Emerging India , Between Regal Isha And Idealist Rajvi !

BY R.K.MISRA

It hurts to separate but it is interesting to expect. 

Particularly at the cusp. Between the old and the new, between yesterday and tomorrow.  A baby to be born and a child moments old. From antiquity to anticipation !

As 2018 is set to become history, one seeks to look back one last time before crossing the threshold to 2019.There are a legion of pundits to dissect  the politics of the year gone by. I too shall endeavor to do so but at a different  word venue. For now and here, I heed my heart and not my head.

The last month of the past year -2018- saw a global extravaganza at one end of the spectrum and a soundless ,simple wedding , at the other. The world swirled in a manna- dipped ,mesmeric daze  at one end while  the other passed on padded feet, the way it was meant to, simple as simple could be. In fact almost a non-event except for the near and dear ones.

Nevertheless , it interests me for the simple reason that it sums up two divergent parts of my country.  lt also interests me for it  sums up Gujarat, the state which gave  many big names-among others-late Dhirubhai Ambani, the doyen of business  and off late Narendra Modi for climbing the political Everest. The humble-to- heights stories apart, Gujarat would any day pay obeisance to the simple Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, his illustrious brother Vithalbhai Patel,  Gulzarilal Nanda, the major Mahajan leader  who became officiating Prime Minister  and the taciturn gandhian Morarji Desai, the first prime minister from Gujarat and before them all Indulal Yagnik, Ravishankar Maharaj, Zaverchand Meghani, Kalapi, kavi Narmad…..the list would be long enough to cover this column. The one common strand governing  the bulk of these lives was simplicity.

But this is not about them all. This is about Isha, the grand daughter of Dhirubhai Ambani and daughter  of his son  Mukesh and Nita Ambani and Rajvi, the daughter of Darshan and Hina Desai.

The Reliance chairman’s offspring ,Isha married Anand, the son of Swati and Ajay Piramal of the Piramal group on December 12.The marriage was an extravaganza like never before which stretched from Mumbai to Udaipur and  from former Indian president Pranab Mukherjee to  former US first Lady Hillary Clinton and from America’s  Beyonce to Bollywood’s Bachchans with a long list of the likes of  Khans and Tendulkars filling  up the breach.

None of the razzmatazz here .Darshan is a journalist of a quarter century standing and his wife Hina a renowned social reformer working  in  what is often termed as the badlands of Uttar Pradesh, Azamgarh.Their daughter Rajvi got married  to Kuldip on December 9 at the Sadvichar parivar complex in Ahmedabad on December 9.

Both marriages took place around almost the same time. Both  were gujaratis by descent. In fact the Desai s have by-en-large stuck to their soil, the Ambanis ventured into greener , pastures, struck pay dirt and continue to shovel deeper . They are in the business of creating wealth  and legitimately splurging it in fractional proportion to  their earnings for the world to see.

The contrasts could not have been starker. Dhirubhai had no spoon in his mouth, Darshan’s father, Mahadevbhai  had one, even in his village of  South Gujarat origin, Anaval. Dhirubhai ,by published  accounts of his struggle days, queued outside public toilets to relieve himself in his days of struggle , Mahadevbhai , Iam sure never had to, until the time he became the executive  director of the Life Insurance Corporation of India, retired and left this world as did his better half a  teacher with the Central School, also called the Kendriya Vidyalayas.

Isha’s profile in public space lists her as a product of  Yale University and Stanford Business School. Rajvi is a pure product of indigenous education . She studied in schools  and colleges within the country that an upper middle class Indian could afford for their only child.

I do not know Isha who was born with a world of affordability, but I do know Rajvi, a journalist colleagues daughter who grew up in a middle class- graduated to upper middle class ethos. She was a withdrawn child in diapers who gained in strength, composure, confidence and comfort over the years making a career in banking on the strength of her own standing.

Never said but always understood, this withdrawn child transformed into an epitome of womanhood, one recent day  and chose her own  life partner. No barriers of caste and creed delineated her choice. Her parents were a union of their deadlocked  community, not so the shackles for their only child. They opened the world of the dreams of India’s founding fathers for their only one.

The tentacles of caste, creed, family and friends in Indian society is not a small one. And marriages may be made in heaven but when solemnized on earth bleed financially, burrow societally and box you in anthropologically. These were as binding on the Desais too. The only grandchild in a generational phalanx, Rajvi’s marriage was the stuff of her elders  multi-hued dreams. She, however, was made of more taciturn stuff.

Rajvi and her partner in life, Kuldip who cut through the caste chaos showed  why hope sees a future in young India. They made it clear  that their marriage would be a very simple affair with no one except a handful of close relatives attending. The parents of the young couple may not have a friends and family list to circle twice  around the globe like the Ambanis but they have picked up enough acquaintances in their journey through life to have a couple of hundred happily participate. A simple e-mail conveying the wishes of the youngsters for a quiet, no-frills, no-nonsense marriage was sent across with prayerful sobriety and accepted with dignity and delight.

The question I pose in the ending stages of the year to  an emerging India is who ,among the two, deserves your love and blessings. I for one have no doubt. Rajvi remains the trendsetter of the India of my dreams.

 Mukeshbhai would be well advised to spend just an iota of his abundance to make Mumbai  a wee bit more comfortable for the countless who queue up every morning with no where to go !!