Category: Enough said

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Enough said

Dust capital

We’ve always known what a news report recently declared – that Delhi is the most polluted city in the world!
Humra Quraishiby Humra Quraishi

So, it’s being declared loud and clear – New Delhi is the most polluted city in the world. This news is no shocker, at least not for those who live here. The deterioration has been on for the last two decades. In fact, the most hard-hitting aspect of life in New Delhi is its pollution and smog. When my friends and relatives from other towns land here, they take a couple of days to recover from chest congestion and throat infections, which pave the way for coughs, fever and uneasiness.

The average citizen is aware that he or she is breathing polluted air, but what is the alternative? The capital city houses the Who’s Who in the corridors of power, so one would think that Delhi would be all clean and clear to breathe in, for a start. There’s never a dull moment in Delhi; it is a happening city and surely a much polluted one!

If you can survive the pollution and develop a thick hide, you can probably live here happily. Plus, you can also learn the art of seeing the positives of life even as you live in the midst of severe turmoil.

On a related note, however, there is a lot to celebrate about Delhi as well. A lot of Hindi film stories have been based in Delhi, and there have also been several books written on the capital. One of the most comprehensive volumes on Delhi was published in 2010, Celebrating Delhi. I love this book – it distracts one for a while from the mess that Delhi is in, taking one instead on a nostalgic ride of the Delhi that used to be.

And it’s Pradip Krishen’s essay –‘Avenue Trees in Lutyens’ Delhi: How They Were Chosen’ – that actually gives you an insight into how particular trees were chosen to go along the avenues of New Delhi. “It’s a curious list of trees in some ways, because British planners seem to have consciously avoided planting trees like the mango, shisham, banyan that were in vogue as avenue trees in northern India through the Mughal times…” he writes.

And now comes another new volume on the national capital: Rana Dasgupta’s new book, Capital: A Portrait Of Twenty First Century Delhi, which hit the stands this year.

So even as we struggle to breathe in Delhi, let’s celebrate its other, more beautiful forms!

Humra Quraishi is a senior political journalist based in Gurgaon. She is the author of Kashmir: The Untold Story and co-author of Simply Khushwant.

(Picture courtesy blogs.wsj.com)

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Enough said

Africans today, who else tomorrow?

Somnath Bharti’s antics against the Ugandan women spell doom – will this happen with communities in the country as well?
Humra Quraishiby Humra Quraishi

We’ve all heard of the dreaded midnight knocks on doors and raids happening in the Kashmir Valley and in the North East, but to have a similar thing happen in Delhi is unthinkable. Delhi’s Law Minister Somnath Bharti and his men barged into a home of a small group of Ugandan women, and not just abused them but accused them of running prostitution and drug rackets!

Call this intrusion by any term of your choice, barbarism or anarchy or dictatorship, but this act reeks of double standards and racism. Could Bharti and his men have barged into a fellow minister’s home or into a tycoon’s farmhouse or even in the hotel room of a European in this fashion? No, because he would have been thrashed and thrown out!

But his terrorising antics against these Ugandan women have a lot to do with our misconceptions against dark-skinned people and our prejudices against Africans. Bharti merely played on our biases, throwing serious accusations at these hapless women. His language, his thoughts, his tactics – all of these were utterly third class and unworthy of a law minister.

And if this kind of behaviour is not halted in time, it would spell disaster for all of us. For today, this is happening with Africans. Tomorrow, what stops this behaviour from turning inward, towards particular communities or castes or minorities? That’s how ghettos are made – and that’s how so many exist in the country already.

Why speak of ghettos alone? Something like this has already been in operation for so long, in our major cities. Well-to-do Muslims have voluntarily moved to the outskirts of Ahmedabad. Muslims are outright refused houses in upscale localities in Mumbai, and there exist Muslim localities where not a single Hindu family will be found. This has not just broadened the gap between two communities, but has also paved the way for misconceptions about the ‘other’ – and who can blame them? After all, how can children from both communities learn about each other if they are not allowed to mingle with each other, if they are forced to live miles apart?

Coming back to the recent developments in Delhi, I must confess to a definite feeling of dismay. Though I have been writing in support of the AAP all along, I do feel concerned for the future. With little hope in the Congress, one looked at AAP as some sort of a saviour political outfit. But this one incident and its aftermath has paved the way for a re-think.

Humra Quraishi is a senior political journalist based in Gurgaon. She is the author of Kashmir: The Untold Story and co-author of Simply Khushwant.

(Picture courtesy in.news.yahoo.com)

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‘People who live without history are no better than animals’

Noted Indian writer Ved Mehta recently launched his newest book in the national capital. Humra Quraishi revisits an old encounter.

This week, I received an invite from Penguin Books for the launch of Ved Mehta’s latest, The Essential Ved Mehta. I marveled at this writer’s determination and his grit to go on – today, he is 80 years old, but he is still writing, and when he is visually impaired.

Five years ago, I had the chance to interview him here in New Delhi, when he was here at the launch of another of his books. He had spoken then of a meningitis attack that had left him visually impaired at the age of four, but that he had never let this setback get in the way of his writing.

His is an inspirational survival story. He received an early education at the Arkansas School for the Blind, Dadar (in Bombay), then moved to the Pomona College, Balliol College and finally to Harvard University. What is amazing is that he managed these major moves, especially one that meant shifting to the West in his early teens. He got American citizenship in 1975 and visits India regularly.

The 80-year-old writer has written 26 books, as also numerous short and long stories. For over three decades, from 1961 to 1994, he was a staff writer at The New Yorker. All along, there were murmurs about his ‘colourful lifestyle’, till the time he decided to marry. Marrying in 1983, at the age of 49, he chose for his life partner a woman much younger than he – probably on the lines of Aristotle’s philosophy, that for a marriage to be happy, a man must marry a much younger woman.

I had the chance to first interview him in 2009, and even today I remember the meeting fondly. This is how it went:

Are you currently working on some new book and what is it going to be about?

I am writing a new novel but I don’t like discussing my work till it is published. As of now all that I can say is that the protagonist is an Indian settled in the US. And no, it isn’t along autobiographical lines.

You are settled in the US and American foreign policies have triggered changes in the world scenario. What do you feel about this?

America should get out of Afghanistan, and Iraq was a total disaster, totally a fantasy of a kind, along the lines of what the US did in Vietnam and in Korea. I’m for non-violence and all for the policy of tolerance and I do believe in Aristotle’s philosophy vis-à-vis democracy, “You can only have democracy if a majority of people belong to the middle class.”

What changes have come in the world of writing and publishing over the years?

We are living in an odd world. In the publishing world the editors are playing musical chairs and as regards writing, I’m from the old school and thoroughly believe in the principles of integrity and honesty to oneself and to one’s readers.

Your wife seems much younger than you. Where did you meet her and how it all happened?

I married late when I was 49 years old and Lill is almost 20 years younger than me…Actually, Lill is a friend’s niece and I had first met her when she was about 11 years old. Years later, I had met her again at a party and this time I was drunk and kissed her. The very next morning, however, I wrote an apology note to her and she told me that from her side, too, there were feelings involved. It was then that we decided to marry. We married in 1983. And today she is my wife and we have two daughters.

Why did you re-launch your earlier books, Daddyji and Mamaji? You wrote these two books years ago, why the re-launch now?

Yes, I wrote these books decades back but I feel our history is important for today’s generation. People who live without history are no better than animals. History is important for today’s generation as it adds a dimension to life, just as children and wife add that extra dimension to a man’s life. Also, I feel that we should realise that our parents are not some authoritative figures but are as human as you and me. My parents – Shanti Devi Mehta and Amolak Ram Mehta were very private people and I wrote these out of affection for them and focussed on the everyday life of a family in the late 19th and early 20th century India.

Humra Quraishi is a senior political journalist based in Gurgaon. She is the author of Kashmir: The Untold Story and co-author of Simply Khushwant.

(Pictures courtesy www.thehindu.com)

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Back to Muzaffarnagar

How is a pogrom planned and executed? The riots of Muzaffarnagar and other subsequent developments are a recent, ongoing example.
Humra Quraishiby Humra Quraishi

Several people tell me I focus too much on Muzaffarnagar, but I’m in no apologetic mood. I’m trying to focus on and bring attention to what seems to be a genocide.

Yes, that’s blunt. Equally blunt is my belief that today’s politicians are using the age-old strategy of killing in a systematic way. First, riots are made to occur – no riot can start and spread without the knowledge of the police and the State machinery. Provocations are used to ignite an already charged atmosphere. The pogrom is allowed to go on, not stopped. And as research shows, the police play a partisan role.

If recruitment at the police constable level takes place on the basis of caste and community, then it should come as no shock to anyone that the police join the rioters when the riot goes against their own caste. The hapless victims are either killed or made to flee. 

At this stage, the land and political mafia grab the (forcibly) vacated lands and homes and fields. Meanwhile, nobody cares a damn if the affected riot victims die or live like third class citizens. If they dare to point fingers or accuse the wrongdoers, other strategies are used – encounter killings or terror charges are heaped on the victims’ heads and they sit languishing in jails.

In Muzaffarnagar, though, Akhilesh and Mulayam Yadav have gone a step ahead. The riots went uncontrolled, were allowed to spread to the rural belt, and survivors were not allowed to survive. Even those tattered tents sheltering the victims were pulled off, killing most of them in these freezing temperatures.

The father-son duo is now playing a bigger game – first it was rioting, then  the hounding of the survivors, then an overnight removal of relief tents, then the bulldozing of the very muzaffarnagar riotsstretch where the survivors would sit and where the dead lay in fresh graves. Now, relief workers and activists and the media are being kept at a ‘safe distance’, by introducing a new ‘terror angle’! And to complete this picture of apathy and sheer insensitivity, thick-skinned bureaucrats of the Uttar Pradesh sarkar quip, “Nobody dies of cold…people survive in Siberia”!

Can we ask these politicians and bureaucrats to step outside their heated offices, and head to these places in this biting cold, not wearing their sweaters and jackets and mufflers, amidst the fog and the mist and the intermittent drizzles? Will they do it? Can they?

It is with a sense of rage that I say: Shame these politicians! After terrorising a hapless population, they are pushing these people towards death – all out there in the open!

Humra Quraishi is a senior political journalist based in Gurgaon. She is the author of Kashmir: The Untold Story and co-author of Simply Khushwant.

(Pictures courtesy www.indianexpress.com)

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Starting the new year on a high

While the AAP has brought new energy into our politics, lit fests are striking the right note in civil society.
Humra Quraishiby Humra Quraishi

This new year has started on a note of hope. Yes, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) wave has a lot to do with that, at least here in the capital city. Everyone has a wish for the new year…mine is that AAP’s branches, offices, and the enthusiasm of its volunteers and workers spreads to other locales in the country and reaches the people across communities. I would dearly love to see the AAP dent the supposed strongholds of the BJP-RSS and the Congress and SP all over the country.

The other thing getting me considerably excited is the wave of new book releases. I particularly loved this line I recently heard: ‘Tomorrow is the first blank page of a 365-page book. Write a good one.’   

Books and literary festivals are back on the circuit. Even sleepy little towns are planning to host literary dos. And why not! If we can have a newspaper, Khabar Lahireya, published and compiled by a women’s group in the rural stretch of Eastern Uttar Pradesh, we can certainly have small towns hosting literary meets. Still, I was surprised to hear that two literary festivals could be coming up in Lucknow and Gwalior and Bhopal. The list is long: already about a dozen cities of this country are hosting these meets – Mumbai, New Delhi, Jaipur, Cochin, Bangalore, Agra, Chandigarh, Hyderabad, Chennai, Goa, Kolkata and Kasauli.

And I hear that an Urdu Literature festival is starting in Patna. Rakhshanda Jalil is organising it in collaboration with the Government of Bihar on January 4 and 5, 2014. Called Jashn-e-Urdu, it will have panel discussions, book exhibition, film screenings, mushaira as well as ghazal singing and a play by Tom Alter.

Can other cities and towns and villages start hosting such meets? I have been telling my writer friends living in different parts of the country to get together and organise a literature fest. But most of them look worried and nervous – of course, organising such an event cannot be without its pitfalls and stress, but there is no need to get too ambitious or go overboard. These fests could be small, and manageable to host, expanding gradually over the years.

But why do I insist on more literature fests? Because nothing unites and educates like the pen does. We saw this during the days of the Raj, when rebel writers and poets unleashed their disgust against British brutalities through their writings. What can be better than uniting our present-day society than a literature festival that educates as well as entertains?

Humra Quraishi is a senior political journalist based in Gurgaon. She is the author of Kashmir: The Untold Story and co-author of Simply Khushwant.

(Picture courtesy stevemccurry.com)

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Of good health and Hindi

This week, the capital saw the launch of a book on nutrition and a volume on the beauty of Hindi.
by Humra Quraishi

It has been a hectic week in Delhi. There has been a lot happening, especially on the political front. But while there has been political uncertainty, there have also been two delightful book launches to lighten the mood.

First was Dr Alka Pande’s book, Mukhwas – Indian Food through the Ages, which was launched at the residence of the Ambassador of France, Francois Richier. The great thing about this book is its focus on traditional Ayurveda foods and the Ayurveda concept of healing with relays of one’s health through one’s pulse. A healer was present at the launch, checking the pulse of several guests, and then revealing the state of their body and soul. It was a relaxed evening, and guests were given return gifts in the form of packets of flax and pumpkin seeds.

alka pandeAt long last, we seem to realise the significance of grains and seeds in our diet. Dr Pande is one of those extraordinary women who has worked very hard for her success, not just as a writer but as a leading art consultant and curator. Her books focus on traditional art forms, age-old customs and our ancient living patterns. I like the basic simplicity of her style and also the abundance of illustrations and paintings in her books, which for me, adds to the ‘connect’ with the reader.

Then another book made its way into my heart this week – Gulzarsaab’s latest, Hindi For Heart. If you’re a Gulzar reader, you will know that each of his books carries its own fragrance. This new book is an alphabet primer in verse, which is not just lyrical but which sounds playful and fun. This is a book for the lover of languages, one who wants to grasp words, sounds, voices, places and much more. This book is illustrated by Toronto-based artist Rina Singh.

I enjoyed Gulzarsaab’s book. My own grasp of Hindi is pretty okay. I had opted for Advanced Hindi at the Intermediate level and enjoyed the learning process, more so as the Hindi tutor, called ‘Panditji’, was patient and helped ease us into the language.

Before I conclude this column, I am tempted to quote two lines from the  back cover of this book, penned by Gulzar saab:

‘Zabaan seekhne ki zaroorat kisi bhi umr mein par sakti hai/ 

aise hee jaise ishk kisi bhi umr mein ho sakta hai’

(The need to learn a new language can arise at any stage of one’s life…just as one can fall in love at any age)

Humra Quraishi is a senior political journalist based in Gurgaon. She is the author of Kashmir: The Untold Story and co-author of Simply Khushwant.

(Pictures courtesy www.amazon.in, www.bmeia.gv.at, www.rinasingh.com)

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