Babanrao Mahadik makes a comeback

Recently, the Shiv Sena responded to the assaults on Indian students in Australia by declaring that it would not allow the Australian cricket team to play in Mumbai during the upcoming Indian Premier League. Some view this threat as Bal Thackeray’s bid to revive the Sena’s image as a party of aggressive street fighting men. This image has suffered under the leadership of Uddhav Thackeray, who’s perceived to be a mild chap who’d rather take aerial photographs. However few people know that the man charting the Sena’s image makeover is none other than Babanrao Mahadik. The right wing radical has left the Shri Ram Sene and returned to the mothership in Bombay to turn it around. But this homecoming did not take place under very happy circumstances. Mahadik, it is believed, was asked to leave the Shri Ram Sene after the failure of his outrageous ‘Chaddi Hatao campaign’. A women’s group in Mangalore reacted to the campaign by arguing that the same logic applied to men’s underwear. If women can’t wear panties, then men can’t wear briefs. The group stormed the offices of the Sene and tried publicly and quite literally to take Mahadik’s pants down. Ironically, Mahadik was saved by his underwear. On the unfortunate day, Mahadik had fortunately chosen to wear a kachha instead of briefs. Before the women could fully unravel the kachha’s double knotted nada, the police arrived and shooed them away.

Mahadik says that he has put the incident behind him and moved on. Immanuel’s Cant caught up with Mahadik at home, where he’s fondly called Babya.

IC: How does it feel to return to the Sena?

BM: I feel like a tiger who has found his long lost pack and is fully charged again to hunt all those who stray into his territory.

IC: Tigers don’t hunt in packs.

BM: Whatever.

IC: It’s possible that while some attacks are racist, some are motivated by theft. It’s also possible that Australians resent the fact that a lot of Indians go there not to study but get residencies and are willing to work for very low wages.

BM: So what? Indians are hard working people and if the Australians are afraid that Indians are taking their jobs they should work harder. Beating people is not the answer.

IC: In that case, why do you harass north Indians working in Bombay?

BM: Umm…

IC: Have you noticed that most of the Indians attacked are north Indians? You should be happy no?

BM: Not at all boss. Better they go to Australia than come to Mumbai no? (laughs conspiratorially)

IC: So who are you going to hunt next? You’ve covered north Indians, south Indians, Muslims, Pakistanis. Who’s left?

BM: If you notice, the number of foreigners working in Mumbai has increased dramatically in the last few years. Just go to Bandra – you see more gora log than apna Indian log. Saala, these people have caused the financial crisis, and now that there are no jobs in the West, they are coming to India and depriving us of jobs. I’m thinking of starting a campaign called ‘No videshi, only swadeshi’. We’ll take out some morchas, slap a few people around. What do you think?

IC: I think you’ll be in trouble – again – if some of them happen to be Australians.

BM: Enough talking boss. Here, have some Shiv vada pav………………. How is the taste?

IC: Nothing compared to Aaram’s vada pav.

BM: Between you and me, I agree.

Amused to death

On a recent trip to Delhi, I visited DLF Promenade mall. A gigantic monolith on a highway in Vasant Vihar, it’s less known than its neighbour DLF Emporio, which is famous for housing top brands like Gucci and Dior. Emporio seems like the sort of place in which guards, instead of searching visitors for explosives, check to see if you’re wearing at least some major brands. Bally, in. Bata, out! I was carrying a jhola, so I didn’t want to risk being chased by guard dogs or whatever it is they use to keep affordably dressed people out.

Back to the point. What’s striking about these malls, to a Bombaywallah at least, is their location. They’re on a stretch of road on which you see few people and lots of whizzing cars. Even the mall compounds were eerily deserted at the time I visited – about 8pm on a Sunday. But inside, the mall was surprisingly full of people. Now malls are designed to be exclusive, shopping wonderlands that shut out the distractions of the outside world. But I find that that’s just a little harder to achieve in Bombay. If you look out of the glass panels at Infinity Mall in Andheri you see chaotic traffic, Phoenix Mills has a chimney that reminds you that the place was once a textile mill whose premises were slyly turned into a shopping arcade. At the Promenade, the illusion remains even if you’re outside its walls. A friend and I sat in the al fresco section of the TGIF, which overlooks a courtyard that has fountains and ornamental trees. Beyond it is the road that’s reminiscent of Lynch’s Lost Highway. Maybe it was the time of day and the effect of all the lights, but even though I was outside, I felt I could have been anywhere. And this in turn gave rise to the feeling of unreality. The only sign that I was in Delhi and not in Dubai was a bunch of men talking loudly behind us. Never have brash Punjabis been more reassuring.

A similar and far more disconcerting experience was a trip in September to Disney Land in Anaheim, a singularly uninteresting suburb where all you see on the roads are cars and palm trees.

This was not my first Disney experience. On a trip to the States in 2000 with the family, I had visited Disney World in Florida. The novelty of Disney made the first experience enjoyable even though I couldn’t shake off the feeling of being in one of those glass paperweights with miniature figurines and fake snow. The second time – I was there on work – was like being in someone else’s hallucination. After all, you’re constantly reminded that you’re experiencing Walt Disney’s fabulous dream. And it was not fun. The level of artifice, the extent to which the theme is taken is so staggering that it’s unsettling. My half day trip was spent trying to overcome an unrelenting claustrophobia. The most surreal moment occurred while I was trying to swallow tasteless crab cakes at a dinner with fellow journalists, one of whom wore a different Mickey Mouse shirt every day for five days. I realised that the sky above me was false. I was in a restaurant that overlooked the Pirates of the Caribbean ride that I had taken a few hours before. (This rubbish amusement in which you sail down a canal with robotic pirates swilling rum and crowing “ahoy mateys” as your feet get wet is the inspiration behind the film.) When I looked to the firmament in frustration, I found that even that wasn’t real. I had mistaken a black swathe of cloth for the sky and air conditioning for fresh air. And there wasn’t drop of alcohol on the table to my rescue.

For Christ’s sake

 

It’s difficult to make up one’s mind about Lars von Trier’s Antichrist. Initially its impact felt like the emotional equivalent of a bludgeoning by a wrecking ball. But in retrospect, the film lost some of its weight, seeming more and more like a hastily written first draft, filled with loose ends and incomplete thoughts. It’s very unlike von Trier, whose films are usually tightly reined in pieces of work. At the same time, Antichrist has an honesty that’s quite appealing.

The film opens with a nameless couple making passionate love. The scene is shot in slow motion and set to a Handel aria that soars as their pleasure intensifies. As they plunder each other, their child falls out of a window. The woman (Charlotte Gainsbourg) is torn apart by grief. Her husband (Willem Dafoe), who’s also her therapist, attempts to help her cope. They go to a log cabin in a semi-imaginary forest called Eden and it’s here that the woman spirals into insanity. Unfortunately, she takes the film with her.

Before it begins its dramatic descent, Antichrist is an intensely intimate examination of guilt that’s often hard to watch peppered as it is with scenes of violent sex. You feel sympathy for the woman when she’s put through a series of psychoanalytical exercises by her husband who is at times maddeningly rational. But once they’re at the cabin, Antichrist takes a Biblical hairpin.

An academic who has researched historical violence committed against women, Gainsboug’s character becomes convinced that women are evil. She calls nature Satan’s church, women false creatures and later, in an unbearable scene, slices her genitals with a scissor. She also flagellates herself by masturbating violently and having sex that looks cringingly painful. Her guilt over her son’s death combines with a Catholic guilt over her enjoyment of sex. Critics have accused von Trier of misogyny. For the film, he hired a “misogyny consultant” who was required to produce evidence that women are evil, starting from Eve. But the Biblical references are ham-handed. It seems farfetched to conclude that von Trier is a misogynist. Instead Antichrist could be read, as its Nietzschean title suggests, as an indictment of Christianity. But there’s not enough in the film to back the idea. It’s as if von Trier recently read about medieval Christianity and thought it would make a nice hook for his film. (He converted to Catholicism at the age of 30.)

The other evil in Satan’s church is nature. Von Trier channels the horror film as he shows an Eden that is as sinister as it is beautiful. Trees are dark and looming and the cabin rings with the unpleasant thud of acorns falling on it. The woman says she can hear the cry of all things that are going to die. The man sees a deer with a stillborn foetus dangling from its womb and an injured fox which, in an unbelievably ridiculous scene, looks at him and intones: chaos reigns. Actually, the woman’s preoccupation with death is a far more interesting thread than feminine guilt. Sadly it leads nowhere.

In interviews, von Trier has said that the film was his way of dealing with a long drawn bout of depression that had incapacitated him for months. It makes sense as Antichrist really does come across as the outcome of some feverish self-examination. It seems too personal to be another joke by the “giggling prankster of world cinema”. But if it is, then joke is on von Trier. The film ends with a horrifying sequence of gratuitous violence – she screws what looks like a millstone onto his leg in an act of punishment and smashes his genitals with a log. More than saying anything about the pathology of the woman or womanhood, it suggests that von Trier had forgotten to take his meds.

God awful

If you’ve recently crossed Hughes Road on your way north, you might have noticed a billboard advertising Phoenix Mills. It has a couple carrying several shopping bags standing with their arms around each other in a clothing store. Superimposed on their faces are two large smileys. A blurb reads: “Let’s go phoenixing!”

Not on your life. The smileys, which are meant to convey a joie de vivre, do the exact opposite. They’re disconcertingly placed, making the couple seem possessed and their smiles, especially the one on the left, seem almost diabolical. There’s nothing subliminal here. The ad seems to say: shop or we’ll invade your bodies.

The ad reminded me of Neil Gaiman’s American Gods, in which mythological gods such as Odin, Loki, Anubis, even Kali face competition from modern deities – the internet, media, consumption – and clash in a Gotterdammerung. Gaiman, I’m sure, could imagine the global financial crisis in terms of an epic downfall in which the gods of consumption are sucker punched by their own fates. Their realm, the retail market, is obviously not recovering as well as news reports suggest if they have to reveal themselves in billboards. Phoenix isn’t the only company to advertise. There have recently been a number of ads that show families shopping hysterically at incredible sales. Well, all they make me want to do is leave my money at the altar of fixed deposits.

Photograph by Mahafreed Irani

The walue of education

Last Saturday, Hillary Clinton and Aamir Khan discussed education at St Xavier’s College before students and volunteers of Teach India and Teach for India. The talk was moderated by Arnab Goswami, whose phoniness made him more odious than usual. Clinton said lots of inspirational things about bridging gaps between talent and education etcetera etcetera. After the event, everyone around me gushed about how eloquent she was. Is that surprising? Most of her job involves giving speeches. Of course she’s impressive.

But the afternoon’s great embarrassment was Aamir Khan. He was invited because he’s the ambassador for Teach India and Teach for India. Not that he’s done much about it. I hear he was meant to take a class with municipal kids. He confidently said he could teach science, math and language – he didn’t specify which one – and asked for text books five times but didn’t take the class.

On stage he was hilarious. He had that look of studied concentration that has been spoofed so well on TV. And he kept confusing his Vs and Ws. There should be great walue placed on education. I wanna see people wying for teaching jobs. Hillary sitting next to him in a retina-shattering vermillion suit must have thought: I can’t believe sharing the stage with this silly, tiny man and this chubby news anchor who’s pretending to give a shit. Indeed Arnab, at one point with supreme affectation, gushed: I’m so moved by what you’re saying Secretary Clinton. I can see that Aamir is absolutely drawn into the conversation.

Aamir put both his legs and torso into his mouth when he answered a question posed by a member of the audience who said that she was having trouble tutoring slum kids who have almost no knowledge of English. What should she do? Aamir confidently declared that it’s unimportant what language you instruct them in. Just teach children in the language they’re comfortable in. Right. English, the great enabler, is unimportant.

Mind it

It’s well known how seriously the intellectual is taken in West Bengal. It’s only in this state where ‘intellectual’ – the artist, writer, poet, filmmaker – is almost a genus. Just like peasants, rickshawallahs, school teachers, you have intellectuals. It’s a conceit of Bengalis, who consider themselves a highly cerebral people. Amartya Sen, for instance, suggests that the rate of crime in his home state is low because Bengalis like to read. It’s also a quaint, if hilarious, Marxist throwback that seems at odds with a Bengal that’s being put through an accelerated modernisation process. Take Calcutta, which is full of bizarre sights such as Victorian buildings housing KFCs. The communist government has kept Bengal antiquated for so long that any sign of modernity seems hard to digest. As New Rajarhat transforms into a Bengali Gurgaon and Salt Lake acquires more and more glass-fronted offices, the intellectual continues to be referred to by this lofty title. They might not have strong ideological ties with the government like many did in the Soviet Union and in Bengal especially in the sixties and seventies, but they’re still “intellectuals” – henceforth referred to in ironic double quotes.

It’s funny how even newspapers outside Bengal take the appellation for granted. They’ve been in the news quite regularly since the Singur and Nandigram conflicts, when they emerged in large numbers to protest against the CPI (M). In Bengal, a section of prominent “intellectuals” supported the Left, choosing to overlook, as Swapan Dasgupta points out, the regime’s repressive policies. But after Nandigram and Singur, even partisans like Mrinal Sen rallied against the government. They felt the CPI (M) had gone too far in its drive to overhaul Bengal and not I’m sure, as Dasgrupta histrionically suggests, because they were upset that Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee has the audacity to leapfrog them from the late nineteenth century to the present.

Naturally the government isn’t pleased with the “intellectuals”. In an editorial in The Times of India, DN Ghosh, a former chairman of the State Bank of India, quotes an irate cabinet minister: “Let the artists paint pictures and authors write books. They should not stray into politics. If I were the police commissioner, I would have taken them to the Sagar island in the Bay of Bengal and consigned them to oblivion”.
But in Bengal, it would seem, no political party is complete without a division of “intellectuals”. The Trinamool Congress has Tapas Pal (the babyface actor who has created a template for maudlinness) and Kabir Suman, a singer and self-confessed polygamist and nihilist, who is known as the Bengali Dylan. I’m not certain what Dylan would think of lyrics like “Pagol… shaap ludo khelchhey bidhataar shonge” (The mad…snake plays ludo with god).

The first time I realised just how seriously Bengalis take their reputation was in college. I was strolling around campus on a pleasant evening. Since I was a fresher and prone to being ragged, taking a walk was a dangerous activity. Sure enough, I was accosted by a bunch of boys who happened to be part of the Bengali Literary Society. For them, even ragging was an intellectual activity. Getting me to sing a song or pretend to be a tennis ball as most other seniors had demanded would have been too low brow. Instead I was gruffly asked: “Which Russian authors have you read?” Stunned for a moment, I think I tried not to giggle as I mumbled “Dostoevsky”.

Illustration by Azeema Pardiwala

Chaos theory

The monsoon is perhaps the only time Bombay looks picturesque. Moody skies and delicate curtains of rain turn even a street littered with garbage into a photo op. Imagine what a rainy day can do to the Bandra-Worli sea link. I had the chance to stroll along the sea link on such a day. The clouds were epic, the light, a melancholic slate, the slums of Worli’s fishing village looked like they were right out of a Paul Klee painting. And the bridge, rising forty storeys from the sea bed, stayed with cables like a giant harp, looked the eighth wonder of the world.

Now if only the rain could whitewash what a waste of 1600 crores the sea link seems to be. It’s a no-brainer – without the extension to Nariman Point, there’s going to be a major traffic jam when cars are disgorged at Worli sea face. This, after paying Rs 50 for a one-way ride.

The sea link is in so many ways emblematic of Bombay right now. Huge infrastructure projects are executed without caring about consequences. The construction of the sea link narrowed the Mithi as a result of which the river flooded a part of the city in 2005. But  who cares? Not the conscientiously myopic architects of Bombay. The new airport that’s planned in Navi Mumbai, will erase 115 hectares of mangroves. What does it matter that Bombay can’t afford to lose more green cover, that mangroves are natural flood deterrents?

This year the monsoons were scarily late. Folks were reminded of a time in the 1960s when the government considered evacuating the city because the rains were far behind schedule. At the rate at which we’re going, there won’t be enough trees to usher in rains that prettify the city.

On a less histrionic note: I noticed that the railings that line the sea link look rather cheap, like they would crumple if you boxed them. So much for spending 1600 crores. A colleague, who I suspect is a Bengali supremacist, seemed to agree. She declared, “Kolkata’s Vidyasagar Setu is maach bettaar.”

Tata, roads

The Nano was launched on March 23 at Parsi Gymkhana on Marine Drive. Even though there was little fanfare – I’ve been told that the Indica launch had dancers and lighting effects – it was like being in the hottest party in town. There were people queuing to get in, those inside were happily swilling wine and chowing down delicious ham rolls and terrible veg sushi. The atmosphere was quite convivial and all people could talk about was what a historic achievement the Nano is.

Many of those present, it seemed, were only too willing to overlook the possibility that the Nano will lead to a historic irony. The outrageously cheap car (though it will cost a lakh only to the first one lakh buyers; there’s always a catch), Ratan Tata declared will give millions of rural Indians, who travel with entire families packed onto scooters, a chance to drive in comfort. Ecstatic votaries of the Nano almost make the scheme out to be a corporate social responsibility initiative.

But how long will comfort last when India becomes a colossal traffic jam? I imagine Bombay’s roads will become gridlocks of gaily coloured Nanos. Ratan Tata, sitting in his Mercedes S Class, is bumper to bumper with his petite creations. He ordinarily takes 15 minutes to zip from his home in Colaba to his office at Flora Fountain. After the phenomenal success of the Nano, it takes him an hour. In a moment of insanity brought on by the inertia of Bombay traffic, he echoes Kurtz: “The horror! The horror!”

Nano’s cheerleaders argue that the rest of the country is barely motorised. A few million Nanos aren’t enough to cause traffic jams in the vast swathes of unmotorised countryside. Besides, they continue, the solution to traffic snarls in the city is not reducing the number of cars on the road but enhancing public transport. Nano’s critics are accused of being blinkered bourgeois bigots who can’t stand the idea of class barriers being disrupted by a vehicle of social mobility.

That’s just capitalist apologia for a hugely profit-making enterprise. I don’t care if my dudhwala has a car. But I’m frustrated when I see the number of cars on the road swell, dooming to failure projects like the Bus Rapid Transit System, a scheme that involves a vehicle of far more economical and environmentally sound social mobility.

And then there are those who view the Nano as a godsend in more ways than one. In the March 26 edition of the Hindustan Times, spiritual columnist Satish Sharma ingeniously suggests: “The launch of the new car – Nano – has been greeted with unprecedented enthusiasm. For millions of families with modest means, it would mean the realization of the dream of a more comfortable and private mode of transportation. But it goes beyond that. For, inherent in it is the desire to be in motion. While motion is a physical act, it is also spiritually liberating. Only when we are in motion, do we share the rhythm of the universe more palpably………Hindu scriptures lay special emphasis on vehicles. All gods and goddesses have their vehicles. If it is a mouse for Lord Ganesha, it is a swan for Saraswati, the goddess of learning.” I expect LK Advani and company to trade their gilded chariots with Nanos in the next rath yatra.

Saffron art

These are hard times for the salaried employee or those who are in “service” as my grandmum says. Jobs are being axed as the economic shitstorm shows no sign of letting up. Poor investment bankers have had to defer plans of buying a third car, a fifth Armani suit. Things are bad even for those who are not in banking. We’re all thrashing and flailing in the toilet bowl that is the economy. But there is one sector that’s upbeat, that’s positively booming: Hindu fundamentalism. There has never been a better time to be a Hindu activist. Just look at the job opportunities. There are the warhorses: RSS, Shiv Sena, Bajrang Dal, VHP, ABVP, Hindu Jagran Manch, MNS (even though they don’t have an explicit Hindu agenda, they deserve to be on the list for their linguistic chauvinism). Then there are new bodies like the Shri Ram Sene and Abhinav Bharat. These are spirited outfits fuelled by young firepower. Take the guys at Abhinav Bharat. They wanted to create not just a Hindu Rashtra, but a consortium of Hindu and Buddhist countries under the banner of Hindu and Oriental Nations Union. What vision for bunch of people who had never been heard of before. When they were arrested and jailed for their courage, it felt like the freedom struggle all over again.

These groups are no longer rag-tag mobs of uneducated youth helmed by a single, charismatic leader. Their ranks are educated – they have army men, computer engineers, Vedic scholars. To get hired for a good position, therefore, one must be educated and full of initiative. So here’s a brief model resume every aspiring Hindu activist can draw inspiration from.

 

 

 

Babanrao Mahadik

Date of birth: May 28, 1980

 

X Apartments, Savarkar Road, Tilakwadi, Belgaum, Karnataka.

Tel: (831) 4209777

 

Education: Tilakwadi High School (Marathi medium)

Gogte College of Commerce: B Com, M Com

 

 

Interests: Reading (I have read Mein Kampf 13 times and am an ardent fan of MS Golwalkar and KB Hedgewar); writing (I have written the first draft of No Country for Mild Men: Towards a Robust Hindu Nation); exercise (I am proficient in malkhamb); travelling (I have toured most of the temple towns in Bharat. As an avowed bhramachari, I have no family to tie me down. And so I have no qualms about working where my party sends me).

 

Work experience:

 

Volunteered with the Maharashtra Ekikaran Samiti to campaign for Belgaum joining Maharashtra. (1998)

 

Worked with Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad to set up shakhas throughout Belgaum. Was commended for my talent for doing calisthenics. (1999)

 

Joined the Shiv Sena in Mumbai as a party worker. I have fulfilled, among others, the following assignments: led a charge of sainiks to deface English shop signs, disrupted Railway Recruitment Board exams to protest those from outside Maharashtra joining, disrupted a cricket pitch in Mohali to protest Pakistan from playing in Bharat. (2000-2005)

 

Joined Maharashtra Navnirman Sena. As a member of the MNS, I have participated in attacking Uttar Bharatiya taxi drivers, forcing shops to bear Marathi signs, threatening owners of shops with names of Pakistani cities (for example Punjab Chandu Halwai Karachiwala) with action if they didn’t change the titles and so on. (2005-2009)

 

Currently consolidating the brand new Shri Ram Sene in Belgaum. I am spearheading a new initiative that is a reaction to the perverted Pink Chaddi Campaign started by the Consortium of Pubgoing, Loose and Forward Women. When we received all that pink underwear, we were shocked by how vulgar they were. Such undergarments are an affront to Bharatiya sanskruti. But then we realised that there is no tradition of women’s underwear in Bharat at all! It is a piece of clothing imported from the West. Our grandmothers never wore underwear. Why should our women wear them? And so our new campaign exhorts women to discard their underwear, burn their chaddis. We are calling it Chaddi Hatao!

 

Delicious irony

I take back what I said about Indians not having a sense of irony in my second post. How could we not? It’s in our meltwater, in our rivers and lakes and seas. It’s up for sale, if this label on a bottle of Himalayan is to be believed:

 

I look back on life

it’s funny how things turn out.

You, the creator of beeping sirens

and honking cars, yearn for the

solitude of the mountains.

You, a connoisseur of fast food,

now gaze at water that took

years to gather natural minerals

as it trickled its way down

from the Himalayas to within

your reach. And I, some of the purest water in the world,

stand here, trapped in a bottle.

Come, enjoy the irony.