Sometimes time demands other things from one which hold at bay activities of desire till later. I have written many blog posts in my head all these many months because writing is like painting for me; even when I am not in my studio, I conjure images in my head continuously….
Illness has dotted this new year of 2014; both for me as well as within the family. With such challenges we begin to comprehend the real meaning of energy and life. A new cycle of experience is charted and old methods of adaptation facilitate change, making for new harmonies in otherwise discordant situations. Hopefully the balance, though tenuous, is now in place and reordered structures of work slowly set a new normalcy.
I was unable to vote as I was out of the country. And mores the pity as this time more than ever I so desired to execute my voting franchise. The country as it calls for change from the weak governance of a government that took its mandate and vote of confidence perhaps too lightly, now sets itself up to face a regime that will hold conservative and regressive ideas on culture; and design a new vocabulary to accommodate and sells its agendas in the fast track of supposed progress and development.
I fear that in truth all countries with political histories that have had outside agencies govern them find their greatest moments of political clarity at the time of their freedom movements and the initial years of self rule. It is perhaps the only time when political service holds the greatest ideals and is relatively less imbued with corrupted practises.
India now is a cacophony of multiple roars….all deafening and sounding ominous without the slightest overtone of comfort and peace. Like a bad hazer party that makes mud pools to initiate the incoming fraternity on many a Western university campus, the Indian political campaign trail has the equivalent in the mud slinging that is often crude and violent in nature during campaign speeches. The palpable aggression that is omnipresent which does not tolerate any differing opinion other than which is being rammed down ones throat as a monolith truth is being showcased with high TRP ratings by news channels. These programs all sound the same and feature the same people and air the same cacophony that leaves one exhausted and bewildered and without much hope.
Is my India slowly fading away? That vision of modernity that is to up hold humanism over caste and creed and work to dispel religion as a vote bank card, and hold instead democracy and progress at the fulcrum of driving our nations future? What I see is a new re-drawing of a national agenda that appears to pull region and caste into the belly of political discourse; and the attempt for a new governance to originate from a mindset that chooses to view Indian culture from the prism of Hindu accordance, desiring to make this the new definition of "the Indian way of life".
As the 16th of May draws closer I fervently hope that the secular forces of politics within India can make its presence felt in a significant manner to reinstate itself with new vigour and atone for its dismal performance. If not then we certainly are in for a new chapter of Indian political history, the consequences of which I remain deeply uncertain of.
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