O P I N I O N S

THIS ABOVE ALL
Translations of Bahadur Shah Zafar
Khushwant Singh
IN the weekly column I write for The Hindustan Times, I quoted some lines of the last Mughal emperor, Bahadur Shah Zafar (1775-1862).

TOUCHSTONES
Art, books or faith, it’s all a mela
What have they done to promote religious belief, an interest in books or art? If you ask me, very little. They are now rightfully called ‘melas’ because they are spectacular feasts and little else.
Ira Pande
THIS is the season for fairs and festivals. Leading them all by a wide margin is the Kumbh Mela at Prayag, an event that is justly celebrated as the largest congregation of human beings at any one spot anywhere in the world.

GROUND ZERO
The Kargil War – in search of the truth
‘I hold Musharraf responsible for the Kargil attack. I can only tell Mr Vajpayee that I did not know that I was being stabbed in the back by my own general,’ Nawaz Sharif told me while he was in exile in Jeddah.
Raj Chengappa
In Pakistan a controversy has broken out again over who initiated the 1999 Kargil War. It was triggered by the release of a book titled “How Long This Silence”, written by Shahid Aziz, a retired Lt-General who was serving with the ISI during the war.

THIS ABOVE ALL
Translations of Bahadur Shah Zafar
Khushwant Singh

Bahadur Shah Zafar

IN the weekly column I write for The Hindustan Times, I quoted some lines of the last Mughal emperor, Bahadur Shah Zafar (1775-1862). I reproduce two more pieces translated by me:

Baat karnee mujhey mushkil kabhee aisee to na thhee/ Jaisee ab hai teree mehfil kabhee aisee to na thhee/ Ley gayaa chheen key kaun aaj teraa sabro-o-qaraar/ Beqararee tujhey ai dil kabhee aisee to na thee/ Chashm-e-qaatil meree dushman thhee hameshaa lekin/ Jaise ab ho gayee qaatil kabhee aisee to na thhee/ Unkee aankhon ney khuda jaaney kiyaa kyaa jaadoo/ Ki tabeeyat meree maa'il kabhee aisee to ne thhee/ Aks-e-rukh-e-yaar ney kissey hai tujhey chamkaayaa/ Taab tujh mein maah-e-kaamil kabhee aisee to ne thhee/ Kya sabab too jo bigadtaa hai Zafar sey har baar/ Khoob teree hoor-e-shamaa'il kabhee aisee to na thhee.

(I was never at a loss for words, almost dumb/ Your gatherings were never what they've now become./ Who has robbed you of your patience, your peace of mind?/ You were never this restless, dear heart, as now I find./ The assassin's eyes were always my enemy/ They have become even more venomous I can see./ God alone knows what sorcery her eyes contain/ My spirits were never so low,/ as everyone can tell./ The reflection of beloved's face has a new shine./ The full moon never lit the skies with such luster divine./ Why is it that Zafar can do nothing right in your eyes?/ You never behaved like the heartless houris of paradise.)

Once in a lifetime flight Sudhir Kumar Tyagi of Gurgaon has sent me an account of his flight from Kolkata to Jammu which I find amusing enough to share with my readers. “It was one of those happenings which occur once in a lifetime. I was required to attend a business meeting at Jammu. Arriving at Delhi by late evening flight from Kolkata, I got my Delhi-Jammu sector confirmed for the early morning flight on the following day at Indian Airlines counter at the airport before proceeding to the hotel for staying overnight.

“However, next morning I found there was no checking counter for flight to Jammu. I learnt the flight to Jammu had been cancelled due to operational reasons. Since I had an important assignment of attending a meeting with the government at Jammu that day and had got the flight confirmed, I barged into the office of the duty officer of IA and demanded an explanation for such a letdown. The duty officer turned out to be an officer of exemplary good behaviour. He informed me that as a special case that day the normal flight Delhi-Chandigarh-Jammu-Srinagar was being operated by a bigger aircraft Viscount instead of the normal Fokker Friendship and as Viscount could not land at Jammu and Srinagar airports, the flight would operate up to Chandigarh only. They could send me to Chandigarh by that flight and later accommodate me on another flight from Chandigarh to Jammu, as it was being considered to have another special flight later by Fokker Friendship that day to meet certain special requirements which he did not disclose, failing which they could either provide me a car up to Jammu or give me a free stopover at Chandigarh to be able to fly to Jammu the following day.

“Movement towards the destination was preferable. So the duty officer gave me a boarding pass and I was escorted to the plane. I was intrigued as I was the only passenger and that too for a large aircraft that was supposed to take me to Chandigarh. But the suspense did not last long. I saw almost the entire Union Cabinet and several state Chief Ministers entering the plane. As I had reached first, I had occupied the first seat No. IC. Jagjivan Ram was in seat IA and YB Chavan in seat No. IB. My companion in ID was Kamalapati Tripathi. A large number of dignitaries were to proceed to Chandigarh en route to Shimla for a party session and all of them could not be accommodated in a small aircraft. I never enjoyed better service in any IA flight than the service in this chance flight. But little did I know more wonderful things were still to happen.

“As we reached Chandigarh airport, a large number of party workers were lined up to garland leaders alighting from the plane. The treatment did not bypass me either. They put a heavy garland around my neck and touched my feet. I had been pushed by now into a melee of India’s top leaders. Soon I saw an IAF plane landing and minutes later I saw a jeep bringing Prime Minister Indira Gandhi towards us.

“The Chief Commissioner of Chandigarh, standing by my side, frowned and whispered, ‘Sir, you should not have brought this briefcase here when greeting the PM’. ‘But what could I do? I could have left it in the plane but I have been pushed to stand in the queue. I am a passenger and not any leader’. He nearly fainted on hearing my reply. But by now Mrs Gandhi was two persons away, moving towards us, shaking hands with some and doing namastey to the others. She reached in front of me and was confused as she could not recollect when she had inducted this young man into her Cabinet. She shook hands with me as I extended my hand and moved further still straining her memory to recollect this strange fellow.”

TOUCHSTONES
Art, books or faith, it’s all a mela
What have they done to promote religious belief, an interest in books or art? If you ask me, very little. They are now rightfully called ‘melas’ because they are spectacular feasts and little else.
Ira Pande

Crowds at the Jaipur Lit-Fest.

THIS is the season for fairs and festivals. Leading them all by a wide margin is the Kumbh Mela at Prayag, an event that is justly celebrated as the largest congregation of human beings at any one spot anywhere in the world. Close on its heels is the Jaipur Lit-Fest, which is surely the largest congregation of writers and readers at any spot on this planet and last – but certainly not the least – is the Art Summit (now called the Art Fair) held each winter in Delhi that threatens to overtake several other smaller art ‘melas’ held around the world.

Perhaps it is our sheer numbers that make anything the largest event whenever one is organised anywhere in the country, or perhaps it is just our terrific energy and enthusiasm to participate in large congregations. Whatever the reason, it is time to reflect on what they have achieved. Certainly, they have placed us on the world’s cultural map, for no one can deny the enormous trade and revenue they generate and the attention they focus on India. But equally, what have they done to promote religious belief, an interest in books or art? If you ask me, very little. They are now rightfully called ‘melas’ because they are spectacular feasts that add colour and noise to the environment and little else.

In the case of the Jaipur Lit-Fest, it is now mandatory to have a ‘controversial’ episode. Last year, it was Salman Rushdie, who was targeted by the Muslim extremist groups and this year there was a tit-for-tat response for a ban on Pakistani writers called by the Hindu extremists. Thankfully, that lunatic request was a non-starter but then it was overtaken by some remarks that offended the Dalit community. The fact is that the very success of Jaipur’s Lit-Fest has become its greatest liability, for now anyone who wishes to secure his or her two minutes of fame on TV Prime Time has just to find a reason to launch a protest. Of course, our obliging newscasters play the game: after all, heated debates on TV bring in the advertising moolah, don’t they? And what of the interesting panel discussions and celebrity authors who come there? Who cares to sit through those dull debates and discussions? Certainly not the celebrity-hunters armed with mobile phones that capture their moment of fame, standing next to an international author. They move from venue to venue, laughing, eating their samosas and drinking their tea or wine: “It is a mela, yaar!”

All this was brought home to me when I attended a great session in Jaipur between Purushottam Agarwal, Diana Eck and Jim Mallinson on the Kumbh Mela. Diana Eck spoke of a project she is currently doing with architect Rahul Mehrotra and her Harvard University students on the concept of the ‘instant city’ that comes up along the banks of the Sangam that caters to millions of pilgrims and sadhus who come to the Kumbh. It is an academic exercise that touches several areas of human contact, dealing primarily with the notion of urban planning and fleeting habitats. Jim Mallinson is a British sadhu, dreadlocks and all, who came to India to study the Naga sadhus of the Juna Akhara and became a convert. But it was Purushottam Agarwal who reminded us that what we call the Kumbh Mela was once upon a time a congregation of the various heads of the Sanatam Hindu religion who came together at an astrologically appropriate time to debate and discuss the future of their faith. Saints, seers and the learned pundits exchanged their views on spirituality and people heard them expound on life, death and God. Today, it is as if we have sunk to the lowest level of religious belief and decided that the superstitious and pandit-led rituals are greater than the spiritual core of what is possibly the grandest philosophy in the world.

The more we move away from the original Kumbh, the more we begin to focus on what is so immensely impressive: its vast scale, its planning and execution and its outer illumination.

The thought is worth mulling over, for everywhere we have given control over our lives to the dictates of a loud majority. We let our television debates take over what should be an internal dialogue between the mind and heart, our political beliefs to a party of scamsters and hustlers and our own identity to that of the religion we follow. In lit-fests and book fairs, we allow writers and publishers to convince us that if we do not read what everyone is talking about, we must be illiterate, and if we do not appreciate the downright garbage that often passes off as high art, we must be philistines of the lowest order.

Perhaps it is time we re-read the story of an emperor and his new clothes.