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Moments could mean anything and many things. When people meet for whatever reasons at a place like Haus-I-Alai in Huas-Khas, Delhi which was originally built between AD 1296-1316, the past of the place as a madrasa and mosque complex is perhaps the last thing in their minds. But they converse, pause and pose; they work and they relax. In the backdrop of the past, the present unfolds in moments. But they might not be the kind of moments that ensured a place like Haus-I-Alai emerged in the first place. They might not be moments that would make history. But they are moments.

A Cheerless Christmas!

Though coming from a non-Christian background and a country where the Christian population is a minority of about 7.5%, I have been used to the idea of Christmas as a time of festive cheer, color, lights and music. As a child, even though the only people in my neighborhood were Buddhists and Hindus, my family opted to ‘celebrate’ the day in a non religious manner, perhaps because it must have seemed like a cheerful thing to do. A month or so before Christmas actually arrives and long after, Colombo looks like one big mall with Christmas decorations even though most people putting them up quite possibly are not Christians.

This Christmas in Delhi I missed all that; it has simply come as if through a backdoor, and I guess it will leave also from a back door by nightfall today. The two Churches I go past almost every day in Vasant Kunj seemed quite desolate even yesterday. St Thomas’ Church off Africa Avenue sported a rather sorry looking white paper star on the top of its roof. If this was meant to symbolize the star that guided the wise men in search of the son of god who had just been born according to Christian mythology, then this was a very uninspiring and almost sad simulation. Of course, I have no idea what the interiors of these religious places held for devotees or what individuals for whom this was much more than a single day on the calendar might have done on their own. But from these public spaces, neither a sense of cheer nor a feeling of exuberance was emanating. It was quite gloomy not too unlike the Delhi smog. But of course, a friend told me yesterday that Khan Market had transformed itself to suite what is often expected of Christmas in a commercial sense in most parts of the world. Few businesses had done so too in CP and many Delhi-based internet shopping spaces were selling rather predictable and tiresome Christmas paraphernalia. The lobby of the Asoka Hotel In Delhi had installed a somewhat stout grey rendition of a Christmas tree shorn of its leaves, which looked more like a de-commissioned Scud missile sitting on its smokeless posterior.

But given the largeness of the city, it is entirely possible that Christmas might have come to some places with more glamour and a sense of festivity that I have simply missed. I had neither the time nor the patience to visit a few of the better known malls and see if a packaged form of the moment bedecked with North American commercialized symbolism of the day was more prominently displayed. However, whenever I stopped for traffic, I saw some of the numerous poor folks trying to make a living selling what appeared to be red Santa caps not too far from another intersection where another group of people were trying to sell DVDS and books containing the Bagvat Gita.

But this absence had its blessings. The way in which Christmas ‘cheer’ was commercially manufactured in a place like Colombo, one could easily assume this was celebration that had something to do with simulated rubber-coated snow, a blue eyed bearded white man in a red costume gallivanting around the planet in a not so aerodynamic vehicle pulled by a bunch of hard-board reindeer. In that rendition what was absent was Jesus himself and the way of life he tried to teach.

If that is what typifies Christmas today in many places, I wonder if I should not learn to appreciate its cheerlessness in my new context and appreciate it as just another day.

Kindness o f Terrorists

Having come from what used to be an active war zone where regular bombings, various security regimes and loss of friends in war and violence had unfortunately become somewhat regular, the military and police presence as well as ‘security’ checks in Delhi were things I took in a stride. They were everywhere and had become part and parcel of the landscape. Today, with a group of others I had lunch at the Janpath in Delhi. The same thing as I entered the hotel: a polite good afternoon, a ritual body search which was magically quick; a hand-held metal scanner scans the body lazily from left to right like some kind of a mechanized blessing ritual, and it screams as it usually does when it reached my left pocket due to the presence of the large bunch of keys and a twenty year Swiss army knife which functions as a key tag. No hesitation on the part of the security person, and with the routine-ness of a seasoned ritual expert he moves to the next pocket, gropes my wallet and waves me in. Apparently, security was assured. All of this would have taken less than 40 seconds. As far as I was concerned, no sense of security was guaranteed; only a ritual of ‘feeling safe’ was enacted. Both pockets could have easily contained things far more potent than a bunch of keys and some cash.

The point is, this is not unusual. In fact, this is the norm I have been experiencing since November 1st 2011 wherever I go and encounter moments of ‘security’: metro stations, cinema theatres, malls, hotels and my own university -- every morning and evening. Having some idea of what security means and the consequences of its failure, what I have experienced in Delhi is not security. It is not even something annoying. It is merely a minor infringement on time and a routine ritual not that much different from a pooja or the like that one might perform or undergo in a temple: a routinized and stylized set of practices that are linked to a notion but not to a reality in concrete terms. In this case, the notion of course is that security is achieved; the reality is that it has not been; but there is an expectation, a hope that it has been. However, beyond rituals, if this is what is technically considered ‘security’, it is clearly a very cumbersome and ultimately meaningless process.

In this scenario, and given the current political upheavals and their military-security consequences that India experiences and the assortment of nutcases who might opt for ‘terrorism’ as a routine method of politics nowadays, I am endlessly amazed why this city is not much worse than it actually is. Naturally, I am quite thankful that it is:

But rather than these endlessly repetitive rituals, I am convinced that whatever safety we might experience here today has to do with the utmost kindness of terrorists.

දිසි අදිසි දනා

මිහිදුම් සළු අතරින්
මුණගැසෙන තැන අඳුර
දුහුල් ආලෝක දහර,
ඈත අපැහැදිලි ඉමක
ඉපිල වියැකී යන
එ් මායාවී රූ
හමු නොවේ අපට කිසි විටත්;
නන්නාදුනනා එ් රූ
දොඩමළු නොව් අප හා
කෙදිනකවත්.


ඇවිත් නෑවිත්
හෙවනැලි ලොවින් මෙපිටට
දිගන්තයට ඔබ්බෙන්
බොඳවීයන එ් රූ,
වේය උයණ සරනා
දිසි අදිසි දනා.
 

නව දිල්ලිය, 19 දෙසැම්බර් 2011