Comment

There's this friend I meet once a month over chicken patties and South Indian coffee. The gupshup usually jumps from movies to politics to beauty secrets, to all kinds of secrets, lingering longest over unadulterated gossip. Why deny it at this late stage in life?
Now, this friend is not one given to hyperbole. So, when she declares with evangelical earnestness that Barack Obama might just be some kind of messiah come to the rescue of a world spinning out of control, I blink in disbelief.

Did I hear right? Need I clean my ears? She goes on, painting a vivid picture of how the American president just emerged out of nowhere, galvanising millions along the way — even melting cynical hearts continents away, including in our ancient land largely populated by opportunist and shameless politicos and their bureaucratic honchos and handmaiden. Something like, Mr President, how about coming here and cleaning up our mess.

To begin with I smile politely. And then it strikes me that she is the third person who has in the last few days talked of Obama as a beacon of hope, if not a saviour.

First, there was an acquaintance in Mumbai who wondered out loud whether Obama represented hope for the world. Here was somebody who admits his mistakes and never loses his cool; who tries to take everybody along, even extending a hand to the enemy. For her he was a bit of Mahatma Gandhi, a bit of Martin Luther King Jr. Of course, it also helps his being so elegantly dishy.

Next was an analyst friend in Mumbai, now savouring every word of president Barack Obama's memoir, Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance. He says that this is the first time he has really been given a true picture of what it means to be an outsider. The book gave him many insights into those on the margin — of families and within nations.

And then just yesterday I came across a brilliant article titled, So Many Tongues, by novelist Zadie Smith in the New York Review of Books. Actually, the cogent piece is based on a lecture the author (born to an English father and a Jamaican mother) recently gave at the New York Public Library.

It has to do with speaking a multiplicity of voices — not just voicing them but incorporating and incarnating them. "Obama can do young Jewish male, black old lady from the South Side, white woman from Kansas, Kenyan elders, white Harvard nerds, black Columbia nerds, activist women, churchmen, security guards, bank tellers…"

For her the new president "doesn't just speak for his people. He can speak them." It's all about taking in the other, and making him your own. It is about the need for leaders who have something of a healing touch about them.

Sure, America needs Obama. But why are we in India now getting obsessed by him? Well one reason could be that most of our leaders speak with forked tongues: multiplicity of tongues is not their thing. The Us-and-Them school of politicking works better for them. In other word: sons of the soil, pick up your swords and throw out the outsiders, citizens wear the colours and symbols of your religion on your person. And yes, while you are it, take out your hammers and sickles and trishuls.

As for my Mumbai friend, traumatised by 26/11, she feels that we, more than ever before, need somebody who embodies hope and reconciliation.

For the analyst, the lessons Obama learned from his immigrant father as well as his own skilful negotiation between the borders of race, divorced parents, dogmas and cultures helped him understand the predicament of some of his patients. "I was struck by the way he could handle pain and move on."

So just a little advice for the Obama-struck. Let's look closer home to find our own Obamas, away from dynasties and fiefdoms. And while we are at it look even closer, within, to find our inner Obamas.

The writer is author of The Kapoors: The First Family of Indian Cinema