If Vande be the food of bhakti, ride on… Shakespeare and Ghālib pow wow Part I

 

The Vande Bharat trains are in the news all the time. And why not, when a train gets adopted by the Prime Minister as a mascot of development, almost like a juju to influence the inspirational India to give a big thumbs up for election 2024? But the news is a bouquet of the good, the bad, the ugly, the comical and the bizarre. Sample these:

 

We heard that the passengers of Bhopal-New Delhi Vande Bharat Express performed yoga  to mark the 9th International Yoga Day. Do recall the strange incident in Kerala when a man shut himself inside Vande Bharat Express washroom for hours and had to be brought out by force or another one about a man who got on the train merely to relieve himself but had to travel a long distance as the train had meanwhile started, locking him in. Add to that the woes of the lady, who, the media would have us believe, was robbed because she had a ticket to ride the Secunderabad Vande Bharat. The coup de grâce of this barrage of news was the one about this guy who boarded the Tirupati Vande Bharat ticketless and could not resist the urge to smoke in the toilet, activating the alarm and aerosol sprinklers. Unable to collate and process these snippets of news, I was perplexed and naturally turned to the sagacious ones. I eavesdropped on an animated highbrow pow wow on the issue between the two of the most-scholarly, my great-uncle Shakespeare and the youngest uncle Ghālib. The dialogue that ensued was absolutely enlightening and brought out many a pearl of esoteric wisdom and I now reproduce verbatim some extracts, awash with the elixir of human ontology and practical discernment:

 

Shakespeare: My dear Gaulib, did we not have a tête-à-tête, examining the whole issue of men peeing in aircrafts? I had observed then and I reiterate, unlike the indecisive Hamlet, to pee or not to pee is never the question and pee one has to off and on. But where? You see, the act of peeing is a private matter and so this man, caught in the exigency to relieve himself on the Bhopal platform, proceeded to go to the nearest washroom which was in the Vande Bharat train standing there. Can you blame him? You see, even kings, let alone mere mortals, are not immune to the call of nature, like King Henry in Henry V, “...the King is but a man…The element shows to him as it doth to me. All his senses have but human conditions. His ceremonies laid by, in his nakedness he appears but a man”.

 

Why are Mr. Moody and you Indians so ga ga over Vande Bharat trains. A train ran on rails for the first time in England, and indeed the world, when I was 237-year-old. Today, when I am 438-year young, you have your first modern train although we laid the tracks for you when I was 278-year-old. You will do well to remember Biron’s word from Love’s labour’s Lost, "Small have continual plodders ever won Save base authority from others' books", conveying that dullards never learnt much, not even the basics. Whatever, this incident is a downer for Vande Bharat, the dream train, a big dampener for those who expected an elevating ‘peepee’ experience in a train, reminding one of Helena in As You Like IT, “…Oft expectation fails, and most oft there where most it promises...”. Don’t you think the Vande Bharat trains should be more considerate towards the resurgent Indian peers, I mean pee-ers, instead of closing their doors on them and emulate your airlines which afford passengers peeing on co-passengers?

 

Ghālib: Arre bhaiya, Billee Barad (Oh my brother Billy the bard), you have missed the crux. The train in question is really a gem, so is its well-appointed washrooms, so much that this pee-er was lost in the experience and forgot why he went in.

 

Be-ḳhudī be-sabab nahīñ Ghālib

kuchh to hai jis kī parda-dārī hai

(Be-ḳhudī: being beside one's self, be-sabab: without reason, parda-dārī: secrecy, covering with a veil. This state of senselessness is not without a reason as there is something that is so divinely covert.)

 

Entering this toilet unfolds a mystique and so the good man was uplifted to another world and when he came by his bearings, the train had mercilessly started and locked its doors automatically. This pee-er was advised to use the ‘talk back’ feature of the train to ask the driver to stop, albeit at the risk of paying a fine, but a self-respecting man that he is, he let it be and backed off.

 

Gusl-KHaane meñ bhī vo āzāda o ḳhud-bīñ haiñ ki ham

ulTe phir aa.e dar-e-Vande agar vā na huā

(Gusl-KHaane: Bathroom, āzāda o ḳhud-bīñ: liberated, proud, dar-e-Vande: door of Vande Bharat train, vā: open. Even in matters of bathrooms, he conducts himself with such pride that if he does not find the door of train in which the washroom existed kept open for him, he  would not suffer the indignity of trying to get it opened but simply turn around and stay.)

 

Shakespeare: A toiletesque mystique, indeed, my dervish friend! We in England also had chamber pots built into stools with ornaments and spangles to derive optical pleasure while doing your thing. The conjury of the masked vessel where secrets are disposed as nature calls! But why so much ado about nothing and or in today’s language, all this song and dance? Heed the redoubtable Lady Macbeth as she has wisely advised in Hamlet, "...a little water clears us of this deed...".

 

Ghālib: Tu abhi bachcha hai, mere pyaare Shakku, bandar kya jaane adrak ka swaad (You are a child, my dear Shakku, which monkey did ever know the taste of ginger?). Let me quote your own Humlate speaking to Hoorashio, “There are more things in heaven, earth and Vande Bharat than are dreamt of in your fisaddi angrez falsafaa(backward English philosophy)”.

 

My birādar (brother), refrain from decrying Vande Bharat as you are overcome by your evident envy. This train is so magical that anyone with its ticket is presumed to be rolling in the stuff and so this lady was robbed at Secunderabad.

 

The situation was piquant but, ironically, I must adapt one of the most famous ash.ār wrongly attributed to me, which was actually penned by Bazm Akbarabadi:

 

Ik sair ki tamannā aur ik vande ka ticket

ba.ad lutne ke mire ghar se ye sāmāñ niklā

(Sair: excursion, tamannā: desire, ba.ad lutne: after being robbed, sāmāñ: goods, provisions. An unfulfilled desire to travel and a ticket of Vande Bharat is all that was left with me after I was robbed.)

 

Shakespeare: I now see it my dear Glibbybag. Tweaking what Orsino says in my play Twelfth Night, let me proclaim, “If Vande be the food of (your) bhakti, ride on…”

 

(The tête-à-tête continued to cover the other news, but I will bring it to you in Part II in a couple of days...)