Endings

Illustration/Uday Mohite

The end of the year is a bittersweet caesura, a moment of pause in time's constant change. We dwell for a spell in both past and future, subtly aware that endings are more tangled up with beginnings than we care to admit.

The world entered this year with a genocidal war in Palestine and that is how we leave it, inhumanity still clouding the air. In India the year ended with the deaths of many icons - Zakir Hussain, Shyam Benegal, MT Vasudevan Nair and now Manmohan Singh. They shaped something of the world we grew up in. And though that world is already changed, their passing reminds us of the loss we have been experiencing all along with a piercing clarity. Perhaps this is most true of Dr. Singh.

Dr Singh, the architect of Indian liberalisation, leaves behind a complex legacy. It includes MNREGA, the RTI and RTE acts, but also Operation Green Hunt and UAPA amendments. As the child of an idealistic new nation, he also retained a sense of liberal idealism and a quality for which he is rightly praised: civility.

Civility, a common space in which to meet the other, including the enemy, comes from the root civis, to be a citizen. According to Google books Ngram, which tracks word usage, usage of the word civil rose from the 1800s hitting its peak in the 1950s and 60s, to decline most sharply in the 21st century. Three decades of Indian liberalisation have not favoured civility. Rather, they have favoured brashness - of the upstart and the start-up, the tech bro, the influencer and the right-wing. Capitalism thrives on brashness, conflating disregard of the other, with freedom. That culture devalues civility and ethics as quaint and weak-a loser in a world of winners or losers.

That death of civility play out often this year-end. In Ahmedabad, members of Vishwa Hindu Parishad raided the kindergarten section - yaniki, sabse chhote bacche - of South International School in Bapunagar and forced the school staff to remove all Christmas decorations. It's not just teens in love. Kids having a little fun and cake also make grown men insecure now.

In Lucknow, an ISCKON group performed loud bhajans in front of a cathedral in Hazratganj on Christmas Day. When they were criticized (I'd say described) for mean-mindedness some of the singers were quoted as saying Jesus would be happy they were taking God's name and who is the father of God, if not Krishna? Complex logic taught in the School for Mean Girls.

This purportedly inclusive approach to God was not in evidence at a BJP event in Patna that day though. When the Bhojpuri singer Devi sang the line "Eshwar Allah Tere Naam" in her rendition of the bhajan RaghupatiRaghav raja Ram", BJP members objected to the mention of Allah. The singer protested too - saying God belongs to all and she was only trying to remind the audience about the large heartedness of Indian culture, yaniki civility.

Can people be reminded of what we have been trained to forget - by the economy and the political culture around us? As we contemplate endings and beginnings, is what we feel despair for what is gone, or is it a deep and unforgettable yearning that can birth something? We can choose the first note with which to begin a new song. Then we wait for the melody to reveal itself.

Paromita Vohra is an award-winning Mumbai-based filmmaker, writer and curator working with fiction and non-fiction. Reach her at paromita.vohra@mid-day.com