Eraviperoor to Eraviperoor

Eraviperoor to Eraviperoor

Those were the words written on his tin trunk which he hauled to the carriage as it left home. In the distant his parents waved him good bye, never once dreaming of the applause their son would bring home one day.

Forget the fact no one outside his geographical reach knew the village he had come from, but his tin trunk proudly displayed his past. It was probably those words which always pulled at his heart strings so often that he could never ever be separated from his hometown.

Today he is yearning to come home to be buried in the fields of yore, where once his father and forefathers had tilled so stoutly and steadfastly. The defender of the poor, the messiah of his countrymen is on his return journey fulfilling the prophesy so boldly painted on his little tin trunk

It was a sunny afternoon when the breeze rustled the coconut leaves perched high above the ground. The bright light of the day gave hope to little Mathunny who was setting out on the voyage of his dreams, a land across the oceans, where he was to find his home.

As the ship sailed deeper into the ocean eagerly trying to touch the distant horizons, young Mathunny’s dreams started to stand out amidst the sadness of parting ways. He felt numbness inside him; the emptiness of leaving his loved ones, the smell of the green and the ocean, the wild hooting call of the fish seller, the aroma of raw coffee filtering through the air around him. 

Yes, he was setting sail for his date with dame luck. Slowly the past got merged into the future and dreams began to sour. Once he landed in the city of his dreams he set about in right earnest to get what was offered to him, the job of a typist. The rest is history.

His deeds along with other fellow Indians of influence leaves many teary eyed and his fellow countrymen can feel a bloating of their chests with the pride that he instilled through his courageous and selfless acts during the invasion.

He briskly walks into the pages of history and will stay put through the various awards and recognitions that were won during his years of toil. He brought his obscure village onto the world map and village folks proudly announce the synonymity that the name carried with the village to gain instant recognition.

Now I hear the roar in the distance of the chariots coming to take M. Mathews to his eternal home to where he belongs and where he is to be united with all his righteous and well meaning friends.

On the return journey to Eraviperoor I can imagine him humming these few lines:

“Going home, I'm going home
There is nothing to hold me here
I've caught a glimpse of that Heavenly land
Praise God, I'm going home

Now the twilight is fading, the day soon shall end
Lord, I get homesick, the farther I roam
But the Father has led me each step of the way
And now I'm going home”.

Can someone find and pull down the rusty old tin trunk and erase the words written so prominently -for Toyota Sunny has returned home.

Robin Varghese

24^th May 2017

NB: My tribute to the Late M. Mathews- this is a fictional piece of writing and the happenings in the article may have nothing to do with the actual events as they unfold, unfolded or shall unfold.

Democracy backsliding

Democracy backsliding

Our Prime minister before he became one was the Chief Minister of a state for 13 long years running into three successive election victories. He is seen as one who is straight forward and reckless in his beliefs yet seen to carry conviction of the masses at an easy pace. He is perceived as the villain yet gets the applause of a hero. Such is his aura and image that people have come to compare and associate him to the Iron man of India.

He is seen to take unfamiliar stands but comes out victorious in spite of all the hue and cry. He is often predicted to receive a drubbing at the polls yet comes out victorious with a thumping majority. He is simply unbeatable and irresistible. He can tweak his way to the top and can twist an initial thought to serve many ends.

The demonetization of the economy was carried out to defeat the scourge of black money not the ones lying in Swiss banks, but the counterfeit kind which was equivalent to building a parallel economy, but he cleverly turned it to suit other ends like digitalization etc. It is actions like this that make him seem as a larger than life hero, someone who can justify a wrong and succeed in carrying it along without simmering discontent in any quarters.

After the Gujarat riots in 2002 no one gave him a chance at the Chief Ministers chair for the second time, yet he overturned all predictions to occupy it a second time. In spite of several opposition parties shouting out his sins and in spite of various government agencies intermittently applying the brakes he rode on to complete his second term. Anyone would have thought that the minority community who sees him as a conspirator would hardly vote for him, but for his third term he came out with even bigger numbers. Poll pundits and political analyst could not figure out why this was happening.

How could someone who had made enemies with the minority become victorious in every sphere of election? This clearly was baffling and learned people even ventured to opine that the minority was intimated and subdued and threatened to vote for him. The ones who voted against him started scratching their heads as soon as election results were out. They could not figure out where their votes had vanished. Everyone kept quiet because it was ridiculous to challenge a verdict of the people.

But was this a verdict of the people? Who could tell, given that the ones who voted against him did not want to claim it in the open for fear of showing their hand? However a good and astute politician will be able to calculate his chances. That is why opportunist’s politicians jump ship nearer election time. They can smell defeat and change ends to ensure that they are victorious.

Thus all political parties have a feel of the results going into elections, but they normally do not disclose it for fear of lowering moral of workers, because there can be only one winner. However when the results are grossly disproportionate some screeched louder and that is how a former Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, Mayawati shouted from the roof tops that there was something baffling about the Electronic Voting Machines.

So strong was the narrative in favour about EVM’s in the country that people were afraid to turn against it. Talking against the machine would tantamount to surrendering ones intellectual capabilities, since the majority were convinced that the process of voting had become easier to monitor and safeguard given the kind of reports that used to filter in during manual voting process about booth capturing and forced voting and voters being intimidated and prevented from voting along with poll officials everyone sat in their comfort zones.

However what one conveniently overlooked was the point that there was a method in the madness, in the story that the Bharatiya Janata Party had worked up a frenzy in synchronization with the voting machine to get a foothold in the political landscape in India and used this foothold to push through their agenda while acting like tough unwed school principals in matters of administration.

Finally someone demonstrated that these machines were not tamper proof and as one engineer politician added anything that is programmed by humans is capable of being surpassed by humans. The general public is now shedding the notion of Democracy being supreme and debating the quality of processes employed in achieving this apex position that the term ‘Democracy’ espouses.

There is a saying ‘ you can fool some people for some time but not all people all the time’, perhaps the game is up and the tide will turn allowing people and parties that seem to have been deliberately elbowed to claw their way back. As some would agree this is one condition that aptly fits into the newly coined term “Democracy backsliding” faced by countries and which has started to gather steam across the world.

Robin Varghese

12^th May 2017

In letter and spirit

In Letter and spirit

The recent reports of young aspiring medical students being subjected to stripping by test center officials has raised a hue and cry in some quarters. Students, it is reported were forced to strip down to their undergarments and in one case, was also asked to remove them because it was against the written down rules as perceived by the official on duty.

Particularly noticeable is the fact that this is reported from the state of Kerala when surely, female students were present in all states where the examinations were held. Why then has this incident surfaced in Kerala? Again surely, students were wearing their under garments in all states and from what we know other states did not report this kind of behavior.

To understand this you must understand the ‘Malayalee’. He lives by the rule; and waits for an opportunity to pounce on someone circumventing the rules. That is why you have a horde of locals ‘ghearoing’ a Policeman and forcing him to take off his cap to trade with a helmet. The question is not whether riding a motorbike without a helmet is against the rules, but the curious concern of the locals to enforce them, given their penchant to implement rules uniformly, thus stepping into a new domain.

Long back I travelled a short distance of two hours from Ernakulum Junction station to my Hometown Tiruvalla in a long distance train that starts from New Delhi and terminates at Trivandrum. I hopped on because being a resident of Delhi I knew that a lot of people would get down at this station and seats would be available aplenty. All one had to do was pay the legalized fare for such distance and travel.

However when the ticket collector came, he fined me for getting into a reservation compartment without a reserved ticket. I explained to him that I was prepared and willing to pay the price for such travel, but he refused to budge and asked me to get off at the next station after paying the nominal fine for such travel. 

I even argued that having empty seats amounted to a loss for the railways, so wasn’t it better to have short distance passengers like me who were willing to pay for travelling in a reserved coach? Nothing of what I said or none of my arguments cut ice with him and he majestically did his job of hauling me into an unreserved compartment.

Those who travel by air would have observed that even the check-in ground staff in airlines put up such as fuss over minor weight excesses in hand baggage that it is almost impossible to buy peace with them. It is their way or the highway, there is no middle path. Compare this with ground staff in Major metros like Delhi and you can see the difference.

Hand baggage is allowed up to 7 Kgs on domestic flights in India. While you can travel from Delhi to Cochin on a few extra kilos, you cannot do the same on the return leg. I tried to bring in 9 Kgs of hand baggage on the flight from Cochin recently and they asked me to check in the baggage because it was outside the limits. There is no point arguing or making them see reason they will not budge so fixated are they on the rules read out to them.

Therefore the difference is, in the Malayalee psyche, he is born to implement the rule both in letter and spirit and will not tolerate another behaving otherwise, albeit in small measure. He is the upholder of the laid down rules and will not broach aberrations. Needless to say that the instructions of CBSE officials, was followed by all staff in all centers throughout the country,  but it was only in the state of Kerala that the female candidate had to give her exams at a cost to her inner peace. 

Robin Varghese

10^th May 2017