Sunday ka Funda

What could the camel be thinking — that he is protected or that he is a threat? And do camels come in the way of camels?

The Queen in Camel Town

Arab royalty looms behind and beside the Queen of England

Whoa! We hear about how the Queen of England honours people with the OBE and the Knighthood and other goodies. She is by far the most visible and prominent royal in the world; the British monarchy is.

Therefore, we were (sic) quite amused to read this news from Abu Dhabi:

Shaikh Khalifa conferred on Queen Elizabeth the Order of Zayed, the United Arab Emirates’ highest civil decoration. He also bestowed the Order of Federation to both Prince Andrew, Duke of York, and Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh.

It must be noted that the grand monarch of Great Britain got a civilian award. And no one is arching eyebrows?

The Swami and the Strays

Imagine a situation where a tragedy is imminent. The heart aches. Tears just about line the rims of eyes. The devotees begin the mournful pre-emptive dirge, the inner circle cries foul, the victim indicates he was the target but he smiles. He has to. He teaches everyone to do so in the face of all odds, ends and tails.

The investigators arrive. Big man, big audience. They move swiftly and the trail takes them to a farm from where a bullet travelled 2,500 feet to reach the ashram and grazed one member of the meditating congregation. Who was it aimed at?

Four stray dogs that had mauled a sheep at the farm-owner’s property. With his licensed .32 revolver, Mahavira Prasad fired three bullets; one bullet decided to travel farther out.

The Swami has said, “It is a closed chapter and will be forgotten.”

I am thinking about all those high-powered devotees who rushed to claim fealty and wondered in sorrowful tones about how anyone would want to target a good man like the swami. He himself had insisted that the intention was to hit him. He still believes that there is prejudice against swamis: “I suggest Karan Johar make a movie titled ‘I Am Swamy, But I Am Innocent’, which could show that all religious leaders are not like that.”

Those dogs could be innocent, too. Did the farm-owner know exactly which strays had mauled the sheep? Did the sheep stray into stray territory? Since it is a poultry and sheep farm, weren’t the fowl and the animal meant for consumption?

Why did Prasad first fire two rounds and the third near the gate of the ashram where another dog was? That dog could have been a devotee or planning to join the satsang. Have the police considered this angle?

There is in this incident a sense of a weird deus ex machina…a powerful man’s potential martyrdom snicked by a dog.

Also, imagine this one stray, perhaps human in an earlier birth, quite besotted by the swami yearns for a glimpse. Several frustrated attempts lead her astray and she goes berserk as the Swami’s car whooshes past, the dust rising and stinging her eyes. Day after day. On that fateful day, she scampers to the farm stomping on the grass and then as she watches the sheep quietly munching away she lunges, gnawing at the flesh. How she aches!

Her anger subsiding, she decides she can only pine. And so she waits at the gate. For a glimpse and dust in eyes:

A song from Sati Savitri yelps in her mind:

Tum gagan ke chandrama
Main dhara ki dhool hoon
Tum pralay ke devta ho
Main samarpit phool hoon

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For those interested in the report, here’s a brief summary:

The mystery bullet that Art of Living guru Sri Sri Ravi Shankar claimed was intended for him and cops insisted was merely a stray slug was actually aimed at scaring stray dogs at a farm near the guru’s ashram.

Karnataka police chief Ajai Kumar Singh said Mahadeva Prasad, chairman of Dr B R Ambedkar Medical and Dental College was on his poultry and sheep farm last Sunday around the same time the guru was addressing his congregation. Prasad was taking aim at four stray dogs near his farm since they had recently mauled a sheep. He fired three shots, missed the dogs completely and one bullet travelled over 2,500 feet in the air before grazing Vinay, a devotee at the ashram. “Taking the ballistic expert report, gradient of landscape and time of firing, it was confirmed the same bullet had travelled to the ashram,’’ Singh said.

In Vein

Imagine you are ready to die. They are going to kill you. 25 years after you have committed a crime. Raped a 14-year-old girl and then murdered her. You were 28 then. You wait, arms stiff, body taut, eyes numb.

They hold your hand tightly, as though they are drawing blood for testing. They probe and prod. They cannot find your veins. For 90 minutes they try this. One hour and 30 minutes you are already suffering a slow death.

Romell Broom’s execution has been delayed because the prison authorities in Ohio could not find a vein that could handle the lethal three-drug injection. Had he been tried and sentenced soon after the crime he might have had to spend time in a prison cell for long. Since 1999, the state has resumed executions.

They finally conducted a medical examination and found that his “right arm appeared accessible”. Who would imagine that one’s own arm, that too the right one, would become a traitor? He must curse that arm. What if he had no right arm? What if they had not found this access path? What if…?

I do not sympathise with his crime, although I am against capital punishment. I have said this often that killing a killer does not stop murders anywhere in the world. There is no precedent to prove it.

But, the idea of a man waiting for that final moment when in his full senses has dark elements. An ill person knows about malady and fatality. A person in an accident is taken by surprise. But to have to wait for death? Was he thinking about what he did 25 years ago? Did he even remember the face of the girl? Did he think about the details of his crime? Did he feel remorse? Did he hate himself?

Right now he must be only thinking about his veins.

Caveman, Cavewoman

Where are the bats? The darkness? Why are these two cave-dwelling examples more about urban chic than an honest attempt at starkness?

Daniel Suelo has been described as a “48-year-old hermit from Utah”. Eight years ago he decided to stop using money. For the past three years he has been living in a cave. His eureka moment came when he went on a trip to Alaska. His friend and he “speared fish, ate mushrooms and berries and lived very well. Then we hit the road, hitchhiking, and realised how generous people were”.

Now this is being glorified. How many people do you know of who have given up materialism, live away from ‘civilisation’, and yet manage to reach out? Mr. Suelo has succeeded in portraying himself as one who lives without government handouts. Yet, he goes to a public library to record moments of his “punishing lifestyle”. He is a hero during times of recession because he has got no money, so he cannot lose it. Ho-hum.

This charade reeks of disdain in a world where qualified people are laid off. Where skilled labour in some societies has to subsist on minimum wages. Where people do not have water, forget fish to find in it.

There was a report a year ago about a foreign tourist who lived in a cave in the mountain regions of Kullu a tourist town in Himachal Pradesh. After losing her passport 8 years ago, Dimitri subsisted by soliciting money, food, and other essentials.

No one quite knew where she was from, though the cops said, “She has been living here for last many years.”

And how has that been possible? She did serve a seven month term for being without documents, but why was she still there with the knowledge of the cops? If her police records showed she was from Italy, then on what grounds did that country refuse to accept her?

What I find even more intriguing is that she declined to interact with Indians and begged only from foreigners. Ah, and they say beggars can’t be choosers.

Is there a need to romanticise such stories? There are millions of people who are homeless and do not have the choice of who they beg from and how they file their routines for internet posterity. This cave identity just does not convey a fraction of the squalid conditions of people who live in the open or in pipes.

I’ll any day take bats over manipulative batty.

The great depression?

This is a party in Berlin. They are indulging themselves. The theme is the Great Depression. It is supposed to mock at a time in history when people had little to eat and little to hope.

Today, this mockery seems like nervousness. To grab the momentary. To look at history through wine glasses. To mimick misery and therefore feel less miserable.

It is a sad way to be happy.