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The Rediff Special

Dear Mr Navalkar

I write this in order to express, in some measure, the immense gratitude I feel bubbling up from the wellsprings of my heart. Gratitude to you, our right honourable minister for culture, for saving me from falling into a bottomless abyss of moral depravity.

Sir, when I read that Savage Garden was going to perform in Mumbai, my heart sank. I quivered, head to foot, like badly set jelly. To my fevered imagination, it felt like I was hanging by a rope over a precipice... and the rope was fraying fast...

And then, like the knight errants of old, you rode to the rescue, with your moral code and your censoring of the lyrics and your edict that the pop group should not indulge in explicit gestures in course of their performance, your ukase to the effect that the spectators at said show should not go beyond antiseptic hand-holding, that kissing and suchlike depraved demonstrations would be dealt with strictly.

And for the first time since I heard of the impending performance, I breathed a sigh of relief. Saved!, is what I told myself -- saved at the last minute, saved from a doom worse than death, saved by Pramod Navalkar the right honourable minister for culture, whose name be praised.

In my eight years of residence in this wonderful metropolis, I have never faced such a threat to my morals, my sensibilities, as the one posed by Savage Garden.

In this time, I have sat in a darkened cinema theatre, watching Sharon Stone deliberately crossing and uncrossing her legs, apparently unaware that in her hurry to dress she had forgotten to put on her panties. But that was nothing -- a mere bagatelle, compared to this latest threat.

I have, at other times and in other movie theatres, sat and pondered the question of Choli ke peechay kya hai. I have been considerably saddened by the plight of Karishma Kapoor, who lamented Sexy Sexy Sexy mujhe log bhole -- I mean, imagine, here was this pure, wholesome girl, and people were saying such filth about her!!! I have watched an anonymous dancer, her hands interlocked, her index finger, held pelvis-high, gradually rising skywards to the strains of Chad gaya oopar re while Mithun Chakravarthy and Ayesha Jhulka clambered atop a convenient haystack and set about making babies.

Why, the other day I even went to a city theatre, but found I couldn't get tickets for Garbh Shastra. "Houseful for a week", the booking clerk told me. I didn't enquire too closely into the reason for this phenomenon, but I suspect that thousands of researchers must have descended on Bombay just now, all eager to see the film and, hopefully, find therein a solution to India's rapidly skyrocketing population -- which, needless to add, was the reason I, too, wanted to see the above-mentioned film.

Elsewhere, I've formed one of the milling throng, watching Michael Jackson -- you know that fellow of course, sir, the one with the funny nose who they said was a paedophile, a charge he got out of by means of an out-of-court settlement -- grab his crotch, gyrate his hips and warble wonderful sentiments. Thanks to his American accent and his habit of forcing the words out of his much-sculpted nose, I couldn't quite understand what he was singing -- but since the great Bal Thackeray, whose name be praised even higher than yours, was sitting in the very front row, smiling benignly on the performer, I suspect he must have been singing about chastity and virginity and morals and of course about our great Indian culture.

I survived all this and more, sir, without serious damage to my morals... but strictly between you, me and the postman who brings this to you, I seriously doubted my ability to survive this latest assault by Savage Garden. And then you came along... and I breathed easier.

Sir, like all great men, you have your enemies. And they have been doing their best to poison my mind against you!

Like this fellow who told me, "Arre yaar, you are nuts, that Navalkar fellow is not concerned with your morals or mine. If he really cared a hoot for morals, wouldn't he first censor all those obscene Hindi film lyrics? But he won't do that, because after all, Bollywood contributes the heck of a lot of money to his party's election coffers. So he leaves Bollywood alone, and grabs cheap headlines by making rude noises about rock concerts!! He is a fraud I tell you!!"

Why would he, the right honourable Pramod Navalkar, want to do anything like that, I demanded. "Don't be naive," this fellow -- he really should be taught a lesson, Navalkar sir, I'll give you his address, maybe you can send some of those wonderfully persuasive musclemen belonging to your party to pay him a courtesy call?, "Navalkar realises that all he has to show for his three years as minister is controversies -- about people invited for functions who should not have been invited, or people ignored who should not have been ignored. So now he is desperate to prove that he is actually doing something and like I said, rock concerts are a soft target, only the upper class youth go for those and they don't go and stand in long lines, come election time, to vote!"

Chee chee! Not to mention Shiva, Shiva!! How can anyone talk that way about you, sir? How can they denigrate, thus, your great contribution to the cause of public morality? Sir, they are jealous, I tell you. Envious of your name and fame, and too stupid to realise your essential greatness. <

You know me, sir, too well to even suspect that I would harbour such thoughts about you, or suspect your motives for an instant. So I won't say anything more about that just now.

But sir, there is, inside me, a still, small voice.

'Look out the window of your suburban train,' that voice tells me. 'Look along the sides of the railway tracks, as you commute to work in the early morning hours. Do you see all those grown men squatting, their shirts raised high, their genitals showing, as they defecate in the open air? Isn't it obscene that grown human beings are forced to forego their sense of shame in this fashion? Isn't it even more obscene that our government has neither the time nor the inclination to provide the very basic of amenities for its citizens? Is it that this government, which can see headlines in monitoring a rock concert, realises there are no headlines to be had out of ensuring that there are a sufficiency of public conveniences in this metropolis?'

I do my best to shut that voice. But if I relax my vigilance for as much as a second, off it goes on another track.

'The next time the car stops at a traffic light,' goes that small voice, 'keep your eyes peeled. You will see small boys in shorts too big for them, shorts they tie in place with ropes, wiping the windshields of the stationary cars in the hopes of earning some small change. Starvation is etched in every rib that protrudes from their scrawny frames -- ribs you can count at your leisure, because these boys cannot afford to cover themselves with shirts. You will see, too, pubescent girls, their budding breasts showing through their torn and tattered upper garments, trying to earn enough for a cup of tea by selling you a string of marigolds. Navalkar and his tame hatchet man, Nandgaonkar, are so worried about the moral depravity that could result from spectators at a rock concert taking off their shirts -- don't they see the real obscenity inherent in a society, a government, that allows its young to scrounge, thus, for pennies when they should, with full bellies and sporting proper attire, be studying their ABCs in government-sponsored schools? Or could it be that Navalkar and company don't see headline possibilities in undertaking a sincere attempt to get our unwanted young off the streets?'

Shut up!, I tell that voice of mine.

But it is a persistent voice, this. 'This minister, this fellow who seeks to uphold our culture -- what does he know, really know, about Indian culture? Does he know that the essence of our cultural ethos revolves around hospitality to our invited guests? This defender of Indian culture, where was he when goons belonging to his party violently disrupted a cultural program the other day -- a program featuring Ghulam Ali, an invited guest of the metropolis?'

I give up. And sit here listening to that voice inside me. A voice that keeps pointing out the real issues, the real obscenities perpetrated by this society, this government, a voice that scoffs at your wonderful efforts, sir, to save me from depravity.

That still, small voice makes me feel still smaller, the more I listen to it.

I've had enough. Fortunately, the commercial on my television screen is now over. You know, sir, that ice-cream commercial? It has this guy licking at a confection marketed under the trade name Feast... and this girl comes along, stares pointedly at the guy's crotch, licks her lips and goes, 'Hey, what's on your stick?'

Yeah, that is the commercial I mean. Very wholesome it is, too, just like Walls ice cream. It just ended, and the song and dance program has resumed.

Madhuri Dixit, with a beatific smile, has her palm pressed to her heavily padded bosom, which heaves like a ship in a storm. Dhak dhak karne laga, she warbles angelically...

I can't resist -- it is, after all, one of the few innocent pleasures left to me, totally unlike the unmentionable depravity sought to be inflicted on me by Savage Garden.

So I think I'll end this letter here, sarkao my khatiya a shade closer to the television screen, and -- purely out of medical curiosity, mind -- go deeper into the question of Madhuri Dixit and her dhak dhak-ing heart... breathing easy in the knowledge that while you are there to look after me, my morals can come to no lasting harm.

Prem Panicker

The Rediff Special

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