The Light that is Gandhi

 

Gandhi is a revered figure worldwide. Mandela, Martin Luther King, and Obama are among those who count him as their inspiration. The story in India is a little different though. There are M.G. roads (Mahatma Gandhi Road) in most cities, and he stares out from currency notes and Government publications but social media is full of ugly comments about him. His assassin Godse is now quite visible too in movies and birthday celebrations. 

It is difficult to kill Gandhi however. Lincoln played his part in trying to end slavery and Gandhi was the man who ended the other ill that afflicted the world - colonialism. If slavery was justified by assuming blacks to be inferior, colonialism rationalised the white man's superiority over natives. Power, money, and technology from the ebbs and flows of history are used as proxies for superior natural ability. Silly it may be, but this is what was the intellectual bulwark for all the principal social ills in history like slavery, colonialism, and caste.

To mobilise masses in a country with multiple languages, religions and a burden of feudalism was an enormous achievement by itself. To use that force in a non-violent way to drive out the British without too much rancour with both the victims (Indians) or the vanquished like the British is unprecedented.

Add to that his incredible personal simplicity, transparency in relationships, adherence to principles despite any obstacle, use of truth and love for all bar none yet remaining primarily a political leader is impossible to replicate.

He was also a deeply original thinker, fearless, and never afraid to take risks. He did not follow any defined path and built his own ideology and modus operandi for the freedom struggle.

There is nothing more noble on Indian Independence Day than to remember this great man, a frail-looking lawyer infused with the highest ideals of humanity. 

The Shadow of History

 The rebellion of 1857 in India against the British forces is a landmark event. In early May, sepoys in the cantonment in Meerut captured the government buildings and started the uprising. The next day they rode to Delhi and appointed the 82-year-old Bahadur Shah Zafar, the last Moghul emperor, then feeble and ruling actually over a small fraction of the city's area as their titular head. This gathered momentum and in a few weeks, sepoys all over the whole of North India had joined the rebellion. The Nana Saheb of Cawnpore, Laxmi Bai, and Begum Hazrat Mahal were the prominent rulers who also joined the fight.

There were many bloody battles. Two gruesome episodes in this period stand out. In Cawnpore, many British civilians were killed by the sepoys in the Bibighar massacre. After prolonged fights, the British managed to turn the tables and in September, captured Delhi again. The British forces were in a mood for revenge and they blocked Kashmere gate, the entry to what is now known as old Delhi. Over a period of 4 to 5 days, the English soldiers were allowed to kill all adult males. Many eyewitness accounts of those days speak about the streets and the river turning red with blood. It was horrific.

As a consequence of this, the crown formally then took over the administration of India from the East India Company. The next 90 years under the Raj had its own stories of loot, injustice and blood. 

India came down from contributing a quarter of the world's GDP in the early 18th century to just about an estimated 3 % in 1947 when the British left. It was wealth extraction on a massive scale.

At the same time, modern India today cannot live without Cricket( a sport it is obsessed with), bread, rail and even its passport to the world, the English language. Apart from the relatively new justice and administrative systems. 

The bad came with the good. Can this be undone? No, and it does not make sense to. The only purpose of history should be to understand it and to be aware of our current status and the structural forces that can affect us. The same dynamics existed between the allied countries like UK, US and France with Germany and Japan or even England with the US. Going back in history, similar patterns of conflicts and then mutual absorption occurred between kingdoms within India.

Those who forget history are condemned to repeat it but those who obsess over it and try to live the present with the battles of the past are also condemned to go inside its dark tunnels once again. 

Missing Federer

 The first decade of this century was his. He won his first slam in 2003 at Wimbledon and the last at the Australian Open in 2018. But his true period of dominance was from the 2003 Wimbledon to the 2010 Aus Open when out of 26 slams, he won an unprecedented 16 and was a runner-up in another 6.

The precision of movement, a scintillating backhand, the faint twitch in his facial muscles when under pressure, and supreme athleticism combined with sublime skills kept millions hooked to TV sets when he was playing especially on those Sunday evening finals. That sound of the racquet hitting the ball that was not excessively loud, just a hint of power; the almost supernatural sense of anticipation, and his shots landing on the lines like guided missiles made watching Fed so mesmerising. One of the regrets of my life was when he played in Delhi and I could not go and one of the blessings of the last decade was Federer continuing to play as long as he played. Sports at its finest elevates human experience like nothing else and Fed was the quintessential symbol of that.  

Nadal, Djokovic and maybe Laver did reach his superhuman heights but for accomplishments combined with aesthetic appeal and elegance, he remains unmatched.

Alcaraz is a treat to watch with his drop shots, top spin forehands and athletic ability. Djokovic continues to make us marvel with his tenacity and all-round ability but the void left by Federer can never possibly be filled.   

Milan Kundera dies at 94

 

(From my tribute to Kundera on FB)
Milan Kundera, a Czech novelist, died on Tuesday, 11th July at 94. For me, it is rather personal.

Years ago, I was a participant in a television quiz where apart from general awareness, we had a subject round where we could choose our own topic. I had stumbled into a review of ‘The Unbearable Lightness of Being’ by Kundera in the now defunct Gentleman magazine and then went on to read the book. It was exhilarating.

Over a period of time, I bought a few of his other works. I found his ability to distil profound truths of life through a mix of levity, seriousness, stories of resistance against the repression of the communist regimes in Eastern Europe and also hedonism beguiling. A few stayed with me.

One I always think about is that life moves like the hands of a clock, in a pattern and always repeating the same thematic cycles. I have found this to be so true for myself - it has been chronologically linear but cyclical in so many other ways.

His characters approached the absurdity of existence and an intense desire to experience life in the same breath. They lived and talked as of they were faintly bemused but still flying over all that life threw at them.

Here is an excerpt from ‘The Unbearable Lightness of Being’:
“People usually escape from their troubles into the future; they draw an imaginary line across the path of time, a line beyond which their current troubles will cease to exist. But Tereza saw no such line in her future. Only looking back could bring her consolation. It was Sunday again. They got into the car and drove far beyond the limits of Prague.”

Having told the organisers that my topic would be ‘Works of Milan Kundera’, I discovered that I did not have his entire collection. In those Pre Amazon days, I started scouring all the bookshops in a few cities both personally and through friends. Usually, a lone Kundera would be lying on the shelves and a couple of his works were not easily available. The search however eventually yielded fruit and I managed to get all the missing books in my collection barring one. But in the months after the quiz, I always noticed the same shelves with many Kunderas. Did I play a part in building up that demand? I would fancy so (chuckle).

Kundera lived in Prague and then migrated to Paris. The first one full of both gorgeous architecture and the tragedy of lives and potential snuffed out by a draconian state. And in Paris, one can always sense the existentialism of Sartre, along with a celebration of life through its museums and grand boulevards. Kundera was both - Prague and Paris.

He was also a perennial Nobel contender but somehow did not get it. To me however, though lesser known, he is there with some of the finest: Mahfouz, Barnes, Coetzee or Munro if not Marquez and Camus.
Milan Kundera: April 1, 1929, to 11 July, 2023.

Is it the power of generosity?

 

Narayan Murthy is a true legend, an icon for generations. As a successful middle-class professional in India in the 1980s, it was an audacious step  to take the plunge into entrepreneurship. And in his journey, he set several benchmarks - the first to distribute wealth through stock options to a very large base of employees, the first to insist on the highest corporate governance standards for a fledgeling business, the uncompromising adherence to values and more. In the process, he created the  $70 bn behemoth that gave a fillip to job creation and entrepreneurship in the country and built the reputation of  India flying high as an IT superpower. IT services today are the biggest exports from the country. There are very few companies anywhere that are so innovative, pioneering and that also have transformed an industry and maybe even changed a country.

He belonged to a lower-middle-class family, his father was a schoolteacher with eight children. Now he is worth about $ 4 bn and by all accounts with time, his reputation and respect keep going uph. His daughter is married to the Prime Minister of the UK. It is by all means an abundantly blessed life.

In a recent interview with his son Rohan on TV ( link below), he says his favourite character in Mahabharata is Karna for his generosity. In the story, Karna gives away anything that anybody asks for including his shield that can protect him from any weapon. He is a tragic hero, He is the finest warrior amongst the heroes,  he suffers all along from fate but that does not stop him from being always ready to sacrifice. Murthy also in a very uncharacteristic gesture, did not retain a substantial equity in Infosys as everyone would do, but shared it equitably with his co-founders and employees. Infosys Foundation has carried forward that work too. 

It is quite curious that someone who in the last few decades gave away the most has also got back the most.

https://www.msn.com/mr-in/news/other/exclusive-rohan-murthy-interviews-dad-nr-narayana-murthy-on-starting-up-sacrifices-values/vi-AA1dzxnN