Kasab Coverage In The Indian Media

As Published in the Express Tribune

Unlike the Pakistani media that reported the hanging of Ajmal Kasab sparingly, the Indian media featured the story very prominently all day yesterday. I can vouch for the fact that for Indian television and online journalists it was a busy field day. Literally, all angles of the story were covered – the actual hanging, the mercy petition, 26/11 survivors, 26/11 martyrs and the Kasab’s last wish.

One of the reasons that got many elders in UP and Delhi to watch television news was the invincible dumbing down spirit that India TV, a 24 hour Hindi news channel, exhibits time and again. They were true to their reputation yesterday as well, in an attempt to explain to the Indian public the nuances of hanging a terrorist they said, in a hurried toe, “Faasi ke waqt Kasab bhi maujood” – a piece of information that an average Indian was quite unaware of and was very hungrily seeking!

The English channels, catering to the intelligentsia, were only slightly more measured in their theatrics. Times Now had a 2-minute promo that called Kasab a “butcher” more than 4 times! As much as we all agree that Kasab was a terrorist who came to the country to kill people in cold blood, there is little need to rekindle the wounds of the victims of the dreaded night of November 26^th.

Now that my usual amount of criticism has been meted out, I want to go on record to say that yesterday was a day when I also saw some good, balanced reporting done. There will always be channels that went overboard, reporters that got emotional and reportage that were opinions. But, an overall picture of the reporting done on Kasab’s hanging was better than the usual jingoistic, loud reporting.

Even as many in the media began sounding triumphant, there were people whose heads were placed firmly on their shoulders. Kafila, an well-known team blog, carried a piece on how a Mumbai terror attack victim sympathises with Kasab - sensible and level headed commentary on why people like Kasab are made and why shouldn’t lose sight of the other side.

On rediff.com, independent journalist, Shivam Vij, asked, “Rejoice, fellow Indians. Ajmal Kasab [ Images ] has been hanged. But please excuse me, I am not joining you. Your cheering and hooting and hurrahs feel like a medieval lynch mob celebrating the death of the sinner and not the sin. 'Barbaric' is the word that comes to mind.

This isn't merely about the morality or aesthetic of capital punishment. I want to ask you: What did we just achieve? Ten terrorists had come to kill and be killed, to cause maximum damage of the sort that they surely knew they'd be killed. Nine of them were killed in direct encounter. Did we hail their deaths? Do we say their deaths were justice? So if we killed Ajmal Kasab four years later -- 'with due process' -- what exactly have we achieved?”

Several senior journalists congratulated him on the piece and several others were concerned about the impact that this would have on the India-Pakistan relations.

And, the social media was rife with several journalists showing their frustration about the Pakistani establishment, but to their credit they targeted their anger towards only the authority. Divya senior journalist with NDTV said “And can Pakistan stop looking away? Such pathetic leadership really.... I feel sorry for the common man there.”

I am not sure it was a triumph of the Indian state by killing a man they had in captivity, but it surely was a triumph of Indian media for the way they handled the story.

Barfi! - A sweet cine-treat for all

As Published in Express Tribune

For someone who had not seen the rushes, Barfi! was a pleasant surprise. When I walked into the theatre I was unaware that I was about to watch a film where the lead actor had a speech and hearing impairment, and that the lead actress was autistic.

About ten minutes into the film, when the audience is told that Barfi, Ranbir Kapoor’s character in the film, had severe impairments, I braced myself to watch another emotive movie that would leave me crying profusely and feeling sorry for the differently-abled.

Until the end, I kept waiting for that moment.

The film manages to constantly put a smile on your face and gently sprinkles bouts of laughter in several scenes.

Director Anurag Basu had proven that he understands the myriad complexity of human emotions when he made Life In A Metro in 2007; with Barfi!, he has gone a step further.

Barfi had all the reasons to be a traditional Bollywood tragic hero – his mother died at birth, he’s poor and penniless through his youthful days and is left brokenhearted by a rich girl. However, Barfi is different and so is Jhilmil, Priyanka Chopra’s character, an autistic child who is loveless and companion-less for most of her screen life.

Attempting to carefully understand the lives and needs of autistic and differently-abled people, Basu has pulled his lead characters out of their traditional roles in a cry-fest.

Ranbir Kapoor is not only the current hot-favourite among the girls, but has also been consistent in getting critics’ accolades. This is another such performance which can bag a huge chunk of the awards next year.

At the start of the movie, where Ranbir Kapoor is being chased by a policeman, played by Saurabh Shukla, Ranbir’s expression of youthful carelessness and joy comes alive on the screen. The scene is also shot wonderfully well with interesting camera angles, and contributes a great deal in building up the pace of the movie.

I felt, however, that Priyanka Chopra has overdone her bit. The worst criticism for an actor is when the audience can see the actor as being separate from the character, and that is exactly what Priyanka does in several scenes. Jhilmil is lost (or overdone) reminding the audience constantly that they are watching Priyanka Chopra’s pretence. The scene when Jhilmil is brought back home from ‘Muskaan’, a foster home for differently-abled people, exemplifies my point.

South Indian actress Illeana D’Cruz surely gets into the skin of her character named Shruti, who is also the narrator of the story. She is crafty, both at the romantic scenes and at the emotional ones.

More than once during the 180 minutes, the audience is caught sitting intently on the edge of their seats, predicting the character’s next move. Some of those moments are when Shruti holds the train ticket in her hand and is deciding whether to leave her life as a wife of a rich man behind; when Shurti hears Jhilmil scream out Barfi’s name and is in the dilemma of whether to convey that to Barfi, and the scene in which Jhilmil runs behind Barfi’s moving bus.

The music is exceptional and keeps in tone with the changing mood of the film. Music director Pritam does the trick again in getting the music just enough attention that is required. The songs do not take away attention from the scenes, neither are they too insignificant that they go unnoticed.

Barfi! is an enjoyable watch, mostly because it springs a surprise on the audience and let’s them carry a sweet, happy feeling back to their homes.

Thank you for letting me travel to Pakistan!

As Published in Express Tribune

Pakistan had always been a reality to me, unlike for some people who couldn’t believe that there was another nation carved out of the Indian subcontinent. But, for me, it was just another nation that existed before I was born.

In 2007, I chanced upon a scholarship to finish a part of my semester in Kinnaird College, Lahore.  Lahore fascinated me ever since. It was in Lahore that Sahir Ludhianvi (my favourite lyricist) spent his romantic years, where Jaun Eliya (my favourite poet) struggled through his life and Sa’adat Hasan Manto (my favouurite writer) passed away.

While my only fear was what the city would offer to a vegetarian, as I packed my bags to leave, my family and friends were very concerned for my physical safety.

Just days before I was to enter the alluring city, due to a spat between the heads of states of India and Pakistan, all visas (except diplomatic visas) were cancelled.  That was the closest I had come to experiencing Pakistan.

Three years later, another scholarship took me to the US, to complete my studies.  I had never thought that a scholarship that was funded by the governments of US and India, would bring me closer to Pakistan.

On the University of Colorado Boulder's beautiful, lush lawns, 25 students from across the world, who had been granted the same scholarship gathered and spoke in hushed tones about the upcoming introductory seminars.  From the corner of my eye, I caught one gentleman giving me a long, thoughtful look.  From the color of his skin, I could tell that he was from my part of the world, but his shy, almost withdrawn nature made me nervous about approaching him.

Finally, he came over and said, "I have wanted to say hi to you for a long time. You are from India, right?"  I answered edgily, "Yes, I am Raksha."  I extended my hand.  Under his beard was a smile and look of unmistakable intelligence.  "I am Bilal.  I am from Pakistan."  Soon, we realized that not only were we about to attend the same grad school, Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, but that we would also be living in the same building!

That introduction was the beginning of a beautiful friendship and also the reason I forged many other precious friendships during my stay in the US.  Bilal introduced me to Sana, a bubbly Pakistani woman whose laughter resonates long after she has left the room.

As time passed and we settled into our routines (which involved going to school, working late and spending weekends catching up on sleep), we realized that our calendars allowed for spending time together.  On most days, the three of us dined together.  We visited Times Square and the Statue of Liberty, and ate tons and tons of 

South Asian food while chatting mostly in Hindustani.

It is interesting how certain situations and places can highlight different aspects of one's identity.  In New York, Sana, Bilal and I were no longer from the two warring nations.  We were students of Columbia University, who shared food, culture and language as opposed to several others from different parts of the world. 

When Sana called us each evening, Bilal and I immediately knew the agenda: we would order a large pizza with jalapeno peppers and pineapple, and sit on Sana’s bed listening to stories about her childhood.  We watched American and Pakistani sitcoms, and laughed well into the night.

Today, months after graduation, there is a bond between us that goes beyond all barriers, in spite of the fact that we are separated by what some call the impermeable borders between India and Pakistan.

As I now plan a visit to Pakistan to meet Bilal’s newly wed wife and gang up with Sana for a hiking trip on the Margalla Hills, I hope some day the history will remain deeply buried and never return to haunt us. 

Judging Women, Eh?

As published in Tehelka

Every time you think the society couldn’t degenerate any further, there is an example that proves you wrong. Justice Bhaktavatsala, a Karnataka High Court judge, was one such example that came up this past week when he justified wife beating, reportedly in a matter-of-fact way.

However, the light at the end of the tunnel became brighter as all family court matters, including child custody and guardianship, was shifted from him to other judges by the end of the week. This came as a result of many online petitions and protests by Women’s Rights organisations.

That is not the end of the story. If anything, it is the beginning. When a qualified man speaks frustrating non-sense with effortless ease, it is sign that the society needs a serious revamp.

Addressing a woman in a marriage dispute case, Justice Bhaktavatsala had said, “Women suffer in all marriages.  You are married with two children, and know what it means to suffer as a woman. Yesterday, there was a techie couple who, reconciled for the sake of their child. Your husband is doing good business; he will take care of you. Why are you still talking about his beatings?” he said to a woman who had accused her husband of excessively beating her.

When I first heard about blatant gender bias in the Karnataka High Court, a part of me was in denial. I wanted to believe that Justice Bhaktavatsala’s blasphemous comments were an aberration.

But, no. Bhaktavatsala’s idea of justice includes several other gems of patronising, male chauvinistic thoughts. In August, the same judge told a young woman lawyer who was trying to argue in a marriage dispute case, “Family matters should be argued only by married people, not spinsters. You should only watch. Bachelors and spinsters watching family court proceedings will start thinking if there is any need to marry at all. Marriage is not like a public transport system. You better get married and you will get very good experience to argue such cases.”

Unfortunately for women, there are many in the rank and file of the judiciary who consider women subordinate to men, and as instruments meant to comfort and please men. The question here is of law versus justice. Can having stringent laws to protect Women’s Rights change outlooks and provide women with the justice they deserve? A well implemented law is more important than a law on paper. The Convocation on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), believes that Indian law ranks much higher than most countries when it comes to the issue of gender justice.

However, justice is a combination of enactment of laws responsive to the changing needs of time, their effective enforcement and their proactive interpretation and application. How can justice be strengthened if not by educating the dispensers of it? The Justice Bhaktavatsala incident is a wake up call for the Indian judicial system that it is not enough to merely have stringent laws, but also to genuinely educate the dispensers of justice so as to open their minds to the changing times.

When less qualified men make gender biased statements, we put it down to their lack of exposure and conveniently ignore them. Once, an auto-rickshaw driver had said to me, “poore kapde pehenegi to koi chhedega nahi, (you will not be teased if you are fully covered)” gaping at my jeans and cotton top. I had smiled at his perspective and disregarded it, knowing that saying anything will fall on deaf ears.

If things are as bad today, I can’t help but wonder how things would have been without decades of arduous Women’s Liberation movements across the civilised world. Or did they help at all? 

A Fondness For Fairness

As published in the Express Tribune 

While I sat lazing one Sunday morning, I received a frantic phone call from a friend, “my naani thinks I will never be married!” she yelled. “She says I am 28 years old, and dark complexioned to boot!” she exclaimed.

Fairness was central to the lives of our older generations (I keep asking why that was, to no answers!). Even long before the British arrived in the subcontinent, the fairer among the Indians were well received in social settings and marriage markets. I remember my grandmother referring to her grandmother as being “as white as snow” (and hence being immensely beautiful).  Therefore, the subcontinent is an easy target for the big cosmetic firms as they can further an existing cultural bias and lure prospective customers into buying fairness products. Advertisemts in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Pakistan compare little to the huge fairness market that India seems to posses.

There have been several commercials in India, over the decades, which have spoken about how young men desire women who are fair, and how fairness in women is a precondition to success. However, the ad that got the activists and social commentators up-in-arms was the one on vaginal fairness. The ad hit the screens early March, but the shock and distress that it caused to bloggers and columnists alike is such that the matter is still kept alive on the blogosphere and twitter. Adding insult to injury, the admaker justified it in one of his columns for a popular weekly: “The only reason I can offer for why people like fairness, is this: if you have two beautiful girls, one of them fair and the other dark, you see the fair girl’s features more clearly. This is because her complexion reflects more light.”

Why am I still not angry with him?

I understand the psychology of a capitalistic society which thrives on selling useless products to the masses. Such ads hold up a mirror to our society, the adman and the like are only feeding on the fodder that the society provides them with. Our responsibility as a generation that has inherited a deep-rooted bias, is to ensure that colour of the skin becomes nothing more than that – the colour of the skin, a biological factor that differs from race to race. The minute we link it with societal structures like caste and class, bifurcations of superiority and inferiority seep in.

While I was a student in New York, during our usual coffee table talks, a White American friend whispered into my ear, “I hear men these days want women looking fair all over! I have stopped wearing a bikini to the beach!” she half-giggled.

This caught me by surprise as I had thought that people in the West wanted a sexy layer of tan on their bodies. After a little bit of searching around, I found, just like all capitalist-consumer products, virginal whiteness is also a borrowed concept. The US has had virginal and anal whitening creams for a few years now, and researchers are now looking at their possible health risks.   

Considering virginal whitening creams have just been introduced in India, I guess, we know what to expect next.

Boys Just Can't be Girls

As published in the Express Tribune


Sitting alone in a train compartment, I waited for my co-passengers to arrive. Like several people, I enjoy being a silent observer of those around me and particularly on a long journey that I was about to undertake, I figured, it was a fine pastime.


A lady, not more than 35 years of age, struggled her way into my compartment carrying a rather heavy child in her left arm and balancing a huge suitcase in her right. Her hair undone, sweat rolling down her forehead, her eyes showed relief that she made it in time. On reaching her spot that was in front of mine, she threw her suitcase on the floor and her child on the berth. Turning her back to me, “Bubbly!” she yelled in full volume.


Before long, a pretty girl of about 8 years, appeared from nowhere. The girl was wearing a pair of lose fitting blue jeans pants, had her hair cut very short. Her eyes looked like what authors of fairy tales would describe as those of princesses – shiny, black, enchanting. She seemed to be quite true to her name. No sooner had she reached her mother and brother than she began to speak in an animated way, “ma, I saw this man outside wearing the same shirt as Guddu bhaiyya.”


Her mother nodded and busily began making space for the three of them.


“When I was entering the train na? I smelt the worst of smells! Ma, I will not use those bathrooms for anything!!”


The suitcase went below the seat, and the other young child of about 6 years was placed near the window.


“Ma… when we reach…” she began again, as if it were her duty to fill her mother in on everything she experienced.


“Shut up, Bubbly! Will you?”


Bubbly winced and shut up.


Over the next 36 hours that we journeyed together, I observed the three of them closely. They were a typical upper middle class family, the children went to reputed schools in New Delhi I learnt, the mother was well educated herself and taught them well – no disturbing others, no making noises while chewing food, be nice to the other sibling etc. Whether it was Bubbly or her brother, they were being taught the same morals and the same good conduct was expected of them.


I was smiling at myself looking a very pleasant family, until Bubbly threw another of her incessant questions at her mother, “Ma, Sunaina’s younger sister wears Sunaina’s old frocks, why can’t Chotu wear my old frocks?” This seemingly innocent question is actually a firm slap on our alleged gender neural society.


That is when I did a mental recap of everything the mother had “taught” in the past few hours.


“Bubbly, be brave, go upto the upper berth by yourself! How will you face life if you are such a coward?”


“Bubbly feed your brother while I eat. You should always be loving siblings.”


“Bubbly, come on, share your toy car with your brother, he is not interested in those dolls.”


Our society has come a long way in gender justice, but we have learnt subtle ways of discrimination. While we are proud of bringing up our daughters like our sons, we still haven’t learnt to bring up our sons like our daughters.


While we encourage our ‘Bubbly’s to be dressed in a pair of pants, keep their hair short, show interest in toy cars; it is looked down upon if our ‘Chotu’s wear a frock, played with dolls and had a natural shy, ‘docile’ nature.


I wonder if we could just let a child nurture its natural traits, grow up in families that are consciously aware of the social constructs and will strive to keep their kids immune from it. Urban women are under twice the stress as the yester years, because the society expects a dual role (that of a man and a woman) from them under the garb of moving towards “true empowerment”.


As if voicing my thoughts, the mother said, “Bubbly, we should always learn to adjust, beta. Never expect that from others, in this case, your brother.”

Blind leading the sighted?

Published in the Express Tribune

Chandini is only about four feet, nine inches tall. Her body seems to have naturally bent leftward from all the strain of having carried four children, one after another, on her waist for about a decade now. She had her first child when she was 17 years old. “I took one look at the child, and I couldn’t stop my tears,” she ruefully pointed, “it was he,” at her first born who was desperately trying to reattach the broken arm to the doll’s body.  She had wanted a daughter.

Jagat, Chandini’s husband, earns his living by screening the trash and selling what is possible to the scarp dealers. “He earns about Rs 60 a day, when he decides to go to work,” Chandini sobs.

Sobbing is one of the only things Chandini would be able to use her pair of eyes for, in a few years time. She suffers from progressive vision loss that will result in blindness and is almost half blind now.  “I trip over vessels, bundles of clothes and sometimes even my kids,” she laughs. A laugh that has more pain in it than humour.

Yet, Chandini was sure enough that she wanted a daughter. She had tried three times and was lucky the fourth time, when she gave birth to Suhana a year ago. I asked the obvious question, “Why?!” I half-exclaimed, “Why would you conceive again and again with the hope of delivering a daughter?”

“Why not?” she counter-questioned and paused.

Chandini lives in the Valmiki Nagar slum of West Bangalore. With rising prices, it is almost impossible for a family of six to think of living in a city like Bangalore with no income. In such a situation, I was very curious to know why Chandini was so desperate for a girl child.

“People want a son these days, Chandini,” I ventured, “they feel a son would fend for them, a daughter would be a burden, I am therefore curious to know why you wanted a daughter?” All the while thinking about India’s irreparably skewed sex ratio.  

Chandini pointed at her house – a small, 10 feet wide shack with bare, wet walls made of mud. She had a few utensils she uses to cook a meal when there were enough grains in the house. There were three small bundles of clothes and one earthern pot which stored drinking water for the family. “Do you think we can ever live in a better condition?” she asked in a voice that expected a sincere answer from me.

With deep guilt, I looked at her, not knowing an answer to that question.

“That is why I want a girl child,” she uttered. “What we need is a little bit of care, some love and affection and some respect. A girl is more sensitive, I am hoping that my daughter will take care of me one day.”

She did not mean to suggest that sons are insensitive; she felt that her daughter would be more of a support to her.

“These days girls go out and earn a decent living and they also take care of us at home,” her voice sounded genuine, “I can give my daughter nothing but life, I am hoping she will be my life to me.”

When I left Chandini’s tiny house, I think, I sensed the changing times. 

Raksha Kumar

A Brush With Reality

As published in the Express Tribune

Bombay (now known as Mumbai) enamours me, like it has many people. While the plane lands over the city, you see a seamless mix of shanties and high rises.

It is not so inconspicuous on the ground.

Riding a local train from Santa Cruz to Malad East, I gazed at the best and the worst of living conditions of the people of Bombay. I was in the city to report on the raising real estate prices in the city’s slums. As I reached my destination in Dharavi, one of the largest slums in Asia, there was a strange sensation in my stomach because I was treading carefully on a mixture of stinking animal and human refuse, wet mud and miscellaneous junk that I dare not think about.

After a few minutes, I reached the home of Rashid, the auto driver. His family is large with four children, “we need people’s shoulders to cry on when we are in distress, you see,” he smiled. Rashid lives in a 10ft-12ft room that doubles up as a kitchen and a tiny portion in the corner is marked off as wash area.

In order to reach the bathroom, Rashid and his family trek down at least 5 minutes outside their house to a dingy public toilet in the far corner of their small, crowded neighbourhood. The toilet, Rashid tells me has not had water for the past 2 days and in any case, there is no certainty that one would get to use it when one wants. “We have to wade through the queue,” he utters, almost embarrassed.

The six members of the family share the coir mat and the hard cement floor to sleep at night. Khalida, Rashid’s wife, recycles her limited utensils to cook and feed her family.

The house is regularly flooded in the rainy season. And when it does, the family first saves the books of the kids and then goes on to protect other things in the house.

Sitting on an inverted tin box, the only seat in the house, and sipping tea that was specially made for me, I could only think about how distant the privileged classes are to the realities of families such as Rashid’s. Unless one ventures out and forces themselves to be a bystander in the lives of those like Rashid, they will remain an exotic fantasy in the minds of those with cozy apartments.

Considering slums and substandard living conditions make up large parts of the cities of India, understanding them becomes the first step in trying to alter the situation. The common reaction of the privileged class is to cringe at the thought of passing by a shanty in a car, or just simply complain about their existence.

Spending some time as spectators, will also bridge the palpable mental gap between the more privileged and the less privileged. In a country like India, the more we understand the underbelly of our cities the better we can perform as a cohesive urban unit. Currently, the distance between the two urban worlds of comfort and distress seem unbridgeable. But, the future can certainly be different if we desire.

After having a small chat with Rashid’s family while I was walking away from their house, I felt a small tug on my sleeve. Turning around, I saw 11-year-old Salma, Rashid’s daughter, smiling at me. “Could you please give me your number?” she asked me confidently in impeccable English. “Yeah... sure!” I fumbled and handed my card. “I will call you for advice on what college I should go to in a few years,” she said. “You should,” I replied, “I would be happy to tell you all I know,” I left with a huge smile on my face.

Raksha Kumar

Valuing The Past

As Published in Easy Narrative

Lost in a long row of white buildings, amidst the madness of Chowringhee’s markets, is a nondescript two storied building. Except for the small Gold plated sign on it that says Indian Museum, 1814 there is nothing to suggest that it is the oldest museum in all of Asia and houses more than a hundred thousand artifacts. It is rightfully located in the then capital of British India, Calcutta (currently called Kolkata).

During my short stay in Calcutta, I was adamant about seeing as much of the city’s rich history as possible. My first stop was the Indian Museum, which is autonomously maintained under the Minister of Culture (a mystery that is uniquely Indian).

Upon entering the huge white structure, one gets a whiff of some needless bureaucracy – you have to have Rs 10 in change for the ticket, you have to go through bomb detectors that do not work and the like. However, what took the cake was that you are allowed to take your camera, wallet and other valuables inside the museum, but are required to deposit your bag. I, therefore, ended up depositing a small, empty bag at the counter and uneasily held on to plenty of my belongings as I toured the large museum for hours.

The museum has six sections comprising thirty five galleries of cultural and scientific artifacts namely art, archaeology, anthropology, geology, zoology and economic botany. Some of the most fascinating relics are dumped in these sections. The museum looked like a store house of historic objects, not an informative and creative display for people to enjoy and learn.

When Indians sing their own praises about 5000 years of history, it seems what they mean is tolerating decay of some never-to-be-found-again miniature Mughul paintings; not caring much about the anthropological remains of the rare tribes of India; And ignoring the 80,000 geological specimens and letting them grow dust.

In the far corner of the zoology section, I saw a man desperately trying to explain to his daughter the functions of mammals with a broken down specimen of a horseshoe bat.

Perhaps, the hunger for knowledge in an ordinary Indian does not equal the establishment’s desire to preserve organisations such as the Indian Museum. This extends to several public libraries across the country as well where books are treated as waste in a dump yard.

Civilizations like that of the Egyptians, Chinese and Indian have their histories to boast of that no other part of the world can. If anything, their sole effort should be to protect and nurture their fascinating histories.

Is the Ministry of Culture in New Delhi listening?

By Raksha Kumar

The Death Ride

As Published in Easy Narrative


Even though India is much written about in world media, few people fully comprehend its diversity and complexity. This nation of more than a billion people has many hidden stories that are screaming out in silent voices, almost unheard by anyone.
This blog is an attempt to give a voice to the ordinary Indian – the woman on a Mumbai local train, the rickshawala on the streets of Delhi, the fruitseller of Bangalore and the Irani chai wala of Hyderabad. After all, only when the stories of the common Indian is valued, will the nation’s essence be absorbed better.
The following is the story of thousands of people in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, who risk their lives to commute to work.
A tattered nine-seater jeep was travelling at the speed of a race car on the highway that connects Fatehpur to Agra. Black plastic sheets covered its top and the sides were open, presumably for some air. 23 people were stuffed into it like cotton stuffed into a pillow!


I was one of them, crushed between my friend (who was almost falling off the jeep) on my right and a middle aged women on my left.


We had ended our journey of the magnificent Fatehpur and Sikri that evening and were told that there weren’t any buses back to Agra. We had to take the jeep. The driver of the jeep had politely invited us and had pointed to a tiny space which could, at best, accommodate a four-year-old.
Five minutes into the journey, the kid next to me threw up. I was secretly glad because the kid seemed to be the only one in that crowd who would acknowledge the claustrophobic and suffocating set up. To me, that was reassuring. The mother cupped her hands in front of the child’s mouth. That is how we were to spend the rest of our journey. My initial pleasure at the reassurance soon disappeared as the stink of the vomit exponentially increased the suffocation.
Those sitting on the seats inside the jeep were partially lucky as they had gotten to sit through the journey. And those hanging on to the windows and sides of the jeep were partially lucky as they had gotten to breathe through the journey.
There were four people to the driver’s left and one to his right. The very sight of a person driving with people pushing him around was scary. The speedometer had stopped at 40, but it didn’t take Einstein’s brains to guess that the speed was well above 100kmph. Thankfully, the road was in a reasonably good state, not a common sight in our country.


To add to my fears, it stared drizzling. To my utmost dismay, I realized that our jeep was without wipers!


Within a flash, I thought of all the people I love, all the things that I wanted to do in life, thanked God for everything I had achieved and apologised to him for all my shortcomings.
Before I finished this long conversation with God, we reached Agra. I hoped out of the jeep like one would jump out of a sinking boat.
The following morning I was thankful for the beautiful sunrise, the amazing night’s sleep and the hot cup of tea I had in my hand. Tea infuses the spirit in you to mull over life.
I thought about the thousands of men and women who make that commute every day, how frustrated would they return home, how much energy would they have to laugh with their kids at the end of the day, would they look forward to going to work every day? Would they be enthusiastic at work?
While I thought of the people who were forced to make that ‘death’ commute every day, the picture of a middle aged man who was sitting in front of me in that jeep came to mind. He was reading a Hindi novel in the midst of that chaos. A serene sight. That is the inexplicable peace of mind we all crave for.


Raksha Kumar