It Is That Time Of The Year Again

The morning sky when you wake up and for the large part of the day has bright blue sky. A few white clouds float past once in a while against this backdrop. The sunlight is not so harsh on skin. A few varieties of flowers spread their fragrance in the air. The evening has a lovely orange hue of the setting sun. The nights are pleasantly cool and the sky presents itself with bright stars. Mild due settles on benches in parks, on vehicle seats and elsewhere. Yes, this is that time of the year when all of the above happens.

Two months of the year which I would count from mid of September to mid of November is a special time of the year. That the weather becomes pleasant in many parts of the country is true but not only that, the festivities of this time period made it all the more special. Navratri, Eid, Durga Puja, Diwali being the primary festivals, involve large swathes of people across the country providing that time of the year where you can buy new clothes, meet relatives, be religious, hog on food, burst crackers or go on a vacation to name few.

It is rightly said that memories shaped in the formative years of childhood stays with you forever. And for years together after having taken out of the environment where the memories were formed they come back to make you nostalgic. A similar thing happens during this time of the year to me. Having grown up in a big extended family, in a place where Durga Puja is celebrated pompously, and ten odd days of holidays and friends around, it has always been a fun time, this part of the year. The nostalgia therefore grips tight during this time.

Seeing the idol of goddess Durga being made, monitoring its progress after school each day, then seeing the bamboo gates and structures starting to get erect and the colourful clothes draped around them always built up a strong curiosity. The family get together, the distant uncle and aunts, the delicious dishes being made and the ritual shopping at the nearest big city has so deep embedded in psyche that one comes to feel of emptiness with the lack of it. The evening trips of the festival with friends, taking enough money to have chaat and ice creams, or the toy guns and huge balloons when still younger which seem just a normal child-play now has definitely formed emotions that express during these times.

Life takes you to places, removes you from your natural habitat, becomes more complex by the day, and simply changes everything. But however far, how much ever time apart, the memories that had been formed into in your childhood will always stay, even though dormant like a volcano, only to erupt when provided with the right environment, one of which is this time of the year...

Of 'La Tomatina' and India

       Bangalore is all set to host the maiden La Tomatina festival. It is set to replicate the event which originated in Spain way back in 1945. The event which began as a street brawl and gradually developed into a festival of sorts has the central theme of quashing tomato and throwing it on revellers turning the scene, the street and the people red! While many knew of such an event, the La Tomatino became institutionalised recently owing to its depiction the popular Bollywood flick ‘zindagi na milegi dobara’. Now that organizer has set the date (18^th sept) and time (11 a.m) for the event, larger questions hog the limelight.

       The first question that pricks your conscience is that in a country like ours, where considering whichever statistics you follow, around 40 million people do not get two decent meals a day, is this waste of tomatoes a wise or fun thing to do? What might be fun for one participant could very well be essential food to prevent starvation for many. It is probably to answer this ethical question that the organizers on their website have mentioned “will ensure that a part of the earnings are donated to NGO's or Foundations which feed the needy. Details will be posted once things are concrete.” (this can be found on their facebook page). ‘Part of the earnings’ , ‘once things are concrete’ and no mention of which NGO or Foundation are misleading, untrustworthy and  on the face of it appears mere jargon.
     
    By now you could be caught thinking that we engage in millions of activities which could be branded as anti poor, be it wasting food each day, in however small or large quantity or indulging in spendthrift activities every weekend. And thus it is not our job to curtail our fun activities. It is our right to be part of any activity we think is fun. Or rather the onus is on the government to feed the poor, so what if we can afford tomatoes to be thrown down the drain. Yes you may be right if you think all of the above.

        But the larger issue here is the blatant spectacle that the La Tomatino provides. At the point of writing the article some 55 thousand people had clicked on ‘attending’ on the organisers page. I am not sure if such number of people will turn up but imagine a spectacle of tonnes of tomatoes being quashed amongst thousands, many DJ’s blaring away chartbusters, gallons of water used for the ‘rain dance’ that is part of the event, and also gallons of booze that will be downed all carefully and closely brought every home courtesy ‘News’ channels. How well do you think will the spectacle go down with those 7 million people who have just been rendered homeless by floods in Odisha?
       
          The tomatoes that are used in La Tomatina in Spain are specifically grown for the festival and are of inferior quality for consumption. The organizers in Bangalore have also mentioned that they have ‘acquired’ tomatoes which are ‘not edible’ and are ‘NOT ROTTEN’ (in capital letters). It leaves me wondering which tomato in India which is not rotten would not be fit for consumption. And if the organisers suggest that they have imported such huge quantity of tomatoes, it is a much graver sin in that case. These statements, aiming to provide credibility to this exercise, appear more as cover ups than answering the ethical debate that the event has arisen. Probably the conscience of larger masses would not have pricked if it was to do with any other valuable, but food, the first basic necessity for humans, makes it a different ball game altogether.

         Just because the affluent can pay a ticket of twelve hundred rupees, arrive in their fancy cars, dress not much different than what they have just seen their screen idols do, and a few page 3 celebrities posing to shutterbugs doesn’t mean that a moral licence for such events. The Bhagvad Gita says "The serenity of mind, gentleness, silence, self-restraint, and the purity of mind are called the austerity of thought." It is this austerity which is missing. The question remains whether such an organised event for people to have ‘fantastico time’ as they have claim, is justified where the slums not far than hundred meters from the place have people starving for food, and  a component of that food which might flow in the drain upon which they have built their twigs and tarpaulin huts.

The Day When The World Changed

        I have a lucid memory of that defining moment, the moment which changed the way the world used to be. It was a pleasant evening and my desktop computer was malfunctioning. I rode the scooter to a nearby place and got hold of a computer mechanic (that is how they were called), got him home and as he worked I switched on the TV. And there with divided attention I switched between the computer repair work and towards the scene playing on the TV. The channel that started playing on it was the News channel, which was by default. But on that day and that moment for a few long seconds it didn’t seem to be a News channel. The precise description I had that moment was of wondering whether these are scenes of some Hollywood movie.

      Yes there it felt like an action flick playing where an aircraft rammed into a very tall building. And as if it was an extended sequence, the scene repeated itself. That moment, which made me literally stand up, raise the volume and call in everyone to watch, was to change the world. The World Trade Center bombing, the most spectacularly gory event was to redefine terrorism for everyone. That moment took with it three thousand lives, that moment shocked the most powerful nation of the world and brought it to a standstill, that moment made Osama bin Laden a household name, and that moment registered forever in all the history books.

        Ten years have passed since. Today marks a decade since the twin towers crashed. There crashed not just two buildings of steel and concrete, but along with it crashed the belief that any country however powerful was safe. Along with it crashed the belief that a powerful country could protect its citizens. Along with it crashed to some degrees the sanctity of a powerful religion. Along with it crashed a lull of large scale war. Not to forget the crashing of the lives of people, thousands then and millions as an aftermath.

So much in and around all of us changed for those few minutes. Two countries were reduced to rubble based on ‘hunting down perpetrators’ and the never found weapons of mass destruction. Annihilated with bombs dropped amounting much higher than their GDP’s. 9/11 marked the beginning of the phenomenon of bringing terror right to your doorstep, to your train station, to your airport, into your flight, in your marketplace and much deeper, into your hearts. A vicious circle ensued and continues to grapple us all, irrespective of where you are.

         Security became paramount at the cost of personal liberties many a times. Suspicion based on religion became the order of the day. Many conspiracy theories surfaced and still continue to. The economy turned down and the wisdom of wars questioned. Human rights violations took the world by storm. Also the man behind the crime hunted down after a decade. The war that was raised at a distance of half the world made millions homeless.

        Summing it all up in a few words beats the decade long changes which have become part of the world we live in without our even realizing it now. In the Indian context terrorism has played a havoc always which has been exacerbated after 9/11. The world might have become a little safer with many evil souls eradicated but the questions remains whether it is as safe as we would like it to be? How would our generation remember this infamous date 9/11, a day that was Tuesday, as? A decade later today, and decades later, this date is certain to be The Day When The World Changed.