After Kiran Nagarkar, Saeed Mirza. Mirza’s new book, Ammi: Letter to a Democratic Mother, is out from Tranquebar Press. On Monday night, an hour after her conversation with Nagarkar, Nilanjana Roy sat on stage with Mirza to talk about Ammi. And Rahul Bose read several passages from the book.
Nilanjana said that when the manuscript came to her (as Tranquebar’s editor), she figured it would take her a week to read it. Instead, she sat up one night and finished it, and knew right away that she had to make it Tranquebar’s first book.
That was introduction enough.
Mirza began by telling us that his mother came from a “tradition of inclusion”, and had a “largeness of spirit.” These were values, he said, that are disappearing today, leaving only a chauvinism and a lack of the generosity he knew in his mother. Rahul Bose echoed that theme. He said of the book that it speaks of a world we all know; it is a lament for this country, a mixture of longing, love, unslaked thirst and a sense of loss. Books like these, people like Mirza, he said, are the “bits of chewing gum” that keep us together.
Trying to answer Bose’s question about whether there are two (or more?) Indias, and what his sense is of the shifts in the country, Mirza confessed to a “deepseated fear” about India. We have several timezones, he said metaphorically, that don’t seem to interact. 75 per cent of the country feels left out of the advance of the country, but sees the “richness, fun, laughter, consumerism” of the rest. They wonder, why shouldn’t they be a part of this? There’s a lopsidedness to our development that manifests itself in rage, rage over something that has gone wrong. He worries that there will be a price to pay for this.
Yet Mirza said that despite the despair and pessimism he feels, his journeys across the country — Bose made a case for Mirza being the widest travelled Indian since Gandhi — have been humbling and uplifting. The people he has met have been unfailingly generous and welcoming, and their lives often inspiring. He spoke of a a chance meeting with a young pair of activists in Bihar, Sarita and Mahesh, who got the residents of 40 villages to jointly build a canal that had transformed lives there.
A year later, he read a small news report saying that they were dead. Shot to death on the highway, undoubtedly for their work with the villagers. (Intriguingly, the Times of India report about this conversation with Mirza says that Sarita and Mahesh died in “an accident”).
Do something worthwhile, and you get killed. Could that be a commentary on this country? (Think of names such as Satyendra, Manjunath, Sanjoy).
There was plenty more. At some point, I found myself reflecting on Kiran Nagarkar’s sadness over his city and country. Is it given only to people of a certain age and life experience — Mirza and Nagarkar, to pick two — to feel that despair? Do younger Indians not see what they do? Or see it differently? Or not want to be bothered with the less-than-good news, preferring instead a constant diet of “India’s time has come” and “India is the next superpower” kinds of reports?
What makes this the world’s most fascinating country? The feel-good story of cars and malls and rising stocks and the economic boom? Or the more complex, not always feel-good, story of a country of immense contrast and diversity, of numbing poverty as well as soaring wealth, of great injustice as well as innovative entrepreneurs?
I know my answer. Is it odd to be thinking these thoughts at this particular book release function? Nagarkar, then Mirza: It’s been that kind of evening.
