Author: Dr Sumedha

It all began nine years ago with a phone call by the offspring’s music teacher from school. Until then, I (a self- confessed ignoramus when it came to the vast world of music) had reveled in her participation in the annual school functions like the Parent’s Day where she occupied a small space in the orchestra pit with a pair of cymbals, a triangle neatly by her side, changing dexterously between the two, keeping up with the rhythm.

Like a typical mother, I only kept my ears open to the ominous sound of silence, which normally meant some mischief in the offing. Her singing was slightly off-key according to the neighborhood music teacher and seeing her reluctance to give throat to any song, I, in search of greener pastures had withdrawn her altogether. Therefore, this call had importance. She had an innate sense of rhythm, the music teacher patiently explained, and it would be put to good use in the world of percussion. Thus, began her (and by default, my) tryst with the Tabla. Six-and-a-half years of training, three exams and a dozen performances later, she has learnt to march to the beat of her own drums, as I now look on from the sidelines.

In the midst of all this, she did get an opportunity, barely six months into her training to attend the live performance of the individual whose name and identity were synonymous with the Tabla….Ustad Zakir Hussain.

 I remember gawking at his television persona as a wide-eyed child of the eighties. Back then, only dear old Doordarshan graced our narrow screen television sets with their flimsy antennae. His performance in the song ‘Baje Sargam Har Taraf Se, Goonje Bankar Desh Raag’ was as famous for his shock of curly hair as the dexterity with which his fingers flew over the Tabla. In a firmament which was lined by the brightest of Indian musicians, he managed to carve out his own niche, thanks perhaps to the avid enjoyment which was apparent in his playing.

Brooke Bond also cashed in its chips early, when it recognized the potential of getting him to advertise its most famous brand of tea…Taj Mahal. “Pehle meri Taj, baaki sab uske baad” and “Arre huzoor, wah Taj boliye” became household lines and everyone queued up to get a taste of the beverage which added so much zest to this famous musician’s percussion.

Cue to February 2016 and it was precisely with this in mind, that I managed to book three tickets (the spouse being a last- minute addition after the usual shilly-shallying and pulling many sad faces about being left to his own devices since the offspring and I refused to budge about attending) and we found ourselves ensconced in the tenth row of the Kashinath Ghanekar Auditorium. The offspring’s Guru had played his role in exhorting us to not miss this performance by ‘Zakhir Bhai’ as he called him. The performance itself was a joint one, between the sitarist, Pandit Niladri Kumar and Usatdji.

When the lights dimmed and the curtains went up though, it was only Pandit Niladri Kumar on stage. The offspring offered a disgruntled little pout. She was only nine and the thought of listening to another classical instrument did not sit very well in her scheme of things. The spouse and I, having once been students of the sitar in the hoary past, were thrilled though and a lot of shushing and telling the offspring to listen followed. Pandit Niladri Kumar, a wonderful exponent of the sitar and the pioneer who invented the Zitar, an electric version of the sitar was almost ascetic in his demeanor. Telling the audience not to applaud too loudly, he began to play. It was easy to see that he had entered a different plane of existence and was communing with the deity of music. It was ethereal and unworldly, and lesser beings like us were soon left far behind.

Mid way though, the lights brightened, because another figure sidled onto the stage. Trademark shock of curly dark hair, a blue salwar-kurta and a grey shawl draped over his shoulders. But what caught everyone’s attention was not just the familiar face, but the twinkle in the eyes, and the child-like innocence. Putting a finger to his lips to avoid disturbing his co-artist, he quietly settled into a corner. Perhaps the Gods of music sensed his presence, and warned him because Pandit Niladri Kumar reached a crescendo, returned to earth, opened his eyes, and touched the feet of the figure. Ustadji had arrived.

The offspring perked up immediately and waved her feelers around. A heartfelt apology for his tardiness (thanks to the horrendous Mumbai traffic, what else?) later, Ustadji began to tune his Tabla. After satisfying himself, he knocked himself on the head a couple of times (without the hammer, luckily) and declared happily that he had tuned himself as well. And then what unfolded was something which was even beyond magic. The Tabla started to talk. Through the beats and the rhythm, it gradually told us its own story. About why it was initially like the damru and the pakhawaj and then bifurcated into the ‘Dayan’ and the ‘Bayan’ and how two instruments could so perfectly complement each other that they were considered whole only if they were together and how they lost their individual identity without each other. I sneaked a quick peek at the offspring, who only a couple of minutes before, had been yawning and rubbing her eyes sleepily (back then, 10.30 in the night was bed-time for her) only to see her sitting bolt upright in her seat, mouth slightly agape, her stubby little fingers tapping on the edge of her seat-rest. A picture imprinted in my mind for years to come.

Those dexterous fingers of Ustad Zakir Hussain have been stilled forever now. Obituaries have poured in, memorial services have been held all over the world and everyone who can, has recounted their close encounters with him. His qualities, his dedication to his art, his musical journey, anecdotes of him and his father and family, co-artists, and the kind of person he was have been laid bare over and over.

For me, as someone who has only read about him and attended only a single live concert, only two stories stand out. One recounted by the acclaimed singer, Manik Varma, who spoke about how the crying child was gently disciplined by his illustrious father who made him begin his Riyaaz at 4 am in the bitter winters of North India and the other which I luckily witnessed, of how more than fifty years later, he kept a sleepy child of nine awake till well past midnight on a not-so- chill night in a Thane auditorium because when he entered a different plane of existence, he had the power to take us all along.

His greatness lies in the power of complete ‘Samarpan’ which he probably imbibed from the ‘Dayan’ and ‘Bayan’ tabla. The courage to lose the ‘you’ in yourself so that the whole identifies itself with you. So, the next time you hear a thunderstorm, or the rain beating down on a tiled roof, try to hear the echoes of Ustad Zakir Hussain’s tabla, playing an eternal rhythm.

And if the beat falters, causing you to say

‘Dil ye bechain ve,

Raste pe nain ve

Jindi behaal hai

Sur hai na taal hai’

Who knows, Ustadji might reply, saying ‘Taal se taal mila’

I recently read a report in Nikkei Asia (a news weekly) which pointed to India as a bright spot in the real estate market. The causes, to my simple mind stuck out like sore thumbs: a humongous population, difficult to fit in, since land obviously refuses to grow apace with it. The second and more ominous was illegal occupation, what we call squatting.

 Living in a metro makes you inured to such stuff: The stairwell of your apartment block suddenly fills up with a cupboard, bed and bicycle thanks to a neighbor who cannot ‘keep to the limits,’ a car-next-door escapes its boundaries without a care to fill up half of your parking spot, a thriving market springs up on what used to be your jogging track till the day before yesterday, thanks to some mean political muscle on the vendor’s part, shanties mushroom during the monsoons and are decked out with a ‘pucca’ roof and all appliances by the time Diwali rolls in. By and large, we tend to give in to the innate Indian trait and ‘adjust’ until we are in neck- deep, with the hot water still rising.

But just how much the land we call Bharat is coveted by aliens is clear when we check our historical records for the umpteen squatters who have turned up unbidden at our borders, largely with overt or covert nefarious designs, and then proceeded to make themselves so much at home, that we, indigenous Indians, rendered homeless, begin to doubt our right to our homeland. While the parable of the kind hearted Arab being driven out into the chill of the desert night merely because he allowed the head of his shivering camel to shelter in his tent may hold true in Arabia, we Indians have our home-grown version of it when WE were driven from our lands by the Arabs, Turks and their camels and donkeys, beginning around a thousand odd years ago. And not just the common population. To our eternal misfortune, the greatest emperor this land has seen, one whose name is revered in almost all of Asia ranging from Cambodia to Korea and Thailand to Indonesia was forced into unspeakable make-shift accommodation in his own city, thanks to being disowned by His people. Shri Ram of Ayodhya.

Luckily, he is on his way home now. In the original Ramayana of the Treta Yug, His exile lasted for fourteen years. Perhaps because depravity was not as all pervasive as it is now. The advent of Kali though, made things so much worse. And thus, His second and unnecessary exile lasted for the better part of five centuries when it should not have happened at all, thanks to power vested in the hands of brutes who could sell their souls for much less than thirty shekels of silver, to say nothing of their God.

While the historical aspects of the Ram-Janma-Bhoomi temple have been recorded since the time of Brihadbala (a descendent of Ram himself, who in Dwapar Yug sided with the Kauravas in the Kurukshetra war), the last time He was displaced was due to the notorious Mir Baqi, a general of the Mughal, Babur, who destroyed His temple and raised what was called the Babri Mosque in its place. There have been several first- person accounts from neutral third parties like European travelers as early as the seventeenth century that Hindus always worshipped at the courtyard of the Babri mosque. Several convoluted centuries and cases later, well- watered by the blood of devout Hindus, the land has finally been restored to whom it belonged all along: Ram Lalla Virajman, or the infant Shri Ram.

A matter of great satisfaction and pride for most of us is that after years of listening to lofty rhetoric from politicians and lowly jokes from standup comedians involving the Lord buying a 2BHK apartment on the Ayodhya-Faizabad highway, a temple is again coming up where a temple once stood. There is little else being discussed other than the grand consecration ceremony. A religious fervour has gripped the nation. Most people are celebrating the idea of a historical wrong being corrected. Better late than never. It is the best example of putting paid to encroachment once and for all.

 But, what all squatters fear is eviction and are always looking out for ways and means to prevent it. Our squatters were the original cancel-culturists who thought that denying a Hindu deity his space was an easy way of cancelling centuries of heritage and history. And as it has already been pointed out before, years of pandering to the whims of a special minority has led them to automatically believe in their infallible supremacy. With the rug suddenly pulled from under their feet, they find themselves literally without a leg to stand on. And who in this era of the land-grabber would give up such a prime piece of real estate without a fight? And thus, we see calls from (dis)respected members of Parliament, no less, giving an open call to the youth of the minority to destroy the temple at the first available chance.

Yet others appear miffed and refuse the invitation to the consecration ceremony touting the jaded excuse of ‘secularism’ which forms the basis of the Indian state. Never mind that they will attend all religious ceremonies of ANY other religion with unholy glee. Some members of the public, sporting beards and a towel thrown over the shoulders, have given themselves the right to compose dubious ‘shayari’ advising people to understand Ram in the modern sense leaving the ‘ek tha raja, ek thi rani’ story behind, before they house Him in his temple and ‘divide’ him up! Apparently wearing a white Kurta, a la son of the soil, and sporting a dark gothic background is enough for anyone to call himself ‘Psychoshayar’ and morph into a modern- day philosopher with all the right to tell common devotees how foolish their chant of ‘Jai Shree Ram’ is because it apparently contains everything except the essence of ‘Ram’! Yet others opine that the temple is an unnecessary attempt at chest-thumping and jingoism and how a hospital would have served the people better instead.

When I think of all the hue and cry which several Hindus themselves are raising over the temple, I am strongly reminded of the protagonist, Professor Henry Higgins from the classic ‘My Fair Lady,’ with his perpetual lament about the English not teaching their children the proper nuances of their own mother tongue. Stretching his point, we can see that several modern Hindus are no different, rather worse, because they shy away from teaching their children their own culture, garbed under the hazily vague cloak of modernity. It is unfortunate that such short-sighted people fail to see the fervour and pride which the temple has raised. It is further unfortunate that this misplaced modernity has blindfolded the gullible who fail to see the importance of a claiming of their history by the Hindus in India. What makes it saddest is the happiness with which the conversion of the Hagia Sophia, a historical church and later museum, to a mosque in recent times was greeted with gusto by these very same people. Is it by duplicity or design, one tends to wonder, especially when venerable seers of the Hindu religion jump into the political cauldron and proceed to create controversies where none were needed.

 But then, one tends to take heart when you see the Suryavanshi Rajputs of Ayodhya put on leather footwear and tie ceremonial Safas because they have succeeded in redeeming the pledge they made to their ‘Raja Ram’: that they would shame themselves by going barefoot because they were unable to withstand the onslaught of barbarians and protect their king. I like to think that all these nay-sayers are just a minor dark lining to the large silver cloud that is the common Hindu, who is rejoicing unabashedly. The very air is crackling with excitement as households all over the country await the holy invitation, a gesture of weaving them into the tapestry of a common happiness which unites us all. And it perhaps holds true for the Hindu diaspora the world over, as they watch with hopeful eyes a homecoming which has been centuries in the making.

Home, they say, is where the heart is. With the un-mangled version of ‘Raghupati Raghav Raja Ram’ with its lyrics of ‘Sundar Vigraha Megha Shyam, Ganga Tulsi Shaligram’ finally seeing the light of day and with Ayodhya being restored as the beating heart Hindu heritage and pride, the Hindu after being an eternal exile is finally home!

Emperors and conquerors abound in the pages of history. They were born, conquered, flourished, and died. Some were confined to local tales. A few travelled the world on the wings of victory. Others on the wings of notoriety. Quite a few have survived the ravages of the relentless march of time. But few have captured the imagination like a King who ruled a land which is now so different from its former Avatar, as to be unrecognizable. A God who lived the life of man or perhaps a man so great, that he aspired to Godhood. Whose life has captured the imagination of millions through the millennia. Who is inextricably woven into the fabric of Asia and who has hundreds of versions written about his life. A life which was distinguished neither by glorious success in every aspect nor by infallibility, but by an unflagging pursuance of duty. Ram of Ayodhya.

If Helen of Troy was responsible for the launching of a thousand ships during the Trojan war, Ram is responsible for launching the collective conscience of a people. His story, immortalized in The Ramayana, has floated down the river of time itself, disdainful and mocking of the changes which have tried to pull it off course by eddies and swirls caused by invasions, conversions and a thousand other types of destruction. It has been at the core of every Indian home, everchanging yet never changing. And it has been the ideal that millions aspire to.

His story has launched a revivalist movement of sorts, catapulted a change of regime and has been at center of several controversies and court cases which have run the whole gamut, questioning everything even remotely connected to Him, including his very existence. The slogan invoking him, ‘Jai Shree Ram’ has stirred not just minds and hearts but also unnecessary communal pots. It has awakened not only a spirit of brotherhood in some, but has been touted as ‘terrifying’ and ‘enraging,’ particularly in the waspish mind of a motherly, benevolent dictator (if Ram can be a myth, why not this mythical creature too?) who now rules, in reverse gear, what was once the beating heart of intellectual India. Tell us Indians to NOT do something and we WILL do it with unholy glee and thus the considerate dictator has been followed by mobs chanting Jai Shree Ram, until she has sought medical help for ringing ears. Not that it seems to have worked. Indiscriminate violence is sometimes the only answer when one’s ego is provoked, well depicted in The Ramayana itself and this easterly state has seen the same during Ram Navami celebrations.

If seen through the modern lens of unabashedly aspirational life, where ‘getting ahead’ whatever the cost is the only thing which counts, virtues be damned, you tend to agree with a famous Marathi music director when he describes The Ramayana as the greatest tragedy ever told. A series of disasters brought on by abysmal choices. Modernity may mock Ram’s obdurate stance on his unwavering sense of duty, which left him sadly lacking on the worldly front. He has always fought uphill battles whether against a foreign foe or against the enemy within.

Again, with times a-changing, black, and white has been imperceptibly merging to create a sordid grey mist which blankets everything moral in its suffocating tendrils. And thus, we see role reversals happening even in such a timeless classic. It has become the fashion, the ‘in thing’ to do. We have an entire cult of Ravan worshippers who tout Ravan as the aggrieved party, a righteous brother, provoked to action because of the criminal treatment meted out to his beloved sister (never mind sister’s shenanigans to deserve the punishment in the first place). In fact, there are those who justify the fact that he carried a woman away against her will because he ‘merely imprisoned’ her instead of ‘having his way’! Call it an open and shut case of a provoked ego and you have trolls coming at you waving pitchforks, clubs, nasty tweets (where is Elon Musk when you need him?) and unleashing the entirely new ‘Social-media-troll-Astra,’ a boon which had apparently been conferred on Ravan only now, not by the ancient Gods, but by the modern people, hell bent on playing God themselves.

Thus, the battle between Ram and Ravan remains one of inequality, of opposites. Of self- control versus recklessness, of ego versus altruism, of order versus disorder, harmony versus dissonance and put it very simply, of good versus evil. It is a battle which is as old as time itself and one which cannot be simply decided once and for all. Because, how can you separate the reverse and obverse of a single coin where one has no meaning without the other?

If struggle forms the basis of Ram’s life, it is heartening for us who live in modern times, to see it continuing. It is perhaps the one part of His life which we are still witness to, even if He is long gone. The Ram Janma Bhoomi case which dragged on for years and the Setu- Samudram project where His existence itself was the object of scrutiny are two of the latest examples. Jesus, denied thrice, by his disciple Peter is now a story in the Bible, teaching us human frailty and how redemption is possible with repentance. We can only wait for the several thousands of Indian Peters to have their epiphany on the way to Ayodhya. So far, however, it looks as if Italy still rules the ‘woke’ and everyone, a modern-day dynasty included seem to be travelling over the hills and far away to Rome, rather than the much closer Hindi hinterland which houses Ayodhya. Perhaps, their legacy is more Roman than Indian.

Whatever the case maybe, love Him, hate Him or be in denial, one cannot ignore or whitewash His presence from the Indian consciousness. Perhaps because His story remains relevant. Because truth, devotion, responsibility, and duty are universal tenets which makes us human. And thus, He continues to inspire, accepting all, rejecting none. Teaching us to stand up for what is right, even it means walking alone, whether on a strait or through the narrow.

What if you walked into Maratha Mandir theatre and found that instead of Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge, Mughal-e-Azam was playing instead? One part of you would be happy that the droning on and on and on of the former had ended. But the other part would be horrified that an even older film, which you had hoped had shot its bolt for good was back with a vengeance. Perhaps Messrs. Putin and Zelensky experienced similar emotions because they were summarily replaced from center stage by some of the oldest players in the Old Testament, the Jews, and the Palestinians, aka the Philistines, in their new avatar.

 Nothing kills the weekend vibe faster than waking up feeling thankful that the sun has finally appeared, only to be confronted with the news of a terrorist attack which has killed more than a thousand people, albeit half way across the world. You absorb the general gloom by osmosis, which is swiftly made worse by gruesome images and videos which sneak their way into your smart phone. “You may run but cannot hide” pounds in your head until you are left with a jumble of emotions, guaranteed to bring on a pounding headache, with an accompanying nasty, queasy feeling. What makes you want to lie down in a darkened room with a cool cloth over your eyes is the realization that this loop of depravity at its worse is not going away any time soon. There will be retaliation, condemnations, and the worst of it all, endless debates on who is right and who is wrong.

I think it is strange how people are now ‘woke up’ instead of ‘woken up.’ Perhaps they are losing much more than a sense of grammar. They are in grave danger of losing ALL sense, the commonest of course being common sense! It is no wonder that the panda is the universal sign of the endangered. Me thinks it has been chosen for its black and white color scheme among other things. Because today’s world refuses to acknowledge these two unfortunate colors. They have been combined into a single grey leaving all of us in the eye of the storm.

I had never truly understood why the commonest adjective to describe grey was ‘murky’ or ‘stormy,’ until now. But after hearing people shouting themselves hoarse in defense of the indefensible, even the eye of the storm blinds with its crystal- clear clarity. Media of all kinds has left little to the imagination in the attack on civilian Jews by HAMAS, a radical Muslim organization in Palestine. If people sitting thousands of miles away can feel the outrage and anger caused by the massacre of babies, the supposed ‘Knee-Jerk’ reaction of the Israeli government in calling for a no-holds barred decimation of HAMAS is certainly not abnormal. Besides, as Golda Meir, the former prime minister of Israel poetically put it, the Jews have nowhere else to go, and thus, any attempt to rub them up the wrong way is a one- way ticket to the hereafter before you can say ‘blast.’

But perhaps the world never could be divided neatly into right and wrong. Somehow, the onus of the massacre of human rights has landed on the Jewish doorstep, trailing the entrails of the ‘woke’ who claim Israel to be a terrorist state which has encroached upon the land of the ‘poor Palestinians’ and converted Gaza into the world’s largest open- air prison. Making a peaceful community revolt against decades of suppression and usurpation. Calls for the rest of the Muslim world to stand in solidarity against Israel have already resulted in knifings in France, clashes in Canada, eruptions in England, grumbling in Germany and smoldering fires in Sweden.

Never mind that the original settlers of the land of Cannan were the Jews, who were hounded out by Arab conquerors whose greed for land was not satiated even after swallowing the Persians, the Mesopotamians, the Egyptians, and the Romans! Possession in this case was the ABSOLUTE law, not just nine tenths of it. Never mind that in recent history the Ottoman Turks were forced to cede this land and of course, never mind that Israel was provoked into fighting three wars, winning them all and adding to its territory.  Never mind that it restored the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt, which REFUSED to take over Gaza! Never mind that the rest of Israel’s neighbors covertly armed and funded the Palestinians, encouraging them to fight a proxy war on their behalf, putting paid to any negotiations for lasting peace.

Of course, HAMAS has human rights if they were to join the human race in the first place! Kidnapping the old and infirm, burning babies alive, parading naked dead bodies and indiscriminate killings need to be defended as if they were defensible crimes. And HAMAS has been smart. They are the eternal victims who are being defended by their champions who woke up very early, whether in Harvard, Yale, Turkey, good old God’s own country Kerala, the Aligarh Muslim University or the working committee of the grand old party of India.

There are those bleeding hearts who were proponents of peace between the powers that were in Gaza and Israel, who were kidnapped by HAMAS to use as hostages and were later disposed off like so many flies. But then again, it is the world of the woke or so they think. What terrorist organizations excel at is propaganda which is as insidious as low dose arsenic, which succeeds in endorsing its fake victim card before you can say Aadhar. While the true master minds bring their nefarious plans to fruition from far away safe havens, they have the advantage of the double whammy. By sacrificing dispensable front lines as cannon fodder, they portray the actual victims as the oppressors, making them fight two battles: of weapons and of morals. It is a win- win situation for them. For the world generally loves to fete the have-nots. We have heard and seen it in the classic beginning of most childhood tales, “There once was a kind poor man and a wicked rich man.” The Jews of Israel are still trying to live down the reputation foisted on them by William Shakespeare’s Shylock.

Perhaps, it is time for us Indians to turn to our ancient wisdom, where wrong and right were more clearly demarcated and punishment meted out accordingly, to angels and demons alike. For until the world wakes from its slumber of wokeism, HAMAS will continue to exercise its (in)human rights.

(This article is Part 1 of the series called Tentacles of Terror: Connecting Bharat, Israel and Persia)