Awarded, Rewarded and Thoroughly Insulted: Ghālib & Shakespeare on Dais to Disgrace

 

There are many like me. Folks with some half-plucked feathers in the cap, who periodically get invited to be both honoured and humiliated at the same time. This blog is my humble service to that fraternity of 'garlanded casualties: glitter outside, slap inside' so that they can smell the insult like stale samosas behind the garland. 

After all, even Shakespeare’s Angelo in Measure for Measure knew this chimera of honours and awards, saying, “...Most dangerous Is that temptation that doth goad us on To sin in loving virtue...”.

This menace peaks around Engineers’ Day, our annual silly season when engineers like me are dragged out of mothballs and decorated like Diwali lanterns, only to discover the fuse is still attached. A caveat though, some organizations do honour you with dignity, by Central Cabinet Ministers, et alia, with the whole ceremonial ecosystem: officials, aides, photographers, protocol, paraphernalia, and general pomp, but let’s exclude those rare gems. What follows is the slapstick side of the saga with ‘to-do and not-to-do list’.

Chachā (uncle) Ghālib knew about it:

Ham ko ma.alūm hai jannat kī haqīqat lekin 

dil ke ḳhush rakhne ko Ghālib ye ḳhayāl achchhā hai

(ma.alūm: aware, jannat: paradise, haqiqat: reality, ḳhayāl: thought. We are well aware of the truth about paradise but the thought is good to keep our hearts happy.)

The first fiasco: a big-shot city organization summoned me to be honoured at a gala dinner. I accepted, dressed sharp, collected my trophy from a State Cabinet Minister, and felt almost radiant—till I brushed shoulders with the next awardee: a scamster so greasy he could slip through a sieve. Indeed, Mr. Escalus, “...Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall...”. My halo collapsed faster than a sandcastle in a Mumbai monsoon. Moral: before accepting any award, ask who else is lurking on the guest list.

A sweet thing turning sour? Ask the Bard who covered it in Sonnet 94, “...For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds; Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.”

Next one: This time the organizers reassured me that I would share the dais with a Padma Shri awardee. That sounded respectable. All was well—till that same scamster was announced, and I, cornered by etiquette, had to grin while handing him his award. Lesson two: don’t just ask for the list—ask for the final list, sworn, notarized, stamped, and astrologically matched.

Hypercorrecting the master’s couplet a bit, having RSVP’d for a photo-op pageant that fizzled out, and so, I must ask for a lowdown from the organizers repeatedly:

Thī ḳhabar garm ki Ghālib ko mileñge tamGe

dekhne ham bhī ga.e the pa tamāshā na huā

(ḳhabar: news, tamGe: medals, royal grants, tamāshā: spectacle. There was promise of a great honour and we too went to witness the spectacle but it was a damp squib.)

Bahrā huuñ maiñ to chāhiye duunā ho iltifāt

suntā nahīñ huuñ baat mukarrar kahe baġhair

(iltifāt: kindness, mukarrar: repeated. I am hard of hearing so unless you shower kindness repeatedly, I do not listen.)

I grew wiser and pickier. One event seemed safe: only two fellow awardees, both distinguished. I asked for and got a vehicle to pick me up. But midway through my speech, the Chief Guest arrived—the same Minister, again, apparently on a lifetime contract to preside over all second-rate functions in the city. Instantly, my voice was drowned by a thunderous welcome song and an LED screen that screamed his face. I was politely evicted with all the tenderness usually reserved for stray dogs after the Supreme Court judgment. So, there I was, grandly evicted, like Antigonus chased offstage by a bear in the Bard’s The Winter’s Tale. After sulking in the waiting area, I requested to leave. A car was provided—shared, after seventy minutes of waiting. Pro tip: drive your own car, so at least your retreat is dignified. 

Even as I was getting packed off, I had the nightmarish delusions of the Lear himself shouting, “...Out, varlet from my sight”, even as the Chachā mocked me:

Nikalnā ḳhuld se aadam kā sunte aa.e haiñ lekin

bahut be-ābrū ho kar tire kūche se ham nikle

(ḳhuld: paradise, eternity, aadam: Adam, be-ābrū: disgraced, kūche: lane. We have heard of Adam's shame at being bunged out of the garden of Eden but my exit from their alleyway surpasses it in shame.)

And then there was that Engineers’ Day carnival where I was proudly listed as the 113th awardee, somewhere between a man whose civil engineering achievement was convincing the local corporator to remove one stubborn coconut shell from his street drain and another who fixed a society gate latch. When my citation came up, the anchor triumphantly announced my greatest achievement: being the first passenger on the inaugural Vande Bharat Express while I half expected them to say my crowning feat was inventing the wheel. Reader, I nearly fossilized while standing in that Jurassic-length queue. Always proofread your citation—or be ready to live with a weird résumé.

I remembered the uncle once again, ruefully, tweaking his couplet once again,

KhaḌe haiñ vahāñ jahāñ se ham ko bhī

kuchh hamārī ḳhabar nahīñ aatī

(I’m standing at a place from where even my own status update fails to reach me.)

And the crowning absurdity: this Engineers’ Day, a newspaper did a special feature, wrote glowing words about me and Train 18/Vande Bharat, and even carried a photo. Except… it wasn’t me. It was some bald stranger, no beard, looking like he had escaped from a shaving cream commercial. I groaned, wishing they had at least used Clint Eastwood’s photo. A correction was issued the next day, but not before Mr. Prakash Tendulkar, a long-time friend from the US, sent me an FBI “Most Wanted” notice—my name under the bald impostor’s face. From “Engineer of Vande Bharat” to “Global Fugitive,” all in 24 hours!

Much ado about nothing. Warned again by the Bard’s Lear against getting trapped in honours and awards, “...O, that way madness lies. Let me shun that. No more of that”, I have become a trifle philosophical too.

Na thā kuchh to ḳhudā thā kuchh na hotā to ḳhudā hotā

Duboyā mujh ko in izzatoñ ne na hotā ye to kyā hotā

(God was present when it was all void, God would still be there if it would all be nothing. These honours have drowned me, what would it be if they did not exist?)

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PS: The saga goes on, my friends. Since I wrote this, events have occurred that conclusively prove that all the so-called lessons I so earnestly enumerated have done absolutely nothing to prevent my being humiliated—royally and repeatedly. There were more such episodes, but I will flag just two, lest this turn into a boxed set.

At a recent festival, I was invited to speak on the cultural ethos of my city, along with three other panelists, including a nawab himself—real, titled, and palpably untransferable. The moderator was a good friend: a fine lawyer cum shāʿir (poet). And because he is the former (not because he is the latter), he is admirably open to manipulation. The Bard, through Volumnia in Coriolanus, tells us that “Action is eloquence…”, and here the action required was conspiratorial collaboration in advance to obviate any unpleasant surprise. This collaboration was agreed to and prepared with military precision. Having cut short another engagement, I reached the venue in good time and then waited. And waited. Three hours past the scheduled time, an ever-expanding assortment of versifiers, singers, crooners, minstrels, semi-minstrels, and possibly a wandering dafli-vadak (player of a hand drum) kept being invited to the stage, but not us. At some point, dignity prevailed over optimism, and we beat a hasty and inglorious retreat. Lesson this time: never arrive on time for events; it only extends your sentence.

In a later episode, I was invited to Delhi to speak at a grand jamboree of educationists. A Business Class ticket was duly sent, its comfort somewhat negated by the driver at the airport who waited for me at Departures instead of Arrivals. Possibly a philosopher, he may have believed that leaving before arriving is the correct way to navigate existence, because no matter where you go, there you are. At the venue, I had just begun waxing eloquent in my allotted twenty minutes when, midway, a slip was indiscreetly passed to me. It said, simply: “Stop it.” I grimaced and obeyed. I sulked briefly, but soon resigned to the non-existent maxim that “The universe conspires to treat an idiot’s valour with indiscretion”. After all, the next speaker, the star attraction, had arrived ahead of schedule. And indeed, he was a star; his speech was electrifying, and the audience crackled accordingly.

ham kahāñ ke daanā the kis hunar meñ yaktā the
be-sabab to nahīñ huā dushman āsmāñ apnā
(I was never wise in any way, nor uniquely gifted; not without reason has the heavens declared me their enemy.)

Yes, I continue to learn, an immodest man, with so very much to be modest about.

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