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j[chat]awala
ronya
Arrrrrf.the ivory tower's basementRegistered User regular
Arrrrrf.the ivory tower's basementRegistered User regular
Simran Bhargava with Chiddanand Rajghatta in Bangalore. Illustrations by Ajit Ninan. India Today, August 15, 1989
The trademarks are the same—khadi kurta, broken chappals and a faded jhola. But along with the genuine social activist, a new breed of hangers-on has appeared on the scene. A report on the noveau-jholawala’s causes and crises.
“He’s a walking contradiction, partly true and partly fiction.”—Kris Kristofferson
Long before there were Yuppies and Puppies, there was a truly homespun figure already doing the rounds. Not restricted to caste or community, he belongs to us all: the jholawala.
He is the one in the protest march, raising his clenched fist against “these bloody multinationals”. He is the one in the bookstore gazing on mournfully at Pablo Neruda and Michel Foucault as he fondles his three-day-old stubble. He is the one who, if he has two pyjamas, will proudly wear the one with a hole in it.
The jholawala is a professor, researcher, drop-out, theatre person, small-time film maker, socially concerned journalist or simply unemployed. He is an intellectual in an intense love affair with poverty. For a jholawala, a jhola is a purely physical need; anything will do as long as it can be hung on the shoulder, leaving his hands free to hang on to buses or to raise in protest marches.
The jholawala is found in libraries, canteens, second-hand bookshops, European film festivals and art galleries. In Bombay, he is at the Jehangir Art Gallery. In Calcutta, he is at the College Street Coffee house. In Madras, he is known as a thuk-bag intellectual (some say ineffectual). And in Delhi, the tribe hums in the 1-km area around Mandi House.
The jholawala is usually in the midst of a hot discussion. He is the thinking man’s answer to the Puppy (prosperous urban Punjabi) and he almost always belongs to the broad, broad Left. But now, as one admitted, “We are confused. We don’t know what to do with glasnost, perestroika and the Chinese crackdown.”
Jholawalas exist in groups and the look on their face is earnest. A genuine jholawala must have a cause. Silent Valley, Narmada Dam, pavement dwellers—or he can’t exist. As thousands perished during Bhopal’s lethal gas leak, many jholawalas took birth. ‘They are the ones who make a difference,” said one observer. “I take my hat off to them.”
Several jholawalas, in fact, first rose during the Naxalite movement in the late ‘60s. They were marked by their passion and violent activism. They got beaten up, left colleges and went underground. When they resurfaced, they could no longer adjust to society. The originals are still floating around and have given rise to hundreds of imitators, nouveau-jholawalas, who are turned on by the romance of it all but are, thankfully, spared the heat and hardship.
The real jholawala worked: the psuedo one makes sure someone sees him working—or what’s the point? He is the one on the fringes, gingerly putting his toe into mainstream activism, and backing away, scared: ultimately, it’s just too hot to be committed for long.
The psuedo jholawala is also into guilt trips in a big way. Above all he lives a life marked by intensity, a search for angst. He is tortured by the unfairness of it all: the unfair distribution of wealth, exploitation of the workers and the greed of the moneyed classes. He will try and infect others with this guilt too.
Today’s jholawala ranges from the grassroot (working in villages) variety to the upmarket (attending seminars on foreign films) type. He is rarely into local issues like civic amenities but he can always be rounded up for protests against dams, eucalyptus trees and American imperialism: a full-time jholawala can in fact be tested by the number of blisters on his feet. He’s also found hanging around the World Bank for a grant to lecture in America on the perfidies of multinationals.
A jhola has him prepared for any eventuality: a typical jhola would contain Charminar cigarettes, a 15-day-old clipping from The Guardian, an old issue of the New Yorker. A toothbrush because you don’t know where the sun will rise the next day (a comb, however, isn’t necessary). A People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) study on something. A book to read at the bus stop and a couple of refills (but no pen) to write with.
Although they hate Ronald Reagan’s and George Bush’s America, jholawalas learnt a lot from the US in the ‘60s: Vietnam, peace, love, feminism, Marxism, thisism, thatism. An ideal jholawala is some part flower child and genuinely believes that love and peace are important. Nowadays, though, Marxism is out and environmentalism is in: one environmentalist jholawala refuses to build a fire even in the middle of winter “because the earth’s resources are getting depleted”. And he will not drink tea—”because tea-pickers are exploited”.
In recent times, jholawalas have loved films by Costa-Gavras and Thomas Alea. They talk about this scene in Alea’s The Housewarming where a party is going on in a South American sugar plantation: five minutes are spent just stirring the sugar in the cup. Many jholawalas have spent half an hour discussing this five-minute scene.
For some reason all jholawalas are turned on by South America: discussions at parties have ranged from the debt trap, rate of inflation in Argentina to the destruction of rain forests in Brazil. One worried jholawala, at 22, landed up at Berkeley (the hotbed of American jholawalaism), surfaced in demonstrations against the CIA, helped with a concert to raise money for Nicaragua—and was last seen disappearing into Gautemala on a Rockefeller grant.
A jholawala is often part of a study circle where everyone sits on the floor, having an intense discussion after every page of The Economic and Political Weekly. These days, hot jholawala discussions have centred on how to stop bricks from getting into Ram Janmabhoomi.
Other jholawalas run—or subscribe to—small, underground video libraries that rent out revolutionary films. One highly academic jholawala’s favourite song was Ek Do Teen Char, but since it didn’t go with his Pather Panchali image, he only allowed himself to hum it when no one was around.
There is a great sense of camaraderie among jholawalas but there are also sub-cultures and jealousies. A typical comment about an ex-jholawala friend would be: “Saala fraud hai, Doordarshan ke liye film bana raha hai.” (He is a fraud. He is making a film for Doordarshan).
https://fakeer.wordpress.com/2008/03/14/the-jholawala-sydnrome/
ronya on
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