The Gagging Reflex

For the last couple of days, I’ve been reading all over Facebook about how people are being gagged by the government. The internet in general and Facebook in particular are my link with the real world. I sit in a corner, in my end-of-the-road house in a non-descript village, surrounded by jungle, away from sand, surf and tourists. Post after post tells me India’s being gagged. I narrow my search in the newspaper for ‘public transport’ and ‘garbage’ headlines, my areas of interest these days. No gagging of voices anywhere. Taxi-drivers/owners and passengers are both cribbing loud and clear. As are locals and tourists alike, regarding disposal of plastic bags, sanitary napkins, biscuit-wrappers, banana peels, half-eaten wada-paavs, etc. The gagging business has got me curious. Familiar faces shout out of my television screen in decibels whose vibrations scared away the two-metre monitor lizard that was sunning itself in our compound last week. Those voices have been unchanged for years and unchanging in their ways, ruled by the advertisers, day after day, 24-hours/day. To switch channels, one has to choose between insane yelling, vigorous hyperventilation and boredom, with program-repeats every couple of hours. Methinks, some form of gagging would be a good idea. I read some old opinions on military affairs in Kashmir and naxal-territory written by a novelist. Was impressed. The author should pronto be made a starred general. Those who do professional courses and put themselves at risk on crazy heights in miserable weather are wasting their time. All they need to do is check with her how to sort out complicated political stuff and convince the powers that rule, and the powers that divide, and some violence-happy guys, and make peace prevail. She hasn’t written for a while. If she’s been gagged, she should be un-gagged immediately. In a democracy, all PoVs should be heard, even absurd/irresponsible ones. I hear friends discuss how such-and-such politician hasn’t kept his/her word and is so-o corrupt. That’s what politicians do. And no one’s being gagged (in India) for saying so…yet. And no one’s discovered (anywhere) a method to gag a politician…yet. Over the phone two acquaintances from Delhi tell me about the happenings in JNU: one says the government has no business to stifle students’ voices, the other says students should get involved in politics after their studying years are over. This is life in a free country, everyone voicing contra-views. Gagging will kill that charm. An ex-colleague from the hotel industry tells me how putrid the health care industry is. Medical professionals say a few greedy ones are giving them all a bad name. Builders/industrialists say you can’t stop progress; environmentalists say you mustn’t destroy the earth. Such a cacophony. When irritated, I feel, gag ‘em all. Parents say dilute the school syllabi; the government says fail nobody, and when the school-children become young adults, they don’t get jobs because they don’t have skills. So many people complaining, so many complaints. More the merrier. Complaining is our birth-right. In calmer moments, I feel, gagging will destroy this national pastime. Actually, when I began doing homework about gagging, what should or not be gagged, I was expecting reporters, anchors, people around me to feel nauseated, be throwing up. Because gagging is what happens when an ENT surgeon shoves a spatula into my mouth to depress my tongue or a dentist opens my mouth wide and wider until my insides protest with a couple of unexpected, involuntary, violent consecutive jerks. (Doctors/dentists/nurses dealing with the likes of me get nightmares: of that another time.) Gagging is what I did as a child… when the thin cream that happened on the surface of cooling coffee/tea got inadvertently swallowed. Gagging is one reflex that recognizes whether a patient is unconscious or dead. And the health of Freedom in a nation. Nowadays, everyone in Delhi-Gurgaon is wearing masks and keeping windows closed. Some are not daring to even do pranayama in case they inhale too much of that dense fog of smoke and grime. When I listen to what’s making everyone wheeze and choke there, what makes me gag is the question “What has the government done?” We all know the government is irresponsible. It’s been like that for almost 67 years, nothing new about that. What makes me gag is that no one’s asking us citizens what we have done to reduce the pollution that’s causing everybody to cough and gasp. I don’t hear anyone insisting on having comfortable and reliable buses so that they don’t have to use cars. Or bicycle-tracks. My point: want single-use cars? Want multiple cars per family? Then learn to gag. The air clogs poor lungs, rich lungs, middle-class lungs, healthy lungs, ill lungs, domiciled lungs and lungs passing through. Masked and yet-to-be masked nostrils means a lot of money to be made for certain manufacturers. India’s on the move. A trillion-trillion masks to make. A billion-plus of us are ready to pollute, and in all parts of India, too. I don’t hear anyone volunteering to stop or reduce using air-conditioning, or burning crackers/sparklers. Using wood for cremating the dead adds to the smoke. Electrical burning pollutes less. Do we insist on the latter? Nah, tradition is more important, gagging be damned. Burning in the fields in another, major, problem. But not the only one. We’ll soon have packaged air. Some years ago we thought bottled water was not possible. More packaging, more plastic in the gutters, more burning of garbage, more fumes, more gagging. Some guru will invent and broadcast the gag-pranayama on tv. And we’ll have families/schools doing this together: “on-the-gag, get-set, breathe”. The media says: “The government must do something.” We have our rights, the government has the responsibility. To me the biggest gag moment of all is hearing a fellow countryman do ‘khaak thoo’. India has the distinction of being the only country in the world that has a problem with disposal of spit. Any ideas how we can deal with it? Want to start a Gaggers’ Group? Feedback: sheelajaywant@yahoo.co.in.

The IAS and the Military.

         Bai Goanna said “one of you should have joined the IAS”, rolling her eyes at Shri Husband, but addressing me. “Then instead of budgeting and bussing to places, you’d be buying homes in Palampur/Manipur/Coorg, maybe even employing a pilot so that you don’t have to take the trouble to fly your own aircraft.”

         Shri Husband: “Don’t be silly, those officers are salaried employees of the Government, no different from many others.”

         “Naïve,” said Bai Goanna. “Very. Had you been a babu, and posted in Chennai at this time, you’d have earned multiple times what all your ancestors put together have over generations.”

         “We come from honest stock,” declared Shri Husband.

         “Nothing to be proud of,” believed Bai Goanna. “Misfits you are.”

         I brought the topic back on-track: “Why Chennai?”

         Bai Goanna: “Remember the Uttarakhand-Kedarnath floods? Thousands died. Rs 5 biscuit packets were sold at Rs 200 and bottles of water at Rs 100 each. Saddened at the apathy and greed of the locals trying the best to make most of the tragedy, the bureaucrats comforted themselves at Narayankoti, a few kilometres away from Guptkashi, with butter chicken and rasgulla. The Rudraprayag district administration shelled out Rs 25.19 lakh for towards their food and accommodation.”

         “How,” asked Shri Husband suspiciously, “do you know this?”

         Bai Goanna read from a file of cuttings she’d carried along: “… revealed from a reply to an RTI query filed by Dehradun-based activist Bhupendra Kumar.” 

She added, “While the Army- Air Force rescue operations were going on, the babus were happy to play routine roles.”

Shri Husband contemplated: “Any heads rolled?”

Bai Goanna: “No bureaucratic head rolls because s/he gave bribed permission to build in low-lying areas, flouting all sense of town-planning and ecologically correct rules. Won’t happen in Chennai also. Lots of money-making opportunity there now.”

Shri Husband, being fair: “Some babus do brilliant jobs.”

Bai Goanna: “Exceptions prove the rule. The clever ones master the art of misuse of disaster-funds. One Uttarakhand official submitted a bill of Rs 194 for half-a-litre of milk. In Chamoli, diesel bills were submitted for use of four-wheelers. The vehicle-numbers mentioned in the bill were petrol-run two-wheelers.” 

Shri Husband shook his head.

Bai Goanna carried on: “In Gopeshwar, from a particular shop, some officials bought 1,800 raincoats per day, for three consecutive days. How did a shop stock so many? Who collected/distributed them?”  

Shri Husband remarked, “The Defence guys do their jobs irrespective of payments/irregularities.”

“There are Defence guys who line their pockets, too,” said Bai Goanna.

“Exceptions prove the rule,” retorted Shri Husband, mimicking her. “The stranded and rescued believe the Indian Armed Forces are gods in uniform.  Not without reason; they win battles in spite of the substandard equipment supplied to them, rescue children who fall into unsafe wells, control crowds in NaMo’s own state when the cops and paramilitaries can’t. There are IAS chaps who lead from the front, though rarely.”

Bai Goanna commented: “Not surprised that the Army-Navy-Air Force was called out in Chennai. No bureaucrat will be held responsible for anything at all.”

I granted: “The babus live well on the commissions they get. Rarely heard of a Court punishing them for wrong-doing. Remember the chaos in Srinagar last year? Result of another babu-neta-thekedar nexus?”

          Shri Husband said: “Global warming makes floods happen.”

Bai Goanna interjected: “Global warming isn’t responsible for the chaotic condition of city planning. The IAS would control the weather if it could get money to do so. It – the IAS, not the weather---needs to be held accountable/responsible.”

         I thought to myself: “Why do these soldiers do these rescues when the government is treating them so shabbily over the One Rank One Pension?”
         As if reading my mind, Shri Husband said: “They have a sense of izzat, a sense of duty, money be damned. But there will come a time – and soon-- when they may do just what is told to them and not go out of their way as they’re doing now. They might ask questions like why aren’t those who are paid to do disaster relief and handle law and order situations doing their jobs. The world agrees that our faujis are the best in the world. And we ourselves can confidently vote our babudom the worst.”
         I read in a newspaper that the Raksha Mantri had said “Let the veterans prove that their agitation is not political,” whilst talking about the OROP.  

“If he’s really said that,” Bai Goanna said, “the one institution that so far hasn’t bothered about the religion/region/political affiliation of those it serves/saves, of which India is justifiably proud, will no longer be the same. They’ve waited for four decades for this right to be granted. Now they’re told that the Government “is losing patience” with their agitation. Shame. Politicians come and go. It’s the bureaucracy that holds the reins permanently.”

“True,” I said, “true. They say the IAS is the steel framework of our government.”

“Rusty, cracked and pitted,” said Shri Husband pithily. “Needs to be transfused with lots of clean, fresh blood for it to recover from decades of sloth and corruption.”

“Told you,” said Bai Goanna thinking she’d have the last word this time. “One of you should have joined the IAS.”

“Can’t,” said Shri Husband as usual having his say before walking out. “We’re overage.”

Feedback: sheelajaywant@yahoo.co.in