Young Life in India Sanjay Ghosh, age 14, New Delhi

My teachers often tell me my writings are vague, but I just reflect my life and my times. Perhaps life is very vague. There is no authority. Hoodlums and urchins boss over the poor people. There is a government at the center but its presence is no longer felt as we move away from the capitol. Even America for that matter isn’t in a better position. Unknown Mike Tysons rule the streets, the cities by the mafia and the government by millionaires who can afford to spend a lot on elections.

Maybe I think too much for a 14 year old but I can’t help being aware of what’s going on around me. The world is full of inequality—the poor countries and the rich ones. Even in my own country there are so many poor people and some very rich. I am one of the fortunate kids who has been getting a very good education, but in India there are millions who don’t know what education is. Education, I feel, is the first step toward democracy. In “Indian Democracy” there are officially 22 percent educated. This includes those who cannot even write their own names. This is the political state of affairs in India. 

Not more than five percent read the newspapers. Village folk don’t even know the worth of the chit of paper they throw into the ballet boxes. The ballot boxes are quite black in India. Votes are bought at cheap rates and even snatched by bullies. It is a grim state of affairs.

Let’s be more personal. I come down into my own personal life. Let’s break up all the Western myths of India to say that the song “Faith” arrived just three months after it was released in the U.S. And we in India listen to Guns n’ Roses and watch Beverly Hills Cop. 

The city has a lot of excitement. It ain’t as monotonous as they have in the communist countries, but what’s the change and excitement anyway? Because life just passes in the wink of an eye, as Jimmie Hendrix said.

Coming up to the spiritual part of life in India, most of the foolish Westerners have come here seeking something but they all finish up nowhere. I think they have the same gods up there in the Western skies. 

In this painting, the ceremony of Goddess Durga is taking place. The goddess, with her lion, defeats the monster Asura. With the goddess are her daughters, Goddess Lakshmi and Goddess Saraswati and her sons, Ganesh and Kastik. In this painting, with a little satire, I have depicted religion today.

Maybe my writing reflects nothing of my being 14. I have been blessed by a birth in one of the bigger Indian cities in all the opportunity of becoming something. There is a lot of competition in this country of more than 800 million. Some people think and face it. Some run away from life. Some are content with everything that is there, and to be content is perhaps the greatest thing. And with a little humor.

I am content with everything. It’s no better anywhere else. And because a higher standard of living doesn’t mean a thing to me I don’t mind where I am, in India or anywhere else in the world. Life hurries on, and the leaves that are green turn to brown.

India Now Sanjay Ghosh, age 32, New Delhi

Honestly, I was quite disgusted to discover that George Michael, Beverly Hills Cop and Guns n’ Roses were a prominent part of my preoccupations. Then again, you have to make concessions for teenagers. On the other hand, I’m quite happy about the fact that I had already noticed rampant inequality in my surroundings. Now, that economic discrepancy has simply got out of control. Official statistics reveal that roughly 80 percent of Indians—836 million of them—live on Rs 20 (around 50 cents) or less per day. In contrast, the Forbes list of the ten richest people in the world has four billionaires of Indian ethnicity. When people call India the world’s biggest democracy, it seems like the cruelest of all jokes. It’s more like a ticking time bomb waiting to explode.

Superficially, urban India looks a lot different from what it was two decades ago—cell phones, flyovers, swanky cars and shopping malls. An air of arrogance is palpable. People seem to have whole-heartedly accepted the media propaganda about how well the country is doing. The fact that thousands of farmers are killing themselves doesn’t register on those enjoying the ‘sweet life.’ Scratch the surface and a country full of anxiety-ridden people are revealed. High school students killing themselves before and after exams with clock-work regularity. A billion people jostling for space, a desperation feeding corruption. 

It’s probably foolish to accept the older generation’s lament that corruption is a post-independence phenomenon. Seen dispassionately, corruption set in thousands of years ago when one section of our society usurped all privileges in the name of caste and heaped scorn on the weaker lot In everyday practice, the grandiloquent ancient Indian civilisation is a farce. We pray to the Goddess but kill as many unborn girls as possible. Even though our ancient art celebrated nakedness, our contemporary sense of sobriety is violated by the very same attribute. We pay lip service to Gandhi and turn a blind eye to his lessons of frugality and non-violence. In the guise of various para-military units, India hides one of the biggest armed forces in the world. How else do you keep such an enormous disgruntled population quiet?  The absurd economic disparity is not limited to India; it’s a worldwide phenomenon.

There are people in the U.S. who aren’t able to afford a bus ticket out of an imminent hurricane. Haitians are eating mud biscuits because a combination of bio-fuel cultivation, climate change and exorbitant crude oil has thrown cereals out of their reach. An average person in the developed world throws away more than a quarter of the food piled on his plate. The richest 500 people now own more wealth than all the poorer half of the world population put together. 

There has perhaps never been a time since the Middle Ages when there was such an absurd consolidation of wealth. Then again, the Middle Ages were blessed with ignorance and the notion of divine kings. How are we going to get away with the situation in the age of Internet and ‘improvised explosive devices?’ Terrorism seems to be the natural consequence of globalization. Consolidation of wealth has also meant consolidation of media. Millions can pour into the streets in protest but the consent for baseless wars are still being manufactured. The media is too busy admiring the emperor’s new clothes. One only has to remember what Rupert Murdoch said in support of the Iraq war: ‘It will give us $20 a barrel of oil!’ The Indian media’s pet whipping boy is the communist party. The communist MPs are by far the cleanest, whether in terms of wealth, criminal record or public debt. News coverage in the media doesn’t give a hint of this fact. In fact, it propagates an opposite image wherein every problem of the country is blamed on the communist party. And art only gets mentioned in the Indian media, either for record prices or if it violates public morality.

The other dramatic change that has taken place in the world in the last two decades is the information revolution. A vast amount of data is now in easy reach. A new breed of back office jobs have now become India’s largest export. As an artist, one feels that never in history was such a comprehensive database of our heritage so readily available as now. You’re a click away from the world’s oldest book: the Rig Veda. Sadly, even scholars can’t decipher its true meaning. Somehow the burden of history is being felt in the arts. Unlike the hard sciences, history is a working element of the arts and the baggage just piles on by the day. Even without the baggage, being an arts practitioner is fraught with problems. 

If the cold eye is an artist’s real gift, he is duty bound to reveal the truth which anyway doesn’t endear him to society. Society is a flock of sheep. From the very beginning, the basis of civilisation has always been fear. Initially, we feared the beast of prey. 

Over time, that fear has been transformed at various times into the fear of the barbarians, the huns, the infidels, the natives, the communists and currently Islamic terrorists. In the short term, we offset our fears with entertainment; in the long run, our insecurities drive us towards surplus, wealth and power. 

If art was supposed to illuminate, it necessarily needed to point to the fear in man. Ironically, throughout history the artist has had to depend on the most insecure for a living. It’s like asking to be paid for slapping someone awake. 

Naturally, society regards artists with a degree of hostility until such time that they have become elements of nostalgia. The sad truth is that society doesn’t get art, it fawns at big price tags. 

In my city, New Delhi, if you take away alcohol from the equation there would be no art audience. Then again, the artists are also in the vicinity of a billion people jostling for space. The anxiety to be noticed transforms them into showmen, clowns. Artistic output becomes a novelty no longer concerned with empathy. Artists project a sense of community but they are actually cartels in disguise. A smaller sheep herd within a big flock. 

The location of wealth and poverty is closely linked with climate. Posterity will recognize the gulf stream as one of the architects of the modern industrial epoch. Apart from availability of water, the biggest factor of development must be temperature. If they are not ports, hot and humid places are invariably poor. Yet mankind seems oblivious to the extent of its dependence on climate. At some level we may be sensing what’s coming but we respond by gulping down a lot of medicines and blabbering on the phone. Big pharma and telecom giants are laughing their way to the bank. Only the insurance companies know they have been paying up for climate-related damages for some time now. 

In 1989 I thought life was vague, but not anymore. I think we are ball-dancing to a romantic waltz on the deck of a sinking ship. We just don’t want to acknowledge it. When I was 14 years old I was content with everything. Now it’s the exact opposite. I know too much to be content. Living in one of the richest pockets of an essentially poor country was never going to be easy, especially being an outsider artist, since art is essentially moving into a new discomfort zone. At one level, success is failure, but then failure is not always success. One does notice that not having kept up with the Joneses, the number of ‘friends’ has dwindled. One should have foreseen it coming, having pursued art in earnest. 

I probably sound too pessimistic but where I come from they have enacted a law to protect parents from their own children. Reason: escalating real estate prices. The kids can’t tolerate their parents for sitting on the money. They want to splurge, seek excitement, and they want it now. When you’re young, excitement seems precious but the passage of time proves it to be a big distraction. The diamond-water paradox reveals itself with age.

As the world becomes faster, we seem to be losing our human qualities. We are becoming smaller people. We try to package ourselves cleverly and ignore our core qualities. Consequently, even in the art world, novelty seems to be winning over depth.  I don’t think art can change the world. In the same way as history teaches us nothing. Yet each of us is unique and we can leave behind a document on ourselves. If our observations are acute, they’ll touch a universal tone. To the discerning, it will betray an account of our times. As acute accounts go, they’ll probably resemble other remote accounts. The faint humming of the rhythm of life will be felt. Yes, I still believe in gods being present in the Western skies as much as in the East. Yet perhaps the sky is a distant proposition. If the maker made you, the fingerprints are bound to be found within. Although given our current restlessness, the chances of our finding those fingerprints are getting increasingly remote. 

Sanjay Ghosh, New Delhi, 2008

It Doesn’t Touch Us Bornali Datta, age 17, New Delhi

I am driving down Delhi roads completely wrapped in thoughts of school, of my last few days. There is an emptiness deep down inside, for when life begins to mean being with the same people, doing the same things and suddenly it all ends, it leaves you as lost as a withered leaf being tossed about by the wind, floating and swaying and never reaching the ground. And time, that tricky old fellow, had outwitted me and outrun me once again. I wondered how my selfish notions­—I and passing out of high school, impossible—had been dashed to the ground. And knowing that my present notions—I and growing old, unthinkable—would be. The distant, the far away would happen. I would wake up one day and find myself old and gray. And time, that cold, impassive merciless dictator of my life would be sitting up there on the wall, smilingly and mockingly. And so I would leave all that was my life and the saddest part would be that time would make me forget those of the past, gradually but willingly. He would wipe it out gently, leaving behind only a haze to cling to.

The car draws to a halt at the traffic lights, jerking me out of my rambling thoughts. Little children and street urchins swarm around the vehicles, sometimes mothers with babies and sometimes old men stretch out their hands in front of the cars which pause momentarily on their racing routes. They wipe the cars and sell unreadable newspapers. The children effortlessly wrinkle their faces into misery—struck expressions till the coins clink into their greasy palms. Then they beam, but only momentarily. Poverty, we call it. Sorrow. Suffering. Cruel pain. For them it is merely life. The nights they would spend on the pavement, their shelterless homes under the gaze of the stars. And even winter’s cold which settles like an icy shroud would not freeze them, for they love life. Dawn would find them stirring and watching their dreams disappear with the stars and the night. They would plunge into life and reality. And life and reality were harsh. A constant struggle with no respite. 

Yet, they survive, for life to them is just being able to live, to walk, to breathe, to dream, to sleep with the wind as lullaby. And they have their own joys of which we know nothing. For when the skies frown and send the rain, pouring and splashing onto the thirsty earth, blackened by the naked heat of the sun and roughened by the dusty wind whose thirst is never quenched, whose dust and grime is washed away, whose bodies are cooled, it is they who run and feel with outstretched arms the pelting drops of rain. And they play with abandon in the muddy puddles with a happiness few know of. 

We, shut in by the bricks and cement feel neither the scorching heat of the sun nor the fury of the winds nor the stinging balm of the rains. We watch it all through glass panes. We see the winds raising the dust and spreading it into a haze, and we see the torrents of rain washing the gray of buildings into the green of trees, splashing colors into and out of objects, and the fragrance of wet earth rises up, but it doesn’t touch us. 

Besides, they have hope and faith. For hope, that irrepressible facet of human nature, and faith, in life and the maker, can see through anything. Faith, belief, religiousness and superstition are paramount in India. People put all their faith in the heavens where their gods, along with the stars and the planets, fix up their lives and their destinies. The educated think otherwise. They know of the Big Bang and Darwin’s theory of evolution, and the new, cynical generation views religious faith with doubt and suspicion, for they put their faith in man’s abilities and achievements, not in his imagination. Yet, in every home in every city religion is palpable, particularly in the holy cities where the River Ganges flows. Ganga, our goddess, washes away all of our sins. 

By day people dip into the holy waters emerging cleansed, and by night there are religious ceremonies. I carry a picture in my mind of an evening in Haridwar on the banks of the Ganga. A strange calm and peace pervaded amidst the chanting of prayers and the gentle lapping of water. Little glowing lamps of leaves and flowers floated away, carrying our hopes and our prayers heavenward. One could feel God within oneself and all around one could communicate with Him. 

And faith is essential, for when sunk in the unfathomable depths of despair and grief there is a reassurance that somewhere there is an invisible power that will lift us out of the abyss, for one certainly cannot depend on mere mortals, as fallible and unreliable as one’s self. Hence, the need to believe and pray. 

As we reach downtown Delhi, the car stops. I step out and look at the people around me. We have not yet acquired the racing busy-ness of the West. We still amble along, looking everywhere and looking curiously and appraisingly at the passers-by. I walk on and join the mainstream and I am swallowed by the moving sea of people. I lose my identity. I become simply an Indian walking on the soil of my homeland, India… Bharat… the land of outstanding differences, where the rich and the poor live together, where thatched shelters are built against massive, magnificent buildings, where castles and forts from ages unknown and forgotten exist alongside buildings built centuries and centuries ago. Where everything is primitive, yet modern. 

The land where people are lazy, disorganized, gossipy, interfering, undisciplined, but loving and caring with a basic goodness. Where people of distinct cultures, having entirely different lifestyles and speaking hundreds of different languages live side by side and communicate in English, the gift the British left behind after looting us. The land of countless festivals of light and color, where morals and values exist, being fast forgotten in the fury of life but surviving somewhere deep down. The land whose music has meaning, the fingers plunking the strings and tugging at your heart. And the rhythm of palm against the membrane throbs through your whole being. Where there is good and evil, beauty and ugliness… where life is pulsating, for it is led by people who love life People who are non-entities in the vastness of space and time but look within themselves. And time and space fade into magnificence, for within is the beauty and richness of being alive… of being able to feel… of being a human being.

Journeys and Back Bornali Datta, New Delhi, 2016

When I was 17, there was a tremendous dichotomy in my mind about the path I would be taking after school. The two clear and disparate paths were those of Medicine and Art. In those times, in middle class urban India, most of us would choose a firm path – medicine, engineering, law, commerce, etc. A firm path leading on to a firm, tangible destination. In keeping, I chose Medicine. But also, I chose it for I felt it was my calling. Twenty-five years later that dichotomy still exists. Medicine is a hard and exacting task master who flogs me, and while most times I take to the flogging very kindly, every now and again, I rebel and dream of art. But my skills have eroded over the years, even though my creative instincts are alive and keep me going.

I learnt the core of my medicine in one of Delhi’s busy government hospitals, located in the rift between old Delhi and new Delhi. On one side the world opened up into the wide boulevards of Lutyens Delhi and on the other side the world closed in into the shambles of old Delhi. The hospital was a maddeningly busy place, with unwell people pouring in through the door. Very busy and very intense. 

My zeal was fulfilled in its entirety in this hub of medicine, where all our skills as trainees were developed to a high level, as much by the volumes of patients that we saw as by the excellent teaching by the professors of the institute. Government hospitals were free and the patients we catered to were poor and unable to pay for medical care. They got good medical service from good doctors in these hospitals, but the infrastructure was lacking and the hospitals tended to be somewhat run down. That notwithstanding, I remember those years as being the best in my life. I remember working for 36 hours on the trot as a resident in Medicine and then coming home and disappearing into the oblivion of a deep dreamless well earned sleep. Of course that was much later on during the years of post graduation.

In my very first year in medical college, on the contrary, I remember being stunned bored whilst sat in the lecture theatres listening to lengthy meaningless jargon from different teachers. The subjects, I found bone dry, and although complemented by practicals, they did not interest me. After a year and a half of these dull pre-clinical subjects, finally our visits to the hospital started and with that a feel of why we were all there in the first place, came to me. The hospital with its moving shades of illnesses and pathologies fascinated me. As did the tasks of a doctor. The trend amongst all doctors in those times was to go abroad. USA mostly, UK sometimes. Once you completed post graduation, there were virtually no options. The government hospitals had very limited jobs and there were hardly any private hospitals. 

So the only option was to sit in a small clinic, which most doctors found uninspiring and poor paying. Most were bright and ambitious, and the West drew them all in like iron filings to a magnet. The West spelt professional satisfaction and economic liberation. I was no exception. 

In the start of the 21st century, we arrived in England. So, then, from having to deal with Medicine only, now there was medicine, medicine in England and England; not all the same. Medicine was relatively easy, Medicine in England was a bit harder and England was very hard indeed. Medicine in England consisted of crystal-clear concepts and approaches, so that no one could go wrong or at least the system minimised the chances of anyone going wrong. Lesser academic discussions and many more discussions on how to get it right. Analytical and argumentative. The time spent in England would refine and hone our existing skills like a fine-tipped pencil. 

Life was stable and secure in the structured environs of the West. Most got well entrenched in the way of life, however different and even alien sometimes. And again, most would stay on for the rest of their lives. This time, we broke away. Ten years and we were back. Intending all along to return to Delhi, into the arms of the wide boulevards and roundabouts, flush with winter blooms, all of which I remembered so well and so clearly. Except that we were actually tossed into Gurgaon. 

Ten years ago when we left, I had been vaguely aware of Gurgaon as a suburban settlement just outside Delhi, no more. We had hardly ever come out to Gurgaon. But now, it had transformed beyond recognition. Delhi had spilled itself, over-flowed into Gurgaon. It was the millennium city. High rises, buildings with glass facades, metro, eateries, breweries, everything you could think of. 

Having been away for so long in the regimental order of Western existence, coming back to the utter irrevocable chaos of India was not easy. It often felt like we had driven into a concrete wall and then lay in a stunned crumpled heap, not knowing what had hit us, very much Tom & Jerry style, with sore red bumps erupting out of scalps!

The first thing on returning that strikes you is the complete dissolution of or possibly non-existence of the boundaries that exist in the West. In every single aspect of life. Then the heat hits you hard. And then the deluge of people out on the roads, out everywhere, a constant presence of people, the hum, the buzz, the whirr, the screech of life around you. Constant background noise. 

The very thing, the absence of which in the West had been so hard to get used to in the beginning. I remember, very often, waking up to this intense quiet around me, unbroken by the twitter of birds or the distant hum of traffic. Very unsettling till the stillness becomes part of your sensory landscape. And therefore when you come back, its an assault on your senses by the same background noise and simmering unrest. Settling in became a process of unlearning certain things and relearning certain others. 

The cities had grown enormously and gleamed with wealth. Huge malls and shiny cars. But if you stepped out of the cities and not even too far out of the cities, there were the districts in complete disarray.  The roads led on further to the rural settlements and villages, which had quite obviously remained completely untouched by the march of time and progress. And Medicine? Again it had changed beyond recognition in the cities. Big private hospitals had come up attracting doctors, giving good service and care and available for all those who could afford it. Step out of the cities though and again nothing had changed really. Derelict, apathetic government service. 

Medicine here often did not reach those who needed it most. Those living in faraway remote villages, deserts, mountains, with no real access to healthcare, who by the time they reached the hospitals in big cities were already ravaged by whatever disease they had. A huge disparity and dichotomy, of a different kind.

And Art? Buried in my mind under the giant called Medicine.