When the Heart Speaks

RAJESH SINGH


Does He know a mother’s heart?
By Arun Shourie
Harper Collins
Rs 599/-

At the core of this book lies a heart. A heart that is in shock, in grief and alight with anger. It pines for answers. But the heart is a useless instrument to summon when it comes to rationalizing, to seeking explanations for excesses. It is more so the case when the target of those excesses is your beloved child and you remain a helpless spectator. And when you are told that the tragedy has been visited upon by God – and He knows best – your heart sighs and accepts the explanation without a contest. But the mind does not, often. The heart is so giving, so magnanimous that it is ready to “forgive” God, but the mind is less charitable. It demands credible answers; it demolishes established theories and seeks a way out of the emotional muddle. Thus, the mind and the heart enter into a confluence of conflict – as they do in the book – resulting in a touching yet seemingly detached scholarly study of why God (or religion) cannot be the answer to everything.

Does He know a mother’s heart? Arun Shourie does not pose a question here, he taunts. Of course He does not, is what the author really means to say. Because, if God did He would not have allowed an innocent boy – the author’s son – to be struck by a debilitating physical illness at birth, immobilizing him for life. Did the Almighty not have concern for the boy – who has not, could not have, done any wrong? Did He not pause for a moment to imagine the pain He had caused to the mother, for whom her child is the world? And what wrong had the mother done, by the way? Struck by the multiple shocks, the author could have easily turned this book into a personal journey of pathos that begged sympathy and drew tears from the readers. But Shourie, seizing this moment of private grief, launches into a detailed critique of various religious texts in a bid to be enlightened. Sadly, he finds no solace, and the effort only ends up raising uncomfortable questions.

We may or may not accept the author’s premise or his conclusions, entirely or partially, but we should not impute insidious motives to him, as some have done. One theory is that, politically frustrated, Shourie has exploited his personal grief to corner attention and sympathy – and makes some money in the process. This is a downright mean interpretation that can come only from a sick mind. The book compels you to think, re-evaluate earlier held beliefs. The end result may still be different from what the author has arrived at, but that does away from the importance of the process.

Also, as the author says early in the book, “It is not just one child. Millions and millions of children suffer, as do millions and millions of adults. That has to be explained. That apart, does the argument not work the other way? Assume that only one child is suffering, our Adit alone. As Allah has the power to create this magnificent and infinite universe, can’t he help that single child?”

There is no disputing the fact that the book is indeed a personal – and personalized –journey that the author has undertaken. We can relate to some of his observations, we cannot to others. Yet, there are notes that sink us into the depths of thought, a passage like this one:

“‘Let go,’ we are taught. But let go of what? The condition that confronts us is not curable; it is not going to go away. So, it is not that condition that we can ‘let go’. In the end we learn that it is the reactions to that condition that we have to let go. The condition lasts. The need for serving lasts. The reactions invade our mind again and again. As we observe them over the years, observing the mind becomes a habit. And we are transformed.”

If pain attracts more pain, the pained also gravitate towards those similarly afflicted. Shourie digs out passage after passage from our ancient scriptures cutting across religions that depict the sufferings of not just ordinary people, but those considered by God Himself to be close to Him. The author’s argument is two-fold: if God decides to be brutal to even his most faithful followers – at times to test them, on occasions to merely reiterate His omnipotence – what can the lesser mortals expect of Him? Secondly, why should even God have the right to devastate you without offering solid reasons, hiding behind vague excuses like: the human being deserved it for some sin he had committed, if not now, surely in a previous birth? Shourie is dissatisfied, and that he demonstrates in one scathing dissection after the other of our scriptures.

But for all the religious incorrectness the author shows throughout the book and his emphatic tone, one is left wondering whether he has actually dumped religion as an illusion, and God as non-existent. Or does he acknowledge their presence but dismisses the theory of their compassion and fairness? After all, the acceptance of a divine force does help in closing arguments as well – as much as it did in opening new lines of dispute for Shourie. If there is no God, compassionate or otherwise, whom do you blame for your troubles in desperation – the next door neighbour? Where do you take your very private grievance for redressal? Who will the author hold accountable for Adit’s condition?

Of course, the issue appears less complicated if we accept the author’s following premise:
“Suffering is a problem that requires an explanation only if we posit a God. Otherwise, it is just what Donald Rumsfeld, the former US Secretary of State would say, ‘Stuff happens’.”

Grappling with unresolved issues, Shourie finds some relief in the teaching of the Buddha. That is welcome. In dismissing the role of some past karma to justify present sufferings, the author is absolutely right in saying that “the deed that is required to overcome the effects of karma and chance is not a havan or a pilgrimage, but one that unweaves the consequences of our original deed and of chance, here and now. Abandoning everything to serve and love the child, not running from one holy place to the other.” But this is a hard lesson he learnt through experience; he went through the motions of visiting various places of worship in the desperate hope of a miracle for his son.

Buddhism is also a religion, and Buddha is God-incarnate. The great man was moved by the human sufferings, but even after his Enlightenment he could not wipe off those sufferings. In the end, there is a lot to be learnt from such sufferings. The author is so right when he observes: “No reader will think that I have learnt the lessons fully, and I hope that no reader will think that I think that I have learnt even a fraction of them.”

Read the book with an open mind and a critical eye, by all means. You will find flaws and discover faults of reasoning. But read it with your heart, and you will melt.

Hazare is the real Singham

RAJESH SINGH

Ever wondered why an ordinary film such as Singham has turned out to be a smash hit? There cannot be any cinematic value to explain that, because the Ajay Devgn starrer does not even pretend to have one. The fight sequences are Rajnithanthesque, the songs are mediocre and the acting is barely passable. If that is not enough, the film drags in parts. Yet, it occupies the pride of place as among the top first-week earners in Hindi film history. The question, then, is: What went right?

It’s the theme, stupid. The good cop versus the corrupt politician. That clicked. That united the film-goers across the country into one solid mass of Singham supporters. Religion did not matter, caste did not matter, region did not matter. Nothing mattered, except the fact that the corrupt politician should be taught a lesson, was taught a lesson. Those who have watched the film will know what the lesson was. No law of the land will endorse that punishment. The viewers who saw it being rendered on the screen knew that, and yet they cheered and whistled every time the politician and his henchmen were put to the test. The millions of people who flocked — and continue to flock — the halls to watch it all happen were, in fact, living out their dream of putting the corrupt politician in place. The success of Singham demonstrates the people’s ire towards our errant politicians, and reinforces the growing belief that, given a chance, they are in no mood to allow matters to deteriorate any further.

This is just the sort of sentiment that social activist Anna Hazare has capitalised on across the country, much like the film’s director Rohit Shetty did. Singham’s box office performance and Anna Hazare’s success have, therefore, much in common. Rest assured that were there to be a nationwide referendum on the Lok Pal Bill, the people would overwhelmingly throw out the Government version and opt for the one proposed by Anna Hazare’s group, even if one takes into account some minor changes here and there. The response would have been as dramatic as the film has received. The veteran Gandhian is the real-life Singham, though his methods unlike those of Ajay Devgn — who plays the duty-driven police officer — have not involved pounding the skull of the crook with the swiftness of a meteorite hitting the earth, and flooring the guy in the process yet he has done enough to more than rattle the Union Government, which is now truly scared of his protest fasts.

Having seen on two previous occasions the kind of massive support he garnered from across the country, not to mention on the Internet, the UPA Government this time decided to dilute the impact by seeking to tether Anna Hazare by denying him permission to protest at Jantar Mantar from August 16. The Government suddenly woke up to the ‘fact’ that the place was too small for large-scale protests.

This time the Government has to also contend with another problem — that of the Opposition raising questions over its Lok Pal Bill draft. Leaders from the Left and the NDA (Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar stands out) have rubbished the draft and demanded the inclusion of the Prime Minister under the Bill. Of course, the Bill has still a long way to go before it becomes law, and it is possible that some of the concerns raised by Anna Hazare’s team could be incorporated in the final version. But for now, the Government will have a lot of answering to do.

The challenge to authority is in itself a daring act. In Singham, the protagonist invites trouble by doing so. He could have simply allowed the system to remain in the rot it was, and steered clear of change, something that several of his colleagues in the police had done and survived well enough. To return to the analogy, Anna Hazare and all those who are feeling stifled by prospering corruption in high places too could have avoided the turmoil by silently operating their non-Government organisations and staying away from directly confronting the political system. But they chose the harder option. The honest police officer in the film had to not only battle the wily neta but also his own colleagues who had either resigned to the corrupt system or become an active party to it. Here is another lesson: Singham could not perhaps have succeeded so spectacularly without the support of his colleagues who rallied behind him. And they did that because they were fired by the zeal of that one colleague. The change of the heart, the firing of the imagination and the belief that things can be improved if one is willing to pay the price, is at the core of Anna Hazare’s campaign.

It is not the case that each and every individual that is backing Anna Hazare is squeaky clean, nor is there an argument that even his close associates are entirely above board. These are issues that Anna Hazare’s critics have often raised. The point is that, despite all of this, they have come out in open support, signalling that they are amenable to personal change — if need be — for the larger cause. Singham’s colleagues too lost no time in personal makeovers once they were convinced that the time had come to shed their spinelessness. They knew they could erase their sordid track record only by backing the protagonist to the hilt.

Singham has some funny moments, the dramatic reliefs that Shakespeare so adroitly inserted in his plays. Some of those scenes involved the chief villain and his personal aide. They are occasions for hearty laughs. Sadly, there is nothing funny in the antics of some of our politicians who have made it a full-time commitment to ridicule the civil society movement and invest it with intentions that it never harboured. For instance, Anna Hazare and group were accused of trying to supersede Parliamentary democracy by insisting on their version of the Bill. Yet the fact always was — and the activists always said it — that their Jan Lok Pal Bill could pass through only with the approval of the people’s representatives in Parliament. That it was entirely up to the political system to accept their version or dump it. All that Anna Hazare and his team said was that they retained the right to protest peacefully and democratically if they were unhappy with the Government’s version.

In Singham, an entire village rose in protest when the corrupt and ‘killer’ politician along with his goons tried to browbeat the honest officer at a police station. It is that mass movement across the country that Anna Hazare often talks of. He wants each one of us to be a non-violent Singham. Will that happen?