No full stops in India

Review

The cover of this book shows a couple of sadhus in the morning sun, reading the newspaper. One of them is reclining on the back of a car, the other is standing. This cover indicates how the media, the press, is entering the space that is supposed to be sacred, the mind of a sadhu. Another interpretation could be the casualness in the way the half naked fakir is reclining on the car.

If there are no full stops, is India a perpetual question? Those of us who live in cities may not agree. We think we know our land.
We think know our people.

Mark Tully says that the best way to destroy a people’s identity and culture is to undermine its religion, and language. The British, have done both. The result is that the elite, the educated upper class of India, have adapted the English language, the English ways, and have further alienated from our roots.

India lives in its villages, Gandhiji had said long ago. The book indicates, however, that India lives in its poor. The villagers are coming to the cities and serving the rich. This is a commonly known statistic. Then why is it necessary to go deeper into the subject? Because statistic is dry and therefore does not evoke a response. We have become too insensitive to even the word poverty.

However, the author does not adopt a high angle when doing his research. His is a journalism of integrity, where he be-friends his subject, long enough to get to know it like an insider.

The book opens to a complete life sketch of a villager who now works as a cook in the author’s house. Sample this conversation that shows the ease in their relationship.

‘Why have you kept money stashed away in the house when you know we have had three burglaries?’ asks Mark.

‘All the burglaries happened in the upstairs rooms. I kept my money downstairs,’ replies the clever servant.

‘Impeccable logic’, responds Sir Mark.

Ramayana, the blockbuster TV serial has featured many a time in the press, with people amazed at the popularity of the epic. Marc shares a peg of whisky with Hanuman, sorry Dara Singh, and gets out some interesting gossip.

In the Deorala sati story, Mark takes us to the village and spends time with the villagers. His attitude, though, is not biased. He genuinely wants to know whether the young widow was burnt alive, or was she ‘a real sati’.

In Calcutta he wonders why a revolution has not happened in a state with a communist ideology. But he is not allowed entry into a club because one of his friends is not wearing a tie.

‘The typhoon in Ahmedabad’ is the most moving story in the book. Not only are riot affected struggling to survive the curfew, they constantly live under threat of being killed.

‘Doesn’t the government offer you any help?’ he asks a Muslim woman.
‘The Government!’ she replies, scornfully. ‘All they do is shoot us. They just shoot us dead.’

What I didn’t like about the book:

There are at times too many details which could have been edited out.

What I liked about the book:

Mark Tully does not glorify India. And neither does he tear apart the country on the basis of numbers and statistics. He observes India with the attention and care of a beloved.

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Interview with Sir Mark Tully:

Q. Your understanding of Indians seems very apt from No Full Stops. You have mentioned in the preface that the elite Indian’s are still dominated by the western mind, by foreign thinking. Do you see any change in this pattern since the years that you published this book?

I think that the western influence on the Indian mind is still there, in fact, it is more. I would say that the over materialist, the over consumerist culture, has made further inroads into India since then. Earlier it had taken over Indian cities, and now even the villages are getting affected.

Q. Mahatma Gandhi had said that India lives in its villages.

Well, I think if he were here now, Gandhiji would have said that India lives in its poor. Because a lot of villagers are leaving their homes for the cities. I think there is an urgent and pressing need in this country to do something for the standard of living, particularly in areas of health and education of every Indian. So I think the Prime Minister is absolutely right to coin the phrase, ‘inclusive economics’.

Q. Do you see any positives of the recession for India?

I think the world should learn a lesson from recession, that you should not take market economics, or socialism too far, but that you should find a balance between the two.
Then the world and India would benefit from the recession.

It has been caused by the market economics being taken too far. In a book that I wrote, that was published before the recession, there is whole chapter about this. I had said that this was definitely a danger in the direction that things were moving. The name of the book is ‘India’s unending journey.’ The whole book is about the middle road and there is a section on the middle road in economics.

Q. How do you think India should deal with terrorism?

I think the worst thing you could do is to get hysterical, because then you make all kinds of mistakes. And that does not mean that what happened in Bombay is not dreadful. You have to remain calm. The terrorists want you to become hysterical.

Second thing I would say, is that India should learn from this. The need of a wholesale reform of its police and its courts. Because, police cannot function efficiently, unless there is a responsible court system. If the courts systems are not efficient, the police cannot be efficient either.

You are still running your police as if they were the British Raj running the police. Things have moved on since then. I don’t know why this is in India, in the administration, in the bureaucracy, in the courts and in the police, so much of the British Raj is left behind.

People sometimes make the mistake that the British Raj was the British system. It was not the British system; it was the British Colonial system. And the Colonial system was designed to exercise the power of the state. The Indian government, at the moment, is supposed to be the servant of the people, rather than the master of the people.

Q.    We are used to the term, ‘politically correct.’ But your book, No Full Stops in India also talks about being ‘spiritually correct’. Can you give me your take on the correct spiritual attitude?

(laughs) Well to begin with, I feel that whatever forms of worship we have, should all be respected. Unless they become inhuman in some way. If someone for instance, believes in human sacrifice, then that is not tolerable.
But if like in Christianity some like to worship saints, or whether some believe in murti puja or not, or whether in Muslims they believe in the Sharia form of law or some other law, it is best that they be respected for their beliefs.

I believe very strongly that there is such a thing as secular fundamentalism. I believe that the secular people should practice tolerance, just as the religious people should practice tolerance of other people’s beliefs.

I also believe that to not believe in spirituality, to not believe in God, is as much a matter of faith, as any other faith. Because there is no rational evidence that God does exist, and no rational evidence that he doesn’t exist.

So the secular fundamentalists, who think that the religious people are being stupid, are actually themselves rather stupid. And rather arrogant. We all need to be humble.
And in the present climate, the secular people who don’t believe are not showing humility.

Q. What books do you read?

At the moment I am reading Theology, a book about science and religion. I like to read poetry. And I also enjoy light reading. Bhavani Junction is another favorite of mine, because I love the railways.

Q. You were in Bangalore last year as a judge of the India plaza Golden Quill awards function. How was your response to it?

I enjoyed myself a lot, but I feel that with awards, the danger is that you cannot give them to everyone who might deserve them. Everyone pays attention only to the winners. And judges are only human, we have our own preferences.

So my feeling is that awards should be taken as fun, rather than very seriously.

Dancing on the Edge

How can a child not have a grip on life? Is it something to be learnt? Why is it relevant to to be grounded in reality, to answer questions truthfully to a child, however painful they might be? And lastly, why is it good to cry?

As the name suggests, Dancing on the Edge is about an adolescent girl dancing on the edge of life, skirting death. For how long can anyone go on living if she is convinced that she is not really alive?

‘Miracle’ is called so because her birth was miraculous. She was born out of a dead woman’s body. Her mother died in a car accident before the girl was born, and her grandmother will not let her forget this awful fact. Her father, Dane, was a child prodigy, a novelist at age thirteen. Which means he does not have to be fatherly at all, he is lost to his writing. But like all children who cannot find fault with their parents, Miracle adores her Daddy.

After all, even though he ignores her, Daddy is alive. Unlike Mommy, who escaped before she could even see her. And really, Daddy ain’t so bad. He doesn’t keep reminding her of Mama, like her Grandmother does. Grandmother is another story altogether. She talks to the dead, (except Mama of course), sees auras, wears only purple because it is supposed to be the highest in spiritual colors. She considers herself special, a psychic, but to the outsider, she is nothing short of a witch.

Especially when her son, the writer, mysteriously disappears one day, in thin air, leaving behind his gown and slippers on the floor? The explanation that Grandmother gives when Daddy vanishes is that ‘Dane has melted.’ Since Daddy was a prodigy, Miracle believes that he wouldn’t just ‘die’ or run away, like normal people did. He melted. Hopefully, he will come back, if she matters to him. If she is a child prodigy too, if she excels in something, he might come back, to see her.

To avoid the social pressure, Grandmother moves to Grandfather’s house, along with Miracle. But this is merely an arrangement, between the two ‘enemies.’ Grandfather hates the hocus-focus that grandmother indulges in, and this confuses matters further for the girl.

‘If you were born out of a dead woman’s body, you are also dead.’ Says her Grandfather, and his conviction does something to her sense of being alive. Very slowly, it starts to deteriorate, replaced by fears and demons.

A bad family is better than no family; a family that replaces itself can be tremendously strenuous. Miracle is pushed deeper into her shell when her Grandmother leaves the scene, to marry someone and get a new life. Grandfather gets a heart attack and Miracle blames herself. It is too late for the new family that she is entrusted to become ‘family’.

At school she is a misfit, and children can be cruel to someone of a different feather. Her intense need to communicate with someone familiar, her melted father, leads her to set fire to herself.

How she is saved, both physically and emotionally, is the rest of the story. The language is simple, the plot is far too interesting and overrides all literary considerations. The characters are as real as the hands holding the book.

Winner of the 1997 National Book Award, Dancing on the Edge is an experience that can inspire you to be a cautious and caring parent. It brings home the similarity in the words, family and familiar.

This book is a must for anyone working with children, for it offers a clear insight into the workings of a disturbed adolescent and also throws light on the healing process.

What I did not like about the book:

Reading the book can create a fear of the supernatural, of fairy tales, and anything imaginative.

What I liked about the book:

I liked the character of the psychiatrist who helps Miracle regain her sense of life. It is through him that the author, Han Nolan speaks, and heals the broken self image of the girl.