There have come days in our calendars which make me want to wake up to the rubber-faced caricature of "India Shining" and spit on it with force. And one such day was today.
As a nineteen year old woman, I'm (predictably) fiercely independent, so despite being duly warned by my parents about Dadar being a little more than just anti-human as it usually is today, I brushed their concerns aside. I read about a seventeen year old girl talking to a Hindustan Times journalist about how it was impossible for girls to travel during these two days, with equal dismissal. After all, there could be nothing could be worse than Shiv Sainiks letting loose their deeply secularist whims and fancies, could there?
Apparently, there is something even worse.
Eight o'clock in the morning, and Dadar was fairly as normal as it could get. Then I reached college and forgot everything about how somebody's death anniversary celebrations could possibly affect me adversely. It was 6:30 in the evening when I entered Dadar station and ten minutes later, I was on the bridge. The area around the flight of stairs leading to platform one was like a bee-hive in April - multitudes of people in white, pushing and shoving like the space around them had punching bags and not other people. I took a deep breath and pushed my five feet three inch frame ahead.
If you have ever been in a similar situation, you'll know that a mob is very similar in its mental and physical tendencies. They think alike and also move alike, so there is absolutely no control over something as personal as where you want to go with your own two feet. Climbing down the bridge was therefore nightmarishly difficult, and add to that an invisible number of starved, hungry male hands spreading their way all across your body like Medusa's hair, all wanting a piece. The free-for-all stopped only when I entered the first-class compartment. Which was packed with women and kids, all of whom obviously had valid tickets. I got off at my station thirty minutes later and made my weary way home.
Throughout the journey a million questions banged and bruised my head. Who was Dr. B.R. Ambedkar? Was he the same harmless fellow we studied as kids in Civics, who'd written our Constitution? Who'd vehemently opposed caste-based reservation? Who'd warned us against the very thing he feared would rule Indian Democracy one day - hero-worship - and sadly became a posthumous pawn in the grand scheme of things?
A billboard with his face splashed all over it spawned seven metres of my sky-line home, and I suddenly felt a sporadic moment of intense hatred towards him. You're dead, I thought, so you don't have to see what you left behind. Your legacy is asphyxiating my country. Your words are being twisted so horribly out of context, solely so that they can be capitalised to put blinders on the sensibilities of India's millions. Your good-will, your sacrifices, your keen foresight died a quick death with you 51 years ago.
It's tough to blame accurately when you're boiling inside. It's not and never was Dr. B.R Ambedkar's fault. Maybe his only fault was to try and logically streamline the divisive forces of Indian politics. It is devastating irony that when our politicians play reservation politics, the one man who resolutely opposed the introduction of any kind of quota is their favourite poster-boy. Is this what he strived for so hard his entire life? Is it chilling prolepsis when he talked about caste not dividing labour, but labourers?
My anger energises me with a wild kind of force to do something. Simultaneously, I also feel trapped in my helplessness, when I realise that I am placed very low in the hierarchy of people who can make a significant difference in Indian politics. But there is always a hope, a belief that I can and I will change things. And although everybody reads the newspapers and shrugs their shoulders, I will remember not to forget.
As a nineteen year old woman, I'm (predictably) fiercely independent, so despite being duly warned by my parents about Dadar being a little more than just anti-human as it usually is today, I brushed their concerns aside. I read about a seventeen year old girl talking to a Hindustan Times journalist about how it was impossible for girls to travel during these two days, with equal dismissal. After all, there could be nothing could be worse than Shiv Sainiks letting loose their deeply secularist whims and fancies, could there?
Apparently, there is something even worse.
Eight o'clock in the morning, and Dadar was fairly as normal as it could get. Then I reached college and forgot everything about how somebody's death anniversary celebrations could possibly affect me adversely. It was 6:30 in the evening when I entered Dadar station and ten minutes later, I was on the bridge. The area around the flight of stairs leading to platform one was like a bee-hive in April - multitudes of people in white, pushing and shoving like the space around them had punching bags and not other people. I took a deep breath and pushed my five feet three inch frame ahead.
If you have ever been in a similar situation, you'll know that a mob is very similar in its mental and physical tendencies. They think alike and also move alike, so there is absolutely no control over something as personal as where you want to go with your own two feet. Climbing down the bridge was therefore nightmarishly difficult, and add to that an invisible number of starved, hungry male hands spreading their way all across your body like Medusa's hair, all wanting a piece. The free-for-all stopped only when I entered the first-class compartment. Which was packed with women and kids, all of whom obviously had valid tickets. I got off at my station thirty minutes later and made my weary way home.
Throughout the journey a million questions banged and bruised my head. Who was Dr. B.R. Ambedkar? Was he the same harmless fellow we studied as kids in Civics, who'd written our Constitution? Who'd vehemently opposed caste-based reservation? Who'd warned us against the very thing he feared would rule Indian Democracy one day - hero-worship - and sadly became a posthumous pawn in the grand scheme of things?
A billboard with his face splashed all over it spawned seven metres of my sky-line home, and I suddenly felt a sporadic moment of intense hatred towards him. You're dead, I thought, so you don't have to see what you left behind. Your legacy is asphyxiating my country. Your words are being twisted so horribly out of context, solely so that they can be capitalised to put blinders on the sensibilities of India's millions. Your good-will, your sacrifices, your keen foresight died a quick death with you 51 years ago.
It's tough to blame accurately when you're boiling inside. It's not and never was Dr. B.R Ambedkar's fault. Maybe his only fault was to try and logically streamline the divisive forces of Indian politics. It is devastating irony that when our politicians play reservation politics, the one man who resolutely opposed the introduction of any kind of quota is their favourite poster-boy. Is this what he strived for so hard his entire life? Is it chilling prolepsis when he talked about caste not dividing labour, but labourers?
My anger energises me with a wild kind of force to do something. Simultaneously, I also feel trapped in my helplessness, when I realise that I am placed very low in the hierarchy of people who can make a significant difference in Indian politics. But there is always a hope, a belief that I can and I will change things. And although everybody reads the newspapers and shrugs their shoulders, I will remember not to forget.
