Nov 4 The new issue of Frontline carries my "impressionistic" (their brief!) essay on walking with the Bharat Jodo Yatra last month. (You may remember that I already circulated two articles I wrote about the experience.)
Bharat Jodo Yatra: On the walk, https://frontline.thehindu.com/politics/congress-in-focus-bharat-jodo-yatra-on-the-walk/article66068686.ece It may be behind a paywall, so the text is below. Any thoughts welcome. And I do want to try and join the Yatra again, so if you're thinking about it too, maybe we can join forces. yours, dilip --- Bharat Jodo Yatra: On the walk, A sceptical friend asked: "Bharat jodne ka kya plan hai Congress ke paas?" (What plan does the Congress have to repair India?) Not a bad question to ask after I was with the ongoing Bharat Jodo Yatra for a couple of days. Because it got me musing, reflecting, reminiscing. Before I answer her question, here's a flavour of that. My first taste of the spirit of the Yatra was even before we joined. Early on Sunday, we stationed ourselves two km ahead of where the walkers were starting from that morning. Someone had told us the best place to walk was just in front of the main body: still among plenty of walkers, but not engulfed in a flood of them jostling for space. So we waited there for the procession to arrive. I strolled around, taking photos of nearby posters and bunting. Out of the blue, someone on a truck yelled at me: "majige!" When I showed incomprehension, he said: "Buttermilk!" and thrust a small green packet at me. He was unloading several sacks filled with them, for the walkers, and must have decided I needed one. Nearby stood a coconut stall. Out of the blue again, a police van stopped, several plainsclothesmen leapt out and asked the stall-owner for coconuts for each of them. With a large machete, he began slicing one. Suddenly perturbed, the cops grabbed the knife and examined it closely: what if the vendor had nefarious intent? But persuaded somehow that he wouldn't use the machete to leap into the yatra and start hacking at humans, they handed it back and he continued with the coconuts. Things got more serious quickly. We were engulfed in a tide anyway, jostling for space on the road. Those pictures of Rahul Gandhi, walking briskly with hardly anyone or anything ahead of him? That's achieved by a police cordon around him and stretching for a good 50m in front - an actual long rope carried by dozens of cops. They walk on the edge of the tarred surface. To keep the cordon intact, they summarily push nobodies like me out of the way. So I fell in among plenty more like me, and then further behind because I had no stomach for jostling. Yet here's the thing. Not one person I met complained about the jostling. Nor about the hours of walking, not strolling. Nothing. Take Chandy from Kerala. He's one of the 150+ yatris, men and women who will do the whole journey from Kanyakumari to Kashmir. The first time I met him, he and two women walking with him did a jig right there on the road, laughing in delight. Then I kept bumping into him - sometimes he caught up with me, sometimes I caught up with him, once or twice we walked side-by-side for a spell. If he didn't do the jig again, he was in the same good spirits every time. But get this: he was barefoot. Though "is" might be the better word. He plans to do the whole trek - several thousand km - barefoot. So while I'm no longer at the yatra, I'm confident he's trekking along on his bare feet. "How's the walking this morning?" I asked him on Monday, when I came up from behind and he was hobbling slightly. It had rained overnight, and Chandy said: "All fine, except the rain has woken up all the grains of granite. So instead of lying down sensibly, they are poking upwards into my feet." And on he hobbled. I walked ahead to catch up with a companion. An hour later, Chandy overtook us. Take Vanitha from Bangalore. She came alongside once when I was just ahead of the cordon, walking behind the press truck. In an almost booming tone, she demanded to know: "So what brings you here?" Given her apparent sternness, I replied almost meekly, but soon realized it was just her way of speaking. In the same booming tone, she told me she had worked as a gynaecologist for many years, but then gave it up and joined politics. Specifically, the Congress. Then when this Yatra was announced, she knew: "I had to join. I had to walk. This country needs this now." I wanted her to flesh that thought out, but was preempted by another booming demand: "Have you come alone?" I shook my head and pointed to my sister-in-law Ramani, striding along a few feet away. "She's a doctor too," I said. Vanitha promptly lost interest in me, moving over to shake hands with Ramani. "I'm a doctor too," I heard her say, and then they moved steadily ahead, chatting animatedly about whatever doctors chat about while on a Bharat Jodo Yatra. Take Anil from Delhi. A Congress worker, he's been assigned a specific task. He strides in front of the yatra, walkie-talkie in hand, barking out instructions to sundry vehicles so as to preempt accidents and smoothen the yatra's progress. At one point he noticed the two slow-moving press trucks getting a little too close for comfort. I know because I was walking between them at the time, just starting to wonder if I was going to be squeezed. "What's going on?" he shouted, practically in my ear. "You both want to kiss each other?" (It sounded far juicier in the original Hindi, not least because of his barking.) Seeing several of us break into smiles, he turned to me and said: "See, I'm going to walk like this every day till Kashmir. It gets boring if I don't find ways to make it fun!" Then something ahead of us caught his eye. "Hey, Fortuner!" he yelled. "Yes, you fat Toyota Fortuner! Move up ahead, at once!" (It sounded far funnier in the original Hindi.) Just three examples, of many among the walkers. In them, like in most of the rest, there was a nearly visible determination and purpose in manner, their approach to the yatra. In fact, to me that seemed almost the "why" of their walking. That is, here they were, showing the world that there are still people motivated not by religious structures, not by past glories, not by hatreds in different directions. No, these were ordinary folks doing something extraordinary purely because they think that effort might shake a nation out of a spiralling miasma of division, mistrust, cynicism, sophistry and violence. Some might disagree about the contours of that miasma, sure. Some might disagree that this Yatra will actually produce such shaking, certainly. But what's hard to disagree with is the simple, yet clear like the blue sky, sense of purpose in the folks participating in the Yatra. And that's even before mentioning those who are not walking. Meaning, the crowds we passed everywhere: smiling, waving, wanting to shake hands, cheering. Babies in arms, adults in their most colourful clothes, kids squealing in delight as I photographed their sandals, women who looked close to 90 ... There's plenty to be said for perspective that time and distance allows, but right there and then, it was hard not to think that the Yatra was reaching out to touch Indians in unexpected ways. As another usually sceptical friend commented, "surprisingly it seems to be making headway in the right direction!" And all this is even before a real mention of Rahul Gandhi. Yet as central as he is to the Yatra, there's also a sense that in the end, its real message is larger than him. It's about hope and optimism in the India our remarkable Constitution promises. So yes, what's the Congress's "Bharat jodne ka plan"? As I saw it during the Yatra: First, stand up to those who would break this country. Second, listen fully and sincerely to people speak about their concerns: education, health, women's issues, jobs, inflation, whatever. Third, lay out the Congress's own plans to address such concerns. Its own vision for the country. My impression is that the Congress is doing pretty well on this Yatra with the first two of those. The third needs more substance. To many of us, the Congress is a party struggling with its reason to exist, its relevance, its political decline over many years. That decline is a worry for anyone, like me, who values democracy. But at least it is struggling - meaning its members are not complacent, apathetic or dispirited. As a plan, I'll take that. For me, that was the exhilarating, uplifting thing about the Yatra. -- My book with Joy Ma: "The Deoliwallahs" Twitter: @DeathEndsFun Death Ends Fun: http://dcubed.blogspot.com -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Dilip's essays" group. 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