Touchstones: Destroyers of social values

Was there life before the Bihar elections, I wonder? Whatever you read, hear or see goes back to ‘Who do you think is going to win in Bihar?’ Just as we’ve made every festival a carnival, we have made elections a game of betting and public conjecture. It’s as if we have given our own brains to the pollsters and journalists, who have fixed preferences and bombard us day and night with dodgy poll surveys and interviews with chosen people. The hysteria reached epic heights in the days leading to Bihar’s Chhath festival. Buses and trains with migrant Biharis returning for their annual celebration became the perfect chance to hype the spectacle it presented, with some enterprising journalists even travelling in over-crowded sleeper coaches to ask the question that appears to haunt all of India currently.

Then came the deadly wave of our post-Diwali pollution that gave a heaven-sent opportunity to the rival parties in Delhi to blame everything on the current government. From the filthy air to the poisonous water in the Yamuna, to the state of the crowds at the railway stations — there was so much to feed off. In all of this frenzied reporting were journalists who can barely speak two coherent sentences in Hindi, let alone Maithili or Bhojpuri, while those who can are equally challenged in English. I don’t remember when this sweet Bihari festival became so important that even the PM decided to display his true Bihari feelings by going to Bihar and bowing before the river. Nothing in the world is as important as the war between the Mahagathbandhan and the NDA, it seems. God help us all and God help Bihar.

I recall several past elections that were equally keenly contested but the level of name-calling, the vulgarity of the language used by even the senior-most politicians who address mega election rallies and the angry bitterness is unprecedented. Bihar trumped (excuse the unintended pun) even the ASEAN conclave because, frankly, the PM had better things to do than meeting members of this important forum. Ab bolo!

We have tried our best to drag all our respected public institutions to this tu-tu, main-main level. So, starting with the Constitution and Parliament, to the Election Commission and the Supreme Court, our politicians will not rest in peace until they have torn down the very stage they stand on. Mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters — no relationship is left out. Memes, reels, sick jingles and near-fisticuff fights on debates at Prime Time news hour are now a blood sport no television channel can afford to ignore. From finger-wagging, self-righteous keepers of this country’s conscience to rascals who have crawled into public prominence by selling their souls, I can think of no one who I’d like to hear for clarity of vision.

All this brings to mind a film that remains my perennial favourite: ‘Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro’. Its comic depiction of the levels of corruption seen by two innocent and struggling photographers who try to expose it had the same message, but how brilliantly scripted and played! Sadly, the Bombay film world was never able to repeat this level of underplayed political satire. Who can ever forget the drunk Om Puri lifting the lid of a coffin with a dead Satish Shah inside or the Mahabharat scene with the dead Satish Shah as Draupadi, and a sword-wielding Naseeruddin Shah bringing the curtain down when the performance gets out of hand? Satish Shah, who passed away recently, was a genius whose wide repertoire of roles both in cinema and television brought a verve and wicked angle that said so much because of his flawless sense of comic timing.

In a moving clip of his memorial I chanced upon, Sonu Nigam kneels before Satish Shah’s wife (now sadly afflicted with Alzheimer’s) to sing holding her hand while she tries to mouth the words of the song Nigam sings. Believe me, I have not seen anything more moving in a long time. Many have paid tributes that are worthy of reading but Shah’s unexpected death leaves a hole in the heart of every film buff.

I have been thinking for a long time about how pomposity and self-importance are destroyers of social values. Wagging a finger and speaking in a deliberately civil voice has never convinced me that the speaker does not have a deeper motive than pure self-promotion. Give me the forthright critic who digs his own political grave by saying what needs to be clearly spelt out any day. There is another kind of public intellectual: the one who writes only for those who are familiar with the abstruse academic language he adopts to make a grave point. Indian journalism badly needs a Satish Shah who can laugh like Puck and say, ‘What fools these mortals be!’

A final word on language: more than ever before I bemoan the lack of the common idiom that best reflects common sense. I am reminded of a certain teacher in my university, who offered a visiting student some biscuits with the tea that he had served. When the poor boy shook his head shyly, the teacher pushed the plate across, saying, ‘Why do you cogitate and vacillate? Partake, partake.’

I have no idea whether this was a made-up story but this I remember that loud snores could be heard from the back-benchers in this teacher’s class.

— The writer is a social commentator