Last week was Kundan Lal Saigal’s 98th birth anniversary and this Saturday it will be Baisakhi/Bihu/ Vishu. It’s also the anniversary of the founding of the Khalsa by Guru Gobind Singh. In Himachal, the hills are foaming with peach blossom and dog rose. In the North Indian plains, the rabi crop is harvested. All over India they’ll be painting cattlehorns red and blue, shining up the caparisons of processional elephants, stringing torans of mango leaves and marigolds to hang over doorways. The week is full of messages from our universe, if we choose to listen. This year, Saigal’s birthday did not inspire favourites like Diya jalao and Main nahin maakhan khaayo for a ritual replay. Instead, the song that came first to mind was from Bhanwar (1944): Thukra rahi hai duniya/Hum kaise so gayen the/Barbaad ho chuke hain/Barbaad ho rahen hain. Gujarat. Well, Vishu is an important ceremonial opportunity to rededicate ourselves to India. For, so much bitter talk is eddying around. Wherever one goes, after the first flush of angry condemnation is over, after lawyers, media mavens, writers, painters and dancers have collectively consigned India to perdition, the question that begs to be asked remains unanswered. What can we, as individuals do, to make things better? The situation is so overwhelming that no easy answers are possible. One definite POA, suggested in these columns, is that each one of us, like planting a tree, should target one angry person to give up his negative, past-rooted feelings for positive, future-directed ones. Another option, inspired by the squirrel that helped Lord Ram build the bridge at Setu (an image that haunts one, especially now): let’s do our own jobs well so that even in our tiny spheres, standards are raised by that much. It could mean getting up to look up a word in a dictionary. It could mean clearing files meticulously. It could mean just an hour a week as a volunteer with HelpAge or Spastics Society or any NGO that needs your skills, like book keeping and writing reports. Or it’s as small but vital as paying your Residents Welfare Association fees. Besides basic civics, going that extra mile in study or work is so meaningful if we think, ‘‘I’m doing this for India’’. A lady from Mumbai, the beautiful wife of a top industrialist, took on the challenge of setting up a new township in Gujarat. She reportedly slept under asbestos, trekked around in the burning sun and put in 18-hour days. The people who live there now seem to appreciate her planning and attention to detail. One hears only good things about her effort. Meanwhile in a well-known firm of publishers, a young editor works night after night to help an author get her act together. This is over and above the call of duty. But he wants a good book out and so he does not grudge the effort or even the expense of late taxi fares. Ask him why he did so much, he says breezily at first, well, this is my area of interest. But another time he mumbles something about ‘national effort’. A forty-ish dancer has knee problems. Gritting her teeth, she swallows her medication, does her physio and gets back to pounding the floor. Why are you killing yourself, you ask her. ‘‘There’s this lovely old item that nobody dances anymore. I must put it back in the repertoire!’’ she pants, flexing carefully. Nobody’s going to give her a Bharat Ratna, indeed she’ll be lucky if 30 people notice and three people appreciate her effort. ‘‘Why do you bother, ma?’’ you persist. ‘‘Come on, yaar. Don’t you understand I’m doing it for India?’’ These people, to my mind, seem to link up with Guru Gobind Singh’s strength of character. In this hour of India’s need, may the moon of Baisakhi shine for us as it does for them.
