I’m back to Delhi, the capital of India, a country I loved so much since the arrival of my breath in wind of my small village. It was quite more than three months long wanderings in another planet enduring anyhow in the same nation-state.. My small village, Sitapur is just struggling to survive under the clutches of builders, contractors, corrupt officials and politicians who have one genetic consistency amongst them which owns greed and violence as their DNA distinctiveness.
They must be tested for it, medically and neurologically.
My novella Mohandas was born here, in the same soil, under the same sky, at the bank of the same river Soan, where I was born too around 56 years in the past.
Mohandas was never a fiction, a handiwork of imagination, an objet d'art created through arduous skills in a language named Hindi. It was not a daydreaming or scaring nightmare. Mohandas was and is never a fantasy….
It ‘s too real. Corporal truth about the life of us all working, moral and powerless subjects of this mighty corporate-political state. It’s a narrative which narrates its time and its helplessness. A gloomy, pessimistic saga of our life which succeeds to continue anyhow.
Well, Mohandas became very popular in no time throughout India. It’s translated in to almost all Indian languages, including English, which also is an Indian language without any snag. It has been played and being played as theatrical performances in big and small cities well spread over the country.
However, like ‘The Girl with the Golden Parasol’ (Peelee Chhatari waali Ladkee) this novella too created chaos and mess in my life. Now my being, I deeply feel, is an subversive act of clinging to life in a political, dehumanized, business minded state.
Irony or tragic comicality was here. If you remember, the novella Mohandas was dedicated to a lawyer who had taken up his case to the judicial magistrate, to my shock, the lawyer is now the Secretary of the Lions Club. A city club of businessmen and contractors. At the same time he is also the district secretary of the Communist Party of India.
So, things have changed very soon. History has ended and pragmatism has replaced ideologies. I visited the lawyers chamber, it’s equipped with split AC and interiors are lavish with expensive furnitures.
Well where Mohandas will go? And me, his author? Unemployed, uprooted…..! Money and power has snatched away our identities. I exactly remember the time when I wrote Mohandas three years before. I’d gone back to my village in search of survival as I was rejected by the selection committees for a University and an Academy. The member got his own son in law appointed in the same university and had full support of power centers of capital’s Hindi elites. Now, when I read a newspaper I found that the man who was selected for the post I was contender, is found guilty of sexual abuse and exploitation of a research student and an inquiry is on.
I know, nothing will happen. He’ll come out smiling in the same way as Vishwanath smiles as a victor, impersonating as Mohandas, seizing his identity. They are the Brahmins. Our life has been subjugated and slaved by them. Hindi is their colony.
Yes, Mohandas is made in to a feature film, produced by another Brahmin, who has nothing beside power and money and ambitions. Although he’s running his ‘production company’ faking it with his wife’s name in actuality he’s a government official. One can guess about his resources of wealth in today’s India very well.
I thank to media and media critics who came out questioning my absence during the Osian Film Festival and I also thank Osian people for displaying my name in all their banners and folios.
But the news is that film Mohandas repeated the same tragedy, perhaps as a farce this time with his author and writer.
I sincerely oppose it and criticize it.
I wrote a poem just before I left to my native land (Remember the brilliant poem by Amme Cesare : Return to My Native Land). The poem I wrote is about Delhi and its title is ‘Dayaar’. It’s published in a small magazine ‘samved’ edited by Kishan Kaljayi. I’ve been receiving many phone calls since then.
Yes, my friends …I’m down and out…
And the truth is, I’ve not opted for it !
I’ll write more very soon about all this.
They must be tested for it, medically and neurologically.
My novella Mohandas was born here, in the same soil, under the same sky, at the bank of the same river Soan, where I was born too around 56 years in the past.
Mohandas was never a fiction, a handiwork of imagination, an objet d'art created through arduous skills in a language named Hindi. It was not a daydreaming or scaring nightmare. Mohandas was and is never a fantasy….
It ‘s too real. Corporal truth about the life of us all working, moral and powerless subjects of this mighty corporate-political state. It’s a narrative which narrates its time and its helplessness. A gloomy, pessimistic saga of our life which succeeds to continue anyhow.
Well, Mohandas became very popular in no time throughout India. It’s translated in to almost all Indian languages, including English, which also is an Indian language without any snag. It has been played and being played as theatrical performances in big and small cities well spread over the country.
However, like ‘The Girl with the Golden Parasol’ (Peelee Chhatari waali Ladkee) this novella too created chaos and mess in my life. Now my being, I deeply feel, is an subversive act of clinging to life in a political, dehumanized, business minded state.
Irony or tragic comicality was here. If you remember, the novella Mohandas was dedicated to a lawyer who had taken up his case to the judicial magistrate, to my shock, the lawyer is now the Secretary of the Lions Club. A city club of businessmen and contractors. At the same time he is also the district secretary of the Communist Party of India.
So, things have changed very soon. History has ended and pragmatism has replaced ideologies. I visited the lawyers chamber, it’s equipped with split AC and interiors are lavish with expensive furnitures.
Well where Mohandas will go? And me, his author? Unemployed, uprooted…..! Money and power has snatched away our identities. I exactly remember the time when I wrote Mohandas three years before. I’d gone back to my village in search of survival as I was rejected by the selection committees for a University and an Academy. The member got his own son in law appointed in the same university and had full support of power centers of capital’s Hindi elites. Now, when I read a newspaper I found that the man who was selected for the post I was contender, is found guilty of sexual abuse and exploitation of a research student and an inquiry is on.
I know, nothing will happen. He’ll come out smiling in the same way as Vishwanath smiles as a victor, impersonating as Mohandas, seizing his identity. They are the Brahmins. Our life has been subjugated and slaved by them. Hindi is their colony.
Yes, Mohandas is made in to a feature film, produced by another Brahmin, who has nothing beside power and money and ambitions. Although he’s running his ‘production company’ faking it with his wife’s name in actuality he’s a government official. One can guess about his resources of wealth in today’s India very well.
I thank to media and media critics who came out questioning my absence during the Osian Film Festival and I also thank Osian people for displaying my name in all their banners and folios.
But the news is that film Mohandas repeated the same tragedy, perhaps as a farce this time with his author and writer.
I sincerely oppose it and criticize it.
I wrote a poem just before I left to my native land (Remember the brilliant poem by Amme Cesare : Return to My Native Land). The poem I wrote is about Delhi and its title is ‘Dayaar’. It’s published in a small magazine ‘samved’ edited by Kishan Kaljayi. I’ve been receiving many phone calls since then.
Yes, my friends …I’m down and out…
And the truth is, I’ve not opted for it !
I’ll write more very soon about all this.
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