November 5, 2015.

At street corners, school girls and boys in fancy dress, were waiting the morn for school buses; school girls and boys from the Link Road Dahisar slums, in drabs, were trudging to the municipal school on Eksar Road. A Chiyu-size lady of Rustomjee School in Gandhi dress with grandpa's walking stick and her father at the Shanti Ashram turning...unsure whether Gandhi is a risky, calling card in today's near-shut-India...for me Gandhi is Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi not Mahatma Gandhi.Chiyu-sized girl stepped into the bus and me into a walk. Me lives. Me walks. Living in jitters. Walkers return Hari Oms and Jay Shree Rams for Good Mornings. There is Hindutva India; there is still a plural India; Hindutva India is violent, bullets and lynchs; plural India of Dr. Raghuram Rajan, Shah Rukh Khan, Arundhati Roy ... pleads for chairs at talking tables.. there is Anupam Kher upset over Hindus, Kashmiri Pandits, driven out of Kashmir by Muslims; me goes with him; that act of driving Kashmiri Pandits was cruel; as tearing down the Babri Masjid. For Babri, Hindus should say Sorry to Muslims; Muslims return the Sorry for Kashmiri Pandits; a hug and a Khuda Hafeez. Me can understand the twins; but not a third with names like Amitabh Bachchan and Sachin Tendulkar. They are neither this nor that; Amitabh has rarely spoken on anything except while hosting Kaun Banega Crorepati; or when yelling in Deewar and Zanzeer; a non-commercial film, he has not serenaded; his grim wife Jaya is a Rajya Sabha MP; son and daughter-in-law are into films, though flops; every politician of every shade is a family friend; all bases covered. Sachin Tendulkar is of the same imprint; in recent times has adopted a village in Andhra Pradesh; never wrote or spoke a quarrel; me did not go beyond 15 pages of Sachin Tendulkar: Playing it my way. Sachin became a Rajya Sabha MP in Sonia times. Is it the money way for Amitabh and Sachin; maybe, the two are playing their ways. 'Unfair' me friend says. Not being anything, neither a Karna nor an Abhimanyu; neither a Rama nor a Krishna; a phot-op living in Juhu and Bandra; a live-in with cash; akin to tracking the paramatman by our saints with zilch concern for the living; Buddha and Brahma, a selfishness; isn't it a lonely existence, Amitabh and Sachin. To be fair, Gandhi never sat down, stood up. In another 50 years where and what will be Shreya and Chiyu; and the many, many school girls and boys me meets every morning, me Happy Morning hours. Amen.