A Tale of Two Mummys

In tragedy is contained truth.

The magnificent Ms. O, an emblem of the finest, free-spirited flower of Jesustani womanhood, approached me with a tale of woe that froze my blood. Aided ably (or otherwise) by her boyfriend, Ms. O had been attempting for some time to become pregnant. Recently, she succeeded – at which point, the boyfriend fled.

Ho, hum, I hear you say. A garden-variety drama. Wait, read on.

As the overwrought are wont to do, Ms. O responded to this unanticipated crisis by writing to her boyfriend’s mother, asking for solidarity. The mother, let us call her Mummy, responded by claiming Ms. O had laid a horrible trap for her poor innocent son. Mummy claimed that Ms. O was a trashy harlot, solely responsible for her fate. Ms. O was inconsolable.

Ho, hum, I hear you say. A garden-variety drama. Wait, read on.

Some years ago, the magnificent Ms. O had been a similar situation with a desi boyfriend. On that occasion, as on this one, she wrote for help to the mother of the munda, let us call her Mummy-Ji. Mummy-Ji had reacted by claiming that Ms. O had laid a horrible trap for her poor innocent son. Mummy-Ji claimed that Ms. O was a trashy harlot solely responsible for her fate. Like any desi kudi, Ms. O was inconsolable.

Intellectuals could, I am certain, draw many illuminating lessons from this affair. Leftists might say that her tale illustrates that Marx was right; that history does repeat itself. Rightists might say that her tale illustrates that Marx was wrong; that while history might repeat itself, it most certainly does not do so as farce. It is not for me, described very accurately by Mrs. Gupta in Class III as a lafanga and duffer, to draw learned judgment.

What I can see, though, is that no matter how many million kos I wander, people – and the pain they suffer – are much the same. Gora boyfriend is much like desi boyfriend. Gori mem is much like desi kudi. And, of course, Mummy and Mummy-Ji, appalled as they might be by the thought, are true sisters under the skin.

The Explicit Truth

The truth, I have always believed, will out. All right, at least some of the truth will sometimes out.

A tsunami of self-loathing has washed over the progressives of Jesustan after a new psychological test revealed that they are not as free of bias as they chose to believe. Available online at https://implicit.harvard.edu, the Project Implicit shows that the overwhelming majority of people, black and white, gay and straight, male and female, rich and poor, harbour racist, sexist and homophobic sentiments (as well as every other conceivable form of bigotry – anti-Muslim hatred, for example, or disdain for people who like sex with small, furry animals).

I find three aspects of the tamasha particularly entertaining. First, the uproar seems confined to over-educated liberals alone. Either garden-variety Jesustanis do not read the Sunday supplements of The Washington Post (in general, a wise move), or, in the alternate, do not need a test to tell them they are racist, sexist and homophobic. Second, Jesustani progressives seem desperately desirous of self-flagellation. Flooded with traffic generated by self-hating Jesustanis, Project Implicit’s website has had to suspend offering all but a few basic options.

Most important of all, though, the carnage inflicted by the tests suggests an alarming disregard of the self-evident among liberal Jesustanis. To anyone with their eyes open – and to even those like me, who have under-powered spectacles – it should be clear that prejudice is a central part of the prevailing culture of Jesustan. Washington DC metro train lines heading south-east at rush hour are full of black people; those heading north-west full of white people. White people head to one set of nightclubs; black people to another. A publicly-funded office I frequent, set up with the purpose of bringing democracy and tolerance to the benighted heathen of the world, has precisely three habshis working at it – the receptionist, the odd-jobs-man, and the resident flunkey.

Self delusion is more than simply a human failing, though; it is a core part of the Jesustani ideological project. It is called political correctness. We live in colonial times, and political correctness has, like Coca Cola, McDonalds and Hollywood, now been exported to each corner of the world. It has created a most peculiar form of dementia. As long as you call churas Dalits, invite your slaves to the household Diwali party, insist bundus are exercising a sexual choice, or dignify randis by renaming them commercial sex workers, it doesn’t matter how you treat them. Extreme variants of this disease are also evident. An acquaintance in Hindustan, for example, married a Muslim, not because she loved her spouse, but because she was striking a blow for religious coexistence.

Its all about labels: a triumph of brand over content, of text over truth.

A post-script: this week’s racist-sexist-homophobic joke award, bearing a grand prize of US$ 0.99, goes to my friend Dr. A. A newly-wed Pathan gazes longingly at his wife, sighing intermittently. “What are you thinking, sahib”, she finally asks? “You are so, so, beautiful”, he replies, quietly, “as beautiful as the stars and the skies. How beautiful your brother must be”.

A malicious slur? Ask the little boys paraded through certain bazaars near Peshawar, their eyes lined with kohl and their cheeks covered with rouge, while the bidders lining the streets cheer.

Utopia

Inauguration Week: the horror, the horror.

For the past few weeks, unable to sleep amidst the fractious natives’ loud cries of ‘Hail The Chief’ and ‘Hail The Thief’, I have become increasingly sensitive to the ubiquitous presence of national flags across the length and breadth of Jesustan. Like portraits of the Beloved Leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, and the emblems of the Third Reich, Jesustan’s official logo cannot be avoided. It flies from every third building, it is emblazoned on shop displays, plastered on the bumpers of cars, and scrawled on anti-war banners.

For someone from Hindustan, where a certain irreverence pervades public consciousness, these displays are, well, somewhat embarrassing. When Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, Praise Be Upon Him, put up patriotic slogans on the streets of New Delhi, it became a cause for merriment. One, a very curvaceous representation of the warrior queen of the city of Jhansi proclaiming ‘mein apni Jhansi nahi doongi’ – “I will not surrender my Jhansi” – was reinvented, at least among those of us who were in high school at the time, as a lament for our unhappy treatment at the hands of girlfriends who refused to unlock their chastity belts.

Few in Jesustan, however, mock their national symbols. Patriotism, my native guide tells me by way of explanation, admixed in equal part with religious fundamentalism. But what religion? It is most certainly not Christianity; of that much I am sure. Jesustan is too divided on this score. On the road from Baltimore to central Pennsylvania, for example, billboards proclaiming “Jesus Saves” and “XXX Adult Emporium” occur with roughly equal frequency. A little time with those who put them makes clear the sponsors of both believe they represent what the natives call “the Jesustani way”.

In a recent book, The Bullet’s Song, William Pfaff points to what he sees as a shared characteristic of fascism and communism, their belief in an earthly heaven – one, of course, based on exclusionism; the other on universalism. He is honest enough, unlike most intellectuals in Jesustan, to see the similarities between this and the vision of the neo-conservatives who now rule this land. Pfaff, like Isiah Berlin, seems to believe that all efforts to find collective solutions to the human condition are fated to end in tragedy.

Perhaps Pfaff is right; perhaps not. What I am certain of is that he does not go nearly far enough. Neo-conservatives are not the only ones in Jesustan who see it as a laboratory in which paradise is being manufactured; radicals and liberals, greens and black activists, anarchists and sitters-on-the-fence all share the same perception. To go to war in Iraq, an appeal must be made to the idea of Jesustan; to oppose it, too, that very idea must be invoked. Abortion is repugnant to the values of Jesustan; the right to an abortion, too, draws on the same values. Ditto the death sentence and democracy; fast food and free trade: to either oppose or support the project, the Jesustani must draw on the idea of Jesustan.

Not, of course, that this is unique to Jesustan. Pakistan is a case in point. Most reasonable people know that the Shariat’s most ardent advocates practice it in a way that would, let us say, raise a few divine eyebrows on judgment day. We have, for example, the luminous example of the famous Maulana Sandwich, whose loud declamations about fighting for the true faith ought to be tempered, in the minds of his audience, by the knowledge that the gentleman’s own preferred field of battle is in his bed, with a Houri on the one side and Adonis on the other (“Across the river sits a boy with buttocks like a peach”, goes the ancient poem, “but, Alas! I cannot swim”. Maulana Sahib, we know, most certainly can). None the less, the armies of the Jihad do verily multiply.

And this points us, I believe, towards a fundamental truth: of all the utopian projects of the twentieth century, Jesustan and the Islamic Jihad are the only two which still survive – the one because happiness can be purchased right now, right here, off the shelf; the other because it offers a gift certificate usable only in the hereafter. There is more to the mortal combat Jesustan and the Jihad are now locked in, methinks, than meets the eye. It is the battle of brother against brother, the most elemental and bitter kind of war there can possibly be.

Jannat ki haqeeqat hum ko bhi maloom hai lekin, Ghalib, dil behlane ke liye khayal acchha hai: I, too, know what the reality of paradise is, Ghalib, but the idea is still useful to while away the time.

A Map to Paradise

The only people who have ever asked me for directions in DC are other foreigners.

When we want to find our way to someplace in Hindustan, we do it the simple way: we ask someone. In Jesustan, the natives grapple with maps instead. Herein lies one of our profound cultural differences.

I’ve long suspected maps aren’t just guides to geography. Maps are, rather, an opiate to numb us to the uncertainties of life; a means to pretend that we are not in fact lost; an instrument of revelation, if you like. Like their idea of god, maps perpetuate the illusion that the lives of Jesustanis have some profound purpose, and that there is reward for virtue and punishment for sin.

No coincidence, then, that Jesustanis have maps for almost everything. Young E., an enthusiast for international peace who recently finished her undergraduate degree, told me she intends to solve at least three of the world’s problems before the age of thirty, and then get married and have two children. Already, at twenty-one, she has a map. So do most people in Jesustan. E., like most people in Jesustan, will more likely than not, be bitter and hard-edged; few maps, as those of us who travel the world know, actually correspond to the realities on ground.

Mapmaking is a major industry in Jesustan. Consider, for example, the business of getting married. Barnes and Noble in Georgetown has an entire section devoted to marriage-planning magazines and books. Today’s Washington Post Magazine quotes one map-maker as saying “taking lessons before your wedding gives you confidence and can reduce stress”. He wasn’t sadly, talking about new brides’ alleged terror of the one-eyed snake, those unhappy days having, fortunately, long passed us by. He was discussing, instead the virtues of mapping life before walking its course. Of course, all the proliferation of maps doesn’t stop one in two marriages from ending in divorce.

Eventually, I’m told, maps will be rendered redundant by Global Positioning Systems, which will mark a triumph of science over mumbo-jumbo. Already, schools in the District of Colombia are tracking not just the movement of their buses, but the precise times their young passengers get on and off. Parents are assigned codes which enable them to monitor the movements of their children online. Several companies are attempting to use GPS to monitor the ways in which their employees spend their time; workers, quite understandably in my opinion, resent this effort to eradicate that most important activity, slacking off.

Radicals in Jesustan claim all this is a sign of the coming of The Monster State. Perhaps. More likely, it is merely a manifestation of the profound belief in the existence heaven, a place where happiness is constant and uninterrupted if only you can find your way there. Witness the proliferation of internet matchmaking services, enhance-your-self-esteem books, make-your-first-million guides, and body-part-enhancement shops. A map to paradise? To most of us in Hindustan, I suspect this would sound as credible as the penis-enlargement oil sold at Dhabas on the Ambala-Delhi highway. Not so for the residents in Jesustan: here, they call it their national project.

The Pursuit of Happiness

Last week, I had the privilege of listening to a Pakistani taxi driver complaining bitterly about life in Jesustan. He had just paid $2,500.00 for a root canal treatment, a price, he pointed out, would have bought him a bypass surgery in Bangalore. His daughter had turned into a gora-style slut. His son used hair gel. Worst of all, his wife had taken to watching the Oprah Winfrey show, and no longer made Pakoras on cold winter nights.

All of this begged the question of just why he chose to live in Jesustan, instead of Pakistan.

He said: “in this country, everyone is happy”.

Hmmm….

Some weeks ago, I met J., who had recently committed himself to the tender mercies of a shrink. J. is in a new relationship and, according to what I’ve been told, is enjoying the high-grade sex and higher-grade humour his girlfriend offers him. Yet, just like the Pakistani taxi driver, he is not at peace. J.’s problem is that he does not know whether he is happy or unhappy. He truly does not know, and the answer is important enough to him to seek professional help. Some discreet inquiries conducted by my native guide suggest that the lucrative Jesustani trade of psycho-babbling is founded, for the most part, on people like J.

Man was born free, Karl Marx had written, but everywhere he is in chains. I’m starting to think there is some truth in this, but perhaps not in the way the Prophet intended. In Hindustan, or in Pakistan, people are poor, for the most part politically oppressed and sexually repressed. As a result, they are miserable. In Jesustan, people are relatively rich, and have too many television shows to watch and to much shopping to do to have time to worry about politics. They have sexual freedom, or something that passes for it, anyhow. Like us little brown people, they too are miserable.

To my mind, this opens up two possibilities. Either Prozac is, in fact, the solution to the human condition, or, in the alternate, the pursuit of happiness is a waste of time. I suspect the latter proposition is closer to the truth. Indoctrinated from an early age to believe that the attainment of happiness is the purpose of life, Jesustanis are willing to go to the most extraordinary lengths to find it. The problem is, no one knows what this thing called happiness is, and therefore have no idea whether they have it or not. Little brown people, on the other hand, have simply given up, and consoled themselves with the thought that god is, after all, a white man.

Can happiness be found? Stand atop Mount Kailash, and flap your killi in the wind. See if Madhuri Dixit appears and grabs it. Stranger things have, of course, happened – but the odds, I think you will agree, are low.