What good’s the freedom to express if not exercised in its joyous excess!
Amnesty India and its former head Aakar Patel (in picture) have been accused of FCRA violations. Pic/Twitter
As ‘masterstrokes’ go, my favourite from journalist Aakar Patel is the tabloid-sized headline in mid-day in October 2004, that went, “Sonia Wins”: listing a series of events following the victory of a Congress-led alliance, against BJP-Sena, in Maharashtra elections. Only the results weren’t in yet. They’d be the next morning, when the paper had already been put to bed.
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Corner of both the front and back-page read: “Paper palto. Result badlo.” Back-page enumerated opposite options, with the headline: “Sena Wins!” Street vendors could decide the facing page, depending on the actual result. I may have seen something like this in the movie-musical Chicago (2002).
It was decidedly editor Patel’s idea. Among similarly inspired others, such as blasting The Times of India, across mid-day’s cover, for demeaning Mumbai’s suburban residents—based on an innocuous Shobhaa De column in a neighbourhood supplement, where she called them “burbies”.
This story I worked on. Like other ‘atrangi’ ideas—such as playing a fictional relationship coach, a globally travelled, “Dear Diana”, who’ll fix all your love bugs! Patel wrote a daily storyboard of TV serial-type romantic issues. Or chasing Bollywood superstar stories and their ‘lafdas’, based on blurry images of a fight, even a kiss. Pixelated pix in. Story must follow. To publish a fresh version of events later, he could run the images again.
Tabloid editor Patel, “with verve and bravery in equal measure” that I knew at this time—“who loved nothing better to do than a joyous dance in a hail of criticism” (I’m quoting Moureen Dowd on The New Yorker’s James Bellows)—was also surrounded by bhakts, swearing by his word, yearning for his approval, ever-ready to please.
Which is strange. Because he could be an intimidating presence, for his short attention span—say whatever you gotta, in 30 seconds flat (that was my rule). Also that he wouldn’t suffer for a sec, if he considered you a fool (no you don’t wanna be that guy).
Patel barely wrote in the paper. Barring unsigned diary entries here and there, pontificating on TV commentator Mandira Bedi’s noodle straps, purple haze over Roger Waters’s concert, or madness of the movie Maqbool. Maybe he felt the editor mustn’t overbearingly come between the paper and reader. He seemed too playful to be polemical.
Writer Patel that followed, a few years later, is/was India’s best columnist. Defined in my books as per the risk one takes with perspective/opinion. But more so, the eclectic range of areas you express on—inevitably revealing something new, with a gift of observation to state outside the obvious still.
College dropout Patel is an astounding autodidact—a self-taught scholar, of both the seemingly high and lowbrow. A podcaster I heard rightly described his writing as “suppressing a smile.” It’s firstly unadorned by pretentious elegance, or needless rhetoric, getting straight to the frickin’ point.
His top contribution as mainstream columnist might well be to repeatedly examine individuals, let alone communities, through the lens of caste traits. It is an apt way to figure Indians. That’s what makes us unique. Especially the supposedly deracinated cosmopolitans—since, you’ll notice, caste remains the biggest blind spot there.
Also, few, if any Indian, English language columnist, has as sufficiently employed his freedom of expression to take unpopular stands, with take-down pieces on so many holy men—from Swami Vivekananda, to mercenarial history of Indian Army, India’s South>North, or tearing apart Sachin Tendulkar, alongside Bollywood’s Khans.
What good is the right to free speech, if not exercised in its joyous excess? An answer to a column is a column still. One of his take-downs I recall was dedicated to Twitter, concluding why must one write, where there is no money?
I think he spoke too soon. Among the similarly inclined, Patel 3.0 on Twitter is what brought him instant social-media fame—shit-posting sometimes in an adorably desi pidgin, broken English basically, primarily to communicate disgust at a culture that promotes/orchestrates communal hate online, and otherwise.
Sarcasm apart, this is activist Patel. He’s associated with the Nobel-laureate Amnesty International, allowing him a presence/voice that carries even greater weight/reach/consequence. You could argue that’s also a notional protective cover, which doesn’t belong to most citizens, who we keep exhorting to “say something”. They best express through their vote. You hope that’s an informed and fair one. I know this is a debatable point. We can debate it forever.
What’s beyond debate, across history though, is the power of ordinary citizens, named civil society as a collective, to raise individual voices, often at the cost of facing direct heat from their governments. The dumbest diagnosis is to call the state that retaliates thus as suffering from some kinda desperation.
Think it’s a sign of certain ruling politicians as so non-complacent that even with electoral victories and super-powers hence, they miss no opportunity to find and scare any opposing voice, big or small, through carrots but mostly stick, setting an example for potential others.
The paranoid win/survive, sure. But persistence is all that the less-powerful have, anyway. Besides raids on Amnesty, Patel, top Twitter-critic of the current government, has twice been disallowed from leaving the country from the airport. He still says what he likes. But he must stay within India, where the government is. This is pure, mutual love. What else!
Mayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass culture. He tweets @mayankw14
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The views expressed in this column are the individual’s and don’t represent those of the paper.
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