Hum intezar karenge tera qayamat tak Khuda kare ki qayamat ho aur tu aaye (I will wait for you till doomsday comes, May God wish for doomsday and hasten your arrival)
Urdu poet and lyricist Majrooh Sultanpuri must have longed for doomsday for sure. But who knows if his beloved ever arrived! If doomsday did come, would the poet have lived to see another day?
Former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, too, probably had a foreboding. Why else would she have got a time capsule buried in Red Fort in Delhi on August 15, 1973. The 'history' contained in that pot became the talk of the town.
It is 2012 and everyone is talking about doomsday all over again. What if the world does indeed come to an end this year? What would we, as a nation, want to pass on for posterity – if there is one – to remember us by?
Anand Prakash and Sanjay Srivastava draw up a bucket list of ten things/concepts/symbols that define the India of 2012, things that would necessarily make the cut if another time-capsule were to be lowered into the bowels of the earth.
Lathi
For the rest of the world, the pen might be mightier than the sword. But in the Indian context, nothing can be stronger than the lathi. Via Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, the wooden staff became a totem of our freedom struggle. From political firebrands battling for a cause to men in uniform staving off trouble to schoolmasters waving a firm hand at students, they have all wielded the lathi to great effect.
Jalebi
The juicy, crispy, yummy sweetmeat with many a delightful twist is an integral part of Indian street food. It not only satiates our collective proverbial sweet tooth, it serves as a great leveller in a mind-bogglingly diverse country, binding the rich and the poor, the south and the north, and the high and the low. Jai ho, jalebi!
Cuss words
Want to get something done in a rush? Hurl a choice gaali and see the kamaal unfold! In a land blessed with a multiplicity of languages and dialects, these colourful expletives that are used to soften up friends and enemies, and everyone else in between, emit just the right sound waves to dispel all prospective opposition. No blow is too low when a swear word is unleashed with intent and no effect that it has is too surprising! We are like this only.
Roti
The spherical, handmade wheat-bread makes the world go round in this part of the globe. In India, when we pray for our daily bread, it is roti that we always mean. The nation has its share of rice eaters no doubt, but can the roti ever be dislodged from our dietary spread, no matter which part of the country we live in? Roti-boti, rozi-roti and aatey-dal ka bhaav are inseparable from our upcountry patois. The parantha is, clearly, a neglected and limited species.
Uparwala
We probably hate the idea, but we are undeniably a land of snake charmers. India is home to a million superstitions and rituals. Every joy has a divine reason. And every woe is caused by God's wrath. Births, deaths, floods, droughts, lightning, thunder, happiness, sorrow, madness, delirium – everything is blamed on uparwale ki marzi (God's will). Thousands may die of snake bites every year in this country, but millions turn out every Nag Panchami day to celebrate the power of the serpents. Faith always wins even if life doesn't.
Song and dance
If literature is society’s mirror, cinema is its lens. But what this lens usually captures is a larger-than-life reality that demands a complete suspension of disbelief. Indian popular cinema peddles dreams and sugar-coated lies, but we love to lap it all up. Fashion, passion and tashan are the three pillars on which these yarns stand and whirl: India wouldn't be half as interesting a place without its 24-frames-a-second song and dance extravaganzas.
Paan
This is probably the only widely consumed edible item in the country – and the world – that is meant for nothing else but spitting out. The betel leaf juice is believed to activate the digestive system after a hearty meal, but this activity has defaced the innards of many of our monuments and other public edifices? But do we ever see red? A vital part of India's mass culture, we live with it in absolute harmony.
Joint family
The storyteller grandparents have become stories themselves. The joint family was supposed to be a specialty of this country. Grandparents, parents and children used to live under one roof. The oldest member used to be the head of the family. Call it the need of the hour or a modern-day compulsion, one can't live in a joint family today even if one wants to. Joint families are a thing of the past. Bring on the time capsule!
Kamasutra
The timeless text that turned carnality into an art is India's cultural meal ticket in the West. Nothing sells like sex. In a country where moral policemen frequently dismiss any overt display of sexuality as a Western aberration, the Kamasutra, a celebration of sexual adventurism, remains the essential riposte to all the killjoys who want to reduce India to a sexless land where you would do 'it' only to procreate and nothing else. Thank God for Vatsyayan!
Neta
Our political leaders are a breed so apart that they could put Marie Antoinette to shame. They are the butt of constant mass ridicule but they continue regardless, powered by the ballot. More than 60 years after Independence, their greed and incompetence have ensured that India languishes at the bottom of the human development index. Time was when the neta would hide under a Gandhi topi. Today, he has discarded all vestiges of purity. So, why would we want anybody to remember them? Simple. So that history isn't repeated!
