The trail of destruction since last December’s tsunami makes everyone wonder if indeed another Pralaya is on the celestial cards. The Government of India is clearly unable to cope with anything. So people have to wait for a sudden “Shaktimaan” to appear in each crisis, new folk heroes, briefly celebrated and quickly forgotten. In the old days, just one such act of bravery would have resulted in a semi-religious cult, like that of Pabuji in Rajasthan, still celebrated for rescuing stolen herds.What hurts in India, along with so much else, is how we celebrate mediocrity to fill news pages and airtime: tiny talents, wannabes with unproven credentials and every foreign functionary’s favourite recipe or restaurant. We celebrate Laloo Prasad Yadav and Mayawati for their antics, excusing their lack of merit; we eulogise the wretched old upper caste guard, forgetting their ruin of India’s post-47 potential, mindlessly showcasing their photogenic offspring who merely inherited privilege. We are expected to take notice if V.P. Singh paints a picture, instead of putting a civilisational ban on him for entrenching caste politics. We save our deepest passion for film stars and cricketers, since they offer protracted intervals from reality.So it’s heartwarming in Iran to see how the common people, including teenagers, lay roses at the poet Hafiz’s grave in Shiraz, communing with his spirit as a repository of their national soul. Can you see us pouring love like that on Mahakavi Kalidas at Ujjain or Tulsidas at Varanasi? Of course, not. We barely know their names and resent anyone who seems culturally literate. Instead we ruin Shantiniketan and steal Tagore’s medal (there’s a lovely picture in Shiraz, by the way, of Tagore at Hafiz’s grave). What truly shames you is how poignantly Iranians keep faith with their dead heroes. Every town and village has wall murals with long-lashed portraits of local soldiers who died in the Iran-Iraq war. And in a rose-ringed graveyard by Hafiz’s tomb, next to Iran’s great poets and philosophers, sleep their ace pilots. But Sar-zameen-e-Hindustan? We can’t keep faith with today and tomorrow; catch us bothering with our past people or their works and days.
