Bandh! The word excites the politicians and its implementation paralyses life of the common man... but who cares?
The eye-for-an-eye tussle between governor HR Bhardwaj and chief minister BS Yeddyurappa — nothing short of a Tom & Jerry show — has once again shown us how political crises are made out to be mountains out of molehills, but giving a damn to how people get affected.
Take it from me. Saturday went into the waste bin, instead of being a good start to the weekend. The politicos who called for the bandh, like all who have done so before and who will follow in their footsteps, must pat their backs for the “wonderful” effects the bandh has had. The ideal lesson taught to the younger generations — leave alone the lobby groups who have that obsessive habit of calling for bandhs (however unsuccessful or effective they may be) at the drop of their hats.
What they don’t get to see is the effect it has on children and their parents; the family — the basic social unit of society — that they are supposed to serve.
While people scratch their heads over how to tide over a day of bandh — that, too, the beginning of a weekend — political activists and impressionists gloat over sights of downed shutters, cinema halls and multiplexes being closed, and sparse traffic on the roads; and they probably feel like good, old Simple Simon who put in his thumb, pulled out a plum and said: “What a good boy am I.”
But here’s what they don’t see: Despite being a Saturday, children are not allowed to go out to play out of fear that any possible violence on the streets could harm them. Consider their plight. As children, they are forced to suffer the effects of the bandh by sitting at home. As it is, almost every apartment block in Bangalore disallows children from playing within the building compounds, and going out is barred due to the marvellous, dramatic turn of events that culminated in the bandh, a call given by the ruling party in Karnataka to express solidarity with their beleaguered chief minister.
So what do kids do? They watch TV, play games on computers, while out of their sight, parents pull their own hair out of helplessness for allowing their children do the very things they would have otherwise banned them from doing.
No restaurants, no places of entertainment to take their kids to, no parks, and certainly no playgrounds. All these were swept off the day’s plan by the parents fearing the adverse effects of the bandh.
And to what end? A fight between an apparently interfering governor and an allegedly corrupt chief minister; that too, shown as if we are coming across corruption in the political class for the first time in our lives. And we need to be shocked!
On Facebook, a response to my single-word status “Bandh…!” was “Kya bandh?” (“What bandh”) and “Dukan ya Dimakh (sic)” (“Shop or Mind?”).
Most people fielding that poser would have said it was their mind. What else does a bandh achieve?
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