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One of us...

First of all, a Happy Diwali to you, and sorry for absconding once again: I was blotto in the Sheikdom of Dubai. This time, the excuse for spirituous celebrations was the mater's tremendously successful concert -- topped by a request from Planet Hollywood to cast her handprints in concrete. Ahem, Bhosle senior is to be the very first Indian film-personality to have a presence in that chain. Umm, a Nobel it ain't, but one can't help gloating over the petite B's stealing a march over what would've seemed the natural choice: the Big B. Especially since the janata had gone loco over his merely attending the inauguration of the Dubai outlet a few months ago. Hehehehehe... I absolutely thrive on one- upwomanship...

Anyway, it was this high-note which saw me through the trip. That apart, old memories made Dubai a very painful place... You see, I know the city well: my brother used to be an expat there, and I often spent long stretches with him. My last visit to the Emirates was in 1992 -- I left Dubai in December of that year, a day after the lone Hindu temple in Bur Dubai and the Choitram store on Al Fahidi Street were razed by Pakistani, Bangladeshi and Indian Muslims. On that very day, riots had "spontaneously" erupted in Bombay. So, I flew home.

But my gloom isn't tethered to Dubai mobs "reacting spontaneously" to events in far-away Ayodhya: that's history. It has to do with one Muslim -- a friend, a buddy, a person I spent lazy crazy days with. I knew Aziz only as the scion of an old-time and much revered film-maker: He was "one of us". And what a character he was -- straight out of a novel. One day he'd tip every waiter in the Aviation Club with a 100 dirham note; on the next, he'd sell off his furniture for want of cash. Big living, big spending, big- hearted, humorous, reckless, helpful, naive, generous, caring, that's how I saw him. I just knew that with him, I was always safe. And yes, I was.

I never gave a damn about the subterranean rumbling -- that there was something shady about Aziz... Those were the pre-riot days, when the hood was Robin Hood. In a country which fostered a parallel black economy through unrealistic taxation-slabs, under a government which forced average citizens to become tax-evaders out of necessity, why would smugglers be regarded as prime criminals? Nah, few cared about anybody swindling the administration...

Mr J B D'Souza is right -- the serial blasts did serve one important societal purpose: Post-blasts, the glamour that the film industry had attached to the underworld -- through movies like Deewar or Parinda or Shakti, movies whose hero-turned-by-circumstance-into-villain we fully understood and related to -- dissipated for most of us. People began to see gangsters for what they really were, shorn of all romance. No longer does the filmi elite hobnob socially or commercially with the heavies. Those who still do, are the ones who've shouldered their way in from the nukkad gangs.

But there was another fall-out: The riots and the bomb blasts focused attention on the predominance of one community in the mafia. Where, before, the dons and their minions were just people making a questionable living, who didn't assail those uninvolved with their trade, after the bloodshed, they became Muslims with a murderous communal programme whereby no innocent bystander was safe. Worse, the thugs had an undeniable link with Pakistan. Too, it was no help when underlings like Chotta Rajan and Sharad Shetty broke away from the "family." Forget the personal or business reasons publicly forwarded, everyone knows that the splits occurred because the Hindu lieutenants were kept in the dark about the blasts. This was at the root of the gang wars that ensued; the mafia had divided into distinct communal factions.

Hindsight has 20/20 vision: Whatever I witnessed and experienced in Dubai in those crucial months before the December carnage convinces me that the riots had zero to do with spontaneity. Those who hold that the agitation began as a spontaneous reaction, that it was orchestrated for commercial reasons, that the underworld got into the act only with the serial blasts, that Muslim rioters were leaderless, can be one of only two things -- totally clueless, or, with special agendas.

No, I don't have any proof nor any specifics to tell. My belief rests on the perceptible change in the attitude of Aziz and his cronies; on chance remarks which made no sense then; on the silent but palpable hostility that hung over my entry during mysterious meetings, and of course, the timing... Something was in the air; you could've cut the tension with a knife.

To date, I can't say how embroiled Aziz was, but that he knew of what was afoot, I have no doubts. Even so, "Aziz" is not his real name: I still feel that on a personal level, he would never have harmed me, and I refuse to identify him, no matter what my tenets or his deeds. Misguided loyalty? Perhaps. But each of us is a bundle of contradictions; I wouldn't have it any other way. Fact is, I did like Aziz immensely, and I can't see myself breaching the trust of even a long-forsaken friendship. However, the betrayal continues to smart.

As I re-read this, I realise that Bhosle has gotten maudlin. And over a Mosie, too! I guess we all have our moments when we let it all hang out... for me, writing is nothing if not a cathartic process...

Sometimes, I don't know whether to laugh or cry when I scan my hate-mail. Not because I get hives over how faceless yobs perceive me, but because I'm no longer sure how my flesh-and-blood friends see me. For instance, my top-favourite person in Rediff is your friendly cluster-geek from the techno-pages, Zaki Ansari; our friendship has somehow endured my blatantly Hindutvawadi columns right through The Sunday Observer. Maybe it's because we've never talked shop; maybe it's because he knows there's nothing personal in politics; I really can't say. So when I'm told that I definitely hate Muslims, my thoughts fly to Zaki and other such friends: Is this what they think, too...?

It's easy to be flip and say let's chase racketeers into Pakistan, but is that how it worked...? It's easy for me to support the mowing down of hardened criminals, but how would I react if I had to haul a bloodied corpse...? It's easy for me to advocate nuclear armament since I believe it is purely a power-play and no country is stupid enough to actually use nukes -- but what if I'm wrong...?

Sure, such questions have ground on me since before I took a public stance. And the damn sods still grind on me when I move from an ideological view to the personal... Thing is, there's no end to moral dilemmas. This kind of mental self-flagellation or cerebral masturbation is a luxury afforded to philosophers and poets: On John Lennon's behest, I can imagine a world without strife; unfortunately, it exists only there. The rest of us have to be practical -- we need to coldly apply the brakes at some point. And what that point is, depends upon the individual.

I think I took my stand rather in the mode of the Jewish, ever- compromising "Reb Tevyeh" of The Fiddler on the Roof: If you remember, Tevyeh accepts the marriage of his first daughter to an impoverished tailor; then, he allows his second daughter to join her revolutionary lover in Siberia. He accedes to both alliances much against his own judgement, and in his soliloquies, he rationalises his change of dispositions by going through a gamut of on-one-hand and on-the-other-hand. But when his third and favourite daughter elopes with a Christian, Tevyeh rejects her without a second thought. As he recoils from her, he cries, "There is NO on-the-other-hand! If I bend anymore I will break"...

There comes a time when no matter how reasonable or correct or convenient an alternative may be, it is unthinkable because it goes against the totality of one's being. This is why Indian Muslims reject the Uniform Civil Code -- their being is tied to separateness. And this is why I oppose the Nehruvian parody of secularism and promote an aggressive, Hindu awareness -- my being is bound to equity. We do what we gotta do. There can be no respite -- the war is doomed to rage on...

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Varsha Bhosle