Love vs Fear

What is a more powerful emotion - Love or Fear? If I ask you this question, what will your answer be? Perhaps your answer would be ‘it depends’. And possibly that answer is not very far from the truth. Because it does ‘depend’ upon the context, the situation. But 'it depends' is a very simplistic answer. Let us try to understand and evaluate this more deeply with some examples.

Let’s say that you are an animal lover. One day, a street dog suddenly goes crazy and lunges towards you. At that instant, maybe it’s your fear that is the more dominant feeling than your love for dogs. And you either try to run away or fight the dog so that it doesn’t bite you or cause some physical damage. You possibly won’t even care if your actions cause any harm to the dog. Now take for example another situation in which you want to marry a girl whom your parents do not approve of. Situation has come to a point where you have to take a decision. You are afraid on one side that your parents will be heart-broken and feel so bad, and on the other side it’s your love for this girl. In such a situation, your love might take precedence and you might end up deciding that you will break your parent’s hearts but not go of your lady love. So in this case, its love that wins over fear. Or is it? If you analyze the situation more deeply, you might realize that it’s not a battle between between love and fear. It is actually a battle between two fears - the fear of losing your parent’s love vs the fear of losing the love of your life. It’s a comparative battle between two fears. So if we go in-depth into the situations that we encounter in our day to day life, we will realize that it is actually fear that is the more dominant and compulsive emotion than love. 

Another wonderful example would be regarding our love for God. Do we really love him, or we fear about the consequences if we don’t love him? I am sure you have encountered your mother or your grandmother fasting on the day of some religious event at home. At times, they might be really unwell (running a high fever, or having a severe headache or something else), but still they insist that they will fast. Is it really love, or is it the fear that ‘what will happen if I don’t fast?’ Let’s say you love your wife very very much and you gift her a bouquet of roses on Valentines Day every year no matter what. You have been doing this for the last 15 years. But this year you are extremely unwell and can’t even get out of bed on Valentine’s Day. Do you think your wife will not understand and still expect you to go out and get those roses for her? Yes, she might feel bad that she did not get the roses this time, but would she be angry with you or try to cause you any harm because you could not get her those roses. Similarly, if you love God and are not able to maybe perform puja one year by fasting the whole day, would He be angry. Certainly He will not be. But then we do not love God, or maybe to put it more precisely, we do not love God as much as we fear him.

Let’s take another situation. A husband/boyfriend walks into a pub in Mumbai on a weekday on his way from office. He is alone and wants to have a couple of drinks before going home. He sees this extremely beautiful lady next to him at the counter. She smiles at him and she looks like she is very ‘approachable’. Now this guy is our average guy (likes girls and likes to talk about and with them, is an occasionally flirt, curses his neighbor who has this awesome wife, slows down his bike when he sees a hot female on the footpath, has known Sunny Leone for a long long time, much before she entered Bollywood etc. etc.). So what does he do? He does nothing. He loves his wife/girlfriend too much to indulge in anything like this. Now let’s geographically shift this same scenario, let’s say to a Bangkok, or a Brisbane, or Manila, or London. This guy is on an official trip for a week and the same situation happens. What does he do? Possibly here he will approach this girl. So where does his love go? Or was it fear that was stopping him from approaching the female in Mumbai. Fear that someone might see him, fear that she might somehow turn out to be known to his wife/gf, fear of doing something in a familiar city, fear of a hundred other things. But in Bangkok, he is what we call in Hindi as Khula Saand. If his love for his partner was more than fear, then his actions would remain same irrespective of where he is. But if his actions differ based on the location, then its fear that is actually dictating what he ends up doing.

Now let’s talk about the professional world. The two most popular trends that you see today are MBA and entrepreneurship (TVF Pitchers says ‘when engineers get bored of their 9 to 5 jobs, they either go for an MBA or start a startup). What is it all about? Do people really want to learn about marketing, finance, HR, etc. or they fear that with just a bachelor’s degree, they are going to get stuck in their careers. Are the entrepreneurs really in love with their ‘new’ idea, or they fear getting lost in the crowd of salaried professionals. They fear that if they don’t take the plunge now, they might not be able to take the plunge later in their lives. Basically, is it the fear of professional obsolescence that is driving them or is it the love for something?

Let’s take a diversion and talk about family life. You will see many married couples becoming parents in their late 20s or early 30s. Is it because they really love kids, or is it because of something else - fear of not able to conceive (concepts like ‘a female should have her first child before she is 30’ has been floating around for quite some time. I am not saying that there is no medical basis to it, but just trying to say that it’s again some kind of fear that is driving the decision and not love for something), fear of having to answer to parents, relatives, neighbours, other same-age friends who have become parents, the list is just unending.

I have possibly generalized quite a bit. Of course, there are individuals whose actions are driven purely by love - animal lovers who don’t care about their personal safety before helping stray dogs, committed lovers who do nothing outside their relationships no matter how much the opportunities and provocations, parents for whom kids are a product of their love and affection and not some compulsion, entrepreneurs who really believe in their ideas and feel that they can bring about a change, religious people who really love God (Ramkrishna Paramhans, Mirabai, history is filled with many such exemplary people), creative people (artists, musicians, writers etc.) who really love their craft and don’t think about the consequences while pursuing their dreams, so on and so forth. The best example that I can think of is of a Jawan in the army guarding our borders. He knows that there is someone out there whose next bullet might rip through his heart, but still he goes ahead. Yes, he is afraid of death like any other human being, but his love and complete devotion for his country far exceeds that fear and he is ready to give up his life (the greatest sacrifice that anyone can possibly do) for his country. I am sure there will be innumerable such situations that will establish the supremacy of love over fear. 

All I am actually trying to say out here is that when we carefully analyse most of the situations in our life and the decisions that we take, we will realize that more often than not that those decisions were dictated by, or taken under the influence of by some kind of (conscious/subconscious) fear more than some kind of love.

Emotional Atyachar

Oscar Wilde's "I can resist anything but temptation" has always been my all-time favourite quote. But I had never guessed that someone would, one day, base a reality show on this. I am talking about this s(h)o(w) - called Emotional Atyachar.

Every time I am in Brigade road with my wife, even though she rarely gives any attention to the myriad of handsome hunks passing by, I on countless occasions, have been found staring at every second girl that collides with my line of vision. It is this basic fallacy of the male nature that is being exploited to the hilt in Emotional Atyachar. I would understand and maybe even sympathise with the show had they tried to investigate the real "extra - affair" affairs that are going on. But they are not doing that. What the makers of this show do is send an outrageously seductive temptress (most of them being models), skimpily clad, and bearing an omnipresent expression of "you are the man I have been waiting for all my life" to this antagonist (on whom they are running a so-called loyalty test). And then they expect this person to do nothing. Even a simple hi-hello on his part is recognised as infidelity. Now come on! I have spent the last 28 years of my life on this planet with men of all sorts: from absolute sex maniacs to people who have spent entire nights reading the autobiography of Swami Vivekananda while a porn film was unfolding in its full glory in the adjacent hostel room. How far a person actually goes when confronted with a situation like this (like the one they create in this show) varies from individual to individual, but one thing that I am very sure of is that no sane mortal male with normal levels of testosterone in his system would say "Hey bitch, go away!...I am a committed man and I love my girlfriend/wife very much....O Lord, pardon me, for I have sinned even my looking at this Eve". No Man would do that and the inability of this person to do this makes him guilty.

The show has all the ingredients to make it click. Love, Sex, Dhokha: it has it all. But one really needs to question the rationale behind manipulating imperfections in the human nature for the sake of better TRPs. You entice, allure, provoke someone to commit a mistake and the moment he takes the bait, you pounce upon him with a barrage of hidden cameras, microphones and all kinds of 007 styled surveillance gizmos. And there he is, in front of the whole world, looking like an absolute asshole (very much like the MTV Bakras, only that things are way serious out here). What's more unnerving is the fact that, when in one of the episodes, the person under scrutiny refused to go to bed with one of these models, his wife and the anchor of the show (who were watching the proceedings live through a spy cam) seemed to be really crestfallen. They were expecting him to take the plunge, so that they could make him undergo the oft seen ordeal of getting abused, humiliated, and in some cases, even slapped in public.

I am in no way trying to defend the actions of these people in question. If someone is cheating on his partner, there is no way I, or he, or anyone else can justify that action. It's wrong and no amount of condemnation is enough. But there is a difference between reporting a story, and creating one. I can recollect a chapter in our science class in school: 'Stimuli and Reaction'. It said that there can be a reaction only when there is a stimulus (something that incites to action). If this show were to show us the reactions, then nothing like it. But what the makers of this show are doing is that they are providing the Stimuli, with the foreknowledge that the reactions are all but logical outcomes. Rest aside, one thing that they have got spot-on is the naming of the show. It really is an atyachar, not (as they would like us to believe) on the damsels in distress, who come seeking for "small-screen intervention" to ratify their suspicions, but on the unsuspecting victims who are caught in this vicious game of seduction and shame.

From India.....with Hate

Valentines Day, or should we call it Violence Day, Vengeance Day or Vandalism Day. These are much more appropriate meanings that 14th Feb has come to attain. There is chaos, anarchy and a sense of desperation everywhere. People are being beaten up in every nook and corner of the country. Even females are not being spared. We pride ourselves in proclaiming that we have a Matri Pradhan Samaj, meaning a society that gives maximum value to providing respect to women. And the so called safe – keepers of this same society are taking to the streets to physically assault the ladies. It was pathetic to witness (in one of the news channels) how a girl was being pulled by her hair by a policeman and tortured like a common criminal. If the women are not getting spared, you can imagine what treatment is being meted out to the poor men caught in this cultural crossfire. You just had to switch on any news channel on 14th evening and you could see n number of incidents that had taken place across the nation. Some couples were forced to get married the moment they were seen together in public, while in one of the cities a boy was married off to a donkey for expressing his love. But one of the most shameful incidents was when a brother and sister were beaten up on their way to school as someone suspected them of being romantically involved. How worse can things really get? If we continue is this fashion, I am sure another Tiananmen Square is just waiting to happen. Some are calling this as the Talibanisation of Indian culture. But I guess even the Taliban have that much sense of respect left in them that they do not escort their women folk onto the streets and beat them up.

So what do these self – proclaimed saviors of Indian culture really have to say? They say that they are not against people falling in love. What they are against is the public display of love. They question why people have to express their love on a certain day in line with western thought. They ask why people are so hell bent on celebrating Valentines Day? My simple question to them is “Why not?” How the f**k does it matter to them how people want to express their love. It’s not as if people are stripping in public and enacting scenes from Vatsayana’s Kamasutra. If they wish to give a card or a rose to the people they love on a certain day of the year, how does it affect these people? If people want to glorify and celebrate being in love on a certain day, what is the harm? Actually these people have nothing to do with our culture. These are all bloody hypocrites. These are the same people who go to watch “Om Shanti Om” first day first show and fill the auditorium with whistles the moment Shah Rukh Khan breaks out into a song to express his love in a crowded street or a park. These are the people who have been failures as far as love in concerned. Maybe they tried their hand at getting a girl to accept them but failed miserably (which girl in her senses is going to fall for assholes like these) and this is just a manifestation of their desperation and agony. “What we cannot do nobody else should be able to do” must be their theory. These are idiots of the highest order. Some of these people call themselves the Ram Sena. They bring a religious and cultural touch to this whole thing. They worship Lord Rama and Lord Krishna. If they worship Krishna, they should at least understand what they worship in the first place. Krishna’s love for Radha is not only part of Indian mythology but is very much a part of our religious texts. Innumerable hymns and religious songs and stories have been woven around the central theme of Lord Krishna’s love for Radha. I may not be an exponent on Indian religious matters, but with my limited knowledge, I can safely say that Lord Krishna’s love for Radha was anything put private. He used to express freely and without any apprehensions of his deep love for Radha. The whole concept of Raas Leela is about the public display of affection between the Lord and his beloved. What has been so romantically and beautifully painted in the canvass of our religious texts has now become the reason for humiliating people and assaulting them. This is not only totally unacceptable, but an utter disgrace on everything Indian culture stands for. Heer Ranjha, Shiri Fariyaad, Laila Majnu, Raj Simran are just a few of the innumerable eternal love stories that are so strongly ingrained in our social fabric. And when the people of the same nation display such strong sentiments of intolerance, it’s just a bit too hard to accept.

So let’s see what can be done about this? Some people are already trying. A massive campaign has been launched to send pink panties and condoms to the Ram Sena chief. But this kind of a step is ridiculous at its worst and humorous at its best. This is not the age of Gandhi and so this kind of Gandhigiri is not going to work. This is not going to help matters in any way. It is just giving free publicity to these people. And going by the economic recession and given the fact that they have reportedly received a massive number of condoms and panties, the Ram Sena might as well plan to sell these items and make a huge profit out of it. These kinds of small and insignificant actions don’t yield any definite results. Actually, these are not meant to get any result but propaganda just as hollow as the Ram Sena’s. What we need to do is take some concrete steps and then have the determination to back them up with actions. Why cant we, the youth of our country decide that in the ensuing elections, we are not going to vote until and unless the perpetrators of this heinous crime are punished by the law. We have to take some strong step of this kind which will make the nation and its deaf politicians take note of the fact that what is happening is not right. Today is the 16th and in the space of two days, people have basically forgotten what has happened and resumed their normal lives. Also the laws of the country have to be amended to deal effectively with situations like these. Of course, when we find policemen themselves involved in the acts of violence, the whole system seems to crash like a house of cards. What was most amusing was the step taken by the administration of keeping the Ram Sena chief in custody on the 14th, and releasing the people who had committed the actual crime a few days ago. What the government thinks and what it wishes to do is really beyond anyone’s understanding. There is a dearth of that one thing that is so very important in any fruitful decision making – logic. Neither the Ram Sena, nor the victims, or the general public or the administration knows what it is doing. Everyone is just flowing with the flow and living life on the spur of the moment. This was how the early man used to live and animals do till this day. These are the actions of people who are guided by pure instinct and have very little or no respect for reason and justification.

You go to any corner of the globe and you say “India”, the first response that you are most likely to get is “The Taj Mahal”. A nation whose identity for the rest of the world is this icon of everlasting love, and which has been accepted for centuries as being the epicenter of harmony and tolerance, when such a country is engulfed by such intolerance and blatant violation of human rights, it’s a duty and responsibility of each and every citizen to do his bit to put an end to this nonsense and restore India to her pristine pride and grace.

Regionalism

We shifted to our new house a couple of months ago. Fortunately or unfortunately, there are a few Bengali families living in the same housing block. And when they got news that a new Bengali couple was moving in, as usual they were very excited. Though we did not share their excitement, we knew that sooner or later we would come across them. And in the few fleeting pleasantries that we had exchanged here and there, they had invited us more than once to their homes. Lest we got recognized as the most unsocial beings on this planet, we decided to give them a visit. They were quite nice. Easy going, friendly and helpful. But the aspect that struck us most was their desire for group formation. They told us which Bengali family lived in which apartment, the composition of their families, the nature of their kids, all kinds of information we had the least intention of acquiring. And with a negative bend of tone, they also told us about one family which was not so eager to mix with the other fellow Bengalis, making it very clear which side of the divide they belonged to.

India is a free country and everyone has the freedom to live as he wants. I am no one to pass a judgement on how people should or should not lead their lives. But I guess the same freedom gives me the right to voice my opinion about what I see and feel. And this “groupism” is something that I hate from the core of my heart. Being a Bengali, I have cited the example of a Bengali family. But similar sentiments are applicable to each and every linguistic or regionalistic group in the country. Take a Gujarati, Marathi, Mallu, Assamese, just about anybody and you will find the same thing. Let me make one thing very clear out here – Exceptions do exist and I am very proud and happy to say that throughout my life, I have been blessed with these exceptional people as my friends. Lets come back to the main topic. I don’t disagree to the fact that common language is the basis for many of our relations. I hail from Assam and here I am in Gujarat, two opposite vertexes of India. And when you hear someone out here speaking in Bengali or Assamese, the sense of belonging you feel is just about too hard to resist. So its nothing but natural if you want to know that person or strike up a conversation. You might have never known that person had he been a Joshi or Desai, but the fact that he is a Banerjee or a Barua acquaints you to him. But I guess the ball should stop rolling right there. I mean the ball of “groupism”. What happens between the two of you from then on should only be based on the kind of person you two are and your personal equations and interactions. Speaking the same language or belonging to the same caste or religion should have absolutely nothing to do with it. But it invariably does. People cling to each other not because they love the kind of person you are, but because you speak the same language or because your ancestors might have roamed the same piece of earth. Trying to cling to each other is still acceptable and it might have been ok if the buck stopped there. The problem is that they expect you to do the same.

Now let’s look at this thing from another point of view. Let me narrate an incident to arrive at this viewpoint. One day, having just come back from office, I was parking my bike in the parking space (the whole ground floor of our apartment). Now there are some yellow lines that have been made on the floor of the parking area. There is some kind of circular that everyone should park their vehicles inside those lines (I was not aware of this circular at that point of time). As usual, I parked my bike outside the line. As I was about to get inside the lift, the watchman approached me and told me that I should park my vehicle inside the line. I told him that I park my bike in the extreme corner and so it should not be anybody’s concern whether it is inside or outside the line. The watchman replied “you better park it inside or I am going to deflate your tyres”. I was enraged at this kind of a threat and made it clear that if he had the guts, he could go ahead and do what he wanted. I would keep my vehicle parked where it was. He told me that these were rules made by the housing committee and if I had any problem following them, then I should go and talk to the president of the committee who stays in flat no 305. I told him that if someone wanted to talk to me, he should come to my flat and not vice versa. With these words, I left the scene. Soon a bunch of people came knocking on my door. The “supposed president” from flat no 305 introduced himself and told me that I have to park the vehicle inside the lines as that was the rule; else my tyres would be deflated. I asked him who would actually go and take the action if I did not accept the rule. He replied - “I will”.

I have been exposed to too many threats and so called “Dadagiri” in my life to be frightened or even affected by this kind of an occurrence. But this highlighted something that was more than mere breach of a parking rule. This threat would not have been made had I been a “Patel” or a “Shah” instead of “Ghosh”. The people who had come to my flat that day knew this very well and that’s why they came and spoke to me in the manner they did. If I was a Gujarati, I am sure they would have expressed their discontent in a more refined and cultured manner. Of course, having stayed here for three years, a cultured and civil behaviour is something that I have not come to expect from the Gujarati people. I thus come back to the original thought that I was trying to convey: Maybe it is this kind of a behaviour that compels people to form a group. It makes people realize that as long as they are not alone, but part of a group, they are safe. Even if not safe, at least anybody and everybody cannot treat them in the way I was treated. They can fight back and raise their voice. Being alone, they stand no chance. In this context, the desire of my fellow Bengalis to stick together seems well justified. This was just to provide a possible explanation for the way some people try to form groups. It is not a justification and certainly not an endorsement. For that matter, a Gujarati couple trying to settle down in Calcutta might as well be subjected to the same treatment by the locals out there.

My first real brush with this vice was in engineering college. The first couple of months in college, glorified as the “Ragging period” was the time when I (as were the other freshers) was introduced to this wonderful (read as awful) concept of “Groups”. The first fifteen days of our college life, termed as the “general ragging period” had just got over and we were happy that we had somehow managed not to succumb to it. But we never knew that Hell awaited us. On the basis of the place from where we had come from and the language our family members spoke, we were divided into Groups. These groups were to become our only entity for the next 45 days (and to a great extent, it remained as one of our most important recognition throughout REC life). People from different parts of Assam having their mother tongue as Bengali were put into the Bengali Group, the Bengali people from in and around Silchar were in the Local Group, the Assamese speaking ones were in the Assamese Group. Most of the other states had their own separate groups. In some cases, where the number of students from certain states was very less, there was some kind of a coalition between some states with regards to the formation of their groups. Then there was the question of some disputed cases where it was a difficult to exactly pinpoint which group one should join (or more appropriately, allowed to join). For example, someone who had been born in Guwahati but whose schooling had been in Silchar, but whose family was actually from Delhi. These kinds of people were inspired and encouraged (tortured) by the seniors of the various group in contention to join them. Anyways, when all these trivialities got sorted out, then came the main part – the actual ragging. But let me not go into that in detail. But what I need to mention without fail are the main ideas that were transmitted to us during those days. I use the word transmitted and not communicated because we were more like machines obeying our masters than human beings. We were told that “the people of your group are your only friends in REC. You are free to mix with people from other groups but do remember that in times of trouble, it’s only your group people who are going to come to your help. For curricular as well as extra – curricular activities, only these people are going to assist you. As long as you are among these people, you are safe. The moment you alienate yourself from your group, the situation you will face is unimaginable”. These were just some of the things we were taught in those days. It was as if we were being tutored to become Jehadis and not engineers. Lest you think that it was only my group that was imparting this kind of bullshit, let me tell you that the same thing was being done in all the other groups and that too more brutally and inhumanly. Basically, what they did was that they created, of course in a very subtle manner, a lot of enmity among these fresh brains who had come from different corners of the country to stay together, study and enjoy the best four years of their lives. I had hated this concept from the core of my heart even then and to this day, I have this same hatred for people who follow this kind of groupism. And to put things in the proper perspective, let me tell you that it was a few seniors from my group who created all the trouble for me and had it not been for a bunch of wonderful seniors (mostly all of them from other groups), life would have become terrible for me. One of these seniors even went to the extent of apologizing in public on behalf of me to save me from some possible dire consequence. I have remained and will always remain indebted to these seniors for what they did for me. And when they passed out, it was my friends (again, nearly all of them from other groups) who supported me and were always there by my side whenever I got into any trouble. Actually, group was never a criterion for friendship in my case. And I guess the same is applicable to the majority of my batchmates, irrespective of the group they had to owe their allegiance to. In our batch, we saw a wonderful mix between the people from all groups and there were very very few instances of the harmony being eclipsed by group sentiments. The only time I actually witnessed a rivalry and hatred between people belonging to different groups was at the time of college elections. Of course, me and my friends took a very humorous approach to the whole issue of elections, but underneath a lot of really nasty things went on at that time. And that really soured the relationship between many people, some of them best of friends, for the remainder of REC life.

The issues highlighted above are of a personal nature and although it does leave a scar on the mind, they do not have earth shaking and far fetched implications. But the way regionalism is graining ground throughout our country, it is an issue that needs immediate attention. It is of course, a very sensitive issue and so has to be dealt with a lot of care. Otherwise, we may do more damage than has already been done. Today, this evil is raising its head in every nook and corner of the country. If the north - eastern regions of the country feel alienated from the Indian mainstream, the people in the southern states have forcefully created a mental block against the rest of India. Kashmiri people feel they have been cheated for decades. Same with the aboriginals of Sikkim and Darjeeling, who have been demanding a separate Gorkha land for years. Things have reached such a disgusting level that there have been demands in recent times for people like Amitabh Bachchan and Shah Rukh Khan to leave Mumbai since they are not Marathis. I am sure there is going to be a back lash against the Marathi people in the states from where SRK or AB hail from in retaliation to these. People from Bihar have been beaten up in Assam, and they have replied with equal vengeance. The list goes on and on. There is something going on in some part of the country. You pick up any newspaper on any given day, and you are certain to find some law and order situation in some state or the other because of regional tensions. Things are not helped by the law enforcing agencies, who are as biased as much unbiased they are supposed to be. Recently, I was stopped by a traffic police for skipping the signal. He cut a challan. Everything was written in Gujarati (basically all official things out here are written only in Gujarati. I can understand encouraging people to learn their own language but this kind of a measure seems quite extreme). I asked to at least write down the amount in English or Hindi so that I could know whether what I was paying him was actually what he had written. He refused to do so point blank. When I told him that Hindi is the national language and he cannot refuse to not do an official work in Hindi when requested, he replied that “this is Gujarat. Everything out here will be done only in Gujarati”. There was nothing more I could say. I paid up the 50 rupees he had demanded and left. At least in Assam, as much as I have seen, every official thing (any form or notice or challan) is written in English or Hindi along with the Assamese text. Out here, even the sign boards and addresses are written in Gujarati, making it virtually impossible for someone not knowing the language to get along.

I guess things are really getting out of hand. We have to make a concerted effort to bring back normalcy in these matters. We have to concentrate on becoming citizens of the country and not of pockets of lands defined my state borders. The tolerance that has been a hallmark of our culture has to be exercised to good effect. We don’t want to become a breeding ground for regional hatred and communal tussles. Diversity is there and we have to acknowledge that and simultaneously look for ways to unite people, not divide them. The British ruled us using this principle for centuries. Now the politicians are doing the same.

In the present scenario, it’s very difficult to love the people you have been or are being taught not to love. Its not only not “easier said than done”, it’s virtually impossible. But we can start by trying to at least not hate the people of other regions. Though a very humble beginning, it will be a beginning none the less. And I am sure we can build upon on this in the times to come and construct an India that will be free from this evil. Only then I think we can proudly and actually claim that “India is shining”

Reality..................shows

Mind blowing, fantastic, God bless…..what is the connection between these three words? It shouldn’t be of any issue for any regular viewer of television to answer this question. Or for that matter tell you the meaning of phrases like “Jai Mata Di, Lets Rock” or “Yalgaar Ho”. No matter how irrelevant or utterly meaningless these words sound, they are on everybody’s lips. Welcome to the world of musical talent hunts.

It all began with “Sa Re Ga Ma” on Zee TV in 1995. But things were very very different at that time. You had to record a song in your voice and send the audio cassette (I hope people still remember that double faced rectangular piece of plastic with two holes in between and riveted together by small silver coloured nails) to Zee TV, where a panel would listen to your songs and decide whether you were good enough to be called on the show. Then there was our very own desi DD version – “Meri Aawaz Suno”, which began a year later in 1996. Channels apart, the inherent sentiment behind the shows was same – they were there to find out people who could sing well. Nothing else mattered. It was totally, absolutely, completely based on how you sang. It had nothing, nothing whatsoever to do with how you looked or what you could or couldn’t do on stage. But now the onus has shifted towards finding performers: people who can set the stage on fire, people who can bring in the crowds with their looks and hip shaking talents, people who can bring in the moolah for the television channels. The singing has been left far far behind. There is something called “necessary and sufficient condition”. Knowing how to sing is still necessary, but not the sufficient condition any more.

And the results speak for themselves. People who were associated with ‘Sa Re Ga Ma’ and ‘Meri Aawaz Suno’ are ruling the roost in Bollywood today. Sonu Nigam and Shaan (both hosted SRGM) are the top male singers in the country today. Shreya Ghosal and Sunidhi Chauhan were the winners of SRGM and MAS respectively. Kunal Ganjawala was a participant of SRGM in the year 1997 and 1998. But what is happening today? Why is the new breed of singing talent not able to make a mark? Let me put forward a simple calculation. Zee has ‘Sa Re Ga Ma Pa – Challenge’. Sony has its ‘Indian Idol’ and Star has its own ‘Voice of India’. Then there are about 20 – 25 regional channels broadcasting the regional formats of the same shows. So, at any point of time, there are about 30 shows on air trying to find the ‘next big name’ in Indian music. Now, one season of each of these shows lasts for about 6 months after which the same cycle starts all over again. With due respect to the winner, the top three participants in all of these shows are of the same caliber. That means every 6 months, we are getting 30 X 3 = 90 supposedly talented singers. 180 singers / year. If you want to consider only the winner also, the number comes out to 60. Is there place for so many people? The answer is a simple NO. But equally true is the fact that quantity can never overshadow quality. If there is a singer of real talent, he is going to shine and survive. So why is not a single singer able to hit the bull’s eye? Primarily because of the format of the shows. It starts from the start and continues till the end. In the auditions, the judges go about selecting people who are more presentable than being better in vocals. When the foundation itself is so weak, how can you expect to get good results. Even then, some good talent does sieve through this illogical procedure. But the real mockery starts once the participants go on air. Each week, the participants get eliminated one by one, not on the basis of what they have sung, but on the basis of the number of SMSs that have come in their name (or more appropriately on the basis of the SMSs that have not come in their name). This issue was raised by Mini Mathur in Indian Idol this year, trying to defend this awful method. Her exact words were – “Iska matlab kya ye hai ki janta galat hai?”, meaning “Does this mean that the masses are wrong?”, to which Javed Akhtar replied that “Yes, the masses are wrong. Many a times, the masses make the wrong decision. They choose the wrong leader. They vote criminals who become part of the government. So you can never say that people always make the right decision”. This silenced Mini and nobody uttered a single more word on this topic. This actually is the main reason why the shows are not able to extract real talent from the haystack. I think somebody needs to sit down and put in some thought into this so that this mindless game can be stopped. People all over India vote for these participants based on regional sentiments more than anything else. And at the end of the way, the only real winners are the television channels and the mobile service providers, raking in huge amounts of money. There have been reports of many organizations going from home to home urging people to vote for the participants from their cities, distributing free SIM cards, even threatening people with dire consequences if they did not vote. This is democracy at its worst. Things went to the extent of taking the shape of a law and order situation this time when there were some comments from various sections that the winner of this year’s Indian Idol was not a deserving candidate. Where is the question of regional sentiments being there when all you have to decide is whether a person is singing well or not? A Shah Rukh Khan film is a Shah Rukh Khan film no matter in which part of the country it is being shown. People will throng to fill up the seats if a Sonu Nigam is performing irrecpective of the geographical location. Kishore Kumar, Mohd. Rafi, Mukesh, Manna Dey, Lata Mangeshkar are icons of India’s rich vocal wealth. They have a myriad of songs to their names sung in all the major and minor languages of India. So how can something as beautiful as music become the source for regional conflict and communal friction? The answer again lies in the way the shows are being conducted.

People in India are basically very tolerant. But at the same time, their minds are also very easily effected. One can easily motivate or demotivate the masses and channelise their positive energy to further some ulterior means. So that something like this doesn’t happen and deserving participants do end up winning these shows, something needs to be done. A judge in one of these shows had recommended a very novel way of doing this. He had suggested a very simple method – do not allow public voting in the initial stages of any show. The elimination should only be on the basis of the judges’ judgement. What this will do is that it will ensure that the best three or five participants do reach the final stages of the competition (we have to assume that atleast the judges collectively are going to make the right choice). And then when we are down to the last three or five, we can start the public voting. There is very little difference as far as singing talent goes between these remaining participants and no matter whom the public eventually chooses, we can be assured that it will be a deserving one. What this will also do is that it is going to lessen the association the people develop towards a certain participant. When you start voting for a participant from the initial stages of a show, you become more emotionally involved with the participant than being an admirer of his or her singing acumen. As a result, your voting becomes biased. But when the voting is allowed only in the final stages, you are more likely to use your grey cells and vote for the person who is singing well and not for the person who hails from a certain community or region. Another thing that needs to be done is to give the judges the freedom to express their views in the way they want to. Their opinions and observations should not be dictated by the TRP ratings or the interests of the channel that is airing the show. The judges have become so busy in promoting the show that they judge that they have even forgotten the real purpose of their being there. You can hear Himesh Reshammiya shouting atleast ten times in every episode how the blessings of the Almighty has always been with “Sa Re Ga Ma Pa” and how they bring out the best talents every year. Of course people like Aadesh Shrivastava, who till recently were part of Star “Voice of India” cut a very sorry figure sitting next to Himesh when he claims SRGMP being the best talent hunt in the whole world and so on and so forth.

All these notwithstanding, there are some positives to be taken away as well. These shows are providing the youth with a never-had-before opportunity to showcase their talents. When previously they had to come to Mumbai and then slog for years, running from pillar to post to even get near a composer, they are now directly being picked up from their home towns and launched on into the limelight. Cutting an album was like the most difficult thing you could have thought about. But now, you have to win a show and there you are with your own album. And it doesn’t end with one show. If you are not able to make a mark in one, there are many other shows waiting for you. So the initial pick-up you get is awesome. Your talent gets an opening that you couldn’t even dream of about five years ago. The only question that you need to answer is whether you really have the talent? But more than the participants, I think the biggest beneficiary of these talent hunts have been some of the judges. People like Aadesh Shrivastava, Anu Malik, Bappi Lahiri, Ismail Darbar (its very hard to find these names even in the remotest corner of our memories) are getting a chance to play a second innings. And the funniest part of it all is when these people make tall claims that they are going to use this and that participant as a playback singer in their next movie. Where do these people have any movie? They have not scored a decent soundtrack for years and are not going to do so for years to come. There is even a slight hint of a sarcastic smile on the face of the participants when these announcements are made (and there are about two or three announcements like this every episode), but they know better than to make their thoughts become too evident. Whatever be the case, right now, these people, coming to the show all decked up in their ten kilogram jewellery, sunglasses (I can never understand why a sunglass is required at night), designer hair cuts, body hugging t-shirts, blaring out comments like “the antra was this, the mukhda was that”, “the high notes are not pitching well”, are having a grand time.

All said and done, music talent hunts are here to stay and if everyone concerned does his job to the best of his ability and in a more “common sense” manner, we can certainly hope to see some real churning of the great musical depth and genius that is omni prevalent in this country and the subsequent emergence of singers who will enthrall and mesmerize us for decades to come.

“If a man is called to be a streetsweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great streetsweeper who did his job well.”
- Martin Luther King, Jr

Himesh Reshammiya

Year 2010……….morning assembly time in a school in Mumbai……….
“Tanhaiyaan, Tanhaiiiiyaan, Tanhaiiiiiiiiiyaaaan……Sara Alam, Sare Mausam, Sari Khushiyan, Sari Duniya……..Tere Wagair……..Tanhaiyaan, Tanhaiiiiyaan, Tanhaiiiiiiiiiyaaaan”

There is no more any invoking the Gods before start of the academic day or a hymn in praise of the motherland. It starts with a Himesh Reshammiya song.

Maybe my extrapolation of the situation is a bit too far fetched. But there is no denying the iconic status that this person has come to enjoy in today’s India. Tune in to any FM channel, and its his songs that are playing, tune in to any entertainment channel and there is that person with a cap on his head and holding the mic at an angle of 45 degrees in front of his mouth, tune in to any news channel and there is a trade analysis about the number of hits he has delivered in one calendar year and how many million records he is selling. The truth really is – Himesh is everywhere. Maybe there was only one medium that had escaped. But now, even that is slated for invasion. We are going to witness H on the silver screen. (Of course, the fact/fiction whether the film is based on the real life of H has been the topic of much debate and discussion and a lot of additional airtime has been devoted to it). Before going any further, I think I need to mention very specifically that I am neither a fan of his, nor do I like the music he is making. I just felt that he is something that I should write about.

Notwithstanding my own personal opinion about his music, it has to be accepted that he has given one chartbusting hit after the other. And there are no signs of his slowing down. Just when u think that he has reached his saturation point, he comes up with yet another surprise. It takes me back to the year 1998-1999. Something very similar happened to Jatin-Lalit. Whatever they touched that year got translated into success. They had 6 straight hit scores that year – Ghulam, Jab Pyar Kisise Hota Hai, Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, Khubsoorat, Pyar To Hona Hi Tha, and Pyar Kiya To Darna Kya (whose title song “Odhli Chunariya Tere Pyar Mein” incidentally was by Himesh). The first film whose credits had him as a music director was Bandhan (in which he collaborated with Anand Raj Anand). That was in 1998. In the next few years, he gave music to quite a few films (most of them being Salman Khan starrers) but without much success or acclaim. Then came that one film that was to become a craze and change his destiny for ever – Tere Naam. It was released in 2003 and I was in engineering college then. My college was in Silchar and my hometown Guwahati is a 10 hours bus journey away. I remember very clearly that there was not a single bus which did not have a audio cassette of Tere Naam (some even had two, lest one got damaged). In the coming 2 years in which I must have taken that 10 hour journey atleast 10 times, I never failed to hear a Tere Naam song atleast once. When you are desperately trying to somehow get some sleep in that uncomfortable seat of the Capital Travels bus and suddenly at 1 AM at night, the sound box above your head starts blurting out “Tauba ye tajgi, chehre se sadgi, ye bat us me kaha”, there is nothing u can do other than start hating that person who has made this kind of music.

His next big hit came in the form of “Aashiq Banaya Aapne” and thereafter there has been no looking back. He has leapt from one hit to the other. But his success (like any other success story) has not been without controversy. Industry insiders and a fraction of the music loving public have severely criticized him for his style of music, the same kind of songs that he keeps on making, his’ singing most of the songs himself, his nasal voice etc etc. Also, his wearing a cap everywhere he goes and his unique style of holding the mic has been a source of much ridicule and mockery in the media. His arrogant attitude (much displayed in the talent hunt show Sa Re Ga Ma Pa, although u never know whether what is being shown is truly what is taking place or the whole thing is just orchestrated) has also come for much censure.

Despite all these, his popularity has not dampened. On the contrary, maybe its all these that keeps him in the public eye at all times. Nowadays, its very necessary to be in the news for the wrong reasons more than the right ones. But to be fair to him, I think he has given some decent music in a couple of his films, especially Namastey London in which a few tracks are more than just hummable.

The present belongs to Himesh Reshammiya. Only time will tell whether he can maintain his success and constantly keep re-inventing himself and his music in the years to come to deliver more and more countdown hits………………or become just another Anu Malik.