‘You’ve done well, how could you study so much?’ one of my live hearted friend complemented on my passing the civil services & enquire about my study. ‘Nothing secret about it’ I lamented with utmost ease, thanks to processions. I stay just a stone throw away from the MG road. Any procession if not passed on to MG road, it can not be called as procession neither would have its coverage printed in next day’s news paper. ‘Daily or to be specific nightly processions hailing somebody or dismissing somebody keep us awake whole night’. I continued with more stressed on my utilizing time, ‘mother would then ask to fill the water in kitchen which invariably comes in the night & father to study, as such I can not take a wink. I did both, built muscle power & excelled in exams, became nocturnal human being is the side advantage’ I quipped. Thanks to processions which got me into civil services.
The day I take over as district collector, I’ve vowed much early in my life, not to hold any application for holding processions & bog down any pressure asking me doing so. How people will get their photos, names printed in news papers otherwise? How news papers will fill their pages otherwise? How will the local free & ‘good for nothing’ souls will earn their daily roasted flesh of rotten goat, nip of desi-daru? How their bosses will try their luck in ever-reaching politics?
Having my deep knowledge in processions one day my wife asked me on, ‘why don’t you do your Ph. D. on processions?’ I immediately accepted her idea, well later I realized she was trying to pull my legs. However any husband, if promised anything to his wife must fulfill her wish, I took to writing. They say you got to go through plenty of reference books, travel a lot, take numerous interviews, apple polish your guide & what not. To complete the Ph.D. which despite takes at least three years to complete.
I took to writing & within a week I’d my complete write up ready on my table. Wife was aghast with my prowess, my image in her mind if dented during so many years of our togetherness certainly got whitewashed. I did nothing to write anything special, just remembered all those sweet memories of waking up till wee hours to wait for uproar of the processions turned into lengthy speeches & clamour & of course water. To pass the time I’d take any study material & read. While writing exams, I did not remembered what I read but what I listened in the processions got correlated with the study material, numbers, phrases & key words got me through. Thanks to processions, they got me so far.
I wrote in my Ph. D. thesis, actually I should not reveal it as there is always danger of it getting copied or theft by somebody. Yet, I’d produce here that processions have no specific agenda common people interested in. Be it inflation, poverty, caste based reservation, power shedding, water supplies, precarious road conditions, slums … Nothing has power which can be cause of processions. To turn the available mob to procession or hire trained man power for processions has bigger & better reasons like birth or death anniversaries of leader, statue defamation, forthcoming election which keep on coming round the year & years after years. Or winning in the ward election to winning in parliament election. There are other processions too which never became subject of my interest like marriage processions, morcha on the local police station against police atrocities, processions lead by some spiritual guru since all these processions lack the life of procession in them. Processions must consist of gullal, dance, sticks, sometimes use of those sticks, stone pelting, burning buses & trucks, looting, ransacking, absentee of police, shut shop-doors, terrorized common people…
Processions are of great importance. They make people walk on the road, they’d sit motionless before TV otherwise, they make read news papers, make & mar leaders, burn public & private property to make government & people buy new this causes rolling of the economy. Processions are of great importance, they make person like me a civil servant who’d let processions take place in days & years to come.
By
Vijay Yelmelwar
The day I take over as district collector, I’ve vowed much early in my life, not to hold any application for holding processions & bog down any pressure asking me doing so. How people will get their photos, names printed in news papers otherwise? How news papers will fill their pages otherwise? How will the local free & ‘good for nothing’ souls will earn their daily roasted flesh of rotten goat, nip of desi-daru? How their bosses will try their luck in ever-reaching politics?
Having my deep knowledge in processions one day my wife asked me on, ‘why don’t you do your Ph. D. on processions?’ I immediately accepted her idea, well later I realized she was trying to pull my legs. However any husband, if promised anything to his wife must fulfill her wish, I took to writing. They say you got to go through plenty of reference books, travel a lot, take numerous interviews, apple polish your guide & what not. To complete the Ph.D. which despite takes at least three years to complete.
I took to writing & within a week I’d my complete write up ready on my table. Wife was aghast with my prowess, my image in her mind if dented during so many years of our togetherness certainly got whitewashed. I did nothing to write anything special, just remembered all those sweet memories of waking up till wee hours to wait for uproar of the processions turned into lengthy speeches & clamour & of course water. To pass the time I’d take any study material & read. While writing exams, I did not remembered what I read but what I listened in the processions got correlated with the study material, numbers, phrases & key words got me through. Thanks to processions, they got me so far.
I wrote in my Ph. D. thesis, actually I should not reveal it as there is always danger of it getting copied or theft by somebody. Yet, I’d produce here that processions have no specific agenda common people interested in. Be it inflation, poverty, caste based reservation, power shedding, water supplies, precarious road conditions, slums … Nothing has power which can be cause of processions. To turn the available mob to procession or hire trained man power for processions has bigger & better reasons like birth or death anniversaries of leader, statue defamation, forthcoming election which keep on coming round the year & years after years. Or winning in the ward election to winning in parliament election. There are other processions too which never became subject of my interest like marriage processions, morcha on the local police station against police atrocities, processions lead by some spiritual guru since all these processions lack the life of procession in them. Processions must consist of gullal, dance, sticks, sometimes use of those sticks, stone pelting, burning buses & trucks, looting, ransacking, absentee of police, shut shop-doors, terrorized common people…
Processions are of great importance. They make people walk on the road, they’d sit motionless before TV otherwise, they make read news papers, make & mar leaders, burn public & private property to make government & people buy new this causes rolling of the economy. Processions are of great importance, they make person like me a civil servant who’d let processions take place in days & years to come.
By
Vijay Yelmelwar
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