Refresh @ 10 - IX

STORIES as that of the Baria man-eater can qualify as once-in-a-life-time for a hack. A Leopard in the jungles of Panchmahals and Dahod had turned to killing humans and had eaten up over a dozen in less than two months. Apart from becoming a local terror, the cat had become a big story for its guile at deceiving the forest department. Innumerable bait-cages lay strewn in its track to no avail. I made at least three field trips to cover the sensation, reliving the Jim Corbett chapters from school textbooks on the Nanital man-eater. 

On one such trip, we came to know that the cat had made a fresh kill of an old woman in a village of Devgadh Baria. As we were near by, I and photographer Chandan Giri decided to visit the spot. The hut was at some distance in the fields at the base of a hillock. We had no option but to leave our car and walk the distance – about half a kilometer from the road. We must have done about 200 steps through the standing Maze crop, me with a stick in hand and Chandan following, when a humming noise distracted us. Or rather got us focused. It was a consistent sound of grrr grrr grrr. I froze in my steps. So did Chandan. I poked the stick left and right in the maze with trepidation taking over. Was the cat lurking somewhere around? Before I could sense more, Chandan whispered a fearful ‘Sirrr’ and scooted back in the direction of the road. In less than a split second I followed suit. 

It was too risky to even bother to confirm if it was the man-eater in the thick vegetation. I thought Chandan had seen something. We ran helter skelter as they say till we reached the car, breathless. I asked Chandan if he had seen something. He said he thought I had and that’s why I had stopped. Even as we gathered breath, we realized the humming had not stopped yet! That’s when we looked up. In the sky – a plane was passing over causing the sound.

The whole setting – fields, jungle, village – and the story in our mind had created a hallucination where we thought we encountered the man-eater cat. By this time an administration car came to where we were standing and informed that the half eaten body of the woman had been found some 3 kms away and had been taken to hospital for post-mortem. We were relieved. Though the hallucination was over, we both had no stomach to take the track again.

But the story I wrote following the visit can be seen here: http://cities.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=63637

Congress’ Gujarat Puzzle – I

PRESS note journalism – turning news stories out of official releases – is the laziest form of reporting, and hence rightly derided by more energetic of the hacks. But at times they can present a telling picture, revealing a phenomenon in all its sharpness.

So this is about press notes of the opposition Congress and the ruling BJP of January 24. Taken together, the two presented succinctly the why and how of Gujarat's present politics - and more importantly a picture of Congress's state of morass.

The Congress communication headlined the struggle of people in Kutch, Saurashtra, and north Gujarat for water and painted a grim scenario. It quoted from information already in public domain, about the waste of Narmada waters in the absence of third tier distribution network of canals across the state. Understandably, putting all blame for this on mis-governance of the ruling party.

Ideally, one would expect this to be a juicy prospect for the Congress party ahead of local body elections in February. But that’s where the contrast lay. For, the BJP communiqué of the same day headlined party’s victory on 53 seats in various municipal bodies across the state uncontested!

Meaning Congress conceded these many seats even before a single vote is polled. Of the 53 seats claimed by BJP as won uncontested, 34 come from Saurashtra region as per the release. They include 20 of 21 in Halvad of Surendranagar, 10 of 21 in the Kutiyana municipality of Porbandar, nine in Jafrabad town of Amreli district, three in Talaja of Bhavnagar. And as if to rub it in, two Muslim candidates also won in Junagad by-poll on BJP ticket, again uncontested.

I made a dozen calls and checked municipal water availability in all the towns named above. It is once in two or three days. Junagadh city is divided into two halves cut in the middle by a railway track. The old city on the right gets water once in 2-3 days, while the new city has no piped water delivery system. The municipality has put up large tanks at the entrance of societies that are regularly filled using tankers. In Rajkot, similar story is repeated with even greater dependence of private water suppliers. Of smaller towns less said the better.

In Amreli, a rich farmer friend of mine says that there are villages where it’s difficult to marry off boys as girls know they would spend half their life fetching water. From personal experience I can say that roads can be really bad in Saurashtra, otherwise a USP of much of Gujarat.

So can we safely conclude that electoral victory in present day Gujarat is not connected with governance delivery? While an answer to that would need a longer post, what seems clear is that Congress is rudderless. I found out that the fiasco of losing seats uncontested happened because local leaders at these places stuck sweet-deals for themselves with the BJP units – clear case of cadres having no faith in the leadership. Otherwise, how can one explain that despite a fertile situation on the ground the party has no ranks, no cadres, and obviously no leadership to turn it to its advantage. As a folk saying goes, you can bring the horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.

Sati, Somnath, and Rajiv Bhai...

MY respected senior and one time beat colleague in Gandhinagar Rajiv Shah recently wrote a blog on litterateur-politician K M Munshi’s Jay Somnath and the practice of Sati as portrayed in the novel. In his piece, Rajiv bhai recalls the historical as narrated by his Baa during summer breaks from school. For some reason, he selectively remembers only the chapter on Sati, terms it an evil practice, and goes on to brand it an “evil Hindu ritual” in the same breath. Rest of the blog focuses on how the novel seeks to glorify an understandably abhorrent practice.

Though Rajiv bhai also mentions studying about reformist Raja Rammohun Roy’s work against Sati in passing, I thought the focus on the subject needs a certain perspective that is missing from the write up. Like him I too had to dig into memory and go back to my preparations for the civil services exam I took in 2000-01. History was one of my electives.

Wars in ancient times were not fought on borders as now, with rules of engagement driven by some convention authored in rarified climes of a Swiss resort. Wars were a no-holds-barred contest in which the winner took all, with women seen as legitimate war-booties, to be dishonoured if met with resistance. It was only in this limited context that the practice of Sati arose, gaining ground toward second millennium coinciding with the invading hordes from central Asia during what constitutes the medieval period of Indian history. Munshi’s Jay Somnath is a record of exactly this period.

But what is important for our purposes is that the practice never got mass approval. In any case it was never eulogized. I recall studying that King Harsha, who ruled much of India immediately after the classical Gupta period, prevented his sister Rajya Sri from committing Sati. She had escaped a marauding army that had defeated her husband, the Maukhari king of Kanauj, and was literally snatched from the pyre by Harsha as she tried to self-immolate.

Kadambari, a Sanskrit text written by Harsha’s court poet Banabhatta, in fact rails against the “evil” practice. It calls Sati a “pointless” path followed by the illiterate, infatuated, and the ignorant! Bana termed it an act of the rash who took a narrow view of the things. According to him, it was a foolish blunder that brought no good whatsoever to the one who is already dead, and amounted to the sin of suicide by those who committed it.

To underscore that Sati was never extolled in the period under review, we have the example of Padma Purana (written about 1000 A.D.) which says that though it might be noble for Kshatriya women to commit Sati (being directly affected by the ravages of war), it was not to be committed by other women.

And even as we see numerous instances of Jauhars by Rajput women – the most famous one of Rani Padmini – given the times they lived in, we have the example of Rani Ahilya Bai as well. From the Maratha dynasty of Indore, Ahilya Bai’s husband Khanderao Holkar had died in the battle of Kumbhet, prompting her to take to the pyre. But she was stopped by none other than her father-in-law Malhar Rao who explained to her that the conditions that prompted the Jauhar of Padmini did not exist for her. This must have been around 1750.

Why Rajiv bhai chooses to focus on Sati and its glorification in Munshi’s novel is not clear. Perhaps the answer is in how he frames the central question. According to him, it is “Should one see Somnath from Munshi’s eyes?” After which he brushes it with the paint of national revivalism. Thankfully, he does not term it as Hindu revivalism. Also, he refers to Munshi’s tale as “history” in double quotes not specifying whether by this he is questioning its authenticity, for, when it comes to Romila Thapar’s account he accepts it as “received wisdom” with no double quotes this time. On the contrary if he is merely indicating towards it as an alternative narrative of history, one would say what’s wrong with that?

Refresh @ 10 - VIII

APART from the classic definition of news as ‘dog bites man’ there can be numerous ways in which a trainee reporter finds what constitutes news. The experience can be sometimes hilarious. It was probably the second month of my traineeship at The Indian Express, and hence a period of excited learning on the job. The Resident Editor of the edition had come visiting from Ahmedabad. Perhaps a cow had roughed the edges of his car, or some such thing, because he was livid that Baroda had more cows and fewer helmets on the roads than Ahmedabad. Promptly a campaign was decided. One of my colleagues was deputed to find out the status of cow containment by municipal authorities and yours truly was asked to take up helmet wearing as a campaign of sorts, as health was my beat at the moment. Meeting over, I left for the SSG Hospital as it was the hub of the beat. There, at the Medico-Legal Office (MLO) where all police cases would be registered, I came to know that a case had reached the hospital in which a rider had fallen off his bike and the accident had proved fatal. And guess what, he was trying to avoid a cow! It was like hitting two birds with a single stone. I immediately called up the bureau chief in excitement. Believe it his excitement was even more uncontainable. He shouted: “Excellent!!! Great, get the story,” before commanding what all he wanted in it. It was a stark if a little funny initiation into what constitutes news. A boy had to lose his life to fit into a journalist’s idea of a great day’s work.

Refresh @ 10 - VII