Utopia

Most democracies grant their subjects the right to a full and happy life, if the subjects have the means to get around the quirks of their particular democracy.

In India, for instance, if one has unlimited funds with which one can bribe every government employee from the person who sweeps the streets (or leans drunk on his broomstick at the street corner, anyway) to the Prime Minister who has not even swept to victory in his own constituency, then it’s a wonderful life. In Bangladesh if one can cross the border over into India then the above holds true too. In the United Kingdom, one has to make sure to keep one’s face masked while looting random stores while the country is in the throes of violent riots so that when the rioting is over one can enjoy the loots of labour without being turned into the face of the I’m-so-virtuous-I-turned-my-child-over-to-the-police-for-participating-in-patriotic-looting magazine by own's righteous parents.

I’m not sure what the absurdities of other democracies are, but I’m sure each has its share.

But India is a country more curious than most; it has more than its fair share of eccentricities, like you’d expect from anything that’s more than a few thousand years old: its oddities are more convention inspired than economic-system inspired, having stood the test of everything from monarchy to the caricature of democracy, which is what in place now.

One of our least offensive oddities is that we have signs for everything. Signs that, on the face of it, seem bizarre but if you dig deeper you'll see that they stem from our fundamental lack of consideration for another's convenience and comfort, and a general contempt for civil rights.

Why else would we need signs on the gates of private driveways that tell us "Please Do Not Park In Front Of The Gate"; signs nailed into trees advising us not to "Stick or nail signs into trees"; signs on public walls requesting us to "Please not urinate here"; or signs in public parks telling us not to "Spit or litter in the lawn"?

Why else would we drive over the "Handicapped Parking" sign board in our rush to occupy that very parking spot? Or need a lift-man to ensure the safety of the very people who endanger themselves and him by rushing to squeeze into an already wheezing lift? Or need to be informed about the ‘Silence Zone’ around hospitals that only spurs motorists on to honk louder and more consistently than usual?

I see only one way out. Since we Indians neither fear nor recognize any mortal authority, it is only the threat of pain in the afterlife - everlasting pain - that can make us mend our ways. But Hell, as it is now, is not a very efficient deterrent to discourage bad behaviour. So to make our world a more habitable place, I have here a two-step process to put into place a more effective curb on our selfish ways.

The first is to make the penalty for not leading a model life so cruel that everyone becomes anxious to get himself or herself into Heaven. The second step is to open up the communication channels between the living and the dead. For unless the tormented souls in Hell can get their message across to the people who still have hope, the new Hell will have no advertisement; and marketing is everything in today's world.

However, the idea of a blanket Hell for everyone, one Hell to which all the wicked souls on earth go, is intellectually disappointing. It’s like a party for the Evil. Heaven, on the other hand, is more customized. Sure, there is the usual moksha, God's presence and white, puffy clouds. But there is also the fulfilment of all your desires; and of course every soul is going to have a different set of desires for which it has been sold. Heaven is so much more personalized.

This makes more sense if you think of Heaven and Hell as two, let us say, clubs or restaurants. One is reserved for the elite and the other, well, anyone can walk into it after paying a nominal entrance fee. Being evil is so much easier than being good, even in the widest sense of the terms. So the price one has to pay to get into Heaven is millions more, spiritually, than the price one has to pay to get into Hell. And for such a steep price a little tailoring cannot be begrudged.

This argument is specious: the idea of a blanket Hell leaves much to be desired.

Think about it: what is Hellish for one needn't be so for another, though both might be equally wicked; a relaxing dip in a tub of hot oil after a long, hard life may be just what the doctor ordered for some people for them to emerge all reinvigorated on the other side of eternity.

So what we need are alternative, even unconventional, rehabilitation measures to ensure that the afterlife is daunting enough to keep still-mortal souls on the straight and the narrow path of virtue.

For instance, when a young man who likes to fly down a congested road on his motorbike with his thumb glued to the horn drives abruptly into a lamppost and finds himself being tended to by the guardians of the ever-lasting fire, what we have is a chance to try to direct his more fortunate friends on to the path of moderation. Instead of a warm oil bath, we have a wonderful opportunity to let our creative sadism loose. Imagine how much more effective it would be if this young man, let us call him Unfortunate No. 1, found himself strapped down on to a Hayabusa, a magnificently loud horn at his disposal, an endless stretch of smooth, tree-line road -- just made to speed over-- rolling out in front of him; and only a foot that weighed as much as two bikes put together standing, as it were, between him and his paradise, for all eternity! Now, if, along with this, communication channels between Unfortunate No. 1 and his friends on earth were opened up, we’d be well on the way to Utopia, wouldn’t we?

Similarly, if each of us was faced with the possibility of spending eternity with the thing we love the most on earth just-just out of reach - for ETERNITY -; and unable to do anything about it, I think we’d clean up our acts pretty fast; it would be like the weight lifting off Unfortunate No. 1’s accelerating foot.

A terrorist given all the ingredients to make a bomb that would blow earth out of the solar system, but no mixing cauldron; a nymphomaniac in a chastity belt faced with a line-up of Brad Pitts; a politician with all the money he wants in Hell’s equivalent of a Swiss bank account the number of which he just can’t remember; I can go on forever, quite literally.

Make me Hell’s event manager, and the world will be a better place for posterity.

The Abused Article

There was once a time when the little people of the English language, a, an and the, had a place and purpose in the great scheme of things. They knew where they belonged, who their partners were, and where they would always find welcoming arms. There was no ambiguity about their billet and station in life. They were used when needed, otherwise they stayed safe in the sanctuary of security of purpose, away from the violence and turbulence that plagued the rest of the language.

 

Now their life of comfort has been snatched away, leaving them bewildered about their raison d'etre.

 

I place the blame for this deplorable state of affairs at the door step of modern laxity of speech: when we read with indulgence the ramblings of would-be writers camouflaged in the guise of bringing the language closer to the common man, we condemn the articles to obscurity. What is forgotten in this quest for propinquity is that the language in which they write is only the illegitimate child of English, an indelible blot on the escutcheon of a proud language.

 

There are books being written, by the roll of the printing press, the mantra for which, supposedly, is accessibility of the language. I would say that the purpose of these books is to clothe the ignorance of the language with the garb of innovation. But innovation starts to lose its sheen when researchers abound aplenty.

 

When we can read without wincing a sentence like: "Following are a detail you wanted", we become conspirators in hastening the language to its demise. When the superflous apostrohe in a board indicating that we can buy fresh "Fruit's" here doesnt elict a shocked gasp, at the very least, from us, we can be certain that we are battle-hardened soldiers, whom no horrors may astonish. And when a request such as: "Will you please bring science book which you have gave me earlier", doesnt reduce us to tears, we may conclude that we have lost all our finer feelings and sensibilities.

  

The newspaper: that guide to the language, that torchbearer for the masses; is also the ring master of prowling thieves of the sanctity of the language. The articles are used so frugally that one starts to wonder if they are in short supply, and whether one should use one's contacts in the black-market to start hoarding up on them. But its not just the articles; grammar, in its wondrous entirety, absents itself with an unnerving frequency from the pages of our newspapers. One can see the astonishing prowess of the country's police-force when one reads of twelve men being "arrested with 50 kg of Ganja". What is even more distressing is our placid acceptance of the absurd.

 

Indeed, one doesn't need to go through the trouble of buying a book and reading it, or even turning the pages of a newspaper to find examples of betises that hound the language. Just drive by any random road and you will find ample evidence of abuse. Shops that want to encourage people to sample their 'western out feet' are not hard to find.

 

A hoarding advertising a playgroup for children reads "School for children with health-care"; one can only wonder whether to tack on 'issues' at the end. Send your offspring to such a school, and you can complacently expect a generation that speaks, at best, a perverted variant of the language.

 

Convention seems to suggest that as long as you get your point across grammar is irrelevant. That is, language is nothing more and nothing less than a medium of communication, and the rules of grammar can be buried six feet below the ground as long as we understand each other. In that case, we might as well start burning up the works of art of every language that we can lay our hands up on. The fallacy of this argument is that rules, convention and tradition in every language have developed with the sole aim of communication. Through the ages they have gathered legitimacy,almost a ne plus ultra. Language, some may argue, is not a destination, but an evolution. In forming new traditions, we must not transgress the established.

 

At the risk of sounding pedantic, I must confess that, when it comes to language, my blood doesnt rebel against establisment. Every misused 'a' makes me want to rush to it with first aid, every missing 'the' hits me like the loss of a loved one and each absent 'an' makes me weep.

 

When Lord Byron wrote the lines:

 

"And when I laugh at any mortal thing

'Tis that I may not weep",

 

it must have been in anticipation of times to come.

The Perfect Job

I recently attended a Strings concert; first things first: Wooooh!!! It was brilliant, notwithstanding the fact that though I had a VIP pass I had to be content with imagining Bilal and Faisal and their magic for the first half-hour. Things got better soon; in fact I was able to squeeze my way to the front and for the rest of the concert I was in the first row: the V-VIP row.

And that is when the voices in my head started competing with the acoustic love-making.

As I sat there, the wet grass ensuring that my favourite pair of jeans would forever remember Strings, my ear-drums trying to retreat into my head, a beefy, pan-chewing member of the security came and planted his trouser seat between Faisal and me. This set me thinking: there are some jobs which are best suited to those who would hate the job. Consider, for instance, the security at concerts. It has to comprise of tone deaf people who are intellectually and morally opposed to music. Only then can they successfully glower murderously at the performer and his audience alike. Only then can their mere presence attract magically the weapons of would-be assassins and other silencers of music. Only then can they, when the singer, oblivious to danger, and in the throes of applause, tries to throw himself into the arms of his audience, keep him glued firmly on to the stage. It is only when every member of the security, in harmony, hates music; and consequently, his job, can a singer tour the world, wooing audience after audience and then proceed, each night, to sink into safe slumber. It is the ideal arrangement.

Imagine the disaster that would follow if the managers of concerts had not the good sense to steer clear of music-loving muscle-men to ensure the safety of the singers. Were this to happen, this is what I envision: The concert is on in full swing; the audience is in a trance; the star is the hypnotist; the security sways as a body to the music - eyes closed, mouths gently agape, puddles of drool at their feet - suddenly shots ring out: the drummers are shot and masked men emerge from the audience, leap on to the stage and drag the lead singer away even as the hands of each member of the security move, as one, to grope drunkenly at their respective holsters for their guns. This makes the headlines in the country's newspapers the next morning, completely overshadowing routine political upheavals. The tearful why-was-I-so-lazy-about-filing-my-divorce-papers wife now has to run to the stunned insurance company which will have to come up with schemes to evade payment ("We told you not to employ a music-loveing security, you should have made them plants in the audience instead.", "We told you not to tour in such an uncivilized place as India."). The next thing you know, the ransom has been coughed up and the singer emerges, gaunt and humble: filled with new respect for life, all set to write a heart-rending account of his stay with the kind-hearted barbarians of a third-world country and grammarians across the world wait with bated breath for another sock in the jaw for the language.

And all for the want of a music-loathing security.

This is not the only profession in which a job-hating victim would make for a better employee than a willing drone.

Take surgeons, for example. A surgeon who is a little squeamish about blood would be vastly more desirable than a bloodthirsty one. Think of the massacre that a surgeon with a case of the blood-lust can unleash!

Writers, too, are better when they are miserable about everything in general, and about life in particular. Byron, even as he was being hounded by most European nations, churned out beautiful poetry. Indian writers too uphold the literary tradition of 'the more suicidal, the better' works of fiction.

In conclusion, what any young person about to begin the very serious life-work of earning his living has to decide at the very outset is: does he want to enjoy what he does or does he want to be good at what he does? For, as we have just established, in most noble professions excellence and passion are incompatible.