A sipper for Father Stan!

 November 30, 2020

 

It is the last day of November and time to put nano behind. I think I have clocked in a mere 30,000 words and am still floundering with the story, so can’t call it a success. Yet I am satisfied. I wrote 20,000 words in the first two weeks which reassured me that I could still do it. And the writing provided further thought on the things haunting me and which I wanted to think and write about. 

 

Two or three of these things are the following — farmer protests in India, the Stan Swamy sipper and straw story, and the love-jihad bullshit. But not just these of course. The barely reported J and K elections, where BJP candidates roamed around campaigning, but the opposition was prevented from doing the same for security reasons, is also is on my mind but since it is barely reported about I find it hard to find news around it. 

 

I am interested in hearing the different voices around the issues that pre-occupy me. The sweeping scapes of the farmers moving and being stopped at borders like they were doing something illegal are surreal. The farmers seem clear enough about why the new laws are not in their favour. But they have been thwarted in their quest to negotiate them and in this last march to the capital they have been tear gassed, water cannoned, met with trenches and barbed wire, as well as offered a place to protest far from anywhere and which they see as an open jail. The Delhi Police did ask the Delhi government to allow Delhi stadiums to be used to jail the farmers so it makes sense that they would react this way to Amit Shah’s condition for talks. The BJP asks why it is only farmers of opposition states who are protesting? They have been incited by the opposition and they are possibly Khalistani’s, they say. They are blamed for blocking trains and national highways and inconveniencing citizens. They are patronized and treated as idiots who do not think for themselves. These same people who grow our food and due to whose efforts, the GDP is not more negative than it is. Meanwhile Mr Modi as if oblivious to all that is going on said, in his maan-ki-baat, that these reforms had opened opportunities for the farmers and met their long-pending demands. The protesting farmers I believe said, ‘Who asked for this, we didn’t?’ I won’t be surprised if soon some might be booked under UAPA, the BJP’s favourite weapon since 2018, and the narrative again made favourable for the BJP.

 

Which brings me to Stan Swamy. 83-year-old man with Parkinson’s who was booked under UAPA and jailed. His ‘trending’ story begins with him submitting an application for a straw and sipper, as he is unable to drink without these, on November 6^th. The NIA (National Investigation Agency) requested 20 days to reply to it. Now at the end of November the 473-word reply says that the NIA never confiscated the straw and sipper and this application is mischievous. It says it is the prison authorities who should be looking out for this and the NIA have nothing to do with it. It took them this long to say this, sigh. Inefficiency or just malice? But not new this attempt by National agencies to paint Maharashtra institutions in a bad light, is it? Still sore about not being in power there. And last I read about this story is that the sipper and straw have been provided. The BJP can now say you activists are naughty for spreading false stories. And further, activists should be ashamed for making noise about this, but not protesting the jailing and mistreatment of Arnab Goswami. Nothing new about being told whom and what to protest, right?

 

But I hope that really Stan Swamy has his straw and sipper and warm clothes. For in these Kafkaesque twists and turns it is impossible to know what the real story is now? And shouldn’t we all just keep very quiet till we know what it is? Familiar this is too. Flood the space with so many narratives that one is kept busy untangling the threads to find what could be the truth. Typical BJP SOP. A Singaporean friend suggested that we send the NIA a straw and sipper. I think it’s a fab idea. Shall we flood the NIA and the jail with them?

 

After writing this I am much too tired to write about love-jihad. The saffron face of Adityanath stirring this up keeps spooking me in odd moments though. That man is a menace to India. 

 

I am interested in the rise of the BJP, in its new face with the Modi-Shah couple, with the way it can spin narratives, and how Modi magic has mesmerized even intelligent people I know. How so many are willing to give up a secular and wide identity for a narrow Hindu nationalistic one. I think these will find their way into my story, set between 1970 and the present. I am reading a lot of papers on the BJP, and history of this time. It all is fascinating. I also read a book called the ‘Lucifer Effect’ which discusses how systems turn ordinary people into torturers and murderers. It starts with the Stanford Prison Experiment and talks about Nazi’s, Rwanda and other genocides and the atrocities at Abu Ghraib. It is scary how quickly people can turn into their darkest possible identities when acted upon by system forces. I worry for India sometimes.

 

I have a plan for December. I have given myself permission to spend two weeks reading whatever I want to in all the spare time I have. Then I hope mid-December I might see more of the story I have begun to explore and start to write it again.