Notes from a broken fast: why the 'other India' was there

“Are you a channel-wallah?” asks the turbaned man in the spotless white kurta and dhoti.

Though I am not carrying a bulky video camera hoisted on my shoulder, my sneakers, jeans and my Fabindia-ish shirt are dead giveaways that I am a tourist in their midst.

Baba Ramdev was embarking on his fast on stage and the faithful are filing in by the thousands. There are people like me as well scattered under the giant shamiana. But we have real cameras, not just cell phone cameras, wires in our ears and we race around the Ramlila grounds gawking at the “other India.”

The “other India”, outnumbering us by the thousands, is gracious. “Have some jeera pani,” a lady in a white salwar leading her friends from Delhi in an enthusiastic Ae mere pyare watan sing-along urges me. As I gingerly drink from the Mountain Dew bottle, she says expansively, “Just finish it.”

“Madam, you sing so well. Would you sing a bit for our television?” a passing journalist asks unctuously. The women readily agree - but not because they are desperate for exposure. It is more a gesture of courtesy and hospitality.

There was even an element of performance like that Vicco Vajradanti ad where the foreign tourists go tramping through the brush to experience a “real Indian village.” As soon as the cameras pop up, the group from Haryana or Rajasthan obligingly breaks into a jig with drums and snake-charmer pipes. They pose with their giant colourful turbans and smile. They pause their song while the _channel-wallah_s fiddle with their equipment and then resume it again once they get the green light. They shout their slogans on cue. Babaji, sangharsh karo, hum tumhare saath hain. (Babaji, fight on, we are with you.)

“Kaunsa channel?” they ask at the end, almost touching in their faith in the media not to twist their words. Many of them are here because of the media. Their first exposure to Baba Ramdev had been on Aastha television.

The moving force

It’s easy to be cynical about Baba Ramdev. This is the godman who giggles. He suggests doing pranayam and shut his nose after the Pakistani terrorists attacked Mumbai. It’s a little harder to be cynical about the thousands who have gathered in his name, the families that are parked on the ground, heads resting on a battered carry-all, damp towels and undershirts draped on the bamboo fencing.

It is, instead, chastening. An old man, in his seventies, with thick discoloured glasses, walks carefully down the aisle, holding onto to the bamboo fence next to him. He’s from Indore, he tells me. He has eleven children, two of whom have died. He’s come because he wants to make India a heaven. “Don’t you?” he asks me and hands me a photocopied pamphlet about the economic fallout of corruption. Instantly five people gather around us, anxious to get his pamphlets. The man beams. “One at a  time,” he says.

One at a time. That’s strangely the most un-Indian thing about the whole affair. One at a time to fill your water bottle. One at a time to get your pamphlet. Standing in the hot sun, in a long line slow line, Indians do what Indians do. They try to wangle their way into the front of the line. A retired man, who now runs a school for girls, admonishes them.

“One at a time,” he says. “Go stand in the line. We are all standing in the sun. Brother, what kind of anusilan ke sipahi (soldier of discipline) will you be if you break in like this? We are not here to watch some movie.”

What we are watching instead is a packaged show of religious diversity. Baba Ramdev has gathered together on stage assorted sadhus, a Jain nun, blue-turbaned Nirankaris, a Kashmiri social activist, her head draped in a dupatta, a bearded imam. They give their two-minute speeches. When the energy flags, Ramdev pops up like an emcee to tease, tickle, cajole, fire up his crowd. The group from Uttaranchal next to me bursts into excited slogan-chanting in the middle of his speech. They are shushed by everyone around them.

Ramdev calls out to his faithful like a scoutmaster. “How many people are here from Punjab? Stand and wave,” he shouts. Jammu and Kashmir? There aren’t too many. He quickly switches over to Haryana and gets a giant roar. “Looks like all of Haryana has just picked up and moved here,” he chortles.

I wonder if I should stand when he gets to West Bengal. Does it count if you are here for work, to cover the “other India”, not because you are part of it?

“Why have you come?” a lady from Kolkata asks me. She is curious, not interrogatory. She tells me she had to organise daily home delivery of food for her husband and children before she left. She gives me her cell number. She says she’s here for the long haul. I, on the other hand, am just here for the colour.

This revolution isn’t a picnic

As I wind my way out through the throngs I finally realise why all of this feels so surreal. So many Indians, so much noise, so many families but there are no tiffin carriers filled with parathas and aloo and pickle in plastic wraps, no vendors hawking chips or chai or thanda.

Finally, I do spot  a young man selling something. His name is Rahul and he sells Foldabel (sic) Japanese fans. With a flick of the wrist, the cloth fans open up. They come in different colours and patterns, dots, plaid, stripes. He carries scores of those fans stuffed in an old red bag bursting at the seams.

“Business is good,” he says. “So many people coming here from far far away. They want to take back a little something.”

He’s selling them for ten rupees a fan.

“Buy it now,” he tells me. “Tomorrow if the fast goes well, who knows, they might be fifteen.”

When I reach my hotel, dusty and dishevelled from the trip to “other India” barely three subway stops away, the uniformed guard is sceptical.

“You are living here?” he says suspiciously. “What’s your room number?”

I reach into my bag to fish out my room key but pull out the fold-able fan instead.  He stares quizzically. I smile apologetically and then I walk into the air-conditioned lobby.