The rites of passage and a passage on Rights.

The transition from class VIII to class IX marked a sea change in my life. For one I was now a senior student, entitled to live in the Senior House, secondly, I had now gone from a gawky pre – teen to a gawky teenager, complete with a voice that was squeaky one minute and a deep bass the next, and as a student of IX ISC., I was entitled to select the subjects of study for the board examinations.

   Important decisions had to be made to chart out my future career.

Some subjects were easy; they were compulsory and therefore easy to select.  Tougher choices ones were the optional subjects.

  I eventually chose Sanskrit which I had a nodding acquaintance with, and one I considered a piece of cake, and CIVICS.

  I didn’t know much about civics then. The main reason I opted for civics, was that it was taught by Mr. A.S.N.Sinha.

  Mr. Sinha was a gentleman of the old school with a hail fellow well met mien, always impeccably dressed, a bottle brush moustache rather like Terry Thomas, and always was contagiously happy. He was very popular with the boys; good enough reasons for taking up Civics. Of such trifles are earth shattering decisions made.

  Civics I found was a very dry, dismal subject. Even the pages were filled with long paragraphs, so long that they were unreadable. And there were no pictures at all. What use is a textbook without pictures, I ask you!

 Furthermore the civics classes were usually held after the lunch break when our minds were in a state of post prandial torpor.

  But we had Mr. Sinha to breathe some semblance of life into an otherwise dull, dreary subject. Mr. Sinha could infuse humor into everything, even the chapter on Rights and Duties. And what is more his jokes were on the risqué side.

  Till quite recently we used to find toilet humor excruciatingly funny; almost as good as Sardarji jokes, but Mr. Sinha’s jokes were different. We giggled nervously and were deliciously scandalized, without usually understanding the import of the jokes. It was sufficient that the older boys looked knowingly at one another, and told us that theses were *dirty jokes*. We felt we were all grown up and men of the world and debonair and sophisticated.

  So we spent the next two years eagerly waiting for his lectures more for the ribaldry than for the civics.

  Consequently, I know as much about the subject now, as I knew before I started studying it.

Yet, in that all encompassing Stygian darkness of ignorance, a few residual nuggets of knowledge occasionally glimmered like glow worms in a summer night.

 One of these scattered bits includes the Constitution of India. Not the whole thing of course, but the beginning or what is better known as “the Preamble”.

 Mr. Sinha drummed it into us that the Preamble is a very important thing and at the very least, we could expect a short note in the examinations. So with due diligence I read it over and over again. It did not come in the examinations, which I thought was very unfair, but the result of this exercise was

a)     I developed an abiding distaste for people who can’t get to the point and waffle around like Congress spokespersons. You want a constitution, go ahead; why go for the preliminary things like preambles? It’s like being forced to eat your veggies before you get to the main stuff.

b)    I also got a vague understanding that under the constitution every one was equal.

I mean it quite clearly says in the preamble that all are equal and one cannot be nasty to another on the grounds of caste, religion, creed, sex, color, language, or whatever.

It would also mean that one should not selectively boost up the next person on the grounds above.

Right?

Or, to put it in a nutshell, there should be no discrimination between me and the next person on the grounds mentioned above and if you think I am going to type all the grounds again, you’re a monkey’s uncle.

 The corollary to that is anyone who discriminates between different groups of people is being very naughty, and deserves to be punished; certainly not be elected.

 What brought this diatribe up are the impending elections and my quandary is who to vote for.

Party A tells me that Party B and Party C are stooges of Mr. Moneybags, and are partners in crime.

Party B claims that Party C is corrupt and Party A is all hot air and incompetent; they are also the B team of C.

Party C informs me that Party B is communal, i.e. for the Hindus and against the Muslims and so shouldn’t be considered. They themselves are of course pure as driven snow.

Party D reminds us that they are totally secular and are not for or against any religion. Caste of course, is another matter. They claim to represent the castes that have been trampled over by society for the past millenia and now, by George, they are going to give the other castes their comeuppance, for the next millennium.

And so on for the rest of the alphabets.

Every one of them seems to have an axe to grind against some group or the other. The entire political spectrum seems to be raddled and ravaged by this pettiness.

Except for Party T, which is hell bent on ‘Poribortan’.

They have several axes to grind.

I really wonder if I should bother to cast my vote at all. The alternatives I am offered are all so unpalatable.

I think I shall sit and contemplate my navel, if I can locate it.

My paunch is getting in the way.