The blue bedspread

We all have such moments when on being prompted we walk back through our past, walking some stretches again and again, and pretending to have forgotten some. The memory lane has many nooks and corners, like a deep labyrinth, some straight, others straighter, or some convoluted and others still more convoluted. Some of these lanes have clear cut bold-lettered words which pull us again and again (like my first trip to Nicco Park and how can I forget the day when I purchased my first video game in Singapore, so distinctly do I remember the nicely combed oiled hair of the seller, his store stuffed with infinite numbers of consoles, even toy trains arranged neatly on the right corner). The others, we just pretend to look to the other side. I replayed some of these episodes while reading the book.

The book opens with a phone call to the nameless protagonist that his sister has died and he has been entrusted with her newly born daughter before she can be put for adoption. He brings her and puts her on the blue bedspread. He then starts to pen down the history of his family, his relationship with his father and sister, the mother is almost absent. He takes us on a ride, a ride so meticulously designed that there are no jerks, no honks, and no long stops or irritating delays. There is a fleeting reference to his sodomy by his father, how his father was drunkard and how he used to beat them. The father seems to be broken and there are signs of eccentricity in his behavior. There are brighter instances also when he bought a pair of pigeons for his daughter when she witnessed the death of a pigeon across the street. The protagonist delves in deeper details when he speaks of his unnatural relationship with his sister, how they held each other tight under the blue bedspread and felt each other. These were perhaps the moments of joy for them, the moments when they could escape their father’s anger and violence.  There is a passing reference to his mother, all he remembers is how she used to bathe him on the wash-basin while making gestures to an unknown man standing on the road. All these put in the form of separate stories, along with a number of other narratives which seem to unconnected to the main plot, make up the life of this man.  It is finally revealed that the girl is his daughter.

Writing a story like this, full of family eroticism and illicit incestuous blood relationship, can shock the readers at different levels. The stories of sexual abuse of children and irregular companionship between siblings, written in a jigsaw manner, could have scabbed our imaginations. But the author does a fantastic job in narrating these stories, leaving no sharp edges to hurt the readers. The ride has been made so smooth that these stories seem to hit you like gentle breeze and not as a gale. No one else could have written the same book in a simpler language than Raj Kamal Jha, just like no one else could have conjured images of Kolkata tram lines and middle-class family house-holds. Such is the imagination of the author that he does not even miss the slightest details of the different settings, be it the auto ride to the ghat or the fall of the husband from the roof. The non-linear narrative, using the new-born as a peg, to tell his story keeps the readers on the edges, though I must admit I failed to connect a few incidents without turning the pages back and forth. It’s a beautiful collage of multiple colors blotted sporadically, but in totality is nothing less than a master-piece. 

Animal's People

The survivor of the gas tragedy, a young boy called Jaanwar aka Animal, is a product of tremendous imagination of the author. The author jots down the emotional urges and physical surges of the invalid so dramatically that you can virtually see him in front of you, as if he is not talking into the tape machine, but is ‘f**king’ with your head. Such an intricately detailed plot delves the reader into the snake-like crooked streets of Khaufpur where he is lost in the wide-spread horror and wrath which walk free during the nights and lay trapped in the human forms during the day.

The readers are introduced to the city of Khaufpur (pretend- name for Bhopal) which was once clouded by thick lethal gas coming out of the American company’s factory gate. The central character ‘Animal’ is the product of this tragedy who walks on all four limbs. He looks at the world with scornful eyes as he secretly longs to be a normal human and engage in what normal humans do. His deep love for Nisha and hidden admiration for his love-rival ‘Zafar’ shows his heart is not as deeply lodged in hatred and cynicism as his actions might point. But the story is not only about this Animal’s filthy grudge and sexual frustration, it delineates to numerous other characters who have been the victim of gas tragedy. The author delves into such depths to describe the city and its dwellers that you can actually stand in the middle of Khaufpur and walk up to Pundit Somraj’s house without asking anyone for directions, at the same time waving to familiar imaginable characters. How can you forget Khan, the malformed human embryos who talk to Animal? Such stunning images of these embryos make you sick in stomach. The goodness in the story emanates from Zafar, who has given his whole life fighting against the company, finally ending it with his breath. Doctress Elli, the American doctor who opens a clinic in the neighborhood to help the victims is met with immense hostility until we find out she was not really the agent of the company. The author has brilliantly matched the dissents and pretentious diabolism of Animal with Zafar and Elli’s humanity. No where does the reader have apprehensions about each of these behaviors as each has been intelligently developed during the story. At various places do we see the human side of Animal: his love for apocalypse obsessed French nun, his admittance of all guilt to Zafar, his concern for Aliya. The story, in fact, culminates with a humane Animal.

The author has elaborated some theories at various stages of the story which catches the reader’s imagination. Like the one on promises. How the sun has promised to rise every morning and the sea has promised to cool the parished earth. These have been eloquently spoken by Elli and leave a lasting impact. The other example being Zafar’s belief that Khaufpuris are far stronger than the kampani wallahs as they have nothing to lose, they have the power of nothingness on their side. Look how he paints an ultimate and unambiguous picture of the company in these lines: “Behold, the Kampani. On its roofs are soldiers with guns. Tanks patrol at its feet. Jets fly over leaving criss-cross trails and its basement contains bunker full of atom bombs…..Its stuffed with bank notes….doctors doing research to prove that Kampani’s many accidents have caused harm to no one…thousands public relation consultants…. Job of the PR to tell the world how caring and good and responsible the kampani is…..kampani throwing a party for generals and judges, senators, presidents and prime ministers, oil sheikhs, newspaper owners, movie stars, police chief, mafia dons, members of obscure royal families etcetera etcetera.” Such reliefs offered at various stages of stories give a remarkable insight into the author’s connectedness with the tragedy.

Now focusing on this misshapen survivor, he has created a hard crust around him and pretends to be mostly impenetrable. From his height, he sees an entirely different world, that of pissy gussets and unwashed balls. The some twenty year old boy has clear objectives – first is he wants to walk straight and the second is to sink his beak. He detests the world, can incredibly read your and my mind and is in love with Nisha. He understands how love is sweeter than f***. We may not comprehend the meaning of archaic words like democracy and justice better than him as he has been to the bottom most point of the chasm, smelt the reeking pungent odor of justice, tasted the staleness of sanctimonious human rights, felt the chaff of adequate monetary compensation, heard the cacophony of fixing liability and seen the unsightliness of government’s sympathy, and then climbed back on his four limbs. His magical life carries on within the confines of huge walls which cage the remnants of the factory, the factory that spew a strange gas from its huge metallic pipes, the pipes which lay in shambles, the pipes which now give support to creepers, the pipes which are straighter than this freak’s back. He is not scared of returning to this brick-mortared dilapidated monstrous exhibition of corporate terrorism. In fact, he finds a strange solace surrounded by other four- legged animal who cannot mock his U-shaped back, who cannot imagine him having sex only in doggy –style, who cannot torment the weirdness of his shape and existence.

This work of the author has stabbed my social conscience and also that of hundreds of the fellow readers. His enchanting ventriloquism has dealt a serious issue in a simple, humorous way invoking sympathy. Woven around the secrecy, love, passion, voyeurism and injustice, it symbolizes the small wars waged in different corners in the world against corporate injustices. This particular tragedy strikes a chord with so many millions, not just the victims and survivors, but also those who know such tyranny can be directed towards any of them.

The victims of the tragedy are yet to have a formal closure. The war against UCC or Dow Chemicals is lost in vociferous demands for extradition of the company officials. What about the basic medical facilities at Bhopal? What about the toxic water supply in Bhopal? What about the governments such apathetic attitudes towards its own citizens who walk miles in hope of finding an audience with the PM but are turned away? These questions do not stop here. I raise these questions selfishly because I am scared of the Nuclear Liability Bill, I am scared because DOW Chemical’s is operating profitably from Pune and making pesticides which are integrating into our foods chain. So alarming are the levels of these poisonous chemicals in our food crop that consignments are being rejected from Europe and US. How much more ironic can the situation be? A US based company makes products that cannot be used in the US but in India. How long will this miscarriage of justice carry on? How long are we going to let down Zafar’s and Farooq’s? I don’t intend to go further into these questions as they have all been asked so many times before. I am sure they even haunt the heads of these chemical companies. The politicians working in cahoots with the BP’s and DOW’s can only envisage a world with a dark future, in fact with no future. The struggle in different parts of the worlds has been carried on since ages and will continue to be so till we all start walking on four limbs with twisted backs.

Fireproof

The book gives an account of what raged on the streets of Gujarat during the infamous riots which gripped the helpless nation by its balls. The author leaves no distance uncovered as he describes the events by plunging the readers into three distinct stories- the readers already vulnerable by the Mr. Jay’s misfortune , take the plunge may be to share a part of the tribulation which has befallen him. These stories – the story of Tariq, the story of Abbu and the story of Shabnam, rips the hearts of the readers and slices every cross-section of the pretentious remorse that they might have shown in the hot summers of 2002. The repeated usage of words like fire (then complimented by the use of fireproof) , water, heat, charring, scald, burn makes you feel as if the whole of Gujarat lay in the ovens during those tumultuous times when the barbarism of man was unmatched. What also sets the authors illustrations apart is the unflinching non-display of emotion as Mr Jay witnesses the bombing of the city with dead bodies, dead bodies scattered on the road dividers, those piled up one on top of another covered in white sheets , those who do not even meet proper burial , those who on floor with slit uterus and amputated tongues. He goes to bizarre details of each of these settings with no regard to how the reader might assimilate these over-burdening accounts. I think this is where the author draws his courage from, after all this is his playing field, his settings.

The most striking and enchanting character of the book has to be Ithim – as no one is sure whether it is IT or HIM. This baby is mightily deformed and numerous references to his charred fore-head, funnel-like ears, lip-less mouth formed as the skin is split, no limbs forces the readers to conjure his image and shudder in pain and anguish that how could we all have let these heinous sins happen, how a nation of one billion sat back and comfortably and guiltlessly pushed the blame on others, how we find it more convenient to conjure such images rather than face the real one. The baby was after all , born through the darkest times of human civilization, the lowest point of humanity that we have seen in recent time, the Hitler month in free-India- his ugliness is only representative of the darkness and grotesques and immaturity of the human civilization, how the baby was representative of the dark ages of the civilization, of how the society is yet to come to terms with compassion, of how everyone is still identified by man-made boundaries and strong walls of religion and caste and what not, of how the new, resurgent , shining, incredible India has lost her shone and her people their righteous place. The baby has strikingly beautiful eyes and divinely marked eye-brows, so that it can see how the evil in man manifests and subsumes another man, how the darkness in him absorbs another man, how his caustic vindictive self can slit the uterus and thrash the unborn.

The details of tyranny, as portrayed by the author, seem to re-create those images from news channels in newspapers back in our mind. It gives them life. It gives those dead-bodies a voice to share their story, to share their helplessness, just like the head nurse did, like doctor 1 & 2 did. He even put life in those inanimate things like burnt towel, the book the riot victim was writing in, the watch that was snatched from the another victim. The author has not explicitly taken sides with the fundamentalists or the victims, but his choice of names like Abba, Ahmad, Tariq, Faraz instantly creates ripples in minds as to why he chose these names and who really were at the receiving end.

The author has tried to bring to account who were really responsible for this genocide, who had these implicit assent to this pogrom, who had lent hands and foot to carry out mass-deaths – yes, it was us. It was us, the Mr Jays, who stood back and saw in horror. This horror lent courage to the murderers. This horror tried to cleanse our soles of our actions, it helped in putting up an act of helplessness. This horror which elected the same government back to power for two successive terms. It seems nothing outrages us.

Its all connected.

The events which took place yesterday jolted each and every one of us. But if you look deeper down through the dark tunnel (no, you don’t see light), what you see is a string passing through various events occurring in different parts of the world. Its manifestations are what’re different. I don’t know how many of you would subscribe to my views…

This morning I received a mail and as you all must be reading in the media… the reports of huge amounts being doled out to the AIGs and SACHs by the US Govt., bashing the same people who have channelized millions of dollars through the drain, providing them succor in form of hefty bonuses so that they can squander more and paralyze the already decaying economy. The president and his treasurer have been coddling the Wall Street elite, fretting that if they curtail executives’ pay and perks too much, if they make the negotiations with those who siphoned our 401(k)’s too tough, the spoiled Sherman McCoys will run away, the rescue plan will fail and the markets will wither. Vikram “Pandit the Bandit” at Citigroup, which received $50 billion in bailout money, is pulling a Thain, spending $10 million to renovate his Park Avenue offices, complete with a Sub-Zero refrigerator and “premium millwork” (whatever that is). All this when half of USA’s population is reeling under unemployment and desperation.

This is just one incident.

Let’s look at the second one:

We all raise a hue and cry when it comes to the growing fangs of terrorism... why? Because they traumatize people, make their life unlivable and leave them in a state where mercy also turns its back. Let’s mitigate it a little....terrorists violate our human rights. Deplorable, it is.

Now let’s the see the latest event which has shook us and made so many of us write these blogs.

What happened yesterday... the painful and irrevocable death of one of us. Any of us could have hurt ourselves playing football or basket ball or worse still a ceiling could have collapsed on us (just as it did in front of the Computational Fluid Dynamics lab of the Mechanical Engineering department, just behind VGSOM (though not on a person, thank God for small mercies)). On being asked who is responsible for our lives, the DD and DOSA turned the other way... we all saw that yesterday. We know the reasons behind the collapse of the system......it was not just the Director (I still can’t forget his diabolic grin)... in fact he became the scapegoat.

When we sit back and look at all these events ,what binds them all together is the fact they are all indicative of a decaying and crumbling system which is about to fall under its own weight. Whether its Obama, Osama or our very own "**** " ... (I’m sorry Obama and Osama)... they have all aligned themselves in a way which speaks of "change" and we have been seeing the kind of change that they have been bringing about. Pessimistic moi... but none of us are blind to see that the day isn’t far when most of us will align ourselves in a similar way. It may sound creepy but I have an innate feeling that we are all going to be overtaken by the paranormal and it will take another million years for a new human civilization to be born and start the vicious cycle again.

Where do we go from here? Rage, sabotage, candle marches... will all this resurrect the system? I doubt it. But at least we will have a new hospital... because we are going to need it to admit students who are going to be crushed when the old hostels fail to withstand the weight of an additional storey... coz we are going to need it to admit the family of some faculty because of the walls of his quarter has collapsed... coz we are going to need it to admit the scholars when a ceiling crashes down on them... coz we are going to need it to treat 20000 students who will fall ill because of overcrowded rooms and labs.

So it’s only a new hospital which we need. Isn’t it?