By Nebil Nizar
The year 2004 witnessed many dramatic scenes and is still etched in my memory mainly for the exit poll predictions which took a beating and the renaissance of the Congress party in India, trouncing the BJP-led NDA, which declared a premature election eyeing an easy win. The statistics, arithmetic geniuses put their hands on head in complete shock and asked themselves, how, why?
Cut to 2014. A friend of mine, Waseem,
a PhD scholar at the prestigious Jawaharlal Nehru University said to me
about a barber at K.C Center,
located inside their campus, who is well informed on Indian politics. I decided
to check out for myself and met him.
As he went on with his ‘mission’ with comb and scissors, I tried to
engage him in a conversation. He asked me what was special about 1966. I passed
his ‘entrance test’, and he now opened his treasure house of knowledge.
Next five to ten minutes, Shankar Das, a hairdresser, was vocal about the West
Bengal politics. My first mission ended on reservations about his analysis.
Two weeks later, when I was glancing through that week’s major periodicals, what all said by Shankar Das was on black
and white. My admiration for the man peaked. I called on him once again
and told him what I read on paper. He smiled, and delivered a brief lecture on
National politics. His also liked to take questions and answered them
logically.
Rajdeep Sardesai in his latest book 2014: The elections that changed
India says about his encounter with a key Team Rahul Gandhi member. CNN IBN’s
editor was bombarded with the abysmal statistics of a state where election was
in the pipeline. Finally when results were out, Congress was mopped off. Before
parting, I asked Shankar how he made political observations correctly. He
smiled and civilly said: I am
aware of the ground reality.
(Originally published at http://madtyapost.com/better-than-arithmetic-lions/ )
The pulse of the common man is the pulse of India.Your political analyst from JNU is to be encouraged to advise the so-called political Pundits.A good post.Keep it up.
ReplyDeleteYou are absolutely right. The pulse of the common man is the pulse of India. Shankar Das from J.N.U. is little man's answer to the 'intellectual arrogance' displayed by the self 'proclaimed' political pundits.
DeleteThanks a lot. Keep reading.
Regards,
Nebil
Really happy to read a well written thought provoking article. This write up gave me an opportunity to see in ‘real life’ what Sreenivasan created on ‘silver screen’. Remembering actor Augustine in ‘Chindavishtaya Shyama’ scripted and directed by Sreenivasan. T Damodaran’s ‘Barber Chellappan’ played by Jagathy Sreekumar in ‘Anaval mothiram’ also comes to my mind. Both depicted the role of barber. When the former discussed topics such as UNO, UNSC; the latter dealt with the then contemporary world politics, with their customers. I now understand that such a class didn’t extinct from the world. We always ignore the local talent. Crave for knowledge is there inside every human being. Academic degree is not the yardstick.
ReplyDeleteI hope that the talent author, Nebil, will come up with these kinds of interesting articles in the future. I wish him all the best bottom of my heart.
Regards,
Reju
Films of T Damodaran and Sreenivasan were always a reflection of the society. Today also such characters may be found in our villages and towns, but we seldom bother to find them. In the yesteryears, opinions were formed after discussions in tea and barber shops. Now it is all 'noise' in the news studios. We need to go back to our roots.
DeleteThanks a lot for the appreciation. Keep reading.
Regards,
Nebil
Politics of India runs in mystery ways. It's all based on unbiased words where people fall into there nests.
ReplyDelete