I visited Mohil with a colleague of mine. They were classmates in high school. Mohil was a politician in a high-level office at the time. He lived in Bangalore, the capital city of Karnataka state, called the Silicon Valley of India with its powerful software industry, which was spawned some ten or fifteen years ago by international companies. We were told that the city is ranked first in the country for yearly income per capita and is the fifth populous city in India. It is situated on the Deccan Plateau at 920 meters above the sea level. The official state language is Kannada, but people here also speak Urdu, Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam, Marathi, Tulu, Hindi and Konkani.
Mohil’s house was in a residence complex that looked like a resort area. Curvy clean asphalt lanes, little one-floor houses hidden among plenty of greenery, well maintained tall palm trees, groomed bushes with big bright red and pink blossoms and perfectly aligned symmetric beds of flowers. His living room was decorated in an old Victorian style – mahogany furniture with ornamental wood details and fabric with large flower patterns as in embroidered tapestry, elaborate stitch work in heavy dark frames covered with glass on the walls, these depicting classic biblical scenes, a big cupboard with neatly arranged white and blue china, crystal bowls, glasses of various shapes and porcelain figurines exhibited behind the glass doors. I complimented him and his wife Archna on their taste for interior decoration, but he told me that they could not take any credit for it.
“As a government employee I moved into this house furnished this way and it came along with all my staff – two servants, a cook, a cleaning lady, a chauffeur, a personal secretary and an assistant, and I get for free all the food and drinks, tailoring services, school fees for my son, twice a year vacationing for the whole family, sports and polo club membership. Ultimately, you live a life for free for a few years.”
He looked almost embarrassed as if he was looking for an excuse for the kind of life he had. Then he told me about how miserable he was in Seattle where he specialized in environmental protection policies. He had gone there with his wife and son.
“But the freezing weather, the absence of people walking on the streets felt so bizarre and unsettling. It was like living in a ghost town,” he added. “The only pleasure we had that helped us through and we didn’t leave before the end of my semester was that we found out that there was a branch of Arya Samaj there. You know that this is a reforming branch of Hinduism founded by Maharishi Dayanand Saraswati. The goal was to bring back the value system from the Vedas and to overcome the caste system and social differences. Our motto is “Make the world a noble place to live”. We don’t need images and statues of the all-pervasive God, because he has no shape, no beginning and no end, he is omnipresent and omnipotent and omniscient. He sees and hears all, right?“
Mohil was soft-spoken and chose his words and syntax so carefully that it sounded as if he was reading or as if he had rehearsed this speech. And maybe he had; who knows on how many occasions he had had a chance to mention all this.
He continued. “If it wasn’t for our Arya Samaji brothers and sisters, I think we would have suffered from bad depression. We really missed our family and friends, our environment, our neighborhood. I am not complaining about the arrangements we were offered. Not at all. But, we are not cut out for living abroad, I suppose. However, we knew that I was on a good path to a career change and we wanted it to happen.”
Archna was nodding her head to indicate that she fully agreed with him.
“See,” he said, “there is a huge difference between the privileged classes and the common people in India. Much more, obviously, than in the West. Privileges are acquired or inherited. There are the lucky ones who are born into rich families and are always surrounded by servants, who never step into an open bazaar, who don’t even know which store carries their favorite whisky. But they are the exceptions. Not the norm. Therefore, climbing up the ladder and reaching this position is all one can dream of here. Holding a government office means everything. Your life suddenly changes. Although you wanted it and dreamed about it, it’s even better. You get pampered in a way that you could not have imagined it. As if it doesn’t happen to you, you know. But then you have to be ready – all will end at some point. You are back to the life of a commoner. The fight for such a life is ruthless and relentless. There is no other way.”
He took a sip from his whiskey and coke cocktail, looked at his old friend and added:
“You know I just got lucky! I didn’t fight for all this. My destiny was good when I needed it.”
I wasn’t following and was about to ask why, when he continued:
“I was born into an old Brahmin family that the whole region knew. We had an excellent reputation. However, my father’s heart was somewhere else. He decided to become an Arya Samaji. He did it with his father’s blessing. He became a well-known journalist and philanthropist. He wrote about the poor and the helpless, the backward communities, he defended their interests, rights, welfare and supported many families in their search for opportunities for socio-economic development. Then, he moved into the realm of politics.”
“How?”
Well, the people that knew him told him to announce his candidacy for a state minister’s position. Of course he won. But what is important is that he stayed much longer then he was supposed to, according to his mandate. Thousands of people would demonstrate in his support and would not allow for anyone to come in his office to replace him. He was successful in introducing several projects funded by the government for the areas without water and electricity. He worked closely with the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment while working on the infrastructure in several areas. He resisted staying in office, and this was the absurdity of the situation. You know what the general attitude of the public is toward politicians, right? Let me tell you a joke. One day a bunch of farmers were laboring on the fields under the hot sun when they saw from a distance a bus on the road with big bright banners on the side heading toward their village, carrying politicians on board. Suddenly the bus made a sharp turn and crashed into a tree. The villagers dropped all their instruments, rushed to the place of the accident, started pulling out all the victims from inside the bus, lit up a pyre and as prescribed by the books cremated every single person. When the head of the village came to see what had happened, he asked surprised: ‘Guys, really, were all of them dead? Did you check before you burned them?’ The farmers responded: “A few of them tried to argue with us. But we listened to what you always taught us – never believe a politician!”
According to Mohil, however, Indian politics is not bad and only corrupted.
“It forces you to communicate and cooperate with the lower classes and especially with the scheduled castes, because nowadays without them one would simply fail. You know that the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes are mentioned in Clause 1 of Articles 341 and 342 of the Constitution. So even if you are corrupted, you have to have affiliations with the poor, not like in the U.S where lobbyists determine politics. My father did not know politics, he did not like politics, he did not respect politics, but he figured he needed to be in office to be able to get something done. And he was right. He did. He accomplished a lot and became famous in no time. However, he did not want to have a long political career and retired early. Now he has time to continue the projects he started. The money he made he didn’t spend on the family. It all went for scholarships for dalit kids. When he passed away, I established a foundation and continue working with the harijan. You know, sometimes I wonder how come, the more advanced we are and the more informed we are about each other, about our neighbors, the less tolerant we become. It’s been so difficult for some families who decided to convert, it’s everyone’s choice what they believe and what they practice. I cannot understand violence. No violence has any constructive effect. No violence leads to love and peace. Period! Why do we start it, why do we allow it?”
He took another sip and sighed:
“Anyway, we will have to become better people. We don’t have a choice. Otherwise we cannot survive as a species, right? “
His Hindi was impeccable, his oratory skills were outstanding, his eye contact with his audience and body language refined. Exactly what a politician needs, I was thinking to myself, but it was so polished that it was hard for me to always believe his sincerity.
“In the States I learned how to manage a non-profit organization. I took a course. It helped me a lot to figure out how to handle my father’s foundation and how to further expand it. I came back a changed person. I wanted to apply all I had learned and I sort of recommitted to doing more charity work.”
He finished his drink and went to the serving table on wheels set up in a corner close to the window. It was draped with rich lace curtains through which the late afternoon sun was peeking into the room and against the light the intricacy of the needlework was even more noticeable. He made himself another cocktail and came back to the armchair on the other side of the coffee table.
“You might consider me a hypocrite when you look around and see the place where I live. But if you think about it, I don’t have any other option if I wanted to continue what my father started. I hope that my son will do it as well. It is our family’s responsibility and initiative and has to continue. Right, son?”
And he looked at his son, who was sitting on a cushion on the floor and was listening silently the whole time. He looked about fifteen years old. He was wearing a white collar shirt and black trousers with pleats, and Nike flip-flops.
“You will add your ideas and make it even more successful! Right? Well, we are establishing right now the new contemporary Indian family from the intellectual and industrialist social strata. We need to set some examples and pave the road. Others will follow. Of course, we are not Bono or Bill Gates, who act on the international stage, but we should be able to at least take care of ourselves alone, independently of foreign money or foreign assistance. We can do it. Why not? We have money and education! We are modern people with modern ideas!”
Mohil had insisted on meeting up with us. He had called my friend’s phone several times. However, I felt that he was not relaxed. He seemed to be seated at the edge of his seat, as if ready to jump and go somewhere. He also laughed a bit nervously, I thought, a bit too loud. His wife Archana, would appear and disappear from time to time, the rest of the time she would sit in another armchair and listen while nodding at her husband and a agreeing with all he was saying. Then, she would leave quietly for a little while and come back again with a polite smile. On a few occasions I thought I heard a guttural voice coming somewhere from inside the house, groaning and grunting. It didn’t sound like it was coming from the TV, because then I would hear Archna’s stern and authoritative voice instructing someone in the back. But I couldn’t make out what it was. In the meantime the host was carrying on an animated conversation, often asking if we agreed with him and I had to focus on him. Neither he nor his wife looked perplexed or worried. It was as if there was something in the back of the house they needed to take care of as a routine rather than as an exceptional situation. When we left I had to ask my friend what was going on and it turned out that their first-born son had Down Syndrome. They never mentioned to me that they had two sons.
When the dinner was served we moved to the dining area. There was a big lazy-Susan serving board in the middle of the room. Several dishes served in Englsih porcelain were arranged on it. We had tandoori chicken, kofta (potato balls in rich tomato-based vegetable sauce) and channa, chickpeas. There was no rice, but naan. I wondered why they lived in the South but ate Punjabi cuisine and they said that they really liked this food and hired a Punjabi cook sometimes when they had special guests.
I was observing the way they ate. Utensils were placed on the table, but I was the only one using them. I had noticed before that most people I had eaten with didn’t appear to be too worried when they spilled something on their clothes, almost as if they didn’t care about their clothes much. They would wipe the spot off with a dab of a napkin and that would be all. No club soda, no additional effort. It was usual for women to use the end of their shawls as a napkin. Also, they would push the crumbs deliberately from the table on the floor to clean up the surface in front of themselves. This is not a question of whether they know the etiquette at all, but what their customs are. It is about the environment you grew up in, and theirs was quite different from mine. They had people taking care of all kinds of particular little jobs around the house – the cook, the washer, the cleaning person, the babysitter, the driver. They also had the milkman bring the milk every morning, then the street vendor with his push cart full of fruits stopped by, then came the vegetable seller, the flower person and so forth. When Indians come to the states, they miss these conveniences and for that and other reasons they return to the comfort of their home. This is completely understandable of course, and often, overwhelmed by housework and the mundane demands of daily life, I have found myself dreaming of moving to India with my family.