Lockdown Diaries: Perfidy is still at play by Mahmood Farooqui
We are all in lockdown but the media vilification of Muslims has some of us captured in a double bind: We are the victims and the villains, the sufferers and the virus
Sometimes one forgets that violent social conflicts are endemic to urban north India. “Riots” can be traced back at least to the 1890s, and anyone who grew up in India in the 1980s or before, has perforce heard the word curfew galore. Section 144 and curfew were arguably the commonest words used in the news in the 1980s and early 1090s. Moradabad in 1979, the anti-Sikh pogroms of 1984, Meerutt 1987, Bhagalpur 1989, Bombay and the rest of India in 1992, these were only the high points of social, communal, or state-led violence that went on in one part or another of the country, almost permanently. After all, the former IPS, Bibhuti Narain Rai’s cult Hindi novel Shahar Mein Curfew was published in 1988. And yet, the amazing thing, attesting to the vastness of India, is how few of us have actually lived under curfew.
So what began with a janta curfew, with some merriment and heralding, has now led to a country being locked down, or as our driver said, lockdown band ho gaya hai. We have been confined to our homes, but unlike a curfew, there is no widespread sense of dread, nor a threat of violence and arrest, unless you are poor. Conversely, there is no relaxation, no relief hours, as sociability, even clandestine or small doses of it, is prohibited because of the fear of infection. Some of us, perhaps, feel that we have been imprisoned in our homes. Indeed, as the lockdown extends, the frustration and the monotony will inevitably create a sense of powerlessness, which combined with an uncertainty about the future, the absence of tangible relief in sight, constitutes the mental condition that defines imprisonment. Many of us may soon be echoing Hamlet, who thought that all of Denmark was a prison. Like in any prison, some of us have it good, even as the great majority cowers. Like in prison, our lives have been ransomed to our guards, who can roam around freely, but unlike a prison, here they are putting themselves at risk.
I am aware that there are as many gradations of poverty in India as there are gradations of caste, and that most of them are currently suffering privations that we the middle class types cannot even imagine. To the deprivation of food, salary, livelihood and medical needs that they are undergoing during lockdown, one can add the indignity and humiliation that the state is disproportionately heaving upon them. The British philosopher John Gray has conjectured that in the post-Corona era populations may happily trade security for liberty. But despite these hardships, it is still a better deal than to be in a prison. I have lived in a prison so I can tell you no matter what we are undergoing, or what liberty we may choose to surrender in future, it would still not be the same as living in a prison. Confinement to our homes, with an opportunity to occasionally step out to buy groceries is very far from incarceration. There is no authority sitting over you, compelling you to wake up at a certain hour, to get locked in at a certain hour, to eat only what is provided for you. You are not being subjected to habitual and gratuitous humiliations or insults, nor to inescapable surveillance, you are not constantly being hollered at, you are with your loved ones, you can go to any corner of your castle at anytime of the day, you can talk to anyone you like, you can cook anything you like, you can hug your pets, you can have a cup of tea, a smoke, perhaps a legit drink or a joint if you are so inclined, you are still the Master of your will and your moment, you still have plenty of choice. You have the internet, you have a lamp, you have an AC, you have a desk, a computer, a play station even perhaps. None of your possessions have been taken away. You can still sit in your car and give it a revv, or slouch in your couch if you like. Even your uncertainty extends to a few months at the utmost, you may lose your job, or face a salary cut, but you would retain your qualifications, your skills, your physical labour if needs be. But prison takes away your subjectivity, it also degrades. There is a fine line between deprivation and degradation. The Indian workers who preferred to march for hundreds of miles than suffer the degradation of living on an uncertain dole, showed us that one can undergo deprivation and still hope to survive, but a soul degraded may be impaired forever.
The fact is that an Indian prisoner’s life of uncertainty begins with her confinement, continues as her trial goes on and on, continues as she appeals against her conviction, continues as she seeks parole or furlough. Uncertainty, coercion and violence dog her existence in prison every day: she may lose the employment that helps her pass time, be shifted out of the barrack she has just begun to grow used to, may lose her cell mates who make her prison life bearable, she may be wantonly subject to collective punishment even if she has done no wrong, any warder may complain of misbehaviour against her and she may have even her meagre prison rights, and fare, forfeited.
In the city at large, though, the poor aside, even powerful men, high executives and bureaucrats, used to lording over their staff, fat businessman who run their domain like a benevolent monarch, are no doubt feeling emasculated as they moan at home. They are now bereft of the work places that were their kingdom, bereft of the satisfaction of driving a big car, even on a choked road, bereft of the satisfaction of shouting at others. Power, as Foucault famously said, is after all a relationship, and for now there is no social space where those capillaries of power can run. There is now, mostly, no subordinate, or driver or maid to yell at, for instance, that may allow us to feel powerful. For the moment the powerful have been reduced to a cipher, none of their power or wealth, what distinguished them in their eyes, being of much use right now. But still, this disembodiment is not a permanent severance, unlike a prison inmate whose qualifications are of no use whatsoever. I see many of these men walking in my gated colony, not yet a place where neighbours snitch on a walker to the RWA, or call the police and lodge an FIR. There are also other men, maybe some among these powerful ones, who are earning laurels for helping with the domestic chores, cleaning, dusting, being productive. Certainly, some middle class families have become closer to each other, with a more equitable power distribution within the family. We are deprived, no doubt, but we have not yet been subjected to a violent upheaval, we still have our homes. I keep thinking of refugee camps, during Partition, or during the Holocaust, where even well-to-do families were forced to take shelter, and forced to forage for food by violent means
A lot of these men used to be my audience and I didn’t mind them then. In fact, like any power hungry artist, I wanted more and more powerful men in my audience. I am a performance artist, I come alive (often only) when I see crowds. I don’t know when I will smell those crowds again. I see a lot of my fellow artistes and writers turning online with a vengeance. Many of them are tirelessly performing, lecturing, reading, talking to an imaginary audience, day after day after day, to the last ounce of recorded voice. I admire their energy, but I cannot do it. With three pets, a toddler and three other people in our small flat, I simply don’t have the time, and if I could find the time I still don’t have the inclination. As the famous couplet goes,
Gaya Ho Jab Apna Jeewra Nikal
Kahan Ki Rubai Kahan Ki Ghazal
When our very entrails have been exhumed
Whither the quatrain, whither the Ghazal
The tragedy that forced me out of my creative stasis was the heart breaking plight of the migrant workers. Their miserable and lonely march even surpassed the trauma of the great Partition migrations in some ways. I wrote about them, although I know that many are doing much more. I admire them. For the rest of the time, I feed some of the stray dogs in my lane, I look at the birds and remember the Quranic verse, echoing the Bible, where God asks who if not me feeds these birds. But I realise that these birds are of being human, more than Godly ones. They were being fed through us, our leftovers, our refuse, as much as by nature. Although the skies are now clear and they have the run of our streets, they don’t have the victuals. They look hungry and forlorn.
In my last book, on the great Urdu writer Intizar Husain, I had quoted a column he wrote about reflections of curfew/lockdown in writers past:
“I asked him, O Dear One, how did you find the days and nights of the Curfew? He said my experience is like this that I stayed awake at nights and slept through the days. While asleep I woke up many times, opened my gate, peered out into the streets, found them deserted end to end, so I went back to sleep. As Sarmad, the Sufi saint beheaded by Aurangzeb, is reputed to have said,
Deedeem Ki Fitna Baaqeest Ghunudeem
I saw that perfidy was still at play so I returned to sleep
But even before that Mirabai had said,
Gali To Charon Band Hui
Main Hari Se Milan Kaise Jaun
Kos Kos Pe Pahra Baitha
The Streets are all Blocked
How do I go to meet Hari
There is a guard at every kos
And then there is Ghalib,
Ghar Se Bazar Mein Nikalte Huwe
Zahra Hota Hai Aab Insan Ka
Koi Waan Se Na Aa Sake Yaan Tak
Aadmi Waan Na Ja Sake Koi
Going to the bazar from home
Turns one’s gall into water
Nobody can come here from there
Nobody from here can go there”
Let me stay here with Ghalib for a bit. He wrote these lines in the aftermath of the 1857 uprising, when Delhi’s elites were left without their food and vegetables, without their toilet cleaners, and water carriers and their farriers, and carrion lay dead all around, as I described in my history of Delhi in 1857. But this was not all that Ghalib was faced with. The city of Delhi had also turned into an execution ground, as the marauding and vindictive British went with vengeance after the city that had held out against them for four long months. And in their vendetta they especially targeted the Muslims. Ghalib further wrote,
Chauk Jis Ko Kaheñ Vo Maqtal Hai
Ghar Banā Hai Namūna Zindāñ Kā
Shahr-E-Dehlī Kā Zarra Zarra Ḳhaak
Tishna-E-Ḳhūñ Hai Har Musalmāñ Kā
What we called the city square is today a slaughterhouse
Where the homestead has become the replica of a Prison
Every speck and fleck of the dust of Delhi
Has developed a thirst for the Musalman’s blood
And so there is no getting away from this now. We are all in lockdown but the media vilification of Muslims, the putative Corona spreading jihadis, has some of us captured in a double bind. We are the victims and the villains, the sufferers and the virus, and we are, as the recent FIRs and arrests in Delhi show, also the instigators and planners of a riot which left mostly us dead or damaged. As we prepare for the month of fasting, (which is like being fastened after being locked down, or being liberated by further binding) some of us may be forgiven for wishing that this goes on longer, so that we escape the repercussions that may follow this stigmatisation. Long ago Faiz had said,
Hai Ahle E Dil Ke Liye Ab Ye Nazm E Bast O Kushad
Ki Sang O Khist Muqayyad Hain Aur Sag Azad
For your lovers this is the new law of liberty and internment
That stones and tiles have been put in captivity while dogs roam free
Mahmood Farooqui is a Delhi based writer, best known for reviving Dastangoi, the lost Art of Urdu storytelling.
