Life on the Street

Hyperbole is the leitmotif of politicians, and thanks to their zealous policies, millions of street children are being forced to live in appalling state of misery. Every politician likes to flaunt himself as a messiah of ‘social justice’, but they come up with half-baked programs that make it virtually impossible for street children to find shelter in decent homes or orphanages. These children can’t even avail of proper part time jobs, and in order to survive they must resort to begging or petty crimes. Every town and city is littered with scraps of humanity that peer out from beneath their threadbare clothes and as their begrimed faces beg for small coins from passersby, they typify a life that is forever mired in hardships.

In South Delhi, where I live, the sidewalk of almost every major road serves as a hub for a multitude of street children. Among them are boys and girls less than 10 years old and their condition is absolutely pathetic. Many of them earn their livelihood by begging, some have graduated into selling magazines and pirated editions of best-selling books. Then there are those who linger around traffic lights and rush to wipe the windshields of waiting vehicles in hope of earning a paltry tip. They suffer scorn, abandonment, neglect, violence and sexual exploitation, they endure cold nights and hungry stomachs, and they are not averse to using drugs to self-medicate. At times, circumstances force them to enter the world of petty crime, and some end up as hardcore criminals.

Few months ago, I was able to strike a conversation with a small and slender thirteen years old boy. He had fled two years ago from his home in Jharkhand because his father used to beat him. After arriving in New Delhi railway station, he made a living by selling coconut slices at the platform. But local gangs used to extort much of what he earned, so he left the railway station and found the job of a waiter at a local restaurant. Out here things failed to get any better, as his employer paid him very less and made him work from morning till late in the night. Finally he was forced to quit his waiter’s job and become a magazine vendor. But despite the vagaries of life, he had not stopped dreaming. He told me that he aspires to be a doctor someday.

It is highly unlikely that this boy will ever be able to achieve his ambition. Our nation lacks the kind of social infrastructure that is needed to uplift hapless boys and girls situated at such nadir of destitution. But for that government policies are to be blamed. We spend millions to subsidize education in top educational institutes like IIM, IIT or even Delhi University, where children from the richest families study, but we spend so little on serving the needs of our poorest children. This is certainly a strange type of socialism that we have practiced since independence. Our priorities are misplaced. While poor kids rot on the sidewalks as homeless vagrants, the scions of elite families, who can afford to pay, are allowed to hog government subsidy.

India holds the ignominious distinction of being home to largest number of street children in the world. Real out of the box thinking is required to rescue these kids from the hellish life in which they are trapped. The condition of publicly funded orphanages should be improved and policy changes have to be enacted to make it easier for private charities to open their own orphanages. The best case scenario would be that every street child should to be absorbed into a loving foster home or orphanage, but it might take us forever to develop that kind of social system. Meanwhile, why not encourage private and public sector companies to give part-time employment to street children! After all, a proper job poses as a much better option as compared to begging in the streets.

Then there is the issue of adoption. Indian families tend to be averse to adopting street children. There has to be a social campaign to change public opinion. Bollywood could come up with movies on subject of childless couples who adopt street children. TV serials could be made. We do celebrate children’s day in this country. But the celebrations focus entirely on children from affluent families; for the street child, this day comes and goes without making an iota of a difference to his life. How about having a Street Child’s Day! This could be the day on which civil society will come forward to pour love, affection and material assistance on street children. These kids have been through very hard times and they certainly deserve our care.

Title: Foreign Correspondent, Fifty Years of Reporting South Asia

Edited by: John Elliott, Bernard Imhasly, Simon Denyer

Publisher: Penguin

Pages: 405

Reviewed by: Anoop Verma

The spectrum of modern journalism seems to have made the task of historians much simpler, if not completely redundant. Today’s breaking news story has the potential of serving as a historical treatise for any future generation. It is true that some journalistic reports can turn out to be opinionated or even biased due to personal, political or ideological considerations, but they are still replete with vivid clues that historians of future can use to draw perspectives. The book under review is basically an anthology of the reportage done by eminent foreign correspondents for a variety of publications, but the articles also serve the purpose of shedding insights on the historical and cultural evolution of the Indian subcontinent from 1947 to 2007.

In fact, many articles in the book read like a primer on India’s history during 50 years since independence. Reading these reportages is like taking off on a magic carpet that takes you back into an era, when India was totally different from the chaotic and urbanized landscape that it has transmogrified into today. On 21 March 1951, this is what Adrienne Farrell wrote for Reuters, “India is becoming a hunter’s paradise for Americans who want to shoot tigers. Government officials here estimate that between 500 and 1000 tigers could be killed in the country each year without seriously affecting the general tiger population.” It is easy to see just how different the situation was in 1951, as compared to what it is today, as far as the aspect of tiger population is concerned.

The way in which journalists featured in the earlier selections express themselves is also quite interesting. These articles are written in a more laidback style and are peppered with lots of personal musings. The reporting style is completely different from what it tends to be in the contemporary era, where journalists usually confine themselves to reporting an incident in a crisp language, by using as few words as possible. Gerald Priestland, who was the BBC correspondent in India form 1954 to 1958, has very interesting things to say about India’s literary icon, Nirad Chaudhuri, “Among these was the extraordinary Nirad Chaudhuri, who made it his special mission to stop me from getting romantic or mystical ideas about Hinduism, of which he was great debunker.”

But it seems Nirad Chaudhuri did not have too much success in influencing Gerald, because in another article, the BBC correspondent writes, “The really extraordinary thing about Hinduism is that, far from producing a grim and depressed society, it produces one that is full of music and dancing, brilliant colors, feasts and festivals. When, later, I was posted to the Middle East I was struck by the drabness and dourness of the Arabs compared with the Indians….” Comparing one culture with other would certainly be considered politically incorrect in today’s hypersensitive times, but the 1950s were a different era. Those were the times when correspondents were still free to vent out their cultural prejudices, without the fear of being misunderstood.

Well-known India baiter, Neville Maxwell’s article titled, “Tarnished Image of Mr. Nehru”, which was published in The Times on 4^th April 1963, seems like a relic from the bygone era. Barbara Crossette was barely 10 meters away from the bomb blast site where Rajiv Gandhi and others with him lost their life. Her article, “Assassination in India”, first published in New York Times on 22 May 1991, describes in ample detail the chaos that ensued after Rajiv Gandhi’t tragic assassination. Then there are the excellent reportages from places outside India. Peter R. Kann bagged a Pulitzer Prize for his Dacca Diary, a reportage that takes a brilliant, insightful look at the aspect of being trapped in Dhaka for 15 days during the 1971 Bangladesh war of independence.

The Story of Michael Jackson

Whether you loved him, whether you loathed him, the truth is that Michael Jackson is firmly wedged in the fabric of our lives. The death of someone this famous usually gets greeted with a kind of incredulity. But this is it. This is really the end of the road for Michael Jackson. Too bad for him that his music career had ended years before his physical life did. When he died, it was already eight years since he made a record, and probably twenty since he made a good one. He was neck deep in debt and due to his idiosyncrasies he had given reason to enough people to start calling him “wacko.”

It was on August 28, 1958 that he was born, one of nine kids, and he grew up into a cute African-American teenager. Stardom came early to him; when Michael was only five, he and his brothers were giving amazing performance as “Jackson 5”. Initially they played locally, but as their popularity grew they started playing in New York and in Philly. A big break came when they were “discovered” by Gladys Knight and pianist Billy Taylor at the famous Apollo Theater in Harlem. After that it was a meteoric rise for Michael Jackson. By the age of 11 he was a superstar.

At the age of 13, he started giving solo performances and about a year later, he had his first hit song “Ben.” In 1977 Michael made his film debut in the musical “The Wiz” playing Scarecrow, with Diana Ross in the lead role of Dorothy. It was during this period that he came in contact with Quincy Jones who happened to be doing the score for the film. Soon Quincy Jones became the producer of Michael’s first solo album titled “Off The Wall.” The album became a huge success all over the world, and it won the distinction of the first ever album to release a record breaking 4 No1 singles in the US.

But it was in 1982, when his album “Thriller” got released, that he tasted lasting and enduring success as a pop star. This album produced an unprecedented 7 hit singles, breaking yet again more records, and went on to sell over 50 million copies around the world. Now he was being feted as the “King of Pop”. Then came the year 1984, which saw the King of Pop bagging a record breaking 8 Grammy awards during the course of a single night. The awards were for his work on the Thriller album and also for his work on the narrative for the ET Storybook. It was during this period that Michael started turning white in a mysterious manner.

Naturally his sudden fairness, led to a spate of questions popping up around him. Was his whiteness a result of plastic surgery? Questions were raised about his sexuality as well. Why didn’t he have any girlfriends? At this point of time, such questions were mostly considered to be a tribute to his prodigious talent. It showed that his fans cared about him. But they also had the effect of revealing a sad, lonely and confused side of the gifted star. However, at this point of time Michael was at the peak of his career. His next two albums, “Bad” and “Dangerous”, sold millions of copies and turned him into the richest pop star of all times.

His ill-fated marriage with Lisa Marie Presley, the daughter of rock legend Elvis Presley happened in 1994. The marriage turned out to be nothing more than a well-choreographed publicity stunt by both sides and it lasted only for 19 months, as the couple divorced in 1996. While he was still married to Lisa Marie, Michael released his album titled, “History.” History did not manage to do as well as his earlier albums, and by now Michael had already started to fall from grace. He had even acquired children through some surrogate shenanigans with his nurse.

The period of his meteoric rice in the show business was over. Now the period had commenced when he would unravel slowly and painfully under full public glare. He had already mutilated his appearance in a vain attempt to emulate his childhood fantasy hero, Peter Pan, the boy who never grew up. He lived in a gigantic playground called Neverland, populated with monkeys and other animals for company. He even had a roller coaster in his home. Stories of his inappropriate conduct with young boys started surfacing. His appearance and his lifestyle made him the butt of all kinds of jokes and innuendoes.

It was in 1993 that his reputation really came under a cloud, when a 13-year-old boy claimed that Jackson had molested him while he had been a guest at the Neverland ranch in California. Jackson vehemently denied the accusations, but eventually he was forced to pay $20-million to the boy’s family for an out-of-court settlement. In 2003, Jackson was charged with intoxicating and sexually abusing a boy who had said in a documentary that he would sometimes share a bed with Jackson. He was cleared of all charges in 2005, after a high profile four-month trial.

Despite the hundreds of millions that he had made when he was at the peak of his career, at the time of his death he was deeply in debt amounting to as much as $500 million. Obviously the debt was the result of the super star’s more than three decade of extravagant living and also from legal fees that he had incurred from many high-profile scandals. During the heydays of his career he used to spend millions of dollars unthinkingly on plane charters and on purchase of paintings and antiques. Lavish gifts for friends too had a role to play in pushing in into the red.

And as the dust settles over the news of his death, Michael’s fans everywhere in the world are a confused lot. How should they remember him? Do they think of him as a talented performer that he undoubtedly was? It is quite tragic that in the end he was denied even the chance to work out the ultimate showbiz redemption for himself. If his new music tour had taken off, then he might have had a chance to carve out different image for himself. But now he will only be remembered as a much hyped performer, who yearned to be eternally young like Peter Pan, but ended up looking like an absurdity who was only fit to whine and cry in front of TV screens during the final years of his life.


Published in Media Spectrum

The Northern Clemency

Title: The Northern Clemency
Author: Philip Hensher
Publisher: Fourth Estate
Pages: 738
Price: Rupees 595
Reviewed by: Anoop Verma

The latest book from Philip Hensher poses as a rather verbose conspectus of vast acreages of English life as it was in the so-called Thatcherite era. In fact, Mrs. Margaret Thatcher even makes a veiled appearance on page 190. “…about who she’d voted for, about her father, dead in the Stone Age, and something he’d said once, about this woman they’d made leader of the others, the Conservatives, and something about a new broom – it was almost frightening, listening to her mad, insistent, triumphant voice going on, and you knew that there was nothing you could say about it…” Such subtlety that devolves Mrs. Thatcher into a lady with a broom could be the reason why the book comes out as being trifle shy of revealing its exact raison d’etre.

The story plays out through the medium of its mainstays, who are middle-class Sheffield neighbors, the Glovers and the Sellers - the former milieu-barnacled locals, the latter initially cagey incomers. The saga of these families takes off from the early years of the 1970s, and over a period of next two decades they experience few dramatic events and an awful lot of extremely monotonous ones, but you can depend on Hensher to pluck out minutiae of every aspect of their lives in most exacting details. If anything, the nuances of character and setting are superb. It is certainly a treat encounter sentences that talk of “gold-tasseled sofas glowering at each other across the drawing room like a pair of retired rival strippers”.

The feeling that the book is describing the life and times of a bygone era comes not only from its ambience seeped in nostalgia, but also from the behaviorism of its characters. The quintessentially bored housewife, Katherine Glover, manages to shake up the stiflingly cloistered world of Sheffield merely by taking up a job at the local florist. Her neighbors and even her family assume that she is having an affair with her boss. Things come to such a pass that one-day her husband walks out, and poor Katherine is left with no choice but to vent her frustration on her youngest son, Tim, who has secretly bought a pet snake with his pocket money. Katherine finds the snake and in a fit of pique she kills it in front of her children and neighbors.

But in the end, it is also a case of the city itself being an important protagonist for the novel. The profound social and economic changes of the Thatcher years have left an indelible impact on Sheffield’s way of life. Hensher goes out of his way to keep his characters insulated from the political developments that are going on around them. The miner’s strike of 1984 is met with blithe indifference by most of the characters. Only Tim cares to speak out, but he has already been caricatured as ridiculous and fervent political activist, so his ravings only have the effect of degenerating the strike into something as silly as a family squabble. There is no obvious thrust, but a tilt towards conservative Thatcher is always palpable in the shenanigans of the storyline.

The novel is quite corpulent, but does it deserve such bulk. There is one instance where Hensher uses up a number of pages in describing the creation of fish pie. You could try to have something like that at home, but quite a few cookery books might offer better recipes. And yet the book is completely symptomatic of Hensher’s style of writing - 15 pages of digression to get across one crucial point. Eventually when Katherine does manage to shatter the cycle of taboos by sleeping with her boss, she takes pleasure in it as a piece of political maneuvering: “You could force people to be polite to you, and through their politeness, make them act as you choose.” This is just about the extent to which Hensher is prepared to play his political hand.

The leisurely executed plot is reminiscent of a classical Russian novel. Maybe it would not be unjust to say that “The Northern Clemency” is the kind of book that you would get if you conjoin Dostoevsky with Aravind Adiga. But the fact is that Dostoevsky could never have allowed himself to get consumed by an endless train of abysmally long and hysterically dull digressions. It certainly requires quite a lot of patience to stick with the book that is so stretched that you can ever guess until the last page is turned as to what the various details are designed to add up to.

A Slice of Street Life

Hyperbole is the leitmotif of politicians, and thanks to their zealous policies, millions of street children are being forced to live in appalling state of misery. Every politician likes to flaunt himself as a messiah of ‘social justice’, but they come up with half-baked programs that make it virtually impossible for street children to find shelter in decent homes or orphanages. These children can’t even avail of proper part time jobs, and in order to survive they must resort to begging or petty crimes. Every town and city is littered with scraps of humanity that peer out from beneath their threadbare clothes and as their begrimed faces beg for small coins from passersby, they typify a life that is forever mired in hardships.

In South Delhi, where I live, the sidewalk of almost every major road serves as a hub for a multitude of street children. Among them are boys and girls less than 10 years old and their condition is absolutely pathetic. Many of them earn their livelihood by begging, some have graduated into selling magazines and pirated editions of best-selling books. Then there are those who linger around traffic lights and rush to wipe the windshields of waiting vehicles in hope of earning a paltry tip. They suffer scorn, abandonment, neglect, violence and sexual exploitation, they endure cold nights and hungry stomachs, and they are not averse to using drugs to self-medicate. At times, circumstances force them to enter the world of petty crime, and some end up as hardcore criminals.

Few months ago, I was able to strike a conversation with a small and slender thirteen years old boy. He had fled two years ago from his home in Jharkhand because his father used to beat him. After arriving in New Delhi railway station, he made a living by selling coconut slices at the platform. But local gangs used to extort much of what he earned, so he left the railway station and found the job of a waiter at a local restaurant. Out here things failed to get any better, as his employer paid him very less and made him work from morning till late in the night. Finally he was forced to quit his waiter’s job and become a magazine vendor. But despite the vagaries of life, he had not stopped dreaming. He told me that he aspires to be a doctor someday.

It is highly unlikely that this boy will ever be able to achieve his ambition. Our nation lacks the kind of social infrastructure that is needed to uplift hapless boys and girls situated at such nadir of destitution. But for that government policies are to be blamed. We spend millions to subsidize education in top educational institutes like IIM, IIT or even Delhi University, where children from the richest families study, but we spend so little on serving the needs of our poorest children. This is certainly a strange type of socialism that we have practiced since independence. Our priorities are misplaced. While poor kids rot on the sidewalks as homeless vagrants, the scions of elite families, who can afford to pay, are allowed to hog government subsidy.

India holds the ignominious distinction of being home to largest number of street children in the world. Real out of the box thinking is required to rescue these kids from the hellish life in which they are trapped. The condition of publicly funded orphanages should be improved and policy changes have to be enacted to make it easier for private charities to open their own orphanages. The best case scenario would be that every street child should to be absorbed into a loving foster home or orphanage, but it might take us forever to develop that kind of social system. Meanwhile, why not encourage private and public sector companies to give part-time employment to street children! After all, a proper job poses as a much better option as compared to begging in the streets.

Then there is the issue of adoption. Indian families tend to be averse to adopting street children. There has to be a social campaign to change public opinion. Bollywood could come up with movies on subject of childless couples who adopt street children. TV serials could be made. We do celebrate children’s day in this country. But the celebrations focus entirely on children from affluent families; for the street child, this day comes and goes without making an iota of a difference to his life. How about having a Street Child’s Day! This could be the day on which civil society will come forward to pour love, affection and material assistance on street children. These kids have been through very hard times and they certainly deserve our care.

My Obama Mania

Till 4th November, 2008, I was finding it difficult to believe that Obama, a man of mixed races, could reach pinnacle of US power only two generations after Jim Crow. But the unthinkable has now happened, and that has inevitably lead to a current of senseless euphoria sweeping thorough the dusty alleyways of the entire planet, an euphoria that brings solace to the so-called repressed classes. As Obama savors the taste of sweet victory, Indians cheer him as we would normally cheer the likes of Sachin Tendulkar. There is a deluge of Obama articles and TV shows, all of which focus essentially on the fact that a black man is finally a resident of White House. Isn’t that a fitting response to a leader whose political zeitgeist consists of being an American Mayawati?

By the time Obama wrote his second autobiographical novel, “Audacity of Hope”, he was already a Democratic Party rock star and so this book turned out to be an epitome of political correctness. In my opinion, if you want to understand the real Obama, you have to delve into his first book – “Dreams from my Father”. Few months ago, when Obama trounced Hillary in the primaries, I procured this book. In it he has made an interesting point, “But organizing the black community faces enormous problems as well . . . and the urban landscape is littered with the skeletons of previous efforts.” Now it becomes obvious that organizing black community was fraught with enormous problems, only because a suave personality like Obama was yet to arrive on the scene.

When such a tidal wave of popularity is surging through the landscape, it is difficult for anyone to remain untouched. I wish I could become as euphoric as the crowds I see on TV. But what about India’s IT industry! Isn’t Obama against outsourcing? I think I heard something of that sort in his election speeches. Somehow I am unable to negate the feeling that Obama is being rooted for his racial background and not for his politics. The newspapers coming out on 5th of November are awash with Obama, almost as if an Indian had bagged the White House. Why aren’t the Indian politicians feeling zealous? When was the last time they got such publicity? Even Raj Thackrey has not been subjected to such media blitz after his tirade against north Indians.

What does such extensive coverage exemplify, if not the cri de coeur of a nation that yearns to succeed, but the success that counts is one that has been achieved in the White Man’s world. Obama is able to ride at the crest of the popularity wave, because he has succeeded in America. Had he become the president of some African country, we won’t have cared for him. Now his policies don’t matter, who cares about policy, when you are being offered the palliatives of “hope” and “change”. But in the final dénouement Obama’s mission of change might prove much more effective in the troubled region of Middle East. Now that a man with Muslim middle name is the president of US, the vitriolic mullahs might loose some of their bile.

Euphoric crowds are notoriously ephemeral. But even if Obama’s place on the pedestal is short-lived, by the mere fact of his victory, he has succeeded in demolishing myriad shibboleths that different third world politicians have spawned to fulfill their lust for power. I find myself fretting about how the Samajwadi Party or the various Left parties are going to explain an Obama victory to their politically immature vote banks. Marxists in this country have been notorious for painting US as a country that is seeped in most oppressive forms of racism. May I beg to ask, “Comrade, if US is racist then how did a black man manage to become the president? Can you please revisit your leftist dialectics and find me an answer.”

The thing is that Obama is a formidable politician, who ran a disciplined campaign that sent the Republican Party into a spin. The world’s economy going down the drain helped in its own way. Ah the stupid Wall Street bankers who sank McCain’s campaign for good! But now it is time for Obama to take charge. The world, and not just America, expects change from him. The economy is going to be a difficult baby to handle. And he is likely to face obstacles in his quest to reorient American foreign policy at a time of shifting global power centers. Shakespeare had so succinctly summarized, “The fault, dear Brutus, lies not in our stars but in ourselves.” If Obama fails, he will have only himself to blame.

First Published in Sahara Time (November 2008 issue)