The Common Man

Hmm. Twenty two years. By no means, is a short span of life. Maybe one-third of my entire lifespan. Aaah..while dreaming, why dream till the roof?? Dream till the sky, dream beyond…..cross the world. Then, maybe I can say, I have lived up around one-fifth of my entire life that Almighty has licensed me to be in this world.

Born into this great nation, I have had the dispensation to live in two very contrasting parts of the country. My home state, the “State of Domicile” as the official records put it, is one of the southernmost in the country. And the state where I stayed for near half a decade, where I did my graduation, towards the opposite direction.

This is just a random jotting down of thoughts. The way of life in either of these states, rather the way I assimilate the life of an aam aadmi in these places. I do apologize at the very outset if this entire piece seems satirical, for that is the very aim, the very zest of this article!!!

Aaah, home sweet home. Do allow me the freedom to start off with my home state. What is widely renowned as God’s Own Country. Am sure though, that God might be having a slight difference of opinion.

This friend, very appositely called aam aadmi, owns a motorbike. All through his life, he toils hard for buying a Maruti mid-size car [well, a lot of socio-cultural and business revolutions like Hyundai Santros and Tata Nanos do threaten the Maruti dream, but the “status” of owning a car remains unaltered, no matter the brand]. Wealth, however scanty, is ostentatiously displayed, with women (and often men indeed) showing unbounded zeal for 22-carat gold jewellery. The higher the grade of the car one owns, the higher is his “status” in the society. And every person strives to be in a class higher than the one he actually belongs to. A person in the lower middle class strives to show-off as if he belongs to the upper middle class; someone in the latter category displays attire and attitude that is supposedly the trademark of a higher “elite” class.

When it comes to educational qualification, this person is almost certainly a graduate or at least, in too very rare cases, a matriculate least of all. Malayalam medium schools are the places where only the “lower class” peoples’ children go. For our aam aadmi, his dream is to see his child study in an English medium school. And yet, in spite, the English accent of a common man is so very strange and unique that it’s hard to comprehend for many an outsider. And contrastingly, for a state that boasts of near centum literacy rate, the “level of sensibility” is alarmingly low. To be added is the fact that since a significant proportion of the populace are literate, every other person you come across desires a job “in an office, sitting on a revolving chair under the fan.” Hence, the people hard to find by are laborers like painters, blacksmiths, household helpers etc because we believe, these are jobs “not fit for the educated” and it is better to sit at home jobless than take up some of these as vocation. Even though the state is a global tourism destination, tourists – both foreigners and north Indians, are treated as if they come from another planet. A typical Keralite has a disgusting stare towards anyone who cannot speak Malayalam in his vicinity, one that leaves any human being puzzled and often irritated.

The earlier generation Keralites seemingly had a higher degree of civic sense when it comes to etiquette like avoiding spitting on road or throwing waste on roadside, but the modern generation seldom seems to care of those little factors. For a Keralite, communism is a part of the political fabric and for Communists, revolution is an integral part of them. They seem to be a group of people who feel that absolutely nothing in India is correct, the United States ( and CIA ), they claim, are the root cause of all the problems in India, including petroleum products’ price rise and India should learn and practice the policies of China and erstwhile Soviet Republic (curiously enough, they take care not to mention about Poland in any of their propaganda ). And very amusingly, the Left government in the state, which has regularly gone in for increasing bus, auto-taxi and essential commodities like milk prices almost annually, announces a harthal the day after Central government decided to raise the fuel prices, when no other state in the country shut down (Read this together with the fact that Kerala was possibly the only place in the world which held a harthal (declared by the ruling Communists) the day on which Saddam Hussein was executed; not even Iraq would’ve thought of this idea!!)

Blown the trumpet too much. On my home state. I’ll shift the domain north. To the state which I completed my graduation. To Uttar Pradesh.

Talking about the common man here, he owns a bicycle. And a lifelong toil in the fields earns only a lucky few the opportunity to own a motorbike. In villages, which are the places where probability of finding this person is maximum, a car is considered a symbolism of eliteness in a social setup which is still based more or less on a feudal structure. This person is more straight and pure at heart when compared to his counterparts down south (Hold on…we’re not talking politicians here. Those class of people are corrupt – no regional barriers apply there). And he is in general very naive, with rather little “display” of his wealth, if any.

In a general perspective, this person’s educational qualification is relatively low. One cannot expect this person to be qualified above matriculate, or intermediate at best. But the better part is, he is more or less satisfied with his life in his village and in satisfaction index, ranks very high in my view. Anyone with a strong educational background is revered highly in the north Indian village culture. His display of respect towards persons elder in age to himself is very commendable, with gestures including falling onto the feet which are very much absent down south.

Little is he expected to know about politics outside Mulayam Singh Yadav and Mayawati. Any place south of Bambai[Bombay], is, for him, Madras and anyone from there is considered a Madrassi. Basic amenities like power is very scantily available [even heard of places with eighteen hour power cuts!], whereas I remember in the case of my state, there was an outrageous uproar from public when the government tried to implement a half-hour per day “load shedding” power cut. A typical aam aadmi cannot escape the clutches of Paan and Gutkha and has a very unhygienic habit of spitting any convenient place he finds. As such, the level of civic awareness is quite low, propounded by higher amount of illiteracy. As a direct consequence, the levels of hygiene in villages and cities alike are quite poor when compared to towns in Kerala.

Although I’ve heard a lot about the north Indian attitude of travelling ticketless in trains quite widely, I have not found any instance of any such happening personally.

Let me wind up this piece with a couple of outstanding feature of Keralites. Their overwhelming lust for harthals [a re-christening of what is known elsewhere in India as bandh. The Kerala High Court was literally mocked when it banned bandhs in the state and the intelligent political assemblage came out with a new name – harthal] and booze. An eminent social scientist once pointed very accurately that harthal is the only “festival” in Kerala which is celebrated across socio-economic-religious barrier by all the people throughout the state. People now view it as a public holiday, a day when everyone in the family stays at home and enjoys a complete “day-off.” Shops, business and academic establishments are off, public examinations, if any scheduled on that day, are often postponed. Television channels celebrate it as well, with special programmes and new movies on that day, the kind of stuff one would typically expect on a festive occasion or on a regional or national holiday. For a very educated populace, it seems rather an odd phenomenon in stark contrast to Uttar Pradesh, with a significant proportion of the population being relatively illiterate, where life moves on normally, as on any other day during a bandh.

It’s not just quarters like education and health care that Kerala ranks among the top in the country, but also in the consumption of alcoholic beverages. The explosion of number of people consuming alcoholic beverages is a rather recent trend. The state Government owned Beverages Corporation is one of the most profit making public undertakings operating in the state. There have been cases of occurrence of traffic jams in some areas due to the queues in front of Beverages Corporation outlets on the roadside stretching onto the roads.

Been quite a contrast. I have not delved into the cultural or linguistic differences that exist across the two states, but instead, tried to focus on the difference that exists in the attitude and habits of the aam aadmis on either side. Diversity of India is a topic that never ceases to fascinate and there is going to be no dearth on discussions, deliberations and literature on this subject and this is no way meant to be counted among those. I would rather term it a purely individual perspective, how I have seen and experienced life in various parts of the country, in my very short span of life so far.

On the concluding note, I very faintly remember a cartoon that appeared in a Malayalam newspaper sometime in which a “common man” was asked the significance of October 2nd in contemporary India. The reply was, “Beverages Corporation outlets remain closed on the 1st of every month, as a Government policy. In October, the next day being a public holiday due to Gandhi Jayanti, again the outlets are closed. So the first two days of October are dry days and if one wants to have “the stuff”, he must stock it up a couple of days beforehand!! ” Aptly certified by the BBC ( http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8557215.stm ), the alcohol crazy state had recently come up with a brand titled "Jesus Christ". You drink it, you "resurrect" after three days, the analogy to Jesus Christ being crucified on Good Friday and supposedly resurrected on Easter day, two days hence!!!

Information Technology

Aaahh…it was my dream. I submitted myself to those two words. The talk of the town, the buzz of the world.

They called it Information Technology. “IT” was a real cute nickname. The dream of my generation. It was as if some unknown demi-God had just developed the seed of a tree that had the abilities to grow money. It fascinated me.

Those boring classes in Plus One and Plus Two never extinguished the spark in me. Those giant sized dusty reference books that I was supposed to “assimilate” never seemed a burden to me. Nights were never far where I used to picturize myself as a handsome young man in his well-pressed formal attire and tie, sitting in a revolving chair in an air conditioned room in Bangalore, New Delhi, Detroit, New York……or beyond. The traction provided by the smell of afresh bundles of currency in those dreams of mine was more than enough to leap across the hurdle called entrance examinations.

I eagerly waited. In an obscure corner of my engineering college. For the angel called campus selection. And after three years that seemed like ages, the day came. My angel came. I too was selected….into the wings of a company…a by product of “information technology explosion.”

It took my mother a good part of six months to come anywhere near pronouncing the name of my company, recognizably...

Phew...what else in life. Another damn year in this college and then am a free bird I reflected. Working in those heavenly conditions, living in those grandiose villas and stashing away those bundles of money that I’ll continue “earning” into some bank accounts and investment stocks…for me to enjoy later.

The day dawned. My joining day. Afresh in a new set of branded casuals, the keen desire to encounter the world of computers, I set out to my office in the Electronic City in Bangalore. And lo !!!! It was heaven… For a youth of twenty three, who could dream of better prospects in life at this stage itself?

Life at the first week at job strengthened my beliefs. Those instructions from the firangi boss of mine, seemed like music to my ears. The paraphernalia around me never bothered me, the way it used to until a couple of months ago. In spite of sitting motionless in front of my computer from nine in the morning to ten in the night, it never seemed enough for me. The feelings of hunger and thirst seemed ethereal.

Days passed by. With every passing day, it seemed as if my mind had stopped working. Enthusiasm, joy, happiness, eagerness...all these suddenly seemed mere words in a lexicon. Those commands of my Iboss started feeling less like music and more like having a tinge of contempt and haughtiness. The same monotone, sitting in front of the same idiotic computer. Starting to feel dull, was I?

Naah! All these melted away into thin air the day I got my first salary. Not thousands….tens of them !!! More money than I had ruefully counted and given at the counter of my entrance examination coaching institute. At that moment, I felt on top of the world, literally.

But...but what to do with the money?? Never really had the time to spare to eat what were once my favourite food items in the midst of a spare-timeless work routine. Could not even afford to think of a vacation to places I so badly wanted to visit as a kid, thanks to my boss who opined that taking leave was a greater sin than homicide. Aah..no problems...I consoled myself. Sure once in life, I’ll have the opportunity to spend lavishly this hard earned money, the way I desire.

Hard earned money...the way I desire !!!!
Life ceased to flow like music. It was as if time had lost its tempo. A day dawns, a day ends…and life in between these two events never altered. Six days a week, three hundred plus days an year. Couldn’t recognize days and dates, unsuccessful quests for the feeling called joy behind those fat money bags….every passing day seemed like an eternity frozen in time.

Hardly “found time” to go home. Countably few occasions. And one fine morning, I get a call from home. My marriage had been fixed. With those handful of days of casual leave that was mercifully granted at the behest of my Canadian boss, I journeyed home. Bespectacled with a pair of thick lenses coupled with a slightly wrinkled and expressionless visage, no one even dared talk to me. And I was elated for that. Recently, I had noticed…that I had started enjoying solitude more than anything. So far, so good.

The bride too was from my office, they said. Maybe…I reflected. I…not only me, was the same case with everyone...seldom talked. After all, what role has informal chats to do with the Goliath they call information technology, huh?

Marriage hardly did anything to rework the me in me. Just that in what was earlier a “single room” made way to become a “double room.” I shared space with her, never gave a thought to share my life. Before the time sun thought of rising to way after the time when even the moon and stars got tired of darkness, I “realized my dreams”...realized my life, in front of that white monitored devil with, very symbolically, white body and a dark screen. It seemed…no it was as if I had lost the ability...to laugh, to cry, to dream. Times were few and far in between when I and my wife met.

We were close...yet we lived poles apart. No complaints, no remorse….for either of us.

Now, I have stopped dreaming...about future. Those things come to fore only if you have certain goals to achieve, isn’t it? But whenever I do, I feel stranded. Like a little boy, trapped in a tunnel…with the false hope that at the end, there is going to be light. I remember the moment….when I was signing my offer letter, with a proud smile on my face and dreams of a prosperous future in my mind. I remember the enthusiasm, the spark in me….the resolve to earn money, however, whatever the means. After all, this is what I dreamt of from the time I was in high school.

My mind was raring to go. I was ready. To perform. For a profligate life.

I WAS ready...

Today...everything seems frozen. Me, my self, my mind, my character...I even have doubts as to the very existence of some of these. I am not able to laugh aloud at the dreams of a fifteen year old….at least if I could have done that, I would have justified my presence in this world as a human being.

Lying on my bed, this night...naah, my definition of nights once never used to stretch this far; five used to be very early morning for me as was for my mother a few decades ago, I am unable to sleep. Sleepless nights have become way too common nowadays. I looked to my bedside. I could gauge that even my wife was only half-asleep, the way she twisted and turned in her bed so frequently proved it. I thought of the time ahead….those faces that I came across daily but never really generated any emotion in me, flashed across through my mind…my wife, Canadian boss, canteen bhaiyya…. And the recent dreams, in which information technology as a gigantic satan, chased me with loud guffaws and outstretched hands.

I used to see demons in my dreams in childhood. But the presence of my mother at my bedside used to reassure me...that I was safe.

The alarm rang. Three days is what is left in the deadline given to me, to finish my allotted project, which is only just about half done. Three hours is what I slept...oops, no what I spent in bed, trying to sleep. Without a hint of fatigue, I removed my blanket and got out of bed.

Back to office. Back to the lifeless ethos I call life.