Category: Essays

Prayagraj, Allahabad, Purimtal, or Kosambi: it’s up to you, really, what your political orientation (or disorientation) allows you to call this city. I prefer Allahabad, because here I was born, and ‘tis here I call home.

Shakespeare might argue otherwise, but in the case of cities, names shape not just the bearer’s identity but also the perception of its past and the aspirations for its future. This interplay in the case of Allahabad is what I find to be an inherent dichotomy; the city finds relevance not by updating its elements and changing its name accordingly, but does so by changing its name and updating its elements accordingly.

Finding its earliest mention in the Vedas, it was called Prayāga, meaning "place of a sacrifice" in Sanskrit, believed to be where Brahmaji performed the first yagna. The region also bore the name Kosambi during the Mauryan and Gupta periods. It was associated with the name Purimtal in Jain scriptures, meaning "city of the lakes”.

During the Mughal era, Akbar built a fort at the confluence of the Ganges and Yamuna rivers in 1575, naming it Ilahabas, or "Abode of God”. It was here that perhaps the most consequential document in this subcontinent’s history, the Treaty of Allahabad, was signed in 1765 between Shah Alam II and Robert Clive, sealing in letter after it was in spirit following the Battle of Buxar, the right of the East India Company to exploit the region as its private fiefdom. During British colonial rule, the city retained the name Allahabad and emerged as an administrative and educational hub, with inpouring of heavy colonial investment. As it has been for educational hubs under colonial rule, it was at the centre of India’s independence movement. Before Gujarat’s dominance, it wasn’t uncommon to find the clique of India’s political machinery to have its roots in Allahabad.

Following decades-long concentrated efforts by the BJP, the city was finally renamed as Prayagraj in 2018, giving a nod to its cultural origins and to the voter base that would keep the renamers in power. It is perhaps from this point that it has become more difficult to ascertain, how many times in 144 years does the as-advertised once-in-144-years Kumbh Mela and its very visibly accompanying infrastructure upgrades occur. But then, who doesn’t like wider roads, and more so the maintenance contracts that follow (the GDP won’t inflate itself now, would it)?

With all due respect to the multitude of coaching centres that have set up shop here, particularly those that advertise themselves as gateways into the much-coveted civil services, the transition of this city from an urban academic and intellectual hub to a seasonal cultural one was not abrupt; it is not suddenly that the University of Allahabad, the “Oxford of the East”, has embraced a more native character, imbibing native politics in greater proportion to native intellect. Side by side with the seasonal tourist hordes that the much-politicised Kumbh attracts to Prayagraj, it is still the Allahabad High Court and the UPPSC head office that maintains the more regular administrative and judicial relevance of Allahabad.

This change is most visible not only in the outdated and out-phasing Indo-Saracenic architecture of older office and residential buildings, but also in the evolving thought process. What dominates the ideas of today in regards to this city is not of what once accommodated the Oxford of the East, what was once the centre of the independence movement, what has been and continues to be the site of consequential judicial decisions (it was a judge of the Allahabad High Court that passed the order to unseat Indira Gandhi as Prime Minister), but what is, was, and should remain to be, Kumbh-Nagari. It would be wrong to deem it wrong; we must march along with time, lest it tramples over us. However, it would be thoughtful to ask, does replacement really triumph over co-existence when it comes to cultural ethos? Of course, many politically charged moves would be rendered moot, should that question be answered.

Regardless, to be born amidst the change is quite a ride: I know not as deeply what it was to live in Allahabad (I was 11 when it became Prayagraj), and I will know not what it would be like to live in Prayagraj, for I intend not to. Life is multifaceted in the Indo-Gangetic plains; the shivering mornings of January, the sweltering afternoons of Junes, the moist evenings of August, and the cozy nights of December have all forged the mind that produces these words, comfortable or uncomfortable as they might have been. The process of change in all things but that is visibly forced enough to make me nostalgic for a past that I never experienced and concerned for a future that I’ll never face. Perhaps that’s what lost and rebellious children feel for their homes.

I can trade with you in good faith a dozen bananas for thirty five rupees, in the order of twenty, ten, and five rupees notes; the same deal wouldn’t go in as good faith with, say, a chimpanzee.

By the above statement, what am I getting at? The incapability of the chimpanzee to comprehend a fair deal, given the current market for bananas? Or at the absurdity of the fact that the human would easily give away a rich source of nutrition for a few pieces of paper? Perhaps both, if we are looking for a single dimensional answer. Although, in less derogatory terms towards the chimp, there might be more to it.

While accounting for the swift rise of humans from monkeys who only ever understood food and procreation (Homo habilis) to the indisputable masters of this world who can wipe out entire civilisations with the stroke of a pen (Homo sapiens), we often forget to consider our almost incomprehensible comprehensibility for fiction, and stories.

Stories, contrary to popular belief, are not confined to children’s fairy tales and thriller novels. Stories are nothing but anything not real- not untrue, but unreal. Objectively speaking, consider the Bible, the Vedas, the Quran, or any other religious text for that matter, and ask yourself: What happens when you stop believing in any one of those? What are they, then, other than mere stories, written by mortal writers, waiting to be believed again by someone else, just like the fairy tales and the novels, which lost their positions of popular interest? Such a bold remark, of course, is not limited to religious texts. The law, the constitution, banks, stocks, corporations, nations; all of them, in the raw, natural and real world, are irrelevant, if not for the belief of people in them. Pakistan was not formed because the earth summoned gigantic cracks upon its face that separated the landmass of the Indian subcontinent forming the current Line of Control; it did because a guy named Jinnah effectively radicalised a huge group of people into not believing in the idea, or the story, of a unified Islamic-Hinduist state, with Islam and Hinduism being, as discussed above, stories in themselves.

The effects of the partition, stemmed from layers upon layers of stories, need not be discussed. If tomorrow a group of very wealthy shareholders begin to distrust the story told by a huge corporation in regards to its release of a product, and the corporation goes bankrupt with thousands of lay-offs, the mere upliftment of belief in the story will be quite prominent in the real lives of the employees, as they struggle to get food on the table. If a ruling political party makes questionable decisions in policy making and backs it up with unconvincing reasons- stories people no longer want to believe in, the government changes the next term, and so do the policy structures that directly or indirectly affect the lives of people. Believing in the innovative story of a start-up entrepreneur might convince us into buying a stake in the company, and, by chance if that company were to succeed, we would become quite wealthy ourselves, without even realising that ‘wealth’ in itself is a story told by the bank to compensate for the management of actual resources, being produced by the company! Therefore, it is quite believable that stories that we do believe in have a fairly recognisable effect on our lives.

The chimpanzee might be superior to the Homo sapiens in sheer strength, but it certainly doesn’t understand how bargaining works, and how the thirty five rupees could buy a larger number of bananas in a less posh area. Now, after all that being stated bare, how do we now define stories, and more importantly, are we ready to believe my story about stories? The truth is, it doesn’t matter. As I see it, stories evolved along with human consciousness, as a tool, along with the real tools, for survival and advancement towards higher degrees of sustainability.

A single Homo sapiens does not stand a chance against a lion. A group of five Homo sapiens does not stand a chance against a pride of five lions, either. But a tribe of hundred Homo sapiens against a pride of- nope, a pride of hundred lions, naturally, cannot sustain. They simply cannot do away with slaughtering each other after the population reaches a certain number.

A tribe is, by all accounts, a story. A story agreed upon and adopted by a large number of people, and practised daily in accordance.Imagine this: Ramu and Dev are part of a tribe. Ramu is a farmer, he farms. If Dev steals Ramu’s wheat, it’s a crime. The crime is analysed by the landowner, whose word on it is final. The idea of the identity of the farmer, the morality of the crime, and the authority of the landlord, all comes from stories of hunger, chaos, and order, passed onto generations through generations over the years of evolution. The fact that these ideas didn’t become a part of the tribe member’s mere instinct but stayed in their head as a separate judgement for the real world, indicates how strong human consciousness is in comparison to any other species.

Such tribes evolve into towns, towns into cities, cities into kingdoms, and kingdoms, if given enough time, into nations. The ideals of identity, morality, and authority grow more complex, intricate, and dense. A misunderstanding of such ideals, or stories, may cause oppression within the tribe, and a newfound understanding may cause rebellions and wars- examples need not be given; history is nothing but that- a man, or a group, understanding flawed ideals, and overthrowing authority, and rewriting the stories on which morality and identity revolve- Hitler did it, and so does the ruling government, maybe with different intentions.

Nations further construct more intricate stories of parliaments, banks, et cetera, to further smoothen the functioning of society, built on other, broader stories. Israel has the broader story of Judaism, the Vatican is all about Roman Catholicism, the United States follows capitalism, while Russia still cannot get over pseudo-communism. Within these nations, these broader ideas cement themselves into solid values; values worth war and lives. Much of Shylock’s hatred for Antonio stemmed not from Antonio spitting on him in real life, but from the difference of stories, stories of Christianity and Judaism, that they believed in.

To imagine such nations to exist at the helm of other species, say, chimpanzees, or lions, and it sounds like something out of a fantasy. Animals, in the simplest terms, are not capable of coordinating the way Homo sapiens do. That’s how we beat them to the Agricultural Revolution, and that is how the chimp who wouldn’t trade the banana isn’t even remotely close to starting something like Google or the Internet.

We define our stories, and our stories define us. We stop believing in them, and they hold no weight. We can live by them, we may live against some of them. But it is at the moment when humanity loses its grasp on its stories, when the dominant order of Homo sapiens breaks down.

Now that we know what stories on a more evolutionary, economic, political, and philosophical scale are, how does it affect you? Well, it doesn’t. You have at least completed eight years of education if you are able to read this (such a statement can only be invalidated if you, the reader, is gifted; good for you!), and already believe in enough stories, sustainable ones for that matter, that you have quite an edge over a chimpanzee or a lion or a whale of your age, at least when it comes to coordination. Therefore, there is no use in bickering now over a fictional barter system of currency being used over providing you with life long training which wouldn’t even help you win a one-on-one with a kangaroo- but don’t complain yet, for kangaroos are not very noisy in the Australian Parliament!

What you do know now is that much of your life isn’t the absolute truth, predetermined and set in stone. You choose which stories to believe in, and which to adopt.

-VIjjwal Singh, X-B

Written in March 2020

Failure: Salvation or Barrier?

Failure is something that cannot be avoided, something that is prior to every variant of success, something that is carved in one’s sculpture of life the moment one comes into existence. An infant can turn out to be handicapped as a result of failure in cell formation. A child may end up with his skull broken that might lead to agonizing injuries because he failed to pull the breaks at the right time while learning to ride a bicycle. A student might not get a degree because of his failure in understanding the subject enough. A nervous but talented man doesn’t get a job following the failure in his interview because his ideas and answers didn’t sound profitable enough for the company. The company might get down to bankruptcy because it failed to make the right investments. An old man who has lived through his days may not die a peaceful death because of his failures in life.

Thus failure is a collateral allotment that is guaranteed to you and something that comes at the cost of living an intelligible life. One simply cannot do away with it because just like any other human experiences, failure has a pivotal role to play in the development of your overall personality.

Failure can be broadly divided into two distinctive categories, i.e., personal failure and collective failure.

Astonishingly, collective failure can be considered the more common variant of failure. This is perhaps because in a machine, even if a single part malfunction, the whole thing stops working the desired way. In the same perspective, in a team, if a single member does not play his role correctly, the team is most likely to fail in what they want to accomplish. To be able to acquire the accomplishment desired, one must be cooperative with the other members of the group.

Another significance of collective failure is that it is not limited to the people who fail. Rather, if a group of people fail in a certain task, it can leave a major impact on the people and groups around them. In a science exhibition, if on the leaderboard there are the top three teams, and the one which has secured the first position is disqualified for some reason, the second team will take the first position, the third will take the second position and a team which was drafted into oblivion will get to maintain their prestige. In this perspective, the failure of the team which prior held the first position will come as a form of sadistic pleasure to the other three teams.

The brunt of collective failure varies from intelligence to negligence, and can encompass determining elements like understanding, compromising, dedication and so on and so forth.

Directing the attention to personal failure, which is a relatively more complex variant of failure but also presumably is more important for one’s development of personality.

A child failing to pass, a teacher failing to help the child pass, a parent failing to motivate the child, may sound like collective failure to many, but the child not passing is an individualistic failure of the teacher, the parent, and the child himself. A politician failing to deliver his promises to the public, a mathematician failing to solve an equation, a lawyer failing to give his client the upper hand in a case, a judge failing to serve justice, an analyst failing to predict an attack before it happens, is all their individualistic failures. Personal failure can be a result of psychological or physical disorder, and lack of dedication.

Likewise collective failure, it isn’t limited to the person who failed but leaves an impact on others. In a race, if a runner fails to run fast enough, the competitor behind him takes his place. If a student fails to score 92% in the examination, the student with 90% holds the first position in the class. If an employee is fired, the employee below his post takes his place with a better income.

Failure fulfils a variety of functions in the life and personality of a person; It can cause personality degradation or can further personality development. Therefore, we can speak of the ambivalent nature of the failure. The elementary problem, encountered in failure, is to give failure a meaning. To do this one must ask about the past, ‘Why did I fail?’ This ultimate question not only makes it easier to explain the issue but to also recognize failure as the origin of human existence.

If king Nicolas De Francis wouldn’t fail in delivering the people of France, The French revolution would’ve never taken place and France would never have been ruled by a king elected by its people. If Albert Einstein wouldn’t fail to blend in schools, we wouldn’t be having the Theory of Relativity. If Steve Jobs passed college, we wouldn’t be having the iPhone. If Joseph, the descendant of King James, was a king, we wouldn’t be having Jesus! And speaking in a more mythological perspective, if Eve and Adam had not eaten the apple of Eden, the human race wouldn’t be having the sense of the truth and the falsehood.

As a consequence, individualistic failure is extremely complicated, intricate and tortuous in comparison to collective failure, and thus elements of which are more formidable and onerous than any else fathomable. In the same context, one man’s failure can also be perceived as another man’s pleasure. For some, seeing someone failing in a certain task is adequate enough to fulfil their sadistic thirst.

As emphasized above, one cannot escape or cheat failure. But why do we need it in the first place? What makes failure so special? Once a young reporter asked Alexander Graham Bell during an interview after he invented the telephone, "How, sir, did it feel to fail two hundred times?" to which he firmly answered, "I didn’t fail two hundred times, young man, it was nothing more than a two hundred- step process." If failure is inevitable, I believe, it surely can be revived. In computers, when given a command, it processes through millions of binary codes to find the adequate output and each of the times, it either gets zero or one. And each time it skips a code, it fails to process it which brings it back to the initial point. On this Alan Turing, the great British mathematician, computer scientist and cryptographer said, "If failure is not to be considered a crucial step, computer science is perhaps the most gigantic failure the modern time has ever seen."

When Winston Churchill became the Prime Minister of England under the pressure of the Second World War, in a meeting he said, "Kingdoms burnt to the ground rise from the ashes of its ruins and those that do not know the taste of defeat are devastated to particles." I cannot agree more.