VISITING TWO FADING IDEOLOGIES

VISITING TWO FADING IDEOLOGIES

A few days ago I happened to visit the Fort Area of Mumbai and was negotiating the lane ( Yazdani Bakery) connecting Elphinstone Building( Akbaraleej area) to the Phirozshah Mehta Road . I had passed through the area many times and soon on my arrival in Bombay in 1981 had visited the place. There used to be ' The People's publishing house' flourishing then next to the office of The 'BLITZ' which too has faded along with the other many 'weeklies'.The 'PPP's prominence diluted with the break up of The Soviet Union and soon the shutter of the shop remained permanently down, but whenever I passed that lane I did glance to the side to remind of the days gone by. I was a regular to the shop and had purchased many books of Soviet literary authors- Chekov, Dostovasky,and children story books, these were not only reasonably priced but were of good binding and paper, my daughter still remembers the story of 'Masha and the Bear' and we have named our she dog -Masha! And, therefore the other day too as I looked to the side I was surprised to see the shutter up, and walked to the shop to see that the place has been named as 'People's Book House' on inquiry I learn t that now it is run by a Trust of the Communist Party of India. I was happy to see books on display, and though the subsidy of the Sovietraj did not exist some of the old collections were visible such as Dostovasky's 'Crime and Punishment' I also purchased the 1987 print of 'Ten days which shook the world ' the famous book of John Reed describing the Russian Revolution. Also on display were Hindi literary and Marathi literary works, the CPI mouth piece 'New Age' could be seen in one corner much thinned and dulled as reflection of its party's present state! I have some affinity toward 'PPP', from my Allahabad University days, sometimes we friends visited the 'Nilaabh prakashan' next to the the ever 'decadent-vibrant' 'coffee-house' in civil lines. The PPP books were available at 'Nilaabh', the publication of the famous Hindi writer Upendranath Ashk, named after his son, interestingly during my last visit I chanced to enter 'Nilaabh' and to my dismay found it in a dismal state-faded books,very few in number , the staff unconcerned sitting in the middle talking among themselves waiting for the day to end. My father had gifted me the twin volumes of Dostovasky's, 'The Idiot', purchased from there which I still possesses.

The very day I happened to visit the 'Khadi Gram Udyog' at D N Road. It is a very big departmental store containing various items made by village cooperatives such as Kurta-Pyjamas, silk clothes,shoes , brass artifacts , honey, books etc. But the place has not kept pace with time and is marred by the usual sarkari pace and inefficiency . I purchased two kurtas and two pyjamas to cater to the warm season ahead, somehow in spite of the mall culture and return of the ethnic wear the quality of cloth is inferior in Fabindia and therefore I find 'Khadi' offering variety to be true to itself even if it lacks market skills. My association with Khadi dates back to the times when during oct-nov months coinciding with the birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi ( 02 Oct ) Khadi clothes were sold at heavy discount and we purchased our year's requirement then only, crowd used to overflow and stalls were erected even outside the premises. Now no more discount exists and the rates of the items match with the biggest brands .I wondered therefore that by accident today I stumbled upon the two posts of the crumbling ideologies- Marxism and Gandhism, and felt sad at the decline of the two very relevant ideas, at the same time it was a little reassuring to note that all was not dead and the ideology even though low was not completely defunct.

It is not always important to be dominant but what is important is to keep the struggle on and inspire new struggles and in a way the struggle of 'Aam Aadmi 'party and 'Anna's 'movement is tribute to the Left and Gandhian ideologies!