gods

India is renowned as a country of contrasts. A country of a million gods. Each god revered and worshiped through unique rituals.

The Ramleela festival is one such festival which narrates the story of Lord Ram. The Ramayan is considered to be one of the most sacred epics of India. This festival is a 10 day celebration of that epic. An epic that encompasses being a Hindu to its fullest.

I have grown up watching plays being performed during the festivals. They were entertaining when I was little as it meant, I could be out till late with my parents. It did not mean much to me other than it was a great time to be out with friends.

But its very different now. The critical mind wishes to question the visual aspects of these festivals. What is the purpose of this 10 day long celebration?

Is it to remind us of a glorious India that once was a magnificent civilisation? Is it to tell us we are still as magnificent?

Does the youth growing up in modern India connect with this? The youth in rural towns browse through their smart phones watching American sitcom’s dubbed in regional languages. The aspirations of Indian youth who are part of today’s global community want to be at an equal footing with the slick skateboarders of California or the party revellers of Berlin. Their forward looking anxious minds probably do not have time to stop and look back at their own heritage. The time when they do look back is when politically sponsored events such as these festivals are organised in their town. The chatter on social media is polarising. These festivals have become prejudice reinforcing tools and hence seem to be patronised by the religiously affiliated political clan.

The dhoti was yesterday. Jeans are today. The “pagadi” was yesterday. Bandana’s are today. Just as the local guise has moved on in an organic manner, the country has also moved on in a similar fashion .The old and the new squeezing each other out to dominate the landscape.

People my age are caught in this transition. Reminiscing the simplicity of the past while perpetually trying to keep pace with the changing norms. The long drawn queues around the railway station to get your seat reserved is replaced by fastest button first madness on the online booking system where reservations fill up within minutes. Capacity is the same, just the access to it has become blazing fast. Survival of the fittest was applicable in the past, but today it’s gone beyond that. It’s the survival of the luckiest.

‘ This series was made at one such festival and shows various actors and their modern day depictions of revered gods’

: While this is what everyone calls progress and I do not have any better reason to not call it that, I feel in India, there is a rush to start scaling heights without paying enough attention to establishing a solid foundation. In a country where many do not have basic utilities, there is a mad dash to build ultra modern utilities. On one end the cities are all going wireless and touch free, while scores of people in rural towns are queuing up outside government offices struggling to get electricity or clean water, or then just a road or a health care amenities in their village.

: I wonder if this has to do something with the typical Indian mindset of “jugaad”. I don’t know how to put this word in the right context. But in 2017, the Oxford dictionary officially accepted this word. According to the dictionary, noun Jugaad means “a flexible approach to solve a problem, that uses limited resources in an innovative way” While this might sound positive, it is anything but. These are at best temporary measures to address a problem. But when national reform policies also make the cut of being a “Jugaad” one knows the country is not solving anything.

: Many problems solved through “Jugaad” simply mean an odd patch work done to move on. These solutions eventually become permanent. A half functional health care facility remains such in perpetuity. A badly built road, makes everyone accustomed to regular potholes and apathetic towards road accidents. The list goes on and eventually, people’s default mentality is to provide patch work solutions that somehow help the community to inch a tad bit forward while precariously waiting for accidents to happen. The handling of the COVID-19 pandemic is a stark example of this “jugaad” policy which is rooted in most Indians.

: “The whole point of jugaad is that it is no big deal. Any culture can assemble scrap and make a bad car. Any culture can put a door on a clay pot and call it a fridge. The existence of jugaad is merely the evidence that the circumstances of a society are so bad that it’s smart people are doing what smart people in other civilisations do not have to do. There is an argument that such humble innovations can solve problems no one else but the poor want to solve. But then India holds enduring proof that giant capitalistic market forces that throw up accidental solutions are more beneficial to the poor than jugaad, or humble altruistic research. For instance, Media Lab Asia, the pious short-lived collaboration between MIT Media Lab and the Indian government, worked on a range of technology to improve the lives of the poor. For nearly 10 years, I followed the work of researchers on the cheap computer, cheap phone and also on proto-artificial Intelligence that will translate languages. In the end, the problems were solved by BlackBerry, Apple and Google, giant corporations that thought big and believed in having extravagant budgets for innovation. That is why the real jugaad is not Jugaad; it is Tesla” Excerpt by Manu Joseph for Mint (https://www.livemint.com/Leisure/2c3sntdHfJ8Py2tWxEqgcN/Jugaad-Indias-most-overrated-idea.html)

: Uncultured – Mocking these festivals in not my intent. That is not the uncultured aspect. A plea to make it right before its lost forever is what I wish to achieve. To accept something as wrong, the first step needed to figure out a way to make it right. Denial is what the cultured class is comfortable in. Therefore the uncultured me finds amusement in mocking these misplaced ideals amongst the cultured clan.