Annie Zaidi's meretricious Bread, Cement, Cactus

Annie Zaidi's book 'Bread, Cement, Cactus'- a somewhat thin and facile book length expansion of a 3000 word prize winning essay on the theme of 'belonging and dislocation'- begins thus-

I needed to see it written in black and white, up on a wall. 

جہاں کوئی اپنا دفن نہ ہوا ہو وہ جگہ اپنی نہیں ہوا کرتی 

Jahan koyi apna dafn na hua ho woh jagah apni nahin hua karti

Zaidi is from an Ashraf Shiah family. Her maternal grandfather was an authority on Shia 'marsia'- elegies to Hazrat Hussein. It is a dream of many Shias to be buried in Najaf or Kerbala. Why? Because  Hazrat Hussain is buried there. He represents the Holy 'family of the cloak' who are truly one's own for representing all that is impeccable that may be loved and desired.

But this does not mean any attachment to this Earth. 'The world is a bridge', Hasan al Busri attributes this saying to Prophet Jesus, 'pass over it. Build no houses on it.'

Your body will be buried somewhere, but not forever. There is Resurrection. This Earth is not ours. We are flowers transplanted from a garden that is not terrestrial.

Zaidi, a journalist of the P. Sainath stripe, reacts to the Urdu line in a manner wholly un-Islamic, indeed un-Indian (the Hindu majority cremate their dead).

Like Sainath her sensibility is deracinated and Western- which can be a very good thing if there is a proper application of mind- but which is counterproductive if done in a glib and thoughtless manner. Passion in a political cause can make for good journalism (which, after all, even at its best is but of its day) but only if the brain too is engaged and there is some 'taza gui' freshness of speech, or 'apoorvata', novelty of conception.

Annie, like Sainath, prefers glib phrase-making of a type which shows that her engagement with Western literature is shallow at best. This is why such people are dismissed as 'presstitutes'- an ugly word reflecting an ugly mind but one which touches on Truth. Zaidi, aiming pathetically at Beauty, avoids Truth in favor of confirming the cartoonish manifestos of the sort of Indian journalist who longs for, not genuine Scoops, but grants and visiting professorships and 'aesthetic affirmative action' prizes.

 Urdu poetry may appear stereotyped and meta-metaphoric. But it is genuinely Islamic. Its Truths are imperative not strategic or political. Zaidi falls far short of her grandfather who served India well. He was in the Indian Information Service. She is part of the Indian Dis-information Service.

Consider the botched lapidary quality of this lucubration-

Travelling from Spanish to English to Urdu with its curlicue graces, that line waited to trip me up in my own language. I found it at a stall selling posters at a literary festival. It’s from Gabriel Garcia Marquez’ One Hundred Years of Solitude: A person does not belong to a place until someone beloved is buried there.

In Marquez's novel, the founder of a settlement decides to move to a better location. But everybody else wants to stay. His wife says 'our son was born here'. 'But no one has died here as yet.' the husband replies- his meaning is that there is no graveyard that has to be maintained, this is not ancestral ground. His wife- perhaps like Lot's spouse in the Bible, obstinately says that, in that case, she will herself die so the place becomes 'ancestral'. But it isn't a good place for human beings to live. After a hundred years, the place is virtually uninhabited. The last child born there has the tail of a pig. Then the curtain falls on its utter abandonment.

Zaidi somehow thinks that to have ancestors buried in the ground somewhere in the vicinity is important for 'belonging'. It isn't. Filial piety requires the upkeep of the family burial plot- but this is much less emphasized in Islam and is wholly absent in Hinduism. Yes, one is linked to one's place of birth. Why? Chances are, or were- when the world felt bigger- it is where you will remain. It is your 'watan' and 'hubb al watan min al Iman' love of your country is part of Faith. But you may emigrate so that your children can have a better life. Where you settle is your new watan. To move from 'dar ul harb' to 'dar ul islam'- where Muslims predominate is commendable. The reverse is deplored. Muslims perform 'Hajj' because 'Hijrat'- separating oneself from where one is born to relocate so as to belong more truly to the Faith Community- is praiseworthy. Your birthplace does not greatly matter. Where you are buried does not great matter. What matters is that you are part of the right 'Caravan'- though all Caravans on this Earthly plane are at best but, as Zaidi's distinguished grandfather, a senior colleague of my father, put it Ghubar-e-Karwan, a caravan of dust.


Zaidi writes-

In north India, where my family is from, a corpse is sometimes referred to as mitti.

No. Man was made from dust and to dust he must return. For this reason the word 'mitti' is a synonym for death. To say 'my dust is calling to me' means you have a premonition of impending death. This may cause you to set off for a pilgrimage spot- perhaps where a Sufi Saint is buried- in the hope that your corpse- which is laash, not mitti-  may be buried in that hallowed ground and thus turn to dust mingled with finer dust- but only till the Resurrection and the final Battle between Good and Evil after which there is another Death and another, ultimate, Resurrection.

Soil. Earth, if you prefer, and when you want to emphasise your relationship with the land, you might declare, ‘Yahaan meri purkhon ki naal garhi hai’, ‘This is where my ancestor’s umbilical cord is buried’.

Umbilical cord refers to birth. Not death. The Ashraf Shiah aspires to be buried in Najaf or Kerbala. The Hindu hopes to die in Benares.  What is done with the umbilical cord does not greatly matter. Where it fell is not necessarily where it was buried or otherwise hygienically disposed off.

I must have come upon this sentence about burying beloveds when I first read Marquez, but it hadn’t leapt off the page then.

Because the meaning in the novel is the opposite of the one she attributes to it. If I came across this line in Urdu, I would immediately think of Kerbala. The sentiment is touching and profound. It is something her grandfather may have found in an old marisya miraculously kept alive on the tongue of the common people. But, for Zaidi, it is something atavistic and 'tribal'- not Universal and Spiritual. Why? Because she is a P.Sainath type who wants to display her bleeding heart by waxing wroth about displaced tribals in the boondocks who have to leave the sources of the ju-ju of their Witch Doctors so as to have a less horrible life.

I hadn’t buried anyone yet. I hadn’t even been inside a graveyard. I hadn’t yet been told that I didn’t belong in my own country, or that I had a smaller right to it.

There it is! The Muslim card. Poor poor Annie! The mean girls are telling her to get lost! This explains her psychic link with the poor poor tribals.

Annie says, growing up in a small town in Rajasthan, she learned to tell different tribes apart- Bhil, Garasia, Rabadi. This is actually a very difficult matter. Still kids can't be expected to know very much. The fact is there is much fluidity between tribes. A bowman (Bhil) may become an agriculturist but so might a pastoralist and vice versa. Occupation is one way of trying to define these tribes. But they are highly mobile over an extensive area. Thus tribal identity is fluid. Furthermore, we are speaking of an Imperial 'shatter zone' or 'Zomia'. At the margin, Tribes are really coalitions negotiating an independent existence in marginal land disputed by established centers of power.

Annie couldn't have been expected to know this as a child. But she later became a journalist. Moreover she could look stuff up on Wikipedia or whatever. But, in that case, how could she play the 'poor Muslim Annie' doing a P.Sainath impersonation amongst the abject tribals who have been trampled upon by the high caste Hindus? The truth is there are Royal or semi-royal families of Bhil or Garasia or Rabadi origin. Some, including the Muslim segment of a tribe, are described as 'Kshatriyas' same as the Great Kings or- indeed- Lord Buddha or the Jain Tirthankars.

Annie returns to the small cement-factory town where her mother had run the Company School- which was English medium. She finds what we expect her to find. The indigenous population has grown a lot but work in the factory is hard to come by. The young feel let down. But why did this happen? The answer is well known to all Indians. Paternalistic Labor laws has vested rents in 'permanent'- i.e. older- workers who don't do any work. The young get hired as temporary contract workers unless they show some hint of education or independent spirit in which case nobody will hire them though, if they are smart, they may be encouraged to take up sub-contracting or to become gangmasters. But, to give them a job is madness. They will agitate till they are permanent and then do no work whatsoever. This particularly true of these 'martial' castes. On the other hand, if they trek a few hundred miles to a place where they are not feared, they will get construction and other such jobs because they are good workers.

I suppose Annie is aiming this book at White Liberals. Fair enough. We should encourage export industries of all types so as to earn hard currency. Indeed, some forty years ago, a gentleman came up to me in the street in Delhi. He demanded to know where I had got my suit. 'In London', I replied proudly, 'Marks and Spencer. Why do you ask?' He was mollified. He explained that he worked for the Trade Ministry. The suit I was wearing was made in India but was 'for export only'. This crushed me. I thought the suit was British. He soothed me by saying that the machinery had come from England, the wool from New Zealand, and since the Indian State had paid the export subsidy, I should congratulate myself on having got 'phoren maal' at a knockdown price thanks to the generosity of the Indian tax payer.

Annie's book, it seems to me, is 'for export only'. But, I am behind the times. India is actually now rich enough to provide a lucrative market for the re-import of such shoddy stuff.

Consider the following typical piece of reportage

The village is entitled to a limestone mining royalty and a small share of cement. The villagers agree, it is substantial money, but they allege that it gets cornered by the panchayat (village council) head. The last man who controlled the council also happened to be a union leader at the cement factory. He also happened to be a Rajput, not Garasia. Nobody would say directly how the funds were used. Ask the factory people, some of the younger men said. Ask, how that man roams about in such an expensive car; how he can build a hotel where, it is rumoured, a cup of tea is going to cost 300 rupees? Ask, who pays for the fuel in his car? I asked a different question: why did that man get elected when this village has a majority of Garasia people? Nobody answered.

This is hilarious. They just told her the guy is Union leader- i.e. a big time gangster. Why is this Muslim lady taunting these poor folk by asking such a question? Maybe she really doesn't know the answer. This is convenient.  Ignorance is the side her bread is buttered on. She is confirming the subaltern can't speak. That's the story Western Liberals want to hear.

My worry is that young Indians will read this book. They will assume the author, a journalist, would have done at least some rudimentary fact checking. But they would be wrong. Consider the following

After a devastating famine at the turn of the last century, a tribal leader called Guru Govindgiri (originally Govinda Gobpalia) had emerged as a voice of resistance, but he was arrested and exiled, and very narrowly escaped the death penalty.

Guruji was an ascetic of Banjara origin belonging to the Bundi Dasnami panth. He was persecuted by the liquor contractors whose revenues were badly affected by his work in spreading sobriety. But Christian missionaries in the region too would get into trouble if they meddled with this source of State Revenue. Guruji's affinity with the Christianity proved to be no defence when it came to the fiscal policy of decadent Princes! The Bhil hero, Dhirji Punja, rallied the common folk to make a stand, in 1913, against the greedy rulers and corrupt officials. Guruji sought the intervention of the British Military but they could not accede to his demands and suggested he disperse his followers in return for which their religious freedoms would be respected. But, by then, their blood was up and it took a British military force to disperse the Bhils and capture the ringleaders. Dhirji Punja was transported while Guruji was sentenced to ten years in jail.

Govindgiri had had a vision for the restoration of an indigenous kingdom – a Bhıl Raj– though he couldn’t quite envision cultural autonomy. He spoke out against forced labour and taxes but also wanted his followers to give up meat and alcohol, which ran counter to Bhıl and Garasiya culture. Other activists, too, were intent on the ‘upliftment’ of tribes and the ‘modernisation’ of their ‘negative’ lifestyle.

 Annie is as dismissive of Guruji, who remains venerated to this day, as Gandhi was of Motilal Tekawat who led the Bhil struggle for lower taxes in the early Twenties. In February 1922, Gandhi wrote in 'Young India' I hear that a gentleman by name Motilal Pancholi hailing from Udaipur claims to be my disciple and to preach temperance and what not among the rustics of the Rajputana States. He is reported to be surrounded by an armed crowd of admirers and establishing his kingdom or some other -dom wherever he goes. He claims too, miraculous powers. He or his admirers are reported to have done some destructive work. I wish that people will once and for all understand that I have no disciples'

Annie writes

Matters reached a head in 1920, with the ‘Akki’ or ‘Eki’ movement being suppressed by local rulers, British troops assisting. In May 1922, between 1,200 and 1,500 tribespeople were killed. Among the villages that were set ablaze was the village of Bhula in Sirohi.

She does not say that Gandhi washed his hands off Tekawat's 'Eki' agitation in February and, lo and behold!, the Brits decided, a couple of months later, to crack down on the Bhils though the Brits had a tradition of being wary and respectful of their martial prowess. But, it had been many decades since bows and arrows could prevail over rifles and machine guns.

Annie is critical of the cement company for which her Mother used to work. Yet, even by her account, they seem to be doing quite a good job. What they own, they acquired lawfully. Moreover, by the looks of things, they are responsible Corporate citizens.

Thus Annies critique turns metaphysical. But she is not a deep thinker.

She mentions a sacred Hindu quotation on the Company's website-

There is (a).. quote from one of the ancient spiritual texts, the Ishvasya Upanishad. It says: ‘find your enjoyment in renunciation, do not covet what belongs to others’. 

What belongs to whom? What, and how much, can be taken from nature? Who pays the costs of what is taken and cannot be returned? Tricky questions.

Indeed. But, these are questions which the law has comprehensive answers for. This does not mean laws can't be improved. But that involves tricky questions of mechanism design- 'Law & Economics'- not journalistic shite.

To answer would mean to admit that belonging and coveting have to be seen through historical prisms, for it is history that informs narratives about what is ours to take, and what is not.

Nonsense! The only thing which matters is the law. Historical prisms will blind you to common sense.

The rocks in the Aravalli hills near Sirohi are over 1,400 million years old. According to a 1981 census, the Adivasi or ST population in this district was over 23 per cent (it is now over 28 per cent). JK Lakshmi Cement was set up in 1982. According to the company’s website, it boasts a turnover of 30 billion Indian rupees (418 million USD) and produces 13.30 million tonnes of cement a year.

So, the Adivasis have lots of babies and thus there are many more of them now. By contrast the Singhania family, like the rest of middle class India, stopped having babies like crazy. They went in for education. They continually diversified their investments and found new markets. If environmental laws are changed, they will adapt quickly. If India elects the sort of Government Annie approves of and the country collapses, they will build up businesses elsewhere. The reason they will be able to own things and use those things profitably is because they will acquire things legally, use them sensibly, and pay taxes on their profits. This answers the question of what is yours and how you may use it. If the law says it is yours and you use it to generate profits on which you pay the proper amount of tax, then you are not a robber. Still, your life may be that of an ascetic, if you have a distaste for luxuries. The Singhanias may well be Jains. I would not be surprised if some of them plucked their hair out by the roots and became monks or nuns of that venerable religion which is wholly indigenous to India.

Annie wonders what would have happened if the Bhil language, not English or Hindi, had been taught at the school she went to. The answer, of course, is that she wouldn't have attended it. Her mother would not have been its principal. But English and Hindi- being widely spoken are useful. Even I- an ignorant Iyer- speak both. Why? It is so as to enjoy a better standard of living and have just the one son who went to a top school rather than sire a whole bunch of starving kids who would remain as stupid and prejudiced as myself.

Those who worked in JK Puram as managers over the last few decades didn’t need to learn the language of the Adivasis. They would not have known the tribes’ ballads, or the logic of their marital customs.

But they would have known how to make cement- which is the only reason they were there in the first place.

They came as outsiders, and left culturally unchallenged. It was the Adivasis who had to adapt, learning Hindi and English. I could talk to them without an interpreter. They did not refuse to talk to me, but there was little doubt in either of our minds that I came speaking the language of power, and that the balance of power was tilted against them.

They may have thought you might be useful to them. If they could read your book, they would be soon disabused of any such notion.

I wonder what it might have been like if the dreams of early twentieth-century activists had been realised: what if the factory was located in a Bhıl Raj, or a Garasiya Raj?

We know the answer to that. There would be a fat Bhil Raja living in a palace- indeed there are Royal Houses of Bhil origin. Conditions for the common folk were not be better there.

Would we study Bheeli as a first or second language in schools?

Why not? It is similar to Gujerati.

Would we have committed to a different strand of collective memory: singing paeans to Adivasi heroes, absorbing their aesthetic, learning skills like hunting, sculpting and farming?

But all Indians, save some Brahman and Shraman influenced castes, hunt and sculpt and farm.

There are fresh attempts at reclaiming indigenous territories. A political outfit called the Bharatiya Tribal Party won two seats in the 2018 state assembly elections.

Both were in Gujarat- a father and son team who had recently changed allegiance.

It is demanding a separate state made up of lands that have a significant Bhıl population. One of its leaders pointed out in an interview that a distinct political ‘state’ is crucial for the preservation of cultural identity, which some activists are trying to erode.

Was this Daddy or Sonny boy? The reason both had to strike out on their own was because Daddy voted for Ahmed Patel in the Rajya Sabha election in defiance of his party Chief- Nitish Kumar.

Despite being Bhıl themselves, they want their people to ‘imitate the general population’.

Rather than get drunk and shoot arrows at each other. This seems reasonable.

Annie expresses concern over tribal rights to land. The fact is populations were low in the old days because of 'Malthusian checks'. De-tribalization led to very rapid, but Malthusian, growth on what had always been marginal land. Paternalistic labor laws worsened things because most people, girls especially, could not move from subsistence agriculture into manufacturing. So there was no 'demographic transition' and nothing but a Malthusian trap of 'involution'.

In 1927, the British passed a law bringing forests under the direct control of the government.

Forest Acts date back to the 1860's. The 1927 Act merely consolidated what already existed. Such Acts are a good thing. Deforestation is a bad thing.

This law has remained in force in India, and those who live in forests are considered encroachers unless they can prove otherwise.

In other words, encroachers are considered encroachers.

Since independence, around 50 million Indians have been displaced to make way for dams, industrial projects, highways and protected forest reserves.

The result is that the population has been able to go up by one billion.

The majority of the displaced, over 40 per cent, were Adivasis, who comprise only 8 per cent of the population.

But almost all Indians are 'Adivasis' originally. Detribalization means higher productivity which means more babies survive which means population goes up. The alternative is to end up like the Jaravas of the Andaman Isles.

If they refused to go quietly, they were evicted through brute measures including the use of elephants to knock down huts; their crops were destroyed and their homes set on fire by the state’s paramilitary forces.

Lots of people were 'evicted through brute measures' during Partition. Zaidi's Hindu paternal family, fleeing Pakistan, were a case in point. But even after eviction, they were killed or raped, not by paramilitary forces, but unpaid volunteers. Incidentally, tribes were constantly evicting each other with brute measures. But they also enslaved people. Sadly, Government of India takes a dim view of such forms of Capitalism. It has even tried to put down other delightful customs like head-hunting and the killing of witches.

The remainder of Annie's book can be quickly skimmed through. She goes to places we already have a caricature of in our heads and then she confirms that caricature with little in the way of literary flourish. But then she is merely padding out an essay while describing her own transition from a smart metropolitan journalist into a stereotypical Muslim woman from Uttar Pradesh who relishes the beauty of the Nastaliq script as opposed to the Western fare that enabled her to rise up in the journalistic world. But, since she has no deep connection with Islam, her writing, like her thinking, is superficial and facile.

Consider the following where she quotes the cretin Alok Rai, whose IQ has been steadily falling decade after decade-

Alok Rai, another scholar from Allahabad, has written that meaning is a conspiracy – ‘conspiracy with, or conspiracy against’ – and it is so with names. Allahabad was not renamed as much as it was unnamed. There was no reclaiming of a native name. ‘Calcutta’ reverted to its native pronunciation, ‘Kolkata’; ‘Bangalore’ went back to ‘Bengaluru’; ‘Bombay’ changed to ‘Mumbai’, allegedly because it was a foreign name. But ‘Allahabad’ was not restored to ‘Ilahabas’, or even to ‘Alhabas’. The choice of ‘Prayagraj’ as a new name points to a conspiracy, to a form of retrospective nostalgia for a past that did not include Muslims.'

Would it surprise this lady to hear that Nehru referred to his City as Prayag? He justified this on aesthetic grounds. The place is called 'Prayagraj' because it is considered the 'king' of all such sacred confluences. It was known as such to the Buddha. Annie appears ignorant and querulous by insisting that the place was unknown till Akbar turned up. She could see for herself on Wikipedia that Akbar's minister, Birbal, referred to it as Tirth Raj (king of the sacred fords) Prayag.

Another example is the following-

Faizabad, the former capital of the province, had its name changed to ‘Ayodhya’, an ancient kingdom associated with Ram, who is worshipped as God and in whose name much violence has been unleashed upon Indian Muslims.

This is disrespectful. It is customary to use the term Lord Ram or, if there is a religious scruple against using the word 'Lord' in this connection, one would write 'the Hindu Deity Sri Rama'. Muslims have committed much violence against other Religions in the name of their God.  This does not mean one should use that name in a casual, disrespectful manner, or focus solely on the crimes committed in the name of Islam's Deity.

‘Ayodhya’ was already the name of a neighbouring town, which houses the destroyed Babri mosque.

They are now the same town with the same municipal corporation.

Hindutva outfits claim the mosque was built on top of a temple, of which there is no archaeological evidence.

Not in view of the Supreme Court which went into this matter thoroughly.

One can multiply such instances in Annie's book. They are unworthy of a journalist- or indeed a writer with access to Wikipedia. Still they shore up her self-image as an abject creature- a Muslim adrift in an India which, sadly with good reason, has much diminished sympathy for her creed. It may be that many yet recall the great horrors inflicted on non Muslims in India by her maternal ancestors. Furthermore, unlike any other sect, hers still unleashes maniacal terrorists to slaughter innocents as part of a 'Jihad' or 'Holy War'.

The one interesting thing Annie could tell us, which we do not already know by reading the same sort of biased journalistic shite she has, is what happened to her Hindu father. He died- but when? Why did her parent's  marriage break up? Annie may not be hiding anything. She may simply be incurious about this aspect of her own life because no other similar journalist has written about it already. Thus it can't be written about. It isn't literary. But, the fact is, her Mum sounds like a remarkable woman. A single Mum who goes to College and who relocates to take a job and finally saves up enough to buy an apartment in Mumbai- this is an inspiring story. I hope Annie can work with an Urdu/Hindi ghostwriter to produce a biography of her Mum. But the moral of that story will be very different from what this worthless book conveys.

Instead of telling us how she and other members of her family have adapted and relocated and made a success of their lives, Annie gives us some nonsense about graves and the importance of owning a bit of land- presumably to be buried in it- so as to have 'roots'. Consider the following-

In India, we make a distinction between janm-bhoomi, birthplace, and karm-bhoomi, a place of work or purpose.

This is nonsense. We make a distinction between karma-bhoomi- this world where good actions create good karma and bad actions create bad karma though the world itself remains a vale of tears- and bhoga-bhumi- which is the field of not action but pleasure. It is that Heaven where you enjoy the fruits of your good works in your previous life.

The Janam-bhumi of an incarnation has importance. That's why a Temple will be constructed in Ayodhya. But, if- like most people in the old days- we remain in our birthplace then it is also our karmabhoomi. Only after we die do we go to bhoga-bhumi. However, the sincere Theist wishes to forego Heaven and be reborn on Earth to work the Lord's will by tending to 'Daridra Narayan'- the God who is lonely and poor.

Mumbai has been my karm-bhoomi. So have other cities, for one must go wherever one finds bread.

So- this earth is karmabhoomi. That is correct. But what has this to do with 'janam bhumi'? Is Annie going to reveal that she is the incarnation of God? There is some special sanctity to her birth-place? Like the tribal Witch Doctor, she has to be near the source of her ju ju. But, like the Witch Doctor, what she is doing is telling stupid lies for a self-aggrandizing purpose.

However, whenever I find myself in the grip of anxiety or sadness, I shut my eyes and try to conjure a place of safety, a place where I can go as I am. What I see is a cluster of graves.

But for Muslims there is resurrection- incidentally this idea first appears in the Avesta of the Zoroastrians- though there may be 'barzakh'- again an Avestan idea- which is like the antarabhava of the Buddhists and Hindus. Annie may know it as the Tibetan 'bardo' because her reading is eclectic but shallow.

She does mention Hindu Saints being buried. She does not seem to be aware that they are supposed to be in 'samadhi'- suspended animation- and will rise up again after their meditation is complete.

Lacking even this rudimentary knowledge of Islam or the Indic traditions, Annie has got it into her head that graves matter. They don't. History as a branch of Grievance Studies doesn't matter either. Literature as rehashing the last three decades of anti-BJP journalistic trash may win an award from Whitey but it is thin stuff. Politically, it has failed. Thus, it doesn't matter in the slightest. What does matter is doing something useful with whatever it is you possess. If you can earn a little money writing shite- do so by all means. But don't kid yourself that money so earned can be used to build yourself a permanent home on Literature's thoroughfare. The world is a bridge. So are books. Annie's connects nothing to nothing. It exists as a monument to tokenism of a shameful sort.

Annie ends thus-

This too is a way to define home – as that which we have lived and that which will not leave us: the love that will not quit on us, our social habits, our sources of self-esteem, hunger, shame, genes, fragments of solidarity, refuge, and undisturbed rest.

Youth we have lived, and Youth has left us. Love quits on us if, like Eurydice or Lot's wife, we turn to look backwards rather than move forward. Our social habits are shameful. Our sources of self-esteem vicious or meretricious. Of what is unseen, Religions are univocal. There will be no 'undisturbed rest' though you  hunger for it through all eternity like the Vampire.

Fragments of solidarity aren't solidarity. They are fragments. Playing the persecuted Muslim card doesn't really help Adivasis and Dalits and whoever else is supposed to be your ally against those evil Hindus. As for refuge- that you can only find, not in writing shite books, but in the uncreated Scripture of any or all of Ind's diverse sects. But they don't teach you that at Journalism school. Still, it is something you learn if you love Literature and hope to, not set up a gimcrack stall upon its pavement, but pass over it like a bridge.