Aeschylus. Mephistopheles

I am burning the midnight oil. It is just a lark beyond 12 am and we have all just ushered in New Year 2022, and this is how I am choosing to begin the next 365 days, sitting and staring at my laptop screen and typing away. What else can I do? All around me, idiots are bursting fire-crackers and Sivakasi rockets which are whining and whistling into our already dangerously-polluted skies and stratosphere. All we can hope is that the next few months do not make us revisit Years 2020 and 2021. Why do I say that? Perhaps because we, as a people and society, have simply lost patience – we have seemingly given up and just cannot take anymore of lockdowns and rules; we now give a damn to basic sensibilities and civic responsibilities.

Why am I bringing in Aeschylus and Mephistopheles into a brand-new year, you ask? Well, for one, they were Greek, and that is the in-thing now for the last nearly two years, as we use all their alphabets to describe a pandemic and scourge that refuses to go away. Then again, the historical genres of these two gentlemen have a startling resemblance to what the world is witnessing today.

Aeschylus was the first of classical Athens' great dramatists; he raised the emerging art of tragedy to new and near-insane heights of poetry and theatrical power. Despite all his proclivity though, only seven tragedies attributed to him have survived; 'The Persians', 'Seven Against Thebes', 'The Suppliants', the trilogy known as 'The Oresteia' (three tragedies 'Agamemnon', 'The Libation Bearers' and 'The Eumenides'), and 'Prometheus Bound' (though the authorship of this last one is disputed). Mephistopheles, you ask? In a nutshell, he was all but carnivorous in his maliciousness, buying and selling human souls for a living. All in all, the two were not very optimistic or bright-future promising blokes. Thus it is that over the rest of this article, I shall stymie you a bit on why I am reminded of them in this New Year and our brand-new India.

My yearly roundup

Over the last week, I have read in newspapers and watched on TV many year-end and new year-beckoning roundups, a summation of what the year gone by was like. This then is my own different take, all in yesteryear's Eastman color, on what was another miserable year, quite a-brim with tragedy, hate and targeted malice. Sadly, Year 2021 followed in the footsteps of Year 2020, forcing you and I to live through a soul-scratching (or was it soul-less?) year. Let me recap for a bit and present you with my roundup of Year 2021, one that needled and rankled me as much as it did a billion others in my country and over seven billion worldwide.

A year of tragedy was Year 2021, though we thought it would bring hope and succor, especially with the arrival of a vaccine and some semblance of erection (resurrection?) in India's fast-receding GDP. But no, we were stabbed in the back. While we managed over a billion doses of vaccines, our GDP took a severe hit, yet again, a dive that now sees us battle 14.23-per cent wholesale inflation, unseen in over 40 years. The economic reforms of 1991 gave us direction and put our country on the world map as one of the fastest-growing economies. Remember, we were the second-largest emerging economy globally till 2011.

Today, truth be told, we are a barely-surviving economy. Don't blame this on the pandemic, which has made but a dent in our receding GDP and is nowhere near being the real culprit, as I have stated before. Well before the novel Coronavirus became an intrinsic part of our life, we were already in economic doldrums, even as we were buying dual 'India One' aircraft and cavalcades of cars for our leaders, while every other Indian lady turned her LPG cylinder into a place where we hang our clothes out to dry, much as most affluent did to their treadmills.

Miseries galore

The year was rife and raft with things that went horribly wrong. The impact of a poorly thought-out demonetization and GST implementation stalked us, even years after their announcement and implementation, as did the unforgiving protests by un-assuaging farmers, bankers and others affected by the blind economic overhaul that led to this chaos. The powers-that-be were turmeric, while the actual on-ground feeling was 'lal mirch', vitriol and acid. Sentimental bullets were let fly and they impacted, leading to anarchy, inwardly decimating India and its brotherly history. We let loose and cut loose.

So much so, that we started driving differently. While most of still affluent India went shopping for SUVs and MUVs, some creative others took a drive through and over people (all for sport, mind you!). That was the Lakhimpur Khiri incident. Sometime before that, Rakesh Tikait shed tears and became historical. As a nation, we watched, gawked, reacted and erupted. We still have Mahatma Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi within us. As were people like General Vipin Rawat, our Chief of Defence Forces, lost last year in a helicopter crash… My friendly neighborhood media idiots chose to take the 'conspiracy' route, but were soon trashed, thankfully, as they should have been. One esteemed journalist even called him by a different name altogether, because he was so drunk while still on live television that he didn't know what he was saying. To give this fool his due, he later apologized, claiming that he had acute knee pain due and was on pain-killers, meds that led his mind go astray. Indeed! Year 2021 was fateful indeed.

Losing to Pakistan

A column that starts with Aeschylus and Mephistopheles has to delve deep and be relevant, to pay heed to historical virtues, right? Nope. That's because In Year 2021, India lost to Pakistan in the World Cup opener. Mohammad Shami was all but vandalized. And why not, he is a Muslim! Indian cricket captain Virat Kohli stood up for him on social media. Suddenly, Virat's wife and nine-month-old daughter had to be provided police protection after death threats against them. Anyway, Virat, Ajinkya Rahane and Cheteshwar Pujara have been out of form for a while and deserve treatment. What treatment? India-shtyle…

Should we even remember the second wave that impaled us in April and May of last year? Or talk of the election rallies in West Bengal and elsewhere that spiked cases (forget the Kumbh Mela and the hundreds taking 'dubkis' in our sacred rivers, puffing away at many things not allowed, sporting red 'tikkas' on their blessed foreheads and claiming to be divine, perhaps because their 'chillums' were full and blessed?)

I do not know the answer and am quite powerless. What I do know is that innocent civilians died because of a mistaken encounter in Nagaland. Inflation has reached levels that are confounding. Our leaders are quite shameless, a.k.a. not wearing masks while advising us to do so, even as they admonish us if we don't. And sometimes, our leaders even wave while on metro trains, especially when they are passing through uninhabited places.

To commemorate Aeschylus and Mephistopheles, the heroes of this column, let's cite some possible upcoming tragedies, mostly through election rallies in Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Manipur, Goa and Uttarakhand. Eerily, these will be similar to what happened last year and led to the Second Wave. Let's not forget the landslides in Uttarakhand and the flash-floods in Himachal Pradesh; or the explosion of Omicron. In the UK, US, Europe and South Africa, where it began (or was reported first) – and in India…

Enough! Enough bad things… Let's be happy in the New Year. Good news. India beat South Africa at the Centurion, the only Asian team to do so, ever. That bodes well for the year we have entered, even though this is but just a little blip. May the Lord (and the powers that are) bless India, the world and you and I. We certainly need some good news, cheer and mental vitality.

The author is a communications consultant and clinical analyst. Views expressed are personal. narayanrajeev2006@gmail.com