The Making of a Maoist

This whole Maoist and Naxalite thing is turning out to be too crazy. Earlier in the week I was at one of those la-di-da places in Khan Market exchanging ideas over a working lunch. Someone mentioned some thing about how someone becomes a Maoist. This simple stupid thing changed the very course of the conversation thereon. The fact that everyone present, including yours truly, had theorized similar questions a million times in their heads made the whole exercise more interesting. In addition to a hypothesis, all of us had suggestions that would shame the authorities engaged with such groups.

This Maoist thing isn’t funny anymore. Of course, before you coil up at the very mention of funny and Maoists in the same breath, may I say that I never thought of it as ha-ha funny in any case. The simple fact of the matter remains that there is amazing disparity amongst us Indians. It was always there. In the past the oppressed made peace with the fact that perhaps the white man is behind all this and if god were to come down things would be better off. Sorry. God’s dead. Or maybe he’s really busy. The brown man descended but discovered he could play God and went around plundering just about everything and every one in sight. The oppressed still didn’t know what to do. Someone should have told him to be careful of what you ask for. Initially he thought the white man don’t speak the same language so perhaps he won’t comprehend what was wrong. Now that he has someone who spoke the same tongue, he was kindly told there ain’t nothing wrong. Amidst all this some dudes get together and decide that enough’s enough. They take up arms against their own who now run things for they are just not concerned about the oppressed.

Simple. Not really. Forty years later, the state still hasn’t done enough for the people for whom the dudes took up arms. But things aren’t that black and white anymore. Anyone who has a little more knowledge than me about the whole thing would know that the oppressed is still stuck in between. If they defy the Maoists they had it and if they defy the state they are branded as co-conspirators. The so called modern Robin Hood figures who once claimed to represent the dispossessed of Indian society, particularly the indigenous tribal groups, were dismissed as a ragtag band of outdated dreamers. Many intellectuals and even politicians once sympathized with their cause, but their brand of violence has forced the majority to think whether they can still be tolerated. (Here’s a link to an article in New York Times which will simply explain the issue).

Back to the fancy lunch. We talked for a while and I realized that the mere existence of the small city person within us isn’t enough. We all shook our heads and followed the cues like trained actors on some stage by letting out heartfelt voices at the right time. We couldn’t believe why the hell was it so difficult to do the right thing- just provide for the people. Man! If we could understand it over a lunch what’s stopping the government of India from doing it.

Is this where the problem lies?

Just because I can convince myself that I’m a good listener to someone riling their heart out doesn’t make me understand the person better. And just because I intersperse the session by letting a word of advice escape my lips doesn’t make me a better person. I listen simply because the other person is talking. But more importantly I listen for someone might have heard me out some time. Worse still I listen because once you are done you might hear me out.

By the time I got out of the joint I realized, once again, that having one’s heart in the right place might be a good thing but that’s just a start. The problem with most of us residing in mega cities is that the simple desire to believe that we able to understand the other person’s problem is reason enough to not do anything else. Now just apply this to the state. Now we know why people are still dying of hunger. Why floods in one state and drought in the other is not affecting me as I watch a documentary on Hurricane Katrina.

Someone needs to do the needful.

Things I think about when I think of my stolen car...

Since my car was stolen I’m looking at things in a new light. One of the troubled areas this incident opened up would be my take on things. For some years now my brother has been trying to convince me that I’m a cynical prick whose pastime is to go on bursting bubbles. He’s not entirely off the cuff but the poor fellow is busy trying to convince me of something that I’m fully aware of. Although at times I might garb it with much sincerity to pass it off as extreme realism, it still is cynicism.

I can’t help. Can you with so much so stupidity around?

I guess the bigger thing that has come under the microscope since someone whacked my car is my personality. A few years ago I realized the importance of being cool. I realized that the only way to survive the non-sense is to be calm about it. Now I’m so unruffled, more often than not, that some times people don’t take me seriously. I’m not worried about the car getting whacked. I know I’m insured and more importantly my paperwork is right up there. So I jump three steps and grasp that after all the ranting I will thank destiny, praise the heavens and move on with life. The fact that I jump three steps doesn’t really go down well with people like Gurgaon’s finest- the police aren’t moved enough to lodge my FIR on day 1 of the incident. Maybe I’m not perturbed enough. On day 2 the insurance agent pushes the meeting by a day for maybe I’m not concerned enough. You get the picture!

So does being cool help?

What’s the point in being a dartboard for people to test patience levels with? I’m sure that work would happen if you get angry or stay hungry but isn’t the whole purpose of doing some thing then going out of the window. OK once upon a time people got really angry and the system rattled. I guess people are not getting angry enough these days.

A few days ago my brother mentioned a gentleman who has made his millions (inherited, maybe, I don’t recall) and now suggests meditating as a weapon of choice to combat the ugly truth of the world. Impressed as one should have been at this display of cultivated coolness, I lost a part of mine. My point being one should try to be all things calm in the center of the storm and not in some picturesque hill side town.

Now, since my car got stolen I know why the gentleman from the hills was so calm. It’s a natural reaction when you have your bases covered. After all wasn’t this that very thing which pissed the police about my functionality.

Dude, Where's my car!?

I have joined a rare breed of people whose car has been stolen. No one I knew has ever lost a car. Till last week the biggest thing I ever lost was a cellphone. I really liked that cell-phone and it got stolen from the guard’s desk late at night where I was working. Yes, there are things about me that you still don’t know.; I once worked in a regular office. You know how it feels when you lose a cell-phone. So in effective I should have been angry and sad about the loss of my car.

Strangely I wasn’t.

Nothing can ever prepare you for the loss of a stolen car. This is thing that you have always heard about so you think you know how to react but you don’t. It was 4 in the pm and I was feeling lousy so I decided to venture out to a café. Maybe working from a coffee shop wouldn’t put me to sleep. I went to the market that I have been frequenting for the last five years; I parked the car almost ritualistically in the same lane where it saw the passage of time. I returned in half an hour and was talking on the phone to the girl from my cell-phone company when I realized that the spot where I had left my car was, well…empty.

Hmm.

OK. I asked myself could I have forgotten where I’d parked my car.

Nope.

Perhaps the police towed the car?

Nope. The three traffic constables stationed just fifteen feet from my car duly informed me the cops don’t tow vehicles from that lane.

Did I give the keys to someone and maybe they took the car?

Nope. I’d remember that. I was having coffee and not vodka!

By this time a driver standing next me decided that I should get proactive and go to the nearest police station. The traffic police, of course, weren’t interested. Their rationale was this wasn’t a paid parking or a safe parking (one that is inside the walls of any shopping complex, free or otherwise) and they quickly forgot that hundreds of cars where parked in the same lane as mine. I walked to the local police station who told me to go to the other one. I went. One constable from there took me along as he scouted the area. Finally I called 100 and in three minutes after that I was one of those whose car got stolen.

As the hours ticked away I started recalling what all I lost with the car. I had an original small sized Coca Cola green bottle which was now a collectible, DVDs of nearly 40 episodes of the soap on which my new UNICEF project is based on, fifteen classic audio cassettes and an old and tattered pair of jeans. But the thing I missed the most was the laptop charger which was in the car. The damn thing costs more than two thousand rupees to get a spare one!

The fact that three more cars were stolen from the same area on that very day isn’t enough to make me believe that someone whacked the car from a bust road in the middle of the afternoon in less than thirty minutes. That explains why the cops didn’t register my case on the same day. Like I said nothing can prepare you for the loss of a car…I still think I might have parked it someone else and it would show up.

Positively negative...

That the world is a funny place is old story now. The other day while talking to my script supervisor I was told to look at the positive more than the negative. This made me think. I always thought of myself to be a positive person, cynical, realistic to the level of sounding pessimistic notwithstanding I never thought that I suggest the negative.

The show that I am working on now is a strange, for the lack of any other word, mix of soap and messaging. A few years ago when I wrote an episode about an HIV positive girl who fights for her right to education for a law series called Siddhant, I never thought much of it. A million rewrites later I had lost interest in the story and perhaps that was a good thing. The episode turned out to be one of the better ones and it garnered an Emmy nomination for the show as well. For years I have been asked how did I manage to mix messaging in popular fiction but the truth of the matter is I have no idea.

Anyway now when my supervisor commented on the writing she said that I should focus on the positive aspect of the message. She argued that my writing talked about the bad that could happen if one doesn’t follow ‘rules’ as opposed to saying ‘see the good that came out of doing what was told’. Normally I would think nothing of it but now that I blog and have a ‘social’ responsibility to update people about whatever the hell is happening in my life, I couldn’t help but ponder.

Is it better to be a foolish optimistic or a sensible realist? What is about me that makes me look at the exit route before taking the turn in? As a child I would always scout the off button before switching anything on. Is aimless positivity a good thing as it would help you overcome all the obstacles and roadblocks of life?

Okay too many questions. But then what could I do, whom could I turn to? My life is currently divided into two groups of people- one who ‘believe’ in me to the extent of convincing that it’s the weather that’s making me think like this while the others would just say yes but what about it? So I had to look elsewhere.

I googled.

What I found was interesting. New non-sense has come to light and it seems that positive thoughts are bad for low self esteem. Yeah. According to The Economist thinking positive will just result in feeling bad, of course in some cases. So being a cynic and looking at the worse that could happen and then just back up a bit isn’t all that bad. I thought about this and realized that not many people would agree with me. This seems like a very television thinking- focus on getting the job done. But wasn’t a good plan today better than a perfect plan tomorrow? I wanted to argue my point out and let it reach millions. Hey if the damn thing worked for why wouldn’t it work for some poor soul in one of the country’s million villages?

Apparently it don’t work that way. In any case now that I know I was right.

I can make it.

Focus.

I can move mountains, grab the stars.

Focus.

I’m good.

Oops…