An Ode to the Horse

Prologue

In the seventh month of 2012, the world saw a square shaped man, with a moon shaped face follow his own style, and sing and dance. Through explosions, boat rides, sauna baths, curvaceous bottoms, white wigs, pink trousers and stables… he sang and danced in his own style…O Pan Gangnam style. He sang aloud,

“A girl who does not wear low-cut dresses but looks so sexy,

That kind of sensuous girl

I am a man

I am a man who looks gentle, but the time to play comes, then I can be willing to change in accordance with it.”

(translated version)

Then he raised his hand and swirled the invisible whip and danced his now famous horse riding step. The step that has united cricketers, pimply teenagers, testosterone pumping superstars, shaadi baraats, hot dog hogging kids and more…The sexy and demure girl would look on invitingly, while the man would play when required. But…

What if the bolts were not locked in the stable featured at the beginning of the video? Where would the horses gallop to? What if they did not want the square-moon man to ride them or even emulate their march? Were they hurt when after that one shot at the outset, they remained invisible through the lashes across 4 minutes 13 seconds of the video? But how would all this matter? Banality check.

“”Once upon a time, apparently some tribals in the Himalayas discovered Shilajit. The magical elixir of libido and potency. Yes, that’s Arnab Goswami… tonight we will be gulping him down again for the next spurt of nervous excitement. “

In the ninth month of the year 2012, Longines unveiled Simon Baker as one of the brand ambassadors of its ‘Elegance is an attitude’ advertising campaign. At the first photoshoot for the campaign, the Elegance watch predictably glowed on Simon’s hands as he looked approvingly at a thoroughbred racehorse, lightly holding his leash. The setting was the regal racecourse at Château de Chantilly. The perfect light, the charming face, the sleek watch and the punchline… a born to be successful campaign. But…

Where did the droopy eyes of the horse look? Were they happy eyes or sad? What if the horse did not want to be part of the shoot? Or, perhaps he did not want to be photographed at that angle. But how does all this matter? Banality check.

Between these two events and before and after these two events… so much more happened or seemed to happen. More elections were won and lost; new commissions were set up on the graves of old commissions; more candle light vigils came out as more girls were brutalized; bombs continued flying off towards new and old targets; settlements continued to be built on encroached upon lands; more awards were doled out as forests threatened to become shining asphalt…and the world moved on or moved back to the next breaking news. So, yet another year drew to an end with new resolutions, jubilations and flash mob dances. Now, as channels, magazines embark on their search for their next icon, the next person of the year… we wondered… at a time when the word ‘change’ is the cruelest joke, a joke that has been so abused that we wondered… could we stretch it further? Could we really have a Person of the Year cover? And then we looked back at those listless eyes… the animal which wasn’t meant to have a voice, which was meant to be there to segue into the given purpose, be it a chic print ad or a cheeky music video. The perfect wallflower… the horse! The ‘you’ and ‘me’, who live through our individual battles…who make love, eat, defecate, earn, spend, reproduce, live, die… the banal, the everyday. When each day, the noose seems to get tighter, we still live a million lives… the aloof, the callous, the enraged, the quiet, the stoical, the silent, the angry, the hypocritical, the common, the quotidian… so that’s that. No grand strategies, no pandering to embedded interests in the garb of celebrating grand ideas. NO ONE PERSON OF THE YEAR.

Just an ode to the unheard voice, the silenced hopes and aspirations… in the year of the horse.

Thou shall die

The day was 15th August 2004. My cousin turned 5, six days back. Her parents wanted to celebrate her birthday in style. So they chose the holiday to throw a party. A day back, Dhananjoy Chatterjee was hanged to death for the rape and murder of a 14 year old. As the strains of Aye Mere Watan Ke Logon wafted into the community hall, it seemed the world could not be a better place. Lovely cake, pretty icing, piping hot fish fries, candies, pretty dresses and an animal executed finally, 14 years after committing the crime. His feet stared at you as shots of his shrouded body were splashed on the newspapers, the channels diligently recreated his last moments… how he wrote letters to his wife, his father, how he had some curd and sweets before being led to the gallows. Party ended, celebrations closed. But did the state succeed in making an exemplar out of Dhananjoy? Did the rapes stop?

We just moved on. 8 years later, today as I write this (22th December), another girl is battling for life in a Delhi hospital. She has been gangraped. The grisly details need not be reiterated as the Arnab Goswamis and Rahul Kanwals of the world have repeated them ad infinitum. They scream, “Death! Death!” and feed into frayed nerves. Anuja Chauhan, who made a factor out of Zoya, demands, “Just as there is a dalit votebank, do you have a votebank of rapists?” while Rahul screams, “After this small commercial break, we will discuss how can girls prevent being sodomised.” And Arnab demands answers, “Right here, right now.” Yes, the tweets are overflowing with suggestions of castration, public rape of rapists. Arnab shrieks that there can be only black and white and exemplary punishment means only death. So there you go! The agenda of the day…

Sensitisation of the police while dealing with victims, speedy trials, contours of the term ‘rape’, life imprisonment, general lawlessness… these pointers are needless, just plain and simple death!

Once upon a time, apparently some tribals in the Himalayas discovered Shilajit. The magical elixir of libido and potency. Yes, that’s Arnab Goswami… tonight we will be gulping him down again for the next spurt of nervous excitement. Yes…more facebook pages will be created for death sentences, more vigils and more updates and more politicians will be milking this event dry. It is news that Jaya Bachchan stood in the Parliament for 150 minutes in protest and Sonia Gandhi visited the victim for 23 minutes. Times Now has launched its own Where is My India campaign. You can send 3 rupees smses and recommend harshest of harsh punishments… Soon, all this will be done and dusted for the next gamechanging event. The Keenan Santos who died protesting against the harassment of a friend (as passersby looked on) becomes the Ravinder Pal Singh who died protesting against the harassment of his daughter and then both become dated events but the nameless, faceless ladies will still continue boarding buses, late evening trains from workplaces… and some will still continue to dare and bare and drink and make merry… the wallflowers, they? The horses…

Thou shall not protest

Gurvinder Singh’s Anhe Ghode Da Daan (Alms for a Blind Horse), based on the novel by the same name by Gurdial Singh, opens on the night of a lunar eclipse. There’s a myth that some ‘lower caste’ people in parts of Punjab go around on the night of a lunar eclipse, begging for alms in the name of the blind horse, the horse which is now unfit for racing or  for any other job. So he needs help. But in reality there’s no horse, it’s just the mendicant who is looking for help. The man who is the blind horse… The film diligently maps the daily lives of some farmers who work on the fields of a rich landlord. One of their houses has been razed because the landlord has sold off the land to an industrialist. The farmers protest. One of their sons is a rickshaw puller in the city. He too, is going through a lot of turmoil in his life, a life which makes sense only when he is drunk. There is hunger, there is love, failed attempts to die and a failed attempt at protest… life goes on. One keeps searching for newer ways to eke out a living as cultures, languages, ways of living die.

Nandigram becomes Dubrajpur…more police firings at more unarmed villagers. Workers protest for more wages, less punishing hours. Their castes are abused. A fight results in a death and then they are labeled Maoists and imprisoned. Professors, cartoonists ridicule the state and are jailed. While some people’s freedom and creativity are throttled, there are others, who— almost as a nod to black humour— make a career out of those jail days, appearing on reality shows. And then there are the nameless others who quietly go on scribbling, ploughing, labouring…

Another speed breaker for their journey. The latest draft of the Land Acquisition Bill rechristened as Right to Fair Compensation, Resettlement, Rehabilitation and Transparency in Land Acquisition Bill, cleared by the cabinet, states that consent of those dependent on land for livelihood will not be required. A major boon for the industrialists as securing consent of land-dependents without ownership rights was like a Gordon’s knot, a knot that even a 34 year old government could not open for a mutant like car.

So yes… that’s the new definition of consent. Between a Sheila Dixit who thinks that 600 rupees is enough for a household of five and a Modi who is hailed as a paragon of administration, the silence expands. The gritty silence of the million horses who fight the nameless wars before complete surrender…

Thou shall still live

The mercury has dropped considerably over the last 2 days. Smoking tea in the delicious sun that floods my verandah…pure bliss!  As I looked on today morning, I noticed the furry cat in my lane, frantically running around and then saw the almost still body of its kitten. It had probably died in the cold, last night. Just then, my shrilly neighbour came out huffing and puffing with a bowl of milk and a spoon. She tried feeding the kitten. Its teeth were clenched. She had almost given up hope, when it started sucking on the spoon but not for long. It was too broad and sharp a surface for its little mouth. Then I noticed a  middle aged woman— also on my verandah and with whom my regular fights, makes life more enriching— resolutely walk down the stairs, to the street with a dropper in hand, perhaps one she had kept as a memory of my ink-drenched-hand-days or just because she thought it could serve some household purpose someday. The neighbour took the dropper and it neatly fit into the kitten’s mouth. After some soaking in the sun, it was as alive as ever. A few hours later, the neighbour lamented that the mother cat had taken her kitten away. Perhaps to a safe warm zone or to more treacherous lanes.

The banal. The inconsequential. The beautiful.