Am I alone?

Is it just only me or there is a club out there?  After reading this, may be you can validate my parking spot on this planet earth occupied by the humans.

I am older than a quadragenarian. Of course, I will hide the exact age!

In my profession, my charges are more than the minimum legal wage.

Socially, I love to have a drink with friends and have out of control laughs on jokes which are at times biased or politically incorrect.

I watch stupid movies with family.

I jump and scream while watching Lakers basketball or the Super Bowl.

Sometimes, I have fun discussing my first crush in high school.

I pick my nose at a traffic signal if no one is watching.

When among people, if I need to release air pressure from my stomach, I do go aside and finish the business where other noise would suppress my natural alerts!

At a vacation with a chum, I told him my pee will go further than his, even at this age!

Though I am a regularly performing artist, singer, and a writer, I always sing very loud in the bathroom.

I do make funny facial expressions when I am alone in front of a mirror.

In professional meetings and during socials, my mind wanders all over.  I myself feel “why do I get such thoughts?

These thoughts include imagining the people around me without cloths, telling the guy next to me that he has a body odor, urge to slap my boss, my customer, my banker, or a co traveler at times.

Many times wished I was four inches taller.

When I teach a college class, I exactly know what my students must be thinking of me. It must be the same as what I felt about my professors, some mixed feelings.

When I see teenagers having fun, I feel younger.

Many times I think what if I have a body of a twenty year old with my current savvy wisdom and maturity! Things could be so different.

I always wished I had a control to reverse the calendar and clock!

At the same time, I must admit I am happy in my own skin!

I always wish for the chance to talk to the dear ones who have passed and ask how things are up there… I feel like telling them “I love you and miss you”.

I specifically want to ask them if there is such a thing as life after death.

And definitely ask “by the way, did you meet anyone who saw the hyper-discussed heaven, hell, or the most desirable mokhsh yet?”

I tend to think there could be some great super God somewhere, but I do not have a tangible proof. I am not sure either way. But still, due to fear and faith combined, I believe, there must be a Godly power.

I get tears seeing others cry.  I cannot stop smiling if others are laughing around me.

I get empathy towards sufferers and anger towards brutality and injustice.

Some days, I feel very strong. Some days I feel helpless for not being able to change things around me.

Am I alone feeling such?

September 23, 2022

e.mail : vijaybhatt01@gmail.com

Natwar Gandhi

India at 75: No longer the heaven of freedom where the mind would be without fear

When Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first Prime Minister, gave his famous “Tryst with Destiny” speech on India’s Independence Day, August 15, 1947, he said, “at the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom.” Though he was aware of all the pains that were endured to secure India’s freedom, he was hopeful that “the past is over, and it is the future that beckons to us now.” Since that fateful day, India has changed remarkably. From a timid, diffident, and hesitant nation, it has morphed into an assertive, even aggressive, behemoth. Indian corporations stride triumphantly abroad and smart Indians abroad dazzle their host communities. Despite all this, the country has always lagged behind China in economic progress, but we had the trump card—a multi-party democracy and freedom of press and individual liberty, particularly the freedom to dissent and, above all, the freedom from fear. No more. Presently the freedom that Nehru had bequeathed is squandered. Sadly, India is no longer the country that the Nobel laureate poet Rabindranath Tagore had once envisioned as “the heaven of freedom…. where the mind is without fear.”

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Natwar Gandhi was born in Savar Kundla [Gujarat] and lives in Washington and Philadelphia. He was the Chief Financial Officer of Washington, DC, 2000-13. He is the author of three books of poetry and an autobiography in Gujarati. He is also the author of Still the Promised Land.

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Panna Naik

India at 75: A Climate of Fear Pervades in Literary India

Presently in India, a climate of fear pervades everywhere, even in poetry. As an American poet writing in Gujarati, Mahatma Gandhi’s language, I am deeply distressed and saddened. On June 25, 1975 Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, fearful of political reversal, threw away her legendary father Jawaharlal Nehru’s legacy—popular democracy and individual freedom—by a stroke of the pen. She then established the Emergency. At the time, one of the strongest voices of dissent against her fiat was that of a great Gujarati poet Umashankar Joshi. As a nominated member of Rajya Sabha, India’s Upper House of Parliament, Joshi thundered that this untoward action would destroy the very truth of life as envisioned in the Mahabharata, an ancient Sanskrit epic. Even during that 21-month long Emergency when press freedom and individual liberty were suppressed, poets like Joshi and other dissenters took great risks to speak freely. Today, it is different. Today, my poet friends in India tell me they are cautious in what they write and say. When I hear this, a part of my being as a poet dies.

Panna Naik was born in Bombay and lives in Philadelphia. She has published 11 books of poetry and one collection of short stories in Gujarati. She has also published a book of poems in English, The Astrologer’s Sparrow.

75 years ago, India was granted independence from the British empire. More astute commentators will offer their observations, but here is a personal reflection as to what today means to this British born Indian, and to my family.

75 years feels like a long time ago, but my father was two, and my grandmother who lives with my parents was 17. The former experienced partition, the latter campaigned with Gandhi for the moment we mark today. So it’s very much not ancient history, it’s our story.

I am British born and raised. But my cultural, familial and spiritual roots are Indian. I see no conflict in these facts, only complexity and beauty. Yes I’ve experienced overt and implicit racism here, but the UK has given me a largely good life to build on my rich heritage.

Empire was largely a dark time for almost all Indians. And yet this country has broadly speaking embraced the Indian diaspora. This doesn’t mean British Indians are always and everywhere equal, but many of us are fortunate to be living fulfilling lives in the UK.

Aspects of Indian culture (mainly food and long colourful weddings!) feel so quintessentially British, and yet so much remains a mystery to many people around me. Then I remember: it’s only 75 years since independence, sixty or so since Indians came to the UK in numbers.

What about India itself since independence? This is a PhD subject matter, too nuanced for a brief article, but to me it is home from home, it’s where my family is, and yet despite dozens of trips there, I am always a visitor. At times bizarre, complex, beautiful, infuriating and uplifting.

My thoughts on the legacy of empire, partition and independence remain private, but one thing is for sure: India’s past is inextricably interwoven with British history, as is much of our future. We should seek to learn more about what we share in common.

I both pass and fail the Tebbit test, backing England against all but my first sporting love, India. I enjoy Indian music, often at iconic British cultural venues. I don’t take it lightly that I can enjoy temples, clothes, music and food of India here, with joy.

Who knows what India or anywhere will look like 75 years from now. But I hope that my son grows up in the UK even more accepted than I feel, even more proud of his heritage and still with more of a sense of belonging here.

Jai Hind, Vande Mataram, may india’s light shine on.

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This article was adapted from a Twitter thread. Prateek is a British Indian writing in a personal capacity.