller-skate as quickly as Rahul did? Well - what can we expect; after all, you're a girl."

He's a boy.

What a complete identity that seemed, how self-fulfilling, fated to accomplished, born to be adored, accepted, obeyed. To be a girl was to be a kind of penis-less, clitoris-ridden cripple. You were to reflect the crippled values of your society, its warped and brutal vision that somehow ended up becoming your own identity. You were limited and consumed; named and labeled and spoken for in terms of that all-embracing, stifling phallic sheath - the only legitimate identity recognized by your society.

He's a boy.

But as he was above me, so was I above some others. I was, I knew, definitely above those raggedy children with dusty hair in which red ribbons straggled, outraging my sense of dignity and beauty. These were the children who worked in our homes, swept our streets, begged at the windows of passing cars, and licked out with relish the insides of the ice-cream cups that we tossed after we had finished with them. They could not be my brothers and sisters, these lesser-looking beings with torn clothes and snotty noses. They were a race apart - and anyway, they did not even attend school like we did.

Though they probably did, on paper.

On paper, as I am fond of telling my non-Indian friends, India is a wonderful country. In fact, it has recently been promoted to "incredible" status, as in "Incredible India" - I for Incredible India - like a page out of a child's alphabet book. Lest this be dismissed as mere touristy hyperbole (which it is), we are told that this country is also "diverse and complex", which means that the richest man in India has a house that could pussy-whip Bill Gates' Seattle digs and that the poorest survive on less than a dollar a day - when they survive at all.

So on paper we are a sovereign, secular, socialist republic where discrimination on the basis of caste, gender, and religion is strictly prohibited (we are getting around to the sexual orientation thing; give us time.) We are also a developing nation on the fast track to the 21st century.

Growing up I knew that between paper and practice yawned the shadow, but as children we had hope - at least some of us did - that things would get better. The papers and magazines and radio - TV had yet to come into its own then - reported the famines that ravaged the hinterland, the droughts that ruined the hopes of farmers, the travails of the bonded labourers who toiled endlessly for a pittance, the frustration of educated urban youth at the prospect of long-term unemployment.

Even Indian politicians, who can plumb effortlessly depths of depravity and corruption that would win cries of admiration from the more brutal class of African dictator, felt obliged to keep up a pretence of caring about the sons of the soil who formed the larger part of their electorate. Their pseudo-sympathy expressed itself in the workaday character of the symbols most political parties used to gain instant recognition in a land where the voters were mostly illiterate - the protective hand, raised in benediction, the farmer with his plough hoisted over his shoulder, the cow with her little calf by her side, the wheel, the bicycle.

It seems strange, now, that thirty-five years after independence there lingered within us children such a sense of possibility. Those who came of age in those heady days of 1947, felt, perhaps, the bliss of being alive in that dawn more keenly then we who came after, but nevertheless the fainter whiffs of that first wine of freedom and its promises still reached us down the decades. Crucial to this sense was the understanding, even present, that we were an extremely poor nation, that we were beset with numerous problems, some of which were our legacy from the colonial years, and some that had come before, and that we had suffered through two wrenching partitions whose horror and bloodletting still echoed in the minds of those of us who were the descendants of our indigenous holocaust.

Even though we knew being poor was no cause for pride, the very knowledge that such poverty existed was somehow important. Even in a film industry that produced rubbish that was as outrageously unrealistic as it was irresistibly enjoyable, real social issues still wove in and out of the absurd problems of the protagonists and their equally fantastic resolutions. "Mainstream" films like Roti, Kapda Aur Makaan (Bread, Clothes, Shelter) and Mother India reminded us of the immediate challenges facing the nation and presented working class and farmer heroes battling poverty and discrimination. So we knew we had problems before us; we were not allowed to forget them, or pretend they were the victims' fault, or to pretend, worst of all, that they did not exist at all. In that knowledge of the reality of despair lay the possibility of change and action - a kind of nucleus of hope.

Until, at one time, the problems disappeared.

Yes, disappeared, vamoosed, choo-mantar, vanished, like a magic trick. They had gone. We were now a new and improved nation, a "vast consumer market," "an economic powerhouse," "an emerging superpower" with newly flex-able muscle on the international stage. We had joined the twenty-first century, where a rising tide of deregulation was lifting all boats. And if many boats, unable to keep up, sank quietly to the bottom, our new media did a superb job of insulating us from the cries of those who drowned. It was the media - is it not always the media? - that midwived our glorious, if rather fictitious, new birth. It sang to us of the virtues of multinationals and the economic imperatives of privatization and free-market liberalization. MBAs became the new hot trend, replacing the engineers of an earlier era and the barristers of the early days of the twentieth century. Consumerism had arrived in our homes with a bang and a whoosh, with a whoop and a holler, riding the tube into our living rooms, shrilling its siren song with its burden of supermarkets and vacuum cleaners and TVs and cars and music systems and home-delivered pizza. And we were mesmerized, open-mouthed, salivating at the prospect of immersing ourselves in this new vision that promised to catapult us into the company of civilized nations - by which we meant the USA, Europe and Australia - that were so much more advanced than our own and consumed oh-so-much more of the world's resources.

Now we could do the same. Hooray!

Being a part of this select group of nations seemed crucial to this new Indian identity. We longed, craved, hungered to belong to the Masterclub of "developed nations", to be as admired and envied as they were. Not, of course, that we had been innocent of materialistic ambitions or had not striven to keep up with the Guptas and the Sharmas. But differences in the quantity of something can rise to such heights as to constitute a difference in quality. So it was with the tidal wave of consumerism that hit us, took us at the flood, and swept some of us out to fortune, while at the same time making it possible for us to ignore those who, gasping and stranded, were left behind in the shallows.

We were too busy to care. A new vision was gradually obscuring our imaginative horizon. An advertising slogan that aired on TV around that time spoke perfectly to the change that had arrived. It was, fittingly, a tagline for an ad hawking a television brand, a metanarrative of the new change if there ever was one. The ad assured us that should we choose to purchase an Onida television set, we would be in an enviable position vis-à-vis our neighbors - that such an outcome was an entirely desirable one was never called into doubt. "Neighbor's envy - owner's pride" promised the makers of Onida - and the line, including as it did two of the seven deadly sins, was positively purred out by a handsome devil - literally a devil - in a shiny green suit, a pair of cheeky little horns and a long, curling tail.

Nor did we have much difficulty believing the promises. As we sat munching on ready-made snacks out of new, glossy packages that had recently arrived to displace the homemade and less glamorous local alternatives, sloth and gluttony were already upon us. The three others on the list could not, then, be far behind, and would follow in no particular order.

As our appetites rose, our awareness withered, beautifully in sync. If our goody bag of desires was now crammed full to bursting with the latest offerings served up by the corporate marketplace, there remained no room for the "poor" in this still very poor country. If you no longer see a thing, so much the easier to pretend it isn't there, or if it is, its existence has been vastly exaggerated and the rumors of its death all too true. Through our new glasses, brought to us by Uncle Sam and his lesser European elves, there was so much we no longer needed or wanted to see.

Once you no longer identified as a poor country, you were also absolved of the responsibility of having to do anything to alleviate poverty. In fact, your entire world view is changed, changed utterly. In this new redefined India, the poor were no longer victims. They occupied a more complex role: they were squatters on their own land, impediments in the path to progress, stubbornly hanging on to their forests and rivers and the earth and her treasures - bauxite, aluminum ore, uranium. All there for the taking, if only we could do as our new overlords the West had done for centuries - get rid of the natives.

The population hardest hit, rendered by turns invisible and dangerous by the prestidigitator media - were tribals who had lived for millennia in the forests of the Indian heartland. We set about damming their rivers, felling their trees, destroying their homes, blowing up their mountains. They become our version of British journalist Mark Curtis' "unpeople", either they did not exist, or, when we are forced by their natural resistance to having their lives wrecked around them, to notice their irksome presence, they became "unpeople" of a different sort - dangerous, anti-social, and the latest game in town: "terrorists". We sent out militias against them. Earlier, there had been some talk - and even some action following - of schools, roads, electricity, jobs, health clinics. Our Prime Minister, the white-haired and venerable Oxford economist Manmohan Singh, doing an Obama, declared solemnly, "There has been a systemic failure in giving the tribals a stake in the modern economic processes that inexorably intrude into their living spaces." We, the educated middle class, nodded gravely, lips pursed, expressions thoughtful as became the acknowledgement of our failure. Then, having confessed and absolved ourselves, we carried right on fucking the tribals and the farmers and the city shanty-dwellers.

I do not mean to suggest, of course, that we were some sort of terra nullius before the invasion of Western materialism in its current form. On the contrary. India has been repeatedly and assiduously invaded by every fortune hunter and glory-seeker from Alexander of Macedon to the Muslim descendants of Genghis Khan to the merchant-buccaneers of England, France and Portugal. In fact, even Hinduism appears to be the amalgamated end-product of the chthonic - and mostly female - powers worshipped by the indigenous, pre-Aryan people and the more patriarchal deities of the Indo-European Aryans who first poured into the country some five thousand years ago.

Given this history, I make no claims for innocence. There is no linear narrative here of indigenous victimhood and corrupting Western incursion. We have been melted and potted and remelted far too many times; our crimes and punishments and suffering demand more complex explanations, interweaving tales of mutual exploitation where plain tales of guilt and virtue have a way of foundering amid complex and shifting realities.

So our new identity and its travails may not be our final one, but merely one among many that have gone before and many that are yet to come. (Not, however, if the environmentalist doomsayers are right, or if the white-hot promise of mutually assured nuclear destruction should come into being - as why should it not? Then, I am afraid, we are indeed on our final caper, living out the folly before the finish). Still, the way we imagine ourselves India now has some characteristics that have been less crucial to earlier socio-economic shifts.

Occupation by the British had bequeathed to us a country impoverished by those years of colonialism where the country's wealth crossed the ocean to enrich the coffers of our gora masters. Resisting the occupation had, however, given rise to unprecedented levels of unity; although divisions of caste and region continued to simmer in the background, the necessity of ousting the British did engender a degree of solidarity where people realized that displacing the common enemy required them to bury, if only for a time, their internal differences. More importantly, and with more enduring effect, various reformist movements arose during this time that challenged the deeply entrenched caste, gender and feudal hierarchies and offered more egalitarian alternatives. Nirad C. Chaudhuri, with his inscrutable sense of irony that continues to infuriate uncomprehending readers, expressed something of this paradox in his dedication to his Autobiography of an Unknown Indian to the British Empire in India, adding that

"All that was good and living within us

Was made, shaped and quickened

By the same British rule."

Not only Chaudhuri, but an entire nation came to know itself in new and radical ways as a result of the forces unleashed during the British rule.

However, now that "the man" has departed Animal Farm, the pigs have emerged to fill the power vacuum. And eventually, inevitably, the pigs have invited the man back on to the farm.

Our films, TV and print media no longer foreground rural India or its problems.  The front pages of our major newspapers are filled now with photographs of supermodels twitching anorexically down catwalks, or the latest scandal brewing in the personal life of some overpaid celebrity. We are told of vacations in Hawaii and Belize and Monte Carlo, in a country where most people do not have a proper roof over their heads. Daimler and Rolls Royce and Swarovski have arrived in India. This grotesquerie plays itself out against a backdrop of tens of thousands of farmers in several states who have committed suicide as a result of debts racked up and genetically-modified (GMO) seeds whose introduction has destroyed their traditional practice of saving seeds for the next planting season. The same multinationals to whose employment millions of our young graduates eagerly aspire have, with government connivance, at gunpoint and with bloodshed, intimidated rural communities into giving up their land. When they resist, they are called "terrorists", whose recalcitrance has compelled a benign government to take harsh countermeasures. These "countermeasures" have included forced evacuation, attacks by police or party thugs, rapes and even assassinations.

Ah, "terrorist." The new bugbear of the twenty-first century. Earlier, we had our "foreign hand", a euphemism for Pakistan - which was blamed for India's reprehensible policy in Kashmir, for the outbreak of terrorism in Punjab, for separatist movements in Nagaland and even, as writer Khushwant Singh once remarked, when someone pinched a woman's bottom. But now we are more cosmopolitan; even our bugbears are updated, 2.0, in sync with the hot trends on the international scene. We now have our own terrorist threat, and the attacks in November 2008 gave us our own version of September 11. We are coming to resemble more and more our master and, it may be said, our most important John, always up for the tricks we turn - the United States of America.

Since we do not yet possess the funds and the firepower to pulverize faraway countries full of "terrorists" as our master does, we have perforce to fall back on our own land to find "terrorism". This maneuver involves designating large numbers of the poor as "terrorists", and ignoring the desperation that led them to take up arms in the first place, or to come out in support of those who take up arms on their behalf. Recently the government has embarked on a new phase of "counter-terrorism", dubbed "Operation Green Hunt", to hunt down Naxals and Maoists in the Indian state of Chattisgarh and other areas. The Home Minister, P. Chidambaram, has assured us that the Govt. does not make war upon its own citizens, which means of course, that making war upon its own citizens is exactly what the Govt. is doing. Looking glass creatures, draw near, as Alice said - you'll find yourselves right at home.

I no longer do, though. I fear this new India, where I should have great difficulty fitting in. My father was given to pronouncing the dictum of "simple living, high thinking," a piece of advice at which, growing up, I invariably scoffed, thinking it just a ploy of my father's to avoid getting me whatever gewgaw it was I had my childish heart set on at the time. Knowing my father, it may still have been that, but it must be a sign of approaching old age that this philosophy is now beginning to make sense. I am unable to find my way among the towering glass-fronted malls rampant across the metropolitan skyscapes, the enormous SUVs straddling roads so narrow people flatten themselves against the walls of houses and stand above open sewers to let the monsters roll by, the billboards shrieking determinedly of the desirability of a completely unsustainable way of life.

I am lost amid so much plenty, so much development, so little renewal; so much wealth, so much more poverty. As often when lost, I head for a bookshop; somehow, in whatever country I happen to be, a bookshop feels like a kind of home.

Oxford Book Store: Coda

The interiors, lit by warm yellow light, are tastefully appointed, decorated "ethnically," not for a foreign clientele, as might have been imagined, but for the indigenous upper class. Coffee table books on Calcutta and India are prominently displayed in carefully chosen nooks and corners. Above, on a sort of open first floor, sits a tea shop where the charge for a bottle of water (I ask, being thirsty) comes to nearly as much a the poorest Indians make in a day's wages. Wandering about the shop's closely packed interior, I pick up a book by Indian Foreign Service Officer Pavan Varma that appeared to be extolling the rise of India's middle class - the emerging superpower's biggest consumer market and strongest asset. I recall a conversation with another friend, also in the Foreign Service, who had spoken to me with pride of the rising power of this new middle class. Another friend, living in Singapore, had been baffled at the eccentric behavior of the farmers who seemed persistent in their chosen course of suicide. "I don't know why they're doing it," she'd said, seeming piqued at their actions, which she evidently found in dubious taste. "Their standard of living is not all that bad."

I do not see a book here on the farmers, because annoying nuisances like them rather tarnish our powerhouse image - these ultimate expressions of despair and powerlessness do not fit easily into the dominant narrative of success and prosperity that we wish to project to the world and to ourselves.

It is brightly lit inside the bookstore, but when I step out into the warm evening, dusk has already fallen. Sitting against the railings that separate footpath from road, right in front of the shop's repeatedly opening and closing doors, are a woman and her two young children. One is fully-clothed, though in the filthiest of rags; the other wears only a thin little shirt and nothing more, so I can see he is a boy. All three are the color of city dust, grey and brown as though wrought from the selfsame dust that is thrown up by the thousands of cars and buses and autorickshaws that rumble and roar down Park Street in a ceaseless, unheeding stream. The headlights illuminate the trio, but render them curiously transparent and ghostly, as though they are not really there at all. As I still stand there, the little boy, who looks about two, moves a little way from the rest of his family, huddled by the railings. Standing well away from the noisy flow of traffic, back carefully turned to the road, he urinates against the dull black palings into the sidewalk. Business done, he strolls nonchalantly back to his mother - evidently the action is a common one, for neither of the other two even glances in his direction.

I am a member of the middle class Varma's book talks about, the ones who measure out their Indianness in coffee table books. When I come to India, still the land of cheap labor, I can afford to hire a chauffeur-driven car - a modest one, it is true, but still a car - to take me around the city. Mine drives up now, and I get into it, and am driven away from the brightly-lit bookstore and its faceless, dustgenic guardians of the road.

Pubali Ray Chaudhuri lives and writes in Newark, CA. She can be reached at pubali@sbcglobal.net.