A beginning and an end
It is that time of year again when the weather changes and another long hot season begins. Chaitra, the Indian month of March to you, heralds the start of the Hindu New Year. Strangely, March is officially the signal for closure of the financial year for the government. Schools are busy holding final exams, banks close down for the end of the financial year and mayhem is let loose upon us as urgent requests for the renewal (yet again) of our KYC documents are sent by the bank almost on a weekly basis. Try doing this online and I guarantee you a heart attack: for, one is never sure whether sharing these details online becomes a tool in the hands of a crafty hacker to access your bank accounts and other important private details. Moreover, no bank customer-care phone is ever reachable and as for the banks themselves, they have cut down their staff to the bare minimum so that you can never get across to the person you seek. Finally, when you do manage to find a friendly bank manager and a helpful officer whose phone number you feed into your phone, be prepared to discover that he has moved to another branch or bank when you dial his number for help.
The much-celebrated digitisation of our banking system is touted as the biggest achievement in empowering Indians, but has anyone actually tried to understand what it has developed into? How I long for the old bank manager who stayed for years at his desk, greeted you warmly and shared a friendly cup of coffee as he helped you with your problem. I am sure I’m not the only one who wants the world to go back to that functioning chaos where problems actually got solved instead of creating fresh ones every week.
Having got that off my chest, let me now greet the burst of colour in Nature that surrounds us in March. The red silk cotton tree (semul) is in full bloom before it will burst into wispy balls of cotton wool that will create an epidemic of hay fever, as it is joined by the pollen in the air from flowers and plants full of it. I awoke one morning last week to see my bottlebrush tree sprout tiny red blossoms that are a riot of colour now. By next week, they will start falling, making our mali grumble as he sweeps the dead flowers and leaves. By then, the Easter lilies will poke their heads out, making up for the fading winter flowers that are ready to droop and die.
What this teaches me is that each season is both a beginning and an end. As the end of one draws near, the next one is ready to bloom and grow. This is the law of natural growth and regeneration and all pastoral communities celebrate it with different festivals.
Holi, Bihu, Hola Mohalla, Baisakhi — all these are markers of harvest and a brief period of rest for the hard-working farmer as he can leave his fields fallow to regenerate. In Kumaon, my natal home, married girls visit their parents and are pampered with sweets and gifts. And, as is common, fun, food, song and dance happen spontaneously as the cold winter days are put behind and blossoms in orchards predict a fruitful time ahead.
Sadly, many of these charming local and regional festivals are becoming occasions for riotous and unsocial behaviour. Drinking, smoking hash and consuming thandai generously laced with intoxicants has made it virtually impossible for young girls to participate in the revelry of spraying friends with coloured powders and water. In Uttar Pradesh and doubtless in Bihar, passing trains are covered in mud and dung flung by village rascals at faces seated near the windows. This is a violation of the spirit of the festival but, as they say in UP, ‘Bura na mano, Holi hai!’ (It’s Holi, after all. Let it go!)
From this, let’s turn to the world that is going round in mad circles with Trump and Musk playing the tune that has every country tied up in knots. Many like to call him crazy, but there is a canny politician inside the crazy Trump cards being played. Nobody can seriously challenge that the violence and proxy wars being fought were doing the world no good. It was time that the European nations realised that the days of colonial imperialism were seriously numbered and that they could not expect the US to foot the bill all the time. As elsewhere in the world, the old order was winding down and new power centres were sprouting.
In election after election, the old liberal democracies were being upturned as the entitled elite were displaced by a younger, angry and economically insecure system. Everyone looked for scapegoats: immigration being a common boojum for most. However, what the European countries have to also confront is the imbalance of demography and the fact that their industry and agriculture cannot be sustained unless immigrants do the job that the softened white population will not deign to do.
Listen to the voices outside your comfort zones and you will discover that there is a world outside that you cannot shut out. Remember the French Revolution and wake up, is what these pampered countries need to be told.
— The writer is a social commentator
