WHEN A MUSLIM
DRIVER SPITS
ON THE FACE
OF HIS COLLECTOR (District Magistrate)
The Sacred Grove, a novel by Daman Singh, HarperCollins, 2010
Reviewed by M
Hasan
for Manushi
(an English International Magazine for Women, dedicated to democracy, gender justice
and freedom of expression). Founder editor Prof. Madhu Kishwar
Six years old Fatima, a High
Court Justice’s grand daughter, cautions him on Diwali: we shouldn’t buy crackers from a Muslim shop! Puzzled, he asks why?
She explains: they (Muslims) fire crackers can be bomb to kill
us. We must be careful!. Now annoyed, he
asks, ‘Who told you this?’ ‘My class
teacher!,’ she answered with triumph. She studies in an old elite school,
affiliated to CBSC, in a state capital.
Its branches are in many countries.
A District Magistrate(DM) blurts
out a communally loaded statement in a meeting, only to be terribly mortified
noticing a Muslim officer. The outspoken officer laughingly told me: ‘for a
while forgetting my indignation, I enjoyed plight of the self-crucified
Collector!’
Disregarding BJP home minister
(HM) of his state, a Superintendent of Police (SP), following standard
operating procedures, fires at a mob saving lives and homes of horrified
Muslims. The mob fled, some with leg injuries. Angry HM immediately replaces
him with an ‘obedient’ SP who, ironically, lands in jail joining fellows from
his tribe for fake encounter killings in Gujarat
and Rajasthan. After a few years, in the same district, their successor SP
herds up Muslims of the same town in a police station for ‘protection’ from
attacking mob, but allows looting and arson of their houses! He is promoted! In
another district an SP and DM allow communal tension to build up for good
thirty hours. They take no preventive
measures. Ultimately, ten Muslims are killed or fatally injured. During curfew hours lynching, burning and
throwing of bodies in a well are allowed. Bureaucratic procedures are
orchestrated and delayed sabotaging justice, ensuring poor victims give up
chasing illusive justice. Innocents land in jail, thanks to eclectic
investigation by CBI. These aren’t fictions.
These facts must be kept in mind
while reading and reviewing The Sacred Grove (SG), a novel by Daman Singh.
Because, the novel bridges the gulf between facts given above and fiction she
creates. This is her third novel. Singh
is a realist, acutely aware of her macro ethnic and administrative ambience.
The story she tells gets credence and luster of innocence through the
discerning eyes and non-challance vocabulary of a teenaged seventh grade
‘reporter,’ Ashwini, son of a DM. Our ‘journalist’ spares none, father or
mother. His analysis is as transparent as facts are. He follows the best
traditions of journalism: facts are sacred and analysis unbiased. That is why
his father feels guilty before a child. He distinguishes between a professional
and perverse SP who work with his father. The world he lives in has characters,
school boys, middle women fawning of DM’s wife, politicians, subtle palm-greasing ‘Agarwal’ businessman
and drivers. Through these characters and their functional behaviors, we learn
where we are heading for and what our educational system has produced as
bureaucrats.
Adults and bureaucrats may tell
lies. Not a child, an embodiment of innocence and truth. He doesn’t recognize created ethnic, economic
and racial differences. Like a flower bouquet or tossed salad bowl (shapes,
colors, tastes, texture, fragrances and flavors), the social heterogeneity, he
seems to convey, is part of a cosmic order. God (Truth) resides in him. He is taught these differences at homes,
schools, places of worships and streets, despite his why and how. His questions
and puzzlements are bulldozed, ignored or, at best, as in SG, are rationalized
apologetically by Aswini’s parents, accumulative and insecure mother and
ambitious but coward father. Only a
shepherd like Ashwini can tell us how a young pristine stream in wilderness
dances meandering boulders, rock dams, and irrigates small terraced fields in
remote mountainous region.. So does our protagonist ‘reporter’ Ashwini about the life and dynamics in a fortress,
Collector’s bungalow.
The world of civil servants has
been subject of intellectual biodiversity for fictions like English, August
(1988) by Upmanyu Chatterjee and Riot (2001) by Shashi Throor.
Chatterjee is an IAS officer and Shashi Throor a former UN bureaucrat and now
Member of Parliament and a central minister. Singh, a Stephenian, weaves the
story of SG with ease and imagination around the weltanschauung and life of a
DM and his family, his ambitions wife and skeptic son. Singh has son too, and
has access to his world! The mundane life of the DM in SG, in some ways, finds
reflection in dilemmas of the DM in Throor’s Riot, minus dalliance of a married
Collector with Pricillia Hart, a young American community volunteer, in the
latter. The commonality between SG and Riot are communal clashes, deaths of
innocents and hovering of shadows of doubts about the professional integrity of
Collectors in both the cases.
The novel tells us how growing
and professional survival take place in troubled times shaped by political
conspiracies, bureaucratic conveniences and convictions, business sharks
lurking outside the Collector house, communal biases children learn in homes
and valiant efforts of a teacher in vain
to encourage her students to inculcate secular values and learning.
Collector’s bungalow is a periodic conjugal war zone of greed and caution, hot
debates between a non-sense police
officer and a worldly wise DM. The DM’s wife remains in tears and depressions
when denied worldly temptations by her cautious husband reminding her of his
modest background and hard-earned status at risk if he allows her to follow her
whims. Their child is unaware of social boundaries. While the DM harbors inside
his unspoken world of better posting and faster promotion somehow, outside his
bungalow is a spoken world of carpetbaggers and ambitious politicians
furthering their political clouts by engineering communal tensions.
The author oars the boat of her story in a serene
Dal Lake, raising small concentric ripples
and showing a tapestry of psychological, social and physical landscapes. The
texture is smooth and the weaving is unobtrusive. With the inquisitive scalpel
of a child, the unseemly facets (myths, communal conspiracies, bureaucratic
ambitions on the graves of expected efficiency and accountability, rumors,
communal biases, adolescent pranks and zests) of society and system are
upturned voicelessly, as well as a Muslim driver’s anger shown by spitting on the face of a Collector in public
in front of police.
Often reader walks through miles of a uniform Prairie plain, wheat and
corn belts (worldviews and children’s pranks and zests in school and sacred
groves; middle class women surveying DM’s wife’s kitchen decoration; ecology of
a Muslim neighborhood), occasionally disturbed by sudden ‘twisters’ (tensions
between the DM and his wife about jobs and iPhone gift from a go-getter
businessman; discussion over dinner between a tough SP Mishra who wants to
arrest the ‘Tarun Mandal goons’ lorded by a local MLA and a compromising DM who
is overwhelmed by political clouts of communal elements (107-8). Hindu-Muslim
social and physical boundaries; processions and riots; the rise and motives of
the Trun Mandal; death of innocent Rehan, brother of driver Rafiq, in a riot;
‘confrontation’ between the DM and his arrested driver in police station keep
readers glued to the story. SP Mishra bites a hot green chili during dinner
with the DM. The act captures a subtle symbol of his firm approach to law and
order, willingness to take risk as does the
SP who fires at a mob ignoring instructions of HM. There are interludes of lighter in nature,
only to be provided by ever exploring children. We are given a quiet tour of
children hawking slogans selling vigor and humor in life: ‘Have some zing, do
your things!’ (83) Or, when they test intelligence of each other, they pose
question about the most ‘easiest thing’ to do in the world (153). The improbable
answer, an exclusive territory of children,
makes you bursts into laughter.
There is no hawking of fictional
journalism in the novel. We learnt about mysterious and public places, streets,
hedges, discussions and arguments, resentments and reasoning, the ordinary and
the extraordinary, through the unalloyed eye of a teenage ‘reporter.’ In
Ashwini we see a slightly ‘grown up’ version of a doubting Agtsya Sen, an IAS
probationer, in English, August. With gentle humor and skepticism, Agtsya views
life and landscape of a small town as an absurd entity. Our protagonist in SG
also tells us about the quiet indicators of his father’s anger and annoyance:
widening of nostrils and violent
whirling of hair inside! Children read faces authentically and intimately.
Except Ashwini’s lively engagement with his driver, Rafiq, for cricket learning
or surreptitious search for zing and joy driving. For him his parents’ routine
lives, engagements, worries, priorities and preferences are dull and boring so
much so that he dismisses them contemptuously as questionable and irrelevant.
So what if his mother dies during delivery or
she delivers a dead baby. He is detached to all. There is asymmetry
between his world and those of his parents. The only person who has access to
his world is his driver Rafiq, initially
not trusted by his mother.
Ashwini is deeply attached to Rafiq for his
skill in cricket, car driving, resourcefulness in searching ‘zing’ and the way
he loves his poor family members, particularly his handicapped younger brother
Rehan. When Rehan gets killed in riot, Rafiq is devastated. His grief is
quietly felt by acute observant Ashwini who, unlike his school mate Harsh,
doesn’t understand religious differences, despite his mother’s reservation
about a Muslim driver. Since most Muslim urban neighborhoods are redlined with
no school, hospital, playground, light and sanitation, Muslims accept reality
with resignation. They don’t expect anything from government (56). Rafiq laughs
and tells about relationships between his community and government: ‘What does
government has to do with us?... Our bodies
are graves for police bullets.’ (56) Does it sound from Sachar Committee
Report? Novelists like Singh are more truthful than judicial activism or
convoluted commissions of inquiries for governments which mostly ignore them.
Singh spares none when it comes to her scalpel of truth in dissecting social
realities she narrates. The unfolding of the architecture of the story is
subtle, slow-paced and elegant made by lucidity of language. There are
revelations in short sentences, demonstrating linguistic depth and
craftsmanship of the writer. The shock is kept for the climax at the end, a
terminal relationship between perverse power and hope of the vulnerable.
There are sample of rich nuggets
of social worlds, telling images of alienation, prejudices and boundaries and
redlined zones: ‘Old people got tired easily. (51) Children have an elegant way
of describing their situations: ‘Ravi smiled.
His moustache smiled too.’ (87) When stopped to eat chocolate before dinner,
Ashwini concludes that his papa had an ‘official voice.’ Whereas his ‘Mother
had executive manners.’ Because she didn’t shout at him before Masi…’ (74) When
Ashwini is in fever, he finds his ‘tongue as fat sausage,’ and noisy Masi
‘exploded’ in his head. (79) While hiding under bed, Ashwini’s ‘stomach
growled’ and then ‘It shut up.’ (129) Ashwini believes that ‘If he (Rehan) was
in school, he could have been alive.’ (137-38)
The seeds of communal hatred, misinformation
and stereotypes, causing divisiveness, are sown at an early age, threatening
the very foundation of a secular state. I may remind the reader about the bombs
and cracker above. School teacher Mrs. Kalra is shocked when half of her
students opted for a sectarian (Mangal
Nath Temple)
rather than a secular space (sufi shrine or museum) for their summer projects. Children learn to
choose to walk on a green grass lawn (monoculture) than stroll in a rich jungle
of cultural biodiversity. Fareed Baba’s shrine isn’t ‘ours’ it’s ‘theirs,’
believes Anamika Shukla.(71). A brutalized child like Ravi,
friend of Ashwini asks: ‘What is the difference between a dead horse and a
Muslim?’ Before the question is asked, Ashwini says his lips were ready to
smile. He did smile but thinks that had to do with something dumb. Seeing no
response, Ravi explains: ‘It’s no fun in beating a dead horse.’ (154)
Some giggled. Humanist Ashwini ‘didn’t know what to do with my smile.’
In an ambience of distrust and fear, Muslim
youths live with a sense of insecurity. A false ‘call’ from station house
officer on phone, a prank played by insensitive school boy Harsh, sends chill
in Rafiq’s bones. When he discovers, he doesn’t protest. It doesn’t matter even
if he happens to be a DM’s driver. Being a Muslim youth, he is vulnerable to
police and prank any way. He knows police can call any Muslim youth to the
police station and arrest him, even if he is innocent. Terrorizing and
torturing of Muslims, as evident from Harsh’ joke, is a game for majority
community (86-70).
Ashwini bonds with Rafiq for his
several qualities, but cricket bonds them most. In an engineered riot Rafiq’s
brother Rehan is killed. Rafiq is devastated. He knows connivance of
administration. Nevertheless, later on when Ashwini strays into a Muslim
procession for Fareed Baba shrine, Rafiq, risking his own life, whisks away
Ashwini from the procession which ran amok and saves his life. Police arrests
Rafiq and threshes him brutally. Ashwini tells the truth. To thank and get
released Rafiq the DM goes to police station with Ashwini who narrates
graphically: ‘…(Rafiq) came forward slowly, limping a little. A bruise below
his left eye was turning purple at the edges. His trousers were filthy and torn
in several places. There was blood on his shirt. My blood…Last night Vishnu
(the new SP who replaced Mishra) said that Rafiq had no injuries. He couldn’t
have lied to the collector (!)… But he hadn’t told his cahps to keep their
hands off him. Because if he had, they would have obeyed. Police were like
that. Mishra uncle had told me this long ago. I wished he hadn’t been
transferred…I knew what he (Papa) would do. He would thank Rafiq over and over
again…. But he didn’t. Helpless and lost. Finally, he shook his head slightly and
put out his hand…’(234) ‘Rafiq did not reach out and take it. Instead, he spat.
He spat right in Papa’s face. The spit splattered on his cheek and dribbled its
way down. Papa wiped his with his hand. He didn’t say anything at all. I didn’t
look at Rafiq. Only at Papa.’(235)
When helpless desperate people,
typified by a Muslim car driver of DM, who loses faith in bureaucratic system,
their resentment spills as spite and spits on icons of power, whipping a
stronger message than a bullet. SG is a
faithful narrative from the corner of our street and preserves protected by
commandos. India
of today needs several novels of this genre to cleanse our front and backyards
of prejudices and inefficiency in governance and social harmony. I hope Indian bureaucrats,
fabulously paid and given perks and are given security of job, read this
testament as mirror image of the opaque greedy engagements of many of them
today obliterating the democratic and constitutional face of India. As opposed
to politicians, they can afford to be fair and firm in protecting
Constitutional rights of the vulnerable groups. Otherwise, as Franz Kafka
acidly concluded: Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind a slime of
bureaucracy. Remember Rafiq’s spit, a silent sea of anger and retaliation!
