An evening in the presence of Pt. Shiv Kumar Sharma

Only the other day I went for a concert by renowned santoor player Pandit Shiv Kumar Sharma. It was my first experience of a live santoor performance and I, weary from the long day’s activities, settled down for a delightful evening.  Closing my eyes, I took in as much of the music as I could. Every note seemed to resonate in my heart.  Delightful though the whole experience was, at the end of the performance I was left with a question that has been nagging me ever since.

I can’t vouch for the other members of the audience, but I enjoyed the performance from the very start, even the tuning of the instrument without being aware of. It was only after Panditji thanked us for applauding even for the tuning that we realised that every note the instrument exuded was  worth relishing, be it just a few random taps at the strings. However, this little bit of information that Panditji let us in on also brought to my mind something that is ingrained in my human mind. When he was done with the first part of the show and about to proceed to the second part, he had to tune the instrument again, for it was a different raaga.  Now that I knew that Panditji would repeat the process of tuning again, I didn’t pay as much attention to it as I had done before.  I failed to observe the beauty in the notes because it was not the performance, in short not of utility. When I came out of the auditorium, I was ashamed of myself, for I have tried to assign value to only that was useful. My human instincts had kicked in and I was trying to find beauty only in things that have some value.

 Can’t we human beings enjoy beauty without looking at the value aspect of it? Even the most useless of things has some beauty in it; only a perceiving mind is needed. And it seems I lack it.

Pretentious Indians

Whenever I hear a fellow Indian trying to anglicise their English, I find myself laughing to myself as they set out in a flurry of words. Many Indians try to sound like a proper Englishman when they speak the gentleman’s language. But most of them hardly succeed and make a laughing stock of themselves, much to the amusement of onlookers. There are even courses offered by different coaching centres to teach one how to speak proper English. I do not intend to undermine any of them because one should know the correct pronunciation of the words. However going to extreme ends to sound like a native English speaker should never be one’s aspiration.

          Nor ‘Zee’ Germans, neither do the French try to sound like an Englishman when they speak English. And most certainly not the Italians, who actually take pride in giving the words an Italian accent. So why do only Indians try to imitate the King’s English? Is just saying the words properly without trying bring in any accent not enough? Maybe, we have come to respect the English ways after being ruled by them well-nigh two centuries. And now we try to emulate them. But, even that has to have some limits.

          Actually we Indians can take pride in ourselves in that we speak perhaps the most proper English in the world. Most of our pronunciations are very close to the ones prescribed and even the natural speakers don’t speak it the way it’s supposed to be. American English has become the standard in many places, thanks to the computer and the default language of most Operating Systems being set to AmE. Even while writing this piece, I have had quite a few words underlined in red because they are not correct according to the AmE (I am one who would bother to write about how we try to imitate the westerners but too lazy to change the settings on his own computer…hypocrite ehhhh mate!!!). So why do we need an anglicised form of English?? Perhaps India being a multi lingual nation explains it all. There is no standard for speaking English. Hence different pronunciations for the same words have evolved in different regions and a dedicated pursuer of the language is lost for options. So with no proper guideline to which one could adhere to speak the language, one turns to the Brits for help. But what comes as a hurdle is the mother tongue that has become a part of the person and rears its head at every opportune moment. So one ends up speaking something that resembles neither of the languages and providing ample fodder for others to laugh. 

          One needs to just neutralise one’s pronunciation and not try to put on any accent; that would be perfectly fine and would help converse with people across the world. This preoccupation of anglicising our spoken English just goes on to substantiate the fact that we all consider westerners better than ourselves and try to imitate them. These pretensions without practising any kind of restraint will surely not help in the development of our country. 

 

Corrupted Nation

Does the word corruption ring a bell??

If you are an Indian, it would have set off a string of alarms. Or it wouldn’t have rung any at all. We have largely started to ignore corruption as it has become far too common for us to pay attention. The 2G scam, fodder scam, Bofors Scam, Commonwealth Scam, Satyam Scam…. the list never seems to end. I doubt if there is a single public office where you can have attention being drawn to your case without exchanging some sort of favour, be it monetary or of some other kind. Present politicians almost never have a clean sheet. Some sort of corruption seems to be lying around in some corner for most of them. It is not my intention to classify all of them as corrupt but going by the trend, corruption seems to be the most common trait. There are other classes of the society also who have hogged the limelight……military officers, judges, police officers, industrialists, even cricketers; match fixing is also a form of corruption. Even the anti-corruption department may have some names to brag about.

So what makes these people make such a misuse of the state’s resources and still maintain a clear conscience? India, with all its numerous gods and goddesses, is the last place one would expect such a malpractice to thrive the way it does. So has religion has lost its value? How can one be religious and still carry on with such an unethical action? 

Indians are a very soft hearted people. Ruthlessness has never been a part of the culture. Otherwise, who would have let themselves to be ruled by all sorts of foreigners? We accept everyone from everywhere and let them assimilate into our society. We have never been warring people and thus we lack discipline. So a little bit of tweaking of rules is not such a big thing. Even in our scriptures, we have tweaking of situations to suit the mythological heroes. Even Lord Vishnu has a few such incidents to his name. He assumed the form of a lady to steal the Amrit from the demons. Such incidents are strewn all across our sacred books. The good always prevail in the end in all of our sacred texts but there always seems to be some kind of corruption by the divine Trinity. One would argue that 'that' bit was done for the good of humanity, but corruption is corruption, no matter how insignificant and what might be the end purpose. And they were the powerful people. Who was to decide if their actions were righteous or not? And most of the times their actions were undetected by the people who could cry foul. If a wrong remains undetected, it is never done. Our accepting nature made us overlook that weeny bit. It was all done with a sense of good purpose with a clear conscience, after all. So how can we blame the present day politicians, who also have a clear conscience about making their own fortunes?

I don’t want to justify the present day corrupt actions that are so ubiquitous. My intention is quite the opposite. But I just want a change in perspective before we all start making these corrupt people scapegoats because most of us have been part of some sort malpractice. Only we were not caught and these people have done it at a magnificent level (they made it large!!!!…..remember the Seagram’s ad) and brought all attention to themselves, most of the time unwanted. Even I can’t claim to be completely free from any corrupt practice. It has now become almost imperative for Indians to accept corruption as a part of life.

Not that corrupt practices don’t take place in other countries, but what concerns me most is that we don’t look down upon corruption as we ought to. Only if we develop in ourselves an utter disdain for malpractices can we hope of becoming a developed nation…